Telling It Like It Is - The Delegitimation of The Second Palestinian Intifada in Thomas Friedman's Discourse

Discourse
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`Telling-it-like-it-is': the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in

Thomas Friedman's discourse
M. Mosheer Amer
Discourse Society 2009 20: 5
DOI: 10.1177/0957926508097093
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ARTICLE
Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 5
Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation

of the second Palestinian Intifada in
Thomas Friedmans discourse
Discourse & Society
Copyright 2009
SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC)
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 20(1): 531
10.1177/0957926508097093
M. MOSHEER AMER
TH E U N IVERSITY OF MELB OU R N E, AUSTRALIA
The concept of legitimation is essentially social and political

ABSTRACT
(Martin Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997). That is, what or who is legitimized
depends to a large extent on who speaks and in what capacity, social status
and role he/she speaks from. Legitimation, in this sense, is linked to power,
with which comes the authority to define the situation (Parsons, 1986),
and consequently the authority to determine what is right and wrong, and
what is legitimate and justifiable and what is not. In this paper I examine
the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in Thomas Friedmans
discourse by analysing how the Intifada is discursively constructed in a
column which Friedman contributed to the op-ed page of the New York Times.
I aim to do this by (1) analysing the columns argumentative structure and
moves employed in Friedmans delegitimizing construction of the Intifada,
and (2) showing how the legitimation of political actors, including
self-legitimation, is closely linked to Friedmans argumentation. I also report
on the results of a critical discourse analysis of a corpus of Friedmans
columns which support the analysis findings of the main text.
KEY WORDS:
argumentation, deictic centre, (de)legitimation, dominant themes,

ingroup/outgroup presentation, Israel, NYT, Palestinian Intifada, Thomas Friedman
Human conflict begins and ends via talk and text. We generate, shape, implement,
remember and forget violent behavior between individuals, communities or states
through a specific discourse. It is discourse that prepares for sacrifice, justifies
inhumanity, absolves from guilt, and demonizes the enemy.
(Nelson, 2003: 449)
Discourse & Society 20(1)
Introduction
On 29 September 2000, the second Palestinian uprising (al-Aqsa Intifada) broke
out when then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, escorted by a large security
entourage, staged a right-of-ownership walk-about at what Jews and others
call the Temple Mount, and what Muslims and others refer to as al-Aqsa and the
Dome of the Rock (Hirst, 2003: 25). The provocative march triggered violent
protests, the result of which was that at least five people died in Jerusalem after
being shot by Israeli security forces and more than 200 were wounded after
stones were thrown over the Western Wall after Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa
Mosque (Amnesty International, 2000). Popular Palestinian protests against
the killings spread to other occupied Palestinian territories and in Arab towns
inside Israel proper. Violent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli army forces
characterized the early weeks of the uprising such that between 29 September
2000 and 2 December 2000, according to The Israeli Information Centre for
Human Rights, BTselem (2000: 4):
Israeli security forces killed 204 Palestinian civilians and 24 Palestinian security
forces, and wounded approximately 10,000 Palestinians. At least three Palestinians
were killed by Israeli civilians. Thirteen Israeli civilians and eleven members of the
Israeli security forces have been killed by Palestinian civilians. Five Israeli security
force personnel were killed by Palestinian security forces.
Then the level of violence grew more deadly with Israeli military attacks and
incursions into Palestinian areas on the one hand, and Palestinian attacks against
Israeli military and civilians on the other. The events of this most recent episode
of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict have had serious political reverberations across
the Middle East and worldwide to the present day.1 Predictably, media outlets all
over the world devoted much attention to reporting and commenting on this
momentous event.
Discourses of and about war and conflict are profoundly interconnected with
legitimation. This is because discursive acts of legitimation have socio-cognitive,
political and ideological functions through which powerful social players
seek to justify, explain or discredit particular social actors and actions. Such
legitimation is often done by virtue of conforming to a system of law, acceptable
norms or a social or moral order (see Chilton, 2004; Habermas, 1975; Martin
Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997; Parsons, 1986; Van Leeuwen, 2007; Van Leeuwen
and Wodak, 1999). Legitimation in news media is a case in point as the media
play an influential role in the formation of public opinion and the transmission
and promotion of particular beliefs and ideologies about particular events and
social groups.
This paper examines the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in
the discourse of the well-known American journalist Thomas Friedman of the
New York Times (henceforth NYT). Friedman is an influential media voice who
enjoys a readership of possibly millions of readers through his foreign affairs
column, which appears twice a week in the opinion-editorial (alternatively,
op-ed) section of the NYT, and is syndicated to 700 other newspapers worldwide.2
He is also a three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize: the first two he won mainly
for reporting on the Middle East while he won the third in 2002 for commentary
for his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the
worldwide impact of the terrorist threat. 3 According to Herman (2003),
Friedman is an institution at the NYT, while Robert Fisk characterizes him as
an increasingly messianic columnist for the New York Times (2005: 589).
Friedmans power does not simply come from his wide readership, but more
crucially from his likely influence on politicians and foreign policy circles in
the US, and his position in a powerful institution like the NYT. Also, Friedmans
influence is based on a complex web of relations he has with the Bush administration (Herman, 2003), with Israel, and with other powerful social actors
(Mearsheimer and Walt, 2007). It is from this perspective that Friedmans
discourse can exercise hegemony, gain authority and credibility as it travels, and
constitute what Kress (1985: 15) calls a paradigm example for pertinent
discourses to draw upon, confer authority on and function continuously to reproduce and reconstitute the group around the discourse(s).
For the purposes of analysis, the large part of this paper provides a detailed
examination of a column contributed by Friedman to the op-ed page of the NYT
and published on 13 October 2000, two weeks into the Intifada, and is selected
as representative of Friedmans discourse on the Intifada (see Appendix). This
column is particularly interesting for it was published when it was still unclear
whether the ongoing confrontations were going in the direction of a new violent
phase of IsraeliPalestinian relations, or were just another temporary breakdown
in the already faltering Oslo peace process. Hence, this column represents a prime
case in point of how Friedman sought to define the situation and explain the
actions of the political actors involved in it. Another reason for the importance
of this key text is that it conspicuously showcases many of the themes and textual
features characterizing Friedmans discourse on the Intifada.
My analysis involves examining the columns argumentative structure and
moves employed in Friedmans delegitimizing construction of the Intifada and
demonstrating throughout how the legitimation and delegitimation of political
actors, including self-legitimation, is closely linked to Friedmans argumentation
and his discursive representation of the Intifada. The analysis is done within the
framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which aims at denaturalizing
and exposing opaque and explicit discourse structures and strategies in dominant
discourses responsible for enacting and perpetuating domination and control of
less powerful social groups (e.g. see Fairclough, 1989, 2003; Reisigl and Wodak,
2001; Van Dijk, 1993, 1998).
In the remainder of the paper, I summarize findings from my critical discourse
analysis of a corpus of 20 columns written by Friedman which were published
over a six-month period between 2000 and 2003 in the NYTs op-ed page. This
summary aims to allow us to gain a comprehensive overview of the dominant
themes and their textual realizations underlying Friedmans commentary on
the second Intifada.
Theoretical background
DISCOURSE AND LEGITIMATION
The concept of legitimation is essentially social and political (Martin Rojo and
Van Dijk, 1997). That is, what or who is legitimized depends to a large measure
on who speaks and in what capacity, social status and role he/she speaks.
Legitimation, in this sense, is linked to power, with which comes the authority
to define the situation (Parsons, 1986), and consequently the authority to
determine what is right or wrong, and what is legitimate and justifiable and
what is not. Hence, both speakers and hearers (or writers and readers) orient to
such authority, be it moral, political, institutional or legal; authority such that
hearers bring assumptions and knowledge about the authority and legitimacy of
the speaker while the speaker draws on this authority in their discourse.
Martin Rojo and Van Dijk (1997) hold that sociopolitical legitimation is
largely realized through persuasive, and sometimes manipulative, discursive
structures and strategies. They propose that acts of legitimation may, therefore, be
analysed in three dimensions: a pragmatic dimension which involves the speakers
legitimation of the controversial event itself; a semantic one which involves a
subjective representation of the action as truthful and credible as opposed to
other representations offered by opponent groups; and a sociopolitical dimension
whereby the authority of the speaker interacts with and influences the first two
in legitimating ones discourse and delegitimating others discourses. In this way,
the authority to perform acts of legitimation and its symbolic efficacy, according
to Bourdieu (1991: 111), depend on the interdependent relationship between the
properties of discourses, the properties of the person who pronounces them and
the properties of the institution which authorizes him to pronounce them.
Taking the cognitive dimension of legitimation into account, it may be
instructive to consider Chiltons (2004) discourse processing model, which
is particularly useful for the analysis presented here because of its capacity
to explain how legitimation is produced by utilizing the persuasive power of
proximization (Cap, 2006: 3), and how such legitimation is indexed explicitly
and implicitly in various linguistic expressions. Chilton suggests that in processing any discourse, people generate mental representations about what entities,
locations, etc. exist and what relationships are established between them. Such
representations present conventional shared understandings about the structure
of society, groups and relations with other societies (2004: 56).
Thus, Chilton (2004) proposes a deictic centre along the space (s), time (t)
and modality (m) axes (see Figure 1 opposite). All entities and the relationships
between them are anchored in these three axes which are defined relative to the
centres (i.e. self , the speaker or we) location, time of uttering, and beliefs and
values. He argues that spatial representation conceptualized either in terms of
physical space or social relations is fundamental to this centre such that the positioning of people or things is scaled according to their relative closeness (here)
to or remoteness (there) from self.
On the temporal axis, the anchoring point is the time of speaking, or loosely
now, and is conceptualized in terms of motion through space relative to the self,

