Davin News Server

The use of human shields in war is not a new phenomenon. Militaries
have forced civilians to serve as human shields for centuries. Yet,
despite this long and dubious history, Israel has managed to introduce
a new form of shielding in Gaza, one that appears unprecedented in the
history of warfare.

The practice was initially revealed by Al Jazeera but, subsequently,
Haaretz published an entire expose about how Israeli troops have
abducted Palestinian civilians, dressed them in military uniforms,
attached cameras to their bodies, and sent them into underground
tunnels as well as buildings in order to shield Israeli troops.

“[I]t’s hard to recognise 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,” the Haaretz article notes. But if
you look more closely, “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.”

In the past, Israeli troops have used robots and trained dogs with
cameras on their collars as well as Palestinian civilians to serve as
shields. However, Palestinians who were used as shields always wore
civilian clothes and thus could be identified as civilians. By
dressing Palestinian civilians in military garb and sending them into
the tunnels, the Israeli military has, in effect, altered the very
logic of human shielding.

Indeed, human shielding has historically been predicated on
recognising that the person shielding a military target is a
vulnerable civilian (or prisoner of war). This recognition is meant to
deter the opposing warring party from attacking the target because the
vulnerability of the human shield ostensibly invokes moral restraints
on the use of lethal violence. It is precisely the recognition of
vulnerability that is key to the purported effectiveness of human
shielding and for deterrence to have a chance of working.

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.

The Israeli army’s treatment of Palestinian civilians as expendable
might not come as a surprise given the racialised form of colonial
governance to which they have been subjected for decades. The
deep-seated racism explains the ease with which Israeli President
Isaac Herzog publicly claimed that there are “no innocent civilians”
in the Gaza Strip as well as the prevailing indifference among
Israel’s Jewish public to the tens of thousands of Palestinian
civilians who have been killed.

Indeed, Israelis were not shocked when their political leaders
repeatedly called to “erase” Gaza, “flatten” it, and turn it “into
Dresden”. They have either supported or have been apathetic towards
the damage and destruction of 60 percent of all civilian structures
and sites in Gaza.

Within this context, dressing Palestinian civilians in military garb
and sending them into tunnels is likely to be perceived in the eyes of
most Israeli soldiers – and large sections within the Israeli public –
as not much more than a detail.

Nonetheless, this new form of human shielding does shed important
light on how racism plays out in the battlefield. It reveals that the
military has taken to heart and operationalised Defence Minister Yoav
Gallant’s racist guidelines that “we are fighting human animals”,
exposing how Israeli soldiers are relating to Palestinians as either
bait or prey. Like hunters who use raw meat to lure animals they want
to capture or kill, the Israeli troops use Palestinian civilians as if
they were bare flesh whose function is to attract the hunter’s prey.

Racism also informs Israel’s disregard for international law. By
randomly detaining Palestinian civilians – including youth and the
elderly – and then dressing them in military garb before forcing them
to walk in front of soldiers, the Israeli troops violate not only the
legal provision against the use of human shields but also the
provision that deals with perfidy and prohibits warring parties from
making use of military “uniforms of adverse Parties while engaging in
attacks or in order to shield, favour, protect or impede military
operations”. Two war crimes in a single action.

The horrifying truth, however, is that no matter how much evidence
emerges around Israel’s use of this new human shielding practice or
indeed any other breach of international law, the likelihood that it
will change actions on the ground is small.

Hopes that international law will protect and bring justice to the
Palestinian people have historically been misplaced because colonial
racism – as critical legal scholars from Antony Anghie to Noura Erekat
have pointed out – informs not merely Israel’s actions but also the
international legal order, including the way the International
Criminal Court (ICC) metes out justice. To get a glimpse of this
racism, all one needs to do is browse the website of the International
Criminal Court to see who it has been willing to indict.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/10/20/israel-has-taken-human-shields-to-a-whole-new-criminal-level