I hate Hamas but the way Israel is dealing with this is horrible.
It doesn’t have to black and white or antisemitic to say that.
And yes, Hamas is playing an asymmetrical game and using the rules of engagement as a shield, but that’s still not an excuse for leveling entire cities and indiscriminately killing civilians, or blocking aid that you could instead be supervising.
The main thing is that Isreal intentionally blocked and prevented critical aid from reaching a starving population of civilians. Thats the core of the genocide case because it demonstrates motive and intentionality to hurt only the civilian population. The report that revealed this was what flipped my opinion from supporting isreals response and war objectives.
People call bombing buildings and killing civilians genocide but its an expected part of this type of war. If the enemy hides among the civilian population you can kill the civilian population. If the enemy hides in buildings and booby traps them, you can destroy the buildings.
Bibi is a fascist authoritarian, a war criminal, and is so corrupt he’s facing jail when he leaves office. He is no better than Hamas.
Zionism is literally religious nationalism — which shouldn’t be tolerated by ANY religion — therefore Israel IS a fascist state. Society needs to stop acting like it’s okay for the abused to become the abuser because they were abused. It was never okay, and it still isn’t.
He’s fucking worst. Hamas is only this powerful because the secular resistance (the Fatah) agreed to give up armed struggle in exchange for self-determination and got area C and settler violence instead?
He is never leaving office. In the very unlikely event that the Israeli people start to turn on him I am like 90% sure he will try to pull off a coup and/or a false flag op rather than leave peacefully and face the music
Really? The only “evidence” I’ve seen of Palestine using human shields is Israeli accusations, while I’ve seen multiple instances of video evidence, taken by Israel itself, of the IDF doing it.
You can make an extremely compelling argument about the horrors that the govt of Israel and the IDF are doing without resorting to obvious falsehoods made in defence of Hamas.
I’m not saying we need to adopt some “all sides bad” enlightened centrism bullshit. If you want to focus only on the atrocities of the govt of Israel because that’s your passion: go for it. Call them out for what they are.
But please don’t defend Hamas or pretend they aren’t also committing atrocities. They do use human shields, constantly. And the atrocities done by Hamas do not take away from the absolute horrors of what the government of Israel is actively committing.
When these falsehoods emerge, it makes the argument against Israel appear delusional and undercuts your implied objective. And it’s not necessary! There is so much widespread harm that we can point to, we don’t need spread falsehoods for that.
Speaking of obvious falsehoods, I’m going to ask you to provide a single verifiable report of Hamas using human shields from anyone not directly tied to the Israeli state.
Not the distortion of humanitarian law which assumes that the mere presence of unarmed people suspected of being affiliated with Hamas means any civilians around them are “shields”, because unarmed people regardless of affiliation are not lawful combatants.
Not the absurd claim that suspected tunnels underneath civilians justify the massacre of those civilians in order to target military infrastructure.
Not the unverified testimonies of people with a history of fabricating lies on behalf of the Israeli government.
Just any single instance of someone in Hamas forcing a nearby civilian to endanger their life on their behalf, from a source that is not ultimately the Israeli government or military itself.
Quoting from the UN report “Anatomy of a genocide”, I have edited out the annotations but there are sources for every single one of the claims listed if you would like to verify yourself:
IHL strictly prohibits the use of human shields. Their use constitutes a war crime, as it violates the duty to protect the civilian population from dangers arising from military operations. When human shields are used, the attacking party must take into account the risk to civilians. Indiscriminate or disproportionate harm to civilians remains unlawful and the civilian population can never be targeted.
Israel has accused Palestinian armed groups of deliberately using civilians as human shields in previous aggressions on Gaza (including in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022). It also used it to justify high civilian casualties and attacks against paramedics, journalists and others during the 2018–2019 ‘Great March of Return’. UN independent fact-finding missions and reputable human rights organizations have consistently challenged these allegations, sometimes concluding that evidence of human shields had been fabricated. Nevertheless, Israel has used these accusations – sometimes then retracted – to justify widespread and systematic killing of Palestinian civilians in its ongoing assault.