s
t-past
m
deictic centre
Here, now, I/we
t-future
FIGURE
1 . Dimensions of deictic centre adapted from Chilton (2004: 58).
i.e. events, which carry a time of happening as part of their conceptualization,

can be located as near or distant (Chilton, 2004: 58), as one may find in
references such as the revolution is getting closer, time has arrived, remote,
a long way into the future, etc.
Further, the entities, which have a geopolitical proximization plotted onto
a friendenemy scale, also have a corresponding modality scale that is also
based on a spatial representation. The modality scale has to do with epistemic
modality which involves degrees of certainty, deontic modality which has to do
with permission and obligation, and negation. The epistemic and deontic modal
scales are closely related in that what is conceptually close to self is both truthconditionally true and morally right, and correspondingly what is placed
further away from self may be construed as both untrue and wrong. In many
instances of political discourse, this modal proximization seems to be underlain,
according to Chilton (2004: 60), by a common perception which always
associates the self with truth and rightness, and the other with untruth and
wrongness. Drawing on Chiltons (2004) model, I will suggest a similar model
for processing Friedmans text by proposing a similar deictic centre along spatial,
temporal and modal axes. I locate the two main entities in the text the Israelis
and Palestinians and the legitimatory values assigned to them on these axes.
ARGUMENTATION AND OPINION DISCOURSE
Seeking to legitimize by invoking moral, political or institutional authority is

largely linked to argumentation or at least contains elements of argumentative
discourse. This is because the speaker anticipates some difference of opinion
on the part of the addressees or otherwise they will need to be persuaded that
there is a reasonable justification for attributing legitimatory values to the entity
in question. It is in this sense that legitimizing discourses are quintessentially
argumentative as the speaker resorts to various argumentative structures and
moves to convince their addressees of their viewpoint and consequently win their
agreement. Examining legitimation in discourse, therefore, requires probing into
10
the argumentative elements which are explicitly invoked or implicitly embedded

in discourse.
Argumentative discourse can be defined as an exchange of verbal moves
ideally intended to resolve a difference of opinions (Van Eemeren and Houtlosser,
1999: 480). The raison detre of argumentation is to convince a reasonable
critic of the acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward a constellation of
propositions justifying or refuting the proposition expressed in the standpoint
(Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004: 1). Taking into account the rhetorical
dimension of argumentative discourse, Van Eemeren and Houtlosser suggest
three strategic manoeuvres which speakers may use to secure their audiences
agreement: (1) exploiting the topical potential by selecting from the available
topics the materials the speakers find best serve their argumentative purposes;
(2) adapting to audience demand by appealing to the audiences commonsense and
preferences; and (3) exploiting the appropriate presentational devices such that
their contributions are systematically attuned to their discursive and stylistic
effectiveness (p. 485).
The rhetorical objective of persuasion is often combined with a dialectical one
by which arguers typically maintain appropriate standards of reasonableness and
expecting others to comply with the same critical standards (Van Eemeren and
Houtlosser, 1999: 481). This dialectical objective, according to Richardson (2004:
228), performs a laundering function for the rhetorical argument through
the appearance of fairness and even-handedness. In this way, explicit virulent or racist attitudes and opinions are disguised through using various moves
and strategies in order to preclude the possibility of being seen as biased, racist
or prejudiced. Van Dijk mentions several of these moves (1991: 18798):
Apparent concession: most of them are law-abiding citizens, but . . .;

Contrast: we are not intolerant, but they are;
Reversal/blame the victim: they act in such a way that prejudice or unequal
treatment is justified;
Mitigation and excuse: the police were forced to act in this harsh way;
Ridicule: using ridicule and sarcasm to discredit the opponent.
Van Dijk relates these moves to an overall strategy of positive self-presentation

and negative other-presentation. Speakers use such moves primarily to save
face and manage peoples impressions, to assert ingroup allegiances and
solidarity and to attribute moral superiority to the ingroup members. Positive
self-presentation and negative other presentation is a powerful argumentative
strategy which is recurrently used in various dominant discourses. In much of
his work on dominant everyday and elite discourses on ethnic groups, Van Dijk
(1988, 1991, 1993, 1998) demonstrates that an overall discourse strategy
of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation permeates these
discourses. He refers to this strategy as the ideological square model by which
our positive actions and their negative actions are emphasized on the one hand,
and our negative actions and their positive actions are hedged, mitigated or
excluded on the other.
Opinion discourse, to which the present column belongs, is fundamentally

argumentative and has the function of public, group persuasion (Van Dijk,
1992: 248). It is evidently a genre whose principal function is the expression
of ideological beliefs and opinions. Here one would anticipate that the speaker
advances a standpoint and supports it by various structures and strategies in
order to persuade the audience of the validity of his or her point. The following
analysis will attend to the various argumentative properties of Friedmans
column pertinent to the construction of political actors and the legitimations
associated with them. My point of departure is an examination of the texts
argumentative structure.
Argumentative structure of the column

