Abstract
Gavriely-Nuri takes a cultural approach to critical discourse analysis to investigate the reconstruction of peace in Israeli political, literary, pedagogical and media discourse over the six-plus decades of Israel’s existence. The basic premise of the book is that Israel’s war and peace discourses are a cultural arena that mirrors and (re)constructs the imagined national collective memory of Israel. The exclusionary nature of this imagined identity renders challenging the development of a memory discourse that promotes cosmopolitan values and a culture of peace. This study thus aims to deconstruct the cultural cargo embedded in the various mythic metaphors that are salient in Israeli political discourse.
Chapter 1 exposes how Israeli politicians problematise the Israeli–Palestinian peace process through peace estrangement discourse and semantic conceptual blurring. Various peace estrangement strategies (totalisation and negativisation) in Knesset speeches and newspaper discourse from 1967 to 1973 are analysed in Chapter 2. By depicting peace as unattainable, the ‘peace-seeking’ Israeli political actors construct Israel’s uncompromising anti-peace position as responsible and realistic and represent Arabs’ peace initiatives as mere tactical ploys to restore occupied territories. Peace discourse at the Knesset in 1987–2008 shows more oppressive peace phrases (negative, abstract and unilateral) than supportive (positive, concrete and bilateral) counterparts (Chapter 3). The author analyses Ariel Sharon’s speech during the Palestinian Second Intifada (July 2003) as an illustration.
Chapter 4 demonstrates how peace and war concepts are semantically blurred in Israeli Knesset war speeches during the period 1982–2008. It demonstrates the frequent rhetorical deployment of peace slogans as an Israeli cultural code to provide a casus belli. While Israel claims that it ‘extends a hand in peace’ (p. 55), it is always the instigator of preventive wars allegedly waged to restore peace. The argument that Israel faces an existential threat and that its moral superiority has allowed it to prevail in the face of adversity represents the master narrative in the construction of Israeli collective memory. Such semantic blurring of peace and victory in Israel’s political discourse is shown in victory narratives about the Six-Day War (Chapter 5). Israel’s invulnerability myth is reflected in Dayan’s argument that ‘war is something that happens every ten years, and lasts six days’ (p. 58). Similarly, Meir stated that ‘we met the Arab people living in the territories that were now ours, we smiled at them […] we could now all live a normal life together’ (p. 59). This victory myth-making industry reconstructs militarism as benevolent and conducive to sustainable peace.
In the same vein, the mythic metaphor ‘we extend a hand in peace’ appears as a powerful strategic manoeuvre in metaphorical reasoning in parliamentary and newspaper peace discourse from 1948 to 2010. Analysis of latent ideologies reveals four aspects: the European, the Sabra, the Peacemaker and the Postmodern. The European peace metaphor constructs Israel as a perpetual victim of the absence of a credible Arab peace partner and thus justifies belligerence. On the other hand, the Sabra version is summed up in Yitzhak Rabin’s ‘war for peace’ metaphorical argument: ‘Our hand is always extended in peace, but its fingers are always on the trigger’ (p. 76). The Peacemaker model involves reciprocal readiness to make peace, while the Postmodern model of peace is concerned about mere rehabilitation of the problematic international image of Israel, which renders peace a mere ‘commodity’ in the market of international relations (Chapter 6).
Chapter 7 delineates the various peace-estrangement strategies (i.e. abstraction and impersonalisation) plaguing Israeli history school textbooks, regarded as instrumental in the discursive construction of Israeli identity and the devaluation of peace. The topic of peace is quantitatively marginalised in Israeli textbooks, while benevolent militarism is prioritised. In addition, peace is depicted in abstract terms and human agency is effaced through over-metaphorisation, passivisation, nominalisation and ergativity. War thus is depicted as ineluctable and Arab peace initiatives are silenced. Sport and scientific achievements are portrayed in militaristic frames, ‘reflecting the “life by the sword” ethos as a dominant Israeli cultural code’ (p. 95).
Chapter 8 examines the peace estrangement strategies deployed by Herzl in his novel Altneuland (1902). As Zionist ideology rests on the myth of Palestine as a ‘desolate land’, Palestinians are made invisible. When Arabs are mentioned, they are referred to as ‘brigands’ and their children are portrayed as ‘play[ing] in the dust, naked’ (p. 105). Further, Palestinians are Europeanised to strip them of their distinct cultural identity. Likewise, the influx of Jews and the dispossession of Palestinians are depicted as a blessing. Conversely, Chapter 9 outlines the peace-normalisation discourse strategies (selectivity, conciliation and avoidance) used in Ha’aretz obituary columns (2001–2010). The article selects only Israeli public figures who were active in nurturing cosmopolitan values (e.g. peace or environment activists). It also remembers the deceased more in terms of universal values (e.g. as a caring parent), and avoids the representation of the commemorated figures in reference to their military rank or ethnic, ideological and national identity. These inclusive strategies are enacted through the use of a more universalistic-humanistic conception of global identities; for instance, Eliezer Shiloni’s obituary contained his witness testimony about the brutal British repression of the Great Arab Revolt (1936). Obituaries also contain a conclusion with a cosmopolitan message.
Israeli Peace Discourse offers an interesting exploration the dynamics of Israeli ‘Orwellian Newspeak’ across a multitude of discursive genres. However, the focus on lexico-grammatical aspects of linguistic inquiry limits its ability to achieve ‘a more coherent’ and ‘systematic methodology’ that transcends mere ‘content analysis’ (p. 18); for example, the pragma-dialectical component of political argumentation is downgraded. Although the author argues that Israeli political leaders use dogmatic argumentation, she does not demonstrate in an analytical way what makes Israeli political argumentation dogmatic. Similarly, the statement that ‘metaphors … encapsulate hidden assumptions’ (p. 70) should be supported by a demonstration of why Israeli presumptive metaphorical reasoning is fallacious. Instead, the author simply qualified ‘metaphorisation’ as a manipulative discursive strategy that constructs the peace process as a realm of the political inaccessible, outside any possible political deliberation or reconciliation. Likewise, her analysis of ‘peace phrases’ restricts the study to counting peace phrases that fit within a ‘benevolent militarism’ frame, instead of interrogating the very nature of arguments contained in this frame. Further study is still required to address the complexity and depth of ideology claims contained in Israeli political rhetoric.