The world lost an eminent peace activist recently, 79-year-old Indian parliamentarian and 2005 Nobel Prize nominee Nirmala Deshpande.
It is a shame that Deshpande’s life and her passing have gone largely unnoticed here. Her impartiality and moral consistency in addressing the long conflict between India and Pakistan were honoured by the attendance of high-ranking officials from both governments at her recent funeral. North American peace activists could learn a great deal from this courageous woman, who steadfastly supported democracy, women’s rights, and the victims of violence and oppression.
Deshpande stands in sharp contast to peace activists and movements in Canada. Real peace activists don’t condone or excuse the violence of one side in a conflict, nor do they ignore human rights violations because of political allegiances or a misplaced sense of belonging. And real peace activists promote mutual understanding and explicitly recognize the legitimate aspirations of both sides in a political conflict.
I couldn’t help but reflect on the distinction between real peace activists and the pale imitations we often see here as I read the Edmonton media coverage of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the writings of Rachel Corrie, a brave and passionate young woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. Corrie belonged to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), whose members bill themselves as peace activists, and have a substantial Canadian following.
The ISM, however, is most emphatically not a peace movement, but rather a partisan organization with specific political aims that have nothing to do with peace or nonviolence. It is, its website proclaims, “a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the Israeli occupation.” Nothing is inherently wrong with Canadians or anyone else joining forces with Palestinians in the pursuit of a nationalist political goal, but to call their quest one of “peace” does great violence to an already much-abused term.
The ISM refuses to unequivocally oppose Palestinian terrorism. A statement on suicide bombing on its website turns into a maze of apologetic contortion, full of references to UN resolutions in support of resistance by any means necessary. And as much as I scour the website, I cannot find any mention of the oppression of women or gays and lesbians by other Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, or even a word of opposition to the harassment and murder of local Christians.
The same scenario holds true for the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), whose number included James Loney, the Canadian man held captive with three colleagues in Iraq by Muslim militants in the winter of 2005-06. Loney and the other men were abducted, and one was killed, despite their organization’s vocal opposition to the U.S.-led forces’ presence in Iraq and their overt personal displays of respect for Iraqi religious and national sensibilities.
It was only upon Loney’s rescue by a special team of Canadian, British, and U.S. forces that most of us learned he was gay and had a partner back home forced to endure in silence the agonizing wait for his safe return. Loney did not dare reveal his sexual orientation to his captors for fear of torture and execution. Yet the CPT did not condemn the hostage-takers, nor did they take the opportunity to call for an end to Islamic fundamentalist violence against gays, Assyrians, and other oppressed minorities in Iraq—this despite the fact that the CPT claims to make the “undoing” of racism, sexism, and sexual harassment a priority.
And while the ISM, the CPT, and a host of other related organizations fight abuses by Canada, the United States, Israel, and other Western countries, they are conspicuously absent on the ground in the conflict zones currently producing significant casualties, including the conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region. There is also not a single mention on the CPT website of the ongoing genocide in Darfur.
It is not as though there is a lack of violence to oppose in those places, but what is absent is critical to understanding the CPT and organziations like—western soldiers. By acting solely against western governments and militaries, these 'peace activists' undermine their legitimacy. Ironically, they also implicitly and unintentionally confer a moral advantage on western military establishments by visibly relying on their good will and protection.
If one is truly opposed to violence in all its forms, then one must condemn all its perpetrators equally. If activists choose to distinguish between justified and unjustified violence, one is no different from, say, a U.S. president doing the same thing.
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