Friday 16 January 2009

Collective punishment is wrong, got it?

It is always wrong to punish people for the actions of others. So the Turkish cafe owner who booted out two Israeli women for being Israeli was in the wrong (1). In doing so, he gave in to prejudice and imitated - in a tiny, tiny way -the hopeless, reactionary bitterness that has warped the recent history of the Middle East.

Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organisations are wrong to collectively punish Israelis by murdering them with missiles and suicide bombs, the Israeli government is wrong to collectively punish the Palestinians for the crimes of the terrorists, and Mustafa Tekinkaya is wrong for inflicting his own microscopic version of collective punishment on Natalie Bennie and Tamara Shefa Mevlana for being Israeli.
1 - "Gaza Strip comes to Invercargill," unattributed NZPA article, reproduced on the TVNZ website, 15th of January, 2008. (http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/gaza-strip-comes-invercargill-2442391)

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