A Monstrous Act

Less than a day after I published on this blog a piece dedicated to exposing and examining the systematic cruelty in America’s prison system the state of Texas went through with an act that confirmed what I had written in the worst possible way. I can think of very few words, other than monstrous, barbaric, disgusting, and sick, to describe the state of Texas’s decision to kill a mentally retarded man, Marvin Wilson, and even they seem to fall short of describing the full weight of the situation. While the Supreme Court has barred the practice of killing a mentally retarded person it has left the definition of “mental retardation” up to each individual state. Texas, where 3 out every 4 American executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death sentence in 1976 have taken place, has essentially gone about rewriting the definition for the sole perhaps of executions. Proof of this can be found in the Texas Court of Appeals own phrasing of the question

Does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental retardation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?

Thus Texas is ignoring any clinical or social services definition for mental retardation, definitions that may be used for government purposes in the state, in order to kill as many people as possible. This is why in eschewing the clinical they resort to crude stereotypes, such as the fictional character Lennie from John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, which the Texas Court of Appeals cited to justify killing a man with an IQ of just 61. 

What is perhaps more disturbing than Texas’s decision to fly in the face of the Supreme Court’s prohibition on killing the mentally retarded is that a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court allowed this to happen. Given the horror story after horror story that has come out of the Texas judiciary I expect as little of them as I would the worst of kangaroo courts in the most authoritarian nations. However, the Supreme Court, which I have generally little esteem for, clearly barred the killing of the mentally retarded. And while they left the responsibility for defining mental retardation to the state, Texas’s own definition is no definition at all and merely a not so subtle attempt to contravene the ban on killing mentally retarded individuals.  

While state-sponsored killing is always a deplorable act, it is made more sickening by the fact that the state of Texas murdered someone who essentially had the intellectual capabilities of a child. To make matters worse the only evidence that Wilson was responsible for the murder of a drug informant came from the wife of his accomplice who claimed that Wilson, not her husband, had actually done the killing. Since that time Wilson’s lawyers had uncovered evidence that cast doubts onto whether or not Wilson was even present at the scene of the crime.

The final disturbing aspect of Wilson’s execution centers around how it was done. Wilson is one of few Americans to be killed by a single-drug protocol. In the past lethal injections in the United States were carried out with a three-drug protocol using barbituric acids. However last year, the European Union, which considers capital punishment to be a human rights violation, moved to ban the export of such drugs to the United States. Instead of seeing the ban as a moment to reconsider it’s capital punishment policies, many states have resorted to using a single-drug protocol. Under this method, the condemned is given the same drug that is used by veterinarians to euthanize animals. Though some have argued the single-drug protocol is in fact more humane than the three drug cocktail, it has still generated controversy since it is at best a largely experimental procedure.

Capital punishment is always and under all circumstance unacceptable. While violence may possibly be justified in cases of self-defense, national liberation movements against an external aggressor, or revolutionary actions against a repressive regime (I’ll leave these questions for future debates) in capital punishment the state captures, detains, and then kills someone who poses no threat to anyone. In short, it is nothing more than premeditated murder carried out by the state. Just as we do not tolerate premeditated murder from ordinary citizens we should not excuse such actions when carried out by the state.

As disgraceful as capital punishment is, the murder of Marvin Wilson takes the practice to a new level of barbarism. That no higher court sought fit to intervene in a practice previously deemed unconstitutional demonstrates that to apply the label “justice” to the system that presided over the muder of Wilson is nothing more than a cruel farce, an insult to the very meaning of the word.  

What if There Was No Occupation?

