Woe Is Me; A Left-Wing Zionist

Sometimes I need to sit back and wonder if it's me. Am I the one that's wrong?

Today I lost a twitter follower, who I considered if not a friend then at least friendly, because of my support for Israel. She and I saw eye to eye on a number of political topics including women's rights, education, refugee policies and marriage equality. She was aware that my political leanings were very firmly in the left camp.

Yet according to her I support the occupation of a sovereign state.

I had tweeted about that, in rare times, war was a moral necessity. The live tweets and pictures coming from Gaza were horrific. I would not wish my worst enemy to currently undergo what the many innocent people of Gaza are facing. I pray that this comes to a conclusion because far too many have suffered due to the actions of a few.

I reminded people that if Twitter and social media platforms had existed in the 1930s and 1940s then it would be likely that the West would not have had the stomach for war. I wouldn't blame them. World War II, the bombing of Dresden, the Hiroshima bomb, the constant indiscriminate destruction of life and land by both sides, were all horrible. They were the reason that the Geneva Convention, laws that govern war itself, were introduced.

But was World War II an 'immoral war'?

No.

It was a necessary one. The idea of Hitler and his Nazi conquering Europe still fills me with dread.

The idea of Hamas, the Islamic State, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other jihadist groups taking over the Middle East (which is happening) fills me with an equal fear.

But also look at Israel. Israel with her democracy, her celebration of gay rights, her rights for women, for minorities and freedom of speech...an imperfect state of course but one which strives to balance itself. Israel is up against these truly fascistic, tyrannical elements of society. I stand with the liberal, flawed, democratic Israel.

But further than that. Look at this current conflict. A conflict where the enemy uses human shields. A conflict where Hamas rockets have been discovered in 3 UNWRA schools. This is the epitome of the perversion of civilian spaces. While Israel sends text messages and leaflets to citizens to warn them Hamas steals cement meant for building Gaza and uses it to create terror attack tunnels.

This is not a conflict against Palestine. It is not a conflict against Gaza. It is a conflict against Islamic Jihad. It is a conflict against Hamas.

I do not support the occupation. I do not support the settlements. I do not support Ayalet Shaked and her truly evil comments about killing Palestinian mothers. The right will never be my home. I am left wing and I am proud of that. I mourn for every single innocent person that has lost their lives. I mourn for every home destroyed, every Mosque used as a weapons cache, every hospital used as a command and control centre, every school used as a rocket launching pad.

But I am still left wing. I believe that Israel has leaps and bounds to go before it can be the State I believe it CAN be but that does not mean I will abandon her.

Yes. Hamas Will Lie.

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I've spoken before about the cognitive disconnect that many have when it comes to the current issue in Gaza. However no matter your political persuasion there is no doubt that seeing the images coming out of the Strip are enough to make your heart break. The sight of children covered in rubble, of women mourning husbands and of families looking at their destroyed homes make anyone with a conscience weep.

But the figures that are quoted beggar belief.

'300' it screams one week

'700' the next

As of writing it has apparently just toppled 1000.

Numbers like that sound staggering. They beggar belief and boggle the mind. Yet the next words spoken are what truly destroy your soul: "the majority of them are civilians".

Civilians? This is the Israeli army we're talking about. They speak about 'surgical precision' and 'pin-point strikes'. There can be no doubt in anyone's mind who watches the news or images coming from Gaza that all the attacks on civilians are deliberate. One cannot claim to offer such a high-tech battlefield presence and yet have such a wildly civilian centric death toll.

If I were to be getting nothing but my news from these sources, be they mainstream of social media, then I would believe that. I would believe that the only thing that could possibly justify the extreme civilian casualties was a genocide.

But...I don't.

