“Israel” Using Palestinians As Human Shields or Even to Replace Dogs!

The practice was so widespread across different units fighting in Gaza that it could in effect be considered a “protocol”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of the so-called “Breaking the Silence”, a group founded to document the “Israeli” military abuses.

The group has collected testimony describing the practice from veterans of the 10-month aggression on Gaza. The accounts they have heard match those reported in an investigation by the newspaper Haaretz, which unveiled that the chief of staff’s office was aware of the practice.

“The senior ranks know about it,” one source said to have taken part in finding civilians to serve as human shields told the paper. “Our lives are more important than their lives,” Haaretz quoted commanders telling their soldiers.

The practice is said to be so routine that “Israeli” soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier – and the process was described by several witnesses.

Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by “Israeli” soldiers, dressed in “Israeli” army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of “Israeli” forces.

Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in. “Palestinians are told: ‘Do one mission of … a [tunnel] shaft and you’re free,’” Haaretz quoted one soldier saying.

Afterwards, the men are reportedly released to join their families – underlining to the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz and Breaking the Silence that they were civilians who did not pose any military threat and had been detained only for the clearance operations.

Footage of Palestinian civilians, including some in “Israeli” occupation army uniform, being sent into devastated buildings was obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast in July.

“We heard it from different units, fighting in different times and different places inside Gaza,” Weiman said. “Then we understood it’s something a lot more widespread – or even, I could say, a protocol – in the ‘IDF’.”

One soldier had been told Palestinian civilians were being used to replace the dog units that search for explosives “because too many dogs had died”, he added.