Every accusation a confession: Israel and double lie of ‘human shields’
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 combatants generally do not use human shields. And, secondly, Israel does.
By Craig Mokhiber
An American former UN human rights official
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, 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, 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, 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 combatant 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 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 the repeated use by Israel of human shields at least since 1967. Investigations by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch 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 “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 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 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 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 its “right” to use human shields in successive Israeli court cases. 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.
The article first appeared on
Mondoweiss.