Israeli collective punishment measures should stop

Israel’s return to the policy of destroying homes of Palestinians suspected of attacking Israelis has drawn wide-scale condemnation worldwide and rightly so.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has spearheaded this condemnation describing it as a grave war crime, with other human rights organisations and states expected to follow suit.

The UN Human Rights Council had censured such actions in the past and can be expected to declare the same shortly when it reconvenes in a regular session for the consideration of worldwide human rights abuses.

HRW called on Israel to “impose an immediate moratorium on its policy of razing family homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks on Israel”.

“This policy, which Israeli officials claim is a deterrent,” added HRW, “deliberately and unlawfully punishes people not accused of any wrongdoing.” This amounts to collective punishment, HRW concluded.

Of course no one in his right mind would defend collective punishment or guilt by association or anything else of the sort that aims to punish the immediate family members of someone accused of committing violent acts. But would Israel demolish the homes of Israeli war criminals that kill innocent Palestinians? Would the homes of settlers who burned a Palestinian boy alive earlier this year, or who hanged a Palestinian bus driver, be demolished? Certainly not, as the laws that apply to the indigenous Palestinians living on their land under the yoke of Israeli occupation are different from those that apply to the settlers and Jews.

Such acts of collective punishment extend to many other aspects of life and should be condemned by the international community, which is still waiting for the US and other major powers to take a moral stand and denounce them in no uncertain terms. These powers fought discrimination on their own lands and elsewhere, but are helpless when discriminatory, racist acts are committed by Israel, which continues to live above international law.

Collective punishment policies do not serve the cause of peace and are likely to increase animosity between the two sides and create a climate of hate when what is urgently needed is an environment conducive for peace and harmony to pave the way for achieving justice for the Palestinian people.

It is one thing to punish an individual for committing an act of violence under a fair legal system, and quite another to inflict harm on his/her family members for no fault of their own.