The text has a complex argumentative structure at the centre of which is a
discourse strategy of positive ingroup presentation and negative outgroup
presentation associated with Israelis and Palestinians respectively. Aspects of
this argumentative structure include, inter alia, making explicit evaluations and
authoritative statements, positing controversial propositions as categorical and
absolute, selecting highly charged lexical items and using various moves such
as apparent concession, mitigation and appealing to voices of authority. These
various aspects enhance the binary opposition set up between the Palestinians
and Israelis and support Friedmans argumentation. Let us examine this
argumentation by first teasing out the meanings communicated in the title.
THE TITLE
The title4 Arafats War encapsulates the gist of Friedmans argumentation and
represents the top of the texts thematic hierarchy. It is ideologically significant
for it not only involves a negative definition of the situation and the implications
which arise from it, but it also positions political actors in relation to each other
and according to Friedmans polarizing characterization of the situation, as I will
explain in a moment. At a first glance, the title explicitly states how the two weeks
of raging clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinians are to be viewed: it
is a war that is caused, planned or directed by the Palestinian leader Arafat.
The categorical assertion communicated in the title, which is in the possessive
case, signals Friedmans delegitimation of Arafat from the very early days of the
Palestinian Intifada,5 and is in fact consistent with the Israeli official positions
which pinned blame on Arafat for the ongoing confrontations (for an analysis of
Israeli press coverage during the first month of the Intifada, see Dor, 2004).
Note that framing the violence between Palestinians and Israelis as Arafats
War has ideological implications in terms of causal agency, responsibility and
blame attribution. Here Arafat and the Palestinians are cast in the negative agent
role of the attacker and the transgressor, and therefore are held responsible
and blameworthy for the events. By implication, this attribution of negative
agency and responsibility to the Palestinian side is likely to position Israel in the
semantic patient role of the victim, which is facing Arafats transgression and
war. The reader is drawn to confirm this inference as the text unfolds.
12
The attribution of blame and responsibility to Arafat and the Palestinians

is revealing of Friedmans perspective, especially when put against the context
of the overwhelming power of the Israeli military vis-a-vis largely unarmed
Palestinian civilian demonstrators. This characterization appears to not take into
account numerous reports on the heavy Palestinian casualties resulting from
the Israeli armys excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which neither
the lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger, resulting in
unlawful killings (Amnesty International, 2000), and that [Israeli] violations
of human rights during recent weeks could constitute war crimes6 (according
to an Amnesty International report cited in The Guardian, 2 November 2000).
The delegitimatory definition of the situation and attribution of blame to the
Palestinians become demonstrably manifest in the remainder of the text, as I
show in the following section.
ARGUMENTATION IN THE TEXT
In this section, I provide an informal analysis of the texts argumentative

structure by reconstructing the argumentation advanced in the text. Then I turn
to discuss some of the main argumentative moves that Friedman uses to support his argumentation. For purposes of illustration, the headings in Table 1
opposite point to the argumentative function of each paragraph, while the right
column names the argumentative move which corresponds to its bolded segment
in the text.
The headline spells out the argumentative conclusion of the whole article. In
the first paragraph, Friedman subjectively defines the situation as war and as
an explosion of violence. The contrast he sets up between the first and second
Intifadas serves as a general background against which the second Intifada is
delegitimized as an explosion of violence, embarrassing, inexplicable and has
no name. In the following four paragraphs, Friedman sets out to argue why the
second Intifada is the way he describes.
For instance, in the second paragraph, Friedman states his main claim that
the situation is a violent outburst and selectively traces it back to the Camp
David summit. He explicitly lists the main premises of his argument, which are
based on an indirect representation of a statement by US President Clinton.
What is interesting here is that he begins the paragraph with the clause Heres
why:, thereby implying that he simply aims to explain and show to the reader
why this current situation is different. In this way, Friedman attempts very early
on to assert categorically his claim to knowledge and truth, as I will explain
below. Having defined the situation as an explosion and established a binary
positive/negative division between the compromising and peaceable Israeli
Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, on the one hand, and the inflexible and
violent Arafat, on the other, in paragraphs three, four and five, Friedman develops
further his premises by exemplifying, hypothesizing, making claims and deriving
conclusions. In the sixth paragraph, Friedman states the main conclusion of his
argument that the current violence is to be blamed on Arafat and subsequently
on the Palestinians: Thats why this is Arafats war. Thats its real name.

TA B L E
1 . Argumentative structure of Friedmans article
Argumentative functions
Argumentative moves
A definition of the situation; a general historical background

[1]
. . . The intifada, the Palistinian uprising

of the late 1980s, got its name almost
immediately. Intifada means shaking off, and
Palestinians were said to be trying to sjhake
off the Israeli occupation . . . But the violence of
the last two weeks still has no name . . .
delegitimation through
contrast
Selective reference to historical events; stating premises

[2]
Heres why . . . At that time, Mr Clinton

pointedly, deliberately and rightly stated
that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had
offered unprecedented compromises at the
summit . . . and that Yasir Arafat had not
responded in kind, or at all.
appeal to political
authority
polarized representation
Developing premises further

[3]
Palestinians were shocked by Mr Clintons

assessment . . . that they were stunned and
unprepared for the seriousness of Mr Baraks
offer and the bluntness of Mr Clintons
assessment . . .
presupposition of Israels
generous offer
Hypothesizing; stating claim

[4]
Mr Arafat had a dilemma . . . or provoke the

Israelis into brutalizing Palestinians again
. . . So instead of responding to Mr Baraks
peacemaking overture, he and his boys
responded to Ariel Sharons peace-destroying
provocation. In short, the Palestinians could
not deal with Barak, so they had to turn him
into Sharon. And they did.
blaming the victim

ridiculing and blaming
blaming the victim
Developing premises further; hypothesizing

[5]
Of course, the Palestinians couldnt explain it

in those terms, so instead they unfurled all
the old complaints about the brutality of the
continued Israeli occupation and settlementbuilding. Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and
continued settlement-building are oppressive.
But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse
to acknowledge is that todays Israeli prime
minister was offering them a dignified exit . . .
Imagine if when Mr Sharon visited the Temple
Mount, Mr Arafat had ordered his people to
welcome him with open arms and say . . .
mitigation
apparent concessions
appeal to reasoning and
rationality
(Continued)
14

TA B L E
1 . (Continued)
Argumentative functions
Argumentative moves
Argumentative conclusion
[6] But that would have been an act of statesmanship
and real peaceful intentions . . . It came in the
context of a serious Israeli peace overture,
which Mr Arafat has chosen to spurn. Thats
why this is Arafats war. Thats its real name.
presupposition of a serious
offer
Stating claim by providing quotation

[7] If you want to know how confused the
Palestinians are, consider this quotation from
their senior negotiator, Hasan Asfour: There
blaming the victim, can be no resumption
of peace talks without an international
investigation into the latest the outgroups
members violence . . .
blaming the victim

attacking the rationality of
the outgroups members
Elaborating on previous claim

[8] I see. These Palestinians died so there can be
an international investigation into why they
were killed. Sad. What a totally messed up set
of priorities.
ridicule
Supporting main argument by quotation

[9] Basically, said Stephen P. Cohen, a Middle
East expert at the Israel Policy Forum, the
Arabs and Palestinians have spent so many
years, . . .
appeal to expert authority
Selective selection of facts and sources

