They aren’t Human Shields, They are Human Sacrifices

Above: Palestinian Islamic leaders worship at funeral of activist accidentally killed in violent protest.

You may have heard discussions across media platforms for years about Hamas using their civilians as “human shields.”

This phrase has been used to try and help the Western world understand what Israel has to wrestle with when it comes to taking out terrorist military targets located in civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, mosques—and even schools and kindergartens.

The term “human shields” describes the strategy of terrorists who place innocent civilians between them and the line of fire to protect themselves or their weapons stashes. The strategy is a win-win for the terrorists because if someone fires on them, “innocent people” die, which creates an international uproar. On the other hand, if Israeli forces abort the mission to prevent the death of “innocents”, the terrorists and their property remain safe.

The full truth, however, is actually even more brutal.

Can’t Win

It is astonishing that even when Israel was in its smallest and weakest state—when it was reborn in 1948—five neighboring countries attacked it simultaneously but were unable to destroy it. It is astonishing, that is, if you don’t take into account the miraculous power of God’s promises.

Since that legendary war in 1948, multiple attempts have been made by surrounding countries—all larger, stronger and wealthier—to attack and annihilate Israel and remove the stain of the foreign Jewish God being worshipped in the midst of the Islamic stronghold. Each attack ultimately failed to bring about that result.

It took a couple of decades, but in the 1960’s a change took place in the mindset of Israel’s enemies. It was a bitter reality—that tens (if not hundreds) of millions of Muslims who inhabited the Middle East could not conquer some three million Israelis living in Israel at the time.

Change of Strategy

But military might is only one way to win a war. Israel’s enemies spent years studying Western culture. They were pleased to conclude that Westerners were reliably emotional when it came to human life and could easily be manipulated.

And so, their strategy to chip away at Israel’s allies began. Creating such isolation would make it difficult for the tiny nation to function in a world that thrives on international cooperation.

Islamic terrorists would use the West to crush Israel.

How? Human sacrifice.

The use of human shields, as we know, aims to protect the bad guys from being attacked—saving their lives and allowing them to get away with a crime.

However, if the intention is to get the human shields killed in the process…

They are not human shields.

They are a human sacrifice.

I’ll explain.

Protect and Defend

Did you know that in Israel, since the 1980’s you cannot legally build a home or building without a bomb shelter?

Early on in its existence, Israel understood the long-term threat by its neighbors and took steps to protect its civilian population. Israeli law requires every apartment, home or business built to have a designated reinforced space where people can go if and when Israelis come under attack by rocket fire. Israel’s government also built public bomb shelters that would be accessible to anyone living in older structures without their own bomb shelter or who may be out and about when sirens go off.

In contrast, throughout the decades of Palestinian terrorists planning attacks against Israel, they made no plans whatsoever to build bomb shelters in Gaza.

The billions of humanitarian dollars funneled annually to Gaza to help the population have instead been used to create an entire underground network of tunnels that is accessible only to terrorists who have dedicated their lives to the cause of annihilating Israel (and eventually the West). Civilians are not allowed access to tunnels, even to escape bombings!

Islamic terrorism thrives not only on the death of its enemy victims, but the death of its own people as “martyrs.” To Hamas, Gazan civilians were never meant to survive war against Israel. They were not just a shield, they were the intended weapon designed to throw at any opposition to their cause. They are the sacrifice for the glory of Allah.

This is also why Hamas has no problem stealing the humanitarian supplies brought into Gaza. Why waste it on civilians designated for sacrifice? And any civilian who happens to survive now can be sacrificed in the follow-up war against the West.

Palestinian leaders did however invest time and money in schools—brainwashing virtually an entire population into thinking it is their destiny to offer up their lives to bring about justice. (This parasitical need to take over the rule of its host nation is one of the reasons that not one Middle East nation is willing to take in Palestinian refugees.)