Some may call me biased, some may call me a Zionist troll and some may call me whatever they want. However I have spent enough time wading neck-deep in the Middle East conflict to not trust numbers coming out of the media. There are a number of reasons for this but here's the very big reason:

We are in the middle of the conflict

Why shouldn't I trust numbers happening right now? Well, have you ever heard the term 'fog of war'? It was coined by the Prussian general Carl Von Clausewitz to describe the uncertainty that comes from war. Uncertainty? Yup. Clausewitz was using it to describe the fact that whenever you were engaged in battle there were so many sudden shifts in logistical, operational and strategic planning that whatever you thought you knew at 12:00pm was outdated by 12:10pm.

But it goes further than that when it comes to battling Hamas.

In Hamas you have an enemy that not only does not respect international law and the sanctity of civilians but instead openly flaunts them. This is a group that uses ambulances to transport both weapons and fighters





Uses schools to shoot from and store rockets


And defiles even cemeteries for their war crimes




UNWRA, the United Nations agency in Gaza, discovered that their buildings (areas that civilians would gather in case of an Israeli attack) had been used to store missiles. What this means is that Hamas had turned a UN run school into a legitimate and legal military target.

So why do I bring this up when talking about the fog of war? For the simple fact that if an organisation is more than willing to defile a cemetery or a school then what stops them from defiling homes?

Imagine this:

A squad of Israeli soldiers are preceding down the street, weapons at the ready, and they come under fire from a home a hundred meters up the road. They return fire with small arms and find them insufficient. In self-defence they call in an immediate strike on the source of the fire. The house is then destroyed in an artillery bombardment.
Unknown to the soldiers who have been fired upon the house also contained a family. They, along with the gunmen, were killed instantly. 

What does that mean? Who is to blame? The soldiers who ordered the airstrike? The family for staying in their home? Or perhaps one should blame the Hamas gunman who commandeered the home which thereby made it a legal military target. Once gunmen start to occupy homes they lose their status of protected property under the laws of war.

Hamas has openly used homes to store weapons, to dig tunnels, to fire at Israeli troops and rocket Israeli citizens. Under the laws of war (specifically the 4th Geneva Convention 1949) these homes are appropriate targets and Hamas knows this. Hamas wants this.

Why?

Because for them it is a good thing when Gazan civilians die. Just ask the son of their founder and the man who was being groomed to take over.

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But there's one major reason that I don't trust numbers coming out now...information is completely unverifiable.

Who are the people that are counting all of the numbers and putting out the information?

The Gazan Ministry of Health.

Who runs the Gazan Ministry of Health?

Hamas.

Why is this important? Because the Gazan Ministry of Health declare who is a civilian and who is not. Think about this. The organisation dedicated to determining civilian vs combatant status, or at the very least announcing it to the media, is being run by the organisation that Israel is fighting.

That boggles the mind.

The Hamas Ministry of the Interior has told people on social media to always declare Palestinian dead as 'innocent civilians' regardless of whether or not they're fighters. Do you not think that the Health Ministry, run by the exact same organisation, would ask them to fudge the figures? State that more innocent civilians have died than fighters?

It's not only within the realm of possibility it's right out of their playbook.

For Hamas and the other Islamic jihadist groups the end game is not the eradication of the State of Israel, it's not even the destruction of global Jewry, it's about complete and utter dominance. You think that they're not going to lie about civilian figures during a skirmish with Israel? That they're not going to pressure reporters to talk only about the destruction wrought on the innocent and ignore fighters?

None of this, however, is to say that Gazans are not suffering right now. They are. Too many civilians have died, too many have been injured and too much damage has been made to civilian property. Much of that damage has been done in my name as an Israeli citizen and it pains me to see any suffering.

However. It must be remembered that we are up against a nihilistic enemy. An enemy that devoted more time to building terror tunnels than it did to skyscrapers. Imagine what would have happened if, in 2005, when Israel pulled out of Gaza Hamas had dedicated themselves to building Palestinian society. Remember that when Israel pulled out there was no blockade for the first several months. The blockade came into effect when Hamas began firing their rockets.

The people who are suffering due to Hamas's worshipping of death are the Gazans. Tragically however they are suffering due to my army. The blame and the fault lies solely with Hamas. But that does not make the images that we see any easier.

I Am Not Heartless

Which is the Israeli child and which is the Palestinian child?

