Hamas: we'll kill Jewish childeren.

[sus]

My understanding is that the human shield strategy is deliberate.

If you can find a neutral source to the contrary, well and good. Actually, if you can find a neutral source at all, I will paypal you a falafel.

Didn't Hamas learn it from the IDF?

Amnesty International[3] and Human Rights Watch[4] assert the Israel Defense Forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields during the 2002 Battle of Jenin. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reported that "for a long period of time following the outbreak of the second intifada, particularly during Operation Defensive Shield, in April 2002, the IDF systematically used Palestinian civilians as human shields,

In 2002:
Wikipedia: "Human Shields"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shiel...
Amnesty International[3] and Human Rights Watch[4] assert the Israel Defense Forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields during the 2002 Battle of Jenin

Again in 2003:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan...

Again in 2006:
http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shi...

Again in 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5...

Again in 2009:
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr...

It is quite apparent that Israel has a history of doing this.

 

[sus]

Well any one of them who'd read any kind of history of warfare would get the idea that destroying civilian infrastructure.



And? Does the IDF store arms caches in schools and in the middle of housing estates?

I'm not about to condemn Hamas for using these tactics since that's what asymmetrical warfare is about - attempting to level the battleground by using unconventional tactics that push the moral buttons of 3rds parties to pressurise one or more aggressors to force some kind of resolution that you wouldn't be able to achieve purely militarily methods.

The only problem is that there have been so many dead kids on both sides that many, many people now take the view that both sides deserve each other, that neither has a moral advantage, which rather negates the whole method...

Why? Because the oppressed kept pathetically fighting whilst besieged and murdered?

 

[sus]

No they didn't. The whole mythology of the noble warrior is precisely that - mythology. Throughout history armies have committed atrocities designed to demoralise and degrade the sprits of their foes, by prooving that they are both militarily stronger, and are also prepared to go further in order to win.

Remember Brando's monologue to Willard in Apocalypse Now, about the strength of the Vietcong hacking off the limbs of the innoculated kids? That behaviour wasn't invented in the C20th, it has been a factor in warfare since we started clubbing each other. Mass rape, massacring of civilian populations, throwing the heads of your enemies people back to them - the only differene about the modern era is that we see it all minute by minute and in living colour.

I don't think allowing your own population to be demoralised by massive loss is such an effective tactic, or suggested in The Art of War. Isn't Gaza the most densely populated land on the planet? where the fuck can they hide??