After 7 October, this macro-characterization of Gaza’s civilians as a population of human shields has reached unprecedented levels, with Israel’s top-ranking political and military leaders consistently framing civilians as either Hamas operatives, “accomplices”, or human shields among whom Hamas is “embedded”. In November, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs defined “the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields” and accused Hamas of using “the civilian population as human shields”. The Ministry defines armed groups fighting from urban areas as deliberately “embedded” in the population to such an extent that it “cannot be concluded from the mere fact that seeming ‘civilians’ or ‘civilian objects’ have been targeted, that an attack was unlawful”. Two rhetorical elements of this key legal policy document indicate the intention to transform the entire Gaza population and its infrastructures of life into a ‘legitimate’ targetable shield: the use of the all-encompassing the combined with the quotation marks to qualify civilians and civilian objects. Israel has thus sought to camouflage genocidal intent with humanitarian law jargon.
International law does not permit the blanket claim that an opposing force is using the entire population as human shields en bloc. Any such usage must be assessed and established on a case-by-case basis before each individual attack. The crime of using human shields occurs when the use of civilians or civilian objects to impede attacks on lawful targets is the result of a deliberate tactical choice, not merely arising from the nature of the battlefield, such as hostilities in densely populated urban terrain.
Nevertheless, Israeli authorities have characterized churches, mosques, schools, UN facilities, universities, hospitals and ambulances as connected with Hamas to reinforce the perception of a population characterized as broadly ‘complicit’ and therefore killable. Significant numbers of Palestinian civilians are defined as human shields simply by being in “proximity to” potential Israeli targets. Israel has thus transformed Gaza into a “world without civilians” in which “everything from taking shelter in hospitals to fleeing for safety is declared a form of human shielding”. The accusation of using human shields has thus become a pretext, justifying the killing of civilians under a cloak of purported legality, whose all-enveloping pervasiveness admits only of genocidal intent.
Speaking of obvious falsehoods, I’m going to ask you to provide a single verifiable report of Hamas using human shields from anyone not directly tied to the Israeli state.
The part of your question that I bolder here shows that you’re well aware that as I stated, Hamas uses human shields frequently. You just think that’s it’s justifiable, and you’re free to do that.
But don’t say it doesn’t happen. It happens every day.
No, I am well aware that the Israeli state has a long and well documented history of lying and fabricating evidence to support its genocidal goals. Just because Israel defines the entire civilian population as human shields does not make it so.
As I suspected, you will be unable to provide any independent sources or imagery of Hamas militants engaging in anything that would be recognized as human shielding under international law.
Conversely, I can provide several different examples from several different sources, which paint a clear and ongoingpicture of flagrant war crimes being perpetrated by Israel. This is just the stuff that more closely aligns with “human shields”, using civilians, as well as civilian structures, uniforms, and vehicles, for protection. Israel has been openly violating international law for decades, their disregard for Palestinian life and basic human rights is excruciatingly well documented.
You’ll note that most of these articles do parrot all the lines from Israeli officials as their editorial boards force them to, some even repeat the claims of Hamas using human shields, but you will find none of those are tied to anything but Israeli testimonials. It’s reported matter-of-factly without a shred of evidence. The Israeli crimes however, usually include video or photographic evidence of them being perpetrated.
Surely if the practice of human shielding was common for Hamas, it should be easy enough for you to provide at least one photo or video of this happening, right? All I ask is that you provide one such example, anything that shows this actually happening that isn’t just an Israeli official, civilian, or militant saying it’s happening. If it’s common, it should not be hard to do.
Bruh it’s happened so much there’s an Israeli High Court case that specifically forbids the practice. Hasn’t prevented the practice, there are multiple documented instances, from different conflicts, that the Jewish group B’Tslem has a white paper on just the subject of IDF using human shields:
…soldiers have ordered Palestinians to:
-enter buildings to check if they are booby-trapped, or to remove the occupants
-remove suspicious objects from roads used by the army
-stand inside houses where soldiers have set up military positions, so that Palestinians will not fire at the soldiers
-walk in front of soldiers to shield them from gunfire, while the soldiers hold a gun behind their backs and sometimes fire over their shoulders.
The soldiers in the field did not initiate this practice; rather, the use of human shields is an integral part of the orders they receive.
