Israel has announced a new policy of arresting and deporting the families of terrorists. The "everything Israel does is evil" crowd are already wailing about "collective punishment" and "war crimes". Even the U.S. government denounces this action.
But in fact, the families are often co-conspirators. Take a look, for example, at this video file from the website of the Hamas Al Qassam Brigade. The video shows the final moments of suicide gunman Muhammad Helss before he went off to commit murder. Muhammad's mother is in the video with him and she is also wearing a military cap and holding a gun. The dialog is in Arabic, but you don't need to understand the words to see that this mother is sending her son off to kill and be killed. This woman is an accomplice to terrorism and deserves to be treated as such.
[ I have more about the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigade here ]
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 19, 2002 11:34 AMWhat's amazing to me is that anyone thinks that Israel would give a crap what anyone else thinks of this move--which I think is a clever idea that shows commendable restraint.
The US should be ashamed to complain about it--were these things to happen to us, we wouldn't be deporting their families, we'd be pounding the entire terrorist enclave into gravel from 40,000 feet, as we demonstrated in Afghanistan.
Or...wait a sec...did the complaint come from the State Department?
That would explain a lot.
And as for "collective punishment," what would these poeple call the results of the homicide bombers?
Having just witnessed the brutal murders of perhaps hundreds of schoolchildren by Chechen rebels and their Arab supporters, I must admit I found myself thinking that the only thing that might deter such people is collective punishment (i.e., families, friends), and not merely deportation but also their imprisonment until the murderer (if still living) or his collaborators surrender and tell what they know.
I was troubled by this thought because, after all, collective punishments was the trademark method of the Nazis in suppressing partisans in the Balkans and elsewhere. (The Nazis, of course, didn't merely deport, they murdered the "collective"). But I also recalled having read that it was only after Jordan arrested his mother and threatened harm to her that the terrorist Abu Nidal confessed.
Perhaps, to prevent future mass murder by terrorists, some form of collective punishment is morally, if not legally, justified.
Toren above is correct that the suicide bombers and the 9/11 terrorists are themselves imposing a form of collective punishment.
I can see the justification in terms of prevention, if in fact it is effective, but not as retribution.
But this is all very troubling, particularly if deportation, razing of homes, arrest cannot be shown to have prevented terrorist attacks, yielded intelligence, etc. What is, in fact, the evidence? Also, if we engage in collective punishment ourselves, do we only make its use even more likely by those who hate us, and even validate their decision to use this method and insulate it from criticism?