On human shields
JVL Introduction
In the propaganda war Hamas is accused of hiding among the civilian population, thus – it is argued – making everyone a legitimate target for punitive action.
Neve Gordon points out how militants have always “hidden among civilians in what we now call people’s wars. Given the asymmetry of power between non-state paramilitary groups and national armies, the ability to blend into the civilian population was necessary for military survival.”
So too with Zionism, a fact widely acknowledged within Israel, where more than fifty buildings up and down the country having plaques commemorating how they – schools, synagogues and medical centres – were used to hide combatants and weapons before 1948.
So the significance of the accusation that Hamas uses the civilian population as ‘human shields” is not a protest against barbarous methods of fighting that “we” would never contemplate, but rather a pre-emptive legal defence against accusations that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
It is a way of making all targets military targets, of obliterating any distinction between combatants and civilians.
Needless to say, it undermines the very foundation of international humanitairan law.
RK
This article was originally published by the London Review of Books on Fri 1 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
On human shields
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Israel is what happens when a gang of sadistic psychopaths get together and decide they want to take something, to which they have no right.
Zionists’ genocidal actions cannot be explained by any reference to normal human behaviour, whether that behaviour is in haste, or out of anger causing a loss of control. From the very start of the occupation of Palestine in 1897 or thereabouts, it was always the intention of militant Zionists to drive Palestinians out of Palestine by any method possible, including murder and intimidation. To do it, they had to dehumanise the Arab population, a tactic which they are still using today and was used against Jews in the second world war. What is so disgusting is that there are so many world leaders and people with influence who are either encouraging it, or standing by and watching it happen without lifting a finger to stop it. Instead, they bleat on about ‘Israel’s right of self-defence’ knowing that Israel, instead of being the innocent ‘little Jewish country’, is committing mass murder, orchestrated by war criminals who have yet to be brought to justice.
The language is excessive. Presumably the Israeli population includes sadists and psychopaths to the same degree as other populations. Their conduct in the war is shocking but not abnormal in a colonial war. Britain did thus in its colonial wars: in Africa, Asia,and Australasia; plus, of course, the slave trade. The Israeli tactics are similar to those employed by the French colonialists in Algeria. And the Israelis are also borrowing from the war book of the USA.
Neve Gordon’s article focusses on the hypocrisy of some of Israel’s propaganda tropes. More importantly it rightly identifies the phrase as a way of justifying actions which breach international law and are arguably genocidal.
But the “human shields” notion also implies a clear separation between soldiers and civilians in the adult population, something which does not exist on either side of the conflict. It is therefore not only hypocritical but confusing.
As I sat down to write this comment I read Jack T’s contribution (above), which I consider absurd. Jewish Zionism – I’m not concerned with Christian Zionism – is NOT the product of “a gang of sadistic psychopaths”. (I regret to observe that there are “sadistic psychopaths” in many movements, including ones for national liberation.) Zionism was and is a colonial movement whose success depends on the dispossession of the indigenous population, their elimination or reduction or pacification. Colonial movements are not necessarily led by psychopaths; they are, rather, led by those who think that the interests of their national/racial group are paramount in all circumstances.
Jack, I’d be happier if you put the occupation of Palestine since 1897 in the context of what Britain, France, Germany and other Western nations were doing to carve up Africa and the Middle East by committing mass murder… rather than suggesting that Zionism was down to a group of uniquely sadistic psychopaths. But perhaps you’re just referring to the present Israeli government, in which case no objections. However the logic of settler colonialism everywhere seems always to lead to genocide, and a lot of the people committing the crimes would be considered ‘normal’. That’s the problem, isn’t it?
It has also been stated by
former Israeli PM Ehud Barak
that tunnels (or “bunkers”) were built by Israel when
Gaza was under Israeli control:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVG7duZ-u2U
These were for medical purposes