Why isn't this news in the U.S.? U.S. Rabbis for Gaza Cease-Fire
Dave Belden
OpEdNews.com
Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:32 UTC
Today on page 17 of the New York Times, a group of prominent liberal rabbis and other religious and cultural leaders called for a cease-fire in Gaza. They were backed by over 2,800 American citizens. Because they could not get their opinion presented in the major media they had to buy a full page ad. That's right. Rabbis, ministers, writers who want a cease-fire are not news, but have to buy an ad.
Haaretz considered it news. So far no U.S. media have considered it news. Why not? This is a great puzzle to me. I hope you will consider it news and will sign the ad here, send it around to all your friends, and get this ball rolling until it can't be ignored.
This is a story about Gaza but also about the way that liberal Jewish voices (shared by many other interfaith and secular people) are being shut out of the U.S. media. No American rabbi has a longer or more substantial track record as a liberal on Israel/Palestine than Rabbi Michael Lerner, who convened this group and raised the money from small donations for the ad (he started Tikkun magazine 23 years ago as a counter to Commentary and the Jewish right) but he could not get his views into any oped pages of major newspapers despite valiant efforts since the Gaza invasion. He did however have this in the Times of London.
The text of the ad in the NY Times can be read here. Our press release, sent widely to the U.S. media and ignored, is below.
Rabbis and other religious, cultural and community leaders, heading an interfaith list of 2800 people, call for an immediate Cease-Fire in Gaza and an international conference to provide international pressure to facilitate a lasting and just settlement for all parties, in the New York Times, Wednesday, January 14, 2009.
"We have had to buy space in the New York Times to make this call because the major national newspapers will not give room for this perspective," says Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor of Tikkun magazine, who convened the group. He is joined by Sister Joan Chittister, and Professor Cornel West, Co-chairs with Lerner of the Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP), and over 2,800 others, including Rabbi Brian Walt (North American Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights), Rabbi Arthur Waskow (chair of the Shalom Center), Rabbi David Shneyer (past president of the Rabbinic organization Ohalah), Rabbi Mordecai Leibling and other rabbis, writers such as Ariel Dorfman, Annie Lamott, Deepak Chopra and Fritjof Capra, movie director Jonathan Demme, Richard Falk (the UN representative on Human Rights in Palestine), Christian ministers, academics and activists.
"The essential difference between our point of view, which is widespread but underreported, and the opinions being presented in the mainstream media," said Rabbi Lerner, "is that we believe it is unrealistic to expect violent and hardline tactics, however well justified by the other side's violence, to build the psychological grounds for peace. Each side has to learn empathy for the wounds suffered by the other side, and has to practice generosity in promoting peace, the basic conditions for which are already known and are laid out in our statement. We are appealing to president-elect Obama to lead the international community in applying significant pressure to both sides to accept a mutually generous approach, whether each side feels that generosity yet or not. We spell out the terms of a lasting settlement in the New York Times ad. Given the political clout of the Israel Lobby in the U.S., as manifested in the one-sided coverage that has made invisible Jewish opposition in Israel and the U.S. to Israel's war in Gaza, it is unlikely that President Obama would be able to muster significant pressure on Israel to accept a settlement that would be just to the Palestinian people (and hence would last). For that reason, we are urging him to convene an International Conference in which other countries could play an important role in pushing both sides to make significant compromises for peace."
Cease-Fire in Gaza Jewish Lobby Rabbis call for cease-fire Tikkun
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
When Israel expelled Palestinians: What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead?
When Israel expelled Palestinians: What if it was San Diego and Tijuana instead?
Randall Kuhn
Washington Times
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:09 UTC
© AP Photo / Hatem Moussa
Palestinian children gather at the site where three people died
in a Israeli air strike outside a United Nations school in the Shati
refugee camp, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009.
In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."
Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 , House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.
Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.
And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.
Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.
Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.
The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.
Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
"whites only" Checkpoints home demolitions Palestine Expulsion refugee camps Tijuana United Nations
Randall Kuhn
Washington Times
Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:09 UTC
© AP Photo / Hatem Moussa
Palestinian children gather at the site where three people died
in a Israeli air strike outside a United Nations school in the Shati
refugee camp, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009.
In the wake of Israel's invasion of Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak made this analogy: "Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico."
Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 , House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.
Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.
What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.
What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live.
And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.
Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state-of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.
Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind.
The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.
Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
"whites only" Checkpoints home demolitions Palestine Expulsion refugee camps Tijuana United Nations
Saturday, January 17, 2009
UK Jewish MP: Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza
Finally, the true Jews, the Mensch, are speaking up. They know that "never again" should be for all people, not just them. Blessings on Gerald Kaufman, the brave MP from Britain.
Blue Ibis
*********************************************************************
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
"Never Again" Nazis Gaza Invasion Israeli media Gilad Shalit F-16 Qassams Gerald Kaufman
Blue Ibis
*********************************************************************
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
"Never Again" Nazis Gaza Invasion Israeli media Gilad Shalit F-16 Qassams Gerald Kaufman
Friday, January 16, 2009
Gaza: the "War" is really for Real Estate
The Real Estate War in Gaza
Victoria Buch
CounterPunch
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:32 UTC
The History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing
I arrived in Israel 40 years ago. It took me many years to understand that the very existence of my country, as it is today, is based on an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The project started many years ago. Its seed can be traced to the basic fallacy of the Zionist movement, which set out to establish a Jewish-national state in a location already inhabited by another nation. Under these conditions, one has, at most, a moral right to strive for a bi-national state; establishing a national state implies, more or less by definition, ethnic cleansing of the previous inhabitants.
Albert Einstein grasped this fallacy a long time ago. A short time after WWI "Einstein complained that the Zionists were not doing enough to reach agreement with the Palestinian Arabs...He favored a binational solution in Palestine and warned Chaim Weizmann against ' 'Prussian style' nationalism"[1]
But such warnings passed un-heeded by the Zionist movement. So here we are, nearly a century later, with a Jewish national state dominated by militaristic and militant nationalists, who diligently pursue colonization and "judaization" of the land under Israeli control, on both sides of the Green Line (1967 border). The project has been pursued continuously and relentlessly under the different Israeli governments, recently under the cover of bogus "negotiations" with President Abbas. Most of the Israeli institutions participate in it. Young Israelis, generation after generation, join the army to provide the military cover. The young folks have been brain-washed to honestly believe that the army pursues Israel's "fight for existence". However it seems evident to the author of this article, as to many others, that the survival of the Jewish community in this country depends on establishing viable mechanisms of coexistence with the Palestinians. Thus, under the slogan of "fight for existence", the State of Israel is pursuing an essentially suicidal project.
This long-standing outlook of the Israeli governing classes was summarized succinctly in a recent book Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi, an American academic. His book "suggests that occupation is merely a feature of an ongoing Israeli policy of slow transfer of the native Palestinian population from their lands. This policy predates the founding of the state, and all of the various practices of the occupier: illegal settlement, land confiscation, home demolition and so on, serve this ultimate purpose." [2]
If you do not believe the above assessment, consider several statements by David Ben Gurion himself, from the time before the establishment of the State of Israel (Ben Gurion was the leader of the Zionist movement before 1948 and the first Israeli Prime Minister after 1948):
Among the common mantras provided to the Israelis to justify the above is the following: "Israel accepted the UN partition plan, and Arabs did not, so what happened afterwards is their own fault". What is conveniently overlooked is that Palestinian Arabs constituted between one third and one half of the population of that designated Jewish homeland (according to various UN reports). Why should these people, whose ancestors lived there for generations, accept living in somebody else's designated homeland? Imagine, for example, the reaction of French Belgians if their country were designated as a "Flemish homeland" by the UN.
But the main mantra drummed into the conscience of an Israeli citizen from kindergarten, is that in 1948 "it was either them or us", "Arabs would have thrown us into the sea if we did not establish a Jewish majority state with a strong army", etc. I have my doubts about that line, too, but let us suppose for the moment that in fact, it was so. And then came the year 1967, and the Six Day War. Another chapter in the Israeli "fight for existence" against recalcitrant Arabs who just keep trying to throw us into the sea. On the face of it, that is how it seemed. I together with most of my compatriots believed for years that 1967 was in fact a moment of existential danger for Israel. Until I stumbled upon some telling quotes, uttered by our very own leaders [4]:
The reader may like to know that the 1967 real estate acquisition by the State of Israel was anticipated some twenty years earlier by Ben-Gurion, at the time of the partition plan (which was supposedly accepted by the Zionist leadership). See the following quotes of Ben-Gurion, which can be found in the book by an Israeli historian[5]:
The above explains the mass participation of otherwise normal and more-or-less decent Israelis in the ongoing ethnic-cleansing projects. How else can you account for a dying elderly man and his wife being dragged out of their east Jerusalem apartment to make space for Jewish settlers. Building the Jerusalem "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of an ancient Muslim graveyard. Onslaught on West Bank orphanages supported by Islamic charities. State-subsidized Jewish settler-thugs conducting pogroms against Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories. Widespread sadism practiced by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian detainees. Trashing of Palestinian homes during nightly military incursions in Palestinian towns and villages. Demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem under the brazen pretext of "illegal construction". Extensive land grab for settlers. And much more.[7]
The Gaza Strip is the place where the self-righteous Israeli sadism has reached new heights. The Strip is densely populated, mostly by descendants of Palestinians expelled in 1948. Well before the Second Intifada, choice Gazan real estate along the beach (about ¼ of the Strip land) was confiscated for a few thousand Jewish settlers. Still, a million and a half Gazan Palestinians had a sort of normal life (under the Israeli occupation) - growing fruits and vegetables, making construction materials and other products for Israeli markets, and working as laborers within the Green Line. Before the second Intifada, very little terror was coming from there to Israel.
However, since the beginning of the Intifada (a year and a half before the first Palestinian rocket landing across the border) the Israeli army embarked on the systematic destruction of the Strip. Incursions were carried out every few weeks and included the destruction of factories and workshops, roads, agricultural land, homes, and whatnot. Access to the Israeli economy was closed. Eventually, desperate Palestinians resorted to shooting Qassam rockets which rarely caused casualties or real damage but served as an excellent pretext for Israeli military "action".
And then Sharon carried out his brilliant propaganda move of "disengagement" from Gaza. The whole operation was marketed as a demonstration of Israeli good will. The Israeli settlements in Gaza were in fact removed, but the army was redeployed around the Strip, and the Strip was converted to a large scale prison. The economic strangulation of Gaza was tightened to a draconian extent, especially after the Hamas government suppressed the Israel-cum-USA sponsored Fatah putsch. (I am no fan of Hamas but their government was democratically elected by the Palestinians) Hamas offered several times to conduct negotiations with Israel, based on 1967 borders, but the offers were under-reported and ignored. It is likely that such negotiations would have stopped the Qassams, but Israeli leaders appeared interested in continuation of the violence. The Qassams created a great opportunity for more "poor little us" propaganda, and a great pretext to wiggle out of legitimate international requests to stop the massive colonization of the West Bank.
Finally, a truce with Hamas was negotiated. Since the beginning of the truce defense minister Barak commenced preparations for a massive attack on Gaza[8]. On November 14th the working truce with Hamas was deliberately broken on Barak's orders, by killing several Hamas fighters. A totally predictable Palestinian response ensued - cancellation of the truce and a barrage of rockets. The barrage was used by Barak as a pretext for that large-scale operation, including the slaughter of hundreds of people in Gaza with missiles deployed from airplanes. This muscle-flexing is an obvious part of Barak's and Livni's forthcoming election campaign, at the price of hundreds of Palestinian casualties, and several Israeli ones (as meanwhile Palestinians have improved their aim). In a forthcoming ground operation Israeli soldiers are also likely to pay with their lives for this form of electioneering.
