Human Shields is unique in its subject matter and accurate in its historical probing. Its twenty-two chapters focus on examining the phenomenon of human shielding during wars, both voluntary and compulsory, and both peaceful and warlike, and the subtle paradoxes between considering “human shields” as one of the two main figures in wars…

The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, as part of the “Tarjuman” series, published the book Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, which is the second book written by the trio, Nev Gordon and Nicola Perugini, and Mahmoud Muhammad Al-Harthani, translated. , after their book titled: The Human Right to Dominate, published in 2018.

Human Shields is unique in its subject matter and accurate in its historical probing. Its twenty-two chapters focus on examining the phenomenon of human shielding during wars, both voluntary and compulsory, and both peaceful and warlike, and the subtle paradoxes between considering “human shields” as one of the two main characters in wars, namely combatants and civilians, or not, and how some aggressor states maliciously manipulate this concept legally. To permit the killing of civilians during wars. The book also presents examples of ancient and modern Tatars in all countries, races, and ethnicities. The book is 392 pages long, including a bibliography and a general index.

Gordon and Perugini begin their book, as they did in the English version, with an excerpt that is unmistakably racist, from Italian writer Curzio Malaparte’s novel The Skin (1949). The joke mocks the North African Arab men who used their women and children as human shields when the Americans invaded their country and spread mines across the terrain, and by them riding on their horses, with their wives on foot in front of them and not behind them as they used to do, not out of respect for them but because of the mines, hinting in this that the way these people treat their women and children An insult that became worse after the Western invasion.

Malaparte wrote the book three-quarters of a century ago, but even today, despite the demise of colonialism and the integration of independent North African states into the “family of nations,” the trope of “dark-skinned Arab men who use their women and children as human shields” remains widespread. Since the war on terrorism was launched, the use of the character of a human shield to justify rampant violence against innocent civilians has increased. American military analysts were busy in their reports during the US Navy attack on an Al-Qaeda compound in southern Yemen, in which ten women and children were killed, by determining whether the terrorists were taking the women and children. Human shields or not, as if they were paving the way to justify the killing of civilians.

The implicit logic of the text is clear: If children and women died in the attack, this is a crime that is attributed to “Al-Qaeda,” because its fighters had used them as human shields in the past. However, they missed that the “women and children” lived in the compound for a lifetime and were not turned into human shields. They were framed after the attack to be turned into armor.

When researchers Perugini and Gordon conducted an investigation into the phrase “human shield” in major newspapers and media outlets, they found that the countries where accusations of human shielding were most common were the former colonies in the Middle East and Asia, such as Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, and that the vast majority of shields Humanity is one of the sons of Muslim Arabs. In Mosul, there are more than 100,000 human shields, and in Fallujah, more than 50,000. As for Raqqa, although the entrenchment with ISIS has already occurred there, the newspapers are exaggerating to the point of talking about a complex maze of shields. Humanity is amidst mines to prevent coalition forces from advancing.

Standard for accusation of shielding

Accusing the Arabs of shielding is affected by the change in the historical view regarding who is considered human and who is not in the field of international politics. Following the recognition of the humanity of the Arabs after colonialism, when they were considered part of the family of nations, they became prepared to be human shields, but with the simultaneous disavowal of their humanity, when they continued to be considered barbarians. Like the old colonists.

The book Human Shields examines these processes of recognition and disavowal, and exposes the game of invoking legal profiling to weaken the protections granted to civilians in war zones in the Middle East, such as the Israeli army’s war on Gaza in 2014 and its launch of a campaign on social media to justify the killing of civilians, by promoting the statement that civilians Palestinians are used as human shields, blaming their deaths on Hamas. While this book was being prepared for publication, the Israeli war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 had reached unprecedented levels of violence, with accusations being promoted that Palestinian factions were taking over civilians, with the aim of justifying comprehensive attacks against them, especially against those from the people of the north who rejected the instructions of the Israeli occupation. Gazans by leaving their lands and homes and moving south, and even those who agreed to it as well, were bombed on their way to the south, which Israel claimed would be a “safe area” and it quickly became clear that it was not safe; Several thousand civilians died there.

The Zionist occupiers made accusations of human predation a tool to justify the killing of civilians, by holding others legally responsible for their deaths. They also made it a means of ethnic cleansing and extermination.

Rachel…a human shield

The American Rachel Corrie was not spared the color blindness in the eyes of the Zionist officials, their empty arguments, their chatter, their obsession with what they did not know, and their inherent criminality. This young woman landed on the land of Palestine with the aim of completing a scientific project, and she did not wait until the second Palestinian Intifada began, so she went with the youth of the International Solidarity Movement. “With the Palestinian People” and her young women went to Rafah to try to prevent Israel from demolishing homes on the Egyptian border. This young girl was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer, which claimed her life. Despite the reason for deep regret over her death, what caused even more regret was the accusation by the Israeli army spokeswoman in court that she “made herself a human shield to defend wanted people,” and that by confronting the bulldozer she participated in combat action, and therefore the person who killed her was acquitted. And he did not violate any law.

