The militaristic government of Israel and many of its supporters here in their U.S. try to argue that Israel has every right to impose a blockade of food, petroleum, medicine and building materials on the Palestinians in Gaza. Their argument is that Israel's blockade is an effort to deny Hamas, a terrorist organization, materials that could in any way be used for attacks on Israeli towns and cities.
But if that were true, Israel could deny everything shipped to Gaza - medicines, construction materials, food, fuel, every thing. Because Israel could argue that anything allowed into Gaza helps Hamas.
Recall that the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza freely and democratically elected representatives of Hamas in January 2006. By blocking necessities of life to the ordinary Palestinian, Israel is trying to punish those who voted for Hamas as well as Hamas itself.
This is clearly a good example of odious "collective punishment."
No nation, including Israel, is allowed under international law to punish civilians as a way to punish the political government.
True, the U.S. and Britain did just this during WWII when Allied airplanes carpet-bombed Berlin, Dresden and Dusseldorf. Talk about "war crimes." Each German city suffered more than 50,000 souls incinerated in one night. We are talking women, children, men, all non-combatants.
Israel has no legal or moral right to continue the blockade. I congratulate the peace activists in recent days who tried to bring Palestinians some relief in their miserable existence caused by the Israeli government's foolish quest to punish citizens who voted for Hamas.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
END ISRAEL'S COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT OF PALESTINIANS
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While Palestinians go hungry they seem to find endless money to import thousands of missiles to fire at innocent Israeli civilians, and cargo inspections on a terroristic race of humans is not punishment, its self preservation.
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