A quintessential depiction of the nature of Israel’s struggle against Arab terrorist and guerrilla forces

A sad but true quintessential depiction of the nature of Israel’s struggle against Arab terrorist and guerrilla forces

Hamas takes pride in using women and children as human shields in fighting Israel

From Palestinian Media Watch:

A Hamas representative in the PA legislative council, takes pride in the fact that women and children are used as human shield in fighting Israel. He describes it as part of the "Death Industry" at which they excel, and explains that the Palestinians "desire death" the same way Israelis "desire life".

The following is the full text:

For the Palestinian people death became an industry, at which women excel and so do all people on this land: the elderly excel, the Jihad fighters excel, and the children excel. Accordingly [Palestinians] created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the Jihad fighters againset the Zionist bombing machine, as they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire Life.

Hamas is committing three war crimes

Alan Dershowitz poignantly stated the obvious in an op-ed he wrote today for the WSJ titled: Israel's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate' Hamas are the real war criminals in this conflict

Until the world recognizes that Hamas is committing three war crimes -- targeting Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations -- and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue.

...
In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family's house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.

Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.

These despicable tactics -- targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians -- can only work against moral democracies that care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties. They never work against amoral nations such as Russia, whose military has few inhibitions against killing civilians among whom enemy combatants are hiding.
...

See the full op-ed on the WSJ website:
Israel's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate' Hamas are the real war criminals in this conflict

Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case Against Israel's Enemies" (Wiley, 2008).