Description
When massive violence is not named, what does that silence do and produce? This article examines the political effects of silence in international discourse through the case of Western responses to the Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023. Rather than explaining why governments remain silent, we treat silence itself as an object of inquiry. Drawing on postcolonial scholarship, critical security studies, and emerging literature on silence in International Relations, we conceptualize a “trinity of silence”: the absence of references to violence, victims, and perpetrators. We argue that these omissions are not merely passive but performative, constituting a mechanism of discursive erasure that renders violence socially and politically indiscernible. Empirically, the article analyzes official statements issued by the United States, France, the European Union, the G7, and other Western actors between 2023 and 2025. The findings show how violence is depoliticized through abstraction, victims are symbolically annihilated through omission, and accountability is obscured through the refusal to identify perpetrators. By theorizing silence as a constitutive feature of security discourse, the article contributes to debates on discourse, violence, and postcolonial power, while offering a framework applicable beyond Gaza to other cases of neglected mass violence.