One of the many pitfalls in
the doctrine of absolute sovereignty, whereby government officials acting as government
can literally get away with murder domestically given the lack of credible de
jure and de facto enforcement of international “law,” is the ability
to inflict collective punishment based on group-identity, including the ideologies
that hinge on identity politics. Going the actual culprits of a crime or even a
revolt, collective punishment inflicts harm and even mass murder on an entire
group, including individuals thereof who are not at all culpable. Unlike “collateral
damage,” the ideology of collective justice includes intentionally harming
such individuals. It is an ideology because it is based on beliefs about a
group rather than an ethic that would justify normatively the infliction of
pain and suffering on the innocent. Furthermore, collective justice is an
ideology because it includes the artificial elevation of a group (i.e., the
collective) over the individual even though members of a group are arguably
foremost individuals, who typically belong to more than one group or
organization. To put the collective abstraction first ontologically is thus tenuous
at best. A person may be a Texan, a Democrat, a Catholic, and a member of a
football team, for example, so the claim that that person is essentially
any one of these would be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary. In privileging a
part over a whole, thus being partisan, an ideology is in a sense arbitrary, even
in claiming that a state of affairs that is favored or desired is the
present state of affairs, as if the statement were a fact of reason rather than
a counter-factual statement.
It is one thing for
intellectuals to debate and discuss ontological and ethical matters, and quite
another when a leader on the world stage makes an explicit normative statement
condemning collective punishment. The reason why such a public pronouncement by
a person chosen to head a government or a global religious organization is
important is that the Israeli government quickly discovered in 2023 that having
its president state publicly that every resident of Gaza would be punished for
being culpable in an atrocity committed by criminals in October of that year in
Israel was not going over well in the media around the world. Because the
collective-justice motive was from then on—for at least 21 months (and
counting)—on stealth mode in the Israeli government even though the fingerprints
were obvious in Gaza, to have a leader recognized globally state publicly that collective
“justice” was being pursued by the Israeli government even though prohibited by
international law. For some reason, facts on the ground, even when obvious, are
not enough for human beings to think, Hmm, the Israelis really are pursuing
collective justice on their subjugated people within Israel’s borders. Even
with such a recognition and acknowledgement, the prerogative of absolute sovereignty
can go on, unimpeded internationally.
Nevertheless, it is significant that Pope Leo of the Roman Catholic Church, whose billion-plus membership spans the globe, “said at the end of his Sunday Angelus prayer” on July 20, 2025, “I once again call for an immediate end to the barbarity of this war and for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”[1] Typically, leaders on the global stage are satisfied to leave it at that; they condemn this or that without stating what actions in particular, or what ideologies behind those actions, are being castigated. In addition to bringing up the Israeli attack on the only Catholic church in Gaza just days earlier, the pontiff said, “I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations.”[2] Together with the barbarity of that war, the collective punishment, which presumes the validity of collective justice unless punishment is inflicted without cause, such as randomly, can be said to be extreme in its severity, and not just in its scale. If in fact the Vatican had turned a blind eye to the Nazi Holocaust, the Church was not making the same mistake on the Israeli Holocaust in Gaza. Pope Leo was essentially telling the Israeli government officials:
We know what you’re trying to do; you’re trying to extinguish the Palestinian people who now live in the uninhabitable area that you created so to decimate the Gazans, whom you view not only as culpable collectively, but also sub-human—as “animals,” as it were. This is not the first time in human history that a government has considered a people in its territory to be subhuman. It is ironic, is it not? The Torah makes clear that being Yahweh’s chosen people does not spare you from God’s wrath. You are not divine, so it is not your place to fete out collective justice that God can do by virtue of being omniscient as well as omnipotent.
Whereas the Pope would have to
acknowledge the validity of divine collective justice in the Old
Testament, Nietzsche argues that the conception of the deity wherein it is both
omnibenevolent and vengeful, for “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” is
discredited by whomever added that line, knowing that God must be perfect
goodness. Perhaps collective justice is not vengeance, and a deity who knows
all would only inflict collective punishment in cases in which everyone is
in fact guilty of some injustice. Nietzsche was not an atheist; in fact, he may
have been criticizing a flawed concept so that a new, healthier concept could
be built. An atheist would likely go
further, arguing that collective justice is inherently unjust so positing it of
a deity is wrongheaded, and in fact could do additional damage as Israeli
officials could try to justify their heinous crimes against humanity by saying
that Yahweh engages in collective justice in punishing Israel, such as by keeping
the Hebrews in the wilderness for forty years and later by allowing them to be
conquered for violating the covenant. Trying to exterminate a people who
believe in the same deity—unlike the people in Jericho in the Bible story—is
arguably such a violation. It would be ironic were Yahweh to apply collective
justice on the Israelis by punishing Israel for having inflicted collective
punishment on the Gazans as if every resident in Gaza in October, 2023 were a
culprit. Whether collective justice rightfully applies to an omniscient deity or
contradicts the very notion of divinity, the assumption that we mere mortals enjoy
God’s prerogative is impious self-idolatry.
2. Ibid., italics added for emphasis.
