Is Gaza a testing ground for experimental weapons?

[American Dream]

Is Gaza a testing ground for experimental weapons?
"create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population"

by Jonathan Cook

Global Research,
January 13, 2009


Concerns about Israel’s use of non-conventional and experimental weapons in the Gaza Strip are growing, with evasive comments from spokesmen and reluctance to allow independent journalists inside the tiny enclave only fuelling speculation.

The most prominent controversy is over the use of shells containing white phosphorus, which causes horrific burns when it comes into contact with skin. Under international law, phosphorus is allowed as a smokescreen to protect soldiers but treated as a chemical weapon when used against civilians.

The Israeli army maintains that it is using only weapons authorised in international law, though human rights groups have severely criticised Israel for firing phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza.

But there might be other unconventional weapons Israel is using out of sight of the watching world.

One such munition may be Dime, or dense inert metal explosive, a weapon recently developed by the US army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.

The munition is supposed to still be in the development stage and is not yet regulated. There are fears, however, that Israel may have received a green light from the US military to treat Gaza as a testing ground.

“We have seen Gaza used as a laboratory for testing what I call weapons from hell,” said David Halpin, a retired British surgeon and trauma specialist who has visited Gaza on several occasions to investigate unusual injuries suffered by Gazans.

“I fear the thinking in Israel is that it is in its interests to create as much mutilation as possible to terrorise the civilian population in the hope they will turn against Hamas.”

Gaza’s doctors, including one of the few foreigners there, Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian specialist in emergency medicine working at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, report that many of the injuries they see are consistent with the use of Dime.

Wounds from the weapon are said to be distinctive. Those exposed to the blast have severed or melted limbs, or internal ruptures, especially to soft tissue such as the abdomen, that often lead to death.

There is said to be no shrapnel apart from a fine “dusting” of minute metal particles on damaged organs visible when autopsies are carried out. Survivors of a Dime blast are at increased risk of developing cancer, according to research carried out in the United States.

Traditional munitions, by contrast, cause large wounds wherever shrapnel penetrates the body.

“The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 metres, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave, are cut in pieces,” Dr Gilbert said in a recent interview.

This is not the first time concerns about Israel’s use of Dime have surfaced in Gaza. Doctors there reported strange injuries they could not treat, and from which patients died unexpectedly days later, during a prolonged wave of Israeli air strikes in 2006.

A subsequent Italian investigation found Israel was using a prototype weapon similar to Dime. Samples from victims in Gaza showed concentrations of unusual metals in their bodies.

Yitzhak Ben-Israel, the former head of the Israeli military’s weapons development programme, appeared familiar with the weapon, telling Italian TV that the short radius of the explosion helped avoid injuries to bystanders, allowing “the striking of very small targets”.

Israeli denials about using weapons banned by international law would not cover Dime because it is not yet officially licensed.

It will be difficult to investigate claims that non-conventional weapons have been used in Gaza until a ceasefire is agreed, but previous inquiries have shown that Israel resorts to such munitions.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has recorded numerous occasions when the Israeli army has fired flechette shells, both in Lebanon and Gaza. The shell releases thousands of tiny metal darts that cause horrible injuries to anyone out in the open.

A Reuters cameraman, Fadel Shana, filmed the firing of such a shell from an Israeli tank in Gaza in April, moments before its flechettes killed him.

Miri Weingarten, a spokeswoman for Physicians for Human Rights, said they were watching out for use of a new flechette-type weapon the Israeli army has developed called kalanit (anemone). An anti-personnel munition, the shell sends out hundreds of small discs.

Israel appears to have used a range of controversial weapons during its attack on Lebanon in 2006. After initial denials, an Israeli government minister admitted that the army had fired phosphorus shells, and the Israeli media widely reported millions of cluster bombs being dropped over south Lebanon.

There are also suspicions that Israel may have used uranium-based warheads. A subsequent inquiry by a British newspaper found elevated levels of radiation at two Israeli missile craters.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, said her organisation had not yet been able to confirm which weapons were being used in Gaza in the current attacks. She added, however, that Israel’s denials about using non-conventional munitions should not be relied on.

“It is true, as the army spokespeople say, that weapons such as phosphorus and flechette shells are not expressly prohibited. But our view is that such weapons, which do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, cannot be used legally in a densely populated area like Gaza.”

Reports this month revealed that the United States has been organising massive shipments of arms to Israel, though a Pentagon spokesman denied they were for use in Gaza.



Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.




The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11770

[kelley]

if so, then by analogy this would make gaza the guernica of the twenty-first century. i'll leave it at that.

[Col. Quisp]

...and the US is complicit. Fuck religious bullshit reasons for slaughter. Hugh Manatee Sucks!

[nomo]

One such munition may be Dime, or dense inert metal explosive, a weapon recently developed by the US army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.

Wikipedia:

Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) is an experimental type of explosive that has a relatively small but effective blast radius. It is manufactured by producing a homogeneous mixture of an explosive material (such as HMX or RDX) and small particles of a chemically inert material such as tungsten. It is intended to limit the distance at which the explosion causes damage, to avoid collateral damage in warfare.

