Israel Matzav: Video: Why did Hamas use 'Palestinian' civilians as human shields?

"Are you kidding me?" - Bennett responds to hostile Sky News anchor

Hamas: We Place Civilians in the Line of Fire

While the IDF does everything that it can to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilian lives in danger. 

Hamas hides weapons and missile launchers in densely populated areas. They send men, women and children directly into the line of fire to be used as human shields for terrorists. 

Please Be My Human Shield By: Asher Schwartz

Israel Matzav: Hamas orders civilians to die

Hamas needs some casualties, so from its bunkers, its leadership has ordered its civilians to go out and die in Israeli air strikes (Hat Tip:Gershon D). 

“The interior ministry warned citizens about Israel sending messages telling them to leave their houses,” according to translations of the official Arabic statement provided by Oren Adaki, an Arabic language specialist at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

“The goal of these actions is to create confusion among the citizens,” the Interior Ministry said, instructing “all citizens to not heed these messages from Israel.”

“The goal of these messages is terrorizing citizens and to cause panic among them,” read the statement, which instructs Palestinians to “not do what the messages instruct them to do,” Adaki explained.

“The ministry [is] calling all our people not to deal or pay attention to the psychological warfare carried out by the occupation through rumors that broadcast across his media and delivering publications and communications on the phones of citizens, and the lack of response for each of these means, which aims to weaken the domestic front in light of great steadfastness of our people to face the aggression,” the Hamas Interior Ministry for National Security stated on Thursday in an order published inEnglish and Arabic.

The Israeli military attempts to communicate with Palestinians and warn them of upcoming attacks via paper leaflets, text messages, and phone calls, among other means.

Is anyone listening?

Israel Matzav: 'It's been proven effective'

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri urges Gazans to act as human shields for Hamas leaders targeted by Israel, arguing that it's been proven effective, for example, in the case of Nizar Rayyan.

For those who have forgotten Nizar Rayyan, he managed to take most of his family down with him by ordering them to act as human shields during Operation Cast Lead. I discussed it here and here. The Kawari home, which is shown in the video, was discussed here.

Israel Matzav: Proof Hamas uses human shields in Gaza

For those who still don't believe that Hamas uses human shields, get a good look at the picture above. It's a group of 'Palestinian civilians' (perhaps that is becoming an oxymoron too) on the roof of a building that Israel wanted to destroy. In this case, the human shields accomplished Hamas' purpose: Israel did not destroy the building.
In a screenshot of a television broadcast from July 8, civilians gather on the roof of the home of a Hamas terrorist who was targeted by the IDF. They did so in order to act as human shields and deter an imminent IDF attack, explained the military blog.
An IDF bird's eye video shows civilians gathering on a roof of a terrorist's house after the IDF fired a warning shot to indicate it was about to bomb it. Hamas achieved its aim in this case, because the IDF decided not to bomb the home.
Let's go to the videotape.



Here's a video about human shields that the IDF did during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09.

Let's go to the videotape.



Why aren't the 'human rights' groups criticizing Hamas? Because they're not about human rights. They're about anti-Semitism and Jew hatred.

Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Hamas encourages human shields

We saw yesterday that is was likely that the Hamas leader in the house called the neighbors to protect him during the five minutes from the phone call to the bombing. 

Since then, as far as I can tell, none of the other terror leader houses that have been bombed have been protected by "human shields," meaning that the neighbors trusted Hamas to put their lives on the line exactly once.

Of course, Hamas is happy either way. If the human shields work then their houses and weapons caches are saved by their encouragement or coercion of civilians. If civilians are killed, they can then say this:

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on his Facebook page that the civilian casualties in Gaza meant that Hamas could do the same to Israel.

Hamas is actively trying to endanger Gaza civilians for PR purposes, which is depraved - and par for the course.

Keep in mind that there is no analogy, as much as Hamas pretends there is. International law allows the targeting of a military objective even if there are civilians in the area as long as the target is of high enough value. International law forbids purposefully placing military targets in civilian areas. And international law forbids purposefully moving civilians to a military target in order to protect it.

