The Most Moral Army

”[Our] army is the most moral army in the world”.

The prelude to this “moral army”’s passing is a bombed-out wasteland, a wasteland in which half of the population are children. A wasteland of husks of concrete where civilians are the main targets of genocide and forceful relocation under the guise of hunting terrorists.

And yet, to Netanyahu, his army is the world’s most moral.

An army from a nation which runs ghastly mobile gaming adverts about its indignity, or where influencers and families perform a dancing mockery of the hellish conditions that Palestinians have to try and endure in the waterless and powerless dust of wreck and ruin.

But this is all just and right, according to Netanyahu, and any critics of it “do not have a single drop of morality”.

Not the kind of morality where the moral army aim for the journalists who try to observe the war on the ground. Where Reuters reporters are actively targetted along the Lebanon border, or how journalists and their families are hunted on the ground of the strip.

Remember Shireen Abu Akleh, for she was (according to Netanyahu) shot dead in the head by the most moral army in the world.

I disagree with Netanyahu. Avid readers of these here my Wasted Words know full well the umbrage I take with the apartheid of Zionism. I’m well on record disliking occupation and subjugation on a categorical level. Killing a journalist doing their job is about the most clear draconic sign you can find in a regime, and that’s not even taking into accounts the numerous violations of International Law that Israel makes itself guilty of even in so-called peace time, much more so when at full scale war against a civilian population.

But right this second I disagree with Netanyahu not just on policy or politics, but on a fundamental philosophical level:

There is no moral army. Morality, like truth, is a first casualty in any war. There may be right and wrong, clearly cut, such as in Ukraine’s defence of its sovereign borders, or Europe’s resistance to Nazi Germany’s desire for Lebensraum, but (despite what Peter Sellers said) there’s no space for morality in the war room. Atrocities are endemic to the very idea of war; the industrialized cruelty of political will against another. No matter which side you root for (or against), there is not an armed force upon this earth, past present or likely future, which runs on morality.

If there was, we wouldn’t have need for International Law or the Rules of War.

If there was, the Law of Armed Conflict as part of the United Nations Charter would not be violated on such regular basis as it is.

There may be a moral side to a war every so often. There may even be plenty of moral soldiers in the ranks of either side. But there has never, is not, and will with all likelihood never be, a moral armed force.

And even if I’m wrong, it’s demonstrably not yours, Netanyahu, no matter how loudly you chant.

/Sebastian Lindberg 31/10-2023