One of the most bizarre and perhaps perplexing phenomena is occupation denial. That is the fervent denial by some of Israel’s most ardent (and delusional? disingenuous?) apologists that the Palestinian territory illegally seized during the Six-Day War (Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem) is not “occupied.” The first time I ever encountered this view was in my nascent stages of consciousness about the Palestinian issue. I had stumbled upon a Facebook group set up for both “pro-Israel” and “Pro-Palestine” solidarity activists to discuss their divergent views in a single group. Being a two-stater at the time (a view I will address later in this article), I posted some typical nice sounding bullshit, the sort of thing that comes from someone with a generally liberal outlook, but still under the mistaken impression that Israel-Palestine was a military conflict between two equal sides and not a situation of oppressor and oppressed.
I don’t remember exactly what I said (the group was deleted by one of its Pro-Israel administrators who was angered by the existence of posters with divergent views--so much for dialogue), but it was something to the extent that I supported neither side, as they both had made mistakes--the Palestinians with terrorism and the Israelis with their occupation and the brutality of it, and that I hoped for a peaceful two-state solution based on 1967 borders. Almost immediately, someone responded to my post that I was clearly misinformed as there was no occupation. While I was certainly not as informed on the issue as I am now, even then I knew that someone was telling me that water wasn’t wet, the sky wasn’t blue, and that the Earth’s gravitation pull went away from the ground as opposed to towards it.
While I would love to believe that this was the online ravings of an internet crank, it is not. In fact, it is the official position of the Israeli government as confirmed by the recent Levy report. The stated reason for a lack of occupation is that Palestine was never a country, therefore it can’t occupied. However, in a video I once saw featuring an Israeli government official explaining why the Palestinian territories can’t be occupied because Palestine wasn’t a country, the only word he could find to describe the antebellum status quo of the West Bank and Gaza’s was “occupied by Egypt and Jordan.” Thus the land captured during the Six Day War can’t be occupied territory, because prior to 1967 it wasn’t a country but- occupied territory. The lesson we should draw is just as in Richard Nixon’s mind something “isn’t illegal when the President does it” in the mind of the occupation deniers something “isn’t an occupation when Israel does it.” This level of hypocrisy leaves the extreme fringe (and quite frankly unimportant minority) amongst Israel supporters who believe in a personal deity that engages in real estate transactions and assert that a several thousand year old book with questionable historical accuracy is the best determiner of political geography in the 21st century with the stronger and more rational argument. A impressive feat, no doubt.
Ignoring the utter stupidity of the stated reasoning behind occupation denial that no one, most likely not even the people who utter such drivel, takes seriously, it is easy to see why in the short run Israel and its uncritical apologists would take this position. After all, the near unanimous opinion (the only dissenter being, of course, Israel and a handful of its most diehard supporters) is that the settlements are illegal under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention statesIndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive

If there is no occupation, then settlements are just dandy (well no, not really, since seizure of land and the disposal of one population to benefit another is not only morally repulsive during a military occupation, but given that this is the most coherent line of reasoning attributable to occupation deniers I’ll be generous and let it slide). This means that something clearly motivates occupation deniers other than damaged reasoning skills and an inadequate understanding of international law.
However, what if we were to truly follow the logic of the “there is no occupation” line of reasoning? While settlements may be quasi-ok, what then of the other inhabitants of the non-occupied Palestinian territory, you know, the Palestinians? Aren’t they entitled to the same rights as their neighbors, the Israeli settlers? Like the right to vote, the right to freedom of mobility, the right to trial by jury in a civilian Israeli court? After all, if there is no occupation and the settlements are legal, then aren’t all residents of the West Bank (and Gaza for that matter--which is still occupied in spite of the withdrawal of settlements) living under the jurisdiction of the same state? What do we call a state that grants rights to some citizens, but not others based on the socially constructed category of radicalized identity? Apartheid.
While it may be humorous to point out the unintended consequences of the policies of the most ardent deniers of Palestinian human rights, the issue goes far beyond the crass opportunism of the occupation deniers. We can talk about occupation or no occupation, one state versus two states, but the simple reality is that there already is only one state. There is a mass of land that is historically unified, with two groups of people interspersed throughout. One entity also controls the entire land through its use of force (the very definition of a state). As part of its Occupation denial, Israel does not define its borders, and it doesn’t consider settlers living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be foreigners or expatriates. That’s why Israel gives settlers the right to vote. That is why if they commit a crime they will be tried in an Israeli court, not a Palestinian one. That is why the settlements are subject to Israeli laws, not Palestinian laws. It’s also why Israelis living in settlements can travel freely beyond the green line or why settlement products come stamped with “Made in Israel” on them.
The land of Israel-Palestine is an unified entity under the rule of one state where people are granted or denied rights based on their ethnicity and where they are born. Yes, Palestinians born within Israel’s 1967 borders are granted citizenship (though they don’t have as many rights as their Jewish counterparts), but Palestinians living within the occupied territory are not even though their neighbors living in settlements are. Such rights are not granted because in Israel, like the Jim Crow American South or Apartheid South Africa, rights are second to maintaining racial superiority.