Human Rights Watch
Hamas Uses Human Shields? The Evidence
Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields. You’ve heard the claim echoed ad nauseam in Western corporate media. Yet numerous reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other human rights groups have found the allegations, which are brought to bear by Israeli officials nearly every time Gaza hits the news, to not only be untrue, they’ve discovered that Israel itself has consistently engaged in wanton use of Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields.
In 2014, Amnesty International said of allegations that Hamas was using human shields:
Amnesty International is monitoring and investigating such reports, but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks. In previous conflicts Amnesty International has documented that Palestinian armed groups have stored munitions in and fired indiscriminate rockets from residential areas in the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law. Reports have also emerged during the current conflict of Hamas urging residents to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate. However, these calls may have been motivated by a desire to minimize panic and displacement, in any case, such statements are not the same as directing specific civilians to remain in their homes as “human shields” for fighters, munitions, or military equipment. Under international humanitarian law even if “human shields” are being used Israel’s obligations to protect these civilians would still apply.”
The International Red Cross defines “human shielding,” the term used in international humanitarian law to describe the practice, as “the act of placing a civilian in front of a military objective to deter attacks due to their civilian status.”
Despite their accusation against Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces themselves regularly used Palestinian civilians as human shields under an Israeli military doctrine called the “neighbor procedure” until it was outlawed by the Knesset in 2005. This left Israeli military officials incensed. Former Israel Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz even appeared in court to argue for the ban’s repeal.
Lots of documented evidence that Israeli soldiers, use Palestinian children as human shields http://t.co/XyqwRsg0oc pic.twitter.com/Kker5hRZRy
— Anonymous Palestine (@PalAnonymous) August 17, 2014
B’Tselem, a prominent Israeli human rights organization operating in the occupied territories, reports that since Israel’s 1967 occupation, Israeli security forces have reportedly exploited Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as human shields. The rights group found that:
Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, Israeli security forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip as human shields, ordering them to perform military tasks that risked their lives. As part of this policy, soldiers have ordered Palestinian civilians to remove suspicious objects from roads, to tell people to come out of their homes so the military can arrest them, to stand in front of soldiers while the latter shoot from behind them, and more. The Palestinian civilians were chosen at random for these tasks, and could not refuse the demand placed on them by armed soldiers.”
Israel is often touted as the only democracy in the Middle East; its robust legal system is praised as a panacea to the dictatorial regimes and monarchies of neighboring Arab states. One could infer, therefore, that since it was outlawed by the Israeli Knesset in 2005, the Israeli Defense Forces have halted the barbaric practice, and any soldiers caught resorting to it would be swiftly brought to justice per Israel’s own legislation.
Yet ‘Breaking the Silence,’ a group of former Israeli soldiers and conscientious objectors who speak out about human rights abuses by the Israeli military, say the practice continued unabated well after it was outlawed in 2005. Dozens of highly publicized cases, both inside and outside of Israel, corroborate their claims.
On May 13, 2022, 16-year-old Ahed was left traumatized after being used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers. Defense for Children International reported that:
Israeli soldiers forced Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on May 13 around 8 a.m. in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position… Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside.”
Just one week later, Israeli forces were photographed forcing a Palestinian man into acting as a human shield during a raid into the occupied West Bank after Palestinian resistance fighters began firing on invading Israeli troops.
Despite its ban under Israeli law, justice has eluded Palestinian victims of the practice. In fact, the last time an Israeli soldier was punished for using a Palestinian as a human shield was in 2010 for an act committed during the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza.
B’Tselem summed up the charges against the two offending soldiers as follows:
The two soldiers in question had ordered a nine-year-old boy, at gunpoint, to open a bag they suspected was booby-trapped. Despite the gravity of their conduct – putting a young child at risk – the two were given a three-month conditional sentence and demoted from staff sergeant to private, some two years after the incident took place. None of their commanding officers were tried.”
There is little evidence to suggest that Israel has plans to ditch the practice either. There have been multiple cases documenting Israeli troops using human shields since the events of October 7, 2023.
A video posted to X by renowned Palestinian human rights activist Isso Amro on November 10 shows an Israeli soldier ducking behind a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man during an IDF raid in the Al Fawar Refugee camp in Hebron.
Watch how Israeli soldiers used a Palestinian detainee as a Human Shield in Al Fawar Refugee camp in Hebron . pic.twitter.com/pV9HcPXZi4
— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو (@Issaamro) November 10, 2023
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
The post Hamas Uses Human Shields? The Evidence appeared first on MintPress News.
