Peace, Justice: Hegemony...

It is a concept that all politicians will deny, but most political science student will tell you about until they (and probably you) are blue in the face, is that control of the narrative is power. 'Peace' and 'Justice' are great tools to control the narrative, particularly in the context of protracted conflict: 'Justice' defines the threshold between what is acceptable, and what is not.

'Peace' is an even better tool, it doesn't even need a definition, it just 'is'... We just assume peace to be a state of affairs which is simply better than what exists now. Its vague enough for everyone to agree that its a good idea. without discussing what it actually means.

Problems arise when we apply our assumptions of 'justice' to what is acceptable to think and to say - and when we start using 'peace' as a battering ram, and as by-word for hegemony... and then take these concepts as premises for the narrative, then these noble sounding terms are weapons of war.

As an illustraition of this, we may consider a comparison between the treatment of the narrative of the 'Indian Mutiny', as discussed in The Other Side of the Medal (Edward Thompson, 1926) and the discussion of 'Islamist Terrorism' at the time of the Oslo accords (c. 1993) - a comparison that is still, I believe, relevant today.

From: "The Campaign Against 'Islamic Terror'", in The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Edward Said, Granta Books: London, 2000. p. 44- 50.

"Most British historians of India, for example, described the famous "Mutiny" of 1857 as a barbarous, terroristic attack on defenseless women and children, thereby convertying the Indian into a savage barbarian to whom the only response was force. Thompson points out that for the Indians the "Mutiny" was in fact a rebellion in their struggle against the British, provoked by generations of punishing colonization, racist discrimination, and savage imperial repression of Indian independence ...

... 'Our misrepresentation of Indian history and character is one of the things that have so alienated the educated classes of India that even their moderate elements have refuses to help the Reforms [of colonial policy]. Those measures, because of this sullenness, have failed, when they deserved a better fate." ... Great, deliberate bloody and indiscriminately violent actions like the 1857 mutiny or the recent bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are ugly, indefensible things ... Cynical manipulations of religion are appalling: to kill children or buys passengers in the name of God is a horror to be conditionally condemned, as much as one should also condemn leaders who send young people on suicide missions. But there has been little more obdurate and arrogant than the Israeli and American response, with its sanctimonious choruses against terrorism, Hamas, Islamic fundamentalism ...

... The fact is that the peace process has been an offense to the Palestinian spirit. Each declaration of its virtue, each resounding complement paid to it, each parade and celebratory event, has reminded Palestinians how their history as the native inhabitants of Palestine who were deliberately kicked off their own land, their society destroyed, the West Bank and Gaza kept under military occupation for twenty-nine years [now 40!], has been ignored, violated, misrepresented. Terrorism is bred out of poverty, desperation, a sence of powerlessness and utter misery ...

... Only when Muslims totally fall into line, speak the same language, take the same measures as Israel and United States do, can they be expected to be 'normal,' at which point of course the are no longer really Arab and Muslim. The have simply become 'peace makers.' What a pity that so noble an idea as 'peace' has become a corrupted embellishment of power masquerading as reconciliation."