Why the Term “Collective Punishment” Fails to Fully Capture Israel’s Actions
In September 2006, the author paid a visit to Lebanon, arriving 34 days after the 34-day summer assault by the Israeli military that had killed some 1,200 people in the country. The alleged casus belli was the cross-border kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The author spent two months hitchhiking through the wreckage of Lebanon, staying in the homes of beneficent strangers and being continuously force-fed in accordance with rules of Lebanese hospitality. The 2006 war is but one of numerous Israeli operations denounced by human rights organisations and other appointed upholders of global ethics as collective punishment, a war crime under international humanitarian law.
The term “collective punishment” appears to be a pretty apt description for flattening entire villages, saturating a country with millions of cluster bombs, and sending an attack helicopter to slaughter children in the back of a pick-up truck. But the term fails to fully hit the mark. The implication remains that it is merely the “collective” part of the punishment that’s the problem, and that Israel is still entitled in principle to mete out non-collective punishment in Lebanon. This is despite Israel’s own criminal track record in the country and integral role in generating the conditions for violence.
Jump across Lebanon’s southern border to occupied Palestine and you’ll find no shortage of collective punishment charges levelled against Israel by United Nations experts, Human Rights Watch, and the like. Again, the terminology would appear to constitute an accurate assessment of a panorama defined by intermittent military massacres, the asphyxiating blockade of the Gaza Strip, and continuing home demolitions in the West Bank.
But again, the “collective punishment” charge is inadequate from a perspective of justice – suggesting as it does that the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation is a fundamentally criminal and punishable offence, as long as the punishment is meted out non-collectively. Palestinian violence does not occur in a vacuum. It occurs within a context of 75 years of Israeli subjugation, dispossession, ethnic cleansing and massacres. Rockets fired from within an occupied, blockaded, and bombarded territory are a response to Israeli violence.
In the West Bank, Israel’s rampant demolition of the homes of suspected Palestinian “terrorists” must obviously be denounced. And yet here, too, the “collective punishment” charge implies the validity of individual punishment of Palestinians whose own actions are a direct result of decades of barbaric Israeli policy.
Those who decry Israeli collective punishment no doubt mean well, but one can’t help but wonder whether the use of the terminology ultimately works to invalidate the right to resistance. By terrorising Palestinians, Israel already adds considerably to the affliction of the world. And in the absence of any sign of improvement, perhaps it’s time to rethink how we talk about it.
In The Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law, Françoise Bouchet-Saulnier – legal director of Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières, or MSF) – references a fitting quote from French-Algerian philosopher and writer Albert Camus: “Calling things by the wrong name adds to the affliction of the world.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.