My heart breaks for anyone who loses their lives.

I am not heartless. I do not relish in the destruction of homes, schools or hospitals. I mourn equally an Israeli death as I do a Palestinian. I mourn a Syrian death as much I do an Iraqi, an American or an Australian.

I take no joy in having to support a nation engaged in a military conflict. I take no pride in seeing friends of mine take out their weapons and head down South. I pray for their safe return, I pray that the weapons they have spent thousands of hours shooting at paper targets will remain unused.

I see the death and devastation that the airstrikes, performed by my air force, have caused and I weep. Homes that were filled of joyful memories, a baby's first steps, a family dinner where a child makes a wisecrack and the room fills with raucous laughter. Those homes have become dust now. Those homes have been destroyed by the nation that I pledge allegiance to.

But what of Netanyahu? What of the man who has ordered conflict?

I hate him.

I hate him.

I hate him.

I hate him for having to send the air force over Gaza.

I hate him for having to send my friends into Gaza on foot.

I hate him for saying that Hamas uses telegenically dead children.

"You fool" I want to scream "all children are telegenic but it's because of us that they're dead".

If I were there I would kick, punch and scream at Bibi Netanyahu. He would stand there and he would take it as I collapsed into a pile of sobs and tears.

I hate him that he said something I had no courage to say. I hate him and say that the death and destruction that Israel wrecks on Gaza will be on his head.

I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

But.

I do not blame him.

I blame Hamas.

I blame Hamas not just for firing rockets at my family.

I blame Hamas not just for sending suicide bombers to the cafes I ate at or the buses I rode.

I blame Hamas for destroying the Palestinians.

I blame Hamas for using cement that should have been the foundations of a school instead it is reinforcing a tunnel.

I blame Hamas for wanting to kill me more than they want to save their families.

I blame Hamas for storing rockets in schools, firing them from Mosques and directing their operations from homes.

I blame Hamas for building tunnels to kill Israelis rather than bomb shelters to save their citizens.

I blame them, I blame them, I blame them.

But still I weep for those on that side who will be lost. The child who holds on to the paramedic and screams for his father, the cousin who watched his family disappear in one fell swoop of a bomb, the mother who will be burying the man she loves.

My heart breaks when I have to see my friends rush down to their bomb shelters. They take selfies, an attempt at numbing the pain and the fear that comes with a life filled with endless sirens, and publish them online to convince their families and friends that they're ok. Yet the veneer that is their brave face is slipping as they have to run to their protected space again and again and again.

As the Iron Dome intercepts another rocket aimed at their homes they sit and wait for the 'BOOM'. I know what they're thinking.

"Thank god for Iron Dome"

"It has saved our lives"

"My country protects me"

But I know that in the back of their minds they're thinking something else.

"That's $50,000"

"That was money that could have been spent on social welfare, school books or education"

"That interception saved my life...but what about my future?"

As they cuddle their screaming children, as they try to comfort them and as they remind them that no matter how scary the rockets are their parents still love them.

I am not heartless. I have been called it a few times these past few days. I have been called callous, I have been called evil and all sorts of names such as 'kike', 'Jew-boy', 'Nazi' and the like. I have been told that it would have been better if Hitler had gassed me and my family. I have been told that the blood of these children are on my hands.

I am not heartless. I am human. My eyes well with tears whenever I see what is happening over there. I want nothing more than to hug my nephew and thank god that he is safe here in Australia. With every loss, be it man, woman or child, I feel as if it is a stab directly into my heart and tearing it into a million pieces.

I am not heartless. I just stand with Israel.

I'm A Leftist - But Also A Realist.

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There exists in today's society a cognitive dissonance. I spoke, in my last post, about the way that certain groups will protest one thing but not another. This usually falls under the idea that actions by Israel deserves global marches and days of solidarity whereas those performed by the Assad regime, ISIS or any other jihadist group are swept under the rug of political correctness.

But what does this mean?

It means that many on the left are simply incapable of believing that Hamas plays by the same rules of the game.

