534

The
British
Psychological
British Journal of Social Psychology (2012), 51, 534–550
C 2011 The British Psychological Society
Society

www.wileyonlinelibrary.com

‘This is ordinary behaviour’: Categorization

and culpability in Hamas leaders’ accounts
of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict
Andy McKinlay1 ∗ , Chris McVittie2 and Rahul Sambaraju2
1
The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
2
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK

The present paper examines the talk of three senior figures from the Palestinian Hamas
political movement. Data are drawn from a series of journalistic interviews that were
conducted in the months leading up to the invasion of Gaza by Israel in December
2007. Using membership categorization analysis, we explore the membership categories
and category-bound attributes that interviewers use in questions about responsibility
for potentially culpable actions and the ways that these are taken up, challenged,
or reworked by interviewees in presenting their own versions. The analytic findings
show that interviewers deploy categories bound up with terrorism while interviewees
develop alternative categorizations of resistance. Interviewers construct Palestinians
as victims of Hamas’ actions while interviewees construct them as victims of Israeli
aggression and international indifference. In warranting these alternative constructions,
the interviewees contrast current behaviours of the international community with those
of the past and align current Palestinian actions with those previously taken by Western
nations in resisting illegitimate occupations. Through these descriptions of categories and
actions, the interviewees attribute to the wider international community responsibility
for addressing the events of the ongoing conflict.

In this paper, we examine constructions of inter-group relations within the context of the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Situations of conflict interest discursive social psychologists
because they make salient issues of identity, the meanings of actions carried out,
and claims for particular conflict outcomes. In these respects, the Palestinian/Israeli
conflict offers a prime candidate for study. Its origins are fiercely contested, as are the
entitlements of Palestinians and Israelis as combatants and as members of national groups.
Particular actions occurring during the conflict are equally contested: the First Intifada
(Palestinian uprising) (1987–1993), the Second Intifada (2000–2005), the subsequent
invasion of the Gaza strip by Israel in December, 2007, the 1994 shooting by an Israeli
citizen of Palestinians praying at a Hebron mosque, the 2006 capture by Palestinians of

∗ Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Andy McKinlay, Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh, 7
George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, UK (e-mail: a.mckinlay@ed.ac.uk).

DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02021.x
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 535

the Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit, the archaeological work under the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the
building by Israel of a wall between Israel and Palestine, and Israeli settlements in land
that the Palestinians claim is under occupation can all be constructed as legitimate or
illegitimate according to the claims made by different speakers. Taken together, these
contested versions of antecedents, of particular events and the legitimacy or illegitimacy
of actions make for wholly incompatible claims for resolving the conflict.
Previous research has shown how speakers construct and mobilize their preferred
versions of identities, actions and outcomes in this conflict. For example, in a study of
official condolence messages on the death of Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, Fenton-
Smith (2007) shows how terms such as ‘freedom-fighter’ and ‘terrorist’ are rhetorically
deployed to attend to responsibility for events in Palestine. Witteborn (2007) discusses
how Palestinians interweave identities of resistance into appeals for common humanity
and social change. Some research here focuses on descriptions of actions that justify
and legitimize violence (Amer, 2009; Buttny & Ellis, 2007; Gavriely-Nuri, 2008). Similar
discursive work is found in relation to the outcomes that different speakers propose for
the conflict (Gavriely-Nuri, 2010; Kuzar, 2008). Such work shows how speakers on both
sides of the dispute offer somewhat different versions of the legitimacy or illegitimacy
of their own and the other party’s actions in arguing for very different outcomes to the
dispute.
As yet, however, one element of participants’ descriptions of the relevant issues has
received little attention in the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict: how participants
categorize themselves and others in formulating their descriptions and arguments.
As both Sacks (1992) and Schegloff (2007) note, at any point in an interaction
people, events and contexts can be categorized in a multiplicity of ways. However,
categorizations are not ‘natural’ but are worked up and produced within discursive
contexts (Stokoe, 2006) and depend, in part, on other social actions being performed in
the relevant interaction. It is for this reason that discursive researchers emphasize the im-
portance of developing analyses grounded in participants’ categories and categorizations,
rather than using researcher-defined categories (Edwards & Stokoe, 2004; Hester & Eglin,
1997; Sacks, 1992; Watson, 1997). Sacks draws attention to the ‘inference rich’ nature
of categorizations. Once an individual is assigned membership of a given category, this
sets up a range of normative expectations based upon common-sense knowledge about
what such category membership entails. Indeed, membership categorization analysis
often involves unpacking what it is that ‘common-sense knowledge’ (Schegloff, 2007)
asserts about the relationship between a category and its ‘category-bound activities’
(Sacks, 1972). On the one hand such categorizations provide individuals so categorized
with category-bound rights and entitlements: what Raymond and Heritage (2006) refer
to as ‘rights to identity-bound knowledge in self-other relations’ or the ‘epistemics of
social relations’. On the other hand, if someone is presumed to be a member of a category
but does not behave according to normative expectations then that individual will be
treated by others as in some way exceptional or deficient. Of course, as Sacks points
out, it is also possible that a category-bound activity be performed by someone who is
categorized other than in the relevant manner. In such cases, the actor is ‘not to get it
seen as the real thing’ because such activities are seen as ‘not doable’ by that category
of persons (Sacks, 1992, pp. 479–480).
Recent attention has turned to the ways in which membership categorizations
are bound up with the sequential organization of talk. For example, Stokoe (2009)
draws attention to the way in which category-based denials such as ‘I wouldn’t hit a
woman’ inform us of ‘the symmetrical-hierarchical organization of a culture’s categories’
536 Andy McKinlay et al.

