Israeli troops used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza

"The Israeli soldiers outside Majdi Abed Rabbo’s home were after the three Hamas fighters holed up next door, and they wanted Abed Rabbo to be their point man.
For the next 24 hours, Abed Rabbo said, the soldiers repeatedly forced him to walk through the battle zone to see whether the militants were dead or alive.
Abed Rabbo wasn’t alone. Eight other residents in this northern Gaza Strip neighborhood told McClatchy in separate interviews that Israeli soldiers had conscripted them to check homes for booby traps, to smash holes in the walls of houses so that soldiers could use them as escape routes or to try to pull dead Palestinian militants from the rubble."

By Dion Nissenbaum
continues:
www.mcclatchydc.com...


Another comment-news about war crimes of Israel (same page):

UN special rapporteur Richard Falk called for an independent inquiry into Israel’s violation of international humanitarian law.

Falk said Israel’s actions against the besieged Gazans are reminiscent of “the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto” which included the starvation and murder of Polish Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

“There could have been temporary provision at least made for children, disabled, sick civilians to leave, even if where they left to was southern Israel,” said the Jewish American academic on Thursday.


According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there is a “high risk of developing cancer from exposure to radiation emitted by … depleted uranium weapons. This risk is assumed to be proportional to the dose received.”

The Geneva Convention has classified depleted uranium ammunitions as ‘illegal weapons of mass destruction’ due to their high radioactivity and toxicity.

Israel faces potential war crimes charges over its excessive use of other controversial weapons on the densely-populated coastal strip.

Human rights group Amnesty International has also touched on the issue, saying that Tel Aviv used white phosphorus munitions “indiscriminately and illegally” in overcrowded areas of Gaza.

White phosphorus is a high-incendiary substance that bursts into all-consuming flames that cannot be extinguished with water, burning flesh to the bone and often leading to death.

Falk, dismissed Israel’s argument that the assault was for self-defense, saying that “the UN charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense.”




[edit on 3-2-2009 by deccal]