By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
Israeli occupation forces were filmed using a Palestinian civilian they shot as a human shield on Saturday in the West Bank.
“When I saw the occupation soldiers shooting inside the room, I put my head under the blanket and hid,” said Alaa Husseiniyya, 13, who witnessed an Israeli military operation carried out by special forces on Saturday in Jenin.
The operation took place in Jenin’s Jabariyat neighborhood, targeting Palestinian resistance fighters who were in the vicinity of the house where Alaa was sleeping alongside his uncles.
Alaa told Mondoweiss that Israeli soldiers raided the room in which he and his uncles slept and started shooting at them randomly. Alaa recounted that when he lifted the blanket from his head, he saw his uncle, Majd Husseiniyya, wounded and lying on the ground. Beside him was another man, Mujahid Balas, injured in both legs and lying on the floor just outside the room.
The Israeli forces seized one of the injured men and strapped him to the front of a military vehicle, driving around while parading him as a human shield before eventually handing him over to Palestinian medical teams, who transported him to a hospital in Jenin.
One eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Mondoweiss that the Israeli forces deliberately mistreated the injured man.
“They appeared to be toying with him for amusement,” the eyewitness said, pointing out that the man was neither wanted nor a resistance fighter, but an unarmed civilian. This was evidenced by the fact that Israeli forces did not arrest him but handed him over to the Palestinian ambulance after he had been left strapped to the front of the vehicle for several minutes in the hot summer sun.
Ra’fat Husseiniyya, the owner of the home that was raided, said that the young men were sleeping in his house as they did every night. There army had nothing against them, and they were not suspected of any resistance activity, Ra’fat said. But the Israeli special forces shot them directly while they were sleeping.
He went on to say that the soldiers interrogated him and asked him about his relation to the men in the home. He told them that they were his brothers and that there was no justification for raiding the house and arresting them. He explained that the occupation army delayed providing medical aid to his brother Majd for hours before administering first aid to him.
The Most Moral Army in The World™ has been filmed repeatedly over the past months allegedly using captive Palestinians as human shields.
In December in Gaza, IDF soldiers reportedly used a Palestinian man as a human shield and an exploration drone: