A killing spree. Madness. Crazy. Makes no sense. Unfathomable. The judgments we hear day in, day out, about acts that seem to fit such descriptions. Time and again, in order to comprehend someone’s acts, whether in politics or in the movies or in our employment relations, we’re told to follow the money, to the point that one can almost conclude that all our problems would be solved, if only we could wean ourselves off money. If we could do that, those who commit such apparently unfathomable acts would not pursue money, and therefore such acts would never be committed. This nonetheless poses a difficulty: why is it that follow the money should be the fast track key to determining the cause for someone’s action, and yet so many actions are precisely dismissed as a killing spree, madness, crazy, making no sense or unfathomable? Either it’s not money that needs to be followed to determine motive after all; or we’re simply no good at following it.
In the film Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, we discover in the final reel that Norman Bates (who murders Marion Crane, Milton Arbogast, Bates’s own mother plus two other women) suffers from an alternate (or split) personality disorder. Although the film and the book that inspired it differ to a large extent, they both arrive at this conclusion, one that the audience will have had running through their minds as they watched: Norman Bates is crazy. What is telling is that the money Marion steals is dumped by Bates along with her car and her body in the morass: Bates doesn’t kill Marion for the money, and so we’re unable to follow the money in order to figure out why he kills her.
The money is, nevertheless, the reason why private dick Arbogast even turns up at the motel, and is the reason why Lila (Marion’s sister) and Sam (Lila’s boyfriend) even engage Arbogast’s services. It is the money and the fear of being caught that even urge Marion to buy a new car, for cash, while making her escape. A great deal of sympathy is generated around the victim of this crime (even though she’s guilty of grand larceny, don’t forget) and we all think we know why it is committed, even though the one murder in which we actually see the assailant (which is not Marion’s, but Arbogast’s, on the stairs) is not, or at least does not appear to be, committed by Bates. All we actually see of Marion’s murder in the shower is her face and other shots of her body, not the murderer.
In the final reel, then, the psychiatrist (in the book it is Sam who tells Lila, but Hitchcock didn’t find that convincing enough to persuade us) tells us that Norman is mad (to use the lay term). And we, as his audience, conclude that that is correct. Partly because of the psychiatrist’s authority as a doctor in explaining it to us in the clinical coldness of the prison; partly because of how we’ve seen Bates’s indignant reaction to Marion’s suggestion that his mother should be put into a home; but probably most of all because Bates sinks the money along with the car when he disposes of Marion’s dead body in the morass. In effect, we know that the money Marion steals gets put in the swamp, and therefore concur in the judgment that Bates is indeed crazy.
Image: theatre poster for the 1960 film Psycho. Oddly, the starring lead is squeezed in on the left and the (scantily clad) supporting actress dominates. The half-naked hunk at the foot of the poster is John Gavin, who plays Sam Loomis, a supporting supporting actor if ever there was. Public domain.
Hence, or so we conclude, there are two things, and two things only, that motivate people to act: money and madness. If it’s our own money that’s concerned, then that will generally be the preferred conclusion: they’re after my money (that is, unless we place a higher value on something else, like a third party’s affection, love or friendship). If it’s someone else’s money that’s concerned, and we are otherwise dispassionate observers, we will, by contrast, more readily acquiesce in an authoritative assessment that they’re crazy, virtually without further enquiry (Jack the Ripper, Vladimir Putin, Napoleon’s megalomania, Freddie from Friday 13th, and so on).
The title of the book, and of its film adaptation, is Psycho. That’s an abbreviation that is often expanded to mean psychopath. But what if it were expanded to mean psychology, and then not the psychology of Norman Bates, but of us, the audience? Are we duped into believing that Norman Bates is a murderer? First, by Robert Bloch, who wrote the book, and then by Alfred Hitchcock, who filmed the story (but not as it’s told in the book, in order, yet again, to distort our understanding of what’s going on)? Features of the book not found in the film are the lurid pornography that Bates reads and the fact Marion is not just stabbed in the shower, but decapitated. Norman Bates is a fictional character who can be turned and twisted into being a callous murderer, a poor troubled individual, or an utterly innocent man depending, not on him, but on who is telling his story.
Six months have passed since 7 October, and six months ought to be enough time to figure out why Hamas did it and why Israel reacted the way it did. That said, it’s been 2,000 years since Jesus did away with the Ten Commandments and instituted His own two, and people still debate why that was. Why turning the other cheek or going the extra mile replaced an eye for an eye. Perhaps it’s that bit more difficult to fathom God, who moves in mysterious ways, than it is to impute rationale to our fellow humans. But then again, there’s no money to follow with God, so He poses that bit more of a difficulty in trying to understand Him. No fear, every question you ever wanted to ask of God will one day be answered, of that you can be assured. The question that remains is whether every question you ever wanted to ask of Hamas or the Israeli state will likewise one day be answered. Of that there is a tad less assurance.
