Collective guilt is the defining feature of atrocity logic.
If destruction, civilian death tolls, or the razing of towns were legitimate criteria for declaring a whole people “fundamentally evil,” then modern warfare itself would make most powerful states criminal by definition. Israel has destroyed far more towns and neighbourhoods in Gaza than Palestinians have destroyed in Israel.
Israel and its proxies have killed vastly more civilians, including through documented massacres and mass displacement from the original Palestine, across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and beyond. By Oliner’s logic, that would justify the liquidation or expulsion of Israelis as a “guilty nation.” No serious moral framework accepts this, because the logic is genocidal regardless of who applies it.
International law is explicit on this point. Collective punishment is prohibited precisely because it abolishes individual responsibility. Civilians do not become legitimate targets by ethnicity, geography, or association. Guilt does not transmit biologically or nationally. The moment it does, law is replaced by vengeance.
What makes the statement especially grave is not simply that it is hateful, but that it comes from someone associated with Holocaust remembrance. Holocaust memory exists to mark the point at which entire populations were declared guilty, evil, and disposable. To invoke that memory while endorsing the same structure of reasoning is beyond irony.
So let’s face it:
Yes, Israel has destroyed more Palestinian towns and killed more Palestinian civilians.
No, that does not justify condemning Israelis as a guilty nation and deporting them integrally from Palestine.