RANT: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE JUST PLAIN UGLY

  

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 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 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 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 spaces that offer solace to those who mourn, where the living can meet with their dead and remember their lives. They are liminal places 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 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’. 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 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)