The myth of Hamas’s human shield

[shaayecanaan]

Some Gazans have admitted that they were afraid of criticizing Hamas, but none have said they had been forced by the organisation to stay in places of danger and become unwilling human-shields. The Bani Sobeila area, near Khan Younis, where the Abu Jamaa deaths took place received leaflets dropped from the air last week warning them to leave.

But almost all stayed. One reason for that was many of the houses belonged to the Abu Jamaa clan who felt there was safety in staying together. Another reason was given by a neighbour, Abdullah al-Daweish: “Where do we go to? Some people moved from the outer edge of Khan Younis to Khan Younis centre after Israelis told them to, then the centre got bombed. People have moved from this area to Gaza City, and Gaza City has been bombed. It’s not Hamas who is ordering us in this, it’s the Israelis.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israelgaza-conflict-the-myth-of-hamass-human-shield-9619810.html

[mwrguy]

1. It was always zionist propaganda

[shaayecanaan]

2. It was only ever believable

if you were willing to believe that Palestinians were fundamentally different from other people and were thus willing to offer themselves up to the air strikes of the Israelis.

[shira]

14. Are you denying or justifying these war crimes?

Make up your mind.

[stranger81]

34. Exactly.

Underlying this meme is the racist assumption that Palestinians are less than human.

[sabbat hunter]

3. not a myth

http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/IDF-shows-photos-of-alleged-Hamas-rocket-sites-dug-into-hospital-mosques-368307

[shira]

4. Propagandists will outright deny any and all evidence of Hamas war crimes

Here's the reality: This isn't pro-Palestinian advocacy anymore as much as it is pro-Hamas. It's blatant now.

In the most literal sense, it's covering for Hamas war crimes against the Palestinian people. I've posted one article after the next, with videos, showing evidence of Hamas human shielding. Advocacy groups like B'tselem and Breaking-The-Silence even acknowledge Hamas human shielding.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/113471416

No amount of evidence will convince the propagandists.

[shaayecanaan]

5. Taking that story at face value...

one of the images details a rocket that was fired from the vicinity of a cemetery, which it claims was a "civilian structure". I supposed that is correct if you really stretch the definition of "structure", but even so I doubt that anyone was taking shelter there.

Another details a rocket fired from a mosque courtyard on a Tuesday afternoon at about 2:30 pm, when you wouldnt normally expect anyone to be there.

Another alleges a rocket fired from the periphery of a childrens' playground, which certainly sounds bad. But it was at 7pm at night, and I doubt that anyone would have been there particularly when there is a war going on.

Not a single launch from a residential neighbourhood, which is a bit telling, isn't it? Is this really the best that you can do?

[Igel]

6. The argument is backwards.

The onus for protecting civilians is on combatants. It's the very basis of war crimes claims against what the IDF is doing.

One doesn't have to order civilians to be human shields. You just set up shop among civilians--you've just violated what's come to be considered a fundamental (theoretical) rule of warfare, putting the onus on them to move or function as a shield. You're attracting fire to civilians, which is pretty much the opposite of *protecting* civilians and shielding them.

That's a big bad no-no.

Note that if you're a combatant and civilians flock around you to protect you--something we've seen from time to time in the last 6 months, counting on the "aggressor's" unwillingness to hurt civilians--then you're off the hook. Some folk in 2003 went to Iraq to be human shields, thinking themselves to be innocent civilians (even the highly intelligent can be benighted). In those cases civilians have just assumed liability for everything and anything that happens to them and the only reason not to ignore them in shooting at the combatants is for PR among those who somehow think intentionally putting one's self in harm's way makes you "innocent." This is a completely different matter, however, from when civilians fail to move when somebody stands behind you and shoots past you.

You don't give civilians "negative check-off" on being your protection if you're a combatant. Even if it means that your one real option is to stand in a field with a mortar while fighter-bombers come at you.

[wellst0nev0ter]

7. Sort Of Reminds Me Of the Early Israeli Militants

and all the urban guerrilla tactics and soft targets it attacked during the Mandate period.

But of course, That's Different.

