The New York Times has an unusual way of describing the deaths of two Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces yesterday; the headline reads “Israel Kills Two Palestinians as Raid in West Bank Goes Awry”. The most common definition of the word “awry” describes an unexpected and/or unusual outcome. But the result of yesterday’s raid is anything but an unusual or unexpected outcome for those who understand what it means to place armed soldiers in civilian populations.
As B’tselem reports, IDF forces killed three unarmed Palestinian men in the relatively calm West Bank in January in similar circumstances. The number of unarmed civilians killed by armed Israeli soldiers is ironically—at least to those who believe Israel’s claim that it no longer occupies the strip—much higher in Gaza. At least twenty-one unarmed civilians have been killed by Israeli soldiers this year. Gazans such as three members of the al Hilu family, including a nine year old, and a neighbor killed by Israeli mortar fire. And a sixteen year old three hundred meters from a perimeter fence killed by Israeli fire in March. Some were killed in so-called escalation of force incidents, the same kind in which hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans have been killed by our own soldiers in our own occupations. Others were killed in their homes. Because when a foreign military occupies a civilian population, there is no safe place–be it home, school, place of worship, work or transit.
Such deaths are anything but accidents. Rather, they are the expected outcome when armed soldiers police civilian populations for the benefit of an occupying power. To say that such deaths are something that occur only when things go “awry” is a fairly typical kind of jargon specific to military occupation, which, consciously or not—and I’d have to say it’s conscious given the Ethan Bronner byline—normalizes the presence of armed soldiers in family communities. There is hardly anything that can go well when putting nervous, armed men, steeped in a culture of angry chauvinism toward a group of people in a community full of those people. That’s true from Iraq to Afghanistan to Palestine.
Gator90
August 3, 2011
And a lot of the armed men are scarcely more than boys.
I guess an individual operation may fairly be said to have “gone awry” when unarmed civilians are killed, in the sense that no such deaths were specifically intended to occur during that particular operation (assuming that, indeed, no such deaths were intended). But as you say, it is a troubling usage because such deaths are inevitable by-products of military operations amidst civilian populations. And it is often far too easy for “pro-Israel” types like myself (let alone pro-war Americans) to forget or gloss over the distinction. In part, of course, this is because we tend to see Palestinian lives as a little (or a lot) less valuable than Jewish ones. I include myself in this, and give myself credit only for being aware of it and making some effort to think differently.
Jaime Omar Yassin
August 3, 2011
I think your second sentence hit it on the nose. Civilian deaths are part of the plan, so to speak. So the plan hasn’t gone awry if they die. It’s factored in and expected. As far as seeing Palestinian lives as less valuable, I think that’s a logical outcome of the way our media reports the impact of our policies, which affects our discourse about what’s important, and why people can be hypercritical of Hugo Chavez as a dictator, and be relatively non-plussed about Mubarak.
Gator90
August 3, 2011
Just don’t forget who controls the media, bucko. Bwah hah hah.
Jaime Omar Yassin
August 3, 2011
Comcast?