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SvennoJ on 23 June 2024
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Israeli forces strap wounded Palestinian to jeep during raid

A Palestinian man who Israeli soldiers strapped to an armoured vehicle and used as a human shield, has been taken to hospital for treatment.



Israeli action on Jenin ‘human shield’ incident will be telling

David Des Roches, a professor at the National Defense University in the United States, said if the Israeli military fails to discipline the soldiers who used a wounded Palestinian man as a human shield, then others could see their actions as a licence to do the same thing.

“It’s not standard practice. I hope that the investigation will find out who did this and I hope there will be exemplary punishment doled out. Otherwise, you can make the fair case that this is evolving into policy. But again, there’s a huge revolt against this in the Israeli press, so I don’t think we’ll see this become common,” Des Roches said.

“I think that the reaction of the Israeli military to this is going to be very telling, and, again, if the soldiers who did this are not disciplined appropriately, you can make the argument that this will be viewed as a licence for other people to do this. But at the end of the day, it’s hard to see that there’s any tactical advantage to this, and Israel has suffered grave strategic damage from it.”


Other recent cases of Israeli probes into troop misconduct

We’ve been covering Israeli soldiers’ apparent use of a wounded Palestinian man as a human shield during a raid in Jenin. The incident is not the first time the Israeli military has been forced to address troop misconduct.

Here are a few prominent examples from recent months:

May 2023: Palestinian rights groups accused Israeli troops of using five children as human shields, including during a raid near Jericho in the occupied West Bank, in March of last year.

May 2023: The Israeli military opened an investigation after video emerged of a soldier burning what appeared to be a Quran in May last year.

January 2024: The bombing of the Red Crescent headquarters in southern Gaza in January this year is also under investigation. Five people were killed at the site sheltering 1,400 people.

January 2024: Israeli soldiers in Gaza blew up the main building of a university at the start of the year, after using it as a military base for several weeks. The military said its troops did not get permission to destroy the building.

The next month, Israel’s top military lawyer warned troops about violations, saying the soldiers’ actions would ultimately cause strategic damage to the nation.






US airman ‘proud to go in footsteps of prior conscientious objectors’

Larry Hebert, a senior airman on active duty in the US Air Force, told Al Jazeera there is a long history of conscientious objectors from the United States, including in protest against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.


Hebert is one of two members of the air force requesting to become conscientious objectors over the United States’ support for Israel’s war in Gaza. He says that he hopes to highlight that becoming a conscientious objector is an option for other active-duty US soldiers.

“I think a lot of service members don’t actually know entirely what it is and what their rights are,” he said. While on leave from duty in April, Hebert protested outside the White House, calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the end of US weapons shipments to Israel.