I feel really irritated by this human shields narrative, mostly because it is so stupid and baseless that I honestly don't know how to address people who believe it. I feel the same way now as I did when the world was bombarded with this crap in 2014.
How can anyone read into any aspect of the conflict on any day and come to the honest conclusion that the IDF's campaign is justified, all because every Palestinian civilian fatality is a "human shield"? How come I've never heard a Zionist provide a concrete definition of a human shield?
Human shields have been used in conflicts before. The example that comes to mind for me is in former Yugoslavia when Bosnian Serb forces held UN peacekeepers as hostages inside barracks to deter NATO from bombing them. That is a legitimate example of a human shield. In this example, the hostages deterred bombing, and there were also negotiations which took place to secure the release of those UN hostages.
In contrast in Gaza, any civilian who dies from a bombing is retrospectively labelled as a "human shield", and most of the time no information is provided as to who the target of the bombing was, nor whether civilians were forced to remain in the vicinity of said target. We are just expected to believe that all hit buildings surrounding the hospitals they terrorise contained a legitimate military target. Same with bakeries. Same with ambulances. Same with refugee camps. Surely that is evidence enough that they're not human shields? If the Israeli forces are not deterred by these "human shields", then they either cease to be or never were, human shields.
Whenever they drop a bomb, the whole world is just expected to believe that the civilian wasn't a civilian, or that the building was a Hamas base, or that it contained rockets, or that there was a tunnel entrance inside the building, or that there is a tunnel somewhere underneath it, or that it was used to fire rockets. The term "human shield" in this context has something to do with skewing the validity of all of the victims.
I feel really irritated by this human shields narrative, mostly because it is so stupid and baseless that I honestly don't know how to address people who believe it. I feel the same way now as I did when the world was bombarded with this crap in 2014.
How can anyone read into any aspect of the conflict on any day and come to the honest conclusion that the IDF's campaign is justified, all because every Palestinian civilian fatality is a "human shield"? How come I've never heard a Zionist provide a concrete definition of a human shield?
Human shields have been used in conflicts before. The example that comes to mind for me is in former Yugoslavia when Bosnian Serb forces held UN peacekeepers as hostages inside barracks to deter NATO from bombing them. That is a legitimate example of a human shield. In this example, the hostages deterred bombing, and there were also negotiations which took place to secure the release of those UN hostages.
In contrast in Gaza, any civilian who dies from a bombing is retrospectively labelled as a "human shield", and most of the time no information is provided as to who the target of the bombing was, nor whether civilians were forced to remain in the vicinity of said target. We are just expected to believe that all hit buildings surrounding the hospitals they terrorise contained a legitimate military target. Same with bakeries. Same with ambulances. Same with refugee camps. Surely that is evidence enough that they're not human shields? If the Israeli forces are not deterred by these "human shields", then they either cease to be or never were, human shields.
Whenever they drop a bomb, the whole world is just expected to believe that the civilian wasn't a civilian, or that the building was a Hamas base, or that it contained rockets, or that there was a tunnel entrance inside the building, or that there is a tunnel somewhere underneath it, or that it was used to fire rockets. The term "human shield" in this context has something to do with skewing the validity of all of the victims.