Asst. Lect. Rasha Ali

Department of English

College of Education for the Humanities

University of Kerbala

Linguistic Strategies in Framing War-related Discourse

The discourse related to the Israel-Palestine war is considered one of the most argumentative topics on social media. Various linguistic strategies are employed to shape the war in a way that serves political, ideological, and strategic benefits. The linguistic strategies that are relied on to impact public opinion and policy can be formed as follows:

1- Emotional Language and Euphemisms 

The use of this strategy enables the Israeli operations to be described as “precision strikes” or “neutralizing threats” to mitigate the war destruction and civilian casualties, whereas Palestinian resistance is often described as “terror attacks,” underpinning a negative connotation (Pappé, 2006). Linguistically, violence is shaped in accordance with the source. For instance, Israeli military actions are often outlined in Western media as “self-defense” or “counterterrorism,” while Palestinian actions are frequently called “terrorism” (Said, 1993). In contrast, pro-Palestinian discourse emphasizes terms like “occupation,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “apartheid” (Pappé, 2006). In the same vain, Palestinian advocates use words like “massacre,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “siege” to highlight the human suffering triggered by Israeli actions (Khalidi, 2020) and words like “self-defense” and “counterterrorism” are used by Israeli advocates to justify military operations (Bar-Tal, 2013).

2-Historical Parallels and Contrasts 

With this strategy, there will be retelling to historical events like apartheid South Africa or Holocaust to draw comparisons between past inequalities and the situation in Palestine in the present (Finkelstein, 2018). Parallels like these aim to arouse sound emotional reactions and ethical condemnation.

3-Passive vs. Active Voice

With aid of passive voice structures, reporters can obscure agency. For example, the sentence “Palestinians killed in clashes” shows no agent, whereas the sentence “Hamas launches rocket attacks” overtly declare the agency  emphasizing a certain perspective (Said, 1992).

4-Hashtags and Digital Involvement

Abu-Lughod (2015) proposes that social media platforms have enabled activists to sidestep traditional media narrating. Hashtags such as #FreePalestine #SaveSheikhJarrah, and #GazaUnderAttack, have equipped international consciousness and support. Such campaigns challenge dominant media outlining and provide different standpoints.

5-Censorship and Algorithmic Prejudice

 A large number of Palestinian activists and journalists have cited instances of censorship on Facebook and Instagram, alleging that pro-Palestinian content gets deleted or underrepresented (Alim, 2021). Such dynamics highlight issues of ethics around corporate governance of war communication and the erasure of peripheral discussions. Palestinian activists have also been silenced by content moderation policies designed to catch ‘hate speech’ which are indisputably targeted at supportive Palestinian content (Abu-Lughod, 2021). This mirrors deeper global inequities in the governance of the Internet.