Israel Held Boy, 13, as Human Shield

When older Palestinian boys started throwing stones at Israeli border police in the flashpoint West Bank village of Biddo, 13-year-old Muhammed Badwan went along to watch.

He ended up on the hood of an Israeli jeep, at least one of his skinny arms tied to a wire mesh screen that blocks the windshield from incoming stones, according to a photograph of the purported incident distributed by an Israeli rights group.

"He was a shield for them," Saeed Badwan, a 34-year-old labourer, said of his only son. "When I saw him on the hood of the jeep, my whole mind went crazy...It's a picture you can't even imagine. He was shivering from fear."

Police said Muhammed's case was sent to the Justice Ministry for investigation.

"I know there was violent rioting, serious rock throwing. It's unclear what happened. " police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.

"As a general rule, we do not expose civilians to physical damage willingly," he added.

Israel accuses Palestinian militants of routinely using non-combatants for cover.

Palestinian activists in Biddo, a focal point for protests against Israel's West Bank barrier, say troops have increasingly responded with excessive force to disperse stone throwers.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said it was monitoring West Bank anti-barrier protests after Palestinian complaints of rising violence by Israeli security forces, especially in Biddo.

Medics say four Palestinians have been shot dead this year in Biddo in rock throwing protests against the barrier, which Israel says is necessary to keep out suicide bombers. An elderly man also died of heart failure after inhaling tear gas.

Palestinians say the barrier, whose planned route snakes deep into the West Bank, is intended to annex territory captured by Israel in 1967 that Palestinians want for a state.

Biddo activists said border police had in two separate instances this month used villagers as shields to prevent stone throwing. They said forces had also repeatedly used both rubber and live bullets to disperse protesters.

NO TO HUMAN SHIELDS

"I was scared when they got me at first. I thought they would put me in prison...I was scared a stone would hit me," Muhammed said, nursing a split lip a week after his hours-long detention. Stone throwing mostly stopped when he was on the jeep.

"I cried on the hood of the jeep, and when I saw my dad."

Israel's Supreme Court barred the use of Palestinians as human shields in 2002 after an incident in which soldiers forced the neighbor of a suspected militant to knock on his door and deliver their ultimatum to surrender.

The militant shot and killed the man.

"There is supposed to be an injunction against the military... But there is evidence it is still continuing. It is less, but it does happen," said Marwan Dalal, a lawyer with the Israeli Arab rights group Adalah.

He said it was more common for soldiers to use Palestinians as human shields in military operations, but that civilians had also been used to block stone throwing.

He cited a case last year in which he said security forces used a Palestinian as a human shield during a protest in the divided West Bank city of Hebron.

"I am sure it happens more than is documented," he said.

A left-wing Israeli rabbi who said he too was detained as a human shield when he tried to intervene to free Muhammed Badwan last week said he planned to press charges.

"It is very depressing and very sad to see that we have come to this position where this is what we do. There is disbelief," said Rabbi Arik Ascherman, head of Rabbis for Human Rights, which distributed the picture, taken by a foreign photographer, of Muhammed strapped to a jeep.

But Muhammed, though he said he still wanted to throw stones at soldiers, said he did not consider all Israelis his enemy.

"If I saw an Israeli child, I would respect him, not hit him," Muhammed said. "The soldier was not good, an animal. But the man who came to help me is an honorable person."

>This article was posted yesterday. I am still waiting for the "picture". The arabs have a less than stellar record of honesty,

There's a pattern here. When those two Jewish children were murdered in their beds, the next day I read a report (which was false) that two Palestinian children were killed by the IDF walking behind a tree in a vineyard.

There has been much made of arab terrorists using the civillian population as a shield, so I would expect similarly false reports accusing Israel of doing what the Palis themselves do.

Read the article. The accusation is made by a leftist Israeli human rights org and the Palis quoted are identified as activits in the article. Its Rachel Corrie all over again.

The article is pure BS.

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