Scare rhetoric as a device used to bolster Jewish fighting and pioneering spirit: David Ben-Gurion’s use of antithesis reference

Abstract

Abstract In this article we examined Ben-Gurion’s scare rhetoric reflected in the antithesis relation as a device used to bolster the fighting and pioneering spirit of the Jewish people. We tried to show how Ben-Gurion strove to skew and manipulate the political discourse in order to raise the soldiers’ fighting morale, promote ideological positions on Zionist pioneering, and the Jewish people’s psychological fortitude, and, thus amplify its fighting spirit based on the belief that it would be the soldiers’ fighting spirit and faith in the justness of the war that would ultimately determine the outcome.