During Operation Cast Lead and the Lebanon War before that, you heard the accusatory drone of the pro-Israelists that Hamas and Hezbollah used civilians as human shields, exploited mosques, ambulances, and schools to hide weapons, etc. The general line was that Arab terrorists violated civilized norms and forced Israel to lower itself to their level in order to protect Israelis.
The only problem? Most of the claims were rubbish. We now know that Judge Goldstone actually attempted to document Hamas use of human shields in his report and could not do so. We know of numerous incidents of the IDF using Palestinian children as human shields and have video and photos to prove the practice. Two soldiers were recently found guilty of doing so in Gaza.
One of the more troublesome claims is that terrorists even debase their own religion and its holy sites in their fight against Israel. While such a claim may or may not be true, I managed to find a written source which confirmed that Jews did precisely this during the Mandatory period before the State was created. And Amir Terkel has gone one better. He’s found a historical monument that documents the practice.
The point of all this is not to say that Palestinians are all right and Israelis all wrong. Rather, the point is that whatever propaganda you attempt to use against one side may come back to bite you unless you’re careful.
Related articles
- Israel’s human shields and live bait (warincontext.org)
As I wrote on another file “Breaking the Silence” has been nominated by the Green Party and the United Left Party for the Sakharov Peace Prize of the European Parliament.
NGO Monitor and the indefatigable Gerald Steinberg have started approaching parliament members asking them not to let “Breaking the Silence” win the prize.
link to haaretz.com
Richard, please provide a link supporting your statement about the rules of engagement during cast lead. don’t forget the the IDF provided an early warning to those in the area we attacked and asked all civilians to leave, to prevent them from being hurt. even with that warning puts out, IDF fired selectively only at targets that seemed as a threat to the soldier.
since you never had anything to do with urban combat, please ask any one with some urban combat experience and he will tell you that with respect to the number of people living in the Gaza strip, the number of casualties support my statement. please compare it to the number of casualties in any city you guys operated in Iraq, it was much less in Gaza.
Since you think the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza i’m sure you think the American forces committed the same in Iraq right ?
“the IDF provided an early warning to those in the area we attacked and asked all civilians to leave, to prevent them from being hurt.”
What a mountain of lies. For starters, where, exactly, were the civilians supposed to go, particularly given that the borders were sealed? Second, you seem to be unaware that many of those civilians, including women, little children, and elderly were attacked and killed or wounded even as they tried to leave carrying white flags. Third, I happen to have very close friends living in Gaza, and the story they tell is quite different from the one you keep repeating and repeating here. In the first place, none of my friends had a chance to leave, so they hid in their homes for weeks, terrified that they would be bombed to smithereens over their heads, or that the Israelis would come in looking for “Hamas fighters” (of which there were very, very few) and harm or kill them or their kids.
“even with that warning puts out, IDF fired selectively only at targets that seemed as a threat to the soldier.”
Yeah, they fired “selectively” at groups of women and children carrying white flags as they tried to flee. They fired so selectively that the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian human beings they killed were civilians, including hundreds of children. They fired so carefully that in one case they herded an entire extended family, men, women, children, and elderly into one house, and bombed it selectively, then refused to allow anyone to get near the house to assist the wounded or look after the children whose parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles had been slaughtered like fish in a barrel.
“the number of casualties support my statement.”
No, they don’t. When the number of civilians killed is three times the number of combatants killed that does not support your claims. When the number of children killed is nearly the same as the number of combatants killed that does not support your statement. Neither do the eye witness accounts of Palestinians, Israeli soldiers, and international aid workers do anything at all to support your statement.
“Since you think the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza i’m sure you think the American forces committed the same in Iraq right ?”
Absolutely, they did. They committed war crimes in 1991, they continued their crimes for 13 years, and they started a whole new bunch of crimes in 2003 (well, 2002, really), and they continue to commit war crimes there. So what? Is that supposed to mitigate Israel’s crimes in Gaza?
I told you the story is linked in a post here. YOU do the spade work by searching through all posts related to Cast Lead. If you can’t find it after doing yr homework I’ll try to help you.
So let’s see what really happened. It rained leaflets down on communities where people were holed up inside buildings in fear of their lives. It made cellphone calls telling them to leave their homes because they would be in a free fire zone. Then they had a choice of emerging fr. their homes into that free fire zone or staying put & being considered a miitant by any IDF soldier who might enter. Those who decided to leave their homes were in many instances mowed down in cold blood (again read my blog for past posts which document not one but many such instances). Those who stayed in their homes were often shelled mercilessly by tanks or artillery which is how the Zamouni clan was slaughtered. You were damned if you did & damned if you didn’t.
