Reply #44: The definition of collective punishment doesn't apply here and anyone honest would concede...

[shira]

....that if the UN's blockade of Iraq was not illegal and not collective punishment, then in no way can that be said of Israel.

Simple logic.

Here's Wikipedia on what collective punishment really is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention#Collective_punishments

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and World War II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there. Additional concern also addressed the United States' atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, in turn, caused death and disease to millions of Japanese civilians as well as their decedents. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility.

See, neither you nor any other group gets to just make up definitions that apply only to Israel.

Here's HRW using "collective punishment" only WRT Israel's blockade, and in no other instances...
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/ngo_monitor_s_report_on_hrw_bias_and_double_standards_continue

And here's an example of an HRW report in 1994 on a blockade that makes Israel's look tame in comparison...
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1994/WR94/Helsinki-01.htm

Guess what? That's not described as collective punishment. In fact, I challenge you to find another example besides Israel in which a blockade is considered collective punishment. I've given you 2 examples with Iraq and now Azerbaijan, in which the cumulative effect on the population was FAR worse - but for some reason not defined as collective punishment. You up for that challenge? Or is this where you disappear, divert, ignore that you were refuted, or evade?