Purity of arms

This morning the BBC reported that ‘The Israeli army says it has suspended a commander after the unit he led was accused of using Palestinians as human shields in a West Bank raid.’

Of course it’s not the first time we’ve heard of this practice since Chief Justice Aharon Barak, a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lecturer in law at the Yale Law School, ’the "world's greatest living jurist", the man who decided last December that Israeli extrajudical executions complied with international law, handed down his landmark decision of 6 October 2005 banning the practice. The BBC reported another incident of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children to protect themselves just a month or so ago on 8 March.

It’s hard to imagine why Barak would want to tie the hands of the brave Israeli soldiers, protecting the chosen people from the barbarian hordes. After all, what’s a few ‘drugged cockroaches inside a bottle’ (Israeli politician Rafael Eitan, 12 April 1983) more or less? When, in the immortal words of Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, delivered at the graveside of the sainted Dr Baruch Goldstein, ‘One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail’, why should anyone hesitate to risk a terrorist child to protect human Jewish lives?