And you have the unmitigated gall to come here & tell us the IDF behaved decently with these people? Your deliberate ignorance, yr willful naivete angers me deeply. Again, you weren’t there. You don’t know what happened except what your former employer tells you happened. And frankly, when you write total tripe like this it makes me suspect that you remain on the payroll either literally or figuratively.
As for firing at targets that seemed to be a threat. You may be describing some scene in yr imagination. But EVERY credible account of Cast Lead in much of the Israeli AND mainstream media describe (& this is confirmed by accounts of veterans of the massacre AND the GOldstone Report) of a virtual free fire zone in much of Gaza in which everything moving was shot at & everything living (that wasn’t IDF) was killed. And they describe this not in an isolated incident but as the standard procedure. If you haven’t read these accounts then stop wasting your time here & go back and read everything that you’ve missed. If you have read these accounts, then you’re either a dupe or a willful liar in stating the nonsense you have here.
Please don’t insult our intelligence with what you’re trying to pass off here as credible. It isn’t. And you do neither yrself or yr side any favor by publishing such garbage. It offends me. It disrespects the memory of those murdered…1,100 of them civilians, 300 of them children. Go chew on that and I hope it makes you sick to yr stomach.
Iraq is off topic. Nice try. Deflection is a tried & true tactic of the hasbarist. Again, inferior. You can do better.
Ariel,
your office was an idiot who violated orders, and you know that as well as i do.
Then you agree that every officer during Cast Lead who behaved precisely the same way is an idiot? Glad we’ve got that one figured out.
AriJay,
So my CO was an idiot? Which one of them? The battalion commander who gave the order? The Colonel who approved it? The Captains and Lieutenants who carried it out? I guess that they were all idiots but the bottom line is that I was the one punished. What kind of message do you think it sends out to anyone else who questions orders?
Don’t think that it stops at the army level, I brought the subject up before Mossi Raz when he was still an MK. He told me that he never heard anything about it and ran away as quickly as he could. Ran Cohen’s reply was pretty similar. It was pretty surprising because I definitely remember Mossi Raz calling out to soldiers to disobey illegal orders promising that Meretz will help them out if they do so. Apparently, shooting at unarmed civilians didn’t seem important enough for them.
Bottom line is this – The whole system supports those whom you call “Idiots”. People like me who disobey their orders are ostracized. Despite that, you still claim that the IDF acts lawfully and with restraint and demand proof when someone claims otherwise. Are you beginning to understand how daft it sounds?
Richard, just to answer few of your reply
1. IDF orders prohibit firing at non involved civilians.
2. I never said that the 4th Geneva convention approves such a thing, what i said is that if hostilities brake, they permit firing at the sources of fire, even if those are located within civilian area. the responsibility for civilian casualties is on the firing side. AKA if someone fires from a populated area, and you retaliate and as a result civilians would die, the responsible party is the one that fired from that neighberhood.
3. The Kirya is as hiding among civilians as the Pentagon is, the Syrian army headquarters is, and almost every army headquarters that i know. it doesn’t consider hiding among civilians as there are known boundaries for the military facility, everyone inside is a target everyone outside isn’t.
Those were most definitely NOT the orders of battle for Cast Lead. Since you didn’t serve then, & the Haaretz rpt is documented fr. soldiers & specific documents related specifically to that Operation, you’re out of date & wrong.
In Cast Lead there was hardly any shooting fr. the Palestinian side (as confirmed by the fact that there were almost no dead–3, I think–or wounded fr direct combat operations). So you are then conceding I take it that in every instance in which the IDF faced no direct fire & killed civilians, that those were war crimes? Glad we cleared that up.
Ariel, one who generalized everything out of his experience is a bit narrow minded.
Rules of engagement are on topic as you stated that you fired toward civilians, and you are trying to claim you were ordered by your superior office for doing so. i don’t buy that, and you can’t prove that.
as for the civilians cars, civilians car’s are used during off duty hours for transportation to and from your post station, same logic applies to the car as it applies to a soldier on a leave, a soldier on a leave can wear civilians clothing, and can drive a civil car, and it doesn’t constitute hiding among civilians. you are somewhat skewing the matter.
Are you daft? He was there. He knows what he was ordered to do & the conditions that existed. If he says he was ordered to fire on civilians that’s what happened. If you can prove otherwise pls. do so. As a career officer I think you have a vested interest in defending the IDF. This is a characteristic that limits yr credibility.
