Murdering the future

Murder is a very serious crime. And it is very clearly defined: to kill another person “with malice aforethought”. In other words, to plan to kill someone for whatever reason and then to carry out the intention is a serious violation. The same charge applies to those who pay or order someone else to carry out the deed.

This also applies to groups that are so targeted and killed, whether by one of more people. In such cases, there is the crime of mass murder that, depending on the circumstances, can become genocide, the most heinous of crimes.

There can, of course, be mitigating circumstances. The victim of a serial abuser may finally seek revenge by killing the bully. But this is still murder. And just because you do not like someone or think they pose a potential threat to your wellbeing by being there, does not allow you or anyone else to kill them. Yet that is what has been happening to scientists, police officers, military leaders and politicians, most recently in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran

The only exception where the right of one person to kill another is permitted, is war. And then, in what can be seen as a grand absurdity, there are the rules of war. These are frequently breached on all sides and often allow victors to inflict punishment on the vanquished for rule breaking.

By these rules, a state of war requires armies of nation states and/or their allies facing one another in battle. The unprovoked invasion of one state by another is an act of aggression and is, supposedly, illegal. The resistance to such an invasion by members of the invaded state is legitimate and, therefore, legal. Continued resistance to long-term settlement is also legal.

But all these legalistic niceties have now been wiped away, although the erosion was evident decades ago. In Shakespearean language, murder most foul is now committed with impunity by the professedly great and good. And there seems never to be an accounting — nor an admission — from those responsible.

A political Murder Incorporated, for example, exists in Mossad, the Israeli espionage agency. It is answerable to the prime minister and is responsible for carrying out most state sponsored murders in recent years. However, the security agencies of other countries have similar units.

South Africa had them in the apartheid years. The state security council would decide that certain individuals should be “eliminated” and the units went in to operation. People were shot, burned and their bodies otherwise disposed of. But South Africa had a flawed truth and reconciliation process where security council members maintained that when they said an individual should be “eliminated”. they merely meant, be moved to a safer destination. The killer units were therefore responsible for exceeding their orders,

In today’s global politics, there is no longer any need to hide behind such shallow pretence. “Existential” — apparent or thought to be apparent — threats, without any solid evidence, are deemed legitimate targets for annihilation. Such perceived threats could be the contents of a building, a research institute or individuals, whether scientists, law enforcement officers or military officers.

But all this is murder, where people are killed, whether by drone strike, missile, car bomb, lone assassin or fighter pilot. And the prime responsibility lies with those who ordered the killings in the first place.

This horrendous situation will continue to exist, in your name and in mine, until we, the overwhelming majority, cast off the shackles of mythology and of nationalism and recognise what the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote in 1820: we are many, they are few. And perhaps until and unless we, the many, united in diversity, seize democratic control, this bountiful planet may not have much of a future.