[10] With the gleeful, savage mob murder of
Israeli soldiers in Ramallah . . . Moderates
cannot continue to argue that . . . The iron first
is not a sustainable solution for a state of
six million Jews living in a sea of one billion
angry Muslims.
amplification of the
others
negative action
evoking orientalist
discourses
empathizing with ingroup
members
Pragmatic conclusion
[11] So what do you do when there is no partner for
peace and there is no alternative to peace? . . .
Mourn the dead and pray that after this
explosion of hatred is over, the parties will
find a way to live apart. Otherwise the future
is just endless killing and dying, . . .
evoking fear and alarm
While the first six paragraphs focus on Arafats negative role and establish
the texts argumentative conclusion, in the remaining paragraphs Friedman
elaborates on this conclusion by providing further examples of the failed
Palestinian leadership and the Arabs inability to make peace with Israel. For
instance, in paragraphs seven and eight, Friedman uses a common strategy
typically used in persuasive argumentation, which is to quote a member of the
outgroup. The rhetorical aim of this move appears to pass negative judgement
on the Palestinians as naive, confused and irresponsible.
Unlike this seemingly unfavourable quotation of a Palestinian official,
Friedman directly represents the voice of an Israeli expert in paragraph nine,
which reinforces Friedmans evaluation of the situation. Paragraph 10 is
particularly interesting for it involves Friedmans selective mention of a glaring
incident of Palestinian violence in referring to the mob lynching of two Israeli
soldiers, which happened one day before the column was printed. Similarly, the
indirect representation of the discourses of Israeli moderates and hard-liners
galvanizes Friedmans polarized formulation whereby the Palestinians are
presented as not ready yet for making peace with the Israelis.
Note the use of the reference hard-liners which is an expression that refers to
people who are part of the ingroup, unlike other expressions such as radicals,
fanatics or extremists, which are only ascribed to the outgroup members
(Van Dijk, 1995). Drawing upon Israeli discourses indicates that Friedman both
privileges and sees the situation through Israeli perspectives and definitions.
The final paragraph registers Friedmans pragmatic conclusion in the form of
an indirect speech act of warning (or predicting) of a bleak and violent future
for the region.
ARGUMENTATIVE MOVES
Thus far, we have seen that the text is predominantly argumentative and elements
of argumentation are manifested by means of stating claims, listing premises,
reaching a conclusion and justifying this conclusion by providing various
types of evidence. One central feature of this argumentation is the various
rhetorical moves Friedman strategically deploys in order to achieve optimal
persuasive results. In what follows, I discuss some of the key moves which seem
to be dominant in the text and underlie a discourse strategy of positive ingroup
presentation and negative outgroup presentation associated with Israelis and
Palestinians respectively.
Blaming the victim
Blaming the victim is a common argumentative move in dominant discourses
by which the outgroup members are blamed on the argument that they
acted in a way that justifies their negative treatment by the ingroup members
(Van Dijk, 1991, 1993; Wodak et al., 1999). Evidence of this blame reversal can
be observed in paragraph four in the clauses or provoke the Israelis into brutalizing
Palestinians again and so they had to turn him into Sharon. And they did. These
clauses perform an indirect speech act of blaming directed at the Palestinians for
their own suffering by pushing Barak into brutalizing them and turning him
16
into Sharon. An informed reader is likely to supply the background information

that Sharon is an Israeli army general and politician who is linked to acts of
violence against the Palestinians (see Fisk, 2001).
Of significance here is that Friedman appears to conjure up the image that
Israel is in a predicament where it has no choice but to suppress the Palestinians.
This formulation makes available the inference that Baraks actions against
Palestinians are provoked rather than deliberate or pre-planned. The iterative
again is particularly interesting for it intertextually presupposes that the
Palestinians provoked the Israelis into committing brutalities against them
in the past. This formulation accords with what Van Teeffelen (1981, cited in
Van Teeffelen, 1994: 385) posits that one application of the concept of tragedy
on the PalestinianIsraeli conflict is that it can also be employed, as in much
Israeli discourse, to underline that Israel finds itself in a tragic position since it
is presumably forced to repress Palestinians. It can be added further that this
formulation presents Israel as the moral victim of IsraeliPalestinian violence,
i.e. even though Israel engages in oppressive actions, it is the Palestinians fault
since they brought it on themselves. It therefore has the function of mitigating,
if not excusing, Israels violent actions (see Finkelstein, 2003: 11020, who
discusses this notion of moral anxiety, victimhood and the effects of violence in
Israeli discourses).
In paragraphs seven and eight, Friedman seems to ridicule and question the
rationality of the Palestinians:
[7] If you want to know how confused the Palestinians are, consider this quotation
from their senior negotiator, Hasan Asfour: There can be no resumption of peace
talks without an international investigation into the latest violence. Our people did
not die for nothing.
[8] I see. These Palestinians died so there can be an international investigation into
why they were killed. Sad. What a totally messed up set of priorities.
Note that Friedman quotes the Palestinians in an overtly disqualifying manner

by registering his negative evaluation of the wisdom of Palestinian leaders.
The ridicule expressed in Friedmans direct quote of the Palestinian negotiator
Asfour dismisses the Palestinian demand for an international inquiry committee
investigating the heavy Palestinian casualties caused by Israeli forces as merely
foolish and incomprehensible. It might have carried a more favourable meaning
had Friedman alternatively indicated that the large number of Palestinians killed
and wounded by Israel would have been a cause for the Palestinian demand for an
international inquiry committee into the killings. The image of the Palestinians
acting immaturely is similarly evoked in his reference in paragraph four to the
Palestinians as boys in the clause he [Arafat] and his boys responded to Ariel
Sharons peace-destroying provocation.
Amplifying the others negative actions
Not only does the writer blame the Palestinians for rejecting Baraks offer and
resorting to violence, but he also seems to accentuate their responsibility for
negative actions. The emphasis attached to Palestinian violence can be observed,
for instance, in the transitivity selections in the text in that Palestinian actors
including Arafat are predominantly presented as semantic agents of negative
process types such as material processes (he and his boys responded to Ariel
Sharons peace-destroying provocation), verbal processes (They unfurled all the old
complaints . . .), relational processes (Mr. Arafat, its now clear, possesses neither)
and mental processes (Mr Arafat chose the latter). They are also thematized in
the whole text as the responsible agents of causing violence, provoking Barak,
rejecting a peaceful offer and making irrational and unwise decisions (for a
discussion of transitivity, see Fairclough, 1989; Halliday, 1994; Hodge and
Kress, 1993).
Mitigation
Contrary to the amplified negative role of Arafat and the Palestinians, Friedman
engages in mitigating moves which background or minimize Israeli negative
agency. In paragraph five, for instance, Friedman uses the verb unfurled and
the nominal phrase all the old complaints to play down Palestinian grievances
at the Israeli occupation and settlements. These expressions might leave the
impression that the issues of ending Israeli occupation and illegal settlement
building on Palestinian confiscated land had been archived, rolled up, buried and
are no longer relevant to the present situation. They might equally imply that
the Palestinians have been trotting out these issues over and over again with no
change or solution to the status quo.
The distribution of thematic roles to Israeli and Palestinian actors helps to
reinforce Friedmans ideological construction of the situation. Unlike Palestinian
actors, Israelis on the whole are predominately assigned a patient role as in with
the gleeful, savage mob murder of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah or They had
to turn him [Barak] into Sharon. In cases where Israeli actors, mainly Barak,
occupy an agentive role, they are assigned positive verb processes such as Barak
had offered unprecedented compromises, todays prime minister was offering
them a dignified exit and Moderates cannot continue to argue that if Israel went
far enough, where Palestinian actors act as the beneficiary of such actions.
Apparent concession
A common move in the discourse strategy of positive self-presentation involves
making apparent concessions which speakers may use for managing their
audiences impressions and avoiding being seen as biased and prejudicial. A clear
instance of an apparent concession from the text is in paragraph five, where
Friedman criticizes Israeli occupation and settlement building in the clauses:
Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and continued settlement-building are oppressive. But
what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to acknowledge is that todays Israeli prime
minister was offering them a dignified exit.
Note that a logical relation of concession is established here in these two clauses,
i.e. the conceded proposition in the clause beginning with the disjunct Frankly
signals Friedmans admission that Israels actions are oppressive and brutal,
while the second clause beginning with the conjunction but is presented as a
18
factual statement and categorical assertion to be taken for granted: Barak offered
Arabs and Palestinians an honourable way out of their embarrassment, i.e. a
serious peace deal. This apparent admission of the brutality of Israeli checkpoints
and settlements may also imply that Friedman recognizes the existence of
counterarguments which explain Palestinian actions as resulting from oppressive
Israeli measures. Nonetheless, Friedman immediately shifts blame back to the
Palestinians and Arabs by his explicit emphasis on their short-sighted decisions
and actions in turning down a serious offer by Barak.
Appeal to authority
Perhaps it needs little argument that journalists generally aim to be persuasive
in constructing meanings in such a way that they are not only comprehended
by the readers but also accepted as factual and plausible. One effective means for
the appearance of truth and objectivity, according to Van Dijk (1988), involves
using quotes from reliable sources such as authorities and respectable people,
especially when opinions are given. White (2006: 64) refers to the strategy of
quoting elite sources as evidential standing by which the social status and
authority of the source quoted enhances the warrantability and credibility of
the material quoted.
The authoritative voices which Friedman draws upon are intertextually
significant in that they are stitched into the overall argumentative fabric of the
text and reinforce Friedmans dichotomous representation of the situation. In
paragraph two, for instance, Friedman appeals to political authority in favourably
representing the discourse of US President Clinton. Friedmans endorsement
of Clintons discourse is manifest linguistically in the adverbs pointedly,
deliberately and rightly. Note that Friedmans indirect representation of
Mr. Clintons discourse is intertextually ambivalent since it leaves a sense of
ambiguity as to whether the compromises listed between hyphens are what Mr.
Clinton has stated elsewhere, or they are Friedmans recontextualization and
own clarification of Clintons statement. Nonetheless, the categorical assertion
by which he presents these claims induces the reader to take the material
quoted as highly credible and reliable. As I pointed out earlier, Friedman uses
these listed compromises as premises on the basis of which he reaches his main
argumentative conclusion.
Similarly, Friedman appeals to expert authority in a long direct quotation
(93 words in total) of the Middle East expert Stephen Cohen at an Israeli policy
centre. The quotation is used to confirm Friedmans ideological polarization between Israel and the Arabs in that it passes a negative judgement about the latter
as uncompromising and having no energy to make peace. It also presupposes that
Israel had offered serious compromises to peace including 90 per cent of what
they wanted. Here Friedman aligns himself with, and appeals to the authority
of, these two sources in credentialing his representation of reality.
So far, I have provided an informal analysis of the argumentative structures
and moves that Friedman draws upon in his column. Thus far it has become
clear that Friedman recurrently draws on Baraks offer at Camp David II in his
polarized representation of the situation. Therefore, in the two following sections,

