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Episode 197: The "Human Shields" Canard as Catch-All Colonial Absolution

Added 2024-02-07 16:48:26 +0000 UTC

"Viet Cong Use Children as Human Shields," the Associated Press alleged in 1967. "'Civilian casualty?' That's a gray area," Alan Dershowitz argued in The Los Angeles Times in 2006. "We can’t ignore the truth that Hamas uses human shields," Jason Willick wrote in The Washington Post in 2023.

For more than five decades, military forces with overwhelming firepower, including the U.S., Israel, and others have accused enemy combatants of using “human shields.” According to these allegations, militant resistance throughout the world, from the Vietnamese National Liberation Front to Palestinian militants, herd civilians in front of them, or hide in hospitals, religious institutions, and other public places, in order to evade attacks. In turn, they force the enemy to “risk” killing civilians, and they themselves bear responsibility for those who are killed.

But rarely, if ever, have these accusations been true. Indeed, the term “human shields,” despite having a clear legal definition, has become a catch-all for militias or insurgency groups that merely operate among a civilian population, functioning as a convenient pretext for invading, occupying and colonial forces to kill civilians, and reinforcing racist conceptions about besieged populations. So why, and how, do media provide cover for governments that lie about and instrumentalize supposed “human shielding”?

On this episode, we dissect the decades-old “human shields” accusation, examining how it dehumanizes and militarizes people living under occupation and invasions, demonizes resistance movements, and sanitizes civilian-killing aggressors as reluctant actors who "simply had no choice."

Our guests are Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini.

Guests

Neve Gordon is Professor of Human Rights and the Politics of Humanitarian Law at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of the book “Israel’s Occupation,” and co-author, with Nicola Perugini, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, of the books “Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire” (University of California Press, 2020) and “The Human Right to Dominate." (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Show Notes

On Human Shields

Neve Gordon | December 1, 2023 | London Review of Books

What is a ‘human shield’ and why is Israel using the term in Gaza?

Frederica Marsi | November 13, 2023 | Al Jazeera

Readers respond to a Hamas cartoon

Letters of the Editor | November 8, 2023 | The

Human Shields and the Location of Agency

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini | 2021 | Third World Approaches to International Law Review (TWAILR)

Author Interview: Human Shields

Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini | October 6, 2020 | Jadaliyya

70 years ago, Jewish Militias Hid Weapons Among Civilians in Underground Tunnels

Irenaeus | December 23, 2023 | Daily Kos

Is Muslim life actually ‘cheap’?

James North | September 14, 2020 | Mondoweiss

Between Sovereignty and Race: The Bombardment of Hospitals in the Italo-Ethiopian War and the Colonial Imprint of International Law

Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon | Spring 2018 | State Crime Journal

Israel Says That Hamas Uses Civilian Shields, Reviving Debate

Anne Barnard and Jodi Rudoren | July 23, 2014 | The New York Times

'Anything That Moves': Civilians And The Vietnam War

Nick Turse and Dave Davies | January 28, 2013 | NPR Fresh Air

White Flag Deaths: Killings of Palestinian Civilians during Operation Cast Lead

August 13, 2009 | Human Rights Watch

Why They Died: Civilian Casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 War

September 5, 2007 | Human Rights Watch

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here. You can find transcripts of past episodes and News Briefs here.

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