I am not saying that Israel and the IDF have not used human shields. They absolutely do and you’re 100% correct to condemn this. And I join you in this condemnation.
What am also saying is that people should stop lying in order to defend Hamas. Because you can condemn the govt of Israel without doing that. And the condemnation is more compelling when it’s not accompanied with lies of convenience.
Your comment here being a good example of how that’s done properly. Everything you said is true and it paints a damning picture that is impossible to argue against.
Listen idiot, Gaza is the size of Manhattan with the same density. Israel can blow your entire neighborhood simply because they suspect a hamas goon will be there. They’re using “human shield” simply by being alive and not standing on a hill so they can conveniently be killed.
I have repeatedly and consistently agreed that Israel uses human shields, because it is true.
You know just as well as I do that Hamas uses their own people as human shields. Their entire operation is to hide amongst their civilian population and infrastructure and use that as cover to attack and kill.
The difference is that you agree with the objectives of Hamas, and so you don’t want to acknowledge the horrors of the tactics they use. Seeing the situation as black and white with “your side” as the unassailable heroes and the “other side” as villains.
But I reject this childish outlook, because it’s not a movie it’s real life. The govt of Israel are indeed villains, but so are Hamas.
What atrocities? You would think if it was actually bad Israel would allow freedom of press in Palestine. How many reporters have been injured or killed, and by whom?
Yep it’s actually Israel that has routinely and systematically employed captured Palestinians as human shields. For some background, there is this recent article in Haaretz stemming from anonymous IDF soldier reports, titled “In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves”.
If anyone is distorting rules of engagement and humanitarian law, it’s actually Israel. Something that has come up again and again, especially in the writing of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, is the concept of “humanitarian camouflage” and how the Israeli state has very deliberately misused terms of international humanitarian law to cynically redefine civilian people, structures, and infrastructure as military targets. I am going to quote from an article she co-authored (available here):
The article analyzes the components of this humanitarian camouflage, unveiling how it has been deployed by Israel as a legal-political strategy in the service of a war of total annihilation. We start by examining how, since October 7, Israel has justified its genocidal campaign in Gaza using two registers: on one hand, a brutal register of dehumanization of the Palestinian population of Gaza, construed as a terrorist population to be eliminated; on the other hand—and simultaneously—a liberal register to legitimize its eliminationist violence in the face of its international allies’ audience, disguising it as compliance with IHL.
We then expand the analysis of the second register, showing how the Israeli military, mimicking IHL language, has construed the entirety of the built-up areas of Gaza as a continuum of alleged military objectives, reclaiming the ‘right’ to ‘lawfully’ raze houses, schools, mosques, churches, hospitals, entire neighborhoods, and entire cities to the ground, including the infrastructures indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, rendering the living space of the victim group unlivable. Subsequently, we examine how lethal distortions of the IHL concept of proportionality and collateral damage have been functional in construing entire masses of civilians as killable surroundings of military objectives with a diminished, or non-existent, right to life.
The analysis continues by showing how an array of IHL concepts like safe zones, evacuations, human shields, and “hospital shields” have been mobilized by Israel as technologies of settler-colonial displacement and genocide, creating conditions of life leading to the destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians “in whole or in part.” The article concludes by arguing that the settler-colonial genocidal war against Gaza, and Israel’s marshalling of international humanitarian law to legitimize it, ultimately shows that the international order has reached a tipping point whereby political acquiescence towards Israel and its legitimization as an international law-abiding state eviscerates the key legal tools the international community has developed to prevent international crimes. If tolerated, condoned, and unpunished, this process may inaugurate a new era of mass atrocities against protected groups in the Global South, in which big powers will be able to portray genocides as ‘incidental’ and ‘proportionate’ means to achieve their war aims.
I highly recommend reading the three reports issued by the UN on these matters, “Genocide as colonial erasure” which focuses more on historical context, “Anatomy of a genocide” which covers more of the present patterns of conflict, and finally “More than a human can bear” which covers the widespread and systematic use of gendered and sexual violence inflicted on Palestinians.
I hate Hamas but the way Israel is dealing with this is horrible.
