"The IDF is the most moral army in the world." So
said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on June 11, right after an Israeli artillery shell killed eight civilians, including seven members of the same Palestinian family, on a Gaza beach on June 9, and right before an Israeli aircraft
fired a missile at a van on a busy highway on June 13, killing two Islamic Jihad militants, and then fired a second at the civilian crowd that ran to help, killing nine, including two children and two medics.
Today, Israel
admitted for the first time what everybody already knew: that the IDF used white phosphorus bombs during the war on Lebanon. White phosphorus is incendiary - it burns when it comes into contact with air - and causes
horrific chemical burns to those it hits. Minister Jacob Edery said today,
"The IDF made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground."
The truth has, again, been known to everyone for a while now. During the war, Lebanese civilians were reported to be carrying injuries associated with phosphorus, and Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, a hospital worker, reported receiving three corpses "entirely shriveled with black-green skin" - a tell-tale sign of white phosphorus. Of course, we all know what Israel means by `military targets' - during the war, it explicitly determined everyone in the entire south of the country to be a legitimate target. According to Israel and the U.S., white phosphorus is not illegal per se, although it is forbidden by the Third Protocol of the Geneva Conventions (to which neither Israel nor the U.S. is party). Many experts, on the other hand, classify white phosphorus as a `chemical weapon' because of the way it attacks the respiratory system. If W.P. is classified as a `chemical weapon', it is clearly illegal. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) defines a `toxic chemical' thus:
`Any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. This includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere.'
Any toxic chemical, as defined above, used as a weapon constitutes a `chemical weapon'. That, most definitely, would include white phosphorus. White phosphorus is a horrible weapon - when it was discovered that the U.S. used it in the assault on Fallujah in 2004, there was (eventually) an international outcry. One U.S. soldier described its effects thus:
"[I]t melts the flesh all the way down to the bone ... I saw the burned bodies of women and children. Phosphorus explodes and forms a cloud. Anyone within a radius of 150 metres is done for."
You may recall that when the U.S. was first accused of using white phosphorus as a weapon, it, like Israel, categorically denied everything. Then, evidence forced the U.S. to admit to using W.P., but only for "illumination" purposes, in much the same way as Israel was forced to admit to using it only to `mark territory'. The U.S. then told one more lie - that, in fact, it used white phosphorus not for `illumination' purposes but to 'screen' the movements of troops and as a psychological weapon - before finally admitting to using it as a weapon. Even then, the U.S. refused, as Israel does now, to admit that it used white phosphorus on civilians, despite the insurmountable evidence to the contrary. The sheer audacity of these monsters is incredible.
Since the August 14 ceasefire, at least 22 people, including several children, have been killed and more than 120 civilians have been maimed by unexploded Israeli cluster bombs left over from the war. Around a million unexploded cluster bomblets litter south Lebanon, after Israel fired hundreds of the 'flying mines` during the last 72 hours of the conflict. It is estimated that it will take between 12-15 months to clear them all up, meaning for the next year or so south Lebanon is essentially one large minefield, unsafe for thousands of families to return home to. After the ceasefire Israel, amazingly, refused to cooperate with the U.N. clear-up effort by withholding from it detailed maps of the cluster bomb sites. Is this "the most moral army in the world", or is it, as U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland would have it, "completely immoral"?
Italian state-run news channel, RAI News 24, has recently alleged that Israel may have used a new experimental weapon, similar to the U.S.-developed DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) "which causes a powerful and lethal blast but only within a relatively small radius", in the course of its Gaza offensive ("Operation Summer Rains"). Israel, of course, completely denies this. RAI, incidentally, is the same channel that exposed the United States' use of white phosphorus in Fallujah 2004. One wonders how long it will take this time before Israel admits all. The weapon is believed by experts to be "highly carcinogenic and harmful to the environment." That the IDF would be willing to use the citizens of Gaza as test subjects for a developmental weapon is entire credible; the IDF, and the Israeli leadership in general, has always viewed Palestinian lives as expendable. How else to explain the other big `experiment` Israel has been conducting since January, testing the hypothesis: `how miserable do we have to make Palestinian life before they will get rid of Hamas?' After 15 civilians, including 11 children, were killed when Israel dropped a one-tonne bomb on a Gaza apartment in an assassination attempt on Salah Shehadeh, a Hamas militant, then air-force commander and now IDF chief Dan Halutz was asked how he felt in such situations. He replied, "I feel a slight bump to the plane as a result of the bomb's release. A second later it passes, and that's all. That's what I feel." That's what Palestinian life is worth to the IDF.
Since June 25, at least 320 Palestinians, mostly civilians and including 62 children, have been killed by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF), and at least 1072 Palestinian civilians, including 315 children, have been wounded by IOF gunfire. The number of Palestinian children killed so far this year in the West Bank and Gaza almost doubles the number killed for the whole of 2005.
The IDF "the most moral army in the world"? God, I really, really hope not.
[Cross-posted at The Heathlander]