even when the analysis draws upon understandings of the sequential organization of
interactions. That the recurrent deployment of particular types of categories allows
particular sorts of actions to be produced shows us the way in which categories
are intrinsically linked to social action. Given the sequential analyst’s concern to
elucidate action through sequential analysis, it is therefore clear that understanding
of categorization goes hand in hand with understanding of the sequences that make up
action in interaction.
Such category ascriptions are, of course, treated as sensitive matters in being either
taken up and maintained, or in being challenged or undermined, especially when
they involve negative inferences For example, Condor (2006) shows how national
categories can be formulated via geographical specification or reference to political
institutions and so avoid the moral opprobrium that might be inferred from other
versions of nationality. Indeed, speakers have developed a range of resources for
resisting unwelcome membership category ascriptions. Stokoe (2010) has shown how
in the context of police interviews violent offenders deploy ‘category based denials’
to make identity claims that also deny responsibility for violent events. Formulations
like ‘I am not the sort to hit a woman’ can be used to establish membership of one
category (men who do not hit women) precisely to avoid ascription of an alternative
category (men who do hit women) in circumstances where that latter ascription is highly
consequential for understanding the precise nature and level of the crime committed.
So, suspects’ justificatory accounts and categorizations have real-life consequences for
the type of crime with which they will be charged and for the punishment that they may
subsequently receive.
Of course, similar processes are in play when categorization of people other than
oneself occurs. For example, accounts of those people who might be characterized as the
‘victims’ of negative inter-group activities are often negotiated in a way which provides,
for the hearer, understanding of the roles and responsibilities which they carry in such
events and so description and moral standards become inextricably interwoven (Jayyusi,
1984; Leudar and Nekvapil, 2000; Tileagă, 2005). Leudar, Marsland, and Nekvapil (2004,
p. 244) have also shown that such membership category work may not only establish
blame ‘in delimiting one’s own moral, social and religious characteristics as well as
those of the opponents’ but also set ‘the ground for future violence’ thus justifying
violent actions as consequential upon such blameworthiness. In contexts such as
these therefore, processes of categorization are inevitably bound up with processes
of justification for inter-group actions.
Here, we explore these themes of membership categorization and their interweaving
with justificatory accounts within the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. We do
so in relation to the accounts provided by leaders of one particular party to the dispute:
the Hamas movement. Hamas (Harkat Al Mokwama Al Islamia) came into being, in its
present form, during the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, identifying itself as an Islamist
movement based in Palestine. In 2006, Hamas was elected as the Palestinian government
in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. However, following a challenge to this result, Hamas’
political leadership subsequently became restricted to the Gaza Strip, where it has since
remained in political power. The accounts of Hamas leaders are especially important in
understanding the Palestinian/Israeli conflict for two reasons. First, Hamas is the only
group involved in the conflict to have formally adopted the position that Palestinian
land should be protected by jihad as a religious duty and that Hamas mujahideen (jihad
fighters) should be supported by all Arab states (Schanzer, 2008). Second, the voice of
Hamas has to date been absent from any discursive research conducted on the conflict.
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 537

Here, therefore, we examine how Hamas leaders categorize the parties involved in the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict and how these categorizations attribute, challenge and resist
accountability for potentially culpable events such as violent actions occurring in the
course of the conflict.

Method
Data were collected through an online search via Google News Archive for interviews
with leaders of the Hamas movement, using four search terms: ‘Hamas’, ‘leader’,
‘interview’, and ‘transcript’. Articles were restricted to freely available items written
in English that appeared in the period between Hamas coming to power in Gaza on
25 January 2006 to immediately prior to the Israeli airstrikes and subsequent invasion of
Gaza begun on 27 December 2008. This yielded a preliminary list of 667 references.
Duplicate articles, those containing only descriptive editorial material, rather than
containing text presented as a complete account of what was actually said during the in-
terview, and those explicitly marked as being ‘incomplete transcripts’ were omitted from
consideration.
All remaining articles were described as interviews with speakers for Hamas.
However, Hamas (for obvious reasons) does not maintain a publicly available record of
individuals having a leadership role within the movement. So we compared leadership
identifications within the texts to those found in other publicly available sources that
describe Hamas to ascertain if these particular individuals were similarly described
elsewhere. Of course, processes of categorization and their social action consequences
arise in quotidian talk among everyday members of society. However, our aim here is to
explore how formulations of identity and action that arise on the international political
stage are bound up with descriptions of the conflict between the state of Israel and
the Palestinian people. For this reason, we limited our data to talk produced by actors
publicly recognized as having the appropriate rights and entitlements to ‘speak for’ one
of the major actors in that conflict and whose talk could be treated as consequential in a
manner that the everyday person’s is not. The final corpus of five articles was restricted
to interviews conducted with one of three individuals widely regarded as leaders of the
Hamas movement: Khaled Meshaal, President of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, co-founder
of Hamas, and Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, deputy chief of the Hamas political
bureau.
This type of data represents an interesting and yet seldom utilized resource in discur-
sive research. These data are drawn from the websites of international news agencies.
However, the texts examined here display significant differences in presentation from
those normally encountered on the World Wide Web. In most cases, such texts are
presented as attributing authorship to the person or persons who can be treated as being
responsible for the production of the website. Here, however, the website contents are
presented as though they are verbatim accounts of the interviews that took place. But
of course, the present data cannot be dealt with as though they are genuinely verbatim
accounts of the sort represented by transcripts of researcher-conducted interviews or
audio-recordings of naturally occurring talk. First, the interviewees were not native
English speakers and so what is presented as ‘verbatim’ is in fact the result of a process of
translation. Second, as is common with all journalistic editorial output, what is presented
is actually an outcome of processes of editorial ‘tidying-up’. Nevertheless, attention to
data of this sort can be of great benefit to the researcher. The journalistic outputs that
eventually derived from these interviews took the form of abbreviated magazine articles
538 Andy McKinlay et al.