It means that they are not able to understand that Hamas is looking forward at the very, very long-game and for them it doesn't matter if they lose 200 or 200,000 it is a willing sacrifice for the greater good.

It is truly difficult for us to comprehend this. Why?

We are raised to believe that those who seek high office, that those who have succeeded in the military or in the civil service, do so because that care about those whom they represent. Cynically the idea of democratic representation means that they must have at least some concern for their constituents otherwise they would be voted out of office very quickly.

The people who run Hamas, the people who run ISIS, the people who run Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah have no such concern for human life. They do not care if the lives they take are Muslim, Jewish, Christian or Hindi. For them there is, and always will be, the end goal.

Let's take ISIS.

Originally started in 2000 it has gained prominence thanks to their recent take-over of large swathes of Iraq. Wherever ISIS treads destruction, death, rape and mass slaughter follows very quickly. Recently it gleefully admitted that it had killed over 1,500 civilians and that in many cases they were, dragged from their homes and shot execution style. Many women reported being raped by ISIS soldiers though these numbers are surely a very small percentage of actual cases due to the fear of cultural honour killings.

Yet this is an actual tweet that I read today

What is the difference between ISIS and Israeli troops attacking Gaza?
— Mohammed Omer  (@Mogaza) July 19, 2014

 The difference? Any claims of the IDF intentionally targeting civilians have, at almost all times, been found false. It was claimed in 2002 that Israeli forces had committed a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp. This was a lie. A UN report in 2009 stated that Israel intentionally targeted civilians. The author of that report has since retracted his claims.

The one time that Israel has been rightfully accused of failing to uphold their duty was in 1982 during the Lebanon War. This was a mark upon the State of Israel and has always been considered a stain on our collective consciousness.

Since that day the IDF has strived to protect civilians in war zones. Hamas, and various jihadist groups, have not.

But why? Does Hamas not care for the citizens of Gaza? Do Hezbollah not want Lebanese children to grow up peacefully and do ISIS not want to ensure that their families are safe?

Yes. They do.

Hamas does care for the citizens of Gaza.

We know this because they provide social welfare and education (though it is a strictly Islamic education) for citizens.

However Hamas cares about something more than their citizens.

Their goal.

Their absolute commitment to their goal.

The destruction of Israel, Judaism and anyone else who does not share their mindset.

This includes Christians, Muslims, Atheists and Humanists. This includes everyone that is not a Sunni Muslim.

For them that is the goal. For many of us we cannot believe the lengths that they would go to.

We literally cannot believe that they would sacrifice their own citizens. We cannot believe that they would place missiles in Mosques, schools (including UN run schools) and in homes. We simply refuse to believe that a group could be that callous, that evil and that gleeful over the destruction of human life.

It is far easier to believe that Israel is bombing them.

Israel says that Hamas uses ambulances as transportation, a violation of the Geneva Convention, that Hamas is putting Palestinians in danger, that Hamas is firing rockets into civilian neighbourhoods FROM civilian neighbourhoods.

When you tell someone that then they simply accuse you of lying. They claim that it is nothing more than an excuse.They fail to come to terms that there can be true evil in this world.

I state in the title that I am a leftist. I am. Many fail to understand how I can be both a leftist and a Zionist, how I can support Israel and yet still claim to support human rights.

It's quite simple. For me Israel is the right side of this horrible war.

This is the side that has taken unprecedented measures to save human lives. This is the side that has sent SMS text messages to those that they are targeting, that have developed innovative techniques to save lives, this is the side that agreed to ceasefires and held its fire despite the other side breaking theirs.

Name me another country that would warn their target ahead of time that they were coming?

Name me another country that spends so much time holding their fire, taking rocket after rocket after rocket, despite having the right and the duty to stop the terrorists on their border?

But my left-wing love for Israel goes far beyond the current conflict.

I love Israel because it is a representational democracy. I may not like some elements of Israeli society (read: haredim and the more extreme religious settlers) but I know that they deserve a vote as much as I.

