Column
Comment
Middle East
War & peace
4 min read

‘The silent stars go by’, mocking the Middle East peace process

Where are today’s witnesses to peace in the Holy Lands?

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

Dots of light, caused by missles, fall across a night sky above the city
Iranian missiles above Jerusalem.
BBC News.

The evil shooting stars of ballistic weaponry over Jerusalem would have been clearly visible from Bethlehem, just to the south of the capital in the occupied West Bank, last Monday evening.  

“Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/ the silent stars go by” goes the children’s Christmas carol. Nothing deep and dreamless about sleep in the little town of Bethlehem just now. Those deadly Iranian-dispatched stars were silent enough, until their alignment with Israeli ones in the Iron Dome. Then “Whump!” as each star collapsed, leaving a black hole in the night sky. 

How depressing that these shining stars of violence and hatred should hang in the same sky that, it is said, hosted the star to mark the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. Depressing but not surprising. The Christ child grew up to foretell to Jerusalem that “the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.” 

He predicted his own death in Jerusalem. And, for sure, the Christ is still being crucified there, every time a man, woman or child loses their life to that violence and hatred, there or in the surrounding region. 

Where are wiser counsels this week, witnesses to peace in the Holy Lands? The legend has it that magi followed the messianic star to the stable. Who looks to these different stars in the night sky this week and asks what they mean? 

Iran’s hardliners, under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can’t countenance a dove with an olive twig.

It’s a bit of a stretch to apply the status of magus to Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new reformist president who had just been sworn in when he watched the rockets launched. His only similarity with the magi may be that he watched those travelling stars in the sky from an eastern perspective. 

But Pezeshkian has, at least, tried to talk of the possibility of peace, among a Middle-Eastern cast who can only speak of war. He arrived back in Iran from the UN general assembly, where he had declared that Iran is “ready to lay down its arms if Israel lays down its arms.” He added: “We want to live in peace.” 

Even if it’s not the wolf living with the lamb, or the leopard lying down with the kid, it does at least envisage a time when an Israeli wolf may lie down with the Iranian leopard. But Iran’s hardliners, under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can’t countenance a dove with an olive twig. They’re consumed with vengeance for Israel’s killing of their putative military leader, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon. And death must always be followed by more death in this scenario. 

Followers of the Nazarene into Jerusalem committed to something very different, a defeat of death as a weapon of despair. Two millennia later, we might expect leaders of a western world founded on the principles of those first followers to speak to peace as the overriding priority for the lands from which their religion derives. 

To draw the West into a war with Iran in defence of Israel. A re-elected president Donald Trump would be a useful dupe for this ploy...

Not a bit of it. Peace in the Holy Lands doesn’t even sound like a strategic aim for the West anymore. On the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US Army general David Petraeus asked: “Tell me how this ends?” No such foresight today. The all-consuming desire seems solely to show that we’re on Israel’s side, come what may. 

President Joe Biden responded to Iran’s aerial attack by saying that the US is “fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel”. For his part, prime minister Keir Starmer declared that “Britain stands full square” with Israel and supports its “reasonable demand for the security of its people.” Admirable sentiments, but they don’t point to peace any time soon, so long as they encourage Israel (or anyone else) to escalate conflict. 

In some quarters, this is held to be deliberate Israeli policy: To draw the West into a war with Iran in defence of Israel. A re-elected president Donald Trump would be a useful dupe for this ploy, abetted in part by the more extreme ends of the US Christian Right, for whom Israel must be protected at all costs as the locus for the second coming of the Christ. So, war with Iran is Armageddon, the great conflict of the End Times. 

These are truly terrifying prospects. For the time being, it’s possibly enough to note that the president of Iran speaks more about peace than the West currently does. Given that the West is supposed to represent the legacy virtues of Christendom, that is in turn alarming. 

That Bethlehem carol goes on to note “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” As we raise our eyes to the fearsome lights in the night sky over Israel, we might wonder whether, when it comes to peace, silence from Christian nations is really enough. 

Article
Comment
Language
Politics
5 min read

Our public discourse needs responsible rhetoric before it is too late

The right turn of phrase can turn a nation, the wrong one can destroy

Tom has a PhD in Theology and works as a hospital physician.

A crowd of people stand in the side steps of the Lincoln Memorial
Easter services, Lincoln Memorial.
George Pflueger, via Unspash.

When was the last time a brilliant piece of rhetoric made the headlines? 

“Empty rhetoric.”  

“Form over function.”  

“Sloganeering.” 