or broadcast radio programmes. In this respect, the ‘transcripts’ that are displayed on
the journalistic websites involved here of necessity contain a much greater amount of
what was said by interviewees. Thus, the impact of editorial processes is significantly
reduced by attending to these data rather than to the eventual journalistic outputs. In
this respect, these data represent a more complete and publicly available record of what
interviewees said than would otherwise be available. In addition, the dataset utilized
here has a more ‘permanent’ standing than is the case with radio broadcasts since future
researchers are able to refer back to relevant websites in a way which is not open to
them in respect of broadcast material (unless such materials are available in ‘podcast’
form, which is not the case in the present instance). Finally, these data represent an
important resource because they comprise talk produced by political leaders who,
for obvious reasons, seldom appear as participants in research of this sort. As such,
these ‘transcripts’ provide a dataset sui generis that is worthy of analysis in its own
right.
Analysis of such discursive data can of course take many forms (McKinlay & McVittie,
2008). In line with the aims of this study, the present analysis was informed by
recognized principles of membership categorization analysis (Hester & Eglin, 1997;
Sacks, 1992; Schegloff, 2007), and the ways in which membership categories are used
and attended to within the sequential organization of talk (Stokoe, 2006, 2009). A
particular focus here was on how the membership categories and category-bound
attributes found within the present data functioned to make relevant issues of potentially
violent actions and accountability for those actions (Stokoe, 2010). In the present case,
preliminary analyses indicated a number of interactional sequences commencing with
an interviewer’s turn that introduced the topic of potentially culpable actions in the
context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and made relevant the issue of responsibility
for these actions. These sequences were selected out for detailed analysis. Attention
focused on the membership categories and category-bound attributes that interviewers
used in their formulations of responsibility for culpable actions and on the ways that these
constructions were in turn taken up by interviewees in their responses. We examined
also the competing categories and category-bound attributes that interviewees produced
in their turns, and how these functioned to justify morally the actions of the interviewees
and of their supporters and to attribute to others the moral responsibility for actions
occurring in the course of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Results
The extracts below are reproduced as seen on the relevant websites, maintaining the
paragraph breaks found in the publicly available records. Extract 1 is taken from an
interview with Mahmoud al-Zahar conducted at an unspecified location by Ulrike Putz
of Spiegel Online (Putz, 2007). This extract follows a discussion of Hamas’ possible
involvement in political initiatives instigated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Extract 2 comes from an interview with Khaled Meshaal conducted at an unspecified
location by Jeremy Bowen, Middle East editor of the BBC (Bowen, 2006). This extract
follows a discussion of potential changes to the Hamas charter. In each extract, the
interviewer’s initial turn treats the interviewee as accountable for actions that can
be characterized as ‘terrorist’ and for their effects on international actors. In each
case, the interviewee responds by reworking the membership categories relevant to
understanding the conflict and, in so doing, justifies the actions of Hamas and the
Palestinians.
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 539

Extract 1
1 Putz In the West, there is a fear that the Gaza Strip may become a playground
2 for international terrorism. Is this danger real?
3 al-Zahar Our people can’t distinguish between resistance and terrorism. We’re
4 fighting for the liberation of our land from an occupation. When people
5 in Europe had to fight the Nazis, they were honored, later, as freedom
6 fighters. No one would have called Charles de Gaulle a terrorist.

Extract 2
1 Bowen Hamas has been democratically elected but Hamas is an organization
2 that is listed by the Americans and the EU as a terrorist group. So, they
3 will continue to put more pressure on you, we can assume, than they
4 put on the Israelis. So, what are you going to do about it? Will you want
5 to stick with your truce or are you going to go back to attacks on
6 Israelis?
7 Meshaal This is not our problem. This is the problem of the international
8 community and the nations that deal with the Israeli-Palestinian
9 conflict.
10 Hamas won an election. It acquired the legal mandate through voting
11 and at the same time Hamas practises its right to resist the occupation.
12 Now the international community faces a contradiction. It considers
13 Hamas a terror organization and this is an unfair description of Hamas
14 because Hamas does what the British and French did when they were
15 up against the Nazi occupation.