I love Israel because of their open attitude towards gays. I can walk down the street in Tel Aviv to a gay bar, kiss a man and I won't face any sort of discrimination or death.

I love Israel because I can stand in front of Prime Minister Netanyahu's office and call him a twat and nothing would ever happen to me (he may even invite me in for coffee and I can explain why I think he's a twat).

I love Israel because they send out teams of doctors to save lives no matter where they are.



I love Israel because it now has one of the world's most liberal laws in regards to women's rights.

I love Israel because it affords Arab citizens their full rights.

Is Israel perfect? No! Far from it. But I know that it can achieve the level of perfection that I dream for it. There are many things that continue to disturb me about Israeli society but they are also things that I know citizens of Israel will continue to strive and fix.

But that is why I love Israel.

Why do I hate Hamas? Why do I hate Islamic Jihad, ISIS or Hezbollah?

Because their ideology is perverse and evil. Because they are knowingly destroying their own cities, their own citizens, to fulfil their maniacal dreams of Islamic caliphates. They want to drag this world back into the 12th Century and they're more than willing to sacrifice 200,000 Palestinian civilians to do it.

Hamas know that the Israeli people and the international community cannot stomach the death of innocents. We have little desire for war and if we believe that we can stop it then we will.

But sometimes war is a necessity.

Sometimes the only way to survive the person who wants to kill you is to kill them first.

It will not be long until the international community looms so large that Israel will be forced out of Gaza. They may accomplish their goal of targeting Hamas' tunnel infrastructure or they may not. All we know now is that the innocents of Gaza are suffering for the crimes of their leaders.

I am a leftist. I believe that social justice can and must prevail. I believe that women deserve full and equal rights, I believe that the market must be regulated and I believe in a complete separation of Church and State. I know that climate change is real, I know that labour unions must be supported and I know that I am increasingly worried with the role big business has in shaping our laws.

But I am also a realist. I know that Hamas fires from civilian areas. I know that Hamas, which runs the Gaza Health Ministry (the ministry where everyone is getting their casualty figures), inflates and exaggerates the numbers of dead in Gaza. I know that Hamas hides weapons in mosques, schools and homes. I know that they have bunkers under hospitals so that Israel won't harm them. I know that there is no greater enemy to the Palestinian people than Hamas or whichever jihadist group decides to take their place.

I know that Israel strives to limit the casualties in Gaza. I know this because Israel is the country that I demand the most of. It is the country that I cannot help but love yet desire for it to improve.

I am a realist.

But I am also a leftist.

I support Israel and I am left-wing

For me there is no contradiction.

Yes, We Are Different From Hamas

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Today the State of Israel is in mourning. No, it is not because one of our citizens was killed yesterday by a Hamas rocket. It is not because our children are being forced to spend their days in bomb shelters or because they have not had a truly peaceful nights sleep in over a decade. It is because tragedy occurred in Gaza. Today it pains me to inform you that four young boys lost their lives, by what appears to be, at the hands of our army. 

How can we possibly come to terms with having the blood of children on our hands? Four children, who have done nothing to harm us, have to be buried by a grieving family. This is unfortunately the incident that will define Operation Protective Edge. Israel has just lost the narrative. 

But why? We can get on television, Twitter, Facebook and share as many of the IDF Spokesperson's photos as possible (oh and props to the IDF....they are without a doubt the best public relations department of any army in the world) but that won't help alter the narrative. It won't help put the conflict into a scenario that many people understand. 

I have one way. It's something I use when trying to justify Israel's tactics to friends.

Imagine a mentally disturbed man grabbing an M16, a human shield, closing his eyes and open firing into a crowd of people. Even if he does not hit anyone it is the obligation of the police to stop that man by any means necessary. This includes the chance that they might hit and kill the civilian that the man is using to protect himself.

Truth be told Israel has always been a victim of its own success but on this occasion especially so. The world media, activists and arm chair commentators care only about one single solitary statistic: death. Palestinians, Europeans, Americans, Australians and everyone else in between will point at the gulf between the Israeli and Palestinian death count and refer to it as a massacre. 