AriJay, actually I have some proof, Hebrew only unfortunately:
link to ynet.co.il
I really hate that article, the editor took what I said and made into the headline that read “Ariel Shatil found his buddies sniping at innocents in Beit Hanoun”. You see now why I’m not too fond of militaristic pencil pushers – Any combat soldier would tell you that you cannot “snipe” with machine guns, especially not with the 0.5 Brownings. I got a lot of flak about that headline from people in my unit, however they did agree that the rest of the things attributed to me were 100% accurate.
Again, you might claim that it is my account of things and doesn’t constitute “Proof”. However, IDF spokesperson never once tried to contradict anything that I’ve said there. Believe me that if I wasn’t where I said I was he would be having a field day.
Y’know, I look at the talkbacks to that article and I am somewhat relieved. I thought things were getting much worse among the Israeli public but apparently they were just as horrible back in 2002.
I wouldn’t feel relieved if I were you. Trust me, things are a lot worse now. I’ve been writing this blog since 2003 & observing the I-P landscape for decades before that. The situation now is as dire or more dire than I’ve ever seen it. The only thing that will bring peace is if it gets worse for Israel I’m sorry to say.
Kind of arrogant of you to assume that i was either a “pencil pusher” or belonged to the intelligence divisions.
the only reason i stated it’s not anyone’s business is because it really isn’t.
could you please elaborate on the open fire procedure as you know it within the IDF ? the one that i know is a bit different.
if that’s what your operation officer did, he violated orders.
as for the yellow plate – it’s pointless to debate that.
AriJay,
Not “arrogant”, “experienced” maybe.
Anyway, the general subject of this thread is whether Hamas or Israel use or have used human shields. Bringing up the rules of engagement is going seriously off topic.
However, the debate about IDF administrative vehicles posing as civilian ones is on topic, which is probably why you seem to think that it’s pointless. Try to answer a simple question – Do you understand that not marking army cars as such (for whatever reason) constitutes “hiding among civilians”?
I just saw a picture of the Kirya (IDF headquarters) in Tel Aviv. How ’bout that for “hiding among civilians?”
Your being a career officer is relevant as to how you portray the IDF here. I didn’t say it totally discounts yr views to which you’re entitled. But it allows us to put them into context.
Ariel,
if your operation office directed you to fire “just so they would know you were there ” he violated the strict restriction of opening fire, which is the reason i simply do not believe your nice very convincing “story”, by the way from your story i understand that you were not part of a combat unit, but rather served as a something else, am i right ?
i’ll give you a brake with the license plate, it will not change the facts, IDF leases all the administrative vehicles, he doesn’t own them and can’t mark them with IDF plates. all other IDF equipment (form airplanes to tanks) are marked accordingly.
failure at hasbara ? i am not trying to lahasbir anything, simply stating my own opinion as i hope you do as well.
AriJay,
Sorry to disappoint you but I was always part of a combat unit (until I hit 40 last year). You claim that “he violated the strict restriction of opening fire”? I’m trying not to laugh out too loudly here. It’s always funny when I run into someone who served in army intelligence, or basically pushed pencils in the army. The self important “none of your business” retort that you gave when no one has even asked where you served in the army is a dead giveaway for Army Intelligence.
Just for your information – Another combat soldier would have disagreed with me on our mission there, or whether Palestinians were indeed innocent, on our right to be there. Thing is, I have yet to come across another combat soldier who doesn’t know that we frequently fire first.
If you don’t want to give me a break with the leased vehicles, then please explain why the IDF doesn’t bother to put decals marking the car as an army vehicle. Back in the early nineties it was mandatory to put the decals on all rented cars. Your excuse just doesn’t stand, sorry.
AriJay writes “I’m not trying to lahasbir anything”.
I don’t speak Hebrew but would love to know if that’s a verb and what the radicals (I guess you use that word as in Arabic) and the word do mean precisely. Thanks a lot.
l’hasbir is the infinitive verb form of hasbara.
The three letter root in modern Hebrew is s.b.r meaning “having an opinion”. It is borrowed from the original Aramaic first occuring in the book of Daniel, and frequently used in Talmudic discussions. The use in the word “hasbara” is knowm as the hiphil form, a form commonly used as a causative action, in this case meaning “causing to have an opinion” = “to explain”. Hasbara means “explanation”. In modern Arabic the root implies “to probe” or “to examine”.
That’s incomplete. In contemporary Hebrew it has the added connotation of propaganda or “public diplomacy” if you’re being very charitable (which isn’t warranted in my opinion).
I think you’re splitting hairs – propaganda in Hebrew has a separate word – ta’amulah.
I think both sides of an arguement use propaganda to explain, and both sides believe their explanation to be the right one. Calling the other side’s explanation propaganda is just belittling it without necessarily refuting it. Not all propaganda is lieing, and not all explanations are accurate.