This Is Not Collective Punishment

Greg Bouwer
IINZ

Few accusations against Israel are as casually thrown around (or as legally baseless) as the charge of “collective punishment”. To invoke it is to claim that Israel, rather than fighting Hamas, is deliberately inflicting suffering on Gaza’s civilians for its own sake. It is a grave allegation, rooted in international law, but in the case of Gaza it is also a serious libel.

What Collective Punishment Really Means

The prohibition of collective punishment is found in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

This principle arose from the atrocities of the second world war, when occupying powers – most notoriously Nazi Germany – would massacre civilians or raze villages in reprisal for acts of resistance. When German forces destroyed Lidice in Czechoslovakia in 1942, executing the men, deporting the women and children, and levelling the town, this was the archetype of collective punishment: the intentional targeting of civilians solely because they were civilians of a particular group.

The essence is intent. Collective punishment is not civilian suffering during war. It is deliberately punishing civilians as civilians.

Why Gaza Does Not Fit This Definition

Israel’s military operations are aimed at Hamas’s armed infrastructure: rocket launchers, tunnel systems, command posts, weapons caches, and fighters. Tragically, civilians are sometimes caught in the crossfire. But that does not transform military operations into collective punishment any more than the Allied bombings of German military infrastructure became ‘punishment’ of German civilians.

Moreover, Israel consistently takes measures utterly incompatible with the idea of punishment:

It issues advance warnings before strikes to enable evacuation.
It facilitates humanitarian aid into Gaza, even during active hostilities.
It coordinates with international organizations to establish humanitarian corridors.

If Israel were truly practising collective punishment, none of these steps would occur. One does not feed, warn, and medically support the population one is supposedly intent on punishing.

Security Restrictions Are Not Punishment

Much of the rhetoric about collective punishment centres not on military strikes but on border closures, inspections, and restrictions on goods. Critics argue that limiting movement of people or supplies constitutes punishment of civilians. This is legally and factually wrong.

International law recognizes the legitimacy of blockades and restrictions in wartime, provided they are aimed at denying the enemy war materiel rather than starving civilians. When Hamas has repeatedly diverted cement to build terror tunnels, or fuel to power rocket systems, it is not collective punishment for Israel to regulate those imports. It is lawful and necessary self-defence.

The San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (1994) explicitly permits naval blockades, even when they incidentally affect civilians, provided the purpose is military necessity. Israel’s measures fall squarely within these standards.

The Real Source of Gaza’s Misery

If Gaza’s civilians suffer, it is overwhelmingly because of Hamas:

Aid Diversion: Convoys of food, medicine, and fuel are hijacked by Hamas operatives, resold on the black market, or diverted to its military wing. Ordinary Gazans pay the price.
Human Shields: Hamas embeds fighters, weapons, and command posts in hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings. By turning civilians into human shields, Hamas makes their deaths part of its strategy.
Hostage Politics: Hamas continues to hold Israeli civilians hostage, prolonging the conflict, and at the same time holds two million Gazans hostage to its rule. Its survival depends on their suffering.

This is the true collective punishment in Gaza: Hamas’s deliberate policy of using civilians as pawns in its war.

Collateral Damage Is Not Collective Punishment

One of the most dangerous rhetorical tricks is the conflation of collateral damage – unintended but foreseeable civilian harm in lawful strikes – with collective punishment. International humanitarian law makes a clear distinction. Civilian casualties are lawful if they are proportional to the anticipated military advantage. What is prohibited is deliberate targeting of civilians.

Israel operates within this framework. Every strike is reviewed by military legal advisers. Civilian harm is regretted, not sought. The difference between intention and effect is everything in law – and Israel’s critics deliberately erase it.

Why the Libel Matters

Calling Israel’s actions ‘collective punishment’ is not merely inaccurate – it is malicious. It equates Israel with regimes that massacred entire villages in reprisal. It weaponizes international law not to protect civilians, but to criminalize Israel’s right to self-defence.

And it lets Hamas off the hook. While Israel is smeared with accusations of war crimes, Hamas’s actual war crimes – attacking civilians, holding hostages, using human shields, and stealing aid – are minimized or ignored. The libel serves Hamas’s propaganda perfectly: make Gaza’s suffering appear to be Israel’s policy, when in truth it is Hamas’s strategy.

Conclusion

The accusation of ‘collective punishment’ collapses when measured against history, law, and fact. Israel is not punishing civilians – it is targeting Hamas, while simultaneously enabling humanitarian aid. Gaza’s suffering is real, but it is the product of Hamas’s brutal calculus, not Israel’s intent.

The real collective punishment in Gaza is inflicted by Hamas on its own people. Israel is fighting a terrorist army, not civilians. To claim otherwise is to participate in a libel that obscures reality, distorts international law, and ultimately prolongs the conflict by shielding Hamas from accountability.