Do you know what mainstream Israelis make of the above? 'We, Israelis, in an act of self-sacrifice, removed poor Jewish settlers from their "homes" in the Gaza Strip and gave Palestinians a chance for free and happy existence. But the Palestinians spurned our peace efforts and preferred instead to pursue their addiction to "throwing Jews to the sea." Gaza could have become a new Singapore, but the Gazans chose instead to shoot rockets at Israelis.'
The disengagement was thus an act of brilliance on part of that evil genius, Sharon. He provided mainstream Israelis with a sweeping moral absolution. Palestinians "disappointed" them. Now the Israeli leaders can do anything they wish to Palestinians. Do not expect a squeak of public protest from the Israeli Jewish public, except for a tiny minority of "self hating Jews" like yours truly.
Believe me, these Jewish-Israeli mainstreamers are not natural-born monsters. They just do not know any better. Alas, I used to be one of them. Then one day I stumbled, more or less by chance, into the West Bank with a group of activists. I acquired some Palestinian friends and finally understood the criminality of the treatment of the Palestinians by my country. And I learned to ignore the daily portion of preposterous propaganda which is provided to my compatriots by the media in lieu of "news". But how to convince my compatriots not to listen to this propaganda? I do not know.
Then again, it does not have to be so. In addition to four million or so stateless Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, there are about a million Palestinians living within the Green Line and carrying Israeli citizenship. Despite the very considerable internal racism, many of these Palestinian citizens are deeply involved in Israeli society. You meet Arab doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals, Arab students in Israeli universities etc. There is quite an element of coexistence and cooperation between Jews and Arabs there. But a mainstream Jewish-Israeli colleague who might treat his or her Arab co-worker perfectly decently would still be proud of a soldier son who is "serving the country" in the Occupied Territories. He or she would still repeat racist propaganda about the "demographic danger" to the State of Israel from its Arab citizens, and believe the bloodthirsty speeches of generals and ex-generals on the TV. And vote for any of the three major Zionist parties, Likud, Kadima and Labour, whose leaders have been dedicated ethnic cleansers over the years.
For the sake of both nations living in this country, this outrage must be stopped. It must be stopped by pressure from outside, because at present within Israel there are no significant political forces to oppose it. Please do something, my friends, and do it urgently. And kindly ignore the endless "negotiations" between our government and the powerless Palestinian Authority, they are just a cover for more ethnic cleansing. If you do not believe me, come and see the massive settlement construction in East Jerusalem and West Bank. And the walls of the Palestinian ghettos.
Victoria Buch is an Israeli academic and anti-Occupation activist. Her email: vvbb54@yahoo.com
[1] From The Pity of It All, a book by Amos Elon on German Jews.
[2] From a review of Makdisi's book: Palestine Inside Out, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, IMEU 2008.
[3] From Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
[4] Collected by Stephen Lendman, see here)
[5] From The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities,by Simha Flapan
[6] The full text of the interview can be found in the Counterpunch website
[7] *Information can be found, e.g., in the Occupation Magazine, the website of Israeli anti-Occupation activists.
[8] "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about" By Barak Ravid, Haaretz
Ethnic Cleansing Palestine Expulsion Zionists Israeli Apartheid Wall
Victoria Buch
CounterPunch
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:32 UTC
The History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing
I arrived in Israel 40 years ago. It took me many years to understand that the very existence of my country, as it is today, is based on an ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The project started many years ago. Its seed can be traced to the basic fallacy of the Zionist movement, which set out to establish a Jewish-national state in a location already inhabited by another nation. Under these conditions, one has, at most, a moral right to strive for a bi-national state; establishing a national state implies, more or less by definition, ethnic cleansing of the previous inhabitants.
Albert Einstein grasped this fallacy a long time ago. A short time after WWI "Einstein complained that the Zionists were not doing enough to reach agreement with the Palestinian Arabs...He favored a binational solution in Palestine and warned Chaim Weizmann against ' 'Prussian style' nationalism"[1]
But such warnings passed un-heeded by the Zionist movement. So here we are, nearly a century later, with a Jewish national state dominated by militaristic and militant nationalists, who diligently pursue colonization and "judaization" of the land under Israeli control, on both sides of the Green Line (1967 border). The project has been pursued continuously and relentlessly under the different Israeli governments, recently under the cover of bogus "negotiations" with President Abbas. Most of the Israeli institutions participate in it. Young Israelis, generation after generation, join the army to provide the military cover. The young folks have been brain-washed to honestly believe that the army pursues Israel's "fight for existence". However it seems evident to the author of this article, as to many others, that the survival of the Jewish community in this country depends on establishing viable mechanisms of coexistence with the Palestinians. Thus, under the slogan of "fight for existence", the State of Israel is pursuing an essentially suicidal project.
This long-standing outlook of the Israeli governing classes was summarized succinctly in a recent book Palestine Inside Out by Saree Makdisi, an American academic. His book "suggests that occupation is merely a feature of an ongoing Israeli policy of slow transfer of the native Palestinian population from their lands. This policy predates the founding of the state, and all of the various practices of the occupier: illegal settlement, land confiscation, home demolition and so on, serve this ultimate purpose." [2]
If you do not believe the above assessment, consider several statements by David Ben Gurion himself, from the time before the establishment of the State of Israel (Ben Gurion was the leader of the Zionist movement before 1948 and the first Israeli Prime Minister after 1948):
"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples...We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty, this is national consolidation in a free homeland." [3]During the 1948 war, about two-thirds of the Palestinians who would become refugees were in fact expelled from their homes by the nascent Israeli army, and one-third became refugees while escaping the dangers of war. All these people, 0.75-1 million of them, were prevented from returning to Israel after the armistice agreement, while their homes and property were demolished or appropriated by the State of Israel.
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]...I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." [3]
Among the common mantras provided to the Israelis to justify the above is the following: "Israel accepted the UN partition plan, and Arabs did not, so what happened afterwards is their own fault". What is conveniently overlooked is that Palestinian Arabs constituted between one third and one half of the population of that designated Jewish homeland (according to various UN reports). Why should these people, whose ancestors lived there for generations, accept living in somebody else's designated homeland? Imagine, for example, the reaction of French Belgians if their country were designated as a "Flemish homeland" by the UN.
But the main mantra drummed into the conscience of an Israeli citizen from kindergarten, is that in 1948 "it was either them or us", "Arabs would have thrown us into the sea if we did not establish a Jewish majority state with a strong army", etc. I have my doubts about that line, too, but let us suppose for the moment that in fact, it was so. And then came the year 1967, and the Six Day War. Another chapter in the Israeli "fight for existence" against recalcitrant Arabs who just keep trying to throw us into the sea. On the face of it, that is how it seemed. I together with most of my compatriots believed for years that 1967 was in fact a moment of existential danger for Israel. Until I stumbled upon some telling quotes, uttered by our very own leaders [4]:
So: instead of "thwarting an existential danger", in 1967 the State of Israel carried out an effective military operation to acquire some real estate. There is nothing new about that "existential danger" propaganda. Acquisition of real estate by conquest has been already called pleasing names by various other conquerors and occupiers, throughout the old and new history: such as "manifest destiny", "white man's burden", "spreading true religion / culture / democracy", whatnot."(a) The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin's (1977 - 83) August, 1982 speech saying: 'In June, 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 - 70) was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.'
(b) Two-time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 - 77 and 1992 - 95) told French newspaper Le Monde in February, 1968: 'I do not believe Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.'
(c) General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force during the Six-Day War said in 1978: 'Sixteen years of planning had gone into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.'
(d) General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told Ma'ariv in April 1972: We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.'"
The reader may like to know that the 1967 real estate acquisition by the State of Israel was anticipated some twenty years earlier by Ben-Gurion, at the time of the partition plan (which was supposedly accepted by the Zionist leadership). See the following quotes of Ben-Gurion, which can be found in the book by an Israeli historian[5]:
"Just as I do not see the proposed Jewish state as a final solution to the problems of the Jewish people, so I do not see partition as the final solution of the Palestine question. Those who reject partition are right in their claim that this country cannot be partitioned because it constitutes one unit, not only from a historical point of view but also from that of nature and economy".I wonder if at any point in history there was any association of people who acquired goodies by brute force, and who viewed themselves candidly as such. Times and again, conquerors considered themselves unwilling victims of circumstances, and the barbarians (their own victims!) against whom they have to regretfully protect their rights. Consider the following pronouncements of Benny Morris, a historian who documented the 1948 ethnic cleansing. In a 2004 interview with Morris which was published in Haaretz one reads[6]:
"After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of the Palestine".
The above opinion is representative of the Israeli mainstream. It has been raised to the status of axiom over the years, and no reasonable peace offers (such as the latest Saudi one) are likely to put a dent in it. Israelis are using this slogan to exempt themselves from normal human decency towards Palestinians. Most Israeli Jews have convinced themselves that they have a moral right to expropriate and expel Palestinians because Palestinians are such barbarians, who did not respond to Israel's"generous peace offers" and "only wanted to throw us to the sea". Because we are a nation of Holocaust survivors. My compatriots imagined themselves starring in a modern version of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - starring as beautiful elves, of course, who were forced by sad fate to fight ugly goblins the Palestinians (goblins = "terrorists"). Human mercy does not apply to "terrorists". You do not make territorial compromises or peace agreements with "terrorists".Q: The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is Victims. In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of this conflict, we [Israelis] are the bigger one.
Morris: "Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us.
The above explains the mass participation of otherwise normal and more-or-less decent Israelis in the ongoing ethnic-cleansing projects. How else can you account for a dying elderly man and his wife being dragged out of their east Jerusalem apartment to make space for Jewish settlers. Building the Jerusalem "Museum of Tolerance" on the site of an ancient Muslim graveyard. Onslaught on West Bank orphanages supported by Islamic charities. State-subsidized Jewish settler-thugs conducting pogroms against Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories. Widespread sadism practiced by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian detainees. Trashing of Palestinian homes during nightly military incursions in Palestinian towns and villages. Demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem under the brazen pretext of "illegal construction". Extensive land grab for settlers. And much more.[7]
The Gaza Strip is the place where the self-righteous Israeli sadism has reached new heights. The Strip is densely populated, mostly by descendants of Palestinians expelled in 1948. Well before the Second Intifada, choice Gazan real estate along the beach (about ¼ of the Strip land) was confiscated for a few thousand Jewish settlers. Still, a million and a half Gazan Palestinians had a sort of normal life (under the Israeli occupation) - growing fruits and vegetables, making construction materials and other products for Israeli markets, and working as laborers within the Green Line. Before the second Intifada, very little terror was coming from there to Israel.
However, since the beginning of the Intifada (a year and a half before the first Palestinian rocket landing across the border) the Israeli army embarked on the systematic destruction of the Strip. Incursions were carried out every few weeks and included the destruction of factories and workshops, roads, agricultural land, homes, and whatnot. Access to the Israeli economy was closed. Eventually, desperate Palestinians resorted to shooting Qassam rockets which rarely caused casualties or real damage but served as an excellent pretext for Israeli military "action".
And then Sharon carried out his brilliant propaganda move of "disengagement" from Gaza. The whole operation was marketed as a demonstration of Israeli good will. The Israeli settlements in Gaza were in fact removed, but the army was redeployed around the Strip, and the Strip was converted to a large scale prison. The economic strangulation of Gaza was tightened to a draconian extent, especially after the Hamas government suppressed the Israel-cum-USA sponsored Fatah putsch. (I am no fan of Hamas but their government was democratically elected by the Palestinians) Hamas offered several times to conduct negotiations with Israel, based on 1967 borders, but the offers were under-reported and ignored. It is likely that such negotiations would have stopped the Qassams, but Israeli leaders appeared interested in continuation of the violence. The Qassams created a great opportunity for more "poor little us" propaganda, and a great pretext to wiggle out of legitimate international requests to stop the massive colonization of the West Bank.
