This article analyzes English textbooks used in Israel to examine whether their cultural content is appropriate for the Palestinian Arab learner. This topic is significant, as the English curriculum in Israel is uniform in all sectors. The article presents a critical discourse analysis of six English textbooks used in Israeli high schools to examine the recurrence of seven discursive devices that might possibly serve as a means for shaping or (re)producing ideological values: (1) culturally distinctive names, (2) pronouns, (3) the passive/active voice when relating to the Other, (4) explicit statements defining the target audience, (5) narratives involving faraway cultures that perpetuate Western stereotypes and exclude the Other, (6) a demand for culturally specific prior knowledge, and (7) discourse constructing identities and collective memories. These devices serve to foster English learners imbued with Western oriented Jewish-Zionist ideology, while reproducing and perpetuating hegemonic ideology. Thus, English textbooks in Israel marginalize the Palestinian Arab minority, its culture and common traditions, thereby engendering a learning environment that creates a negative learning experience for students of this sector.

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This article examines the constitutive role of English as a foreign language (EFL) as a cultural discourse of action and empowerment through which teachers in marginalized, specifically conflict‐ridden, educational contexts act as agents of social and educational change. Although current approaches to teaching English accentuate its transformative role, EFL pedagogies still often reproduce hegemonic and exclusionary ideologies. Drawing on an ethnographic EFL classroom case study, the author conducts a critical discourse analysis of dialogue journals within the theoretical frameworks of foreign language education, critical pedagogies, and linguistic citizenship. The article examines the dynamics surrounding the way two preservice Palestinian Arab teachers in Israel respond to imposed linguistic and educational subjectivities, and their political agency in contesting unequal EFL policies. Contesting exclusionary ideologies in EFL textbooks, fostering dialogicity in EFL classrooms, and increasing students’ agency and reflexivity in EFL programs could strategically promote the discursive role of English as an instrumental tool for implementing local–global understanding and social justice. English, in this sense, offers an important discursive terrain for teachers and learners to negotiate conflicts and engage in justice‐oriented dialogue.

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Previous studies of translanguaging in educational contexts indicate that translanguaging practices have the potential to generate a decolonial, emancipatory process for language-minoritized students. However, these insights are mainly based on studies of minoritized learners of English as a second language. Drawing on a one-year ethnographic study conducted in six Palestinian schools in Northern Israel, the present study investigated the effects of translanguaging in a conflict-ridden context, where both the teachers and the learners are minoritized and English is learned as a foreign language. Drawing upon Butler’s (1997) concept of implicit censorship and Stroud’s (2018) linguistic citizenship, we propose colonized education as a framework for understanding the tensions between translanguaging, as a decolonial pedagogy, and English language learning. Our findings suggest that while translanguaging may indeed have a liberatory force, it could also, at the same time, take an emotional-pedagogic toll that may hinder language learning rather than support it. In contrast, critical discussions of issues that are politically and emotionally laden may be highly effective, even when conducted in the target language.

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