International law does not require a combatant to warn their enemy that they are going to be attacked. Steven Erlanger in the New York Times made a sarcastic comment yesterday implying that there was such a standard in warfare, at least for Israel:

Israel does not always give warnings, of course. Also on Tuesday, a missile hit a car traveling along a central Gaza thoroughfare, killing the three occupants. It was not immediately clear who the targets were, though one was reportedly a senior Hamas military official, Muhammad Shaban, and it seemed unlikely that anyone had called them to warn that a missile was on the way.

That comment should be enough to fire the reporter for obvious bias. But, hey, it's The New York Times.

(h/t David G)

YNET: Report: Activists volunteer to become 'human shields' in Syria Britain's Telegraph reports hundreds of British, US citizens volunteered to stake out potential military targets in hopes of deterring US strikes

While many Western nations are evacuating their citizens fromSyria and the neighbors countries ahead of a potential US strikes, human rights activists are planning to enter the war-torn country and act as "human shields" against a US assault, Britain's The Telegraph reported Saturday.

The 'International Human Shields' movement, started by a group of activists in Britain and the US, plans to bring to Syria civilians from countries around the globe, who will try to deter US strikes on the country by staking out potential military targets.

It is unclear whether the Syrian regime will allow the group to enter the country, but Franklin Lamb, a lawyer recently appointed as the legal adviser for the group said he had been "inundated" with requests from activists including from Canada,France, Italy, the US, and Britain.

Many of those volunteering to go to Syria also took part in the "Human Shields" movement that travelled to Baghdad in 2003, initially to protect hospitals and schools, and later, key government infrastructure sites.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that loyal Assad supporters have bedded down in tents on Mount Qussioun overlookingDamascus where the main transmitter for Syrian TV is located.

They are trying to protect the site from possible US attack, Sky News reported. They wear white T-shirts with the logo, "Over our dead bodies".

One of the organizers is 21-year-old law student Hussain Othman. He says he started the sleep in "to protect Syria".

He said: "We will continue until the end. We are civilians. We are against any military strikes."

Assad Is Adopting Hamas "Dead Baby" Strategy by Alan M. Dershowitz

As Congress debates whether to authorize President Obama to engage in a punitive-deterrent military attack on Syria, the Assad regime is adopting what I have called the "dead baby" strategy, perfected by Hamas in its battles with Israel.  This approach is as simple as it is brutal:  Force the United States, as Hamas forced Israel, to kill as many civilians as possible by deliberately moving legitimate military targets into civilian areas, or by moving civilians into military areas.  Democracies, such as the United States and Israel, which care about avoiding civilian casualties, are then put to the tragic choice of either foregoing a legitimate attack against military targets, or by attacking them, being blamed for the civilian casualties, that were willfully caused by their enemies' illegal use of human shields.

This strategy can only work in an age of instant and pervasive television coverage of military actions.  Syria and Hamas know that every baby killed by a US or Israeli rocket will be paraded in front of television cameras being held by grieving mothers and fathers.  It is these vivid and horrifying pictures that are the goal of the dead baby strategy.  Syria and Hamas understand that these emotional pictures will mask the reality that these dead babies are not "collateral damage" caused by legitimate military actions, but rather deliberate targets selected by Syria and Hamas in a cynical attempt to shift blame from them onto the democracies that try their best to avoid civilian casualties, even in the face of deliberate efforts by Hamas and Syria to multiply them.

Lest there be any doubt about Syria's intentions.  Listen to retired American General David A. Deptula:

"The additional time gives Assad the potential advantage of complicating United States targeting by surreptitiously moving people or even chemical munitions into them, aiming to create casualties or chemical release as a direct result of US attacks."

United States General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that assessment when he said that American spy agencies are "keeping up with that movement", which includes prisoners who may be used as "human shields."

If there is any doubt that Hamas has used this despicable strategy, listen to Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council:

"For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land.  The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children.  This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine.  It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: 'We desire death like you desire life.'"

When Hamas employed this dead baby strategy against Israel, it was a resounding success.  Despite the fact that Hamas deliberately fired rockets from schoolyards, hospitals and densely populated civilian areas, the international community blamed Israel for trying to prevent rockets from attacking its civilians by targeting the rockets and occasionally killing civilians.  It was Israel, rather than Hamas, that was accused of "war crimes," even though it is clearly a war crime to use civilians as human shields.  Israel had little choice but to protect its own citizens against rocket attacks, but the world focused not on the moral correctness of Israel's decisions, but rather on the gruesome pictures of dead Palestinians babies, even though some of them were actually caused by errant Palestinian rockets.