Finally, a truce with Hamas was negotiated. Since the beginning of the truce defense minister Barak commenced preparations for a massive attack on Gaza[8]. On November 14th the working truce with Hamas was deliberately broken on Barak's orders, by killing several Hamas fighters. A totally predictable Palestinian response ensued - cancellation of the truce and a barrage of rockets. The barrage was used by Barak as a pretext for that large-scale operation, including the slaughter of hundreds of people in Gaza with missiles deployed from airplanes. This muscle-flexing is an obvious part of Barak's and Livni's forthcoming election campaign, at the price of hundreds of Palestinian casualties, and several Israeli ones (as meanwhile Palestinians have improved their aim). In a forthcoming ground operation Israeli soldiers are also likely to pay with their lives for this form of electioneering.
Do you know what mainstream Israelis make of the above? 'We, Israelis, in an act of self-sacrifice, removed poor Jewish settlers from their "homes" in the Gaza Strip and gave Palestinians a chance for free and happy existence. But the Palestinians spurned our peace efforts and preferred instead to pursue their addiction to "throwing Jews to the sea." Gaza could have become a new Singapore, but the Gazans chose instead to shoot rockets at Israelis.'
The disengagement was thus an act of brilliance on part of that evil genius, Sharon. He provided mainstream Israelis with a sweeping moral absolution. Palestinians "disappointed" them. Now the Israeli leaders can do anything they wish to Palestinians. Do not expect a squeak of public protest from the Israeli Jewish public, except for a tiny minority of "self hating Jews" like yours truly.
Believe me, these Jewish-Israeli mainstreamers are not natural-born monsters. They just do not know any better. Alas, I used to be one of them. Then one day I stumbled, more or less by chance, into the West Bank with a group of activists. I acquired some Palestinian friends and finally understood the criminality of the treatment of the Palestinians by my country. And I learned to ignore the daily portion of preposterous propaganda which is provided to my compatriots by the media in lieu of "news". But how to convince my compatriots not to listen to this propaganda? I do not know.
Then again, it does not have to be so. In addition to four million or so stateless Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, there are about a million Palestinians living within the Green Line and carrying Israeli citizenship. Despite the very considerable internal racism, many of these Palestinian citizens are deeply involved in Israeli society. You meet Arab doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals, Arab students in Israeli universities etc. There is quite an element of coexistence and cooperation between Jews and Arabs there. But a mainstream Jewish-Israeli colleague who might treat his or her Arab co-worker perfectly decently would still be proud of a soldier son who is "serving the country" in the Occupied Territories. He or she would still repeat racist propaganda about the "demographic danger" to the State of Israel from its Arab citizens, and believe the bloodthirsty speeches of generals and ex-generals on the TV. And vote for any of the three major Zionist parties, Likud, Kadima and Labour, whose leaders have been dedicated ethnic cleansers over the years.
For the sake of both nations living in this country, this outrage must be stopped. It must be stopped by pressure from outside, because at present within Israel there are no significant political forces to oppose it. Please do something, my friends, and do it urgently. And kindly ignore the endless "negotiations" between our government and the powerless Palestinian Authority, they are just a cover for more ethnic cleansing. If you do not believe me, come and see the massive settlement construction in East Jerusalem and West Bank. And the walls of the Palestinian ghettos.
Victoria Buch is an Israeli academic and anti-Occupation activist. Her email: vvbb54@yahoo.com
[1] From The Pity of It All, a book by Amos Elon on German Jews.
[2] From a review of Makdisi's book: Palestine Inside Out, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, IMEU 2008.
[3] From Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
[4] Collected by Stephen Lendman, see here)
[5] From The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities,by Simha Flapan
[6] The full text of the interview can be found in the Counterpunch website
[7] *Information can be found, e.g., in the Occupation Magazine, the website of Israeli anti-Occupation activists.
[8] "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about" By Barak Ravid, Haaretz
Ethnic Cleansing Palestine Expulsion Zionists Israeli Apartheid Wall
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The Warsaw Ghetto 2009-style
Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels
Steve Hutcheson
Arab News
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:33 UTC
© AP
The father of 6-month-old Palestinian baby
Mohammed al-Borai holds his son's body
during his funeral in Gaza City,
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008.
I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father's face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy's name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza.
There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them.
It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine.
The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine.
The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving.
It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and felt guilty in not acting sooner.
With the picture of Mohammed Al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say: Enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its perpetrators are those who suffered the most by its conduct.
There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them.
A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammed Al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice.
---
Steve Hutcheson has worked in crisis recovery in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Indonesia for the past several years and is now based in Thailand. He can be contacted at: steve50 @ mail.com
Warsaw Ghetto Gaza Starvation Zionism suicide bombers Hamas Self-defense Palestine
Steve Hutcheson
Arab News
Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:33 UTC
© AP
The father of 6-month-old Palestinian baby
Mohammed al-Borai holds his son's body
during his funeral in Gaza City,
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008.
I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father's face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy's name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza.
There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them.
It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine.
The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine.
The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving.
So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density ofThe Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies.
4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel
which has 360 people per sq. km.
So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle.The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day.
So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements.The Nazis restricted public utilities such as water and electricity.
So too has the Israeli government.The Nazis restricted the inhabitants from adequate health care.
Israelis restrict the health care in Gaza by limiting the medical supplies in or the treatment of cases that need to be done outside.The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way.
So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations, in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so.The Nazis destroyed the structure of the ghetto leveling it to the ground in a broad quest to rout the resistance to their oppression.
Israelis indiscriminately level buildings and the infrastructure in Gaza in a quest to rout out the resistance to their oppression.The Nazis assigned the Jewish people to a lesser status of all their inhabitants depriving them of their rights as citizens and even as humans.
Israel assigns the refugees held in Gaza less status than is given to the Jews worldwide and deprives the Palestinians of their rights to return to their former lands.The Nazis applied whatever was at their means to break the will of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto.
Israelis do the same thing; they use whatever is at their means to break the will of the Palestinians.The Nazis killed the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto indiscriminately.
Don't the Israelis kill indiscriminately the inhabitants in forcing their control over Gaza?The Jews of Israel and elsewhere are quite right to protest at the inhumanity of the Nazis in their treatment of them and oblige the world not to allow the same situation to happen again. The Palestinians protest at the inhumanity of the Israeli treatment, yet in a bizarre twist of events, the world still allows the oppression to happen and continue.
It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and felt guilty in not acting sooner.
With the picture of Mohammed Al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say: Enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its perpetrators are those who suffered the most by its conduct.
There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them.
A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammed Al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice.
---
Steve Hutcheson has worked in crisis recovery in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Indonesia for the past several years and is now based in Thailand. He can be contacted at: steve50 @ mail.com
Warsaw Ghetto Gaza Starvation Zionism suicide bombers Hamas Self-defense Palestine
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Voices of the Elders - Expulsion from Palestine
Read carefully. This old man remembers a time when Jew, Christian and Muslim lived in harmony in Palestine. Then the snake of Zionism struck, shattering a peaceful co-existence. The media will tell you that it was war always, but this is not true. What else is not true?
Blue Ibis
**********************************************************************
What It Was Like Being Forced to Leave Palestine 60 Years Ago
As Told to Suzanne Manneh
New America Media
Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:14 UTC
The current conflict between Hamas forces and Israel has rekindled memories among many Palestinian expats of a time more than six decades ago when they were forced to flee their homeland as violence erupted there. A 78-year-old Palestinian expat, who wants to remain anonymous, shares some of those memories with New America Media reporter Suzanne Manneh.
Daly City, Calif. -- It's been 61 years since I've seen my homeland of Palestine. I'm one of many Palestinian elders living in exile. And sadly, one of many who may not live to see home again.
I left Jaffa, Palestine, now part of Israel, when I was 17. It was a violent time in Palestine, leading up to the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine, and the creation of Israel.
My family and I fled on April 27, 1948. My cousin, who lived a block away from me, was severely injured from a missile attack on our neighborhood, but survived. The next day, Jewish defense forces said we had to leave or die, so we packed whatever we could, as fast as we could, and left for Jordan, hoping for a more peaceful, stable life. But an unstable Jordanian economy in the 1970's ended that dream and started another, in the United States.
When I came to the United States, I hid the fact that I was Palestinian, or even Arab. I said I was Greek. I was worried Americans would call me a terrorist and reject me. I surrendered my homeland and my identity as well. Some found out I was Palestinian and insulted me.
In the last two weeks, I've been glued to my television set, watching from my home here in California the fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. And as I watch, I cry. Watching this is the closest I think I can get to home.
My last memories of home are like this. Chaos. Death. Blood. Tears. Fear. Anger. Screaming. And above all sadness, so much sadness. One minute you're enjoying a meal with your family and boom! you're uprooted.
One afternoon, at the end of January 1948, I was riding my bicycle home from my father's taxicab business. I was in downtown Jaffa and saw one of my uncles riding his bike. "Hurry on home!" he yelled, "I hear this area is next to get bombed!"
I didn't believe him, but I didn't want to take any chances. I rode toward my house and he toward his. Seconds later, I heard a huge explosion. I saw buildings go up in smoke and fires behind me. Hundreds of people were running in the streets, screaming. I was shaking uncontrollably when I got home. I learned that my uncle had died in the explosion.
The violence escalated in the following days. My Jewish friends were shocked. They couldn't believe what was happening. There had been riots before, a little violence, but never like this. Each day there were more attacks. Palestinians felt they had to retaliate, so it became violence against violence.
The Jewish defense forces began forcing people to leave their homes. If they didn't, they would kill everyone, they said. I remember Palestinian girls getting raped. I saw three sisters from my neighborhood jump into a well because the defense forces tried to rape them.
Many families who didn't have cars in which to escape scrambled to find a family that did. They squished into them, 12 to15 people to a car.
Others managed to take boats north into Lebanon. Some fled by foot. Many of them died of dehydration and exhaustion while escaping. We were lucky. We had a cab from my father's taxicab company at home and we drove off in it, leaving everything else behind.
The other day, I saw a close-up of a little girl's face on my TV screen. She was four, maybe five, years old. Her eyes were swollen from crying. She was screaming, "Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Where are you? I need you!" Her parents had been killed in missile attacks.
When I saw her eyes, I remembered a little girl from 1948 in my neighborhood. She too had eyes swollen from crying. She found her parents shot dead in front of her home. They hadn't cooperated when they were told to leave. The little girl was still asleep inside the house.
In that violence, over 750,000 Palestinians were forced out. But today I see cruelty that cannot compare to 1948. This is worse than a slaughterhouse. I see fields of human bodies with arms and legs missing. I see dead bodies lying on top of each other in pools of blood, injured people, homes turned to rubble.
I see children in the streets all alone. I see people crying. They have been without food, water, medicine and electricity for weeks.
In 1948, I thought the Palestinian issue was just a Palestinian issue, but this current conflict has become a global humanitarian crisis. International human rights are being violated. Palestinians deserve a home, deserve peace, just like everyone else.
Growing up in Palestine, I had many Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends. You could sense the harmony between us. I remember many of them visiting me in Jaffa. I, in turn, would visit them in Gaza, an hour's drive away. I still remember the smell of fresh citrus and wild flowers in the air.
I haven't seen or heard from them since I came to the United States. I'm not sure if they're okay, or even if they're still alive. I have no way of finding out. When I fled Palestine, I was lucky to have my parents, brothers, sisters and a few other immediate relatives to stay with. It was impossible to keep track of everyone else you knew when you were ripped apart from everything and everyone.
After the state of Israel was created, the Israeli government made it difficult for Palestinians to return to their homeland. If I had to go back, I would first need to complete forms and be investigated before I am given permission. Imagine needing permission to go home. It's like someone ripping my heart out, stepping on it and feeding it to the lions. If there had been peace in Palestine, I would have preferred to be there now, even if it meant living like a peasant.