Liverpool council bans Jewish woman from speaking on Gaza ceasefire
Read below for her full speech – and the council’s excuses for its attack on democracy and free speech
Helen Marks protesting for Gazans during October’s Labour conference (image rights S Walker)
Liverpool City Council has withdrawn Jewish resident Helen Marks’s speaking slot at tonight’s meeting of the council, where she had successfully applied to address the council to ask it to call for a ceasefire and peace deal in Gaza, where Israel has slaughtered around 15,000 people, half of them children, in a relentless campaign of bombing homes, hospitals and schools.
Ms Marks had been told by the council’s Principal Democratic Services Officer:
You will be able to speak for 3 minutes at the Council Meeting, would you be able to send me a statement as to what you are going to say to the meeting please?
We are also ticketing the meeting, so you will need to be sent a ticket via email for the meeting. You will be allowed 2 tickets if you need another one and I would also need the name of the person attending with you.
As requested, Ms Marks sent a draft of her planned speech. It reads:
My name is Helen Marks. I am secretary of Liverpool Friends of Palestine. I am from a Jewish family. My mother was brought up in mandate Palestine and my Polish Jewish father lost his parents, a brother, aunts , uncles and cousins in the holocaust.
I have asked to speak today to urge you to call for an immediate ceasefire . However, I want you to go further if a ceasefire is agreed and insist that it is accompanied by genuine peace talks to find a lasting solution to this endless cycle of violence.
When the holocaust took place during the 2nd World War most people in the world could justifiably say that they were unaware of what was taking place. They were also incredulous when they learned the facts. They couldn’t believe that any one or any country could behave in such a calculated, despicable way.
Fast forward to the current situation in Gaza. We have no such excuse. Every day we see on our TV screens Gaza being bombed and innocent men women and children being killed in the most calculated, brutal way ; thousands of body bags, children screaming for their mummy. An acronym has been coined. WCNSF Wounded Children No Surviving Family. There are now more than 33,000 Palestinian orphans living in Gaza.
I abhor the killing of innocent Israeli civilians at the hands of Hamas on the 7th October and feel especially sad that some were from a Kibbutz where the residents were critical of the injustices suffered by the Palestinians. However the Israeli response is disproportionate, inhumane and must be stopped.
How can this be happening in this day and age? Did all this violence start on October 7th or must we put it in context ?
Hajo Meyer, holocaust survivor, spent his adult years warning us that holocausts don’t just appear. They happen because of a process of dehumanising the other and that is what successive Israeli governments have been doing in relation to the Palestinians, never calling them Palestinians just Arabs, labelling them all as terrorists, calling them human animals. When I was in Hebron in 2008 I saw daubed on the doors of Palestinian houses “ Kill all Arabs” with a star of David alongside. In 2014, Justice Minister Ayalet Shaked said that the mothers of Palestinian martyrs should go ,as should their homes “ otherwise more little snakes will be raised”.
It is much easier to kill your enemy if you view them as sub human.
In 2022 Amnesty International published a report based on 4 yrs of research which concluded that Israel was an Apartheid state according to the legally accepted definition. This report was backed up by reports by Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem. They saw the expansion of illegal settlements, the theft of land for military purposes, the denial of planning permission for housing, the restricted access to water, the numerous checkpoints that denied free movement, the imprisonment of adults and young people under military not civil law and the killing of Palestinians without proper investigations. Over 160 Palestinians have since been killed in the West Bank following 7th October.
What is happening now in Gaza, like the recent bombing of a school in the Jabalia refugee camp killing 200 children and staff is not self defence or helping to root out Hamas. It must stop.
If you fail to call for an end to the occupation a lifting of the siege of Gaza, a solution to the over 6,000 refugees languishing in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine itself then the cycle of violence will continue.
There were ceasefires after 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018 but the Western Powers continued to protect Israel, pretend it did not have nuclear weapons, backed the false PR that it had the most moral army in the world and was the only democracy in the Middle East and rewarded it with prestigious hosting of events irrespective of its behaviour. And the US and UK continue to send it arms .
I am sure as councillors you will not mistakenly conflate this criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
I call on you to demand an immediate ceasefire that is followed by a clear programme that delivers justice for the Palestinians.
