1) According to Jpost UNRWA is about ready to probe the use of children as human shields during מבצע עופרת יצוקה‎). The UN’s Radhika Coomaraswamy claimed the somewhat equivocal:

We have not yet dealt directly with the human shield issue, but we will now mention it in our reports…t is still very difficult for us to say that it was actually happening and we still need to conduct a full investigation into what exactly took place… but we are not denying that it happened; it is absolutely possible that Hamas was using its civilians as human shields

Let’s see..

2) Many have complained that human rights groups fail to point out the obvious crimes of Hamas and other terror organizations. And, in a strange twist of dialectic where everyone seems to agree but comes away knowing they disagree, the groups agree! Sarit Micha’eli of B’tselem claimed:

It makes it quite easy regarding Hamas. It is quite clear that they are attacking and targeting civilians. When someone straps a bomb on themselves or fire missiles at civilians, the details are less important. It is clearly a war crime without even looking at the details…Even if they fired a Kassam missile as a military target, the fact that it is an inaccurate weapon, it would still count as an indiscriminate attack.

With Israel things are more complicated because Israel states it does not deliberately target civilians and that it safeguards them. With Israel, you have to investigate each specific incident because even if a civilian is killed in an attack, it doesn’t mean its necessarily a war crime. Targeting civilians is a war crime, but the damage to civilians in a given situation isn’t indicative of a war crime.

Muffti guesses they are conflating investigating and condemning. At least Muffti has to say he agrees: arranging suicide bombing and firing kassams at civilians is clearly a war crime.

See

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