Israeli Leaders Hiding in Tunnels, Underground IDF Bases in ‘Populated Areas’: US Media’s Human Shields Double Standard
Why is Jake Tapper not lamenting the IDF doing the exact same things he accuses Hamas of doing?
Human Shields discourse has always been a brainless, dehumanizing talking point—a way for liberals to hand-wave away the endless slaughter in Gaza and, better yet, pin the obscene death toll of Palestinians on “Hamas” or other militants. Hamas, the argument goes, “embeds itself among the civilian population” and thus takes moral responsibility for any carnage Israel’s jet fighters, snipers, and shelling visit upon a largely defenseless and besieged Gaza population. It’s a convenient talking point, to say the least. It feels superficially true, appeals to people’s racist reptile brains, and gives Israel license to kill as many civilians as possible because, we are constantly reminded by US media, virtually all of Gaza is over tunnels and thus contains 2 million human shields. It’s cheap, it's easy, and—most important of all—gets Western leaders funneling bombs to Israel off the hook, which is always the place everyone must end up.
Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran last week, and Iran’s subsequent attack on Israel, however, has exposed just how hollow this talking point is. Let us examine a recent throw-away line in a New York Times article explaining the latest escalation. It’s noteworthy because reporter Isabel Kershner casually admits that Israel, based on US media’s criteria for Hamas, is engaging in textbook human shielding:
“the [Israeli] military maintains bases and camps in many populated areas, as well as in more remote parts of the country. A residential tower block that suffered a direct hit early Saturday is part of a popular entertainment district, filled with cafes and restaurants. It is also close to the main military and government headquarters in Tel Aviv, which was most likely the intended target.”
In response to the Times report, former head of Human Rights Watch Ken Roth tweeted out, “Israel's close intermingling of military and civilian sites makes it difficult to know what Iran is aiming its missiles at. When Hamas does this in the tiny Gaza Strip, Israel accuses it of using human shields.”
This is a polite and diplomatic way of stating what has long been obvious: If our media held Israel to the same standards it holds Palestinian militants, it would conclude that Israel routinely uses its own population as human shields. “Human shielding” has a very specific legal definition in international law, namely the “intentional co-location of military objects (personnel or materials) and civilians with the specific intent of deterring or preventing the targeting of those objects.” It doesn’t mean military personnel and assets are in vague proximity to civilians and civilian infrastructure, as is casually stated by US media when hand-waving away the carnage emanating from Gaza. Indeed, in their July 2024 report detailing Hamas war crimes, Human Rights Watch makes mention of Hamas using human shields but strictly in the context of October 7 and their use of Israeli hostages while escaping from Southern Israel. Conspicuously, HRW makes no mention of Hamas using Palestinians themselves as “human shields.” This is because a guerilla force existing within a civilian population, whether Vietnam or Afghanistan or Gaza, is not per se evidence of human shielding, for the obvious fact that the mere existence of non conventional military actors does not render an entire civilian population among whom they exist and interact fair game for mass killing.
The media almost entirely ignores this legal definition and instead has invented a new one—and one that, apparently, only applies to Hamas. According to data gathered for an upcoming book, “human shields” or “human shielding” was used in the first 90 days of the conflict to describe alleged actions by Palestinians 888 different times on CNN and MSNBC. Despite numerous documented cases of the Israeli military actually using Palestinians as human shields, reports of Israel doing so were mentioned on-air zero times by CNN and MSNBC during our survey period. Print media was just as one-sided. When it comes to references to the use of “human shields” or “human shielding” by Israel in the first year of the conflict in The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico and Axios, there were only five—all in The Washington Post. In contrast, mentions of “human shields” or “Human shielding” by Palestinian militants were 231 (The New York Times 150; Washington Post 22, Politico 56, Axois 3).
It’s simply accepted dogma on cable news and print media that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as “human shields” despite no credible human rights group making this claim. Their primary evidence supporting this dogma? Let’s examine one popular example: Novemeber 2023, CNN’s Jake Tapper, in one of his more cynical, smarmy pro-genocide sermons, began a viral segment lamenting the suffering of the Palestinian people dying from Israel bombardment, but then pivoted to blaming Hamas, using every Human Sheilds trope in the book. He says or implies in the segment Hamas is guilty of human shielding because:
“Hamas, which hides and fires rockets at Israel from among the Palestinian people, from among civilian homes.”
Accuses Hamas of preventing Palestinins from from leaving Gaza
“Hamas embeds within the Palestinian population.”
Accuses Hamas leaders of hiding in tunnels.
So let’s recap Israel’s actions over the past four days, using Tapper’s own criteria:
Israel hides and fires rockets at Iran from among the Israeli people, from among civilian homes ✓
Israel embeds military assets under and around civilian population centers ✓
One can expect Tapper, therefore, as an exemplar of consistency and intellectual honesty, to condemn Israel for its use of human shielding. But alas, no condemnation will be forthcoming, because, when it comes to reporting on Israel and its wholesale destruction of Gaza and routine violation of human rights law, double standards are par for course.
CNN’s Jim Sciutto gave the game away too during last October’s low intensity volley between Iran and Israel, when he made Tapper’s exact same Human Shields argument when describing the risks Israel put its civilians in. But he did not, of course, connect these dots, or put it in Tapper’s moralizing terms.
“The US intel view that among the targets were Israeli airfields, but also, and this is crucial, the headquarters of Mossad, the international intelligence service of Israel, which is inside Tel Aviv,” Scuitto said live on air. “It's in the northern part of Tel Aviv, but it's in the city. It's in a densely populated area. And, of course, the concern is if you're firing, even though Iran might consider that a military target, it is in a densely populated city.”
So Israel maintains its primary command and control center in a “in a densely populated area”? This sure seems like Jake Tapper’s first and most important evidence for Hamas “hiding and firing rockets at Israel from among the Palestinian people.”
The reality is neither Israel nor Hamas “use their population” as human shields in any meaningful sense (indeed, maintaining popular support among their people while doing so would be impossible). They both sometimes use enemies as human shields-–Israel far more than Hamas—but what they are doing is what a military actor in a small, densely populated country under threat of air attacks would do: maintain military infrastructure in urban areas and hide key military leadership and assets under tunnels to avoid detection and assassination. When Hamas does this it’s viewed as a nihilistic strategy of death, of thanatos-fueled sympathy-farming. When Israel does it, it’s given fawning write ups about how prepared and techno-savvy they are. The difference is not substantive, but only one of budget: Israel has better tunnels, better tech, and less need for using this system because they spend most of their time bombing extremely poor people without the capacity to fight back. This dynamic changed last week when Israel launched a war against Iran and, unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran has the ability to inflict real damage on Israel’s cities and military infrastructure. So: cue Israel checking every human shield box in a matter of days. It’s almost as if the fact of military-civilian proximity is an inevitable and essential feature of heavily militarized, largely urban societies fighting what they view as existential conflicts of survival, rather than a diablogical jihadist strategy of soliciting civilian death unique to one side and one side only.