A question of history repeating itself:
Do we use the history of military activity to inform our present and produce lessons which can be applied to future activity which acts within and without military spheres. The answer to this is that we do. The world of business has for years borrowed the terminology of conflict and applied it to corporation strategy. Business has borrowed a range of concepts such as leadership, group dynamics and the role of authority. The world of business then shows us that there are applicable truths which permeate human activity. These concepts are now so ingrained within this sphere of activity that they are taken for granted as part and parcel of corporate methodology. This tells us that the history of military activity can be used to inform and then change collective attitudes towards human agency and group dynamics.
With this in mind i am going to tread on slightly controversial ground by looking at a period of military activity which mirrors an essential part of the conflict currently being fought out in Gaza. My intention is to highlight a simple but key concept when structuring a military organisation and then allowing it to engage in operations which ask it to uphold an extreme socio-political outlook.
(Gaza 2025)
So my premise is simple, the IDF (Israeli defence force) being a religiously orientated military organisation has in the name of security and retribution carried out acts which have more in common with the German Waffen SS of world war two than a modern military organisation whose role is to target combatants. Now this does sound quite harsh and i am in no way minimising the traumatic events which occurred in Israel. Each nation has a right to defend itself proportionally unfortunately proportionality has left the building as far as the IDF are concerned.
Why then the SS. The SS are an example of an organisation who experienced extended socio-political indoctrination, they internalised a clear belief in their own superiority driven by the rhetoric and ideology bequeathed to them by Adolf Hitler. Now i am in no way drawing a comparison between the individuals who are in power in Israel and those who were in Nazi Germany. What i am drawing a parallel between is the penetration of one form of indoctrination to another and how this effects the nature of conflict once combat begins. This effect can be seen across history in a range of conflicts such as the Crusades, the Muslim military break out into Europe, Christian colonialism, Islamic fundamental terrorism, the Cathar purges and i might add many others. The reason i am using the SS as an example is that its actions in combat show how a retaliatory cycle which targets non combatants, breeds more violence. I could easily use the miss steps of US and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in creating a military insurgency but the relationship between the current Jewish state to the historical actions of German forces during world war two makes the SS a good foil for an inquiry into what has become not only moral equivalency but organisational similarity at the point of action.
So what are the similarities ? To begin with we must look at the substructure of justification for acts committed within a theatre of operations. Here we will find a conceptually similar rationality. Being the chosen people (as pointed out by the majority of Jewish people) allows Israel to substantiate its militaries role as a fundamental function of its religiosity. In doing this the IDF evinces moral superiority owing to the belief that Jewishness has a primacy in theological terms. This type of moral superiority when engaged in any conflict always leads to excesses. It is a form of superiority seen throughout German operations especially at the point of acting out schemes of retribution. Take oradour-sur-glane where Das Reich killed the inhabitants of the village and burnt it to the ground, this type of massacre was justified by the killing of a couple of German soldiers by the resistance. In the west of Russia the Leibstandarte raised a variety of villages to the ground also as retributive actions. The Warsaw rising stands as one of the largest retributive actions taken by some of the most heinous SS units to fight in the war. These type of incidents pock mark the whole six year conflict within Europe and illustrate a pattern of behaviour which stems from on one hand, moral superiority as understood through a system of knowledge and on the other the physical enactment of the concept of personal superiority. In each case those who suffered retribution far outweigh the number originally hurt or killed.
Clearly then within a cycle of retribution there is an originating act. I will in no way draw a parallel to Israel here: mainly as finding an originating act is fraught with difficulty, but if we take the 9/11 terrorist attacks this action which cost over two thousand lives, led to estimates of over six figures being killed in the middle east. Evidently scale of proportionality in this instance happened in phases with a tit for tat model appearing. This is not the same in a conceptual sense as the single over arching framework which has blossomed in Gaza but it is clear that Israel see the originating act as stemming from the actions of Hamas and that this allows: in the eyes of Israel the use of force to any limit they deem desirable. Unfortunately like the Waffen SS in Warsaw the IDF has lost sight of all sense of proportionality. What is also surprising is that Israel is tone deaf to the extreme form of retribution they have engaged with. But this post is not targeted at brow beating Israeli actions. Rather it would draw attention to the lessons which should have been take from the various histories of military action. It is undeniable and axiomatic that applying force in an unrestrained manner within urban settings against civilians will only breed further conflict. It will also bring more truculent comparisons which will ask if extremism in any form can be tolerated be it political, religious or social.
(Warsaw 1944)
If we come back to our original statement we must ask how do we use past military activity to properly draw conclusion about actions in the present or future. What is required is the patience to access axiomatic and universal truths when reactive policies dampen critical thought. Collective attitudes are a powerful force but must be tempered by realistic appraisals of what can be achieved by drawing upon the mistakes of the past. Even though approaches to historical understanding have changed over the past 50 years there is no excuse when not drawing upon the experiences which helped form the modern world. What is the point of our collective histories if we take no notice of them.
(Please note i am not expressing a personal attitude towards Israel rather i am questioning its current approach to retributive military action)