Thursday, October 25, 2007
From time to time I read news that shakes me. Today, is one of those days. The BBC reports that Israel is preparing to cut off power to Palestinians in Gaza in order to halt missile attacks. To read that something as abhorrent as collective punishment is planned, and to imagine that it will likely go ahead without serious attempts to halt it from either American, Canadian or other Western or Asian authorities leaves me literally nauseous. How can such a demonisation of a human collectivity be tolerated? I want to vomit and cry. If this is an accepted way for humans to treat humans in this time, what kind of world will our little Kicker grow into? What horrifying possibilities are we permitting to encroach on our horizon? I hate to imagine. No matter the challenge, there must be a separation of the combatant and the civilian, the individual and the collective. Without these human society not only stagnates as possibility is strangled, but security, the basis of social sanity, is made to evaporate. Collective punishment is thus an attack not just on a particular group of people but on the infrastructure of peaceful and prosperous human society.