I illustrate how this event functions as Friedmans main argumentative resource
and how it is used to construct and evaluate the participants in it.
CAMP DAVIDS OFFER AS THE MAIN ARGUMENTATIVE RESOURCE
At the centre of the texts argumentation is the presentation of controversial

propositions as factual statements which are assumed to be shared with, or at least
known to, the hearers. The main presumption on the basis of which Friedman
establishes his argumentation is that Barak offered a serious peace proposal at
Camp David which Arafat inexcusably rejected. Friedman frequently refers to this
presumption in the text as can be observed in the following clauses:
1. It came in the context of a serious Israeli peace overture.
2. That they were unprepared for the seriousness of Mr. Baraks offer.
3. Other world leaders told Mr. Arafat the same thing: Barak deserves a serious
counteroffer.
4. But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to accept is that todays Israeli
prime minister was offering them a dignified exit.
5. This explosion of violence would be totally understandable if the Palestinians
had no alternative.
6. Moderates cannot continue to argue that if Israel went far enough, it would
have a Palestinian partner.
Of significance here is that he repeatedly and authoritatively presents his
presumption of a serious Israeli offer as a given (a position he consistently
adopted throughout, e.g. see his columns on 17 October 2000; 24 August 2001;
7 April 2002; 2 October 2003), although the seriousness of Baraks offer has
been contested and more nuanced explanations of the Camp David talks have
been alternatively provided in a large body of scholarly and journalistic work
(e.g. see Carter, 2007: 14952; Chomsky, 2003; Dor, 2004: 1534; Friel and
Falk, 2007; Halper, 2000; Hirst, 2003; Malley and Agha, 2001; Mearsheimer
and Walt, 2007; Philo and Berry, 2004: 838; Pundak, 2001; Reinhart, 2002;
Said, 2004: 1023; Slater, 2007; Special Document, 2003).
For instance, Malley and Agha (2001) question the claim of a serious
proposal as remarkably shallow. It ignores history, the dynamics of the
negotiations, and the relationships among the three parties [Palestinians, Israelis
and Americans]. Halper (2000) shows that regardless of what Barak offered to
hand back to the Palestinians at Camp David, Israel would continue to exercise
its control over Palestinian territories through a matrix of control, which is
an interlocking series of mechanisms, only a few of which require physical
occupation of territory, that allow Israel to control every aspect of Palestinian
life in the Occupied Territories (p. 5).
More relevant for the present analysis is that the repeated reference to this
presumption of a serious offer by Barak has significant political implications
concerning issues of causal agency, responsibility and blame attribution, and
consequentially the legitimation and delegitimation of Israeli and Palestinian
actions respectively. In the following section, I illustrate this further by conceptualizing a deictic space whereby the Camp David offer is essential to the
attribution of legitimizing values to the two main entities, Palestinians and
Israelis, in this event.
Legitimation and the conceptualization of a deictic centre