Death is their form of worship. How else could you explain the mothers who are proud of their “martyred” children? How do you explain the silence of Gazans for years, never demanding that Hamas build bomb shelters? Have you ever heard an outcry from Gaza begging the international community to provide them with safe rooms? Have you ever heard UNWRA, the UN organization responsible for the welfare of the Palestinians, complain that their schools were being used by terrorists for weapons storage and tunnel pier entrances?

And what do you say to IDF Soldiers who have fought in Gaza and testify that schools are built boobytrapped with explosives imbedded into the structure? Or that every single house they went into had children’s toys and books teaching them how to kill. Every single one.

But even more recent and relevant, how do you explain Gazans cheering with shouts of glee, and handing out sweets celebrating the attacks of October 7th, knowing they would have nowhere to hide when Israel would come for their hundreds of hostages?

Perhaps there are Gazans who want nothing to do with Hamas, but their protests at this point come too little too late. Many Palestinians fleeing their homes were ordered by Hamas at blockades to return home or were shot and killed along the roadside. Hamas needed them to be home to either deter the IDF from digging up the tunnels under their neighborhoods, or to die as the IDF tried to find terrorists in the tunnels. Strategically, if Gazans weren’t willing to cooperate, they weren’t of any use to Hamas. So Hamas used them to provide the West with photos of dead Gazans along the road—of course blaming Israel.

Battlefield of the Mind

Combating this strategy of human sacrifice is no easy task. It is multilayered and requires real-time communication internally and internationally.

It’s no accident that the IDF is famous for their pre-warning techniques of dropping leaflets warning of an impending attack in an area and even their “knocker” bombs they drop onto rooftops releasing a slight bang which gives time for civilians (and terrorists) to get out of harm’s way before they level a targeted building.

The IDF is famous for these above and beyond ethical practices including providing top medical care to terrorists captured alive. And still people of influence more often than not, view Israel’s fight for survival in a negative light.

Just recently, General Sir John McColl, the British former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of NATO arrived in Israel with other former NATO military officers on a fact-finding mission. McColl admitted to arriving predisposed against Israel. This makes his reaction even more significant as he described how impressed he was, declaring IDF policies to be even more ethically rigid than the British military.

There was a well-known occurrence several years ago where Israel called a wanted terrorist in Gaza to order him to leave his home as they were going to level it. The terrorist called up his neighbors and friends—all terror supporters—to stand on the roof until Israel eventually aborted the mission.

While Hamas technically won that round, had Israel attacked, the terrorists would’ve considered it an even bigger win. Because for the mere cost of a house and a few hundred dead Gazans, Hamas would’ve earned UN resolutions condemning Israel, international denouncements, some fresh boycotts and maybe spark  another round of debates for Hamas’ own sovereign state of Palestine.

Child Soldiers

The ideology of death as an honor, a secret weapon, and even a desired consequence is instilled in the hearts of Muslim children from a young age.

I remember watching a documentary in the early 2000’s when the Second Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) brought about the murder of over 1,000 Israelis. News began to spread of the brainwashing taking place with Palestinian Arab children in Gaza and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), under the supervision of UNWRA. One TV show featured a knock off Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck who asked kids:

“What do you want to be when you get older?”

“Martyrs!”, answered the boys and girls.

“Who is the oppressor enemy?”

“The Jew!”

“What would you be willing to give for ‘your homeland of Palestine?’”

“Our blood!”

The narrator in the documentary exposé warned, “In a few decades a murderous generation will come of age…it will make this Intifada seem like child’s play.”

It took less than a year for the “Intifada” to reach US soil with the 9/11 attacks. America reacted and plunged its military into a war on terror deep in the Middle East. That was 20 years ago, and while many of the original terrorists who perpetrated the attacks on Israel and the US are no longer breathing, their ideology lives on with intensity and in even greater numbers.

Why? Because its fuel is human sacrifice.

The more they have killed, the more they have succeeded. The more they have been killed, the more they have succeeded. The more death, the more power, the more they have pleased Allah and brought the world closer to their coveted world domination.

