In many cases, Hamas used its commanders’ own homes, where their families and other civilians were residing, for military purposes. The houses were used for weapons storage, command and control centers and communications in some cases. Such cynical use of one’s own home for a military purpose is heartless, and it transforms one’s family into a human shield.
Yet the Commission failed to use that term – “human shield” – even once, despite the fact that literally hundreds of Gaza civilians died precisely as a result of such tactics, which were specifically recommended in a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group battle manual captured by Israel during the war.
Hamas and its terrorist allies – all of whom were generously patronized and egged on by Iran – could have stopped the war on any day, simply by stopping to shoot at Israel. They chose not to.
The Schabes Report fails to point that out, and in fact studiously avoids the fact that not only did Hamas ignite the war, it stoked the flames by violating every single ceasefire set during the conflict.
*Note: The Commission did not even define Hamas as a terrorist entity, despite the fact that the governments of three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council had done so at the time of the conflict. In December 2014, however, the two Council members who belong to the European Union also became subject to a ruling by the General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg which accepted a petition by Hamas to have itself removed from the EU list of terrorist organizations. As a result, only the United States remains, as the lone permanent member of the UN Security Council currently defining Hamas as a terrorist organization.