Collective punishment is the corollary of the concept of collective responsibility, which holds an entire society responsible for the actions of a state or government. The July 10 attacks that triggered the current conflict and the military retaliation in Gaza are part of this barbaric logic.
The Hamas operation had no military objective. The deliberate massacre of 1,300 Israeli civilians, including children, in a macabre orgy of violence lays bare the soul of the terrorist organization. From their point of view, there is no difference between civilians and military, as all are “occupation soldiers”.
During the Algerian War of Independence (195462), the National Liberation Front carried out attacks on civilians, recall voices who were prepared to justify Hamas’ terror with an anticolonial justification. The argument, which is inherently problematic, draws a false and therefore insightful parallel.
The settlers of French origin in Algeria belonged to an imperial company. The massacred Israelis, on the other hand, are not under the banner of a foreign power: Israel emerged from the immigration of Jews who were persecuted by pogroms and the Nazi genocidal machine. The barbarism of 7/10 can only be legitimized by adopting Hamas’s political goal: the destruction of the Jewish state.
AntiSemitism lives on and in times of war it tears apart the clever imagination of antiZionism. “Death to the Jews,” demonstrators chanted in New York, Paris, London and even Berlin. The “decolonial” discourse with its identity roots fits like a glove with the abhorrent concept of collective punishment. Israel would be part of the “Western,” “European,” “white” sediment that has been deposited in the world over the past few centuries. There would therefore be no difference between the Algerian settler and the Israeli civilian. In the name of “decolonial” caricature, the Jewish state should disappear.
International law gives the State of Israel the right to selfdefense, including reprisals sufficient to dismantle Hamas’s military and government apparatus. However, humanitarian law establishes conditions that are reflected in the laws of war. Israel has no right to collective punishment.
Evidence is emerging from unsuspicious sources that the Gaza hospital tragedy was the result of faulty Islamic Jihad rockets and not Israeli bombs (shorturl.at/aCDE0). However, the eventual proof of its innocence does not absolve Israel of responsibility for the total disruption of Gaza’s water, electricity and food supplies, as well as for indiscriminate bombings that have caused thousands of civilian casualties. Such acts constitute war crimes as family members of Israelis slaughtered or taken hostage on July 10 testify.
An invisible line separates Israeli society. “I have no need for revenge, nothing will revive the dead,” wrote Ziv Stahl, head of the human rights group Yesh Din, who hid in a basement of her kibbutz during the attacks. She warns of the pragmatic need for a “political solution”. But on the other side of the border, the drive for revenge is fueled by the exterminist idea that Palestinian civilians are part of the conflict.
Long before July 10, Bezalel Smotrich, one of the fanatics who holds a ministerial portfolio in the Israeli government, addressed the following words to Arab Israeli citizens: “You are here by mistake because of BenGurion.” [primeiro chefe de governo israelense] didn’t finish the job in 1948 and didn’t kick them out.” The extremists sheltered under Netanyahu’s roof are trying to take advantage of the opportunity offered by Hamas to “finish the job.”
Both Hamas and Israel are taking the path of collective punishment. Perfect parallel? No: Ziv Stahl signs texts in Haaretz while Palestinian opponents of Hamas are tortured and executed in Gaza.