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Collective punishment

moono

Resigned.
Banned
Collective punishment

And we see that reflected also in the world reaction. Is it not astonishing that the entire world knows the name and face of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, while the hundreds of Palestinian children held in Israel's dungeons, not to mention 10,000 adult prisoners, thousands held without charge and trial, abducted from their homes in the middle of the night by Israeli occupation forces, remain nameless and faceless before a silent world?

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/1730311.php



The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said that Gaza was on the brink of a humanitarian crisis after the destruction by the Israeli air force of the only power plant there on Tuesday night.

"Israelis know that if they attack electricity, it is and foremost the civilian population which is hurt. Of course, Israel has to restrain itself. It should work within international law and not go after civilian installation, hurting [the] civilian population..."

Much of Gaza's water supply and the sewerage system is dependent on electricity. Some of the wells can be operated by generators, but fuel is scarce after Israel stopped supplies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5131404.stm



Collective punishment.




Raji al-Sorani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, says the targeting of the power station is tantamount to collective punishment for all who live in Gaza.



"It is a violation of the first, second and third articles of the Geneva Conventions. However, targeting the infrastructure isn't a way to free the Israeli soldier, but to topple the Hamas government."



Other rights activists say that power loss will likely lead to the spoiling of foods in refrigerated warehouses and in civilian homes, particularly as temperatures continue to rise in the summer months.



Restoring power is expected to take six months. The power cut is also affecting water supplies which use electricity to pump water.



Khalil Abu-Shamaleh, director of Al-Dameer Human Rights Centre, said in a news conference in Gaza on Thursday: "Targeting the infrastructure is habitual for the Israelis.



"The concept of security in the Israeli mind has been known since the beginning of the occupation until these days; uprooting trees, demolishing homes and destroying infrastructure under the pretext of keeping security."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3888A9B9-B3E3-4541-85F2-82DF91E36F99.htm

Collective punishment


Five of the detained Hamas cabinet ministers were picked up after midnight when the Israeli army demanded the guest list of a Ramallah hotel and took them from their rooms. Israel has also hinted that Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, who include the prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, could be targets for assassination if Cpl Shalit is not returned alive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1809495,00.html

Collective punishment.


Israeli missiles pound Gaza into new Dark Age in ‘collective punishment’

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=696738



Collective punishment
 
So - and let me just check so we're all clear about it - you think that what the Israeli government is doing is a form of collective punishment, contrary to the canons of international law?

But you don't have much of a problem with the actions of the Palestinians which led to it?
 
Fullyplumped said:
So - and let me just check so we're all clear about it - you think that what the Israeli government is doing is a form of collective punishment, contrary to the canons of international law?

But you don't have much of a problem with the actions of the Palestinians which led to it?

You got a pretty skewed sense of history there Pumppy...:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I don`t actually recall that the Pal people or indeed their government are occupying Israeli land, arresting there people by the tens of thousands. Destroying water/sewage and commerical infrastructure en mass oh and then being so kind as to use one of the most modern Airforces in the world to murder there kids from afar..
Perhaps i`m wrong like and you could tell all here what we cant seem to see.
oh and one french cunt (whos gone to kill people in a land he was not evenborn into)
 
moono said:
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Collective punishment
Okay, do you think we could have this expanded upon a bit and made into an explicit argument or discussion topic? Because I think there may be some confusion as to your thesis here, which will make it hard for people to maintain the high standards of reasoned debate that the ME forum is famous for. Ta.
 
Fullyplumped said:
But you don't have much of a problem with the actions of the Palestinians which led to it?
The old "Let's not talk about that, let's talk about something else" routine is becoming a bit transparent now. The subject of the thread is Israel's actions.

The latest Gaza operation has blown a giant hole into the claim that the IDF does not engage in collective punishment and does not target civilians.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
Okay, do you think we could have this expanded upon a bit and made into an explicit argument or discussion topic? Because I think there may be some confusion as to your thesis here, which will make it hard for people to maintain the high standards of reasoned debate that the ME forum is famous for. Ta.


nice :D
 
Well I don’t know from personal experience but I do know from people I have met and am friends with who come from the area that “Collective punishment” is a tactic used by the Israelis a lot.

