Do you really think they take literal human shields? That’s not what they mean, I don’t think even the IDF thinks that. They mean they live in the same places as civilians, which or course they’re going to, they’re a guerilla terrorist fighting force stuck in an extremely dense area due to Israel land encroachment. Btw, Israel has been known to do that and there have been videos lately showing that.
They also didn’t attack first. Zionists came in and steadily took land back in the beginning, when it was just British Mandate of Palestine. It was peaceful for a long time until they had the numbers to enact violence. Meanwhile, the Palestinians were promised a bunch of territory by the British for fighting against the Ottoman Empire, who then reneged on the deal to give Zionists a state. They then fought back and lost even more land, and have been losing more land since then. Hamas didn’t form until after decades of Israeli terrorists and paramilitary forces had killed lots of innocent Palestinians and took their land. They are a reaction to the killing by Israel. This didn’t all start on October 7th. The current ruling party Likud is descended from some of these paramilitary armies.
Even back in the beginning Jewish luminaries like Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt thought Israel was a bad idea, sometimes once they went to visit, once they realized what it cost to the local population and how it would put them in an eternal military struggle to genocide the local population like was done to them.