Hamas encourages human shields (update)

From MEMRI:



We saw yesterday that is was likely that the Hamas leader in the house called the neighbors to protect him during the five minutes from the phone call to the bombing.

Since then, as far as I can tell, none of the other terror leader houses that have been bombed have been protected by "human shields," meaning that the neighbors trusted Hamas to put their lives on the line exactly once.

Of course, Hamas is happy either way. If the human shields work then their houses and weapons caches are saved by their encouragement or coercion of civilians. If civilians are killed, they can then say this:

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said on his Facebook page that the civilian casualties in Gaza meant that Hamas could do the same to Israel.

Hamas is actively trying to endanger Gaza civilians for PR purposes, which is depraved - and par for the course.

Keep in mind that there is no analogy, as much as Hamas pretends there is. International law allows the targeting of a military objective even if there are civilians in the area as long as the target is of high enough value. International law forbids purposefully placing military targets in civilian areas. And international law forbids purposefully moving civilians to a military target in order to protect it.

International law does not require a combatant to warn their enemy that they are going to be attacked. Steven Erlanger in the New York Times made a sarcastic comment yesterday implying that there was such a standard in warfare, at least for Israel:

Israel does not always give warnings, of course. Also on Tuesday, a missile hit a car traveling along a central Gaza thoroughfare, killing the three occupants. It was not immediately clear who the targets were, though one was reportedly a senior Hamas military official, Muhammad Shaban, and it seemed unlikely that anyone had called them to warn that a missile was on the way.

That comment should be enough to fire the reporter for obvious bias. But, hey, it's The New York Times.

(h/t David G)

UPDATE: This video from 2008 proves that Hamas does indeed call people to protect houses.