Palestinian father pushes his son towards Israelis soldiers and orders his child to go to them, all while yelling “Shoot him! Kill him!” to the soldiers. Instead, the soldier offers his hand to the boy and hi fives him. (Youtube)

In one of many instances where the Islamic principle of death over life was proclaimed, even BBC which has historically been sympathetic to the Islamic cause was chilled when they interviewed an “Islamic State fighter” in Syria:

“We’re coming for you,” he says with disturbing calm, “With men who love death as much as you love life.”

Every Knee Shall Bow?

“But not all Muslims are bad, many are peaceful,” is a common line one hears in the media debate. Westerners, especially Christians who value compassion, are the most vulnerable to the psychological war being fought against them. The word “Islam” means submission. If you do not wish to “submit” to Islam, you are by definition the enemy, an infidel—and war has been declared against you.

To say there are peaceful Muslims is irrelevant. If October 7th proved anything, it is that peaceful Muslims get shot, tortured, and kidnapped just as quickly as non-Muslims. To declare neutrality is equal to laying down your weapon while in the midst of a pack of hungry lions in hopes that they will let you live. Hamas does not care if you have a family and kids waiting for you back home—you are only worth keeping alive if you join their ranks as a predator.

If the West wants to continue to enjoy its current freedoms, it must accept the reality that Islamic extremists have no intention of coexisting peacefully.

Political/social/geographical issues raised will never be resolved as they are largely created to distract the masses and recruit activists who will smokescreen while terrorists build their underground fortresses and grow their weapons stashes.

Facts Can be Boring, Propaganda is Emotional

To win the war of public opinion, the enemy doesn’t have to present facts. They just have to get to people first and tell a convincing scenario. The more dramatic the story, the higher the likelihood that people’s emotions will override their logic.

A classic example is the situation of the Gazan hospital Al-Ahli that was bombed early in this war. Within minutes of the explosion, the Gaza Health Ministry declared 500 Gazans dead by Israeli fire. The media was quick to report those stats without any picture or evidence, even though logically no one could count 500 bodies in five minutes if they were laid out in a row, let alone piled under rubble.

When it turned out that the rocket was not Israeli but a failed Islamic Jihad launch, and that it actually only hit a few cars in a parking lot near the hospital, no one seemed to think the story was interesting anymore. And of course, we never heard about the mass funeral preparations required for all those supposed 500 casualties. While the story has been debunked, to this day, you can find original posts blaming Israel for bombing a hospital.

A larger picture example is the accusation of genocide and apartheid. Again, these are emotional terms that bring out the protective nature in people who believe themselves to be deeply caring for the vulnerable. The short answer is that while there are several million Arab citizens in Israel with all the rights and privileges of Jews, the only Jews in Gaza are being held captive in tunnels. So which sounds more like an aparthied?

Also, if Israel really wanted to commit genocide like other Middle East, Far East and African dictators actually have, they would simply use air strikes to flatten the entire Gaza strip rather than risk the lives of Israeli soldiers by sending them in to sift through and separate the uninvolved Gazans from the terrorists.

Discernment

We get it. These concepts can be hard to accept. The most vulnerable people to a scam are good decent people, because they expect others to be decent. In the same way, because western culture desires good and not evil, it is most vulnerable to the twisted manipulation of terrorists.

If you’ve ever heard about cultures that practice cannibalism, you probably had to take a minute to wrap your head around what it must be like to live there. After all, everyone is at risk in such a culture. In the same way, it takes a bit of effort for those in “civilized” Western culture to grasp the fact that there exists a culture that has designed its own destruction as the weapon to annihilate the Jewish people and anyone who worships their God!

Let it sink in. The Palestinian People aren’t just being used as human shields. They are human sacrifices being offered up by the Militant Islamic world. This means that no matter what negative thing you may hear about Israel, if you love human life, Israel is your greatest ally.