Never mind that they act with wanton disregard for human life when it comes to any other conflict in the world, especially if the victims are Palestinian. 

See what Stop the War Coalition (UK) says in regards to Israel's recent operation in Gaza: 

Israel's barbaric bombardment of the most densely populated area on earth must stop now. Barack Obama, David Cameron and UK foreign secretary William Hague's support for "Israel's right to defend itself" is nothing less than collusion with war crimes killing women, children and disabled people.

Now let's see what they say about the current conflict in Syria: 

We are against western intervention in Syria. There is civil war raging there which has been going on for two years, and which began following protests and demonstrations against the government as part of the ‘Arab spring’. The tragedy has led to the loss of perhaps 100,000 lives and a huge refugee problem. There can only be a political solution to this crisis and this should be for the Syrian people to decide.

WHAT? Are these seriously from the same group? Firstly let's just update their statistics a little bit. The dead number over 160,000 but I think what is even more important to Stop The War is the number of Palestinian dead (as that appears to be the people who deserve 'Western intervention'). As of February this year (the latest figures available) over 2000 Palestinians have been killed. 2000! Yet these Palestinians are not worthy of international rescue. They, and the rest of the civilians who have lost their lives in this conflict, should simply fix their problems by themselves. 

"But it's a civil war" I hear you say "we shouldn't intervene in those". 

Errr....no. 

Firstly we have intervened in civil wars before (remember the Yugoslav Civil War?) and we have truly regretted not intervening in other civil conflicts. 

But the conflict between Israel and Palestine (in this case it's a conflict between Israel and Hamas along with other jihadist groups) is not a civil war. Israel does not want the Palestinians to be a part of Israeli society and Palestinians don't want to be part of Israeli society. In time we will have peace with the Palestinians (most likely it will be as the Israelis offered Arafat in 2000 which was a negotiated land swaps, symbolic right of return and pulling out from the WB) but until then we have to deal with the threat of Hamas rockets.

Yet today people are looking at Israel's unintentional shelling of those four poor children on the beach in Gaza. To this I say that Hamas has bombed more beaches, more cafes, more schools and more homes than Israel could ever dream of.

Why?

Because for Hamas each murder of a civilian is not only their express goal of launching missiles but they celebrate with each death. They name public fountains and works after terrorists that have massacred innocent people, they hand out sweets when Jews die, they encourage the slaughter of their own people. They fired rockets at Tel Aviv beach, they bombed Israelis in cafes, they made Israelis question the ability to even step outside the front door.

This post may seem like a repeat of everything that you've read on pro-Israel blogs and it's true. But that's because people often find it such a hard concept to grasp. There are many things that Israel has done wrong in its short life. It should have made a greater emphasis at peace and reconciliation in 2004 when Arafat died and it certainly shouldn't have occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, though hindsight is always 20/20.

As I write this we are about to head towards a temporary ceasefire, abided by both sides, for aid to get through to Gaza. I, along with all Israelis and Palestinians, hope that fighting ceases and that peace will reign. However jihadism is something that should concern us all and failure to adequately confront it will lead to a lot more innocent people being killed. 

When Is A Civilian Not A Civilian?

Hamas. Not people who you would want to cross.

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The Middle East has flared up again, with all the usual hallmarks of accusations and denials. Whilst I was visiting Israel last month three boys were kidnapped by Hamas operatives and brutally murdered. During that time Hamas increased its rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in violation of a ceasefire that had been in place since November 2012. Whilst Hamas has been firing rockets on an almost daily basis into southern Israel it was the targeting of major population centres such as Beer Sheva, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that made this unacceptable to the Israelis. More than 3.5 million Israelis were forced to seek shelter from the rockets which Hamas fired.

