Human-shield protest tactics halted Israeli air strikes by raising political costs

Evidence

Similarly, Palestinians in Gaza have conjured a counter to Israel’s bombing from above. In the redeployment of force inside Gaza in late 2006, Israel took to announcing that it would target for bombing apartment buildings or homes it claims to house arms caches supporting Hamasor Fatah-connected guerillas. This announcement, the deific marking for death of the non-compliant sons of the philistines holding Israel hostage, is supposed to minimize collateral damage in the “enemy city” by clearing out the targeted Casbah corridor. But Palestinians, regardless of political affiliation and inspired by Hizbullah’s strategies of resistance tinged perhaps with a tiny emergent strain of post-Gandhian anti-violence, have figured out an effective counter-tactics, a living shield set to disrupt the politics of death. When the target is announced a large crowd of Gaza inhabitants from near and far, women and children, young and old, ring the target building, swarming of a counter kind. The Israeli air strikes have been brought to a standstill at least momentarily by weapons of the weak, to use James Scott’s telling phrase, undone by the political cost of wiping out large numbers of peaceful protestors. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 687

Categorization

• XREF: James Scott’s ‘weapons of the weak’ concept is a well-known social science frame; this is a concrete operationalization of it in asymmetric warfare. — connects to: Civilian crowd shields halted targeted Israeli bombing by raising the political cost — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 687