"Once again we hear the word precision
from people who think bombs can be precise...”
Brilliant opening line to a heartrending song from 2003. Full lyrics and a Holly Near cover after the text. Ms. Near’s version is more upbeat, but the liturgical aspect of the original underscores the double meaning of the word “Ministry.” Hell of a song.
Continued to its logical conclusion the aerial bombardment of Gaza will end up isolating Hamas simply because they’ll be the only ones left alive.
Dear Gentleman Who Yelled “Terrorist!” At Me The Other Day,
Please accept my sincerest apologies for any confusion or distress I may have caused by posting that “Free Palestine” banner. Its message was intended to be seen as purely aspirational and in no way meant to suggest that failure to comply by you or your fellow motorists would result in any retribution from me nor any consequence at all beyond the historically predictable.
Rest assured that I was engaged in nothing more nor less than posting a cardboard sign. If that’s your idea of terrorism then with a soft soothing voice and an amiable smile I’ll gently suggest the problem might be that you are just way too easily terrified.
If you’re accusing me of supporting the destruction of Israel or sympathizing with Hamas then I could spend an hour explaining how years of undermining the Palestinian Authority have made Netanyahu the Patron Saint of Hamas, what makes collective punishment a war crime or why modeling strategy on your enemy’s wish list is frowned upon by experts. Perhaps we could find common ground philosophically by exploring the paradoxical nature of kindness on a journey where you kindly go fuck yourself’?
But instead, let’s have it your way, I am a terrorist. And you’re not a terrorist. But this takes place in Gaza where they actually mean something. I am a Bad Guy who prowls the streets with darkness in my heart. You are a Good Guy. A family man. You work hard so you have a home for your wife and three or four children. You love and respect your parents and are proud to take care of them now the way they took care of you. And you have a brother and a sister who both live close by, with their families, so everybody helps each other and nobody is ever too far away: a happy little kingdom of brothers, sisters and cousins, parents and children and grandparents and grandchildren built out of love and respect. You are Good People. I mean that.
I have a wife and a young son whom I rarely see. But that is for their protection because I am a terrorist. Because I’ve come to hide in your neighborhood my punishment is now your punishment. But if you think we will suffer the same, you are badly mistaken. After all, I am at war — you are at home. I’m on foot, staying in motion, either alone or with at most two or three others who are men my age, and all of us are engaged in the thing we have most prepared for. Not you. You are in your home and unable to move and surrounded by the people you love. In just a few minutes the bombs will start dropping. One will land by me, one will land by you. My advantage in knowing where the bomb drops will be slight: two seconds to reposition, provided I get it right. I’ll have a better idea about when it hits, and be absolutely sure I’m on the ground, arms around my head, with protection for my ears and nose. This is not to protect my ability to hear and smell, though it does, but to keep the change in pressure from entering my ear canals and sinuses because in there all it takes to kill you is the tiniest little hole in the right place. This is vastly more important when you’re in a contained space, everything about the physics of the blast will be orders of magnitude worse. But even that in turn is almost nothing compared to the kind of suffering you risk by being in a contained space with your family. When the bomb hits you should pray for death and have it over with instead of having to pray for it every night and day if you survive.
Seen through a bomb sight I appear as a pixel and you as a building at least 200 times my size. That’s not the right ratio, but then again it’s not that wrong either. I am an individual, but you’re a happy kingdom, any part of which can be struck and bring anguish to the rest. It doesn’t seem very fair, does it? That one would have to pay such a price is bad enough after all, when they’ve done nothing, to deserve it. But then to be fifteen or twenty times more likely to pay it? Just for living close to each other? Having children? When you break it down though the root of your vulnerability is that you all care about one another. That’s what costs you, statistically speaking.. At least it does when you’re looking at people through a bomb sight.
When the bomb hits there will be a fraction of a second where there is nothing but heat and noise. This will feel hotter and louder than you could possibly imagine, as if a lifetime of each was happening at once. After that you’ll feel every part of your body being crushed by an enormous invisible weight. It will feel like being paralyzed on the bottom of the ocean whether you’re sitting, standing or flying through the air. After that you’ll feel nothing.
Life or death will depend on proximity to the blast and whether you’re hit by the blast itself or things it’s picked up along the way. If it’s the blast then survival is a question of temperature and pressure and the resilience of impossibly thin tissues in your brain mostly around your ears and sinuses. All of these variables will vastly benefit me over you just from the statistical likelihood that I’ll either be outside or in shelter I’ve chosen specifically to avoid debris and overpressure.
