Military Necessity

 Harris Neck, Georgia

Harris Neck is a unit in the National Wildlife Refuge system, a four square mile tract about thirty miles south of Savannah, Georgia. Until Emancipation it was a forced-labor camp where Black people were enslaved. In 1865 the title-holder deeded the entire tract to one of those formerly-enslaved people Robert Delegall. For the next seventy-seven years, he, his family, his neighbors, and their descendants lived there. They farmed and fished and they built operated processing plants for oysters and crabs. After the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US Army Air Corps was looking in the area to build an air strip and air gunnery range. The local white political establishment pointed them in the direction of Harris Neck. Seventy-five Black families were given eviction notices. Those Black landowners who received any compensation at all got 40% less than white owners, despite the fact that there were homes, barns, and other improvements on the Black-owned land and that there were none on white-owned land, with the exception of one white woman. The families were given two weeks to vacate and then their homes were bulldozed and burned (with the exception of that white woman's home.) The families were promised that they could return when the war ended.

World War 2 ended in 1945. In 1948 the military (now the US Air Force) turned the property over to the county, not to the owners, to operate as a civilian airport. That was never done, so the Federal Aviation Authority took ownership. In 1962 the FAA transferred the property to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to be operated as a refuge.

In the 1980's and again in the 2010's the landowners and their heirs launched campaigns to regain their ownership of the land. Their struggle continues and they are organized as the Harris Neck Land Trust.

Vieques

Vieques is a 90 square mile island about 8 miles east of the main island of Puerto Rico. After the US colonized Puerto Rico in 1898 it was primarily used for sugar plantations owned by outsiders. After the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the US Navy was looking to establish a bombing range to practice aerial and marine bombardment. Since most of the inhabitants were not landowners they were not compensated for being evicted from their homes.  For over sixty years - long after the end of World War 2 - it served as a gunnery range, with bombardment taking place roughly 180 days a year.

In the 1970's protesters began demanding that the Navy cease the peacetime warfare against the island and leave. They picked up in intensity in the 2000's. The Navy finally left in 2003 and the damaged and poisoned lands were turned over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge.

Kaho'olawe

Kaho'olawe is a 45 square mile island in the Hawaiian archipelago, located about 7 miles southwest of Maui. When the US annexed Hawaii in 1898 the island was sparsely populated, in part because it doesn't get much rain. Over the next forty years the environment was further degraded by intense livestock grazing. After the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the US Navy took the island to practice naval bombardment, aerial bombing. and beach landings. The damage was intense, but not all these bombs went off, and by 1948 Kaho'olawe was also covered with undetonated explosives. The island was subjected to similar assault for military training during the US wars in Korea and Vietnam. In the 1970's a Protect Kaho'olawe 'Ohana formed to sue the military to cease the peacetime warfare against the island and conduct environmental and cultural assessments. In 1976 protesters launched boats to land on Kaho'olawe, but they were turned back. Live fire finally ended in 1990 and ownership of the island was turned over to the state. Environmental restoration efforts continue, but they are difficult.

Military Necessity?

I will stop here to belabor a few points that may have appeared to you already.

1. The militarization of the United States that began with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor lasted long after World War 2. That was reflected in the insistence on keeping bombing ranges going as much as it was by the fact that the "defense" industry never returned to a peacetime status.
2. The government is certainly reluctant to cede land once it takes it. National Wildlife Refuges are a lot easier to establish on land that is already federal even though it may seem counterintuitive that bombing ranges are ecologically important.
3. It is a lot easier to take land from Black people, Puerto Ricans, and Hawaiians than it is from white people. In the case of Harris Neck all the evidence suggests that officials specifically pointed the Army to this Black-owned enclave in the Black-majority, but white-controlled, county.

Masafer Yatta

And then there is Israel. And then there is the Occupied West Bank, especially "Area C" which remains under the direct control of the Israeli military, not the Palestinian Authority. Masafer Yatta is an 11 square mile cluster of Palestinian and Bedouin villages about 12 miles south of Hebron. In 1981 then-Minister of Agriculture Ariel Sharon offered the tract to the military as Firing Zone 981. If an area is designated as a firing zone - similar to the gunnery zones, and aerial bombardment zones discussed above - elementary concern for public safety demands that it be evacuated. 

The people of Masafer Yatta have sued to prevent their eviction. But the Israeli courts have upheld it. They have also repeatedly allowed the demolition of structures built without permits, despite the evident fact that the Occupation authorities will not issue permits to Arabs. It is worth noting that, far from also clearing Israeli settlers from this region, their numbers are increasing. It is worth noting that those settlers, who pretend to be religious Jews, have repeatedly destroyed Palestinian olive groves. (The Torah explicitly forbids this, even against an enemy: 

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Deuteronomy 20:19) Two days ago, settlers who were protected by the army brought their sheep to graze on Palestinian crops in the "FiringZone."

But it is especially worth noting that here we have an actual reversal of cause and effect regarding " military necessity". It is not simply easier to seize the land of a subjected group than the land of a dominant group as in the US cases described above. It is not simply more likely that the army will protect Jews over Arabs in the heat of a conflict started by violent, extremist settlers. In the minutes of that 1981 meeting, Minister Sharon clearly states that his motive is not to create a training area, but rather to clear the area of Arabs. I should also mention that an astonishing 18% of the Occupied Territories have been designated as "firing zones." So for the government of Israel the category of "military necessity" is actually a barely-believable cover for ethnic cleansing.