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It's Time to Start Using the Term "Palestinian Civilian" Correctly

(Newsweek) Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer - The four Israeli hostages rescued from Gaza last week were held captive by Palestinian civilians in their home in central Gaza - including a journalist with bylines in Al Jazeera and his physician father. This is a perfect opportunity for a long-overdue conversation about the use of the phrase "Palestinian civilian." Let's get something straight from the outset: When you take hostages, you risk death. The moral and legal responsibility for any casualties resulting from the operation to free the hostages rests fully with Hamas and those holding hostages captive. If you are a journalist or physician holding hostages, you are no longer a "civilian." The Geneva Convention makes it unequivocally clear that civilians lose that protection when they take direct part in the hostilities. In other words, when you hold hostages captive, you become a legitimate military target. Lawmakers, journalists and diplomats are blindly accepting reported casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is no more than a propaganda arm of Hamas. A group that murders, massacres, rapes, beheads, and abducts people, and has a relentless history of fabricating stories, inflating casualties, and using their own civilians as human shields, is not exactly the world's most trustworthy source. As long as the press and world leaders continue to push false narratives and unsubstantiated casualty figures, they are only enabling and empowering Hamas and perpetuating the violence and suffering they claim to seek to end. Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney, is CEO of the International Legal Forum and senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security. John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
2024-06-18 00:00:00
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