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human shields
New Reporting Details 'Large Scale' Use of Human Shields by Israel in Gaza
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," one human rights expert said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
Nov 04, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces routinely use detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, according to testimony from four Palestinians and one IDF soldier shared withThe Washington Post.
Their stories, published on Sunday, build on other accounts from Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the international press, and Defense for Children International to reveal a pattern of Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinians—including children—to enter buildings or tunnels ahead of them to check for militants or explosives, in clear violation of international law.
"This wasn't something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places," Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, told The Washington Post.
"My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The incidents recounted to the Post occurred between January and August. One man, 20-year-old Mohammed Saad, said he was detained by the IDF in June and interrogated for several days. Then, a new pattern began. Every day, he and two other Palestinian men were blindfolded and taken to a different location. They were made to wear IDF uniforms, given cameras, and told to enter buildings ahead of the Israeli soldiers to film and check for explosives. On the second day, an explosion went off after Saad had made his forced investigation.
"They tied my hands and threw me on the sand," he recalled. "They took turns beating me. I still don't know where the explosion came from."
Another time, the captain of the unit he was detained by showed him an image of his family home destroyed by bombing.
"If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this," the captain said.
On the 15th day of Saab's ordeal, he was given civilian clothes and told to walk. As he did so, he felt a pain and realized he had been shot in the back.
The other three Palestinians interviewed by the Post were detained during the IDF's raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in March. One was a surgeon at the hospital, while the other two were taken from their homes nearby. They were made to enter the hospital building ahead of IDF troops, remove any barriers, and take pictures of each room they entered.
"I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here," the surgeon, Omar al-Jadba recalled to the Post. "My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands."
The IDF soldier, who spoke anonymously, said that two Palestinian detainees were placed with his unit to make sure that buildings were safe to enter. One of them was only a teenager. His commander said the two men were terrorists, but then later said they could be released after the mission was over.
"At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists," the soldier, a reservist, told the Post. "The officer just lied to us."
"Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Another group of soldiers questioned the use of human shields, telling a higher-level commander that it was against international law.
"He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF," the soldier told the Post.
However, the IDF said in a statement that its orders prohibit the use of human shields.
Breaking the Silence, a group that records testimonies from Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the reservist's account was in line with others they had received.
"The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began," Carmel said. "The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer."
The
Post reporting came the same day as a major Associated Press investigation into Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza at the end of 2023. Israel has often justified its hospital raids with the claim that Hamas operates from the inside, turning all the patients and doctors into human shields. However, the AP concluded that
"Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence at the three" hospitals it considered: the al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals.
"What do [former U.S. President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have in common?" asked journalist Mehdi Hasan in response to the Post's reporting. "Many things but especially... projection. Every one of their accusations is a confession."
Other commenters responded to the clear violations of international law and questioned why the U.S. continues to provide weapons and funding to the IDF while it engages in war crimes.
The Austin for Palestine coalition shared a quote from the article, noting that what it described was "paid for by our tax dollars."
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Israel's Use of Human Shields in Gaza Sparks Calls for US Probe
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses," the head of one Muslim American advocacy group said.
Oct 21, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces' use of Palestinians—who are often handcuffed and forced to wear IDF uniforms—as human shields prompted the leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Monday to call on the Biden administration to investigate what experts say is a war crime by the No. 1 recipient of American military aid.
International law prohibits the use of combatants or civilians as human shields. However, numerous reports have emerged during Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza—which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case led by South Africa—of IDF troops forcing captured Palestinians, including children, to protect Israeli forces in life-threatening situations.
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses by military forces that receive weapons paid for by American taxpayers and used against a civilian population," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
"These abuses, and the obvious and open ethnic cleansing of Gaza, violate our nation's laws," Awad added. "The Biden administration's complicity with this genocide stains our national reputation and will haunt our diplomats for generations to come when they are told to 'remember Gaza' whenever they bring up the subject of human rights."
International media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Britain's The Guardian, and The New York Times have reported how Israel uses abducted Palestinian militants and civilians to proceed ahead of IDF troops in underground tunnels and buildings in order to protect their captors during life-threatening missions.
In May, a report published by Defense for Children International-Palestine revealed that Palestinian minors are forced to walk ahead of IDF soldiers during dangerous raids. Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"It's hard to recognize them. They're usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they're always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks," Haaretzreported in August. But upon closer examination, "you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear."
