Yey, kids used as Human shields! How fun!!

In October 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for the army to use the Palestinians as human shields. The IDF would pick up someone and send them to walk on a ground, or enter an apartment they fear is unsafe; some people criticised that. In August 2005, Nidal Daraghmeh (isn’t that a beautiful name? Nidal...), a 19 years old student, was killed in one of these operations.

The mere fact that the issue was topic of contention amazes me. At least I’m glad the Supreme Court ruled against it.

But well, it hasn’t stopped. This week, Le Monde reports multiple cases of adults and kids - down to 11 years old. Eleven!! - whom the army sent first in places they feared were booby trapped or they feared to be shot.

So they sent Palestinian children. Beautiful army morals. You know, honour and all that crap.

Three days ago, Israeli telly showed images from Associated Press of a Palestinian young man - 24 years old Sameh Amira - walking in front of Israeli soldiers. He had been picked up randomly, and forced to enter houses and enter all the rooms before the soldiers.

Photos of Sameh Amira, as well as the AP news report:

Palestinian Sameh Amira, 24, stands in his home in the West Bank City of Nablus, Feb. 28, 2007. Television footage showing Amira as he is escorted by heavily armed Israeli soldiers on a door-to-door sweep in a crowded Nablus neighborhood, provided some of the strongest evidence to date that the Israeli army is still using Palestinian civilians as 'human shields' in direct violation of Israel's own supreme court. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

Screenshot from the news report in question.

And, a short AP video report that was covering the Nablus Curfew. You can see clearly Sameh Amira being led by the soldiers (like in the photo above), walking ahead of them in various rooms... (There's an advertisement first, though).

I am taking the photos and video from Lawrence of Cyberia's blog - click on the link for more details, coverage, and photos.

So the army is planning on investigating in some cases of usage of human shields that occurred recently, in the West Bank, during ‘Operation Hot Winter’.

(this is an older one. It dates back to September 2005.)

To finish, I have two things to ask you:

a) Stand against violations of civilian rights in the war. Lobby whomever the fuck you think should be lobbied. If you are Israeli, support your Human Rights organisations which report such incidents.

b) If you have a suggestion for a cool military operation name for the IDF, please send it to them. They seem to have run out of interesting names (not unexpected, they do so many military operations...). I mean, seriously, ‘Operation Hot Winter’? and the next part is what, ‘Operation Cruel Summer’? (for the youngest among you, ‘Cruel Summer’ was a song by Bananarama a few centuries ago).