Each extract begins with a turn in which a membership categorization is provided

for groups from outwith the region of conflict in Gaza: ‘the West’ in Extract 1 and
‘the Americans and the EU’ in Extract 2. However, as Stokoe (2006) points out, such
categorizations can be ‘worked up’ within the context of their production. Here, in
introducing these membership categorizations, the interviewers also ascribe to members
particular attributes: ‘the West’ (Extract 1) experiences ‘fear’ and ‘danger’ and ‘the
Americans and the EU’ (Extract 2) exert ‘pressure’. These formulations of the relevant
membership categorizations make relevant inferences about the reasons or causes for
such fear and pressure, and in both cases the interviewer supplies a candidate reason,
by representing activities within the Gaza strip as ‘terrorism’ or by describing Hamas
as a ‘terrorist group’. Thus, the first turn in both extracts produces a membership
categorization of others outwith the conflict that establishes their interests or concerns
as being legitimately derived from the culpable actions of Hamas or of people in Gaza
that are counter to those interests. In presenting these categorizations and descriptions
of actions, the interviewers treat al-Zahar and Meshaal as accountable for the ‘terrorist’
actions being described and their consequences for international groups.
In the subsequent turn in Extract 1, al-Zahar introduces a different membership
categorization: ‘our people’ (line 3). Like Putz, al-Zahar also works up this categorization.
First, he provides a characterization of the limited extent to which members of this
category draw distinctions that might be made by other groups of people: ‘our people
can’t distinguish between resistance and terrorism’ (line 3). Second, he warrants this
claim by describing the actions that relevant category members engage in. At line 4,
he describes the people of Gaza with whom he aligns himself (through the use of
‘we’) as ‘fighting for the liberation of our land from an occupation’. This description
depicts these actions as reasonable responses to the circumstances they face and presents
them as morally justifiable. By attributing these particular properties and actions to the
group of people to whom he refers, al-Zahar introduces a membership categorization
540 Andy McKinlay et al.

standing in contrast to an alternative categorization made hearable in the earlier turn,

that of ‘terrorist’. Moreover, in producing this membership category, and in offering up
descriptions of related properties and actions, al-Zahar indicates, through his contrast of
‘resistance’ with ‘terrorism’, that action descriptions are dependent upon the category
of people producing the description and on the category of people whose actions are
being described. This formulation therefore undermines the suggestion in Putz’s prior
turn that events that might occur in Gaza can be unproblematically characterized as
terrorism.
He develops this claim that the actions of members of the category ‘our people’
amount to ‘resistance’, at lines 4–6, by juxtaposing this description with a description
of previous actions of another category specified as ‘people in Europe’ fighting ‘the
Nazis’. This example, drawing upon a clearly recognizable period of European history,
is designed to be familiar to an international audience. At lines 5–6, al-Zahar categorizes
those involved as ‘freedom fighters’, consistent with his argument at line 5 that their
actions should be treated as laudable in that they were ‘honoured’. In the upshot to
this turn at line 6, al-Zahar returns to his earlier argument that how actions come to
be characterized depends upon the category of person making the characterization,
and on those whose actions are characterized. It would not make sense, he suggests,
for anyone to categorize the leading actor in the events he has described as being
a ‘terrorist’. Thus, al-Zahar’s turn orients to the preceding turn by providing a new
membership categorization and by working up that categorization in a particular way.
He argues that how category members’ actions are described is in part dependent upon
the categorization on offer and that, in relation to the categorization in play, ‘our people’,
category members’ actions should therefore be viewed as morally acceptable, not morally
culpable.
The issue of category ascriptions and category-bound activities becomes salient in
Bowen’s question in Extract 2. As Sacks (1992) points out, categories can be arranged
as ‘which-type’ sets where membership is presented as being an exclusive affair so
that individuals can be ascribed membership to one category or the other, but not
both. In the first turn, Bowen works up membership of Hamas in just this way. On
the one hand, membership of Hamas is characterized as being membership of a group
that is ‘democratically elected’ and thus hearably associated with category activities
such as sticking ‘with your truce’. On the other hand, membership is characterized as
belonging to a ‘terrorist group’ and here the category-relevant activities introduced are
‘going back to your attacks on Israelis’. Thus, this turn constructs these membership
categories as being mutually exclusive alternatives that lead to the ‘pressure’ that is
attributed to Americans and the EU (European Union) and that face Meshaal with a
dilemma of choice. However, it is noteworthy that whereas the former formulation of
electoral democracy is treated as self-evident in its standing, in the latter case Bowen
deals with the characterization of Hamas as a ‘terrorist group’ more sensitively, ascribing
that characterization to others in the form of ‘the Americans and the EU’.
In his subsequent turn, Meshaal takes up Bowen’s dilemma formulation but at the
same time orients to Bowen’s sensitive production of the ‘terrorist’ categorization in
establishing that such characterizations depend upon the category of person making the
characterization in a manner similar to al-Zahar in Extract 1. At lines 7–9, he takes up
Bowen’s suggested inconsistency in category descriptions as a ‘problem’ but attributes
this problem not to Hamas but to ‘the international community and the nations that
deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’ who are treated as responsible for producing
such inconsistent descriptions. The problematic status of such inconsistency is further
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 541

emphasized at line 12 as being ‘a contradiction’ in that at line 13 it is seen to rely on ‘an