According to an Al Jazeeraarticle published Sunday:
By dressing Palestinian civilians in Israeli military uniforms and casting them as combatants the Israeli military purposefully conceals their vulnerability. It deploys them as shields not to deter Palestinian fighters from striking Israeli soldiers, but rather to draw their fire and thus reveal their location, allowing the Israeli troops to launch a counterattack and kill the fighters. The moment these human shields, masked as soldiers, are sent into the tunnels, they are transformed from vulnerable civilians into fodder.
One 35-year-old Palestinian man, who declined to be identified by his real name for fear of his life, told The Guardian that "the Israeli soldiers put a GPS tracker on my hand and told me: 'If you try to run away, we will shoot you. We will know where you are.'"
"I was asked to go to knock on the doors of four houses and two schools and ask people to leave—women and children first and then the men," he added. "At one of the schools, the situation was very dangerous. I shouted to everyone in the school to leave quietly, but at that moment there was heavy shooting by the Israeli army and I thought I was going to die."
Former IDF soldiers told The New York Times that IDF commanders instructed them that "the lives of terrorists were worth less than those of Israelis—even though officers often concluded their detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charge."
Israel denies it uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, despite video evidence of IDF troops doing so in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.
"The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them," the IDF said in August. "The protocols and orders have been clarified to the troops on the ground."
However, IDF troops have confirmed the practice.
"From what we understand it was a very widely used protocol, meaning there are hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been used as human shields," former IDF sniper Nadav Weiman, who is now a director at Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans' group that exposes war crimes, toldThe Guardian.
"Palestinians are being grabbed from humanitarian corridors inside Gaza... and then they're being brought to different units inside Gaza—regular infantry units, not special forces," Weiman said. "And then those Palestinians are being used as human shields to sweep tunnels and also houses. In some cases, they have a GoPro camera on their chest or on their head and in almost all of the cases, they are cuffed before they are taken into a tunnel or house to sweep and they are dressed in IDF uniform."
The Biden administration provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and shields its ally from international accountability by wielding its United Nations Security Council veto power to block cease-fire resolutions. Administration spokespeople have deflected questions about the IDF's use of human shields by deferring to Israeli investigations in which perpetrators are rarely punished.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Michael Schmitt, a professor of international humanitarian law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, toldThe New York Times last week that "in most cases," what Israel is accused of "constitutes a war crime."
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Investigation Details IDF Use of Gaza Civilians as Booby Trap Detectors
"It's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody," said one IDF soldier who admitted to using Palestinians as human shields.
Aug 13, 2024
Believing that "our lives are more important than their lives," Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.
The report, published Tuesday, features testimonies of IDF soldiers, who said commanders are fully aware of the practice of using captured Palestinians as human shields. One soldier said "there is pride in it," referring to acts considered war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true.'"
The IDF's use of human shields in the current Gaza war first drew widespread international attention following a May report from Defense for Children International-Palestine detailing how minors are forced to walk ahead of Israeli soldiers during dangerous raids.
Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"When I saw the report from Al Jazeera, I said, 'Ah, yes, it's true,'" one IDF conscript who helped use Gazans as human shields told Haaretz. "And then I saw the IDF's response, which totally doesn't reflect reality. It's done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least."
The soldier added that IDF commanders "know that it's not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody."
Another IDF soldier said that "there were times when really old people were made to go into houses."
Yet another soldier said that Palestinian captives are told that if they do one tunnel mission, they'll be set free.
"People began to ask questions, very quickly a mess began about this procedure," one soldier recalled. "Some argued that they weren't willing to carry out operations if it included a Gazan who was forced to sacrifice himself."
"Of course, there were those who supported it, but at least with us there were just a few of them, mostly the commanders who were afraid to deal with the more senior commanders," they added.
Responding to the new report, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that "IDF instructions and orders prohibit the use of Gazan civilians caught in the field for military missions that pose a deliberate risk to their lives."
"The IDF's instructions and orders on the subject have been made clear to the forces," the unit's statement added. "Upon receipt of the request, the allegations were forwarded to the relevant authorities for review."
Israel has been accused of using human shields in wars going back to the founding of the nation in 1948.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction,
according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Numerous subsequent instances of IDF soldiers' use of human shields have gone unpunished.
Palestinian militants including members of Hamas have also been accused of using Palestinians as human shields.
As is the case with the IDF reservists currently accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison, many Israeli government and military officials, as well as journalists and others, have defended the "right" of IDF soldiers to do what they want to Palestinians.
Haaretz explained that "the thinking is that it's better for the Israeli soldiers to remain alive and for the [Palestinians] to be the ones blown up by an explosive device."
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