The European Union on Sunday condemned Hamas for using "hospitals and civilians as human shields" in Gaza, while also urging Israel to show "maximum restraint" to protect civilians.
The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations. […]
It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.
Now, while the above definition would include launching missiles near civilian infrastructure to dissuade retaliation, you are correct that the typical reference to the use of human shields is specifically around hostage taking - which is additionally defined as a war crime in its own right.
So if you want to claim that Hamas doesn’t take hostages or that they did but then didn’t colocate hostages near military operations, then potentially we could have a conversation about the degree to which they met the textbook definitions of human shields (as was discussed in Amnesty International’s piece calling for the hostages to be released and not located near military operations here).
But the topic in the original article relating to the EU condemnation and much of the current conversation of Hamas using schools or hospitals as “human shields” relates to their colocation of military operations including rockets near civilian infrastructure.
So we’re really splitting hairs here with the semantics relative to the OP article.
Placement of rockets does not qualify as a human shield, per Amnesty International.
I have the truth on my side, so I will always win.
The fact that you think there’s a “winning side” to which group in a conflict in the Middle East is or isn’t performing war crimes pretty clearly tells me you aren’t particularly concerned with the topic of truth at all actually.
Now, while the above definition would include launching missiles near civilian infrastructure to dissuade retaliation, you are correct that the typical reference to the use of human shields is specifically around hostage taking - which is additionally defined as a war crime in its own right.
So if you want to claim that Hamas doesn’t take hostages or that they did but then didn’t colocate hostages near military operations, then potentially we could have a conversation about the degree to which they met the textbook definitions of human shields (as was discussed in Amnesty International’s piece calling for the hostages to be released and not located near military operations here).
But the topic in the original article relating to the EU condemnation and much of the current conversation of Hamas using schools or hospitals as “human shields” relates to their colocation of military operations including rockets near civilian infrastructure.
So we’re really splitting hairs here with the semantics relative to the OP article.
Have a source for this specific claim? Because they certainly seem to take a critical stance on the practice.
The fact that you think there’s a “winning side” to which group in a conflict in the Middle East is or isn’t performing war crimes pretty clearly tells me you aren’t particularly concerned with the topic of truth at all actually.