When we return from our trip to the bottom of the sea we’ll both be in shock with blurred vision and temporary hearing loss, although I’m far more likely to have my eardrums intact. If I’m with anyone I will help them if they’re hurt and then either assist or abandon them at my choosing as ours is understood to be an allegiance of convenience and only to be maintained by either party so long as it’s beneficial. My instinct will be to get away from scene of the blast. Intellectually I know that a bomb only explodes once, but the animal inside me hates and fears the place itself, just as you will find yourself viscerally hating and fearing the place that was, and will remain, your home.
Random images that might stay with me will be meaningless: the debris of cars, walls and buildings. Any bodies I see will belong to strangers or at the very worst my comrades, but that place and the people there are no longer my concern and after a minute or two to collect myself I’ll be gone and possibly never come back. Not you.
When you come back from under the sea you might have a couple of seconds to collect yourself but after that you’re just collecting children. Some are yours, some are your brother’s or sister’s. All of them are injured, some of them badly. Some may be dead but you won’t allow yourself to fully recognize that -- you will tell yourself they are sleeping or unconscious. Or that they are dead, but that will only mean you have to bring them back to life later. For now only one thing is important and that is that all the children are removed from the building. For these first few minutes of shock you will not be yourself or even human. Instead you’ll be a machine whose only functions are the excavation and evacuation of children. And as the shock starts to wear off anything about you that starts to feel human will be begging to remain a machine.
For me the physical shock, like the shock wave itself, was far less dramatic: more the garden variety brain fog, feeling like I was floating and being unsure of where to go or what to do. Unlike you I wasn’t faced with any pressing agendas so I had the luxury of just being a zombie for a minute or two.
It’s only once the physical shock begins to wear off that you become aware of your injuries. You’ve been keeping your jaw clenched for some very good reason that you quickly decide you don’t want to explore yet. Your face, shoulders and neck have felt like they were on fire ever since the blast, and although your vision’s messed up and you can barely hear anything you consider that to be a blessing.
If you’re like me you were raised by loving parents and grew up thinking that their death was the worst thing that could possibly happen in this world. But when you find them, your worst fear will be that either of them might still be alive. Two or three more steps will clarify what you’re actually looking at and you’ll know they are dead and probably didn’t survive long enough to know what happened to them. Let alone to their children and grandchildren.
The feeling of gratitude that washes over you at that moment will soon be followed by the horror and grief you’ve been holding at bay, but for a few seconds the knowledge that your parents have been spared what you’ve only just begun to live through may well be the last time you ever experience anything close to joy, and you may even realize this as it’s happening. It’s been nine minutes since the bomb went off.
Nine minutes after mine went off my nerves felt shot and I had a headache. My ears were still ringing but my vision seemed just fine. These things would last into the night and be gone in the morning. When I wake up I’ll feel fatigued in all my muscles and joints but it will be gone in an hour or so. By that afternoon it’ll be like nothing had even happened. Not you. You’ll be spending every day for the rest of your life dealing with the damage that occurred that day: assisting the children that were broken and mourning the ones that died. That’s your fault for being indoors and at home protecting your family.
One of the many difficult changes that’s occurred for you is having to lie to your children about reasons to live — having to find treacle little aphorisms about caterpillars becoming butterflies and the like, when for you. there is one and only one thing worth living for: the day when you make everything right again.
Once again we hear the word "precision"
from people who think bombs can be precise
We hear "the price of fighting terrorism"
from people who don't have to pay that price.
We see a cloud where there should be a college
We see a reservoir reduced to soil
And though they now admit
that the marketplace was hit,
they didn't hit the Ministry of Oil
What they call a military target
is sacred to all soldiers brave and loyal
You can bomb a shrine,
You can bomb a power line,
but you never bomb the Ministry of Oil..
Once again the mayhem they call "warfare"
is followed by the melee they call "peace"
Tearing through the stores and the museums
while the US Army played police..
How much do you suppose that artwork sold for
as their last remaining food began to spoil
the situation's bad,
but no place in Baghdad
is safer than the Ministry of Oil..
The medicine has all been confiscated
and soon there won't be water left to boil
And one might wonder who'd
think up names like "Oil for food"
when what they mean is “Ministry of Oil”
If there's any logic in the universe
If the future isn't just absurd
If justice is precise instead of infinite
If freedom is enjoyed and not endured.
I'll take my class out someday on a field trip
past the shells of Shell and Uniroyal..
And as they're roaming round
the musty White House grounds,
I'll say: "Kids, this was the Ministry of Oil"
I'll say: "Kids, it was a peaceful revolution,
there weren't any battles to embroil,
and I'm very glad to tell
that not one person fell
it's an aspect of our history -that every child knows well
how we failed to avoid
one building being destroyed,
but at least it was the Ministry of Oil".