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Is Israel's Military Law Unit Too Strict?

(Weekly Standard) Willy Stern - At the IDF's visual operations room you can watch footage of Hamas fighters in Gaza using random kids as human shields while bullets are flying; firing weapons from the second floor of al-Wafa Hospital (used as a command-and-control center as well as a surveillance post); and jumping into a clearly labeled Red Crescent ambulance to escape fire from IDF ground troops. Or see Palestinian families scurrying up to a rooftop right after the IDF had warned civilians to evacuate. When Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a former chief of the IDF's international law department, attends legal conferences around the world, she says she faces "recurring claims" from other militaries' legal advisers that the IDF "is going too far in its self-imposed restrictions intended to protect civilians, and that this may cause trouble down the line for other democratic nations fighting organized armed groups."
2015-06-11 00:00:00
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