I cried and prayed for peace in 1948, and every time a fresh outbreak of violence erupted. For too long I have been hearing the terms, "cease fire" and "peace talks." But historically, that part of the world has been an unending cycle of violence and ceasefire. I don't want to see this cycle continue. There must be peace, real peace, and equality.
The only thing I can do now as a 78-year-old man is to pray. Pray for my people. Pray for everyone. Pray for peace.
Palestine Expulsion, Zionism Hamas Jaffa Right of Return
Blue Ibis
**********************************************************************
What It Was Like Being Forced to Leave Palestine 60 Years Ago
As Told to Suzanne Manneh
New America Media
Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:14 UTC
The current conflict between Hamas forces and Israel has rekindled memories among many Palestinian expats of a time more than six decades ago when they were forced to flee their homeland as violence erupted there. A 78-year-old Palestinian expat, who wants to remain anonymous, shares some of those memories with New America Media reporter Suzanne Manneh.
Daly City, Calif. -- It's been 61 years since I've seen my homeland of Palestine. I'm one of many Palestinian elders living in exile. And sadly, one of many who may not live to see home again.
I left Jaffa, Palestine, now part of Israel, when I was 17. It was a violent time in Palestine, leading up to the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, the expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine, and the creation of Israel.
My family and I fled on April 27, 1948. My cousin, who lived a block away from me, was severely injured from a missile attack on our neighborhood, but survived. The next day, Jewish defense forces said we had to leave or die, so we packed whatever we could, as fast as we could, and left for Jordan, hoping for a more peaceful, stable life. But an unstable Jordanian economy in the 1970's ended that dream and started another, in the United States.
When I came to the United States, I hid the fact that I was Palestinian, or even Arab. I said I was Greek. I was worried Americans would call me a terrorist and reject me. I surrendered my homeland and my identity as well. Some found out I was Palestinian and insulted me.
In the last two weeks, I've been glued to my television set, watching from my home here in California the fighting between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. And as I watch, I cry. Watching this is the closest I think I can get to home.
My last memories of home are like this. Chaos. Death. Blood. Tears. Fear. Anger. Screaming. And above all sadness, so much sadness. One minute you're enjoying a meal with your family and boom! you're uprooted.
One afternoon, at the end of January 1948, I was riding my bicycle home from my father's taxicab business. I was in downtown Jaffa and saw one of my uncles riding his bike. "Hurry on home!" he yelled, "I hear this area is next to get bombed!"
I didn't believe him, but I didn't want to take any chances. I rode toward my house and he toward his. Seconds later, I heard a huge explosion. I saw buildings go up in smoke and fires behind me. Hundreds of people were running in the streets, screaming. I was shaking uncontrollably when I got home. I learned that my uncle had died in the explosion.
The violence escalated in the following days. My Jewish friends were shocked. They couldn't believe what was happening. There had been riots before, a little violence, but never like this. Each day there were more attacks. Palestinians felt they had to retaliate, so it became violence against violence.
The Jewish defense forces began forcing people to leave their homes. If they didn't, they would kill everyone, they said. I remember Palestinian girls getting raped. I saw three sisters from my neighborhood jump into a well because the defense forces tried to rape them.
Many families who didn't have cars in which to escape scrambled to find a family that did. They squished into them, 12 to15 people to a car.
Others managed to take boats north into Lebanon. Some fled by foot. Many of them died of dehydration and exhaustion while escaping. We were lucky. We had a cab from my father's taxicab company at home and we drove off in it, leaving everything else behind.
The other day, I saw a close-up of a little girl's face on my TV screen. She was four, maybe five, years old. Her eyes were swollen from crying. She was screaming, "Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Where are you? I need you!" Her parents had been killed in missile attacks.
When I saw her eyes, I remembered a little girl from 1948 in my neighborhood. She too had eyes swollen from crying. She found her parents shot dead in front of her home. They hadn't cooperated when they were told to leave. The little girl was still asleep inside the house.
In that violence, over 750,000 Palestinians were forced out. But today I see cruelty that cannot compare to 1948. This is worse than a slaughterhouse. I see fields of human bodies with arms and legs missing. I see dead bodies lying on top of each other in pools of blood, injured people, homes turned to rubble.
I see children in the streets all alone. I see people crying. They have been without food, water, medicine and electricity for weeks.
In 1948, I thought the Palestinian issue was just a Palestinian issue, but this current conflict has become a global humanitarian crisis. International human rights are being violated. Palestinians deserve a home, deserve peace, just like everyone else.
Growing up in Palestine, I had many Jewish, Muslim and Christian friends. You could sense the harmony between us. I remember many of them visiting me in Jaffa. I, in turn, would visit them in Gaza, an hour's drive away. I still remember the smell of fresh citrus and wild flowers in the air.
I haven't seen or heard from them since I came to the United States. I'm not sure if they're okay, or even if they're still alive. I have no way of finding out. When I fled Palestine, I was lucky to have my parents, brothers, sisters and a few other immediate relatives to stay with. It was impossible to keep track of everyone else you knew when you were ripped apart from everything and everyone.
After the state of Israel was created, the Israeli government made it difficult for Palestinians to return to their homeland. If I had to go back, I would first need to complete forms and be investigated before I am given permission. Imagine needing permission to go home. It's like someone ripping my heart out, stepping on it and feeding it to the lions. If there had been peace in Palestine, I would have preferred to be there now, even if it meant living like a peasant.
I cried and prayed for peace in 1948, and every time a fresh outbreak of violence erupted. For too long I have been hearing the terms, "cease fire" and "peace talks." But historically, that part of the world has been an unending cycle of violence and ceasefire. I don't want to see this cycle continue. There must be peace, real peace, and equality.
The only thing I can do now as a 78-year-old man is to pray. Pray for my people. Pray for everyone. Pray for peace.
Palestine Expulsion, Zionism Hamas Jaffa Right of Return
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
More from the 'most moral' army in the world
Focused Lethality: Phosphorous Bomb Rain Over Northern Gaza
Hiyam Noir
PalestineFreeVoice
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:27 UTC
Gaza City January 8 2009
Gaza - Blankets of white clouds covered the skies over Gaza, including the refuge camps in Khan Younis, Beit Lahia and Gaza City. On Saturday Israeli F16 warplanes launched attacks using phosphorus bombs on the Block 2 section inside the densely populated Jabalya Refuge Camp. Many residents of Jabalya escaped the area covering their faces, searching for a safe shelter in the home of relatives and friends in the neighboring Beit Lahia from the Israelis "Cast Lead Operation". Gaza has always been the Israelis "testing ground" - from nerve agents used in Khan Younis in 2003, to Sonic Boom "phantom air raids", and the use of DIME in the Israelis massacre called " Operation Summer Rain" over Gaza year 2006.
In the dark night the terrifying sound of Drones [small, pilotless planes,] can be heard overflying the northern parts of Gaza Strip. Most deaths and injuries from Israelis air strikes are caused by drones. Drones are using precise remote-controlled devices to launch missiles against targets. A drone can launch bombs, also take photos of the small number plates on cars thousands of meters below on the ground, also recognise and track location of the signals from mobile phones.
On Friday, PCHR, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza accused in a statement, the Israelis of using phosphorous bombs over Gaza Strip.Raji Sourani, the chairman of PCHR, said that "This is not the first time we [PCHR] have documented the Israelis use of prohibited chemical weapons against the Gaza civilian population. The HRW Human Rights Watch senior analyst Marc Garlasco said in an interview on France Chanel 4 TV that .."Israeli artillery bursted fire of white phosphorous shells over Gaza City. "Garlasco said .."I have been standing at the border for the last few days, watching Israeli artillery firing white phosphorus shells into refugee camps".
On Sunday, the Israeli military denied the accusations saying that "We would not discuss what weapons we are using. I can assure you we do not use any weapons that are prohibited by international law. We know that other nations are using phosphorous bombs, we have the right not to comment on this", the Israeli military spokesperson added.
During the first invasion to Iraq, the US occupation forces used phosphorous bombs against the civilian population in Falluyah. Also the Israelis were accused of using phosphorous bombs against civilian targets in Lebanon during the 2006 Israel war on Lebanon.The Israelis at first denied the charges, however when the following investigation overwhelmingly proved and confirmed its findings, the Israelis could not deny the evidence.
["The US did the same in Fallujah, so don't be talking about us"]
The director of the emergency at the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza City, Habas Al-Wahis, told journalists 3 years ago that in several cases, the legs and arms of the injured were sliced from their bodies, Al Wahis said - "as if a sharp saw was used to cut through the bone, however there was no evidence of ordinary metal shrapnel in or near the wounds. At the Al Shifa Hospital also in Gaza City, Dr. Juma Saka, said then, in 2006 that, - "our hospital found small entry wounds on the bodies of the dead and wounded, and a powder on the victims' body, and in their internal organs.
According to Dr. Saka, "The powder is like microscopic shrapnel, likely it caused the injuries". Italian journalists from the Ray TV news network, the channel 24, brought samples of soil from Gaza, back to Parma in Italy. The samples was examined by Carmela Vaccaio, a doctor at the University of Parma, and it turned out that the samples had a high concentration of carbon,copper,aluminium and tungsten. "These findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question, was a dense inert metal explosive or DIME" said Valesco.
DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosive] is a carbon encased missile that shatters into minuscule splinters on the impact. The missile sets off an explosive that burst out, blades of energy-charged, heavy metal tungsten alloy powder, (HMTA), such as cobalt and nickel or iron, with a carbon fibre casing. At the impact the material turns into dust, as it loses inertia very quickly due to air resistance, burning and destroying everything within a 4 metre range, as opposed to shrapnel which results from the fragmentation of a metal casing.
The metal is designated "inert", because it is not involved in the actual blast, and not because it is chemically or biologically inert. In many cases, findings have been made by doctors, that their patients during the first days of the impact, apparently in recovery, will die a sudden death after one or two days. "We do not know what it means, if this is new weapons or something added to a previous weapon " said Saied Joudda, the deputy director at the Kamal Edwan hospital in Beit Lahia. These injuries were first seen in July 2006, after that the Israelis launched a massive military offensive against Gaza one month earlier, at the end of June, the Israelis had killed at least 286 Palestinians and injured over 4,200, according to Gaza governmental emergency services estimations
Tungsten, the main material that would stray outside of the target zone, is also said to be highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment. According to New Scientist magazine, John Kalinich's team at the Armed Forces Radio biology Research Institute in Maryland said, that in a study designed to simulate shrapnel injuries, pellets of weapons-grade tungsten alloy were implanted in 92 rats. Within five months all the animals developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.The carcinogenic effects of HMTA have been studied by the US Armed Forces since at least 2000 (along with depleted uranium). These alloys were found to cause neoplastic transformations of human osteoblast cells.
Dr. Mark Witten, a cancer researcher from the University of Arizona, said he was concerned about the possible links between tungsten and leukaemia. "My opinion is that there is a need for much more research on the health effects of tungsten, before the military increases its usage," he said. Later, in a statement issued, the Israelis denied the use of DIME weapons, adding that "Due to operational reasons, the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] cannot specify the types and use of weapons in its possession."
Adding to their great suffering, Palestinian survivors of this new weaponry can in the future, expect to fall victim to cancer.
Hiyam Noir
PalestineFreeVoice
Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:27 UTC
Gaza City January 8 2009
Gaza - Blankets of white clouds covered the skies over Gaza, including the refuge camps in Khan Younis, Beit Lahia and Gaza City. On Saturday Israeli F16 warplanes launched attacks using phosphorus bombs on the Block 2 section inside the densely populated Jabalya Refuge Camp. Many residents of Jabalya escaped the area covering their faces, searching for a safe shelter in the home of relatives and friends in the neighboring Beit Lahia from the Israelis "Cast Lead Operation". Gaza has always been the Israelis "testing ground" - from nerve agents used in Khan Younis in 2003, to Sonic Boom "phantom air raids", and the use of DIME in the Israelis massacre called " Operation Summer Rain" over Gaza year 2006.