How, and by what logic, was the killing of an unarmed volunteer using non-violent methods considered legal? How can it be considered a “shield” like the “barbarian” tribes that the Chinese used as shields on the Turkish-Mongolian border, or like the prisoners that the Mongols used to provide in their invasions, or the Muslim prisoners that the Crusaders used to place naked and in chains to receive enemy projectiles? Weren’t these shields against their will, and in a time when shielding was not uncommon?

“Tatters” was portrayed in a positive light in the American film To Kill a Mockingbird, which revolves around the lives of two children and their father, the lawyer defending a black man who is falsely accused of assaulting and raping a white woman. It occurs to him the night before the trial that some of the defendant’s white neighbors may want to… In killing the detainee, he decides to stay in front of the prison building to protect his client with his body, and his suspicion actually comes true when an angry crowd arrives demanding that he step down so that they can kill the prisoner. Suddenly the lawyer’s two children appear with another boy and they all take shelter at the prison entrance, not budging. How failed the attack of those who were almost murderers.

This scene depicts a “voluntary human shield”, and considers it an act of resistance to violence and oppressive social norms, which dictate the idea of ​​white supremacy in the southern United States of America, and a challenge to militarism, imperialism, racism, sexism, capitalist exploitation, and environmental plunder, when people willingly put their lives in the line of fire to promote A case they see as moral. By defending the prisoner, the lawyer and the children were taking a stand against the deep-rooted racism in their society, and exposing and exposing this racism.

Compulsory shielding

As for forced human shields, our book analyzed a number of historical events surrounding them, including horrific testimonies about the militarization of civilians in conflict areas, forcing them to become shields, and the reasons for choosing them over others. It also explained and clarified different types of shields historically.

When the US-led coalition began to reclaim the city of Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Western newspapers became a tireless platform in reporting the facts of ISIS’ operations to “pull away terrified civilians” in the face of fierce attacks on it, and the accounts of a few of them who They were able to escape as the retreating fighters took them from one building to another as human shields to protect themselves.

Between the First and Second World Wars, pacifists and anti-colonialists, such as Mahatma Gandhi, developed the idea of ​​human shielding as a tool for legitimate peaceful resistance. They deployed it as a weapon of peace in the face of human fragility represented by those who used it as a detestable weapon of war, such as the German army, which during its occupation of France documented the presence of personalities A prominent French woman used the trains carrying his soldiers to protect him from enemy fire.

ISIS fighters, with their shields in front of them, hoped that their value as defenseless people protected by international law would deter their enemies. As for Corrie, she hoped that her presence and that of other white activists with Western passports would deter Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes. This indicates that the neutral term “human beings” It acquires a political color if it is used in the phrase “human shield,” and that shielding, both voluntary and forced, becomes an essential part of human fragility.

Modern laws of war control the spread of violence during armed conflicts, but they are a tool in the hands of warring parties to justify their forms of violence. The principle of differentiation in these laws distinguishes between combatants who may be killed and non-combatants who are protected, so those who wish to protect themselves resort to claiming that the human shield is not consistent with either of these two. The two legal personalities.

Shields between two characters

Perhaps listing some incidents of human predatory behavior is suitable for examining the mechanisms of operation of the internal laws of war, and the following is one of them:

When President Abraham Lincoln was consumed with the moral repercussions of America’s moral war, Francis Lieber ordered the establishment of a detailed code to regulate fighting in a humane manner. It had an impact on the international level and sparked international debates that led to the first two Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), and with it the issue of the human shield gained depth. Legally, politically and conceptually, he had never had it before.

Although Lieber acknowledged the necessity of treating the civilian population humanely, he claimed, on the other hand, that enemy civilians may, under certain circumstances, become legitimate targets. Civilians who volunteer to serve as shields, or are forced to do so, become a source of confusion in the laws of war, because they can sometimes be killed unlawfully. Lawful. Intense discussions about human shields lying in the middle between the characters of the fighter and others began with the start of the Franco-German War (1871) and continued until the twenty-first century. Ethical questions were raised related to the circumstances that allow the killing of human shields and who is responsible for their lives, due to the difficulty of controlling all of this within the framework of the law that does not contain vocabulary related to “civilians active in armed conflicts,” and therefore an unjustified confusion occurred between combatants and voluntary human shields, such as Rachel Corrie. And activists who traveled to Iraq during the Gulf Wars, these voluntary shields are mostly non-violent, anti-arms, and seek to defend the weak.

One of the reasons for the increase in human shield recruitment in the past two decades is the “disappearance of the battlefield.” The war on terrorism, for example, is no longer within clear spatial boundaries and time frames. This brought the phenomenon of human shields to the forefront. As ISIS militants retreated and hid in urban areas, such as Mosul, Kirkuk, and Raqqa, the ability to distinguish between fighters and civilians was undermined, giving the aggressor legitimacy to use lethal force. The term “human shields” became a legal concept that legitimized the use of brutal violence. Against innocent people.

The earliest known historical cases of tartars date back to the environmental movement in India in the 18th century, when members of the Bishnoi community hugged trees to prevent a local monarch from uprooting them. Two hundred and fifty years later, Greenpeace has adopted peaceful entrenchment as its main environmental tactic in the struggle against nuclear testing and whaling.