Reuters has revealed that during 2024, the US gathered intelligence indicating that Israel discussed the possibility of sending Palestinian soldiers into tunnels in Gaza believed to contain explosives, raising questions about the use of civilians as human shields, which is prohibited under international law. The information was shared with the White House and analysed by […]
By Alaa Shamali
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
I’m confused why this is news or why there are new articles about this.
To be clear, the news is NOT that Israel is using human shields, it’s that the US government knew that Israel was using human shields toward the end of 2024–which, of course they fucking did. This practice was well documented at the time and western news was reporting on it. Here’s an article from CNN from October 2024 that talks about the practice. If the American public had the ability to know Israel was using human shields in the latter part of 2024 then the American government absolutely knew that Israel was using human shields in the latter part of 2024.
Israel has long held that Hamas’ positioning of assets within civilian infrastructure constitutes the use of humans as shields (worth noting at least some of Israel’s military infrastructure is located proximally close to civilians as well). Meanwhile Israeli forces have been storing prisoners bound and blindfolded at night and forced to scout out dangerous situations in front of Israeli troops during the day (to spare the working dogs, of course). In one instance Israeli soldiers tied explosives around an 80yo’s neck and forced him to advance in front of them–when they were done with him they just shot him and his wife.
This is old news, this is known news, and the fact that the US government knew about this when the US people knew about this is not news.
