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A chilling global history of the human shield phenomenon—now with urgent new reflections on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
In practically all contemporary wars, human shields are used to protect, coerce, deter, and legitimize lethal violence. Over the past decade, human shields have also appeared with increasing frequency in antinuclear struggles, civil and environmental protests, and even computer games. Those who use civilians to protect legitimate military targets commit a war crime; yet, accusing the enemy of hiding behind defenseless civilians has become a pretext for exercising inhumane violence.
Human Shields covers key historical and contemporary moments across the globe, from Syrian civilians locked in iron cages to the conflict in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini demonstrate how the increasing weaponization of human beings has made the position of civilians trapped in theaters of violence more precarious and their lives more expendable. Showing how the law facilitates the use of lethal violence against vulnerable people while portraying it as humane, they also reveal how people can and do use their own vulnerability to resist violence and denounce forms of dehumanization. Ultimately, Human Shields unsettles our common ethical assumptions about violence and the law and urges us to imagine entirely new forms of humane politics.
“An invaluable tool for courses on conflict and human rights.”—Choice
“A startling new take on the history of war, morality, and law.”—Humanity
“A timely and brilliant consideration. This work rethinks all of our fundamental categories in the service of a more powerful critique of military violence.”—Judith Butler, author of The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind
"In this amazing book, Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini excavate the forms of human shielding, including as a pacifist tactic, in a diverse range of locales around the world and over a century and a half. With its insights into the politics of who counts as human, Human Shields is one of the most important interventions ever in the critical history of the laws of war."—Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
"Compellingly important and thoroughly absorbing, this very readable book will fast become the standard reference in our understanding of human shields."—Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula
“Sheds light on how the belligerent power perceives civilians and decides their fate. A groundbreaking work that helps to humanize the thinking of our time.”—Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories