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The military-industrial complexSharon and Halutz An email to DavidH on New Year's Day 2005: You ask me: ‘What about the words of Sharon and Halutz?’
I presume you mean these words of Sharon:
‘In the wake of a midnight Israeli bombing run on a crowded Gaza Strip residential neighborhood, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proclaimed the attack a resounding success. “This operation was in my view one of our biggest successes,” said Sharon. “While scrupulously limiting ourselves to a legitimate military target, we still managed to achieve a civilian casualty rate of 14:1. Those are better numbers even than some suicide bombers achieve. I can’t tell you how proud that makes me feel.”‘ http://www.lies.com/wp/2002/07/23/sharon-hails-great-success-in-gaza-bombing-raid/
and these by Halutz:
‘Israel’s air force commander decided to speak out in public that the airstrike that killed 14 bystanders, in addition to its intended target of a senior Hamas military leader. Nine children were killed in the process. Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper that it was both “militarily and morally” right to drop a one-ton bomb on Salah Shehadeh’s home in a crowded Gaza neighborhood despite the risk of injuring other civilians. The interview was reported to have included his statement “The decision-making process was correct, balanced and careful. The problem was with the information, the information changed.” The General indicated that the mission was more important than the safety of innocent people because he added, “As for the changing intelligence information, those who wait for 100 percent certainty in every case, will apparently never move.”’ http://www.noisetoknowledge.com/It_is_morally_right_to_bomb_buildings_now.htm
This revealing and presumably rare admission of the callous attitudes behind Israeli attacks on Palestinians is over two years old. Halutz was apparently taken to court for these remarks and made excuses:
‘Halutz said in the affidavit that he said those things in order to give his support to the soldiers under his command in the wake of harsh criticism by the media, and that his “perfect execution” remark was intended to relate to the operational aspect of the raid. | High Court justices Edmond Levy, Miriam Naor and Jonathan Adiel had decided to ask for Halutz’ “ethical response,” while discussing a petition filed a year ago by Yesh Gvul, the Public Committee Against Torture, and other organizations, demanding that Halutz’ appointment as deputy chief of staff be reversed.’ http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=1749
‘He also tried to persuade the court that his comments had not been insensitive by giving an explanation of what he had been trying to say. For example, he wrote that when he had told the interviewer that he “slept well” after the operation, he meant that he had slept well because the bombing had been carried out with professional perfection.’ http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1104291022860
Some people have read particular sinister motives into this kind of attitude:
‘… That the Sharon government took these actions not despite but BECAUSE it expects these consequences. | That the Sharon government does not wish to achieve a peace settlement with a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, but intends to shatter every effort toward such a settlement, and wants to break every vestige of Palestinian nationhood and any kind of Palestinian national movement. | That the Sharon government is ready not only to kill Palestinians, whether terrorists or civilians or two-month-old babies, to make sure this terrible pot of blood keeps boiling, but to expect and accept the likely result that Israelis also will be killed. | Is there any evidence that the real intention of the Sharon government is to shatter all forms of Palestinian nationhood, not just the terrorist groups, and that it views a cease-fire as contradictory to that goal?’ http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0725-01.htm
You’ve asked what I think of all this, well…
This is all horrible and the last analysis is almost certainly right, but it doesn’t explain why or help us decide what to do. There is an underlying assumption that the actions of the Israeli state and its army are rational and moral, or at least can be usefully judged on such a basis. But I think they are not rational or moral. To really understand this it’s helpful to look at the bigger picture, and particularly the operation of what one can call ‘the military-industrial complex’ or ‘mic’, of which Israel as a US military base is a part. Normal language is no help in discussing the mic; one needs metaphors.
Consider the world as a complex creature, part biological, part inorganic physical-chemical. The creature has some distributed, partially networked, intelligence and memory, both human and artificial, through which it communicates and makes decisions. The mic exists within this creature and has some of the same processes and structures, but it is diseased and could destroy its host. You could call the mic a cancer or a parasite, or maybe an iatrogenic disease, since it has been and continues to be, despite its dreadful side effects, prescribed to cure various ills in the world.
The mic penetrates everywhere. Most human beings are part of it in that they collude in its existence, paying taxes to sanction its continuing growth and power, ignoring its disproportionate consumption of resources, accepting its need of secrecy and surveillance, hardly murmuring at its wanton destruction.
So what distinguishes the mic from the world at large? What we call ‘heart’: the world has that, the mic does not. Heart is the world’s immune system by which we keep the mic somewhat on the defensive. Heart tells us we can influence the mic by appealing to agents of nation states, agents who we know are part of the mic but are also human beings so we think they have heart too. And indeed they have heart but only for private matters; in their professional roles they are ruthless automata or drones.
Our protests are futile efforts at reforming the mic which we feel compelled to make, to be doing what we can: for the same reason we do a bit of recycling, buy fair trade goods, give to charity and do voluntary work. I am sure the mic cannot be reformed. Palestine cannot be saved that way, we are merely supplying palliative care, which is good to do but it is no solution. The mic cannot be surgically excised without also removing the capitalist system with which it is inextricable connected.
Is there anything that can be done about the mic? Well, my own New Year resolutions, as it were, would be:
I engage in some ‘reformist’ campaigns besides PSC:
but my main efforts would go towards:
and I might try to be optimistic and build my own ‘heart’:
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