President Assad of Syria has apparently learned this lesson well and is now prepared to act on it.  This will once again put a democracy, this time the United States, to a difficult choice: forego legitimate military targets, thereby increasing the likelihood that Syria will continue to gas its own citizens; or attack these military targets, inevitably causing some civilian casualties and playing into the hands of Syria's dead baby strategy.

If the media and the international community continue to enable these tyrannical regimes by falling for this cynical dead baby strategy, it will continue and expand in scope.  It's a win-win strategy for tyrants who don't care about their own civilians, and a lose-lose strategy for democracies that do.

Another reason why this strategy succeeds is that the world seems to care far less about civilian deaths caused by Arab and Muslim nations against their own citizens than deaths caused by Western democracies.  If American bombs were to kill 100 Syrian civilians, there would be more outcry than when 100,000 Syrians, including tens of thousands of civilians, have been killed by Syrian forces on both sides of this civil war.  This is pure and simple racism, holding Western democracies to a higher standard than Muslim tyrannies and theocracies.  It's is an old story, but it will once again rear its bigoted head when and if American forces kill Syrian civilians who were deliberately placed in harm's way as human shields by the Syrian regime.

To stop this once and for all, the international community and the media must place the blame for these dead babies where it belongs:  on the shoulders of tyrants who deliberately use their own civilians as human shields.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Syria rips off Israeli hasbara cartoon

Seen on Twitter:

The (almost certainly) original:

(I have seen a Pakistani version against India, but the Israeli one seems to pre-date it; the arm patch looks much more natural in the Israeli one. It seems likely, however, that the Syrians ripped off the Pakistani rip-off; the Pakistani version had writing on the helmet that was poorly covered over in the Syrian version.)

This has also been a recurring cartoon theme for years in Israel; for example, this:

The irony of Syria, a state that has supported terror since the 1950s, complaining about terrorists hiding behind babies is almost too obvious to mention.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Phillip Smyth)

ISRAEL MATZAV: UN slams use of child soldiers, forgets 'Palestinian' 'human shields' and child combatants

Commendably (for a change), the United Nations has slammed the use of child soldiers in Syria and in several other countries. Regrettably, they left out the use of children as 'human shields' (above) and combatants (below) by the 'Palestinians' and other terror organizations. 

The report issued after Ban's special envoy for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, visited Syria in December said thousands of children have been killed in the violence, "while thousands more have seen family members killed or injured."

The report also said children are recruited, killed, maimed or raped by government forces and armed groups in Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen, as well as by armed groups in Mali, Colombia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Iraq and the Central African Republic.

The United Nations considers anyone aged under 18 to be a child.

Ban said that in Syria, torture and ill-treatment of children accused of associating with opposition forces was a worrying trend.

"There were a number of accounts of sexual violence against boys to obtain information or a confession by the state forces, largely but not exclusively by members of the state intelligence services and the Syrian armed forces," the report said.

"Child detainees, largely boys and as young as 14 years old, suffered similar or identical methods of tortures as adults, including electric shock, beatings, stress positions and threats and acts of sexual torture," it said.

Armed opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, were also accused of using children, generally aged 15 to 17 years old, both in combat and in support roles, such as ferrying food and water and loading cartridges, the report said.

"From accounts received, child association with the Free Syrian Army is often linked to an older relative facilitating recruitment or in instances in which the child has lost all members of his or her family," it said.

 But the United Nations 'forgot' (more likely didn't want to mention) the use of children as 'human shields' by 'Palestinian' terror organizations like Fatah and Hamas.

The picture at the bottom is of 'Palestinian' kids coming right up to the border fence with Israel on November 23, 2012.

And then there's this use of a child.

Let's go to the videotape.



But silly me. In the UN's book, it's okay for the 'Palestinians' to use children in combat and as 'human shields.' After all, the 'Palestinians' are a 'liberation movement.'

What could go wrong?

ELDER OF ZIYON: Video of Palestinian Arabs attacking IDF - from behind journalists This exposes both the depravity of using journalists as human shields, and of journalists allowing themselves to be used in such a way.

UCI Says HOLD HAMAS ACCOUNTABLE!

The Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI) is calling for the international community to hold Hamas accountable for it's many war crimes against Israeli civilian populations as well as against their own people. Arabs in Gaza suffer under Hamas which routinely uses them as human shields through the placement and firing of terrorist missiles from heavily populated areas within Gaza. When Israelis attempt to defend their citizens in Beersheva, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the world has ignored this blatant abuse of the Gazan population.

Clare Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East and Senior Fellow of the Center for Security policy in Washington DC. She stated.. 

"We should be stating explicitly that what HAMAS has done constitutes war crimes under international law, against its own people as well as the Israelis... deliberately locating offensive military assets like weapons depots, factories, and launch sites within and next to civilian population centers in violation of international law."

Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/?p=8762

Hamas are Proud to Use their Civilians as Human Shields!

Hamas are Proud to Use their Civilians as Human Shields!

Hamas' Tactic: Require Israel to Cause Civilian Casualties by Alan M. Dershowitz

As the rockets continue to fall in Israel and Gaza, it is important to understand Hamas's tactic and how the international community and the media are encouraging it. Hamas's tactic is as simple as it is criminal and brutal. Its leaders know that by repeatedly firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, they will give Israel no choice but to respond. Israel's response will target the rockets and those sending them. In order to maximize their own civilian casualties, and thereby earn the sympathy of the international community and media, Hamas leaders deliberately fire their rockets from densely populated civilian areas. The Hamas fighters hide in underground bunkers but Hamas refuses to provide any shelter for its own civilians, whom they use as "human shields." This unlawful tactic puts Israel to a tragic choice: simply allow Hamas rockets to continue to target Israeli cities and towns; or respond to the rockets, with inevitable civilian casualties among the Palestinian "human shields."

Every democracy would choose the latter option if presented with a similar choice. Although Israel goes to great efforts to reduce civilian casualties, the Hamas tactic is designed to maximize them. The international community and the media must understand this and begin to blame Hamas, rather than Israel, for the Palestinian civilians who are killed by Israeli rockets but whose deaths are clearly part of the Hamas tactic.

Every reasonable commentator has agreed with President Obama that Hamas started this battle by firing thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every reasonable commentator also agrees with President Obama that Israel has the right to defend its citizens. But many commentators fault Israel for causing Palestinian civilian casualties. But what is Israel's option, other than to simply allow rockets to be aimed at its own women and children. As President Obama observed when he went to Sderot as a candidate:

The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if…somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.

Israel should continue to make every effort to reduce civilian casualties, both because that is the humane thing to do and because it serves their interests. But so long as Hamas continues to fire rockets from densely populated civilian areas, rather than from the many open areas outside of Gaza City, this cynical tactic—which constitutes a double war crime—will guarantee that some Palestinian women and children will be killed. And the Hamas leadership prepares for this gruesome certainty by arranging for the dead babies to be paraded in front of the international media. In one such case, the Palestinian radicals posted a video of a dead baby who turned out to have been killed in Syria by the Assad government, and in another case, they displayed the body of a baby who had been killed by a Hamas rocket that misfired, falsely claiming that it had been the victim of an Israeli rocket.

As Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan has said, the Israeli Army does "more to safeguard civilians than any Army in the history of warfare." This includes dropping leaflets, making phone calls and providing other warnings to civilian residents of Gaza City. But Hamas refuses to provide shelter for its civilians, deliberately exposing them to the risks associated with warfare, while it shelters its own fighters in underground bunkers.

The Hamas tactic is also designed to prevent Israel from making peace with the Palestinian Authority. Even Israeli doves are concerned that if Israel ends its occupation of the West Bank, Hamas may take over that territory, as it took over Gaza shortly after Israel ended its occupation of that area. The West Bank is much closer to Israel's major population centers than Gaza. If Hamas were to fire rockets from the West Bank at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Israel would then have to respond militarily, as it has in Gaza. Once again, civilians would be killed, thus provoking international outcry against Israel.

What we are seeing in Gaza today is a replay of what happened in 2008 and 2009, when Israel went into Gaza to stop the rocket fire. The result was the Goldstone report which put the blame squarely on Israel. This benighted report—condemned by most thoughtful people, and eventually even critiqued by Goldstone himself—has encouraged Hamas to go back to the tactic that resulted in international condemnation of Israel. This tactic will persist as long as the international community and the media persist in blaming Israel for civilian deaths caused by a deliberate Hamas tactic.