[azurnoir]

9. yep

About Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups using Gazan civilians as “human shields.” This Israeli claim is based on the fact that Gazan militants live among the civilian population and keep much of their weaponry in the neighborhoods. But this is hypocrisy; every guerrilla army that fights on its own turf against an incomparably stronger enemy fights from among the civilian population. The pre-1948 Irgun and Lehi guerrillas would kill the British, then “melt back” into the Jewish neighborhoods. In Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan, there are civilian public buildings – including schools – with plaques at the entrance telling how they housed weapons caches and training camps for the Irgun, Lehi or Haganah. Up through Israel’s War of Independence, the kibbutzim were military outposts as much as they were civilian settlements.

http://972mag.com/blame-israel-and-hamas-both-for-gazas-civilian-deaths/93351/

[shaayecanaan]

10. Old Jewish underground weapons caches are still turning up

in synagogues across Israel today:-

http://azvsas.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/zionist-weapons-cache-found-in.html

I'm fairly used to blatant hypocrisy from the hasbarados, but this one takes the cake.

[shira]

15. Translated: It's perfectly okay for Hamas...

....to endanger Palestinian civilians & maximize the number of their deaths because in the 1940's Zionists were hiding weapons from the Brits.

You want to talk hypocrisy?

How do you square your support of Hamas methods with your concern for Palestinian innocents?

[shaayecanaan]

20. a better translation

You dont have a problem with Israel launching air strikes on a mosque if there are weapons inside it, but you would have had a problem with the Brits launching an air strike on a synagogue if there were weapons inside it.

[shira]

22. One standard. There weren't any Geneva Conventions in the 40's.

Back then, the Brits sent Jews back to death camps rather than let them into Palestine. Such was their contempt for Jews. I doubt they'd have cared one whit about innocents had they bombed synagogues.

So which is it? Are you defending Hamas war crimes against its own people, or denying them?

[azurnoir]

23. Back then WW2 was over and the deathcamps were closed unless you're counting the refugee camps

that all displaced people were in not just Jews as death camps

[shira]

24. Geneva Conventions didn't exist until 1949. And the Zionists....

...were fighting the Brits during the WW2 and Holocaust years, when it was perfectly acceptable for the Brits to send Jews away from Palestine and back to the death camps.

[azurnoir]

30. There were "death camps" on Mauritius?

because that's is where the Brits deported Jews to during WW2 they did allow for a paltry 10,000 Jews per year to immigrate

and Zionist fought against the British during WW2? Sure you wish to go with that?

and ell it wasn't a law yet -can you say double standards?

[shaayecanaan]

25. Its depressing arguing with someone as ignorant as you

the Fourth Geneva Convention was made in 1949. They called it the "fourth" because there were three others that preceded it, in 1864, 1906 and 1929. Then you have other conventions such as the Hague Convention on the Rules of War, etc.

Back then, the Brits sent Jews back to death camps rather than let them into Palestine.

Nowadays, Israel sends Black "infiltrators" back to their deaths in Sudan and Somalia.

I doubt they'd have cared one whit about innocents had they bombed synagogues.

That has to be the most inane statement you have ever uttered. The whole point is that the Brits did not bomb synagogues, even though Jews used them to store weapons that were used to kill British soldiers, Arab civilians and sometimes Jewish civilians. Faced with the same situation, the Brits responded with far more humanity and restraint than Israel does.

[shira]

27. Human shield protocols weren't included until 1949

Israel is not sending anyone back to death camps. Yet another failed and vulgar moral equivalency.

And Zionist militias weren't even in the same league as Hamas in the 30's and 40's. They weren't purposely killing as many innocents as possible while trying to maximize Jewish civilian losses... counting on radicals in the West to support such vileness.

[shaayecanaan]

31. So Jews using other Jews as human shields was legal back then?

Its an interesting argument, although incorrect. Human shield protocols were included in the Third Geneva Convention in 1929:-

http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter32_rule97

[bemildred]

35. Note how the argument shifts back and forth between morality and legality, depending on need.

I suppose the Israeli objection to Hamas' "using human shields" is purely a legal matter, they would not mind were it only were still legal like when they did it. Except that they still do it too.

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/survivors-massacre-palestinians.html

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

37. You're all about the law whe it suits your

twisted world view, but when the law is applied to Israel you poorly jump through hoops defending Israeli crimes.

But I expect you to remain silent on this.