The first time I heard about it was a year or so when a friend came back from Lebanon and was tell me of his experiences there, I had a look and ask on a couple of BB that deal with the area and it seems it is common practice in the region for Israel to use “collective punishment” against people of other Nations and States.

The question seems to me to not be about who is right and who is wrong as people will take entrenched views, surely the question that needs to be asked is “Why should people going about their lawful business in the home land be subject to loss of water (no power on water pumps working so no water), loss of power to cook and heat their homes, no transport to get to work, road blocks by occupying forces that keep you waiting for hours just because they can?”

Many of the people who live in Palestine are just ordinary people who want to get on and live their day to day lives without outside interference, why should these people be punished for the actions of others?
 
Point is it's a war crime

The 1949 Geneva Conventions state that collective punishments are a war crime. Article 33 states: "No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed," and "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."
 
If you've read my recent posts on the subject you will have discerned that I believe that the Israeli government has been perpertrating collective punishment consistently. I also think that the actions of the various Palestinian organisations linked to government have also amounted to collective punishment - indiscriminate acts of bloody terrorism designed to cow the Israeli population into submission. Both sides have achieved thousands of dead people and have failed to secure their legitimate goals, and as soon as some progress seems to be starting...bang! and we're back to square one with more dead people. Moono takes such a one-sided view about this and so do some others, and pretends not to know about Palestinian crimes - e.g. asking for chapter and verse on the various bus bombings.
 
Crazy_diamond said:
Many of the people who live in Palestine are just ordinary people who want to get on and live their day to day lives without outside interference, why should these people be punished for the actions of others?
Exactly.
 
TAE said:
The old "Let's not talk about that, let's talk about something else" routine is becoming a bit transparent now. The subject of the thread is Israel's actions.

The latest Gaza operation has blown a giant hole into the claim that the IDF does not engage in collective punishment and does not target civilians.
the subject of the thread is collective punishment. Both sides perpetrate it. Moono fails to acknowledge this and so do others.
 
cemertyone said:
You got a pretty skewed sense of history there Pumppy...:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I don`t actually recall that the Pal people or indeed their government are occupying Israeli land, arresting there people by the tens of thousands. Destroying water/sewage and commerical infrastructure en mass oh and then being so kind as to use one of the most modern Airforces in the world to murder there kids from afar..
Palestinian rockets and bombs kill people too. They aren't better deaths because the technology is more basic.
 
Fullyplumped said:
the subject of the thread is collective punishment. Both sides perpetrate it. Moono fails to acknowledge this and so do others.


I don't think the Palestinians DO perpetrate collective punishment in the sense that international law suggests. You can argue about the legitimacy or otherwise of their struggle / terrorism but it's not the same thing
 
Fullyplumped said:
Palestinian rockets and bombs kill people too. They aren't better deaths because the technology is more basic.


So you're saying that any military act is an act of collective punishment?
 
A good read........

When will they ever learn…that violence is not the path to security?
by Rabbi Michael Lerner


Today we write those words about Israel and Palestine, yesterday about the U.S. in Iraq, tomorrow about China in Tibet, and it goes on and on. And the only solution is to break the chain of pain and say, “No more—we will not respond to violence with violence. We will follow the teaching of the Torah that says ‘love the stranger’ and Jesus that says ‘turn the other cheek’ and we will stop this madness forever if we could really sustain the courage to do that.”

This is a tough moment to say this point—and yet it needs to be said to both sides. I start with Israel only because it is the greater military power, but I’ll get to a critique of the Palestinians too, so read this whole thing through. Tikkun’s progressive middle path for Middle East Peace rejects any attempt to say that one side is the pure bad and the other the pure good.