Cognitively speaking, Friedmans representation of the situation allows the
possibility of conceptualizing a deictic centre model along spatial, temporal and
modal dimensions similar to the deictic model proposed in Chilton (2004). Unlike
Chiltons model where self is the deictic centre, Friedmans text may prompt
the reader to conceptualize peace or, more accurately, the prospect of peace,
as the central point of reference with the two main entities, i.e. Israelis and
Palestinians, appearing as points mapped onto these three ontological dimensions
and scaled relative to the peace centre (see Figure 2 below).
The conceptualization of the prospect of peace as the deictic centre seems
to be both conceptually and linguistically invoked by frequent references in the
text which posit the prospect of achieving peace as at the core of the relationship
between the Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, there are 10 instances in which
the word peace is mentioned in the text. Here two main time periods can be
identified; each period has the prospect of peace at its centre. The first period
Palestinian
territories/Israel
m1
1s
tI
nt
if a
da
nd
t a ns
af a
Ar stinia
le
Pa
t-past
prospect
of peace
20
m2
nd
ka
ra e l i s
B a s ra
I
Camp David
Real/possible
Prospect
of peace
d
an
ing
dy i n g
l
kil
Now/2nd Intifada
untrue/fading away
t-future
FIGURE
2 . Deictic centre of Friedmans text.
is at the Camp David summit at which point the prospect of peace was real or
possible. This is communicated in Friedmans favourable reference to Baraks
offer as in So instead of responding to Mr. Baraks peacemaking overture . . .,
and It came in the context of a serious Israeli peace overture. Here Friedman
authoritatively maintains that a serious opportunity for making peace was
close and possible through Baraks offer at Camp David.
The second time period refers to the time of speaking, or loosely now, with
the prospect of peace looking unreal, illusive or fading away. The fading away
or illusiveness of peace is linguistically generated by reference to the current
situation as explosion of violence, Arafats War and the whole region is
coming unglued. It is also prominently and visually expressed in the sketch
accompanying the column which shows a hand drawing the word peace in
the sand with traces of a sandstorm in the background about to blow away
peace. A third time period which can be further located in this deictic space
is the future in which there seems to be no prospects of peace, but endless
killing and dying.
On the space dimension(s), we need to assume two levels of spatial
representations: the first refers to the same geopolitical space (i.e. occupied
Palestinian territories/Israel proper), which is fixed relative to peace prospect.
The proximity or distance of this physical space to the writer and readers
location (presumably the US) seems to be irrelevant to peace prospect, or at least
it is not linguistically invoked in the text. The second relates to the conceptual
space where the two main entities are positioned relative to their proximity to,
or distance from, the prospect of peace in the two main time periods (i.e. Camp
David summit and now).
Fundamentally, this discourse processing model enables us to determine
how Friedman imputes legitimizing and delegitimizing values to Israeli and
Palestinian actors respectively. On one hand, in both time periods, Barak and
Israelis are conceptually located close to the peace centre and hence may
be conceptualized as right and moral. They can be situated on the deontic
modal scales (m1) and (m2) closer to the peace centre in both periods. This
conceptualization is linguistically triggered by frequent references to Barak as
offering a serious peaceful overture, thereby occupying a moral high ground.
Note further that this conceptual processing of the column makes available the
inference that Friedman, President Clinton, and by extension the US, can all be
situated close to the peace centre. Though this is not explicitly referred to in
the text, the inference seems to be activated meta-discursively by the readers
background knowledge about the central role of President Clinton and the US
as a peace broker between the two parties. On the other hand, Arafat and the
Palestinians are placed further away from the centre in the two time periods
on the deontic modality scales for gratuitously refusing the peace offered by
Barak at Camp David II, and for currently resorting to a violent course of actions.
This conceptualization also seems to be triggered in the various delegitimizing
linguistic structures associated with them, as I have shown earlier.
22
Power, authority and self-legitimation

Much of my discussion so far has focused on the discursive delegitimation of the
Intifada. Nonetheless, legitimation as a discursive process cannot be separated
from the actual or perceived power of the speaker and the institution in which
he/she functions. That is, legitimation as a speech act can only be felicitous
(in a Grecian sense) in as much as the authority and social power of the speaker
are not questioned or challenged, or at least they need to be recognized by
others. In Bourdieus words, What creates the power of words and slogans, a
power capable of maintaining and subverting the social order, is the belief in the
legitimacy of power and of those who utter them (1991: 170, emphasis added).
Legitimation is a dynamic, transactive process whereby speakers continuously
enact, reproduce and rearticulate their legitimacy in relation to the (shared)
assumptions, values or expectations of their audiences and to the discursive
event in question.
It is important to note that the (de)legitimation of the main actors in the
Intifada is established alongside a self-legitimating discourse through which
Friedman legitimizes himself, textures his identity (Fairclough, 2003), and
authoritatively positions himself in relation to his truth claims and to the
readers. This is largely done both meta-discursively by means of evoked or
shared assumptions about the social status and authority of Friedman and the
institution in which he works, i.e. the NYT, and discursively in the linguistic
properties of modality and style.
As I have noted earlier, the authority with which Friedman speaks is partly
achieved by the way others have deferred to him as an authoritative and
influential American voice on the Middle East. Most notably, for instance, the
Arab Peace Initiative proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 was first
revealed to Friedman who made it public in his column on 17 February 2002.
This perceived authority of Friedman may also be augmented by the influence
and stature of the NYT as the nations newspaper of record (Cotter, 2003: 416).
The newspapers standing would contribute considerably to crediting Friedmans
discourse as reliable and authoritative; that is, the authority and legitimacy of the
institution are transferred to the persons representing it rendering their discourse
trustworthy and credible (Martin Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997).
Such sociopolitical self-legitimation generally is not accepted by hearers or
readers at face value, but needs to be validated and enacted in part discursively
through a range of structures and resources. Two main discourse structures
which have self-legitimating functions include modality and style through
which Friedman presents himself as categorical, rational and authoritative while
simultaneously delegating to himself a monopoly over knowledge and truth
(see Martin Rojo and Van Dijk, 1997: 5504).
Modality relates to the interpersonal and pragmatic function of language and
indicates the degree of probability, commitment or authority a speaker attaches
to a proposition (Fairclough, 2003; Hodge and Kress, 1993). Though relatively
few modalized clauses are used, the text is clearly characterized by an overall
claim to truth and a general tone of telling-it-like-it-is. It expresses a high
degree of modality and categorical assertion. For instance, Friedman frequently
makes categorical, authoritative assertions in the simple present tense, mainly

relational processes, e.g. Its because even the participants cant explain what its
about and that is why this is Arafats war. Fowler and Kress (1979: 207) point
out that the present tense is not a modally neutral form, but rather it is a powerful
form that reflects the authors certainty, unquestionableness, continuity, and
universality.
Strong modality is also expressed by the use of categorical adverbials
(pointedly, deliberately, rightly, of course, frankly), italics, value-laden adjectives
(stunned, unprepared, shocked, brutalized, peace-destroying, messed up, savage)
and by what Friedman argues as the real causes of violence, who is responsible
for it and what he anticipates for the future. In a similar vein, self-legitimation is
also conveyed in the texts style. The style is clearly conversational and features
of informality and casualness of delivery are characteristically manifested
in a reliance on a host of textual features. For example, one feature of a conversational, dialogic style involves the use of the imperative verb form as in
imagine if when Mr. Sharon visited . . ., imagine the impact that would have
on Israelis and consider this quotation from their senior negotiator . . .
Closely linked to the casualness of his style is the way Friedman selflegitimizes himself as someone who is open and blunt, i.e. as someone who
just says what is on his mind rather than carefully planning and advancing his
arguments as typically found in written discourse. For example, he appears to
dialogue with the reader using informal, ad-libbed lexis as in heres why, in
short, of course, frankly, I see, sad and whats scary. In fact, one can
sense that Friedman is projecting himself as an angry, exasperated speaker
who is emotionally involved with the situation and who does not refrain from
unreservedly criticizing and assigning blame to those he deems responsible for the
situation (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 825 for strategies of involvement and
detachment). Lexical style also seems to reflect Friedmans emotional intensity
in expressions like stunned, shocked, deep down, but that was not the case,
messed up, unfurled, oppressive, he and his boys, sad and savage, mob
murder. Similarly, the repetition in the last paragraph registers a rhetorical
move whose function is to project a sense of emotional involvement and urgency
on the part of Friedman. Herman (2003) also critically observes these stylistic
features of Friedmans discourse:
He [Thomas Friedman] differs from his predecessors mainly in his brashness, namedropping, and self-promotion, and with his aggressive, bullying tone . . . In these
respects he brings a now fashionable, Geraldo Rivera in-your-face touch to the NYT,
which has borne his effusions stoically for the last three decades.
Perhaps one possible explanation for using this informal, dialogic style and
features of spontaneous, unscripted and emotionally-charged delivery is that
it can be quite legitimately an effective rhetorical resource to appeal to the
readers by signalling an equal relationship with them which positions him not
so much as the provider of knowledge speaking from his high tower an elitist
position but rather as a like-minded person who supposedly shares with the
readers their moral outrage, mutual fears and concerns about the situation.
24
Summary of previous findings

