Haaretz's Amira Hass reports that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields during the attack on Gaza.
Gazans: IDF used us as 'human shields' during offensive
At about 9 A.M. on Monday, the soldiers took Katari's son Jamal from the house. During the next four days Jamal accompanied the soldiers and performed several tasks. He was made to enter what he estimates were 10 houses, going in first and calling on the occupants to come downstairs. He preceded the huge army bulldozer that forced its way through the neighborhood, ripping up the streets. "I am afraid the soldiers will shoot me," he told a soldier, who replied: "Don't be afraid."
In the meantime, that same Monday morning, Shafiq Daher, too, was continuing his mission of protecting Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The second house he was made to check was also empty. It belonged to the Al-Ajarmi family. Daher did not know that his two oldest sons were accompanying other groups of soldiers, and were being forced to smash holes in the walls of houses using sledgehammers. Nor did he know that at that very moment, a soldier was jamming his rifle into the back of his third son, standing at the door of Abed Rabbo's home.
No wonder the IDF didn't want reporters inside Gaza. Apparently the vaunted IDF is afraid to secure residential buildings without using human shields who are forced to enter buildings before the soldiers do. The IDF was pressing whole Palestinian families into its hazardous service at gunpoint.
In another reported instance all of the residents of three 6 story apartment buildings were used as human shields for IDF soldiers who set up firing positions on the tops of their buildings.
Gaza civilian toll rises; diplomats seek truce
Troops seized control of three six-storey buildings on the outskirts, climbing to rooftop gun and observation positions. Residents were locked in their rooms and soldiers took away their cellphones, a neighbour said, quoting a relative who called before his phone was seized.
"The army is there, firing in all directions," said Mohammed Salmai, a 29-year-old truck driver.
"All we can do is take clothes to each other to keep ourselves warm and pray to God that if we die, someone will find our bodies under the rubble."
By taking away their cell phones the IDF soldiers made sure the building's residents couldn't communicate their hostage status to anyone outside of their buildings.
Forcing civilians at gunpoint to act as shields for combatants is a serious war crime.
Using civilians as human shields is exactly what those who parrot the Israeli Government's talking points have been shrilly accusing Hamas of doing. That chorus can't conceal the truth that the IDF was resorting to these cowardly and criminal tactics.
Olmert has pledged to defend all members of the IDF accused of War Crimes during the Gaza Attack, now it looks that Olmert must have learned about the IDF's routine use of these criminal tactics.
A delegation of 8 American lawyers, from the National Lawyers Guild that traveled to Gaza to "determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence." published a report in Common Dreams last Sunday:
What We Found in Gaza
Strong Indications of Violations of the Laws of War, U.S. Law, and War Crimes Found in the Gaza Strip
NLG Delegation
Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure
Much of the debate surrounding Israel's aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.
The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures.
They conclude:
This delegation is seriously concerned by our initial findings. We have found strong indications of violations of the laws of war and possible war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. We are particularly concerned that most of the weapons that were found used in the December 27 assualt on Gaza are US-made and supplied. We believe that Israel's use of these weapons may constitute a violation of US law, and particularly the Foreign Assistance Act and the US Arms Export Control Act.
Amnesty International is calling on the U.N. to widen the scope of its investigation into war crimes in the Gaza attack to all war crimes committed by both sides, instead of only focusing on attacks on U.N. compounds in Gaza. I wholeheartedly support that idea.
I urge you to read this brief Amnesty International report on where things stand inside shattered Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal: The task of reconstruction will be truly immense
In conclusion I'll share something Chris Hedges wrote:
Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens more just."
Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods.