It's a mind shield
Eating Israel's bullshit whole costs lives
Israel’s barbaric murder of at least 100 civilians in al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital tinges this piece with a greater somberness than initially anticipated.1
A UN-run school was struck separately, killing at least six, and representing just a fraction of the major atrocities by Israel, since Oct 7, in which US and EU leaders are complicit.
Though Israeli savagery should no longer surprise anyone, such calculated abominations – one day, chillingly, after the BBC published the headline: “Does Hamas build tunnels under hospitals and schools?”2 – paralyze comprehension.
The following short analysis of Israeli deception comes with hideous timing, but with enough time, at least, to rein in the tone, a tad, accordingly.
It must be clear by now: it’s not only unethical but inhumane for journalists to take Israeli spin at face value.
Three – yes, three – self-respecting journalists put their names to this sentence last week:
“What’s more, Hamas has a documented history of using civilians as human shields, making it difficult for Israeli forces to avoid killing these civilians.”3 (my emphasis)
It leaped out at these four-eyes because Hamas’s human shields is among the reigning bad-boys, the golden gooses, of all the Mount Sinais of anti-Palestinian propaganda.4
Its gloriousness begins even before it leaves the utterer’s mouth – be it that of Melbourne’s Mark Regev, Glaswegian Richard Hecht, London boy Peter Lerner, or any of Israel’s other aptly non-Middle Eastern spokespeople.
The human shields whopper is so peerless because it’s so packed, pre-birth, to its groaning gills, with one hell of an inbuilt assumption – which is that:
Israel hesitates to harm Arabs.
Once you've finished laughing – I can hear you from here! – note that smearing Hamas, for Palestinians are of lesser morality, of course, whereas Israel respects the laws of war – stop, this is serious! – are in fact secondary to its propaganda genius.
The comedic fantasy Israel cares about Arabs is its essence.
Fair enough, it's hard to imagine Israel – a secular state whose religion is less Judaism and more The Holocaust – loading its own state-decreed untermensch, Palestinians, into cattle cars.
But that being hard to picture may shroud a bleak mindset behind Israel’s colonial project – to which we shall soon return.
Today, nobody across the western establishment dares deny that Serbian forces committed big-g Genocide during the notorious event or events known as the Srebrenica Massacre.5
Nobody, either, from that same establishment disputes a peculiarity of the episode:
The Serbs targeted only males of military age while removing all women, children, and elderly from danger – bussing them away.
That fact is well established, and, at the same time, few fail to identify Srebrenica as anything less than genocide.
And, notably, those forced transfers, in which nobody died, were included in charges of genocide by prosecutors – all leading to multiple convictions, for genocide, of Serb officers.
So what do we call the forced transfer of up to a million people while thousands have been killed – at least 1,000 of them children – in ten days, with, Israel promises, more to come?6
And how the hell are western leaders not only united in support of these shocking crimes – but getting away with that support?
Israel's been starving, torturing, and mass murdering the men, women, and children of Gaza with virtual immunity – not least from the G-word – for decades.
Even though Hamas's Oct 7 bloodbath was inevitable resistance to a blockade and occupation7 – and so, bizarre security lapses aside, responsibility is shared by original sinner Israel – some commentators have hastened to dub it, disgracefully, a pogrom.8
Meanwhile, make no mistake, hardcore genocide – far beyond pogroms, authored fully by Israel, and backed to the hilt by the US and EU – is 100% mainstream today.
The cold supremacism of UK Zio-wacko MP Margaret Hodge – seen here sneering and scowling at the mere mention of Palestinian children – is not fringe nor renegade, but quite the norm, today, across polite society.
The Palestinians, so humbling in their unceasing courage and resilience, have faced countless dark hours before this shadowy ferment.
But never before has the whole spectrum of western leadership united so openly in support of their besiegement, forced displacement and ethnic cleansing, mass deprivation, starvation, murder, and avowed genocide.9
Right now Israel is advancing appalling plans, for whose moment its strategists have been waiting a long time.10
What are we waiting for?
There can be little doubt Israel is responsible for the blast, for many reasons.
But, simply, their panicky counterclaims – with Biden inbound – are so clearly contrived, and, even if the death toll’s far lower than initial estimates, it’s still likely to exceed 100 – way beyond the killing capacity of an Islamic Jihad rocket, failed or not.
Channel 4’s concise investigation is well worth your time: youtu.be/4pAuDA6IOwc?si=uRAVV7NkBEc9kCVe
Al Jazeera compared footage from multiple sources – just listen to the first few seconds, even close your eyes. That’s an Islamic Jihad rocket failing to launch? It’s deeply worrying that Israel can still, after all these years, so easily sow doubt about its own atrocities: youtu.be/yyNLvL_8SeY?si=FJoFnpTEufmCyQKM
Revised reporting of casualties: theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/al-ahli-arab-hospital-gaza-blast-explosion-us-intelligence-report-death-toll-estimate
Note the last word, as ever, is given to Israel, without, as ever, substantiation (and, of course, the scary pic on the Tweet): tiny.cc/txhcvz
x.com/BBCWorld/status/1713936586411311331?s=20
Screenshot: imgur.com/a/i4sD3Ft
The full article’s behind a paywall but the howler is from the intro, posted on Twitter/x: twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1713274967784312937
Screenshot: imgur.com/a/ApYMt6g
The trio are far from the only ones, Robert Goldman, Professor of Law, writes on The Conversation:
“Given Gaza’s urban density, it will be extremely difficult for the Israelis to avoid substantial civilian casualties …
“And this task will be nearly impossible if Hamas, as it has consistently done in the past, uses civilians and now hostages to shield military targets.” (my emphasis)
theconversation.com/how-the-laws-of-war-apply-to-the-conflict-between-israel-and-hamas-215493
The article cites a preposterously credulous “case study” of Hamas’s supposed use of human shields, citing as its only examples a handful of uncorroborated news reports – and multiple single-source claims from the ever-reliable Israeli Defense Forces!
