Quick🧵Debunking #Israel's "Human Shields" lie used as a blanket excuse to justify killing ANY Palestinian civilians:
e.g. IDF officials admit they 100% knew children & women would die in their strikes. They went for it anyways & called them "collateral damage" & "human shields"
2\ Amnesty found ZERO evidence of Palestinian combatants forcefully taking civilians as human shields or preventing them from evacuating targeted areas
The #Israeli org Breaking the Silence interviewed 100s of IDF soldiers, but never encountered evidence of those "human shields"
3\ #Israel's own courts, however, found evidence of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields at gun point
IDF calls it the "neighbor procedure"
Amnesty, HRW, BTselem... all found evidence of Israel taking Palestinian human shields since the occupation began in 1967
4\ #Israel deems ALL Palestinians in Gaza "human shields" by virtue of just living in the same neighborhoods with possible Hamas or PIJ members (even non-combatants)!
Can Hamas equally claim that it has a right to target Israeli cities b/c IDF soldiers live among civilians?
5\ An #Israeli "evidence" for "human shields" is a 2014 Hamas leader praising Gazans who refused to evacuate their home so that Israel bombs it to the ground.
HRW said this doesn't amount to the crime of human shields but rather a form of "peaceful protest" & defending homes!
6\ Amnesty concluded that even guerrilla warfare tactics in a densely populated urban space such as "storing munitions in civilian buildings of launching attacks from the vicinity of civilian buildings" do NOT amount to the crime of "Human Shields" under International Law.
7\ "Human Shields" are still civilians who don't lose their protected status whatsoever. Targeting them is still a War Crime.
#Israel's "Human Shields" canard is vile, racist & dehumanizing. It implies that Palestinians don't value their lives & have no agency! It's a 100% lie!
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🚨Israel is arming criminal gangs in Gaza with US-made assault rifles to sow chaos & societal collapse:
Those kids in Deir Al-Balah were armed with M16s that can ONLY enter Gaza through Israel.
They're openly firing their M16s without any fear of Israeli troops 800 meters away!
2\ The US M16 rifles those kids are parading around look very new.
Hamas doesn't smuggle those into Gaza, they use soviet AK-47s rifles.
Similar M16 rifles were reportedly seen with gangs that loot aid trucks & rob homes & civilians.
There's been also 2 major bank robberies.
3\ Israel has been in touch with many criminal gangs & families in Gaza to recruit them to destabilize the enclave and/or in some cases to act substitute for the Hamas government & run neighbourhoods as warlords.
Some families refused or were threatened by Hamas to back off
A 1,743-word story about IDF soldiers RAPING a Gazan civilian does NOT mention the word "rape" a single time
In passing, the article uses vague language like "violate from behind"
They also omitted important parts of his testimony!
2\ Ibrahim Salem testified earlier that Israeli soldiers raped him & other Gazan civilians kidnapped to the Sde Teiman torture camp, including children.
Most of his testimony here was left out in the CNN article above.
The article deliberately downplays Israel's rape of Salem!
3\ Now compare the vague language & deliberate avoidance of the word "rape" in a story about Israel raping Palestinians with how CNN covered the allegations of sexual violence on Oct 7
Many of those allegations have been debunked since, but they're still featured in that article!
Assassinating Haniya is an empty victory image that reeks of desperation & malevolence.
He was a politician not a militant leader. Israeli media themselves admit his killing will have minimal effect on Hamas' operations.
But it'll dramatically impact internal power dynamics🧵
2\ Haniya lived in the open & NOT in hiding like Sinwar. So reaching his head is NOT an achievement.
Why kill him now? 1- Ruin the ceasefire/prisoner swap negotiations 2- Kill chances of Palestinian unity after Beijing's summit 3- Push Hamas to become more hardline
3\ Haniya was a pragmatist & had a moderating influence on Sinwar & Hamas' military wing.
Khaled Meshal, Haniya likely temporary successor, is a moderate within the movement, but doesn't have as much authority over the militants & Sinwar. He's not a Gazan & not as well-connected to everyone on the ground as Haniya was.
🚨Israeli soldiers severely gang RAPED a Gazan detainee at the Sde Teiman torture camp.
The case was so extreme, the victim had to be hospitalized & the IDF had to detain 10 reservists!
Israeli ministers are now calling the rapists "holy" & "heroes", demanding their release🧵
2\ Israel's Knesset (currently on summer break) is holding an emergency discussion tomorrow to defend the rapist IDF soldiers who were detained for gang raping a Gazan detainee so severely, he had to be hospitalized.
🚨Extremely important testimonies of Israeli soldiers admitting to unspeakable atrocities in Gaza:
Mass graves; tanks crushing Gazans alive; littering the streets with bodies of civilians, women & children for dogs to feast on; & shooting indiscriminately for fun out of boredom🧵
2\ Soldiers admit the IDF is littering the streets of Gaza with decomposing bodies of murdered children, women & civilians, left for dogs & cats to feast on
When humanitarian convoys come in, IDF bulldozers dump the bodies in mass graves under the rubble to hide the scene...
3\ Soldiers admit IDF bulldozers & tanks run over hundreds of Gazans ALIVE & dead. The bodies are crushed & flattened into mush.
Soldiers say the Gaza death toll is an undercount b/c of the high number of Gazans whose bodies the IDF hid under the rubble & buried in mass graves
Folks don't understand the serious brain damage Israel torture at Sde Teiman leaves Palestinians with permanently.
Being blindfolded, handcuffed & muzzled all day long for months under threat of severe torture leads the brain to atrophie & creates serious neurological damage🧵
2\ Sustained stress of enforced isolation & sensory deprivation decreases the size of the hippocampus, the brain region related to learning, memory, & spatial awareness, & "a decrease in the formation of new neurons, & the eventual failure in hippocampal function." psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-…
3\ Studies on mice have shown that one month of social isolation caused a decrease of around 20% of the total volume of neurons, though researchers saw that remaining neurons were branching out more than those mice that were not isolated. When the isolation went on longer — up to three months — researchers saw that the extra branching of the neurons was no longer happening, and that, in exchange, spines (structures that neurons develop to place the machinery that is required to communicate to each other) were greatly diminished. What does this mean? The branching that took place in the first month of isolation may represent some sort of compensatory mechanism that the brain puts in place in order to overcome and prevent the detrimental effects of isolation. However, when isolation went on for “too long," this mechanism seemed to come to an end, and trigger the loss of neuronal communication in the form of spine elimination.