unfair description’ of the category-based activities of Hamas. This claim of unfairness is
further developed at lines 14 and 15, where similarly to al-Zahar in Extract 1, Meshaal
introduces other membership categories in the form of ‘the British and French’ with
which the activities of Hamas are aligned. He attributes to people in these categories
actions that have been treated as morally acceptable, emphasized further by his reference
to the category ‘Nazi’ and its hearably culpable action of ‘occupation’. In echoing his
earlier description at line 11 of Hamas practising ‘its right to resist the occupation’, this
reference to ‘occupation’ further serves to align Hamas’ activities with those of ‘the
British and French’ by suggesting that in both cases the actions of the combatants are
similar and recognizably legitimate in resisting the hearably culpable actions of others.
This working up of category-relevant activities thus undermines the categorization of
Hamas as a terrorist group.
By working up the relevant category-bound activities as legitimate rather than
illegitimate and culpable, Meshaal warrants his earlier claim at line 11 that ‘Hamas
practises its right to resist the occupation’. Alongside this description of actions that are
hearably legitimate, Meshaal at line 10 takes up Bowen’s prior categorization of Hamas as
democratically elected in that it is described as having ‘won an election’ and ‘acquired the
legal mandate through voting’. These reworked categorizations are presented as being
consistent and as not leading to any dilemma for Meshaal or for Hamas. Accordingly,
Meshaal’s reworking of the membership categories on offer warrants his claim that any
inconsistency in how Hamas is characterized presents a dilemma for those making these
categorizations and not for Hamas.
What we see in the first pair of extracts, then, is a complex negotiation of membership
categories and category properties in which ascriptions of ‘terrorism’ are challenged
by formulations of ‘our people’ and ‘Hamas’ as ‘freedom fighters’ or as those who
‘resist the occupation’, descriptions resembling the version of Palestinian identity found
by Witteborn (2007). These alternative membership categorizations are worked up
in a variety of ways in order to establish the legitimacy and lack of culpability of
members’ activities. As Erjavec and Volcic (2007) note, analogies such as comparing
the actions of the Palestinians to actions of the British and French in resisting the
Nazis suggest that actions that might be treated as illegitimate can be warranted
through alignment with other actions more readily taken to be legitimate. Indeed,
such analogies are treated as recognizable to the interviewers and to international
audiences. Kitzinger (2000) points out that phrases such as ‘another Vietnam’ or
‘another Hitler’ sum up pre-packaged sets of associations, providing ‘media templates’
that establish interpretative frames of reference. Here, both al-Zahar and Meshaal refer
to fighting against the Nazis and treat these references as standing in no further
need of explanation. Fighting against the Nazis is treated as ‘rhetorical shorthand’
for resistance against an illegitimate occupation. At the same time, the activity of
categorizing individuals and of describing their category-based activities is itself brought
into question. The processes of describing actions and of categorization that arise in
the interviewers’ initial turns misfire, because they either lead to distinctions that are
not recognizable to those involved or leave those proposing the categorization facing a
contradiction.
However, there remains another potential criticism of Hamas, namely that even if
Hamas is not explicitly categorizable as ‘terrorist’, its violent activities still might result in
problematic outcomes for the Palestinian people. Extract 3 is drawn from an interview
with Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook conducted in Damascus by Gabriela Keller of
542 Andy McKinlay et al.

Spiegel Online (Keller, 2006). This extract follows a discussion of possible agreement
between Hamas and Fatah on the establishment of a Palestinian state. Here, the initial
turn makes relevant the category ‘Israel’ and its actions within the conflict. It is these
actions, and the attendant characterization of Israel, and how these are treated by other
parties that provide the focus for the turn that follows.

Extract 3
1 Keller After the abduction of the soldier, Israel began to bomb Gaza. Would
2 that not suggest that such actions only lead to violence against
3 Palestinians?
4 Marzook The Israeli aggressions will never stop anyway. In the last two weeks
5 alone, 11 Palestinian children have been killed in attacks. Now it is
6 about one soldier who was taken in combat. And suddenly the whole
7 world rises up and demands that he be set free. At the same time there
8 are more than 400 Palestinian children in Israeli jails. No one asks
9 about them.

Keller describes an action, ‘the abduction of the soldier’, that she associates with negative
consequences for the Palestinians in that ‘Israel began to bomb Gaza’. The sequential
ordering of these actions, implying a causal connection, and Keller’s formulation ‘such
actions only lead to violence’ construct the abduction of the soldier as more morally
culpable than the consequent actions of Israel. No direct mention is made of any actor
or category of people responsible for this abduction or for ‘such actions’. However, in
posing this question Keller treats Marzook as responsible for providing an appropriately
informed answer.
Marzook’s response at line 4, that ‘the Israeli aggressions will never stop anyway’,
takes up the category ‘Israel’ introduced by Keller but reworks the actions of category
members as proactively violent rather than predictable reactions to prior events. He
continues by warranting this claim through the introduction of a reformulated category of
‘Palestinian children’. This reworked categorization makes relevant both the defenceless
status of those who belong to the category and the illegitimacy of committing violence
against non-combatants of this sort. Marzook ascribes to members of this alternative
category suffering that results from the culpable actions of members of the ‘Israeli’
category, stating at line 5 that some have ‘been killed in attacks’ and at lines 7–8 that
‘there are more than 400 Palestinian children in Israeli jails’. The rhetorical effect of
his first description is heightened by reference to the timescale involved: ‘the last two
weeks alone’. The suffering of ‘Palestinian children’ is further emphasized through being
set within three contrast structures. As Heritage and Greatbatch (1986) have noted,
contrasts or antitheses are rhetorically effective in political speech because they allow
political messages to be constructed twice, in both a ‘positive’ and a ‘negative’ manner.
Here, Marzook first contrasts the actions taken against ‘Palestinian children’ with the
action taken in relation to ‘the soldier’, which action is reformulated as being ‘taken
in combat’ and thus as an unexceptional part of war. Second, the reference to ‘one
soldier’ at line 6 is contrasted with references to ‘11 Palestinian children’ at line 5 and
to ‘more than 400 Palestinian children’ at line 8, emphasizing the scale of the events
suffered by ‘Palestinian children’. Third, Marzook contrasts the responses of others
outwith the conflict. The extreme case formulation (Pomerantz, 1986) ‘the whole world’
at lines 6–7 when describing the external response to the action involving the soldier,
although not to be treated as literally accurate, emphasizes the extent of external concern
generated by that event. This is contrasted with a lack of concern for the suffering of
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 543

