What Makes Anwar Sadat Redfern Speech

The very best speeches are those that express challenging arguments through preconceived ideas relating to and beyond the time in which they were written. Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt’s ‘Speech to the Israeli Knesset’ on 20th November 1997 and Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating’s ‘Redfern Speech’ delivered in Redfern Park on 10th December 1992 both share similar intents: to challenge and discuss relevant affairs that appeal to any audience, to reinforce predetermined beliefs, emphasizing national identity and to finally challenge the attended audience to synthesise ideas that may stir up norms within society.

Sadat’s iconic speech came to fruition after the Yom Kipper War in 1973 which ended in a ceasefire. It later called for immediate

reconsideration for longer lasting peace negotiations between Israel and the Arab bordering countries of the Middle East. His speech challenged the value of patience, peace and duty, focusing on the need for a ‘permanent peace based on justice’. Through the combination of the extended ‘wall’ metaphor to signify an ‘inflammable and escalating psychological warfare’ as well as the Anaphora in Sadat’s statement ‘there was a huge wall between us which you tried to build up over a quarter of a century, but it was destroyed in 1973’. Employs Anwar’s challenge to the conflict between the Middle East by farthing the extended metaphor stating that ‘it was a wall that warned us against extermination and annihilation if we tried to use our legitimate right’. Even though his ideas begin so one-sided, using the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ to appeal human pathos ‘we should rise above all forms of fanaticism, self-deception and obsolete theories of superiority’. Sadat conversely alters his florid rhetoric, using multiple rhetorical questions ‘why don’t we stretch our hands with faith and sincerity so that, together we might destroy this barrier?’, ‘why don’t we stand together … to erect a huge edifice of peace that builds and does not destroy’, to bring both sides together. This adjustment from a ‘wall’ metaphor to an ‘edifice of peace’ challenges the ideas that two conflicting sides can untie and build bonds that allow for peace. Sadat’s mutual change of tone, using multiple collective nouns ‘it is the battle of all and every citizen in all our territories whose right is to live in peace’ suggests unity and hope as well as a notion of trust showcased through the repetition of ‘Let’s be Frank’ challenges the idea of optimism by appealing to strong sense of ethos.
Similarly to Sadat’s speech, Paul Keating’s ‘Redfern Speech’ challenged and criticised the ignorance of the Australian people and the Australian government in their disgraceful inability to recognise the severe and unforgiving acts towards the Indigenous Aboriginals.

Like Sadat, Keating recognises through a bold statement ‘that the issue starts with us non-Aboriginals Australians’. The repetition of ‘we’ combined with the strong metaphor and listing ‘we took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life, we took the children from their mothers’, challenges the preconceived ideas of white Australia in the sense that quote Geoffrey Bailey, we have ‘moved from the three cheers version of Australian history to the black armband view’. Paul Keating’s ‘Redfern Speech’ can be considered a great speech as he is able to appeal to the pathos of individuals by pitching his language so that it becomes more inclusive. This can be noted through the use of strong, direct lexicon combined with a rhetorical question ‘how would I feel if this were done to me? As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us’. I agree that Keating’s speech was a great speech as he was able to be both contentious as showcased through his varying bold statements and the ongoing motif of a test, ‘committed ourselves to succeeding in the test which we so far we have always failed’. As well as converging into a low modality, persuasive pitch to appeal to human emotions, challenging the predetermined ideas of Australia’s past. ‘Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless. I can agree that great speeches are made so by their challenging ideas and both Sadat and Keating were able to challenge the ideas and values of their time so that they have a timeless

appeal.