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Former IDF Legal Expert: Hamas, Hizbullah "Hide Missiles in Children's Rooms"

(JNS) Yaakov Lappin - Former IDF Deputy Military Advocate General Col. Eli Baron told JNS that an "inconceivable" gap exists between the way that international audiences perceive Israel's military operations and the lengths that Israel's military goes to minimize civilian casualties. "The IDF invests heavily to ensure that all of our operations are in line with international law. In many ways, we are world leaders in this field. We go above and beyond what international law requires. Yet this fact is lost on so many around the world." "The principle of distinction in international law...holds that there must be a separation between combatants and civilians. Our adversaries do exactly the opposite. They deliberately disguise their combatants as civilians and launch attacks using human shields to protect their combatants. This gives them greater freedom of operation, and it is also an attempt to get us to harm their civilians, which then gives them points against us in the court of global public opinion. This is how they try to cut down our military advantage." "Hamas turned private homes into command and control centers. It hid weapons in homes. They had no problem hiding missiles in the basements and rooms of homes with children inside....Hizbullah's arsenal of approximately 120,000 to 130,000 rockets and missiles is mostly concealed in civilian residential buildings in Lebanon, as well as in sites like medical clinics....The enemy uses its civilians to protect their weapons. We use our weapons to protect our civilians." "The Gaza violence is not the result of civilians who are sick of their situation and go out to demonstrate, but rather, they are incidents organized by a terrorist organization that has been locked in an armed conflict with us for many years." "Hamas takes full responsibility for it. It pays bus drivers to bring the people, it pays the wounded and the families of the casualties. It sets up camps for them, and I heard it even sets up Wi-Fi connections there. It tells people to burst through the border fence as an objective. It brings tens of thousands of people to the border - some of whom are women, children and the elderly, and hundreds of which are armed Hamas members. They have grenades, explosive devices, firearms and fence-cutting equipment, and they hide behind huge smokescreens created by thousands of tires they burn." "What would happen if they cut the fence and reached Israeli communities a kilometer or two kilometers away? If we don't stop the mob in time, they will storm houses....Dozens of these people are Hamas terrorists who, once they get the opportunity, will kill Israelis."
2019-03-01 00:00:00
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