In the dark night the terrifying sound of Drones [small, pilotless planes,] can be heard overflying the northern parts of Gaza Strip. Most deaths and injuries from Israelis air strikes are caused by drones. Drones are using precise remote-controlled devices to launch missiles against targets. A drone can launch bombs, also take photos of the small number plates on cars thousands of meters below on the ground, also recognise and track location of the signals from mobile phones.
On Friday, PCHR, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza accused in a statement, the Israelis of using phosphorous bombs over Gaza Strip.Raji Sourani, the chairman of PCHR, said that "This is not the first time we [PCHR] have documented the Israelis use of prohibited chemical weapons against the Gaza civilian population. The HRW Human Rights Watch senior analyst Marc Garlasco said in an interview on France Chanel 4 TV that .."Israeli artillery bursted fire of white phosphorous shells over Gaza City. "Garlasco said .."I have been standing at the border for the last few days, watching Israeli artillery firing white phosphorus shells into refugee camps".
On Sunday, the Israeli military denied the accusations saying that "We would not discuss what weapons we are using. I can assure you we do not use any weapons that are prohibited by international law. We know that other nations are using phosphorous bombs, we have the right not to comment on this", the Israeli military spokesperson added.
During the first invasion to Iraq, the US occupation forces used phosphorous bombs against the civilian population in Falluyah. Also the Israelis were accused of using phosphorous bombs against civilian targets in Lebanon during the 2006 Israel war on Lebanon.The Israelis at first denied the charges, however when the following investigation overwhelmingly proved and confirmed its findings, the Israelis could not deny the evidence.
["The US did the same in Fallujah, so don't be talking about us"]
The director of the emergency at the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza City, Habas Al-Wahis, told journalists 3 years ago that in several cases, the legs and arms of the injured were sliced from their bodies, Al Wahis said - "as if a sharp saw was used to cut through the bone, however there was no evidence of ordinary metal shrapnel in or near the wounds. At the Al Shifa Hospital also in Gaza City, Dr. Juma Saka, said then, in 2006 that, - "our hospital found small entry wounds on the bodies of the dead and wounded, and a powder on the victims' body, and in their internal organs.
According to Dr. Saka, "The powder is like microscopic shrapnel, likely it caused the injuries". Italian journalists from the Ray TV news network, the channel 24, brought samples of soil from Gaza, back to Parma in Italy. The samples was examined by Carmela Vaccaio, a doctor at the University of Parma, and it turned out that the samples had a high concentration of carbon,copper,aluminium and tungsten. "These findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question, was a dense inert metal explosive or DIME" said Valesco.
DIME [Dense Inert Metal Explosive] is a carbon encased missile that shatters into minuscule splinters on the impact. The missile sets off an explosive that burst out, blades of energy-charged, heavy metal tungsten alloy powder, (HMTA), such as cobalt and nickel or iron, with a carbon fibre casing. At the impact the material turns into dust, as it loses inertia very quickly due to air resistance, burning and destroying everything within a 4 metre range, as opposed to shrapnel which results from the fragmentation of a metal casing.
The metal is designated "inert", because it is not involved in the actual blast, and not because it is chemically or biologically inert. In many cases, findings have been made by doctors, that their patients during the first days of the impact, apparently in recovery, will die a sudden death after one or two days. "We do not know what it means, if this is new weapons or something added to a previous weapon " said Saied Joudda, the deputy director at the Kamal Edwan hospital in Beit Lahia. These injuries were first seen in July 2006, after that the Israelis launched a massive military offensive against Gaza one month earlier, at the end of June, the Israelis had killed at least 286 Palestinians and injured over 4,200, according to Gaza governmental emergency services estimations
Tungsten, the main material that would stray outside of the target zone, is also said to be highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment. According to New Scientist magazine, John Kalinich's team at the Armed Forces Radio biology Research Institute in Maryland said, that in a study designed to simulate shrapnel injuries, pellets of weapons-grade tungsten alloy were implanted in 92 rats. Within five months all the animals developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma.The carcinogenic effects of HMTA have been studied by the US Armed Forces since at least 2000 (along with depleted uranium). These alloys were found to cause neoplastic transformations of human osteoblast cells.
Dr. Mark Witten, a cancer researcher from the University of Arizona, said he was concerned about the possible links between tungsten and leukaemia. "My opinion is that there is a need for much more research on the health effects of tungsten, before the military increases its usage," he said. Later, in a statement issued, the Israelis denied the use of DIME weapons, adding that "Due to operational reasons, the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] cannot specify the types and use of weapons in its possession."
Adding to their great suffering, Palestinian survivors of this new weaponry can in the future, expect to fall victim to cancer.
Israel's New War Ethic Illustrated - Part Three
US and Israel targeting DNA in Gaza? Part 3 of 3: The DIME bomb, yet another genotoxic weapon
James Brooks
Online Journal
Thu, 07 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
The human genome: target or innocent bystander?
Since early July, Israeli forces have been using a new weapon in the Gaza Strip that inflicts strange and deadly wounds. Doctors and medics say the unidentified device has significantly increased fatalities from Israel's attacks. [1] [2]
In the first two parts of this article, we reviewed evidence that Israel's new weapon may be Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a "low collateral damage" weapon developed by the US Air Force. The DIME bomb's"micro-shrapnel" is reportedly made of HMTA, a tungsten alloy that disrupts body biochemistry, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [3-9]
The road to DIME
DIME weapons are "spin-offs" from the military's"bunker buster" research. Initially, "bunker busters" were made with depleted uranium (DU), which had already been used in armor-piercing bombs, bullets, and artillery shells. [10]
The former director of the US Army's Depleted Uranium project, Dr. Douglas Rokke, warns us that DU is an "illegal . . . radioactive toxic material," the use of which "is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity." [11]
During Gulf War I, US forces deployed more than 300 tons of DU in Iraq. A few years later, more was dropped during Operation Desert Fox.Iraqi doctors reported alarming rises in the incidence of cancer, leukemia, and birth defects, in clusters closely correlated with US bombsites. Scientists found strong links between DU and Gulf War Syndrome, which is slowly killing thousands of veterans. [12-14]
Despite the science, the vets, and the tragedies in Iraq,the US has stubbornly refused to end its use of DU. US-UK forces may have expended more than 2,000 additional tons of DU in Iraq since March 2003.Nowadays, however, commanders are supposed to warn GIs to avoid contact with the results of their work. [15]
After the 2001-2002 bombing of Afghanistan, the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) found that the urine of Afghanis living near USbombing sites contained four to 20 times the normal level of non-depleted uranium (NDU). These unexpected results could not "be explained by . . . any known geological or other features in the area."
UMRC researchers were "shocked" that, "without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill . . . [with] symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium." [13]
Their field results indicated that our weapons scientists had "progressed" beyond DU to NDU, a processed form of pure uranium that is even more toxic than the depleted form. The "slightly enriched" uranium reported from recent Israeli bombsites in Lebanon may possibly be NDU from modified GBU 28 'bunker busters' supplied by the United States. [16] [17]
Dual-purpose munitions
Considering the scope of their destructive power, DU and NDU may be said to function as Dual-Purpose Munitions, like cluster bomblets that kill both tanks and people. As their exotic metallurgy "burns" through concrete and steel, DU and NDU bombs are converted to micron-sized particles that sicken and kill and murder the next generation in the womb. [18] [19]
Agent Orange, an herbicide heavily used during the war on Vietnam, also performed two functions. It obliterated the 'jungle cover hiding the Viet Cong' while it 'weakened the enemy' with burns, illness, and death,and corrupted the DNA of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. The third generation of its disfigured and suffering victims is now being born. [20] [21]
This madness seems to have begun during World War II, within the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb. In a 1943 memo to Brigadier General L. R. Groves, three researchers proposed steps to develop "a gas warfare instrument" [of radioactive material, such as uranium] "ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke. . . . in this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty." [22]
The good doctors were concerned the Germans might be preparing such a weapon. They urged the Army to be ready to respond, or act, in kind. General Groves promptly followed their recommendations.
The toxic HMTA "micro-shrapnel" spewed by DIME weapons appears to be the latest development in a long string of carcinogenic and genotoxic weapons developed and deployed by the US military.
Return to Gaza: The mythology of murder
Israel has denied using DIME weapons. Nonetheless, Israel's military has used the occupied Palestinian territories as a weapons development zone for decades, testing bright ideas like depleted uranium and poison gases.It would not surprise us to find that it is now testing a weapon for the US Air Force on Palestinians in Gaza. [23]
Unfortunately, the DIME hypothesis is the most plausible explanation for the grotesque effects of Israel's new weapon. We can only pray that we have not witnessed the first experiment in the effects of embedded HMTA in human subjects.
Still, DIME may not explain all of the evidence. For example,one of the metals found in victims' wounds was copper. DIME bombs are not known to contain significant copper, but another US marvel, the Sensor Fuzed Weapon(SFW), sprays slugs of molten copper at its targets. Is Israel also testing the SFW? [24] [25]
If DIME weapons are designed to reduce civilian casualties,why has Israel's 'mystery weapon' increased the civilian death toll? Perhaps this question should be addressed to the advocates of Focused Lethality Munitions, and to the remote-control operators of Israel's drone aircraft and their commanders and politicians.
Although much remains unclear about Israel's new weapon, a few devastating facts are indisputable:
"Whenever and wherever necessary"
If the DIME hypothesis is confirmed, authorities will probably explain that it is a new class of weapon not regulated by international law.The truth is that existing conventions and treaties have already prohibited some of the most egregious effects of the new weapon.
To cite one example, the bomb may be in direct violation of Protocol I of the 'Geneva Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons,' which"prohibits the use of any weapon the primary effect of which is to injure by fragments which in the human body escape detection by X-rays." [26]
We will likely be told that DIME weapons provide a more"humane" way to fight "terrorism" by "reducing collateral damage" and "helping US troops win hearts and minds." At the same time, we'll be assured that the new weapon "packs quite a punch" and will "give our troops more options" to"take the battle to the enemy," even if he is "hiding among civilians."
Whether Israel's new weapon is the Air Force's DIME bomb or another similarly dreadful invention, the horrors unfolding in Gaza make it clear that "Focused Lethality" is a blood-drenched lie. It promises only a deadlier form of indiscriminate warfare.
US plans to explode payloads of cancer-causing genotoxic heavy metal powder "wherever and whenever necessary" may portend an escalation of a campaign currently limited to the vicinity of "hard targets" we attack with DU and NDU. Whatever we make of the intent behind these weapons, the result is chemical-genetic warfare. It cannot be allowed to continue.