Palestinian children, of whom he argues again in extreme terms at lines 8–9 that ‘no one
asks about them’. As Edwards (2000) points out, in some cases extreme formulations
of this sort are not introduced as being hearably true (in the present instance, e.g.,
Marzook himself appears to be asking the very question that ‘no one asks about’). Rather,
such formulations are introduced as a display of the ‘investment’ that the speaker has
in the claim being made. Here the design of the contrasting descriptions rhetorically
emphasizes Marzook’s claim that others are indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians.
Thus, Marzook constructs Palestinian children as victims, not of prior actions that lead
to reprisals, but of unwarranted violence committed against them by Israel and of the
external world that fails to respond to their suffering.
Thus far, across Extracts 1–3, we have seen a variety of ways in which interviewees
produce reformulations of the membership categorizations made available by prior turns,
all the while attending to local normative expectations of topical relevancy. In the last
extract, we look at how these formulations of Hamas itself, the Palestinian people, their
relations with the wider community, and the actions of the Israelis are interwoven within
a single extended sequence. Extract 4 is drawn from an interview with Khaled Meshaal
conducted by Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs editor of Sky News at an unspecified location
in Syria (Marshall, 2008). This extract follows a question relating to the extent of Arab
support for Hamas and a response from Meshaal describing the options available to the
Palestinian people.

Extract 4

1 Marshall Nothing is left to them and there’ll be even less left to them if you keep
2 sending what many people believe are brainwashed people to blow
3 themselves up. Killing small children and then invited the retribution
4 that then comes.
5 Meshaal First of all we do not brainwash anyone. Every Palestinian
6 spontaneously feels that his land is occupied. That Israel is killing
7 children and women, demolishing their homes, taking their land,
8 building the wall, the settlements, that journalism favours Israel, and
9 digging under the al Aqsa mosque. So the Palestinian finds himself
10 going directly to fight for the resistance. This is his duty. As the French
11 fought the Nazis, and in the American revolution, as the Vietnamese
12 people fought, as did the South African. This is ordinary behaviour it
13 doesn’t need brainwashing.
14 Marshall You send people to sit next to small children on buses to blow them up.
15 I don’t see the moral equivalence there. You kill small children
16 deliberately, not as an accident, deliberately.
17 Meshaal We don’t kill anyone deliberately. The suicide bombings began after
18 Israel killed people at the Hebron mosque in 1994. Israel killed during
19 prayers in the Mosque and as an ordinary reaction the Palestinian
20 people started defending themselves. As a response to the Israeli
21 crimes.
22 I want to tell you there was no suicide bombing before in Israel.
23 Why did Israel not stop their occupation? You will notice that two
24 weeks ago Israel killed many children and yet there was no response
25 from the International Community. But any Palestinian behaviour is
26 condemned by the International Community.
544 Andy McKinlay et al.

27 This is a kind of hypocrisy. It’s a kind of weakness in the International

28 Community.
29 This is a kind of duplicity. Is it fair?

Marshall’s initial turn, at lines 1–4, draws upon two membership categories in
proposing particular versions of actions, culpability for those actions, and their con-
sequences for the Palestinians. The membership category ‘brainwashed people’ at
line 2, makes relevant the incapacity of members of this category to form appropriate
intentions to act and the suggestion that they have been deprived of this capacity
by others. Moreover, the category is bound up with a description of specific actions
in that at lines 2–3 category members are said ‘to blow themselves up’. The second
membership category comprises the victims of these actions, categorized at line 3
as being ‘small children’, a description that emphasizes the defencelessness and non-
combatant status of those being killed. These categorizations are deployed within a
formulation that proposes moral responsibility for the incapacity of those who carry
out the actions described and for the killing of the victims as described. Marshall,
in stating at lines 1–2 that ‘you keep sending’, treats Meshaal either individually or
as a spokesperson for others as responsible for the morally culpable actions that he
describes. He also describes these actions as having highly negative consequences for
the Palestinians, arguing at line 1 that ‘nothing is left to them’ and arguing at lines
3–4 that this suffering results from ‘retribution that then comes’ against Palestinians
for these actions. This formulation, of membership categories, associated actions and
responsibilities, and Palestinian suffering as a result of Hamas actions, is put to Meshaal for
comment.
Meshaal responds at line 5 by rejecting Marshall’s categorization of ‘brainwashed
people’ and the responsibilities that it makes relevant for the actions that occur. He
follows this by introducing a different membership category and associating it with
attributes that make available an alternative version of actions and motivations. The
membership category introduced at line 5, ‘every Palestinian’, can be heard as referring
to an all-inclusive group, thus attending to Marshall’s suggestion that members of Hamas
are distinguishable from others in being responsible for acts carried out against Israelis.
Meshaal continues by attributing to members of this category specific feelings, namely
each member ‘spontaneously feels that his land is occupied’. In the remainder of his
response, at lines 6–13, we see membership categorizations similar to those seen in
earlier extracts. Meshaal describes Israelis as engaging in actions that are hearably
proactive, illegitimate, and indiscriminate in their victims, and which impact across
many areas of Palestinian life. In such circumstances, the membership category of
‘Palestinian’ becomes associated with activities that are constructed as ‘resistance’ to
such illegitimate actions. As in Extracts 1 and 2, rhetorical support for these claims
is drawn from reference to the past actions of others. At lines 10–12, Meshaal makes
relevant membership categories, comprising national groups that have ‘fought’ against
occupying forces and whose actions can be heard as morally justifiable. In listing these
categories, and comparing the actions of their members to those of the Palestinians, he
develops his earlier claim that current Palestinian actions should be treated as reflecting
‘resistance’ to Israeli actions.
These categorizations warrant his upshot at lines 12–13 that Palestinian actions
represent ‘ordinary behaviour’, characterizing these actions as understandable and
rational responses to their current circumstances (Gavriely-Nuri, 2008). It is noteworthy
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 545

