Human Shields and World Silence

EXCERPTS FROM YESTERDAY'S ASSOCIATED PRESS:

Israel shells near UN school, killing at least 30
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writers

The Israeli army said its soldiers came under fire from militants hiding in the school and responded. It accused Gaza's Hamas rulers of "cynically" using civilians as human shields. Residents confirmed the account, saying militants were seen staging attacks from the area.

The army said two Hamas militants — Imad Abu Askar and Hasan Abu Askar — were among the dead.

Two neighborhood residents confirmed the Israeli account, saying a group of militants fired mortars from a street near the school, then fled into a crowd of people in the streets. Israel then opened fire.

The residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their safety, said the Abu Askar brothers were known low-level Hamas militants.


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Hama, elected by the Palestinians in the hopes of being "less corrupt" than Fatah, have this week proved themselves more morally corrupt than anyone expected. Proof that being "religious" and being moral are not necessarily the same things:

Israel's notifications to civilians in Gaza to leave populated locations before they are bombed are cynically used by Hamas for organizing human shields, a new study says.

The study by the Terror and Intelligence Information Center shows that when the IDF warns Arab civilians of an impending attack in their neighborhood, Hamas uses the information in order to organize the civilians into human shields in the hope of protecting the targets from the IDF's wrath.

Hamas's de facto prime minister Ismail Haniyeh and other top terrorists, including Nizar Riyan, who was killed in the course of Operation Cast Lead, have publicly boasted of using the warnings as “intelligence” and then using civilians, including women and children, as human shields to protect the homes of terrorists.

The tactic is a “win-win” for Hamas: If the IDF cancels its planned attack on a terror target, the terrorists receive a respite. If the IDF attacks despite the human shields, it can then be portrayed as a killer of women and children. The tactic was inspired by the experience of Hizbullah is using such methods against Israel, the study determines.

Use of civilians as human shields and purposely firing at Israel from densely populated areas is a war crime, the researchers say. Yet terror units that specialize in launching rockets and mortars often carry out the launches next to or even from inside civilian residential buildings, schools and mosques.

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...and nary a peep from "human rights organizations" or NGOs about this exploitation of the civilian population.

Israel has spent years, out of necessity, building bomb shelters, safe rooms and early warning systems. We've had years of practice at taking cover.

Hamas has devoted its resources to buying Grads, Kalishnikovs (the M16s they got for free from the US, via Fatah) bomb-making materials, and other material with which to make war.

Despite Hamas's profoundly racist and jihadist ideology, calling for war and the extermination of the Jewish and Christian populations here, not one agurot has been spent by this Moslem 'Brotherhood' in building public bomb shelters, safe rooms or warning systems for their people.

All offense, no defense. Why? The study above makes it plain: if civilians die, its a PR victory for Hamas; if civilian presence deters Israeli fighters, then its a tactical victory for Hamas.

The leaders of Gaza could care less about their people. That's why they're pilfering supplies from the civilian population, leaving them without sufficient food and medicine despite truckloads of aid that are pouring into the Strip.

And the very biased MSM blithely goes along castigating Israel for defending itself, and giving Hamas a free pass for its atrocities and human rights violations. It isn't Israel manipulating the media--the media has wedded itself so firmly to its own biased narrative that it cannot divorce spin from reality.