  In response to this Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a series of air and sea strikes against Hamas targets with a potential ground incursion force in the near future. As the airstrikes reach their third day we are seeing casualties mount and what appears to be a path of destruction by Israeli planes, drones and helicopters. I can point to article after article which shows Hamas’s heinous and wilful practice of hiding amongst civilians, of using homes, schools and Mosques as ammo dumps and launch sites. I can show you how Hamas cheers when an Israeli dies and artificially inflates the figures of their dead (remember the 2002 ‘Jenin Massacre’? Hamas and other Palestinian groups claimed that thousands had been killed. After a UN investigation it was determined that 54 people had been killed and half of those were Israeli soldiers). But this blog post isn’t about that. It’s about the role of civilians in conflicts. Namely, when should a civilian no longer be declared a civilian?

 Firstly let’s look at the law: The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) clearly defines a civilian as:

Any Person not belonging to the armed forces (see Chapter III, Section I) is considered as a civilian and the same applies in case of doubt as to his status. The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians. 

 And civilian property as:

  Civilian property is anything which is not a military objective, i.e. which by its nature, location, purpose or use does not effectively contribute to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization would not offer a definite military advantage in the circumstances ruling at the time. Thus, military equipment, a road of strategic importance, a supply column on its way to the army, a civilian building evacuated and reoccupied by combatants are military objectives. In case of doubt, a property which is normally assigned to civilian use should be considered as civilian and must not be attacked 

 So it’s fairly obvious who is considered a civilian. I have no problem with this and in fact I wholeheartedly support and urge civilians to be protected during times of war.

 I just want to draw your attention to this:

 After the first strike, people were gathered by Hamas operatives on the roof of a home which belonged to a known terrorist as "human shields", hoping their presence would deter a second strike. This was reported by the residents themselves. 

 Now the role of a civilian in armed conflict is one who is caught in the middle, who has no power over his or her fate and is simply a pawn of armed powers. The civilians caught in the crossfire in Syria, Iraq, Congo or Sudan are perfect examples of this.

More importantly a civilian in an armed conflict would do well to get to the designated safe zones as quickly as possible (designated safe zones are often schools or hospitals….though seeing how Hamas fires from, and stores weapons within both schools and hospitals they are wilfully in breach of the 4th Geneva Convention). The question that I pose is: Are those who run back into a building that they know will be destroyed still considered civilians?

 One cannot say that they did not have warnings. Residents of Khan Younis admit that they have received phone calls and leaflets telling them to leave their area and specific houses that will become targets. Furthermore the IDF has implemented what they call a ‘knock on the roof’ strategy, that is hitting a roof with ordinance that contains no explosives so all it does is create a loud noise. This warns people to leave the house as quickly as possible. So the IDF is acting well within its legal obligations (even exceeding them) in warning civilians within a particular area. Yet these civilians chose, willingly (or perhaps with a gun in their backs?), to go back into a building that was targeted for destruction. Despite their actions they will still be tallied as civilian deaths.

 Why? Their action is not that of a normal civilian.

They chose to act as human shields.

 But what is a human shield?

 Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention, and the International Criminal Court define a ‘human shield’ as:


International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia qualified physically securing or otherwise holding peacekeeping forces against their will at potential NATO air targets, including ammunition bunkers, a radar site and a communications centre, as using “human shields” (emphasis added) 

 Whilst this particular ICC ruling referred to the Peacekeepers it adheres to civilians as well. Now, once again, Hamas’ use of human shields has been well documented though has not (in my opinion) been adequately condemned.

But in this instance, according to witness testimony, the civilians ran back into the building willingly.

 Look at this video:




The warning shot is fired (limited damage done to the structure) and residents then leave. They then return, once again, willingly to act as human shields. In this case the IDF avoided destroying the building in order not to kill people.

But what if they had not seen residents returning to the building and thought it empty?

Is it still an intentional targeting of civilians?

Are the IDF pilots and drone operators murderers?

 There has to come a time when we distinguish true civilians from those who are actively sheltering and aiding terror groups. Perhaps it’s time we look at whether or not we should be more liberal in our interpretation of ‘combatant’?

Asymmetrical warfare is a very real thing and perhaps, just perhaps, committing suicide to inflate casualty figures in order to cause international reprimand should fall under the role of a member of an armed force?