The theories that fly around concerning Hamas are that it doesn’t care a fig about civilians and knew full well that its folk would be decimated. It sees its mission as a higher calling than keeping little boys and girls in school and providing them with water, power and food. Or that Hamas sees the world pass Palestine by without a second thought for decades, and wanted to get the word Palestine back into the world’s consciousness. That’s what Black September had done with the plane hijackings and the Munich Olympics. When the British hostages were released from the three planes that landed at Dawson’s Field in the Jordanian desert near Az Zarqa on 12 September 1970 in return for the release by Britain of Leila Khaled, the bemused passengers didn’t even know what or where Palestine was. The PFLP then promptly blew up their aircraft before the eyes of the world’s press. The Brits, if no one else, wouldn’t so easily forget where Palestine is again. The action on and since 7 October has had a similar effect. It remains a moot question, though: is everyone talking about Palestine because of what the Israelis have done, or because of what Hamas did?
While it seems clear that Israel has been controlling the narrative by targeting journalists and communications and, inexplicably, aid workers, and simultaneously holing its own moral high ground below the waterline (as mixed a metaphor as is appropriate in the circumstances), the endeavours to destroy the whole breadth of Palestine and its people still leave the echo of a question mark in my mind.
Yes, having driven out the Egyptians in the 1967 war and then having pulled out of Gaza again, only to make it a prison camp, after 1973’s Yom Kippur War, one can understand the desirability of regaining Gaza, and even of eradicating the Palestinian presence in the West Bank; but at the cost of so many civilian lives? At the cost of Israel’s international reputation and standing? At the cost of their democratic credentials? At the cost of calling in a whole panoply of favours, from the UK, from the US and, perhaps even from Jordan, its erstwhile archenemy? What is it that Gaza possesses that is worth so much misery and so many favours from Israel’s international partners? Zionist principle? A distorted view of Lebensraum? A show of might for Israel’s Arab neighbours to tremble at (if mighty it is, without foreign help to repel an Iranian bombardment). Or is it simply land? Perhaps it is none of these. Not even land, but something less substantial than that: water.
Palestine is recognised as a state by 140 other states of the world. It has been recognised by the United Nations, with observer status, since it was declared in 1988 and it is thought it will soon be recognised by Ireland and Spain, whereas most other EU countries along with the UK and the US do not recognise Palestine diplomatically. Of course there is a question as to what state one recognises by recognising Palestine, since its borders are not fixed as such. But countries all across the world are involved in border disputes, and that doesn’t stop them being recognised diplomatically.
That said, one Palestinian border in particular seems consistently to be overlooked, and that is its 41-kilometre maritime border. It will not have escaped anyone’s notice of late that the Gaza Strip has a lengthy coastline to the Mediterranean Sea. Jared Kushner remarked upon it, as being an ideal location for grand hotels. Mr Kushner is, to say the least, tactless in his observation. But, I suspect that he is also disingenuous. For the Gaza Strip is less propitious as a luxury resort to rival Dubai, and far more as a gas terminal to rival Jebel Ali.
The Gaza Strip’s two hundred-nautical mile limit (or exclusive economic zone) extends for a width of 41 kilometres into the Med over and beyond the territorial waters set out under the exclusive sovereign zone (three nautical miles) and the 12 nautical miles of sovereign waters accorded under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These provisions of international law would appear to determine ownership of the exclusive maritime area that is claimed by Palestine, except that Palestine is not a sovereign state, nor is Israel a signatory to the UN Convention. In many respects, Israel, who so wanted UN membership and was granted it, only to baulk at its obligations thereanent, blocks UN membership by Palestine, which would only too gladly assume its UN obligations. Yet Israel is more than a dog in this manger: it’s also eating the hay.
In short, the Israeli occupation of Gaza prevents Palestine from exploiting what Yasser Arafat described as a gift from God when the gas reserves were discovered in the 1990s but, even with Israeli gas exploration licences granted to a number of consortia, both Israeli and international, over gas fields including Gaza’s, ownership of the gas is nevertheless in some question (none of which stops Israel from drilling it).
Gaza’s gas could power all of Palestine and leave a surplus for sale on the world market. And that is why Israel wants it. Forget Zionism. Follow the money. To deny Palestinians a means of independence and a pathway to prosperity. To stymie Palestinian self-determination. To deny Palestinians a raison d’être in the Levant at all. To claim for themselves something that belongs to another. To steal Gaza’s gas. It’s the classic rationale for colonisation: natural resources. If gas is money, and if we follow the money, are we not better enlightened as to why Israel is pursuing its current Palestine policy?
Germany has stated clearly that unstinting support for Israel is its Staatsräson, its vocation as a state. I’m gay, and gays were exterminated during the Nazi regime. Why does Germany not have a Staatsräson that encompasses supporting me? Or a Staatsräson that encompasses supporting Roma? Or a Staatsräson that encompasses supporting Herero and Nama peoples of Africa? A Staatsräson that encompasses supporting Ukrainian nationalists, whose bodies were piled into the ravine at Babi Yar? A Staatsräson that encompasses supporting communists, political opponents of Nazism? What about all those Staatsräsons? Surely not because it—grammatically—can only have one?
Atoning for one sin is laudable. But that does not atone for all sin. Even if you make it your Räson d’être. Whilst I would never want to exact an eye for an eye against Germany for its shameful past, the irony is, I think I do know what Germany’s Staatsräson is; and it isn’t defending the weak. I’m not even sure it’s doing what it knows is right. But, whatever it is, it’s no madness, no matter how mad you might think it is.