References
1) Gazadoctors say patients suffering mystery injuries after Israeli attacks, Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 10/18/2006
2) Israel usedchemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, Centre for Research on Globalization/wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Abstract:Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, Pub Med,11/26/2006
4) Neoplastictransformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavymetal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, ACet al Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford University Press
5) Abstract:Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute(AFRRI)
6) Depleteduranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay, Miller, AC et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
7) EmbeddedWeapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-GradeRhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
8) Abstract: Effectof the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metaltungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC et al, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
9) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
10) Cancer Worries for New U.S. Bombs, DefenseTech.org, 5/20/2006
11) DepletedUranium and US-Israeli Bombs, Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD, Media Lens, 7/24/2006
12) DirtyWeapons - Casualties From Iraq War Will Mount, Chalmers Johnson, Pacific News Service, 5/3/2003
13) Uranium Radiation Levels in Afghanistan Not Attributable to Depleted Uranium, Centre for Research on Globalization - Middle East, 6/5/2003
14) Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview, Prof Souad N.Al-Azzawi, Centre for Research on Globalization - Middle East, 8/31/2006
15) Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern, Larry Johnson, Common Dreams,8/4/2003
16) FurtherEvidence Of Enriched Uranium In The Air In Lebanon Following The Recent Conflict, Stop Uranium Wars/Pandora DU research Project, 11/22/2006
17) Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb, Robert Fisk, The Independent, 10/28/2006
18) TheReal Dirty Bombs: Depleted Uranium, Christopher Bollyn, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 8/6/2004
19) Depleted Uranium,Australian Peace Committee, 12/2/2006
20) Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign
21) AgentOrange DNA injury confirmed in Vietnam veterans, Patrick Gower, New Zealand Herald, 7/29/2006
22) Memorandumto: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey,Midfully.org/War Department, United States Engineer Office, Manhattan District,Oak Ridge Tennessee, 10/30/1943
23) The Israeli Poison Gas Attacks, James Brooks, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
24) CBU-97,Wikipedia
25) TextronSystems' Sensor Fuzed Weapon Production to Include Maritime Capability,Textron Systems Corporation, 8/10/2006
26) Conventionon Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons . .. , United Nations: International Law, 10/10/1980
Part 1
Part 2
Original
Since early July, Israeli forces have been using a new weapon in the Gaza Strip that inflicts strange and deadly wounds. Doctors and medics say the unidentified device has significantly increased fatalities from Israel's attacks. [1] [2]
In the first two parts of this article, we reviewed evidence that Israel's new weapon may be Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a "low collateral damage" weapon developed by the US Air Force. The DIME bomb's"micro-shrapnel" is reportedly made of HMTA, a tungsten alloy that disrupts body biochemistry, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [3-9]
The road to DIME
DIME weapons are "spin-offs" from the military's"bunker buster" research. Initially, "bunker busters" were made with depleted uranium (DU), which had already been used in armor-piercing bombs, bullets, and artillery shells. [10]
The former director of the US Army's Depleted Uranium project, Dr. Douglas Rokke, warns us that DU is an "illegal . . . radioactive toxic material," the use of which "is absolutely unacceptable, and a crime against humanity." [11]
During Gulf War I, US forces deployed more than 300 tons of DU in Iraq. A few years later, more was dropped during Operation Desert Fox.Iraqi doctors reported alarming rises in the incidence of cancer, leukemia, and birth defects, in clusters closely correlated with US bombsites. Scientists found strong links between DU and Gulf War Syndrome, which is slowly killing thousands of veterans. [12-14]
Despite the science, the vets, and the tragedies in Iraq,the US has stubbornly refused to end its use of DU. US-UK forces may have expended more than 2,000 additional tons of DU in Iraq since March 2003.Nowadays, however, commanders are supposed to warn GIs to avoid contact with the results of their work. [15]
After the 2001-2002 bombing of Afghanistan, the Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) found that the urine of Afghanis living near USbombing sites contained four to 20 times the normal level of non-depleted uranium (NDU). These unexpected results could not "be explained by . . . any known geological or other features in the area."
UMRC researchers were "shocked" that, "without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill . . . [with] symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium." [13]
Their field results indicated that our weapons scientists had "progressed" beyond DU to NDU, a processed form of pure uranium that is even more toxic than the depleted form. The "slightly enriched" uranium reported from recent Israeli bombsites in Lebanon may possibly be NDU from modified GBU 28 'bunker busters' supplied by the United States. [16] [17]
Dual-purpose munitions
Considering the scope of their destructive power, DU and NDU may be said to function as Dual-Purpose Munitions, like cluster bomblets that kill both tanks and people. As their exotic metallurgy "burns" through concrete and steel, DU and NDU bombs are converted to micron-sized particles that sicken and kill and murder the next generation in the womb. [18] [19]
Agent Orange, an herbicide heavily used during the war on Vietnam, also performed two functions. It obliterated the 'jungle cover hiding the Viet Cong' while it 'weakened the enemy' with burns, illness, and death,and corrupted the DNA of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. The third generation of its disfigured and suffering victims is now being born. [20] [21]
This madness seems to have begun during World War II, within the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb. In a 1943 memo to Brigadier General L. R. Groves, three researchers proposed steps to develop "a gas warfare instrument" [of radioactive material, such as uranium] "ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke. . . . in this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty." [22]
The good doctors were concerned the Germans might be preparing such a weapon. They urged the Army to be ready to respond, or act, in kind. General Groves promptly followed their recommendations.
The toxic HMTA "micro-shrapnel" spewed by DIME weapons appears to be the latest development in a long string of carcinogenic and genotoxic weapons developed and deployed by the US military.
Return to Gaza: The mythology of murder
Israel has denied using DIME weapons. Nonetheless, Israel's military has used the occupied Palestinian territories as a weapons development zone for decades, testing bright ideas like depleted uranium and poison gases.It would not surprise us to find that it is now testing a weapon for the US Air Force on Palestinians in Gaza. [23]
Unfortunately, the DIME hypothesis is the most plausible explanation for the grotesque effects of Israel's new weapon. We can only pray that we have not witnessed the first experiment in the effects of embedded HMTA in human subjects.
Still, DIME may not explain all of the evidence. For example,one of the metals found in victims' wounds was copper. DIME bombs are not known to contain significant copper, but another US marvel, the Sensor Fuzed Weapon(SFW), sprays slugs of molten copper at its targets. Is Israel also testing the SFW? [24] [25]
If DIME weapons are designed to reduce civilian casualties,why has Israel's 'mystery weapon' increased the civilian death toll? Perhaps this question should be addressed to the advocates of Focused Lethality Munitions, and to the remote-control operators of Israel's drone aircraft and their commanders and politicians.
Although much remains unclear about Israel's new weapon, a few devastating facts are indisputable:
The weapon causes enormous and indiscriminate pain and suffering.Despite this public parade of horrors, Israeli forces have continued to use this weapon against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for nearly five months.
It operates as both a chemical weapon and an anti-personnel explosive. At the very least, it is likely to induce heavy metal poisoning in its surviving victims.
The weapon has significantly increased civilian mortality rates, in part because it inflicts virtually untreatable wounds.
"Whenever and wherever necessary"
If the DIME hypothesis is confirmed, authorities will probably explain that it is a new class of weapon not regulated by international law.The truth is that existing conventions and treaties have already prohibited some of the most egregious effects of the new weapon.
To cite one example, the bomb may be in direct violation of Protocol I of the 'Geneva Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons,' which"prohibits the use of any weapon the primary effect of which is to injure by fragments which in the human body escape detection by X-rays." [26]
We will likely be told that DIME weapons provide a more"humane" way to fight "terrorism" by "reducing collateral damage" and "helping US troops win hearts and minds." At the same time, we'll be assured that the new weapon "packs quite a punch" and will "give our troops more options" to"take the battle to the enemy," even if he is "hiding among civilians."
Whether Israel's new weapon is the Air Force's DIME bomb or another similarly dreadful invention, the horrors unfolding in Gaza make it clear that "Focused Lethality" is a blood-drenched lie. It promises only a deadlier form of indiscriminate warfare.
US plans to explode payloads of cancer-causing genotoxic heavy metal powder "wherever and whenever necessary" may portend an escalation of a campaign currently limited to the vicinity of "hard targets" we attack with DU and NDU. Whatever we make of the intent behind these weapons, the result is chemical-genetic warfare. It cannot be allowed to continue.
References
1) Gazadoctors say patients suffering mystery injuries after Israeli attacks, Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, 10/18/2006
2) Israel usedchemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, Centre for Research on Globalization/wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Abstract:Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, Pub Med,11/26/2006
4) Neoplastictransformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavymetal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, ACet al Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford University Press
5) Abstract:Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute(AFRRI)
6) Depleteduranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay, Miller, AC et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
7) EmbeddedWeapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-GradeRhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
8) Abstract: Effectof the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metaltungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC et al, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
9) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
10) Cancer Worries for New U.S. Bombs, DefenseTech.org, 5/20/2006
11) DepletedUranium and US-Israeli Bombs, Dr. Doug Rokke, PhD, Media Lens, 7/24/2006
12) DirtyWeapons - Casualties From Iraq War Will Mount, Chalmers Johnson, Pacific News Service, 5/3/2003
13) Uranium Radiation Levels in Afghanistan Not Attributable to Depleted Uranium, Centre for Research on Globalization - Middle East, 6/5/2003
14) Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview, Prof Souad N.Al-Azzawi, Centre for Research on Globalization - Middle East, 8/31/2006
15) Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Lingers as Health Concern, Larry Johnson, Common Dreams,8/4/2003
16) FurtherEvidence Of Enriched Uranium In The Air In Lebanon Following The Recent Conflict, Stop Uranium Wars/Pandora DU research Project, 11/22/2006
17) Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb, Robert Fisk, The Independent, 10/28/2006
18) TheReal Dirty Bombs: Depleted Uranium, Christopher Bollyn, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 8/6/2004
19) Depleted Uranium,Australian Peace Committee, 12/2/2006
20) Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign
21) AgentOrange DNA injury confirmed in Vietnam veterans, Patrick Gower, New Zealand Herald, 7/29/2006
22) Memorandumto: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey,Midfully.org/War Department, United States Engineer Office, Manhattan District,Oak Ridge Tennessee, 10/30/1943
23) The Israeli Poison Gas Attacks, James Brooks, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
24) CBU-97,Wikipedia
25) TextronSystems' Sensor Fuzed Weapon Production to Include Maritime Capability,Textron Systems Corporation, 8/10/2006
26) Conventionon Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons . .. , United Nations: International Law, 10/10/1980
Part 1
Part 2
Original
Sensor Fuzed Weapon(SFW) Focused Lethality Munitions DNA mutations chemical weapons DIME Dense Inert Metal Explosives HMTA Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy UNRWA ,
Monday, January 12, 2009
Israel's New War Ethic Illustrated - Part Two
Online Journal
Wed, 06 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
James Brooks
"Horrific" wounds in Gaza may be warfare of the future
In early July, shortly after the beginning of Israel's bloody military siege of the Gaza Strip, reports began to appear that Israeli forces were using a new weapon that inflicted strange and untreatable wounds,and significantly increased the death tolls of Israel's attacks. [1] [2]
Italian investigators have reported evidence that theunidentified Israeli weapon is probably Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME,a so-called LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed by the United States Air Force. [3]
DIME bombs blast a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered heavy metal tungsten alloy (HMTA). Studies indicate that HMTA embedded in the body disrupts biochemistry and rapidly causes cancer. Like depleted uranium(DU), HMTA is genotoxic -- it is capable of inflicting genetic mutations. [4-10]
Publicly slated for deployment in 2008, [right on schedule] DIME bombs are small but unusually powerful. Their carbon fiber casings make "more of the blast energy . . . available as blast as opposed to being absorbed in [a] steel case". The carbon reportedly breaks into "thousands of harmless fibers" to prevent unintended casualties from casing shrapnel. [11]
The 'footprint' of the DIME blast is much smaller than a conventional bomb's, because gravity and air resistance quickly drag the dense,finely powdered "micro-shrapnel" to the ground. The blast radius is reportedly as small as 25 feet. [12] [13]
DIME is part of the Air Force's Focused Lethality Munitions(FLM) program, which is expected to "allow" the targeting of "terrorists"wherever they are, even in places "previously off limits to the warfighter." [14]
The ideal of FLM is to reliably kill every human within the blast zone -- one way or another. It is 'total war' on a 50-foot circle, within which deaths are not admitted as collateral, but purchased as insurance.