So, the details of the day. Israel is the military power occupying the West Bank and surrounding Gaza. By all international standards it has no right to do either, but if it does so it has an absolute obligation to treat the civilian population with certain respect and basic human rights. Israel continually fails to do this and has become one (not the worst, but one) of the world’s major human rights violators.

No wonder that people are asking their Jewish neighbors, “Do you really think that is morally acceptable to cut off electricity and water for a million and a half Gazans as a retribution for the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnap of a third? Isn’t this the kind of ‘collective punishment’ that ruthless dictators have used against the civilian populations of countries that they controlled to the horror of the rest of the world? Don’t you realize that when you face acts of terror against Israeli civilians that it is because the Palestinians have no army, no airplanes, no tanks, so they fight with their improvised weapons as resistance forces have always done, and it makes no sense to call that “terror,” particularly when the targets are members of the armed forces on active duty. And don’t you think that the U.S. should be allowed to stand up for human rights there rather than be restrained by the fear that anyone criticizing Israel will be described as anti-Israel and their political futures put in danger by the AIPAC-related crowds that have been so effective in shaping the media and the public discourse in this country? And while we are at it, don’t you think that it’s really not great for the Jews to be identified with AIPAC and neo-cons and their spokespeople in Congress like Senator Lieberman who support the war in Iraq and who have become a major voice for trying to push the US into conflict with Iran?”

Those who care about the Jewish people, want to preserve it and protect it, want to see a safe and secure Israel and a safe and secure Jewish people all around the world, have to shout out now in very clear words: “Stop what you are doing, Israel, not just at the moment, but in the essence of your policies. Forget about taking over the part of the West Bank within the Wall built by the Israeli Right and their Labor party collaborators. Get out of the West Bank, and do it in a spirit of generosity, not of resentment and begrudging response to world pressure. Do it in a spirit that communicates that you recognize the humanity of the Palestinian people and recognize their suffering! Imagine, for example, how different the feelings would have been this week in the Arab world if, after killing a family on a Gaza beach through an IDF shelling, the President and Prime Minister of Israel had together gone to visit the family of the deceased to offer apologies and to share in the mourning of this loss, rather than trying to prove (unsuccessfully) that it wasn’t really Israel’s shell after all! Imagine how different things would be if today the Israeli government said, “We will find a way to create an international consortium to provide reparations for those Palestinians who have lost their homes in 1948-1967, and those whose homes were unfairly bulldozed to support the needs of the Israeli settlers on the West Bank! Imagine how different things would be if Israel could say, “We recognize that we have the greatest power in the area, that we face no credible threats from our neighbors, that our actions since 1948 have been ungenerous and sometimes outright immoral in the way we’ve treated not only Palestinians outside our state but also Arabs who have lived and paid taxes inside our state, and we want to stop all that, stop the escalation of weaponry and the arrogance of power, so we will take the first steps to show how generous the Jewish people can be when it follows its Torah’s command to “love the stranger” and then announces concrete acts of love and generosity! Nothing less than this will work.

That is the way to break the chain of pain. The only way. And that’s why eventually the path that Tikkun put forward years ago in our Resolution for Middle East Peace, and then in our support for the Geneva Accord, will be recognized as necessary components of peace. But we are not believers in power politics—in the final analysis what counts is transformations in consciousness and in the heart, and that is why the world so badly needs the New Bottom Line with its call to privileging love over power. Unrealistic, you say? No. What is unrealistic, in fact pure craziness, is for Israel to keep acting the way it has been acting for all these many years, imagining a different result from the same behavior.

So, does that mean that there’s one side that is good and the other evil? No, the world rarely works that way.