also that in building up this claim, at lines 8–9, Meshaal states that ‘journalism favours
Israel’. In addition to being offered as part of the explanation for why Palestinians
feel as they do, this statement undermines descriptions of Palestinian actions that
differ from the one Meshaal is providing. Potentially it is thus hearable as a criticism
of the categories and category-bound activities that Marshall deployed in his initial
question.
Marshall at lines 14–16 rejects Meshaal’s categorization and construction of Pales-
tinian actions, stating that ‘I don’t see the moral equivalence there’. This is contained
within a reworking of his own earlier version of categories and actions. Again, his
membership categorization at line 15 of the victims of such actions as ‘small children’
emphasizes the vulnerability, innocence and non-combatant status of those affected,
while his repeated references at line 16 to ‘deliberately’ and rejection of the alternative
possibility these might arise ‘as an accident’ emphasizes the degree of intention involved
in the commission of these actions. Together, these descriptions rhetorically emphasize
the moral culpability of what Marshall describes.
In responding, Meshaal draws upon two membership categorizations of the Pales-
tinians: the categorization of Palestinians as engaged in resistance as in his previous
turn, and the categorization of Palestinians as victims of external indifference as seen
in earlier extracts. His first description, at lines 17–22, again characterizes Palestinian
actions as responses to morally culpable Israeli actions. In support of this he offers
a further example of an Israeli action, namely the killing of people ‘at the Hebron
mosque in 1994’ described as leading to the ‘ordinary reaction’ of the Palestinian
people ‘defending themselves’. These descriptions as previously present Palestinian
actions as understandable and morally justifiable, given the hearably innocent and
non-violent nature of attendance at religious prayer, in contrast to Marshall’s morally
culpable versions. The second categorization of Palestinians comes at lines 23–26,
where Meshaal makes relevant a further category of ‘children’, reworking the category
earlier introduced by Marshall. By applying this categorization of ‘children’ as hearably
innocent, defenceless, and non-combatant victims to Palestinians, rather than to those
affected by Palestinian actions, Meshaal emphasizes the moral blameworthiness of the
Israeli actions conducted against Palestinians. This construction of Palestinians as victims
is further developed at lines 25–28 by reference to another membership category, ‘the
International Community’. Here Meshaal criticizes members of this category in two ways.
First, they act inappropriately by failing to recognize Palestinian suffering while criticizing
any actions that Palestinians themselves take. Second, Meshaal argues at lines 27–29 that
this inappropriate action amounts to ‘a kind of hypocrisy’, ‘a kind of weakness’, and ‘a
kind of duplicity’, emphasizing through this three-part list (Heritage & Greatbatch, 1986)
and lexical repetition the bias and partiality of such action. This paves the way for his
question at line 29 ‘Is it fair?’, designed not to elicit an answer but instead to provide an
upshot to his description of the Palestinian situation and how it is treated by the outside
world.
In concluding, it is useful to point out that the suggestion here is not that categoriza-
tions of Palestinians, of the Israelis, or of the international community represent per se
some form of ‘elite’ talk that is absent from the more quotidian discourse of the everyday
Palestinian. For example, in the last set of brief examples taken from other journalistic
interviews conducted in the same time period, it is clear that such categorizations are
readily drawn upon by those for whom Meshaal and his colleagues speak.
546 Andy McKinlay et al.

Extract 5a: Anonymous caller to radio programme

1 Caller The Palestinian people are defeated by injustice and occupation

Extract 5b: Zakaria Zubeidi, footsoldier of the Al Aqsa brigade

1 Zubeidi Every time we have a suicide attack it is a reaction to an aggressive
2 Israeli attack. Our attacks are not strategic attacks. All the attacks of the
3 Aqsa brigades have been reaction to big Israeli aggressive attacks

Extract 5c: Indira Gandhi Hamuda, school teacher

1 Hamuda This is the occupation. They make no difference between children and
2 fighters

Extract 5d: Wael al-Sa’idi, shopkeeper

1 al-Sa’idi It’s the result of the blockade. We don’t want aid. We feel like beggars.
2 The world wants us to be dependent on the occupation and aid. How
3 can people live, I wonder?

In these extracts, the speakers produce versions of the Palestinians as victims, of

the Israelis as aggressors, and of the international community as motivated towards
maintaining such a state of affairs. In some respects, these claims echo those found
in the talk of the leaders of Hamas. However, Hamas leaders carefully deploy such
categorizations in response to the interactional demands of the political news interview
and to the prior turns of those political journalists conducting those interviews. In
particular, in the talk of the Hamas leaders, such categorization practices are interwoven
with accounts of culpability and justification and thus accomplish particular social
actions for the interviewees. While category items may be produced in a variety of
different contexts, categorization itself is a social action that orients to these immediate
local contexts of production. What is shown here, then, is that in the present interview
contexts in which accountability for violent action is in play the categorizations available
to Palestinians can be deployed in sequences that attend to such accountability in
justifying the actions of those concerned.