It doesn’t have to black and white or antisemitic to say that.
And yes, Hamas is playing an asymmetrical game and using the rules of engagement as a shield, but that’s still not an excuse for leveling entire cities and indiscriminately killing civilians, or blocking aid that you could instead be supervising.
The main thing is that Isreal intentionally blocked and prevented critical aid from reaching a starving population of civilians. Thats the core of the genocide case because it demonstrates motive and intentionality to hurt only the civilian population. The report that revealed this was what flipped my opinion from supporting isreals response and war objectives.
People call bombing buildings and killing civilians genocide but its an expected part of this type of war. If the enemy hides among the civilian population you can kill the civilian population. If the enemy hides in buildings and booby traps them, you can destroy the buildings.
You hate the only armed force defending people who have been genocided for decades?
Lol OK scumbag
Bibi is a fascist authoritarian, a war criminal, and is so corrupt he’s facing jail when he leaves office. He is no better than Hamas.
Zionism is literally religious nationalism — which shouldn’t be tolerated by ANY religion — therefore Israel IS a fascist state. Society needs to stop acting like it’s okay for the abused to become the abuser because they were abused. It was never okay, and it still isn’t.
“No better?”
He’s fucking worst. Hamas is only this powerful because the secular resistance (the Fatah) agreed to give up armed struggle in exchange for self-determination and got area C and settler violence instead?
He is never leaving office. In the very unlikely event that the Israeli people start to turn on him I am like 90% sure he will try to pull off a coup and/or a false flag op rather than leave peacefully and face the music
that’s why he needs this war to keep going and the genocide to continue
And that’s why we should bomb tel aviv
The only people using human shields are the IDF
Dude, both sides are committing these war crimes
But the number of crimes is magnitudes greater committed by the Israelis
Really? The only “evidence” I’ve seen of Palestine using human shields is Israeli accusations, while I’ve seen multiple instances of video evidence, taken by Israel itself, of the IDF doing it.
This is unquestionably false.
You can make an extremely compelling argument about the horrors that the govt of Israel and the IDF are doing without resorting to obvious falsehoods made in defence of Hamas.
I’m not saying we need to adopt some “all sides bad” enlightened centrism bullshit. If you want to focus only on the atrocities of the govt of Israel because that’s your passion: go for it. Call them out for what they are.
But please don’t defend Hamas or pretend they aren’t also committing atrocities. They do use human shields, constantly. And the atrocities done by Hamas do not take away from the absolute horrors of what the government of Israel is actively committing.
When these falsehoods emerge, it makes the argument against Israel appear delusional and undercuts your implied objective. And it’s not necessary! There is so much widespread harm that we can point to, we don’t need spread falsehoods for that.
Speaking of obvious falsehoods, I’m going to ask you to provide a single verifiable report of Hamas using human shields from anyone not directly tied to the Israeli state.
Not the distortion of humanitarian law which assumes that the mere presence of unarmed people suspected of being affiliated with Hamas means any civilians around them are “shields”, because unarmed people regardless of affiliation are not lawful combatants.
Not the absurd claim that suspected tunnels underneath civilians justify the massacre of those civilians in order to target military infrastructure.
Not the unverified testimonies of people with a history of fabricating lies on behalf of the Israeli government.
Just any single instance of someone in Hamas forcing a nearby civilian to endanger their life on their behalf, from a source that is not ultimately the Israeli government or military itself.
Quoting from the UN report “Anatomy of a genocide”, I have edited out the annotations but there are sources for every single one of the claims listed if you would like to verify yourself:
The part of your question that I bolder here shows that you’re well aware that as I stated, Hamas uses human shields frequently. You just think that’s it’s justifiable, and you’re free to do that.
But don’t say it doesn’t happen. It happens every day.
No, I am well aware that the Israeli state has a long and well documented history of lying and fabricating evidence to support its genocidal goals. Just because Israel defines the entire civilian population as human shields does not make it so.
As I suspected, you will be unable to provide any independent sources or imagery of Hamas militants engaging in anything that would be recognized as human shielding under international law.
