#dnaEdit: Politics of mourning

The million-plus mourners who came out on the streets of Parisian boulevards to mourn the assassinations of 17 persons, including the editorial staff at Charlie Hebdo, people at the Jewish supermarket, and a policewoman, is indeed historic. Nothing like this has been witnessed in the putative intellectual and artistic capital of Europe since World War II. The 1968 student protests in Paris — for all their popular fervour — differed from the Sunday movement because the latter included all classes of people as well as all shades of French opinion and political affiliation. It included Gaullists and socialists, the centre and left of French politics. It was also an expression of defiance and resistance to the challenge mounted by jihadi terrorists to the French political and intellectual values of freedom of speech and expression. This cannot be misinterpreted as an expression of Islamophobia or racism. Though extreme anti-immigrant right-wing  political circles in France as well as in Europe do espouse such sentiments. The French themselves are aware that anti-Semitism — and this includes the anti-Muslim sentiment though Muslims strenuously protest against being identified with Jews — is a shameful subterranean strain in the French national consciousness. It was therefore a compelling gesture by the people of France to come out to express their determination to counter jihadi terrorism as well as anti-Semitism. Paris’ moving statement will stand testimony for a long time to the ideals of French Revolution of 1789 — liberty, equality and fraternity — which still burn bright in the minds and hearts of the French after more than 225 years.

The troubling part of this powerful symbolic gesture is the participation of political leaders from Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, Israel and Palestine, in Sunday’s rally. The presence of these leaders sends out a different message. As far as the European and the US leaders are concerned, their intention is to signal that the Western governments  mean to hit back hard at jihadists, and their representative organisations, al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It is in many ways a declaration that the war on terrorism which began in 2001 in the wake of the attack in New York and Washington, will continue. The Paris attack has provided the perfect alibi to keep up the West’s military engagement in West Asia. 

Israel wants to be part of the West’s anti-Islamic terror alliance and also obstruct the emergence of a Palestinian state. Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas, who is fighting a rearguard battle with Hamas in the Palestinian territories, has also taken part in the mass mourning because he wants to make it clear to the West that the Palestinian state will have nothing to do with jihadi elements. It is necessary for him to clarify this point because he has to counter the Israeli propaganda that Palestine will be a destabilising factor in the region. The presence of the Jordanian royal couple, Abdullah and Rania, is a token expression of polite liberalism from an Arab state. 

The presence of political leaders is a way of beating the war drums. It is this unimaginative bravado of the Western political establishment that displays bankruptcy of strategic thinking. The West’s military might has proved futile. The assurance that the West is against terrorism and not against Islam or Muslims is not convincing enough. This is a moment for a political rethink.