[beeline]

to avoid collateral damage in warfare.

....is, at best, oxymoronic.

[American Dream]

http://www.indypendent.org/2010/05/24/g ... l-weapons/

Genetic Mutations, Peculiar Injuries: More Evidence Emerges that Israel Used Gaza as Testing Ground for Experimental Weapons

By Alex Kane
May 24, 2010


Pages upon pages have been written about the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip by human rights groups and fact-finding missions. The scale of the destruction is well-known: some 1,400 Palestinians were killed by Israel, the vast majority of them civilians; over 15,000 homes were destroyed or so severely damaged that 100,000 Palestinians were rendered homeless; nearly half of health facilities in Gaza were destroyed or damaged.

But allegations that Israel used new, experimental weapons in Gaza have not been adequately investigated.

Helena Cobban, an expert on the Middle East who blogs at Just World News, highlights an important new study by the New Weapons Committee, an organization that studies new weapons and their effects, on “Operation Cast Lead.” The committee was founded in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, where it is also suspected that Israel used highly unconventional weapons.

A press release on the study states:

Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used.

[…]

Some of the elements found are carcinogenic (mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and uranium), others are potentially carcinogenic (cobalt and vanadium), others are also fetotoxic (alluminium, copper, barium, lead and manganese). The first ones can produce genetic mutations; the second ones can have the same effect on animals, but they are not proven to do the same on people; the third ones have toxic effects on people ad can affect either the embryo or the foetus in pregnant women. All metals found in high amounts have pathogenic effects on human respiratory organs, kidney and skin and affect sexual and neurological development and functions.

“Nobody – says professor Paola Manduca, spokesperson for the New Weapons Research Group, genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa – had never conducted bioptic analysis on tissue samples from wounds. We have focused on wounds made by weapons that do not leave fragments, as the doctors from Gaza reported on them repeatedly. We wanted to verify the presence of metals that remained on the skin and in the derma. It was suspected that these metals were present in the weapons that leave no fragments, but it had never been demonstrated before. To our surprise even the burns provoked by white phosporus contain high amount of metals. Moreover, the presence of these metals in the weapons implies that they have been dispersed in the environment, in unknown amounts and range; they have been inhaled by the victims and by bystanders, thus constituting a risk for survivors and for people that were not directly hit by the bombing.”

One of the people who sounded the alarm on these types of weapons was Dr. Mads Gilbert, a professor and the department head for Emergency Medical Services at the University Hospital of North Norway. Gilbert was one of only two foreign doctors to be in Gaza during the Israeli onslaught.

While Gilbert was here in the United States on a speaking tour in February, I got a chance to interview him, and I asked him about these experimental weapons:

They probably used the new DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosives) weapons, developed by the U.S. Air Force to be in the new generation of what is called small diameter bombs. These small diameter bombs are made to have a very short distance of effect, but within the range of the explosive it will have a devastating effect in order to allow “targeted killings” with minimum “collateral damage.” The DIME weapons consist of a heavy metal alloy, mostly tungsten and nickel. It’s small enough to be carried by a small rocket, like a Hellfire rocket, which can easily be mounted on a drone. When this drone comes in, the drone pilot can see everything on the ground, and he can fire the rocket, and when this metal alloy explodes, it actually vaporizes the heavy metal. And this heavy metal vapor will serve as a extremely powerful current of vapor, of microshrapnels, with intense heat and an enormous destructive power. But this vapor will meet air resistance, so the power of the explosion dissipates within 10 meters.

Traditional metal shrapnels are extremely devastating because they can travel hundreds of meters, and injure somebody far away from the detonation. Whereas a DIME weapon will destroy and kill people within a range of 5-7 meters, and those from 7-10 meters, approximately, will have serious injuries. But outside that little range, nobody gets hurt. So it’s made for executions, targeted killings, extralegal liquidations that the Israelis use in their warfare. They target a car with a drone, they want to kill someone inside, but they don’t want to kill the people around them.

So you might think this weapon was made in order to be more humane. But when you fire these weapons on children playing on a rooftop in Gaza, or on children playing outside of school, or U.N. shelters, of course, you will have deadly, devastating injuries to the civilians. And we saw them. We saw children coming in without legs, without arms, completely torn apart, but with no shrapnel injuries. And these injuries we strongly believe to be caused by DIME explosives.

The Israeli Army has never acknowledged or denied they used them, neither during the Lebanon invasion and attack in 2006 that we believe was the first time it was used. They also used it, we believe, in “Operation Summer Rain” in southern Gaza in 2006, that was the first time I saw these injuries in Shifa. And I vividly recall these injuries when the patients were coming in to Shifa hospital in January last year. We have published the evidence we have, and we know of no other weapon that can cause this very specific pattern of injury.

And then of course it was the flechette bombs, which are basically nail bombs, which contain a number of small, dart-like arrows of metal steel, which travel at very high speeds and will penetrate your eyes, your neck, your chest, and cause devastating injuries.