Israel's new weapon "slices" off its victims' legs, leaving"signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation." It's "as if a saw was used to cut through the bone," according to Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the emergency room at Gaza's Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. [15]
Viewing photographs of the living and dead Palestinian victims of this device, many of whom are children, we notice patches of darkened but unburned skin, possibly where metal powder was driven into and/or through the skin by blast force. A child's torso is peppered with holes, some of which, judging from doctors' reports, probably tunnel through to exit wounds in the back. The skin and muscle of one victim is ripped into a blood-encrusted pulp, as if blasted at close range with tiny bird shot. Some of the corpses are unrecognizable. Most of the recent photos of "strange" wounds from Gaza appear to be consistent with what is known about DIME weapons. [16]
The area of a DIME blast should be treated with caution until it has been decontaminated (assuming this is possible). Depending on the local HMTA concentration, soil in the blast area may remain barren for an indefinite period of time, or it may grow plants internally contaminated with HMTA. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" charade
In the scientific literature on tungsten and its alloys, the toxicity of HMTA stands apart. This formula (roughly nine parts tungsten and one part nickel and cobalt or iron) damages DNA even when powders of the metals are simply mixed together. [4] [5] [9]
Implanting four tiny bits of weapons-grade HMTA in lab mice induced terminal cancer in 100 percent of the subjects. A powdered HMTA recipe was tumor-generating and capable of "genotoxic effects." At least one experiment found parallels in the way DU and HMTA attack DNA. The results of another suggested that HMTA may pass its genetic damage down to the next generation. [8] [5] [9] [10]
HMTA may be much more carcinogenic than DU when it is embedded in the body -- as intended. "Tumors developed rapidly" in rats implanted with pellets of HMTA, but researchers "did not observe tumor formation in the DU-implanted rats."
Multiple syndromes of heavy metal poisoning have also been attributed to this alloy, including polycythemia, which can be induced by cobalt overdose. Because HMTA contains far too little cobalt to cause the disease by itself, researchers suspected a synergistic effect among or between the metals. [8]
In a 2005 article reviewing the "status of health concerns"about depleted uranium and "surrogate metals" such as HMTA, three scientists at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) wrote that "medical and political controversies surrounding the use of DU" had spurred "a search for substitute metals in armor-penetrating munitions." [19]
"[N]ew alloys of tungsten/nickel/cobalt and tungsten/nickel/iron . . . rival DU in armor-penetrating performance," and are"among the leading candidates to replace DU in selected munitions." Some of this ordnance "has already been deployed, although on a relatively small scale."
The article then reviews the science detailing the alarming health risks of HMTA, much of it conducted by the authors, whom we thank for their work. It then attempts to explain how the military's favorite "surrogate metal" turned out to be almost as genotoxic as DU, and probably more carcinogenic:
"In many ways the development of substitutes for DU in munitions has followed a pattern similar to that for DU deployment, in that incomplete toxicological information was available prior to their release . . .it was assumed that many years of industrial use of tungsten and alloys such as tungsten carbide . . . meant they could be used as safely in armaments."
We infer that it was reasonable for the military to deploy DU weapons, because the toxicological information was "incomplete." It's a strange scientific rigor that requires us to know exactly how a known poison works before we stop giving it to people.
The cold fact is that there never was a scientifically valid reason to "assume" that depleted uranium could be used "safely in armaments."Quite the opposite; as we shall see in part three, the Army realized more than60 years ago that finely powdered uranium products could make extremely potent antipersonnel weapons. [20]
We currently have "incomplete toxicological information"about HMTA, but for more than 15 years we have had clear warnings about the health risks of combining these metals. US weapons scientists should have known as early as 1992 that mixing cobalt with tungsten could greatly increase the resulting alloy's cancer potential. [21] [22]
It is hardly news that nickel is carcinogenic and genotoxic,and specialists have long noted that heavy metal alloys tend to unpredictably amplify the toxicities of their component metals. With this kind of "incomplete"information at hand, could military scientists have reasonably "assumed" that nickel would be a "safe" addition to HMTA?
Concerns have been voiced about tungsten sport ammunition for several years. Tungsten alloy bullets, some also containing nickel and cobalt (for superior hardness), were found to pose potential environmental hazards in several studies. A probable link between industrial tungsten and leukemia has been identified. Compared to these findings, however, the toxicity of HMTA may be of a different order. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" apologia offered by the AFRRI researchers asks us to assume that the scientists who developed DIME weapons proceeded in sheer ignorance of the existing science. They were so incompetent that they merely "assumed" that they could use any tungsten alloy.
Does this implausibility jibe with the rest of the picture?A multi-billion dollar military weapons program is stung by the "controversies"surrounding its toxic DU weapons, and is under pressure to produce an expedient alternative. Would this program's scientists have been allowed to be so cavalier about consulting the literature? Would the replacement metal be chosen on blind faith, without bothering to conduct even simple studies of its potential health impacts?
Logically, we must conclude that the military developed HMTA in the knowledge that it could have significant carcinogenic and genotoxic effects. Did they "assume" that saying "tungsten is safer than DU" would take care of the matter?
Perhaps relatively non-toxic tungsten carbide, famed for its hardness and cutting ability, would not have sufficed for the purposes of the DIME bomb. Focused Lethality Munitions like DIME must kill all of their victims. Slicing off their arms and legs is not enough.
The last installment of this article will trace the roots of HMTA in depleted uranium and decades of US warfare with poisonous, DNA-damaging powders. Then we will return to Gaza to consider the damage done, and the damage to come, if the war makers have their way.
References
1) Israel accused of using 'Dime' bombs, AlJazeera, 10/13/2006
2) Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
4) Abstract: Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,11/26/2006
5) Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC, etal, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, OxfordUniversity Press
6) Abstract: Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI)
7) Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
8) Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
9) Abstract: Effect of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
10) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
11) Air Force seeks a bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
12) Cancer Worries for New U.S. Bombs, DefenseTech.org, 5/20/2006
13) DenseInert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
14) USAFUnfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
15) Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
16) Effects of Israel's New Weapon, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
17) Possible Health And Environmental Impacts Of Tungsten In Lead Replacement Shot, PaulHarrison and Karen Bradley, MRC Institute for Environment and Health 2005
18) TungstenEffects on Soil Environments, Nikolay Strigul, et al, UMass, Annual International Conference on Soil, Sediments and Water, 10/18/2004
19) Status of Health Concerns about Military Use of Depleted Uranium and Surrogate Metals in Armor-Penetrating Munitions, D.E. McClain, A.C. Miller, and J.F.Kalinich, NATO, 2005
20) Memorandum to: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey,Midfully.org/War Department, United States Engineer Office, Manhattan District,Oak Ridge Tennessee, 10/30/1943
21) Abstract:Comparative study of the acute lung toxicity of pure cobalt powder and cobalt-tungsten carbide mixture in rats, Lasfargues G., et al, Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 1992
22) Evaluation of the role of reactive oxygen species in the interactive toxicity of carbide-cobaltmixtures on macrophages in culture, D. Lison and R. Lauwerys,SpringerLink//Archives of Toxicology, 6/1/1993
Original
In early July, shortly after the beginning of Israel's bloody military siege of the Gaza Strip, reports began to appear that Israeli forces were using a new weapon that inflicted strange and untreatable wounds,and significantly increased the death tolls of Israel's attacks. [1] [2]
Italian investigators have reported evidence that theunidentified Israeli weapon is probably Dense Inert Metal Explosives, or DIME,a so-called LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed by the United States Air Force. [3]
DIME bombs blast a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered heavy metal tungsten alloy (HMTA). Studies indicate that HMTA embedded in the body disrupts biochemistry and rapidly causes cancer. Like depleted uranium(DU), HMTA is genotoxic -- it is capable of inflicting genetic mutations. [4-10]
Publicly slated for deployment in 2008, [right on schedule] DIME bombs are small but unusually powerful. Their carbon fiber casings make "more of the blast energy . . . available as blast as opposed to being absorbed in [a] steel case". The carbon reportedly breaks into "thousands of harmless fibers" to prevent unintended casualties from casing shrapnel. [11]
The 'footprint' of the DIME blast is much smaller than a conventional bomb's, because gravity and air resistance quickly drag the dense,finely powdered "micro-shrapnel" to the ground. The blast radius is reportedly as small as 25 feet. [12] [13]
DIME is part of the Air Force's Focused Lethality Munitions(FLM) program, which is expected to "allow" the targeting of "terrorists"wherever they are, even in places "previously off limits to the warfighter." [14]
The ideal of FLM is to reliably kill every human within the blast zone -- one way or another. It is 'total war' on a 50-foot circle, within which deaths are not admitted as collateral, but purchased as insurance.
Israel's new weapon "slices" off its victims' legs, leaving"signs of heat and burns near the point of the amputation." It's "as if a saw was used to cut through the bone," according to Dr. Habas al-Wahid, head of the emergency room at Gaza's Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital. [15]
Viewing photographs of the living and dead Palestinian victims of this device, many of whom are children, we notice patches of darkened but unburned skin, possibly where metal powder was driven into and/or through the skin by blast force. A child's torso is peppered with holes, some of which, judging from doctors' reports, probably tunnel through to exit wounds in the back. The skin and muscle of one victim is ripped into a blood-encrusted pulp, as if blasted at close range with tiny bird shot. Some of the corpses are unrecognizable. Most of the recent photos of "strange" wounds from Gaza appear to be consistent with what is known about DIME weapons. [16]
The area of a DIME blast should be treated with caution until it has been decontaminated (assuming this is possible). Depending on the local HMTA concentration, soil in the blast area may remain barren for an indefinite period of time, or it may grow plants internally contaminated with HMTA. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" charade
In the scientific literature on tungsten and its alloys, the toxicity of HMTA stands apart. This formula (roughly nine parts tungsten and one part nickel and cobalt or iron) damages DNA even when powders of the metals are simply mixed together. [4] [5] [9]
Implanting four tiny bits of weapons-grade HMTA in lab mice induced terminal cancer in 100 percent of the subjects. A powdered HMTA recipe was tumor-generating and capable of "genotoxic effects." At least one experiment found parallels in the way DU and HMTA attack DNA. The results of another suggested that HMTA may pass its genetic damage down to the next generation. [8] [5] [9] [10]
HMTA may be much more carcinogenic than DU when it is embedded in the body -- as intended. "Tumors developed rapidly" in rats implanted with pellets of HMTA, but researchers "did not observe tumor formation in the DU-implanted rats."
Multiple syndromes of heavy metal poisoning have also been attributed to this alloy, including polycythemia, which can be induced by cobalt overdose. Because HMTA contains far too little cobalt to cause the disease by itself, researchers suspected a synergistic effect among or between the metals. [8]
In a 2005 article reviewing the "status of health concerns"about depleted uranium and "surrogate metals" such as HMTA, three scientists at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI) wrote that "medical and political controversies surrounding the use of DU" had spurred "a search for substitute metals in armor-penetrating munitions." [19]
"[N]ew alloys of tungsten/nickel/cobalt and tungsten/nickel/iron . . . rival DU in armor-penetrating performance," and are"among the leading candidates to replace DU in selected munitions." Some of this ordnance "has already been deployed, although on a relatively small scale."
The article then reviews the science detailing the alarming health risks of HMTA, much of it conducted by the authors, whom we thank for their work. It then attempts to explain how the military's favorite "surrogate metal" turned out to be almost as genotoxic as DU, and probably more carcinogenic:
"In many ways the development of substitutes for DU in munitions has followed a pattern similar to that for DU deployment, in that incomplete toxicological information was available prior to their release . . .it was assumed that many years of industrial use of tungsten and alloys such as tungsten carbide . . . meant they could be used as safely in armaments."
We infer that it was reasonable for the military to deploy DU weapons, because the toxicological information was "incomplete." It's a strange scientific rigor that requires us to know exactly how a known poison works before we stop giving it to people.
The cold fact is that there never was a scientifically valid reason to "assume" that depleted uranium could be used "safely in armaments."Quite the opposite; as we shall see in part three, the Army realized more than60 years ago that finely powdered uranium products could make extremely potent antipersonnel weapons. [20]
We currently have "incomplete toxicological information"about HMTA, but for more than 15 years we have had clear warnings about the health risks of combining these metals. US weapons scientists should have known as early as 1992 that mixing cobalt with tungsten could greatly increase the resulting alloy's cancer potential. [21] [22]
It is hardly news that nickel is carcinogenic and genotoxic,and specialists have long noted that heavy metal alloys tend to unpredictably amplify the toxicities of their component metals. With this kind of "incomplete"information at hand, could military scientists have reasonably "assumed" that nickel would be a "safe" addition to HMTA?
