Policies of shooting to maim rather than kill, such as those of the IOF, are often presented as “letting live,” but are more accurately described as “will not let die.” Within the discourse of Israel’s “humanitarian war,” “expert language, algorithmic calculations, [and] rational science” are marshalled in service of the fantasy of “letting live” in order to occlude the way in which colonial rule asserts its right to maim, “targeting for death but not killing.”
(note that IOF policies have shifted in years since The Right to Maim’s publication and have shifted towards naked genocidality)
references
What kind of sovereignty is being articulated when the right to kill is enacted as the right to maim, to target both bodies and infrastructure for debilitation? […] It is from the vantage of the occupied, I argue, and not from state power or from the privilege of the occupier, that we must apprehend and contend with revising—challenging, in fact—the theorization of the violent mechanisms of biopolitical population creation and maintenance.
⤷ The Right to Maim, Jasbir Puar