So, we have a message for the Palestinian people also: Violence doesn’t work and it is not working for you. You have every democratic right to elect a government that declares it does not recognize the very existence of the State of Israel, and that sees the fundamental crime not in expanding into the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 but rather in its coming into existence in the first place in 1948. Sure, you can do that. But if your government that you elect says it is in a war, then don’t be surprised to find that war getting carried to your doors, to your electricity and water supply, and to your children. If it’s war that you want, you’ll get it. But if it is peace, then there is only one way: totally, 100% renounce violence, renounce the articulators of that violence (whether they be in Hamas or in Fatah). Embrace the path of Martin Luther King, jr. and of Mahatma Gandhi and of the later Nelson Mandela, and physically restrain those people among you who will resort to violence or even to violent speech. If you want to win, you can’t do it by kidnapping, or sending missiles across the border, or throwing rocks. You must be disciplined soldiers of non-violence in your actions and words. You must not only unequivocally announce your support for the Right of Israel to exist, you must put forward your vision of a peace in which you live together with Israel in two sovereign states. And you must acknowledge that when it was Jews who were climbing out of the concentration camps and gaschambers and crematoria of Europe and desperately looking to return to their ancient homeland that it was your Palestinian leaders who, in alliance with British imperialism, tried to keep those refugees from settling in Palestine, thereby confirming to them the previous experiences they had in Arab countries where they were often treated as second class citizens. Acknowledge that when offered a two state solution in 1947 it was your own people who rejected it and denied that Jews could have any state of their own, while Muslims could have more than a dozen states in which their language, culture and religion was the official position of the society. Speak about that, teach it to your children, and enunciate it in Arabic for everyone to hear, and you will have some credibility in talking about the only thing that will make it possible for you to win: a strategy of open-hearted reconciliation with Israel and the Jewish people. So you must reject the anti-Israel lefties who give you the fantasy that you can keep on talking about the destruction of Israel, or embracing fanatics like the president of Iran, and then hope that Israel will be gentle and generous. It’s a fantasy. Your only power is moral credibility, and you build that by giving yourself to that vision of peace and non-violence and love of the enemy. Don’t listen to the people who tell you you have a right to struggle—because of course you have the right. The question is not whether you have the right, but whether it s SMÅRT to follow that path. Those who care about Palestinians will come to a different conclusion: that the smarter path, the path most likely to lead to an end of the Occupation and to peace and security for the Palestinian people, will come through developing the kind of compassion for the other, for the oppressor, combined with absolute commitment to non-violence that made Martin Luther King Jr. and Mandela so successful. Your misleaders have taken you on a self-destructive path, and a path that has led you to immoral actions against innocent civilians. Stop that path—it brings only more suffering and no liberation.

This is the message that our ancient prophets have been trying to communicate in various languages: that the only path that can work is the path of peace, social justice, love, compassion, kindness and generosity. And the path to peace is a path of peace.

When will they ever learn?
 
Dubversion said:
So you're saying that any military act is an act of collective punishment?
I'm saying that firing rockets indiscriminately intto farms, villages and towns is collective punishment. I'm saying that kidnapping teenagers and killing them is collective punishment. I'm saying that sendiing people with bombs strapped to themselves into cafes, bars, border crossings and onto public transport and blowing up whoever happens to be there is collective punishment. You might dignify that with the term "military act" - I call it terrorism. I understand that sometimes Palestinian commentators justify this with the excuse that adults are subject to compulsory military service so they are miitary targets - comlete nonsense, but if true it shows they know what they're doing.
 
Fullyplumped said:
I'm saying that firing rockets indiscriminately intto farms, villages and towns is collective punishment. I'm saying that kidnapping teenagers and killing them is collective punishment. I'm saying that sendiing people with bombs strapped to themselves into cafes, bars, border crossings and onto public transport and blowing up whoever happens to be there is collective punishment. You might dignify that with the term "military act" - I call it terrorism. I understand that sometimes Palestinian commentators justify this with the excuse that adults are subject to compulsory military service so they are miitary targets - comlete nonsense, but if true it shows they know what they're doing.


You've completely missed my point, which is odd because it was a perfectly clear one. I was referring to the actions of the Palestinians in term of international law and collective punishment. Otherwise, any act of war or military intervention is collective punishment, and that's a nonsense.
 
