‘TALKING PEACE – GOING TO WAR’

Abstract

This article offers a cultural approach to critical discourse analysis of major addresses made by Israeli leaders before the initiation of new wars between 1982 and 2008. The article reveals an intriguing phenomenon: the intensive use of the word ‘peace’ in these texts. The article's central claim is that the word ‘peace’ is an integral part of the Israeli just war rhetoric, a phenomenon that can be termed: Peace in the Service of War (PSW). PSW aims at rationalizing and legitimizing war by using a series of discursive strategies creating various pseudo-logical connections between war and peace: false narrative, logic of binarism, dogma and metaphor. Israeli war speeches, an interesting and relatively unknown arena for the non-Hebrew reader, can shed light on the current global just war rhetoric from an unfamiliar perspective.

Keywords:

• discursive capital
• identity image
• just war rhetoric
• ‘us and them’
• Arab–Israeli conflict

Notes

1. Speeches delivered by leaders before initiation of war are defined here as ‘war speeches’.

2. The English citations from this speech are taken from Prime Minister Office website. Available at: http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/Pages/default.aspx. Citations from other speeches were translated by the author from the hebrew version.

3. For updated bibliography on the Just War doctrine from ancient to early modern times, see Delahunty and Yoo (2012).

4. We may have an inclination to think that the 11/9 started a new discursive era. This is not precise. Many concepts and narratives that were used by George Bush have deep roots in former American leaders’ discourse. See, for example, the narrative ‘new partnership’ articulated by President Clinton in 1998. See Edwards and Valenzano (2007).

5. George W. Bush Address to a Joint Session of Congress Following 9/11 Attacks, delivered 20 September 2001. Retrieved from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911jointsessionspeech.htm.

6. It is universally believed to be based on a quotation from Roman military writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (around the year 390 AD).

7. See, for example, G.W. Bush's Veterans Day Speech, 11 November 2005. Retrieved from http://www.timothyhorrigan.com/documents/bush051111.html.

Additional information

Dalia Gavriely-Nuri (author to whom correspondence should be addressed) is a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a senior lecturer at Hadassah Academic College, Jerusalem. She is the ‘Special features’ Editor for Critical Discourse Studies (CDS). She specializes in the cultural and discursive aspects of peace and war, national security and the Arab–Israel conflict and has published more than 25 articles on the subject. Last publication (2013) The normalization of war in Israeli discourse, 1967–2008. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.