In this final section I seek to extend our understanding of Friedmans discourse
on the Intifada by summarizing the main findings of my critical discourse
analysis of a corpus of 20 articles which he contributed to the op-ed section
of the NYT over six months7 between 2000 and 2003. The main questions
guiding the analysis focused on the way Friedman constructed the Intifada
including his representation of political actors and their actions. In particular,
what are the dominant themes used to frame Friedmans discourse on the
Intifada? and what are the textual realizations of these themes?. Salient textual
properties (argumentative moves, lexical and syntactic selections, metaphors,
modality, style, intertextual traces of other voices and discourses, and particular
processes of exclusion, inclusion, mitigation and emphasis) of each theme were
examined.
Analysis shows that six recurrent themes underpin Friedmans discourse on
the second Palestinian Intifada:
1. Claiming that Barak offered a serious peace proposal at Camp David which
Arafat inexcusably rejected and resorted to violence to extract more Israeli
concessions.
2. Blaming Arafat and the Palestinians for engaging in violence and terrorism
and for not being ready yet to make peace with Israel.
3. Criticizing the illegitimate Arab regimes for not pressuring Arafat to
compromise or for exploiting the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from
their internal failures.
4. Blaming Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Right for their
ideological commitment to colonial settlements in the occupied territories
and for lacking a peace strategy.
5. Supporting Israels exiting Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967 but
giving Palestinians partial control over these territories.
6. Emphasizing the central role the US must play in the Middle East conflict given
its power and leverage on the other parties.
These themes appear in most or all of the texts and are recurrently drawn upon to
establish the overall coherence of Friedmans argumentation. The first theme, for
instance, potently dominates Friedmans discourse whereby he consistently treats
as given the presumption that Barak presented Arafat with a serious peaceful
offer, which should not have been rejected: Yasir, thats whats on the table! Is
it perfect from your point of view? . . . My God, man, cant you keep your eye on
the prize? (6 October 2000). The Camp David proposal is repeatedly referred
to as serious offer and the best opportunity ever which Arafat spurned and
deliberately chose to use military pressure, instead of diplomacy or nonviolence,
to extract more out of Israel, and Israelis turned to Mr. Sharon as their revenge
(7 April 2002). The categorical assertion of this presumption is combined with an
anti-Arafat rhetoric characterizing Friedmans discourse as evidenced in part by
associating Arafat with highly negative lexical expressions: Who is Yasir Arafat?
Hes a terrorist bum, Arafat and his boys, the corrupt tyranny of Yasir Arafat,
Yasir Arafat & Company and utterly corrupt and inept leadership.
The binary opposition between Arafat and Barak, which is based largely on
the Camp David event, is also realized in charging that the Palestinians are not
yet ready for making sufficient compromises for making peace with Israel: He
[Arafat] showed himself at Camp David, and after, as a man who would rather
get nothing for his people than look them in the eye and say, we are going to get
some things [at Camp David] and not others (7 August, 2001). A closely related
theme is his criticism of the Arab regimes in the region which he characterizes
as illegitimate and unelected autocrats who provide cover for Arafat and
exploit their peoples anger by letting them let off steam on Israel in order to
divert attention from their internal problems.
Another dominant theme centres on blaming Israels Prime Minister
Sharon and the Israeli Right for their commitment to colonial settlements in the
territories, which he refers to as a huge strategic-political problem, insane
and an obstacle to peace. Others, however, have criticized colonial settlements
on legal grounds as built illegally on confiscated Palestinian land in violation
of international law and United Nations resolutions (see Friel and Falk, 2007:
17; Philo and Berry, 2004: 39). In the same vein, Friedman is also critical of
Sharon for his militancy, lack of pragmatic wisdom and for having no peace
strategy, no roadmap beyond his iron fist. A final recurring theme involves the
argument that Israel should get out of the occupied Palestinian territories, yet
he calls for giving the Palestinians partial control over those territories since the
Palestinians cannot, at this moment, be trusted to run those territories on their
own without making them a base of future operations against Israel (3 April
2002). He therefore proposes bringing NATO and US forces into the territories
to help the Palestinians run their state.
Friedman draws upon a range of metaphorical conceptualizations
which he uses to support his themes. Most notable of these metaphors is the
conceptualization of the relation between the Israelis and the Palestinians
in terms of what Van Teeffelen (1994: 385) refers to as intense personal
antagonism, whereby each side is pitted against the other, and both parties are
seen as being blind to each others rights and therefore as drawing each other
into a negative spiral of violence, as in:
You feel as if you are watching a modern form of ritual sacrifice. The Palestinians seem
to have no qualms about putting up their youths to be shot at, and the Israeli soldiers
seem to have no qualms about shooting them. (31 October 2000)
In this respect, a rhetoric of tutelage tends to be evoked in explaining the role

the US has taken or should take towards the parties involved. Thus, the US is
metaphorized as a father-figure or the guardian who has the privileged power and
moral responsibility to intervene and stop the two reeling sides from consuming
each other: A firm US hand in redrawing all the fudged lines is our only hope
(7 April 2002); Their leaders dont know how to move, so America has to chart
the way with a big idea (28 April 2002).
26 Discourse & Society 20(1)
A particularly noticeable feature of intertextuality in Friedmans discourse

is his overwhelming reliance on Israeli voices (Israeli left and right, experts,
politicians and Israeli public in general) whom Friedman dialogues with, responds
to, approves and disapproves of or draws upon to support his deliberation on the
situation. Indeed, such a prevalence of Israeli voices in Friedmans discourse
shows that more than any other major perspectives and points of view, e.g.
international law, human rights organizations, academics, Arab or other Middle
East experts, etc., Friedman largely anchors his construction of the situation in
relation to Israeli explanations and positions on how to deal with the Palestinians.
Finally, textual properties such as his emotionally intense language, informal
style, categorical modality and authoritative delivery, which I have discussed
in the analysis of the column above, are characteristic features of Friedmans
discourse.
Coda
In this paper, I have largely focused on Friedmans delegitimation of the
second Intifada in a key text he contributed to the NYT. I demonstrated that
an overall discourse strategy of positive in-group presentation and negative
out-group presentation dominates the text and takes place within an overall
argumentative structure which delegitimizes the Palestinians as violent,
confused and irresponsible and legitimizes Israeli actors as peaceable, rational
and flexible. The combination of thematic contents, argumentative moves,
intertextual references and a range of linguistic properties reinforces Friedmans
argumentation and his dichotomous representation of the situation. Friedmans
argumentation is also anchored in a self-legitimation whereby he positions
himself as more rational and objective, and as having better knowledge about
the situation than his assumed opponents. He seems to do so meta-discursively
by appealing to his presupposed or perceived social status as an authoritative
voice on the Middle East and his position in an influential media institution.
I demonstrated that this sociopolitical self-legitimation is realized discursively
in his conversational style and the categorical modality he attaches to his truth
claims and propositions. The themes and textual features revealed in this detailed
analysis of Friedmans column are largely reflected in my critical discourse
analysis of a corpus of texts written by Friedman in the NYT. It shows the
resilience of common themes underpinning Friedmans discourse.
Underlying this analysis is a sensitized awareness of the role of language
in times of war and conflict. As Daniel Nelson noted in the epigraph at the
beginning of this paper, conflicts and wars begin and end with words. Before
guns are fired and bombs start falling, words commit the first act of war.
It ultimately has serious material consequences on individual lives and societies.
The role of language is something one cannot afford to neglect, and this could
not be more relevant than in subjecting the discourses of those in positions of
power to critical analysis with the aim of sensitizing readers consciousness to
the ways in which language can be used to normalize and sustain domination
and control, since in Faircloughs (1989: 1) words: consciousness is the first

step towards emancipation.
N OTE S
1. It is important to realize that to account for the causes and contexts which led to this
most recent episode of the PalestinianIsraeli conflict, one needs to go well beyond
the immediate contexts of this present event and expound on the major events which
have shaped and defined this decades-long conflict. However, a thorough and nuanced
history of this complex and multi-layered conflict goes well beyond the space limits of
this paper.
2. Available at: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com
3. Available at: http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2002/commentary
4. In most cases an editor is assigned the task of writing headlines, though some writers
might retain that right.
5. See, for instance, Friedmans earlier column entitled Time to choose, Yasir, 6 October
2000.
6. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,391262,00.
html#article_continue
7. The months are October 2000, November 2000, August 2001, March 2002, April
2002 and October 2003.
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APPENDIX
ARAFATS WAR
October 13, 2000, Friday