When asked for their source for “Hamas has a documented history of using civilians as human shields,” lead author Michael Shellenberger sent me this:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital
None of the page’s scant claims are corroborated and the most detailed are from Israeli belligerents (rule of thumb: Israel isn’t a great primary, let alone single, source of info on its bitterest enemies).
But its earliest allegation dates to Israel's notorious Operation Cast Lead, which was investigated by The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.
Responding to the standard Israeli claim of Hamas “using medical facilities, vehicles and uniforms as cover for terrorist operations,” the Mission “did not find any evidence to support the allegations made by the Israeli Government”:
ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/12session/A-HRC-12-48.pdf
Stephen Zunes cuts to the chase:
“[D]etailed investigations following the 2008-2009 and 2014 [Gaza] conflicts by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Human Rights Council … have failed to find a single documented case of any civilian deaths caused by Hamas using human shields.
“Not one.”
progressive.org/latest/human-shields-excuse-war-crimes-zunes-210617/
Yet nothing makes more of a mockery of Israel’s human shields refrain than Israel’s own behavior.
During the aforementioned Cast Lead, Israel damaged or destroyed a reported 48% of Gazan health facilities and hospitals:
amnesty.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Failing-Gaza-Report.pdf
During the 2006 Lebanon war – two years before Cast Lead – Israel destroyed two hospitals and seriously damaged 78 medical facilities:
casebook.icrc.org/case-study/israellebanonhezbollah-conflict-2006
“According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) … [d]uring [Cast Lead], Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.”
electronicintifada.net/content/gazas-thin-red-line-one-year-later/8638
ReliefWeb (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs):
‘Between Israel’s 2008/09 assault on Gaza … and its 2014 campaign … Israeli forces damaged and destroyed 32 hospitals and 99 primary care clinics. In the three assaults from 2008, 80 ambulances in Gaza were damaged and destroyed by Israeli forces.’
reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/medical-care-under-siege-israel-s-systematic-violation-gaza-s
Dunno about you, but I've heard of better shields.
However, the use of “human shields” is not, in fact, so mythical, and its having been “documented” happens to be true.
Because – you guessed it – Israel has been employing the diabolical practice for many, many years – as multiple human rights groups have indeed “documented”:
btselem.org/topic/human_shields
breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/?ci=143
hrw.org/news/2007/03/15/israel-stop-forcing-civilians-assist-military-operations
Amnesty International:
‘During Operation “Cast Lead” Israeli forces repeatedly took over Palestinian homes … forcing families to stay in a ground-floor room while they used the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position – effectively using the families, both adults and children, as “human shields” and putting them at risk. While soldiers wore protective body armour and helmets and shielded themselves behind sandbags as they fired from the houses, the Palestinian inhabitants of the houses had no such protection …
‘According to testimonies, in several cases Israeli forces also forced unarmed Palestinian civilian males (mostly adults but in two cases also children) to serve as “human shields”, including making them walk in front of armed soldiers; go into buildings to check for booby traps or gunmen; and inspect suspicious objects for explosives. These practices are not new. Numerous such cases have been documented in recent years and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that such practices contradict international law and prohibited them in October 2005 …
‘[A] father of six … told Amnesty … that he had been taken from his home in the early morning (about 2-3am) … by Israeli soldiers who also used him as a “human shield” and forced him to inspect several houses in the area over a three-day period …
‘[A 16-year old] told Amnesty … he was held by Israeli soldiers in a house they used as a sniper position’
amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/015/2009/en/
Veteran Israeli peace activist Adam Keller:
‘For many years, when I saw the word "Genocide" in the statements of radical groups in Israel and abroad, I would approach the writers and comment that - however appropriate the condemnation of Israeli acts of oppression - Genocide is not among these acts. But this week Roy Sharon, a "respectable" radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see "a million dead bodies in Gaza".
‘And the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading "Exterminate Gaza!". Not "Destroy!", not "Flatten!" – but clearly and explicitly "Exterminate Gaza!". "Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!" - "Exterminate!" Every Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. "Exterminate!" "Exterminate!" "Exterminate!". Hundreds of times "Exterminate!" on every street corner.’
zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1464389870
“List of war crimes and crimes qualifying as genocide committed by Israel in Gaza since 7th October 2023”:
yanisvaroufakis.eu/2023/10/15/list-of-war-crimes-and-crimes-qualifying-as-genocide-committed-by-israel-in-gaza-since-7th-october-2023/
“A textbook case of genocide”:
twitter.com/democracynow/status/1713984982702555335