Conclusion
What we see here are particular membership categorizations being proposed by the
interviewers and being met with challenge and alternative versions by the interviewees.
Moreover, these categorizations are bound up with ascriptions of moral justification or
of culpability. Notably, in the context of this conflict, one ‘contest of categorizations’
in play is that of ‘terrorist’ versus ‘freedom fighter’, as made relevant by the inter-
viewers’ questions and interviewees’ responses in Extracts 1, 2, and 4. The ‘terrorist’
categorization of course hearably attributes moral culpability for violence. It is therefore
unsurprising that the interviewees resist such categorization and provide their own
categorizations of Hamas and of the Palestinians in terms of resistance to an occupying
force.
However, as we noted at the outset, categorizations of the self commonly go hand-in-
hand up with categorizations of others. Such categorizations and their category-bound
attributes not only make available particular versions of past and current activities but
also provide a context within which future actions and moral responsibility for these
actions can be understood (Leudar et al., 2004). Here, the Hamas leaders produce
 Categorization and culpability in Hamas leaders’ talk 547

talk of others in order to achieve three particular rhetorically persuasive effects.

One categorization of the ‘other’ found here is of the other group directly involved
in the conflict. The interviewees construct Israelis as being the aggressor in the conflict
and as a force illegitimately occupying land in Gaza and carrying out acts of violence
against Palestinians. These versions of events and the actions of others provide, for the
hearer, understanding of Israeli responsibility in relation to the conflict and in so doing
legitimate Palestinian actions against Israel. A second categorization of the ‘other’ arises
in the analogy between Palestinian actions and those of other nations that are taken
to have constituted legitimate resistance to an aggressor. By aligning Palestinian actions
with the actions of these others, the interviewees present Palestinian actions as also being
legitimate rather than as comprising unwarranted violence. A third categorization of the
‘other’ arises in Meshaal’s characterizations of those outwith the immediate context
of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict: ‘the International Community’. This categorization
makes available a hearable contrast between the actions of the international community
in criticizing Palestinian activities and their other actions in remaining indifferent to
Palestinian suffering. Taken together, these categorizations are provided to account for
the actions to date of Hamas and the Palestinians and also make relevant a context within
which their future actions can be understood as morally legitimate.
It is to be expected that in accounting for their own actions, the Hamas leaders
categorize the Israelis as the aggressors in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. However,
the specific categorizations of others not directly involved in the conflict offer further
benefits to the interviewees in legitimizing Palestinian actions. For, as Condor (2006)
has pointed out, temporal continuity of interests can provide a basis for establishing
commonality of group identities. Here, the speakers treat the absence of such continuity
as in itself being an accountable matter in the negotiation of inter-group relations.
Thus, the contrast between the characterization of Hamas’ actions as illegitimate and
the treatment of previous actions of other groups as legitimate is presented as being
problematic for the international community. The responses of external actors to actions
occurring within the conflict, in so far as they appear biased and partial, are treated as
being a complainable matter to be addressed by parties outwith the conflict, as reflected
in Meshaal’s final unresolved question.
More broadly, the present findings throw further light on aspects of membership
categories in use that extend well beyond the current context. As Stokoe (2009) notes,
membership categorizations are actions that are located within sequences of interaction.
In the present case, we have seen how actions such as accusing the Israelis or criticizing
the international community are accomplished in part by careful category ascription.
Stokoe also notes that categorization-as-action can be grounded in culturally prevalent
forms of talk such as the ‘the sort to hit a woman’. And, similarly, what we have seen
here is that in some cases the Hamas leaders draw upon categories that are also deployed
by everyday Palestinians. However, what we also see is that the Hamas leaders are able
to make relevant a wide diversity of other categorizations, such as ‘the British and the
French’ in accomplishing action in interaction. This provides an important clue to the
relationship between categorization and social action in general. Category work can be
‘culture specific’ to a form of action, such as denying in a police interview being the sort
to hit women. But it does not have to be. In performing a social action, speakers can draw
upon any categorizations whatsoever. However, for that action to be successful, those
categorizations must be woven into the sequential patterning of the local interaction in a
way that makes those categorizations both relevant to the topic at hand and appropriately
‘inference-rich’.
548 Andy McKinlay et al.

Additionally, in attending to the negative inferences made relevant by specific cate-

gorizations, speakers can resist the ascription to themselves of potentially problematic
memberships, or categorize others in ways that attribute to them responsibility for
actions that occur. Rather than treating these as alternative possibilities, it might in
certain inter-group contexts be more useful to view them as interlinked. For, when
actions occurring in such contexts are hearably negative, issues of accountability will
inevitably be salient. In such cases, it may be insufficient simply to re-characterize one’s
own actions or those of members of the other category; instead the attribution of
accountability for culpable actions may depend upon categorizations of all involved
directly or indirectly. Only in these ways can the issue of accountability be described
in ways that attend to the expectations of a potentially critical audience. Thus, through
careful deployment of categories in attending to the immediate interactional concerns,
speakers can justify their own actions while providing understanding of issues that are
highly consequential for others.
Here, then, for the first time we have seen how leaders of Hamas as one of the
major parties involved in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict make sense of that conflict and
account for their actions and those of others involved. In legitimizing their actions and
those of the Palestinians, the leaders interweave issues of morality and accountability for
violent actions with categorizations of those involved and of their actions. It is moreover
noteworthy that their descriptions attend not only to categorizations of those directly
involved in the conflict but also categorizations of others not directly involved. In these
ways, the speakers’ accounts considered here are designed to provide for an international
audience the understanding of actions of the conflicting groups this far and a context
in which future events should be interpreted pending any future resolution of the
conflict.

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Received 6 May 2010; revised version received 21 January 2011