FUN WORD: This, for me, was a new one: “Necroviolence”, which
is defined as “the intentional infliction of violence on human corpses.” This
abhorrent human behaviour is one area of study found in mortuary archaeology, which examines:
“…human remains in their archaeological
context. Mortuary archaeology aims to generate an understanding of disease,
migration, health, nutrition, gender, status, and kinship among past
populations. Ultimately, these topics help to produce a picture of the daily
lives of past individuals."
ONE RECENT study of necroviolence is of
the “Aktion 1005” Nazi campaign, begun in
mid-1942, which conducted the exhumation of bodies from mass graves in eastern and central
Europe, then burning the remains to destroy evidence of earlier executions carried out
by roving Einsatzkommando
(“Task Force”) squads and at death camps, like Auschwitz, until the more efficient
crematoria were up and running. Modern archaeological techniques that combine archival
sources, ground penetrating radar, chemical analysis of soils and burned
remains of victims provided the study's author, University of Lotz researcher Dawid Kobialka,* with valuable
data on the scale and scope and timeline of the genocidal murders and mass
burials, and the later disinterring of the victims and burning their corpses, something1
Kobialka calls a “second death” inflicted upon the victims.
THE ANALYTICAL TOOLS of mortuary
archaeology and forensic science helped researchers glean valuable information
from the ash and bone fragments uncovered in the killing fields of eastern
Europe and gave the lie to claims that mass murders of Polish intelligentsia,
people with mental disorders, Jews and other minorities, at the hands of the Nazis, could be erased
entirely. The perpetrators of the massacres in Poland’s Szpegawski
forest and elsewhere, during the early years of WWII, tried to expunge all
traces of their crimes from the historical record. In this they failed.
👉PERHAPS in a millennium or two, when the
last physical traces of their foul deeds are finally lost to deep-time, perhaps
then the monsters of last century’s great war may finally rest in peace, and the
only memories of their time upon the earth will be found in ghost stories
parents whisper to their children to bid them sleep and to be wary of things
that go bump in the night.
IN GAZA, the “necroviolence” is multi-varied
and comes with a ‘twist’ of the modern, even if the story is much the same, with
only the players that are different. The most obvious is the deliberate
destruction of Gazan graveyards by the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) using
bulldozers and backhoes. Both sacral and communal, the grounds of cemeteries
are repositories of lives lived. They are sacred places that offer solace to
those who mourn, where the living can meet with their dead and remember their
lives. They are liminal spaces where the present and past intermix with the
future that extends out from shoreline to the far horizon. Today’s digitalizing
age makes it easier, in some respects, to erase the traces of births and
deaths.
👉AS PAPER RECORDS give way to fungible computerized
spread sheets, attacking the physical centres of a population’s religious and secular
life—its civic buildings, businesses, courts, monuments, libraries, schools, museums,
places of worship, its graveyards, arenas, and avenues—along with the digital
destruction of records, are all an effort, Kobialka calls, of “deheritization”,
that is: destroying a people’s heritage, their links to the culture they were born
into and were part of, including their cityscapes and landscapes, the unique, memory-rich physicality
of towns and cities, farmlands and orchards. Without records and physical markers, the histories of individuals, of groups and cultures become,
for future fascists, easier to “memory hole”.
When digital archives are destroyed along with the physical traces of a people’s
past (for example, graveyards), then every year becomes a ‘Year Zero’, for without
a past how can the present have, or even
recognize, a future? As Professor of Archaeology and Archaeodeath blog host, Howard M. R. Williams notes:
“Indeed, many are arguing that this
destruction of heritage, while in part an inevitable result of urban mechanized
warfare – can and should be regarded as an extension of, and integral to, the
violence done to people, their traditions, habits and culture (Ahmed 2024).” (Williams,
Archaeodeath)
Destroying graveyards, with their
gravestones, statuary and monuments, and disinterring gravesite remains,
obviate the efficacy of such liminal places to preserve individual and communal
memories. And not to forget, it’s a war crime and illegal under international humanitarian law—namely Article 56 of the 1954 Hague Convention.
SOCIAL MEDIA, while as potentially
ephemeral2 as digital records, has thus far had the opposite effect on
the wider world’s understanding of the Gazan genocide. Daily, our phones and
screens preserve in photographs, videos, blogs, and commentary the destruction
of Palestinian group memories, including the wanton destruction of at least sixteen
graveyards in the enclave. It’s done as part of a larger policy of eroding Palestinian
resolve and making Gaza unlivable. Destroying
communal depositories of memories destroys (or tries to)
memories that tie a people to the land, making them more malleable and more
likely to take the option of emigrating from their home.
BUT, there is one positive outcome at
least, a single green shoot of resistance and resolve, if you will: In the
United States, support for Israel, once rock solid, is now called into
question, especially from youth who use the TikTok app to bear witness
to atrocities happening each day in Gaza. Therefore, to stem the tide of changing
public opinion and to regain narrative control, TikTok and CBS News
have just been bought by the billionaire father and son team of Larry and David
Ellison. Ardent Zionists, the dynamic duo fails to understand that the more
they try to throttle news coming out of Gaza (and the West Bank and East
Jerusalem) while schlepping as ‘truth’ the approved narratives crafted by the
Netanyahu regime and the murderous IDF, the more users of the app will move to
other platforms to find out what’s really happening there. And that’s a good thing, so long as we
remember there are ‘choke points’ along the digital information highway, with gray
areas in law that allow governments and elites to censor digital exchanges and
ban users and content providers, again with the effect of ‘deheritizing’ the
Palestinian people. As Palestinian journalist
Rami Abu Jamus summed up: "We have come to a point where death
and life mix. We are between life and death. We are dead, but still alive. We
are alive, but always dead."
Free, Free Palestine!
Cheers, Jake. _____________________________________
* From his 2024 paper: “Necroviolence
in the archaeological evidence. Mass crimes in the Szpegawski forest, Poland
and the materiality of Aktion 1005” by Dawid Kobialka.
1. FUN FACT: Hundreds of Polish prisoners were used in the
grizzly task of digging up the dead and burning their remains. When the job was
done, the prisoners were summarily executed and their bodies added to the pile.
Talk about efficiency!
2. For example, just this past
September, the Taliban in Afghanistan temporarily shut down the country’s
internet services for “morality” reasons. (BBC)
FUN
FACT: A 2020 article from Al Jazerra notes that
Israeli disrespect for the bodies of Palestinians has long been a practice of
the IDF, even to the extent of collecting bodies of Palestinians killed in skirmishes to use later as ‘bargaining chips’ in negotiations. Budour Hassan, a legal
researcher with the Jerusalem Legal Aid
and Human Rights Center (JLAC) suggests:“…this
necroviolence – the act of humiliating human bodies – is a means of exerting
control over bodies of the Palestinians. We see it as an extension of an entire
policy designed by Israel to control bodies of Palestinians.” Additionally,
there is some speculation that suggests Israel harvests organs from the recently
deceased Palestinians whose corpses they confiscate. Such actions, according to
Hassan “reveal the extent to which Palestinians have been dehumanised in
Israeli media and by Israeli officials which is a culmination of the whole
system of necroviolence that is being exerted on Palestinians.” (Al Jazerra)