Silence is a sure indicator of guilt.

[PCIntern]

19. ...and I find Native American arrowheads here in PA

This means what?

[shaayecanaan]

21. everyone else seems to have figured it out nt

[Nevernose]

33. It's different because it was 80 years ago

And we're talking about today and this month, in which hundreds of innocents have been killed because two governments are so overrun with extremists that neither of them can protect civilians.

[bemildred]

8. N.Y.U. Professor’s Defense of Civilian Deaths in Gaza “Has No Basis In Existing Law”

With hundreds of largely civilian Palestinians dead, Israel’s attempts at crippling Hamas in the Gaza Strip have resulted in grim headlines and news broadcasts around the world. Regardless of whether or not Israel is winning on the ground in Gaza, it is slipping in its worldwide battle for hearts and minds.

It stands to reason, then, that friendly intellectuals are stepping forward to present their justifications for Israel’s actions. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, for example, toured a Hamas tunnel and dined with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu before describing him as “a reluctant warrior,” echoing Israel’s official position that Hamas is forcing the Israeli Defense Forces to bomb civilian areas.

Unfortunately, some of these defenses invite rather unflattering comparisons.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, New York University professor Thane Rosenbaum outlines what he sees as Israel’s “moral dilemma” of whether or not to strike suspected Hamas targets also populated by civilians.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/07/nyu-professors-defense-of-civilian-deaths-in-gaza-has-no-basis-in-existing-law

[Jefferson23]

16. Thanks, I would like to highlight one aspect of the OP..will bypass Dershowitz, he is the ever so

predictable appellate defense attorney for Bibi...why waste space on his opinions..one can write them for him,
before he does.

But this one here, the no holds bar guy:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Thane Rosenbaum, a senior fellow at New York University’s law school, outlines what he sees as Israel’s “moral dilemma” of whether or not to strike suspected Hamas targets also populated by civilians.

Rosenbaum goes on to question the very idea of what a “civilian” means. It’s worth quoting him at length, to avoid running the risk of misrepresenting his position:

On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets. . . .

Surely there are civilians who have been killed in this conflict who have taken every step to distance themselves from this fast-moving war zone, and children whose parents are not card-carrying Hamas loyalists. These are the true innocents of Gaza. It is they for whom our sympathy should be reserved. The impossibility of identifying them, and saving them, is Israel's deepest moral dilemma.

Rosenbaum presumably didn’t realize that his words in defense of Israel echo those of none other than Osama bin Laden. In his 2002 “Letter to America,” bin Laden laid out his justifications for targeting American civilians.

[bemildred]

17. I saw a much more severe condemnation of Rosenbaum today.

Ah, here it is:

The most vile op-ed you will read about Gaza

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/23/the-most-vile-op-ed-you-will-read-about-gaza/

[Jefferson23]

18. Good for him, excellent. Thank you for the link. n/t

[shaayecanaan]

32. Thanks. I thought that piece was vile, deep down somewhere...

but I find it hard to summon the disgust anymore when it comes to the Washington Post. As the Floyd boys called it, I have become, comfortably numb.

[HooptieWagon]

28. Of course, if Rosenbaum's words applied equally....

...then every single Jewish civilian in Israel is responsible for Netanyahu's war crimes. Leads me to believe "Rosenbaum's Law" is only meant to apply in an apartheid state.... one set of laws for us folks, another set for "them" folks. Which is the crux of the problem.

[Jefferson23]

29. He's nuts, period. n/t

[The Magistrate]

26. To Say That 'Has No Basis In Existing Law', Sir, Is A Masterpiece Of Understatement

Has no relation to existing law, or contradicts existing law, would be more precise....

[bemildred]

36. "Disembowels any semblance of law" is how I would put it Sir.

Perhaps "Obscures existing law" would work too.

[sabbat hunter]

11. Aparently

more weapons are being stored in UNRWA schools. And that is from the UNRWA


http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-condemns-placement-rockets-second-time-one-its-schools

Any wonder why Israel's leaders find it necessary to attack schools?

[leftynyc]

12. Expect many here to ignore any

evidence that hamas's terrorist distinction is valid.

[Fozzledick]

13. Just like the "myths" of global warming, evolution, and of course the Holocaust.