Abstract Amid the ongoing war in Israel that began on October 7, 2023, Palestinian Israeli English teachers are navigating sociopolitical pressures and trauma. In classrooms and public discourse, Palestinian voices are surveilled, silenced, and criminalized, revealing dynamics of oppression (Marmarosh, 2025). The paper brings Elizabeth Povinelli's (2016) concept of the otherwise in conversation with linguistic citizenship —discussed by Stroud relational, embodied pedagogies; resistance to ontological erasure; care and interconnection; and the subtle, unpredictable disruptions—words whispered under surveillance, small acts of curriculum defiance—that spread the potential for transformational voices critical of Israeli hegemony and colonial practices. At a theoretical level, findings sketch contours of linguistic/semiotic citizenship as an otherwise that is a dynamic space shaping survivance.
Hayik et al. (2026) studied this question.