Israel's New Arsenal

[Jcrowley]

Israel's New Arsenal
Ethan Heitner, Tompaine.com, 1 November 2006

What bizarre science-fiction horrors have to occur before the American media wakes up to the strange war that Israel is prosecuting against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians? People are still being maimed or killed every day in Lebanon thanks to unexploded cluster ordinance dropped massively by Israel in the 48 hours after a cease-fire had been negotiated but before it went into effect. Over 30 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in October alone. As usual, however, Lebanon and Palestine have vanished from the newscycle (where Israel is currently represented by a president who refuses to step down despite an all-but-indictment for multiple rape charges and an openly fascist party joining the government ). But there has been a steady drumbeat of revelations, largely in the Israeli and British media, ignored entirely by the American media, about Israel's use of horrifying new weapons on civilian populations.

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All three investigations feature doctors explaining horrific and mysterious new wounds appearing in Gaza hospitals after Israeli drone attacks: "Bodies arrived severely fragmented, melted and disfigured," said Jumaa Saqa'a, a doctor at Shifa hospital, the main casualty hospital in Gaza City. "We found internal burning of organs, while externally there were minute pieces of shrapnel. When we opened many of the injured people we found dusting on the internal organs." ...

"You have complete burns that lead to amputation. You find shrapnel entering the body and leaving very, very small holes. We have never seen this before," said Khalid Radi, a spokesman at the health ministry.

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Of course, new weapons that are still experimental aren't yet banned under international law. And the weight of Israeli denials is light. For anyone following the news longer than a brief media spin cycle should remember that mere months ago the Lebanese government accused Israel of dropping cluster bombs and using white phosphorous explosives against civilians. Bonus: the Italian team that uncovered the weapons experimentation in Gaza was the same team that uncovered that the U.S. Army had similarly used phosphorous weapons against civillians in Iraq, then denied it. And indeed, when being questioned by the Israeli Knesset over the DIME allegations in Gaza, the Israeli army admitted it had, indeed, been using white phosphorous--a horrific chemical weapon of mass destruction that causes wounds to burn when exposed to air--on Lebanese civilians despite initial denials.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/30/israels_new_arsenal.php