This is so depraved, so evil, that it is difficult to know where to even begin.

A phrase that has often rightly been applied to the Israeli state goes like this.

Every accusation is a confession.

And this story, which in fact emerged in the Israeli media, could not underline that more hideously.

It's a story which first appeared in an Israeli investigative

outlet called the hottest place in hell and is based on testimony from Israeli soldiers

themselves. That's in Hebrew, but the Israeli-Palestinian outlet plus 972 magazine has

helpfully written out in English what the report details. Let me just read the first sentence. A senior officer

in the Israeli armies in a hal brigade tied an explosive cord around the neck of an eight-year-old

Palestinian man and forced him to serve as a human shield, ordering him to scout out

abandoned houses under threat of having his head blown off. Adi had served his purpose, the soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife,

but upon being spotted by another battalion, they were both shot dead on the spot.

This was last May in Zaytoon, a neighbourhood in Gaza city, which is in the north, which has

been subjected, of course, to the worst devastation in Gaza.

The Israeli soldiers were conducting a sweep of houses there and then encountered an elderly

Palestinian couple who told the soldiers, who could speak Arabic, that they could not evacuate

because of their mobility issues. That compelled the man to use a cane. Their children had

already fled. According to one of the

Israeli soldiers quoted, at that stage, the commanders decided to use them as mosquitoes. Now, a mosquito is a

euphemism for a human shield. The Israeli military forces Palestinian civilians to protect their soldiers

from, say, being shot or blown up by explosives.

The woman was then detained in her home, but the man, again, only able to walk with the help

...