Israel Treated Gaza Like Its
Own Private Death Laboratory
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By Conn
Hallinan, Foreign Policy. Posted February 13, 2009.
http://www.alternet.org/story/126724/?page=entire
Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals
during the recent war."It was as if they had stepped on a mine," he
says of certain Palestinian patients he treated.
"But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs.
It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war
zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries
before."
Dr. Fosse was describing
the effects of a U.S. "focused lethality" weapon that minimizes
explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds
on its victims. But where did the Israelis get this weapon? And was
their widespread use in the attack on Gaza a field test for a new
generation of explosives?
The specific weapon is
called a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). In 2000, the U.S. Air
Force teamed up with the University of California's
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The weapon wraps high
explosives with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt,
nickel, or iron in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb
explodes the container evaporates, and the tungsten turns into
micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal within a 13-foot radius.
Tungsten is inert, so it doesn't react chemically with the
explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the
blast, tungsten actually contains the explosion to a limited
area.
Within the weapon's range,
however, it's inordinately lethal. According to Norwegian doctor Mad Gilbert, the
blast results in multiple amputations and "very severe fractures.
The muscles are sort of split from the bones, hanging loose, and
you also have quite severe burns." Most of those who survive the
initial blast quickly succumb to septicemia and organ collapse.
"Initially, everything seems in orderbut it turns out on operation
that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all their
organs," says Dr. Jam Brommundt, a German doctor working in Kham
Younis, a city in southern Gaza. "It seems to be some sort of
explosive or shell that disperses tiny particlesthat penetrate all
organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them
surgically." According to Brommundt, the particles cause
multiple organ failures.
If by some miracle victims
resist those conditions, they are almost certain to develop
rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a particularly deadly cancer that deeply
embeds itself into tissue and is almost impossible to treat. A 2005
U.S. Department of health study found that tungsten stimulated RMS cancers
even in very low doses. All of the 92 rats tested developed the
cancer.
While DIMEs were originally designed to avoid "collateral"
damage generated by standard high-explosive bombs, the weapon's
lethality and profound long-term toxicity hardly seem like an
improvement.
It appears DIME weapons
may have been used in the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, but not
enough to alarm medical workers. But in Gaza, the ordinance was
widely used. Al-Shifta alone has
seen 100 to 150 victims of these attacks.
Dr. Gilbert told the Oslo Gardermoen, "there is a
strong suspicionthat Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory
for new weapons."
DIME is a U.S. invention.
Did the Israelis get the weapons from the United States, or did
they design similar ones themselves? Given the close relations
between the two militaries, it isn't unlikely that the U.S. Air
Force supplied the weapons or, at least, the specifications on how
to construct them. And since the United States has yet to use the
device in a war, it would certainly benefit from seeing how these
new "focused lethality" weapons worked under battlefield
conditions.
Marc Garlasco, Human Rights Watch's senior military advisor,
says "it remains to be seen how Israel has
acquired the technology, whether they purchased weapons from the
United States under some agreement, or if they in fact licensed or
developed their own type of munitions."
DIME weapons aren't banned
under the Geneva Conventions because they have never been
officially tested. However, any weapon capable of inflicting such
horrendous damage is normally barred from use, particularly in one
of the most densely populated regions in the
world.
For one thing, no one
knows how long the tungsten remains in the environment or how it
could affect people who return to homes attacked by a DIME.
University of Arizona cancer researcher Dr. Mark Witten, who
investigates links between tungsten and leukemia, says that in his opinion "there needs to be much
more research on the health effects of tungsten before the military
increases its usage."
DIMEs weren't the only controversial weapons used in Gaza.
The Israeli Defense Forces
(IDF) also made generous use of white phosphorus, a chemical that
burns with intense heat and inflicts terrible burns on victims. In
its vapor form it also damages breathing passages. International
law prohibits the weapon's use near population areas and requires
that "all reasonable precautions" be taken to avoid
civilians.
Israel initially denied using the chemical. "The IDF acts only
in accordance with what is permitted by international law and does
not use white phosphorus," said Israel's Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi on
January 13.
But eyewitness accounts in
Gaza and Israel soon forced the IDF to admit that they were,
indeed, using the substance. On January 20, the IDF confessed to using phosphorus artillery shells
as smokescreens, as well as 200 U.S.-made M825A1 phosphorus mortar
shells on "Hamas fighters and rocket launching crews in northern
Gaza."
Three of those shells hit the UN Works and Relief Agency
compound on January 15, igniting a fire that destroyed hundreds of
tons of humanitarian supplies. A phosphorus shell also hit Al-Quds
hospital in Gaza City. The Israelis say there were Hamas fighters
near the two targets, a charge that witnesses adamantly deny.
Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said: "Such extensive use of this weapon in
Gaza's densely-populated residential neighborhoodsand its toll on
civilians is a war crime."
Israel is also accused of using depleted uranium ammunition
(DUA), which a UN sub-commission in 2002 found in violation of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the Geneva
Conventions, the International Convention Against Torture, the
Conventional Weapons Convention, and the Hague Conventions against
the use of poison weapons.
DUA isn't highly
radioactive, but after exploding, some of it turns into a gas that
can easily be inhaled. The dense shrapnel that survives also tends
to bury itself deeply, leaching low-level radioactivity into
water-tables.
Other human-rights groups,
including B'Tselem, Gisha, and Physicians for Human Rights, charge
that the IDF intentionally targeted medical personal, killing over
a dozen, including paramedics and ambulance
drivers.
The International
Federation for Human Rights called on the UN Security Council to refer
Israel to the International Criminal Court for possible war
crimes.
Although the Israelis dismiss the war-crimes charges,
the fact that the Israeli
cabinet held a special meeting on January 25 to discuss the issue
suggests they're concerned about being charged with
"disproportionate" use of force. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to at
"all times" distinguish between combatants and civilians and to
avoid "disproportionate force" in seeking military
gains.
Hamas' use of unguided
missiles fired at Israel would also be a war crime under the
Conventions.
"The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of
disproportion," says Richard Falk, the UN's human rights envoy
for the occupied territories. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in the
fighting, three of them civilians killed by rockets, 11 of them
soldiers, four of the latter by "friendly fire." Some 50 IDF
soldiers were also wounded.
In contrast, 1,330 Palestinians have died and 5,450 were
injured, the overwhelming bulk of them
civilians.
"This kind of fighting constitutes a blatant violation of the
laws of warfare, which we ask to be investigated by the Commission
of War Crimes," a coalition of Israeli human rights groups and
Amnesty International said in a joint statement. "The responsibility of
the state of Israel is beyond doubt."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Justice Minister
Daniel Friedmann would coordinate the defense of any soldier or
commander charged with a war crime. In any case, the United States
would veto any effort by the UN Security Council to refer Israelis
to the International Court at The Hague.
But, as the Financial Times points out, "all countries have an obligation to
search out those accused of 'grave' breaches of the rules of war
and to put them on trial or extradite them to a country that
will."
That was the basis under which the British police arrested
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.
"We're in a seismic shift in international law," Amnesty
International legal advisor Christopher Hall told the Financial Times, who says
Israel's foreign ministry is already examining the risk to Israelis
who travel abroad.
"It's like walking across the street against a red light," he
says. "The risk may be low, but you're going to think twice before
committing a crime or traveling if you have committed one."
