Collective Punishment by Holding Bodies

The concept is simple enough. Person X does something to person Y. Then Y punishes X's family, X's group, and/or X's community. It is illegal under international law. Israel is accused of massive violations, other countries including the USA have a history of collective punishment. We will probably do a team blog on this topic. Team blogs are like news reports and hopefully up to some reasonable standards. You might wish to go to - www.mptinpalestine.blogspot.com and read "Body in the Frig" so you can better understand the rest of this blog.

My personal blogs allow me more freedom to think out loud. Doing so helps me to get my thoughts together, allows you to better understand my thinking (or lack there of as the case may be) and, of course, allows you to communicate with me and impact the direction of my thinking and the content of future blogs.

The idea of holding the bodies of dead prisoners rather than returning them to their families appalls me. Personally I don’t get too excited about what happens to my body while I die. There might be a few places I would like to “see” my ashes spread but it is not something that I will worry about. But some religious or personal belief systems have expectations about such things. This practice could cause much anxiety for some prisoners.

And, of course, there is the issue of the surviving family members. The need for closure is almost universal. So if a spouse, a child, a parent or a friend dies; others have to live with the knowledge that they may never get to “say goodbye”, they may never get to view the body or to properly bury it – which are critical steps of closure for most persons. It is cruel. Such a practice might even be considered a form of collective punishment. Harassments and indignities take so many forms and happen so frequently. It saddens me to think of the amount of suffering the Palestinians have endured and will continue to endure. Continue that is until the world community can take action. And I wonder what or who is stopping that from happening?