Yup. Before October 2023, the "human shields" in Palestine/israel discourse was mostly included coverage and outrage at the IOF for using Palestinians as human shields, for example, when raiding homes in the West Bank - outrage fueled by mountains of direct evidence that the IOF were in fact routinely using Palestinians as human shields.
edit: I was wrong about "mostly", whoops, still death to israel. they still slaughter civilians and use "human shields" as one of many tools in their "genocidal cry-bullying" toolbox.
The definitely not true. You can search back and find claims of palestine using human sheilds way back in 2002, but it really picked up in 2008ish. Amnesty International had to put out a statement in 2009 saying there was no evidence for the claim.
It just likely never came up in your personal news sources. And yes of course Israel has used Palestinians & children as human sheilds.
oh word, thanks for clarifying. i just remember when i was debating some redditor and restricted a google search to pre-2023, and there was a few reports from HRW or the UN that stuck out