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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Every accusation a confession: Israel and the double lie of ‘human shields’</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Craig Mokhiber</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">September 21, 2024<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_m1dp5kuk0" alt="IMG_4244-1.jpg" width="468" height="312"><br>
<font size="1">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) </font>
<p>Among the most frequently deployed weapons in Israel’s hasbara arsenal is the so-called “human shields” ruse. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<h2>International law</h2>
<p>“Human shields” is common parlance for a particular violation of
international humanitarian and human rights law. It is strictly
prohibited in all circumstances. </p>
<p>As summarized by the authoritative <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule97">commentary of the ICRC</a>, it refers to the “intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons <em>hors de combat</em> with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.” (“Persons <em>hors de combat</em>” include fighters who have laid down their arms, prisoners, the sick and wounded, etc.). </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Needless to say, that is not how the concept of human shields works in international law. </p>
<p>In pretending that it does, Israel and its Western proxies willfully ignore three inconvenient elements: Logic, facts, and law. </p>
<h2>Israel’s practice of targeting civilians</h2>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Indeed, Israel’s <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/09/israels-attack-on-lebanon-using-exploding-electronics-is-part-of-a-long-history-and-strategy-of-targeting-civilians/">Dahiya Doctrine</a>,
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 <a href="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/">Hannibal Directive</a>, under which Israel kills its <em>own</em>
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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>But it also fails the test of law. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Accordingly, Israel’s charge of human shields usually has no basis in law whatsoever. </p>
<p>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 <em>still</em> not reduce the legal obligations of the attackers. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Therefore, as a matter of law, even where human shields are present,
the attempt to shift blame and absolve the shooter of responsibility
fails.</p>
<h2>Palestinians don’t use ‘human shields’ but Israel does</h2>
<p>And then there is the pesky problem of facts. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<blockquote><p>The charge is without evidence, and one wielded
not to hold violators to account, but as a justification for Israeli war
crimes. </p></blockquote>
<p>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. </p>
<p>At the same time, we have all seen the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/23/human-shielding-in-action-israeli-forces-strap-palestinian-man-to-jeep">video footage</a>
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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>Indeed, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has <a href="https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files2/publication/200211_human_shield_eng.pdf">documented</a> the repeated use by Israel of human shields <a href="https://www.btselem.org/human_shields">at least since 1967</a>. Investigations by both <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/">Amnesty International</a> and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead">Human Rights Watch</a>
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. </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/lib-docs/HRBodies/UPR/Documents/Session17/IL/CRC-Geneva_UPR17_ISR_E_Main.pdf">found</a>
“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. </p>
<p>A typical finding is included in Amnesty International’s <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/">investigation</a> into Israel’s Cast Lead attacks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“<em>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].</em>”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And in the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/13/white-flag-deaths/killings-palestinian-civilians-during-operation-cast-lead">report</a>
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.” </p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Operation_Cast_Lead_Gaza_2009_Eng.pdf">confessed</a> to the widespread practice. It has been reported in Israeli media, most recently in an expose in <em>Haaretz</em> last month. The Israeli military has even <a href="https://www.btselem.org/human_shields">publicly defended</a> its “right” to use human shields in successive <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/israel">Israeli court cases</a>.
Of course, those instances in which it lost the argument have had
little impact on the military, which continues the practice until
today. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
<p>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. </p>
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