MarjorieCohn.com: Israel’s Collective Punishment of Gaza
. . . The targeting of civilians violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel cannot distinguish between civilians and military targets, they are illegal. But Israel’s air and ground attack in Gaza violates Geneva in four ways. First, it constitutes collective punishment of the entire population in Gaza for the acts of a few militants. Second, it targets civilians, as evidenced by the large numbers of civilian casualties. Third, it is a disproportionate response to the rockets fired into Israel. Fourth, an occupying power has an obligation to ensure food and medical supplies to the occupied population; Israel’s blockade has created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israel’s airstrikes and ground assault on the people of Gaza have little to do with the Gazan rockets, which hadn’t killed any Israelis for a year before Israel’s current military operation. Israel’s leaders are bombing and attacking Gaza in order to gain an advantage in the upcoming Israeli elections in February.
This international law perspective to me is very helpful. Certainly as a pacifist, I oppose both the actions of Hamas and the state of Israel, but Cohn helps to articulate the severity of the wrong of Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas rocket attacks. Also if you read a few paragraphs further, Cohn explains that Israel is using F-16’s and Apache helicopters purchased from the US in this war and that the US is both directly (through its weaponry) and indirectly (through our government’s virtual silence and sometimes open support of the Israeli attacks).
In other words, we are all sinners. We all are guilty, and as such we all have the responsibility o try to right thing wrong.
(Also I should note that Marjorie is the current President of the National Lawyers Guild)
As a pacifist you would sue bad guys and bad countries is surviving there attacks?
Could you restate that? I don’t understand your question.
If you were asking, how as a pacifist can I support the use of any kind of coercive power (such as the power of the judicary)? — That’s a tough question, but probably I would begin by saying that I’m not a pure pacifist.
I think the use of lethal force is wrong in any circumstance, but I could see rare circumstances where the use of non-lethal force is justifiable. Such examples include…
1. A police officer arresting a violent criminal.
2. A starving person breaking a window to get food.
3. A member of the navy sabotoging a ship to keep it from sailing out of the harbor to war.
But it is also a slippery slope, and I think most often there are alternatives to even non-lethal force.
I just checked your homepage listed on your user profie and you are the author of a paranoid, homophobic hate website ( http://religionofself.blogspot.com/ ).
From what I can tell, your basic premise is that the ACLU, National Education Association, and other Satanic groups are trying to pervert America’s youth and turn them into homosexuals, which wi then cause America’s gay youth to burn in hell.
Based on this, I really don’t care to continue the conversation. I am sad that you feel the way you do and will say a prayer that you can repent, but for now there’s nothing more to say. I can’t take anything you say seriously, given that you are open and proud bigot.