Thomas L. Friedman
[1] Maybe the most revealing feature of this latest explosion in IsraeliPalestinian
violence is the fact that this war has no name. The intifada, the Palestinian uprising
of the late 1980s, got its name almost immediately. Intifada loosely means shaking
off, and Palestinians were said to be trying to shake off the Israeli occupation.
The name made so much sense that even Israelis used it. But the violence of the
last two weeks still has no name. And that is not an accident. Its because even
the participants cant explain what its about, or, deep down, theyre embarrassed
to do so.
[2] Heres why: The roots of this latest violent outburst can be traced directly back to
President Clintons press conference after the breakdown of the Camp David summit.
At that time, Mr. Clinton pointedly, deliberately and rightly stated that Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak had offered unprecedented compromises at the summit
more than 90 percent of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, a partial resolution
of the Palestinian refugee problem and Palestinian sovereignty over the Muslim
and Christian quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem and that Yasir Arafat had not
responded in kind, or at all.
[3] Palestinians were shocked by Mr. Clintons assessment. For the first time in a long
time, Mr. Arafat no longer had the moral high ground. He, and the Arab leaders,
30
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
had grown so comfortable with Bibi Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel a man
the world always blamed for any peace breakdown that they were stunned and
unprepared for the seriousness of Mr. Baraks offer and the bluntness of Mr. Clintons
assessment. Other world leaders told Mr. Arafat the same thing: Barak deserves a
serious counteroffer.
Mr. Arafat had a dilemma: make some compromises, build on Mr. Baraks opening
bid and try to get it closer to 100 percent and regain the moral high ground that
way or provoke the Israelis into brutalizing Palestinians again, and regain the
moral high ground that way. Mr. Arafat chose the latter. So instead of responding
to Mr. Baraks peacemaking overture, he and his boys responded to Ariel Sharons
peace-destroying provocation. In short, the Palestinians could not deal with Barak,
so they had to turn him into Sharon. And they did.
Of course, the Palestinians couldnt explain it in those terms, so instead they unfurled
all the old complaints about the brutality of the continued Israeli occupation and
settlement-building. Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and continued settlementbuilding are oppressive. But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to acknowledge
is that todays Israeli prime minister was offering them a dignified exit. It was far from
perfect for Palestinians, but it was a proposal that, with the right approach, could
have been built upon and widened. Imagine if when Mr. Sharon visited the Temple
Mount, Mr. Arafat had ordered his people to welcome him with open arms and say,
When this area is under Palestinian sovereignty, every Jew will be welcome, even you,
Mr. Sharon. Imagine the impact that would have had on Israelis.
But that would have been an act of statesmanship and real peaceful intentions, and
Mr. Arafat, its now clear, possesses neither. He prefers to play the victim rather than
the statesman. This explosion of violence would be totally understandable if the
Palestinians had no alternative. But that was not the case. Whats new here is not the
violence, but the context. It came in the context of a serious Israeli peace overture,
which Mr. Arafat has chosen to spurn. Thats why this is Arafats war. Thats its real
name.
If you want to know how confused the Palestinians are, consider this quotation from
their senior negotiator, Hasan Asfour: There can be no resumption of peace talks
without an international investigation into the latest violence. Our people did not
die for nothing.
I see. These Palestinians died so there can be an international investigation into why
they were killed. Sad. What a totally messed up set of priorities.
Basically, said Stephen P. Cohen, a Middle East expert at the Israel Policy Forum, the
Arabs and Palestinians have spent so many years, and used up so much energy, from
1967 to 2000, just getting to the point where they would make peace with Israel if
they got 100 percent of what they wanted, that they have no energy now to fight
the real battle, which is getting their people to accept 90 percent. The danger if we
dont, despite everything, still find a way to erect a peace is that the only energy
left will be with those who want to undermine everything.
With the gleeful, savage mob murder of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, on top of a week
of IsraeliPalestinian killings and now a suicide attack on a US ship in Yemen, the
whole region is coming unglued. Whats scary is that no one knows what to do next.
Moderates cannot continue to argue that if Israel went far enough, it would have a
Palestinian partner. But the hard-liners, now saying, I told you so the iron fist is
the only way to deal with the Palestinians, are peddling a fantasy as well. The iron
fist is not a sustainable solution for a state of six million Jews living in a sea of one
billion angry Muslims.

[11] So what do you do when there is no partner for peace and there is no alternative to
peace? Mourn the dead. Mourn the dead and pray that after this explosion of hatred
is over, the parties will find a way to live apart. Otherwise the future is just endless
killing and dying, killing and dying, killing and dying, killing and dying, killing and
dying, killing and dying . . .
M . M O S H E E R A M E R is a doctoral candidate at the School of Languages and Linguistics,

University of Melbourne, Australia. His current area of research is Critical Discourse
Analysis and media discourses on the Middle East.
A D D R E S S : [email: m.amer@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au]

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Discourse

`Telling-it-like-it-is': the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada in

>> Version of Record - Jan 7, 2009

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 5

Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation

The concept of legitimation is essentially social and political

argumentation, deictic centre, (de)legitimation, dominant themes,

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Discourse & Society 20(1)

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 7

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Discourse & Society 20(1)

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 9

1 . Dimensions of deictic centre adapted from Chilton (2004: 58).

i.e. events, which carry a time of happening as part of their conceptualization,

Seeking to legitimize by invoking moral, political or institutional authority is

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Discourse & Society 20(1)

the argumentative elements which are explicitly invoked or implicitly embedded

Apparent concession: most of them are law-abiding citizens, but . . .;

Van Dijk relates these moves to an overall strategy of positive self-presentation

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 11

Opinion discourse, to which the present column belongs, is fundamentally

Argumentative structure of the column

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Discourse & Society 20(1)

The attribution of blame and responsibility to Arafat and the Palestinians

In this section, I provide an informal analysis of the texts argumentative

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 13

1 . Argumentative structure of Friedmans article

A definition of the situation; a general historical background

. . . The intifada, the Palistinian uprising

Selective reference to historical events; stating premises

Heres why . . . At that time, Mr Clinton

Developing premises further

Palestinians were shocked by Mr Clintons

Hypothesizing; stating claim

Mr Arafat had a dilemma . . . or provoke the

blaming the victim

Developing premises further; hypothesizing

Of course, the Palestinians couldnt explain it

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Discourse & Society 20(1)

Stating claim by providing quotation

blaming the victim

Elaborating on previous claim

Supporting main argument by quotation

appeal to expert authority

Selective selection of facts and sources

evoking fear and alarm

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Amer: Telling-it-like-it-is: the delegitimation of the second Palestinian Intifada 15

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