Fighting from civilian areas? Perfectly understandable– in Syria

From a story about Syrian violence on NPR Monday night: “Melissa Block speaks with Al Jazeera correspondent Anita McNaught about Syria’s governmental crackdown on Idlib. She was there over the weekend, and is now in Antakya, Turkey, on the border with Syria.”

BLOCK: Let me ask you this, Anita. The rebel soldiers, such as they are, are they embedded among the civilian population? So if they’re firing at tanks, are they in effect attracting return fire at the very civilians that they would want to protect?

MCNAUGHT: I think that’s a very strategic and military way of looking at things. The reality is this: The forces of the Assad regime are not picking military targets. They’re not picking any targets other than the city itself and its civilian infrastructure. This isn’t a city with a military area. This is just people’s homes, and that’s what the tanks are firing into directly and indiscriminately.

When you use terms like embedded, these fighters are sons of the families in the city. They’re not embedded in any military sense with anyone. They’re on the street corners. They’re hiding around sides of buildings, but those are precisely the buildings that the tanks are firing into. And what use are their light weapons, their Kalashnikovs, their shotguns against the massive powerful and heavily equipped military that the Syrian government has to call upon?

Assume for a moment that Block was talking about such violence in Gaza, taking the lives of civilians, and her correspondent offered the same explanation. Would the radio host accept the explanation? No. Would pro-Israel voices clamor for correction, balance, context, etc? And talk about human shields? Absolutely. Yet who can really dispute McNaught’s account. Let the Arab spring transform us all.