[News] Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’
Craig Mokhiber
September 21, 2024
------------------------------
[image: IMG_4244-1.jpg]
Israeli army straps injured Palestinian man to the front of a military
vehicle and uses him as a human shield, Jenin, June 22, 2024. (Photo:
Social Media)

Among the most frequently deployed weapons in Israel’s hasbara arsenal is
the so-called “human shields” ruse.

For decades now, Israel has systematically used this propaganda device as a
trick to justify war crimes, to shift the blame for its crimes to others,
to overcome the principle of distinction in humanitarian law, to dehumanize
Palestinian victims, and to arm its Western proxies and complicit media
companies with ammunition to protect Israeli impunity.

But a chain of international investigations reveals two clear conclusions
about these charges: First, Palestinian armed groups generally do not use
human shields. And, secondly, Israel does.
International law

“Human shields” is common parlance for a particular violation of
international humanitarian and human rights law. It is strictly prohibited
in all circumstances.

As summarized by the authoritative commentary of the ICRC
<https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97>, it refers to
the “intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or
persons *hors de combat* with the specific intent of trying to prevent the
targeting of those military objectives.” (“Persons *hors de combat*”
include fighters who have laid down their arms, prisoners, the sick and
wounded, etc.).

The classic case is when a group of soldiers force civilians from the other
side to march ahead of them into a battle zone or into an unsecured
structure, in hopes that the enemy will not shoot at the soldiers for fear
of hitting the civilians.

But Israel, in its automatic claim of “human shields” each time it kills
large numbers of civilians and destroys protected civilian infrastructure,
pays no mind to this definition. Instead, it simply extends the phrase to
all civilian deaths. On cue and without evidence, complicit Western
politicians, their official spokespersons, and media corporations then
dutifully repeat Israel’s human shield mantra over and over again.

For Israel, refugees going about their daily lives in refugee camps,
patients and doctors in hospitals, people praying in churches and mosques,
and humanitarian workers delivering food to the hungry are all human
shields.

Never mind that they have neither been compelled by Hamas, nor have they
volunteered to shield anyone or anything. And never mind that there is
often no legitimate (or proportionate) military objective in situations
where Israel makes the human shields claim.

If these civilians are killed by Israeli bombs or bullets, according to the
Israeli narrative, it is their own fault or that of Hamas, because they
both live in the same densely populated places.

But the mere presence of armed forces or members of the enemy in populated
civilian areas does not constitute the use of human shields. Indeed, Israel
should carefully consider the implications of its repeated claims that it
does, given that it maintains its military headquarters in a busy section
of the city of Tel Aviv.

Nor does the presence of fighters in a protected civilian location remove
the protected status of that location. Israeli soldiers can be seen in
every Israeli hospital. Does that render those hospitals a legitimate
military target? Of course not. To deny the same protection to Palestinians
would be both a grave breach humanitarian law and (Western journalists take
note) a blatant act of racism.

Needless to say, that is not how the concept of human shields works in
international law.

In pretending that it does, Israel and its Western proxies willfully ignore
three inconvenient elements: Logic, facts, and law.
Israel’s practice of targeting civilians

First, acceptance of these claims requires Israel’s pliable proxies in the
West to ignore decades of experience and volumes of collected evidence that
Israel often makes no distinction between civilians and combatants in its
military activities and, in many other cases, directly targets civilians
and civilian infrastructure.

Israel routinely attacks hospitals, schools, shelters, and refugee camps.
Its snipers and drones hunt down and execute civilians. And its A.I.-guided
weapons, labeled with cruel names like “Where’s Daddy,” are designed to
wait until targets are home with their families before bombing them. It
even guns down civilians, including children and women, waving white flags.
These criminal patterns are well known and well documented in the work of
successive investigations by the UN and by international, Israeli, and
Palestinian human rights organizations.

But the very logic of human shields rests on the idea of deterrence; that
is, that soldiers will hesitate to shoot if civilians are at risk. No such
logic exists with a military force like Israel’s that does not distinguish
between civilians and combatants and that routinely practices the direct
targeting of civilians.

Indeed, Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/israels-attack-on-lebanon-using-exploding-electronics-is-part-of-a-long-history-and-strategy-of-targeting-civilians/>,
on the basis of which it has long carried out the intentional massive
destruction of civilian areas as a means of terrorizing civilian
populations, is proof that Israel cannot be deterred by the use of
Palestinian or Lebanese human shields. The current wave of genocide
perpetrated by Israel in Gaza has left no doubt about its willingness to
kill Palestinian civilians intentionally and without hesitation. And
its Hannibal
Directive
<https://mondoweiss.net/2024/07/israels-leading-paper-says-its-own-army-deliberately-killed-israelis-on-october-7-but-in-the-u-s-media-silence/>,
under which Israel kills its *own* citizens (soldiers and civilians alike)
to prevent them from hindering its military aims means that it may not even
be deterred by human shielding with its own citizens.

Given that the resistance forces challenging Israel are well aware of this,
why would they try to use a tactic that they know is futile? The answer is,
they don’t. Thus, the charge of human shields fails the test of logic.

But it also fails the test of law.

First, the situations in which Israel claims human shields are used do not
qualify as cases of human shields under the international legal definition
described above. Simply put, and as this definition makes clear, the mere
presence of fighters nearby does not magically transform civilians into
human shields.

Accordingly, Israel’s charge of human shields usually has no basis in law
whatsoever.

Secondly, Israel alleges human shields in an attempt to shift blame and
absolve its forces of legal responsibility. But what they miss is that even
if human shields were used, this would *still* not reduce the legal
obligations of the attackers.

In fact, claims of the use of human shields do not justify an attack on
civilians without the constraints imposed by International humanitarian and
human rights law, and the attacker still remains accountable, even if the
user of human shields is also accountable.

The attacker must still respect the principles of precaution, distinction,
and proportionality to avoid harming non-combatants. In other words, the
declaration of human shields is not a “get out of jail free card” under
international law.

Therefore, as a matter of law, even where human shields are present, the
attempt to shift blame and absolve the shooter of responsibility fails.
Palestinians don’t use ‘human shields’ but Israel does

And then there is the pesky problem of facts.

Israel has produced no credible evidence of the use by Palestinian
resistance groups of human shields in the current Israeli attacks on Gaza.
It relies instead on the uncritical, rote repetition of the charge by its
Western sponsors and proxies and Israel-friendly media corporations.

The charge is without evidence, and one wielded not to hold violators to
account, but as a justification for Israeli war crimes.

This is not to suggest that no Palestinian fighter has ever in history used
human shields. But the charge that they do so regularly or systematically
is a charge without evidence, and one regularly wielded not to hold
violators to account, but rather as a justification for the commission of
Israeli war crimes.

At the same time, we have all seen the video footage
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/23/human-shielding-in-action-israeli-forces-strap-palestinian-man-to-jeep>
of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields across Gaza (and
the West Bank). We have viewed with our own eyes the images of Palestinians
(often children) tied to the hood of Israeli military jeeps, forced to walk
ahead of a column of Israeli occupation soldiers or to lead the soldiers
into buildings or other structures. The practice is as old as the state of
Israel itself.

In every successive Israeli attack on Palestinian communities, the pattern
has been the same: Israel accuses the Palestinians of using human shields,
international organizations, and human rights groups investigate, and the
investigations reveal that the party systematically using human shields is
not Palestine, but rather Israel.

Indeed, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has documented
<https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files2/publication/200211_human_shield_eng.pdf>
the repeated use by Israel of human shields at least since 1967
<https://www.btselem.org/human_shields>. Investigations by both Amnesty
International <https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/>
and Human
Rights Watch
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead>
into Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” attacks in Gaza found evidence that
Israel used human shields (including children) but found no evidence that
Palestinian groups did so.

Similarly, successive UN Commissions of Inquiry that investigated the
massive Israeli attacks on Gaza in 2008-2009 and in 2014 looked into
Israel’s claims and found no evidence of Palestinians using human shields.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child found
<https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/lib-docs/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/Session17/IL/CRC-Geneva_UPR17_ISR_E_Main.pdf>
“the continuous use (by Israel) of Palestinian children as human shields”
from 2010 to 2013. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on terrorism reported the
same finding.

A typical finding is included in Amnesty International’s investigation
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/> into Israel’s
Cast Lead attacks:

“*In several cases Israeli soldiers also used civilians, including
children, as “human shields” … However, contrary to repeated allegations by
Israeli officials of the use of “human shields”, Amnesty International
found no evidence that Hamas or other Palestinian fighters [did so].*”

And in the report
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead>
on the “white flag killings” of Palestinian civilians, Human Rights Watch
confirmed that “Israel says Hamas fought from populated areas and used
civilians as “human shields”—that is, deliberately used civilians to deter
attacks against Palestinian forces… Human Rights Watch found no evidence
that the civilian victims (in its investigation) were used by Palestinian
fighters as human shields.”

But the Israeli practice of using human shields is a matter of public
knowledge inside Israel, having long been the subject of public debate.
Israel soldiers, speaking to the Israeli organization Breaking the Silence,
have themselves confessed
<https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Operation_Cast_Lead_Gaza_2009_Eng.pdf>
to the widespread practice. It has been reported in Israeli media, most
recently in an expose in *Haaretz* last month. The Israeli military has
even publicly defended <https://www.btselem.org/human_shields> its “right”
to use human shields in successive Israeli court cases
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/israel>. Of course, those
instances in which it lost the argument have had little impact on the
military, which continues the practice until today.

Thus, Israel’s hasbara disinformation tactics have been an important pillar
in its strategy for the destruction of Gaza since the current wave of
genocide in Gaza began almost a year ago. False charges of human shielding
have been key to those tactics.

But that deception crumbles at even the most cursory examination. If
Western politicians and journalists exercised even the most basic level of
due diligence before parroting Israeli claims, if they subjected them to
the tests of law, fact and logic, the truth would be quickly revealed. The
party that routinely uses human shields is Israel, not Palestine.

A common refrain in the public discourse on Palestine is that “every
Israeli accusation is a confession.”  The double lie of human shields is a
case in point.
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