Jareducation

What’s really sad is it never got weird enough for me. . . Lazlo and Nixon are both gone now, but I don’t think I’m going to believe that ’til I can gnaw on their skulls with my very own teeth. . . If they’re out there, I’m going to find them, and I’m going to gnaw on their skulls. Because it still hasn’t gotten weird enough for me. - Hunter S. Thompson

Collective Punishment

Posted on | January 9, 2009 |

If there is any doubt about how Israel is conducting the colonization of Palestine, read today’s headline: “Israel Shelled Gazan Civilians.” Israeli soldiers rounded people up, around 100, put them in a school and then 24 hours later bombed the building. There can be no doubt that they knew civilians were in there. 30 of them died.

This is an acute demonstration of the sick campaign of collective punishment the Israeli government pursues against Gazans. And it didn’t begin with this incursion. They have been starving them, denying them movement, and intermittently bombing them for years.

The Israeli government has run continuous flights over Gaza for a long time, occassionally breaking the sound barrier to terrorize the inhabitents. Sharon pulled 8,000 “settlers” a.k.a. colonists out of Gaza a few years back. Over the next year 12,000 had moved back in. They stationed soldiers, ran these flights and posted tanks on the borders to “protest” the settlements.

The sea routes to Gaza, if you haven’t seen the news, has also frequently been cut off. In fair language, that’s called a blockade. Tanks on your doorstep is called a seige. Flights overhead are called patrols–like the patrol of a prison guard.

All of this adds up to collective punishment. Hamas fires rockets into Israeli settlements, so Israel punishs all palestinians. In part, because Israel does not know how to respond to such a disparity of force. The weak use homemade rockets to terrorize a civilian population (colonialists). That is not justified on any ground, but since 2000/2002(?not sure of the year, but a long time), no more than 20 Israeli civilian colonists have died. The death toll superceded 700 yesterday. 219 are women and children.

Blockades, patrols, seiges, and collective punishment. Punishing a civilian population violates international treaties, Geneva and distorts reality and creates “terrorists.” This lastest war will only deepen the problem.

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Comments

One Response to “Collective Punishment”

  1. Josh Bull
    January 9th, 2009 @ 4:33 pm

    Comment on this article:
    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1149129

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About

Jared Marchildon aspires to be a foreign correspondent. He produces radio news stories for KPFA 94.1 in Berkeley. Taking photographs removes him from this world and gives him a third eye. He has a problem with buying books, cooks rabidly, and replaced his car with a road bike. You can reach him at: jared@jareducation.com.

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