Dubversion said:
You've completely missed my point, which is odd because it was a perfectly clear one. I was referring to the actions of the Palestinians in term of international law and collective punishment. Otherwise, any act of war or military intervention is collective punishment, and that's a nonsense.
And you are missing my point, which is even clearer than your point. :p

Courts will decide what is and is not in line with international law. My definition encompasses the actions of both sides. They may well have good excuses for their crimes but they're all wicked crimes (and they don't deliver their objectives). You and I probably both agree that the Israeli actions are unjustifiable. But you sound like you want to excuse the Palestinian crimes and I don't. And do you think the Palestinian crimes I outlined amount to military interventions? If so, do you consider the IRA bombs in shopping centres. or the bombings of public transport in London last year, to be acts of war?

You're not going to get lent a fiver at this rate.
 
Fullyplumped said:
But you sound like you want to excuse the Palestinian crimes and I don't. .

where did i say that? For the last time, i'm not taking a side or condemning one act rather than another, i'm merely saying that an act of terrorism wouldn't be considered collective punishment. It would be considered an act of terrorism.
 
the difference in law is clear. palestian activities were terrorism, and therefore are not at any point legal killings. however, killings by israel are killings on behalf of a state. these are subject to international law, which prohibits such things as collective punishment.

legally palestine and palestinians cannot commit collective punishment as they do not have a proper state.

so under international law palestian terrorists are murderers, yes, but israel as a state is guilty of war crimes.

once the palestinians get their own state, they too become subject to international law and fullyplumped gets to have a point.
 
Dubversion said:
where did i say that? For the last time, i'm not taking a side or condemning one act rather than another, i'm merely saying that an act of terrorism wouldn't be considered collective punishment. It would be considered an act of terrorism.
Sorry if I mistook you as taking sides or diminishing the criminality of one as poposed to the other - you clearly meant no such thing. I do consider many acts of terrorism to be acts of collective punishment.
 
bluestreak said:
once the palestinians get their own state, they too become subject to international law and fullyplumped gets to have a point.

if they get a state, their violence against Israel would assumedly then either remain terrorism if not proven to be state-sponsored, or if it were, would become an act of war. Still not collective punishment. If they blocked Israeli water supplies or power supplies, then it would be.
 
Fullyplumped said:
Sorry if I mistook you as taking sides or diminishing the criminality of one as poposed to the other - you clearly meant no such thing. I do consider many acts of terrorism to be acts of collective punishment.

But i believe the thread is about the position in international law of Israel's actions. Not about what you think of it, which may or may not be entirely valid but doesn't make up part of the Geneva Convention, last time i looked :p
 
bluestreak said:
...legally palestine and palestinians cannot commit collective punishment as they do not have a proper state

Well that shows how stupid and irrelevant much of "international law" really is.
 
Fullyplumped said:
Well that shows how stupid and irrelevant much of "international law" really is.


that's as maybe, but under current international law your point about the actions of the Palestinians is still wrong.
 
Dubversion said:
that's as maybe, but under current international law your point about the actions of the Palestinians is still wrong.
I'm sure you're correct to say that, but would you not agree in moral and practical terms - in every way other than in a reading of what lawyers might say speaking about law - that the armed groups affiliated to the Palestinian government are collectively trying to get back at the other side as a whole? In other words, administering collective punishment?
 
Fullyplumped said:
I'm sure you're correct to say that, but would you not agree in moral and practical terms - in every way other than in a reading of what lawyers might say speaking about law - that the armed groups affiliated to the Palestinian government are collectively trying to get back at the other side as a whole? In other words, administering collective punishment?

but that's so obvious as to be meaningless. Any act of war or terrorism therefore becomes collective punishment, which in a sense it is. But it doesn't strike me as a particularly useful way of looking at it.
 
Dubversion said:
but that's so obvious as to be meaningless. Any act of war or terrorism therefore becomes collective punishment, which in a sense it is. But it doesn't strike me as a particularly useful way of looking at it.
It can't be that obvious if I have to try and pin you down in this way.
 
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