Concerns have been voiced about tungsten sport ammunition for several years. Tungsten alloy bullets, some also containing nickel and cobalt (for superior hardness), were found to pose potential environmental hazards in several studies. A probable link between industrial tungsten and leukemia has been identified. Compared to these findings, however, the toxicity of HMTA may be of a different order. [17] [18]
The "who knew?" apologia offered by the AFRRI researchers asks us to assume that the scientists who developed DIME weapons proceeded in sheer ignorance of the existing science. They were so incompetent that they merely "assumed" that they could use any tungsten alloy.
Does this implausibility jibe with the rest of the picture?A multi-billion dollar military weapons program is stung by the "controversies"surrounding its toxic DU weapons, and is under pressure to produce an expedient alternative. Would this program's scientists have been allowed to be so cavalier about consulting the literature? Would the replacement metal be chosen on blind faith, without bothering to conduct even simple studies of its potential health impacts?
Logically, we must conclude that the military developed HMTA in the knowledge that it could have significant carcinogenic and genotoxic effects. Did they "assume" that saying "tungsten is safer than DU" would take care of the matter?
Perhaps relatively non-toxic tungsten carbide, famed for its hardness and cutting ability, would not have sufficed for the purposes of the DIME bomb. Focused Lethality Munitions like DIME must kill all of their victims. Slicing off their arms and legs is not enough.
The last installment of this article will trace the roots of HMTA in depleted uranium and decades of US warfare with poisonous, DNA-damaging powders. Then we will return to Gaza to consider the damage done, and the damage to come, if the war makers have their way.
References
1) Israel accused of using 'Dime' bombs, AlJazeera, 10/13/2006
2) Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
4) Abstract: Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,11/26/2006
5) Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC, etal, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, OxfordUniversity Press
6) Abstract: Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI)
7) Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
8) Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
9) Abstract: Effect of the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC, et al, SpringerLink/Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
10) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancer in unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlot and Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
11) Air Force seeks a bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
12) Cancer Worries for New U.S. Bombs, DefenseTech.org, 5/20/2006
13) DenseInert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
14) USAFUnfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
15) Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
16) Effects of Israel's New Weapon, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
17) Possible Health And Environmental Impacts Of Tungsten In Lead Replacement Shot, PaulHarrison and Karen Bradley, MRC Institute for Environment and Health 2005
18) TungstenEffects on Soil Environments, Nikolay Strigul, et al, UMass, Annual International Conference on Soil, Sediments and Water, 10/18/2004
19) Status of Health Concerns about Military Use of Depleted Uranium and Surrogate Metals in Armor-Penetrating Munitions, D.E. McClain, A.C. Miller, and J.F.Kalinich, NATO, 2005
20) Memorandum to: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey,Midfully.org/War Department, United States Engineer Office, Manhattan District,Oak Ridge Tennessee, 10/30/1943
21) Abstract:Comparative study of the acute lung toxicity of pure cobalt powder and cobalt-tungsten carbide mixture in rats, Lasfargues G., et al, Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 1992
22) Evaluation of the role of reactive oxygen species in the interactive toxicity of carbide-cobaltmixtures on macrophages in culture, D. Lison and R. Lauwerys,SpringerLink//Archives of Toxicology, 6/1/1993
Original
child amputations DNA mutations chemical weapons DIME Dense Inert Metal Explosives HMTA Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy UNRWA ,
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Israel's New War Ethic Illustrated - Part One
Online Journal
Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:00 UTC
James Brooks
It's been almost five months since the first report thatIsraeli drone aircraft have been dropping a "mystery weapon" on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since then, news media around the world have run stories depicting the strange and "horrific" wounds inflicted by the new bomb.
The international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say Israel's new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. [1] [2]
In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic evidence that suggests the new weapon may also represent the near future of US"counterinsurgency warfare." Combined with photographs of the victims and testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). [3]
DIME is an LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [4-11]
It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel's new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel's war on the Palestinian people -- reason enough for the media to suppress it. [12]
Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have introduced Americans to their government's DIME weapons program. This three-part article will ask whether Israel is 'testing' US DIME bombs in the Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in the US military's long-running development of genotoxic weapons.
"They cannot return to life again"
The first reports about 'Israel's new weapon' came from Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza's largest hospital,Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using "a new 'chemical' weapon" and its siege was "a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200." He observed that, "despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body." [13]
"There were usually entry and exit wounds," Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. "When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. . . . A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality." The effects of the weapon seemed"radioactive." [14] [15]
According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa "confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again." [16]
"When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones . . . it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon." [17]
However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently destroyed Gaza's only crime laboratory. [18]
Despite his pleas to the "international community" to investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, "no one has lifted a finger," the doctor was quoted in mid-July. "What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing." [19]
On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency(UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd had visited Dr.Al-Saqqa's hospital, "where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds resulting in an unusually high number of amputations." Commissioner Abu Zayd commented that "what we saw in Al-Shifa . . . was rather horrific." [20]
According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International), "75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital needed amputations" following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. [21]
The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel "agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation." [22]
Tungsten in tissue samples: A DIME weapon?
On October 19, Italy's Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found "a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten." The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME."
Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF's) weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." [23]
The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the 'weapons of choice' for targeting "terrorists hiding among civilians," as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it. [24]
With "focused lethality [and] higher energy materials . . . nanoparticles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality," the Air Force "will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage." Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites "previously off limits to the war fighter." [25] [26]
[Like civilian areas?]
This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering,and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next installment of this article.
References
1) Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza, Ma'an News,7/10/2006
2) Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
4) Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
5) Abstract:Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,11/26/2006
6) Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC,et al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford UniversityPress
7) Abstract:Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI)
8) Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant, alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
9) Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
10) Abstract: Effectof the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC, et al, Springer, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
11) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancerin unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlotand Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
12) If Americans Knew
13) Israel'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Duraid Al Baik, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
14) Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza and Lebanon?, David Halpin MB BS FRCS, Electronic Intifada,8/14/2006
15) Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
16) ibid.
17) Doctors Report Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza, Pacifica/Free Speech Radio News 7/11/2006
18) Israel'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
19) Ministryof Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
20) UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd: "Please don't forget what's going on in Gaza," ReliefWeb/UNRWA, 8/3/2006
21) Hospitals in Gaza overwhelmed and running out of supplies, Electronic Intifada/Merlin,8/8/2006
22) Gaza doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries', Donald Macintyre,The Independent 9/4/2006
23) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
24) Air Force seeks a bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
25) Munition Technology Drivers, Col. Thomas "Mas" Masiell, Air Force Research Laboratory,12/1/2006
26) USAFUnfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
The international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say Israel's new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. [1] [2]
In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic evidence that suggests the new weapon may also represent the near future of US"counterinsurgency warfare." Combined with photographs of the victims and testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). [3]
DIME is an LCD ("low collateral damage") weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated "micro-shrapnel" of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic). [4-11]
It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel's new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel's war on the Palestinian people -- reason enough for the media to suppress it. [12]
Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have introduced Americans to their government's DIME weapons program. This three-part article will ask whether Israel is 'testing' US DIME bombs in the Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in the US military's long-running development of genotoxic weapons.
"They cannot return to life again"
The first reports about 'Israel's new weapon' came from Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza's largest hospital,Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using "a new 'chemical' weapon" and its siege was "a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200." He observed that, "despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body." [13]
"There were usually entry and exit wounds," Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. "When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was difficult to determine. . . . A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality." The effects of the weapon seemed"radioactive." [14] [15]
According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa "confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again." [16]
"When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones . . . it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon." [17]
However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently destroyed Gaza's only crime laboratory. [18]
Despite his pleas to the "international community" to investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, "no one has lifted a finger," the doctor was quoted in mid-July. "What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing." [19]
On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency(UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd had visited Dr.Al-Saqqa's hospital, "where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds resulting in an unusually high number of amputations." Commissioner Abu Zayd commented that "what we saw in Al-Shifa . . . was rather horrific." [20]
According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International), "75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital needed amputations" following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. [21]
The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel "agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation." [22]
Tungsten in tissue samples: A DIME weapon?
On October 19, Italy's Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found "a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten." The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME."
Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF's) weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." [23]
The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the 'weapons of choice' for targeting "terrorists hiding among civilians," as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it. [24]
With "focused lethality [and] higher energy materials . . . nanoparticles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality," the Air Force "will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage." Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites "previously off limits to the war fighter." [25] [26]
[Like civilian areas?]
This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering,and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next installment of this article.
References
1) Palestinian injuries suggest Israel is using chemical weapons in Gaza, Ma'an News,7/10/2006
2) Israel used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza, Jean Shaoul, wsws.org, 10/24/2006
3) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/19/2006
4) Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), GlobalSecurity.org, 10/18/2006
5) Abstract:Potential late health effects of depleted uranium and tungsten used in armor-piercing munitions: comparison of neoplastic transformation and genotoxicity with the known carcinogen nickel, Miller, AC, et al, PubMed,11/26/2006
6) Neoplastic transformation of human osteoblast cells to the tumorigenic phenotype by heavy metal-tungsten alloy particles: induction of genotoxic effects, Miller, AC,et al, Carcinogenesis, Vol. 22, No. 1, 115-125, January 2001, Oxford UniversityPress
7) Abstract:Carcinogenic Potential of Depleted Uranium and Tungsten Alloys, Alexandra CMiller, Ph. D., Department Of Defense, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI)
8) Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant, alpha particle decay, Miller, AC, et al, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, Issue 91, 2002pp. 246- 252
9) Embedded Weapons-Grade Tungsten Alloy Shrapnel Rapidly Induces Metastatic High-Grade Rhabdomyosarcomas in F344 Rats, Kalinich et al, Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 113, Number 6, June 2005
10) Abstract: Effectof the militarily-relevant heavy metals, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2),Miller, AC, et al, Springer, Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry, 1/1/2004
11) Preconceptional paternal exposure to radiation or heavy metals like cadmium can induce cancerin unexposed offspring, Alexandra C. Miller, Rafael Rivas, Robert J. Merlotand Paul, Carcinogenesis 5: Environmental and Endogenous Carcinogens/Proc AmerAssoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006
12) If Americans Knew
13) Israel'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Duraid Al Baik, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
14) Are New Weapons Being Used In Gaza and Lebanon?, David Halpin MB BS FRCS, Electronic Intifada,8/14/2006
15) Ministry of Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
16) ibid.
17) Doctors Report Unusual Weapon Used in Gaza, Pacifica/Free Speech Radio News 7/11/2006
18) Israel'is using chemical ammunition' in Gaza, Centre for Research on Globalization/Gulf News, 6/13/2006
19) Ministryof Health report on toxic Israeli weapons confirmed by Gaza City medical sources, Palestine News Network, 7/13/2006
20) UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen Abu Zayd: "Please don't forget what's going on in Gaza," ReliefWeb/UNRWA, 8/3/2006
21) Hospitals in Gaza overwhelmed and running out of supplies, Electronic Intifada/Merlin,8/8/2006
22) Gaza doctors encounter 'unexplained injuries', Donald Macintyre,The Independent 9/4/2006
23) Italian TV:Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip, Ha'aretz, 10/12/2006
24) Air Force seeks a bomb with less bang, Greg Jaffe, The Wall Street Journal/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/11/2006
25) Munition Technology Drivers, Col. Thomas "Mas" Masiell, Air Force Research Laboratory,12/1/2006
26) USAFUnfunded Priority List (UPL), SAF/FMB POC, FY 2007, February 2006, Page 54
chemical weapons DIME Dense Inert Metal Explosives HMTA Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy UNRWA
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