Switzerland says Israel breaking humanitarian law

"Collective punishment" isn't about overreacting. It's punishing a group of people for the crimes of one person in that group. Completely seperate issue.

one person in that group

This is not a maverick working on their own and against the wishes of the many.

When that soldier turns up dead you're really going to be able to put a foot in your mouth.

Any moral high ground Israel had on this issue, they Blew Up with the power supply on the Gazza Strip.

First: the kidnapping or killing of a human beeing is always a shame.
The question is: is it right to revenge a death with a thousand deaths or with the humiliation of even more humans?
If you answer this question with yes - you are no better than the guys who are responsible for this shame and therefore help making mankind look like a bunch of braindead idiots.

Israel is not being nice to the Palestinians, but far too many Palestinians are unable to let go of the notion that the clock must be turned back 58 years and Israel removed somehow. Faced with this it is almost inevitable that Israel finds itself taking ever tougher and tougher measures to keep its civilians safe and that means hardship for the Palestinians.

I get no joy from the fact that the Palestinians live in misery, but Israel being nice to them will not change Hamas' mission in life one iota, and easing up on restrictions could endanger Israeli lives.

The key to it is to get the world community, including the arab world, to say to Hamas, look the game is up. It's too late now, Israel is here to stay. Come to terms with that and renounce publicly your commitment to destroy it.

That's where the focus needs to be. Sure you can criticise Israel but Israel could buy every Palestinian a bunch of flowers tomorrow and Hamas would still be plotting Israel's demise.

MCLiepshutz - thank you for your sensible and humane comments. My namesake Gideon Levy, an outstandingly humanitarian Israeli journalist, has communicated the same sense of outrage over the Gaza escalation in a recent issue of Haaretz. Non-violence and peace with justice and reconciliation is the only way forward.

According to top American lawyer Professor Marjorie Cohn: "Israel's brutal retaliation against Palestinian civilians constitutes collective punishment. Attacks on a civilian population as a form of collective punishment violate article 50 of the Hague Regulations", "The Fourth Geneva Convention also prohibits collective punishment. Article 33 …" and "Collective punishment is likewise forbidden by Article 75 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. As four US Supreme Court justices agreed in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last week, Article 75 is "indisputably part of the customary international law."" (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/8033/26/ ).

Civilized people around the world demand observance of International Law. There is also the Abrahamic Religious Law of the Mosaic Ten Commandments ("thou shall not kill" ) and the "Natural Law" ("thou shall not kill Children"). About half the civilians of the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories are Children (the post-invasion under-5 infant deaths in these Territories total 0.2, 0.4 and 1.4 million, respectively – about 90% of this carnage being avoidable and due to Israeli and Coalition violation of the Geneva and Rights of the Child Conventions (for detailed documentation see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/533/26/ and http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ).

Before the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Gaza, seven (7) Occupied Palestinian children were dying avoidably every day due to Israeli violation of the above Conventions and Laws – with the destruction of half the Gaza electricity system, the daily death toll of utterly innocent Children will undoubtedly climb (a major concern of the UN, of humane people around the world – and no doubt of their utterly innocent mothers).

Those who knowingly support the mass murder of any Children in word or deed in any way are beyond the Pale - they have crossed a critical boundary in human behaviour. The hard-line Israeli Establishment is violating the greatest Jewish contribution to the world, a 3 millennium history of humanitarian thought, legislation and scholarship, from the Mosaic Ten Commandments to outstanding contemporary Jewish humanitarians such as America's Professor Noam Chomsky.

Of course I don't support the killing of innocent Palestinian children nor does Israel.

What is immoral is the claim by Palestinian supporters that Israel is in any way in favour of any such thing, particularly while they refuse to condemn Palestinian attacks which openly target civilian Israelis, in general including children.

My challenge is against the deliberate use of that double standard as a political tool, to score sympathy brownie points with the world media.

I am getting criticised for doing so, which I guess means people think the double standard is fine. I can keep trying to convince but if I fail I fail.

Violence by either side is wrong, deplorable and counterproductive. Peace with justice and reconcilation is the only way forward.

The "true criminals" and "cowards" are the illegal Occupiers who are violating International Conventions - Humanitarian Law - and are responsible (either actively or passively) for the mass mortality of utterly innocent infants - the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories totals (so far) 0.2, 0.4 and 1.4 million, respectively (about 90% avoidable and due to Occupier non-provision of the life-sustaining requisites demanded of Occupiers by the Geneva Convention).

As long as Israel and the US-led Coalition are permitted - by racist, lying Mainstream media and apathetic voters - to ignore the Geneva Convention, utterly innocent infants will continue to die at the rate of about 0.5 million per year (1,300 per day, 1 per minute) (see the latest UNICEF data: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ).

On this day of all days (US Independence Day) we should remember that "all men are created equal ...and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - and that includes about 30 million utterly innocent Children under Israeli or Coalition guns in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories and dying at appalling rates in what must be described as "passive genocide" by their callous and demonstrably racist Occupiers.

You seem to have forgotten Darfur, or much of Africa for that matter.

Or do those not count?

http://www.somebodyhelpme.info/mideast/History_of_Israel_in_a_Nutshell_Too.swf

Matt Kennedy: thank you for implicitly raising avoidable death in Darfur and the rest of Africa and also for implicitly raising the general question of the value of human life .

To put the tragedy in those lands in context simply consider the following shocking "annual under-5 infant death rate" figures (UN Population Division; estimates for 2003): over 0.33% (cruelly ignored Indigenous Australians i.e. Australian Aborigines), 0.51% (Occupied Palestinian Territories under 4 decades of illegal Israeli rule i.e. Indigenous Palestinians), 0.66% ("free" i.e. US-dominated Latin America and Caribbean), 1.88% (the non-European World), 1.99% (ex-British South Asia), 2.0% (Sudan, wherein the Darfur atrocity is still continuing), 2.7% (US-occupied Iraq), 3.90% (First World-crippled non-Arab Africa), 5.7% (US-occupied Afghanistan) - as compared to: 0.07% (Singapore; the best in the world), 0.1% (White Australia), 0.12% (Israel), 0.15% (UK) and 0.17% (US and Communist Cuba).

In answer to your question, of course they count. Silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people are inescapable obliged to inform everyone about man-made avoidable mass mortality and gross abuses of human rights. The Horrendous South Asian figures show that the aftermath of prolonged, violent colonial occupation is as deadly as war. The annual global avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality total 16.0 and 10.6 million, respectively (44,000 and 29,000, respectively, DAILY) (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ).

It can be estimated that (together with goodwill, high literacy and good governance) a properly distributed $1.4 trillion annually (a mere 2.5% of world annual production) would eliminate global avoidable mortality. By way of comparison, it has been estimated that Israel has cost the US about $2.6 trillion since 1956; the Iraq War has committed the US to costs totalling $1-2 trillion (according to American Professor Joseph Stiglitz, Economics Nobel Laureate); and the annual global market value of EACH of the following 5 DELETERIOUS items is about $1 trillion: military expenditure, tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs and unhealthy processed food.