"A group of 'useful idiots' at the United Nations accused Israel of committing war crimes rather than hold terrorist groups responsible for using human shields in recent protests, a prominent Republican senator argued Monday.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz delivered that rebuke hours after a commission appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council reported that Israeli forces 'killed and gravely injured' dozens of civilians over a nine-month period last year...
'This U.N. report is on its face absurd and dishonest and we know because they have been doing it for a long time,' Cruz said Monday on a call hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 'Hamas and Hezbollah use human shields as a deliberate tactic. They use innocent Palestinian civilians, to put them in harm's way, because they intend to exploit those human shields for when they are injured or killed when Israel defends itself.'
U.S. officials defended Israeli tactics at the time by noting that Hamas was urging protesters 'to burst through the fence' and race into Israeli communities. The protest is 'the latest form of the broader phenomenon of hybrid warfare,' JINSA argued Monday in a rebuttal of the U.N. finding.
'Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza intermixed their own belligerent operatives in these crowds and exploited them as passive shields and a tactical cover for their operatives to approach and attempt to breach the border fence,' the JINSA report said. 'Any breach would enable attacks on Israeli security personnel and Israeli civilian communities near the border.'...
'The United Nations long has been a reservoir of deep anti-Israel animus and this report today is yet another example of that,' Cruz said."