Proposing 'a full cultural and educational boycott of Israel', Iain Banks writes:
Writers and artists refusing to visit Israel, and the cutting off of as many other cultural and educational links with Israel as possible, might help Israelis understand how morally isolated they really are. It would be a form of collective punishment (albeit a mild one), and so in a way an act of hypocrisy for those of us who have criticised Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian people in general and those in Gaza in particular, but appeals to reason, international law, UN resolutions and simple human decency mean – it is now obvious – nothing to Israel, and for those of us not prepared to turn to violence, what else can we do?
It's a simple question and there's a simple answer to it. What else you can do is not engage in forms of collective punishment that you condemn when it suits you; but rather adopt forms of protest and action that meet the standards you demand of others. Two of these standards appear to be 'simple human decency' and not turning to violence. The decency Banks demands of Israel evidently doesn't entail, for him, any abstention from the collective punishment of its citizens. Whether it allows the people of Israel to defend themselves against the threat of violence, and their national existence against being forcibly terminated, would be an interesting question.