These—and other accolades—are stock trade when it comes to the art of denouncing public discourse. Red flags are rightly waved in the face of baseless claims and insincere promises. Scroll through a news reel; open a newspaper: language far stronger in style than in substance is not hard to find. 

Nowadays we are sensitive to these kinds of abuses of public platforms. When Donald Trump speaks of the ‘Great Big Beautiful Bill’ or Elon Musk of the ‘Big Ugly Bill’ we know the cogs at BBC Verify are likely to be turning. Fact-checking is an established trade.  

Sometimes political turns of phrase are just careless, inadequately thought through. Granted, a politician’s public address is often put together at a pace. Time is so remarkably tight that phrasing and formulations are not interrogated as fully as they might be. (Krish Kandiah recently picked up the Prime Minister’s “island of strangers” line and its unfortunate resonance) 

But of course, the critiques I’ve listed above are themselves sharply rhetorical. They are punchy. Not drawn-out logical deductions. They aim to make us sit upright and win us over. Or move us to a course of action. 

So: is rhetoric the problem? No. Its misuse is the problem. This isn’t always clear. And it’s the reason why simply decrying “rhetoric” won’t get us very far.  

I am sympathetic to the suspicion. When efficiency and pragmatism tower high among the canons of public discourse, it is easier to trade in polarising x versus y expressions. Being guarded in the face of such potent idiom is understandable.  

And yet the most remarkable public discourses in human history have been rich in rhetoric.  

Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial: “I have a dream.”  

Churchill in the House of Commons: “we shall fight them on the beaches.”  

Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”  

All these speakers knew that bare understanding doesn’t typically move people to action. An impassioned speech, a plea to respond, or beautifully woven prose often serve as the tipping point for social engagement. 

Which leads me to wonder, what if a suspicion of smart speech-making ends up stunting social engagement, rather than fostering it? Perhaps political discourse today has gone too far; perhaps rhetoric is beyond repair. And yet: abuse doesn’t mean there isn’t proper use. There is a better way.

When persuasive powers are uncoupled from sound argument, then rhetoric obscures understanding and has become irresponsible. 

In the classical era, training in rhetoric was a prominent feature of an education. You might say it was the way to avoid the charge: “All substance, no style”. It was about turning a sound argument into an art form. For Aristotle, rhetoric was about making use of the tools of persuasion—substance with style. But skill in persuasion was not a virtue of itself; it never stood alone. As Roger Standing has reminded us, “the function of rhetorical skills was not to persuade in and of themselves.” Indeed, training in rhetoric was training in responsibility.  

In his classic 1950s text Ethics of Rhetoric, Richard Weaver put his finger on this. He highlighted that “rhetoric passes from mere scientific demonstration of an idea to its relation to prudential conduct.” True rhetoric, then, is this: the art of lighting up the path that leads from sound logic to good action

Today, it seems that when it comes to the rules of rhetoric, communicators are answerable to polls and popularity. These ends justify the means, which makes fancy formulations fair game. If style secures votes, then it’s a good job done. But this means the communicator has no real accountability for his or her language. Pragmatism is in the driving seat. In a sense, responsibility has been handed over to the hearer.  

This is problematic. When persuasive powers are uncoupled from sound argument, then rhetoric obscures understanding and has become irresponsible. Language is no longer illuminating, but misleading. It is trading on falsehood, or perhaps half-truths, instead of magnifying what is true for the sake of what is good. 

Take an example. In the recent parliamentary debate over amendments to the assisted dying bill, the proceedings opened with the claim that “if we do not vote to change the law, we are essentially saying that the status quo is acceptable.” I don’t for a moment doubt the good intent in this claim—securing the most compassionate care possible for terminally ill adults. But let it be said: no, those who do not advocate assisted dying are not “essentially” saying this. This claim is a non sequitur: the conclusion does not follow the premise. It is logically unsound. 

Like many tools, the art of persuasion can be wielded carelessly; sometimes maliciously. But rhetoric-free public discourse would make for a colourless and lifeless thing indeed. What we need now is rhetoric that is responsible—responsible to what is true and responsible to good outcomes. These should not be split; as soon as they are, speech-making becomes sterile or hollow. I recently heard the neat phrase: “Some people reach your mind by going through the heart, and some people reach your heart by going through your mind.” Yes, as the Christian faith has always maintained: mind and heart belong together. Give us words that awaken both, like those once spoken by that obscure wandering rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, in one of the most studied and penetrating speeches in human history:  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 

I pray for public discourse brimming with both substance and style. It might help lead us to better things. 

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