Pedagogy of the oppressor: A new methodology for peacebuilding in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This thesis is concerned with how to overturn oppressive societies and make peace processes more inclusive so that they incorporate oppressors as well as oppressed. Through a comparative case study of the Civil Rights-era American South and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I have concluded that an informal oppressor-centered pedagogy conducted uninationally is needed to sensitize oppressors to the immorality of oppression and create empathetic intergroup relationships. In the American case, the legal system's abstract principles enabled change without such a pedagogy. However, uninational pedagogies are now needed to address unconscious racism. In the Israeli case, the explicitly ethnocentric legal system warrants uninational frameworks to reverse the negative attitudes sustaining oppressive social structures. Furthermore, I have analyzed the Israeli-Jewish population's needs and fears to show how peacebuilders can fully address their concerns. It should be noted that informal pedagogies could be reversed to apply to oppressive Palestinians as well as oppressive Israelis.