Conversely, I can provide several different examples from several different sources, which paint a clear and ongoing picture of flagrant war crimes being perpetrated by Israel. This is just the stuff that more closely aligns with “human shields”, using civilians, as well as civilian structures, uniforms, and vehicles, for protection. Israel has been openly violating international law for decades, their disregard for Palestinian life and basic human rights is excruciatingly well documented.
You’ll note that most of these articles do parrot all the lines from Israeli officials as their editorial boards force them to, some even repeat the claims of Hamas using human shields, but you will find none of those are tied to anything but Israeli testimonials. It’s reported matter-of-factly without a shred of evidence. The Israeli crimes however, usually include video or photographic evidence of them being perpetrated.
Surely if the practice of human shielding was common for Hamas, it should be easy enough for you to provide at least one photo or video of this happening, right? All I ask is that you provide one such example, anything that shows this actually happening that isn’t just an Israeli official, civilian, or militant saying it’s happening. If it’s common, it should not be hard to do.
Bruh it’s happened so much there’s an Israeli High Court case that specifically forbids the practice. Hasn’t prevented the practice, there are multiple documented instances, from different conflicts, that the Jewish group B’Tslem has a white paper on just the subject of IDF using human shields:
I am not saying that Israel and the IDF have not used human shields. They absolutely do and you’re 100% correct to condemn this. And I join you in this condemnation.
What am also saying is that people should stop lying in order to defend Hamas. Because you can condemn the govt of Israel without doing that. And the condemnation is more compelling when it’s not accompanied with lies of convenience.
Your comment here being a good example of how that’s done properly. Everything you said is true and it paints a damning picture that is impossible to argue against.
Listen idiot, Gaza is the size of Manhattan with the same density. Israel can blow your entire neighborhood simply because they suspect a hamas goon will be there. They’re using “human shield” simply by being alive and not standing on a hill so they can conveniently be killed.
Except that they provided actual evidence of Israel using human shields, while all you’ve done is go “trust me bro, Israel would never lie to you”
I have repeatedly and consistently agreed that Israel uses human shields, because it is true.
You know just as well as I do that Hamas uses their own people as human shields. Their entire operation is to hide amongst their civilian population and infrastructure and use that as cover to attack and kill.
The difference is that you agree with the objectives of Hamas, and so you don’t want to acknowledge the horrors of the tactics they use. Seeing the situation as black and white with “your side” as the unassailable heroes and the “other side” as villains.
But I reject this childish outlook, because it’s not a movie it’s real life. The govt of Israel are indeed villains, but so are Hamas.
I see that there are still no links to evidence of Hamas using human shields in your post, and so I’m not reading it.
Citation needed.
That’s a recent article. You may not have seen it.
Summary: every IDF group has a prisoner assigned to it.
It’s a bit of hard read but it’s out there.
What atrocities? You would think if it was actually bad Israel would allow freedom of press in Palestine. How many reporters have been injured or killed, and by whom?
They’re not, for the most part. This is Israeli propaganda that really took hold, but there was never any evidence for the human shields stuff.
Yep it’s actually Israel that has routinely and systematically employed captured Palestinians as human shields. For some background, there is this recent article in Haaretz stemming from anonymous IDF soldier reports, titled “In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves”.
If anyone is distorting rules of engagement and humanitarian law, it’s actually Israel. Something that has come up again and again, especially in the writing of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, is the concept of “humanitarian camouflage” and how the Israeli state has very deliberately misused terms of international humanitarian law to cynically redefine civilian people, structures, and infrastructure as military targets. I am going to quote from an article she co-authored (available here):
I highly recommend reading the three reports issued by the UN on these matters, “Genocide as colonial erasure” which focuses more on historical context, “Anatomy of a genocide” which covers more of the present patterns of conflict, and finally “More than a human can bear” which covers the widespread and systematic use of gendered and sexual violence inflicted on Palestinians.
You realize Hamas is a government, right?
They employ social workers, civil engineers, etc.
Its fine to hate their military, but dont hate the guy picking up the garbage or laying water mains.
I hate the taliban too, and they’re a government.
I don’t have anything against the common Palestinian just trying to live their life or working in the hospitals.
I think it’s very clear who the problem people are.
Yeah, the ones running Israel
Who?