However, this straightforward and factual speech fell foul of the council’s City Solicitor Daniel Fenwick, who claimed that it would breach the so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism – a definition that does not actually define, and which has been criticised by Jewish legal experts and even its author as a means of chilling free speech on and legitimate criticism of Israel. Fenwick wrote, withdrawing Marks’s permission to speak at the meeting:
Dear Ms Marks,
Council Public Speaking Rights
I write with regard to your request to speak at the above meeting and your draft statement which has been passed to me as the Council’s Monitoring Officer for assessment under the Council Procedure Rules (rule 12).
Unfortunately, the Council already had three speakers registered to speak for the Council meeting by the time you registered to speak. For completeness, whilst you emailed the Council on 7th November, the Council replied to you on the same day advising you how to make your request to speak after the publication of the agenda on 14th November. A third and final request to speak was received on 17th November at 9.46am and your request was received at 10.54am on that day. I am sorry this was not communicated earlier to you but, unfortunately, having check the times of the emails, this is the correct order in which they were received and as Monitoring Officer I have no authority to waive this rule..
I believe you have tickets for the public gallery and we look forward to seeing you at the meeting.Your Statement
Thank you for the draft of your statement. For completeness, I have reviewed your statement under the Council’s procedure rules and thought it would assist you if I gave you my views for future reference, if you had been able to speak at the meeting. As currently drafted, your statement could not accepted as it breaches the following rules on the acceptance of public statements:
12.8 The Monitoring Officer may reject a request to speak if:
…
12.8.3 it is defamatory, frivolous or offensiveIt is my view as the Council’s Monitoring Officer that whilst it is legitimate freedom of expression to criticise the Israeli government’s policies and actions in Gaza, there are significant elements of the statement’s content that risks a breach the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Anti-Semitism, which was adopted by the Council as its definition of anti-Semitism in January 2018. Your statement is therefore likely to be offensive to the Jewish community and others in the city and beyond. For this reason, the Council cannot place itself at risk of breaching its own policies and potentially discriminating unlawfully against any person by making a decision to allow it to be read in its current form.
The statement if read out would further place the Council at risk of breaching its public sector equality duty under s.149 of the Equality Act 2010. The Council must have due regard to the achievement of this duty and, as one example, the statement as worded is also unlikely to foster good relations between Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and with those without those protected characteristics under the 2010 Act in Liverpool and beyond, noting the context of the horrific rise of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks since 7 October.
Thank you for showing an interest in speaking at the Council meeting.
Skwawkbox wrote to Fenwick to ask him to be specific about why he was taking this action and exactly what in Marks’s speech he considered to breach the ‘definition’:
Mr Fenwick,
You contacted Jewish activist Helen Marks by email informing her that she would not be able to speak at tonight’s council meeting – despite, though your email did not acknowledge this, her having received confirmation of a 3-minute slot from the council’s Principal Democratic Services Officer. You claim there are too many speakers and that her speech might breach the IHRA ‘definition of anti-semitism’, but do not say why. I have seen the statement and it is self-evidently legitimate criticism of Israel for its actions and merely being offensive to someone is not a breach of the IHRA, which in any case has been criticised by legal experts and even its founder for its chilling effect on free speech.
Apologies for the short notice, but as the meeting takes place at 5pm I will be covering this imminently so ask for your response no later than 2pm on the following – as you have already made these deliberations before writing to Ms Marks, it should not be onerous to provide the information:
- Why are you denying a Jewish resident her right of democratic expression on a matter of obvious public importance concerning Israel and Gaza?
- What precisely in her planned statement do you think breaches the IHRA and why?
- Were you instructed or pressured by anyone inside or outside the council to withdraw permission?
He did not answer the questions, instead saying only that the council meeting will be livestreamed and directing the enquiry to the council’s communications team, who did not respond even well after the press deadline. Opponents of Israel’s genocide in Gaza are mounting a protest outside Liverpool’s City Hall before the 5pm council meeting.
Ms Marks, who was one of two Liverpool Jewish party members smeared by Labour officials in a widely-condemned 2019 BBC Panorama programme, told Skwawkbox that the council’s manoeuvres were ‘feeble but predictable’:
I was given permission to make a 3-minute statement at today’s council meeting but this permission was withdrawn for very feeble but predictable reasons. I was speaking in support of Alan Gibbon’s motion calling on councillors to vote for an immediate ceasefire. I have since sent all councillors the statement I would have read out.
Labour’s betrayal of Palestinian civilians continues even in a city whose people have shown strong solidarity with those Gazan women and children facing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
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