It seems Gaza was a weapons testing lab for the use of a particularly toxic form of weapons: DIME weapons
More from Al Jazeera English:
Medics working in the Gaza Strip have condemned Israel’s use of suspected “new weapons” that inflict horrific injuries they say most surgeons will not have seen before.
Dr Jan Brommundt, a German doctor working for Medecins du Monde in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis, described the injuries he had seen as “absolutely gruesome”. […]
When detonated, a Dime device expels a blade of charged tungsten dust that burns and destroys everything within a four-metre radius.
Brommundt also described widespread but previously unseen abdominal injuries that appear minor at first but degenerate within hours causing multi-organ failure.
“Initially everything seems in order… but they will present within one to five hours with an acute abdomen which looks like appendicitus but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all of their organs,” he said.
“It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles at around 1×1 or 2×1 millimetres that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.”
The doctors said many patients succomb to septicaemia and die within 24 hours.
Dr Erik Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon who worked at the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also told Al Jazeera there was a significant increase in double amputations.
“We suspect they [Israel] used Dime weapons because we saw cases of huge amputations or flesh torn off the lower parts of the body,” he said.
“The pressure wave [from a Dime device] moves from the ground upwards and that’s why the majority of patients have huge injuries to the lower part of the body and abdomen.”
I can’t add much to that. I don’t know what to say, frankly.
no need to say anything
it will all be forgotten soon enough
sadly accurate.
If this is true, one has to begin to wonder if Israel does have a right to exist. Their government’s reckless arrogance is sowing the seeds of their destruction.
Israeli Military Spokesperson’s response: (in Al Jazeera article linked above):
Steven,
She’s a lying bitch on all counts. I’m not going to apologize for using that term.
What kind of woman could sit there and lie like this about the slaughter of children and other women?
I also saw Mark Regev being interviewed by a Brit who tore him a new one when Regev tried to say that Hamas was using human shields.
Where their mouths are moving they are lying!
Livni said there were no civilians…hurt.
how are these weapons delivered? As artillery or as bombs?
I think it could be either way:
Link
so the point of these weapons is to lower the incidence of collateral damage. Not much help to the intended victim(s), though. And I wonder how much care was used in targeting because they seem to have killed a whole lot of women and children.
The idea that they reduce collateral damage can easily be mitigated by indiscriminate delivery. Sure they only kill folks nearby, but if you don’t know who is nearby or don’t care..
Israeli targeting was not indiscriminate. They just assumed that every home harbored a Hamas member or a male, the same thing, and that every institution, including UN schools, benefited the Hamas cause, whatever that is.
What I found most interesting in this conflict was the way fatalities were reported: children and women were reported together, while men constituted the remainder, which is to say: children/women versus males. Presumably if you were male in Gaza during the bombings and shellings, you were a Hamas terrorist and counted as a killed militant.
I would not be surprised to eventually learn that 90% of the dead in Gaza were civilians pure and simple.
Taking into account the fact that they timed the initial assault on December 27 – i.e. the assault that would catch the people most by surprise – at precisely the time that all the kids were getting out of school for the morning, and would therefore be out in the streets by the hundreds of thousands, it is extremely difficult to believe that they were not targeting civilians in general, and children in particular.
And how can you suggest they were not targeting civilians when they herded around 100 men, women, children, infants, and elderly into one house, kept them there for a few hours, and then proceeded to shell the hell out of the house?
And so on, and so on, and so on.
What I meant was that even though they have apparently used a weapon that is supposed to limit collateral damage, they seem to have created a tremendous amount of it. Either this weapon was used sparingly, or it was used improperly.
OK, thanks for clarifying.
How about a cross-post to DK?
This needs more attention.
Look here
Thanks!
But it did not make it to the reco list. Maybe you will…
DIME is an explosives category, not a specific delivery vehicle of the explosive.
dollars to donuts that these weapons come with a MADE IN USA label.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
.
Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) is an LCD (“low collateral damage”) weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory partnered with Lawrence Livermore National 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).
Tungsten in Tissue Samples: A DIME Weapon?
On October 19, 2006, 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 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.” 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.
With “focused lethality [and] higher energy materials…nano particles, 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 warfighter.”
≈ Cross-posted from my recent diary — Ooops .. Again? UN School Shelled ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Made in Albuquerque NM, a partnership I believe between Kirtland AFB and Sandia labs. Bloody evil and not meant in ANY way to limit damage. Zionism is fascism.
The YouTube video presents a very dedicated doctor with a powerful plea to Israeli doctors (we are all of one medical community, he says) to try to stop the killing of women and children with these horrific weapons.
It has been going on for a while.
Italian TV: Israel used new weapon prototype in Gaza Strip
A horrendous weapon that should be banned:
The DIME Bomb: Yet Another Genotoxic Weapon, Part I
while the effects of these DIME weapons are indeed unpleasant, isn’t the job of a bomb to end human life? Isn’t the point of developing these weapons to create a LCD bomb and save lives? Is there a specific reason to prefer the use of high explosives that are more deadly and indiscriminate but not genotoxic?
I’m asking an honest question, not trying to be argumentative.
Well, Israel tends to excuse itself by claiming they’re going for infrastructure, not civilians. Delivering bombs specifically designed to kill gives the lie to that.
But the legal niceties are irrelevant. Even if you can make lawyerly arguments that Israel is doing the lesser harm, use of horrific weapons only makes vivid again their murderous intent (no matter how justified they may claim to be). Torture is not worse than killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi noncombatants, but it is what turned the world against us. The same will happen to Israel, and they are even less able to afford that outcome. They seem to learn nothing from the example of Bush’s America.
I agree that use of these weapons creates a category of victim that is horrible to contemplate, but being blown to bits by high explosives isn’t exactly pleasant, either. Is this weapon more immoral and deserving of a ban on use, or does it do what it is intended to do, and lesson collateral damage? Is the problem here one of perception and politics, or real morality?
Morality is always about perception. That was the point I was trying to make. The Soviet Union suffered many more deaths in WW II than did victims of the Holocaust, yet it is the Holocaust that we remember as the benchmark for organized murder because of its cold-blooded, methodical intent and execution. Just as the world focuses on the US torture cells more than on the horrific number of deaths caused by the Iraq invasion/occupation.
Israel’s use of these weapons (if this report is correct) forces the world to take a fresh look at what the conflict is about. That fresh look will not be favorable to Israel’s justifications. Like so much evil, this behavior is stunningly stupid. It will send out shockwaves that escalate the threat to Israel’s survival by orders of magnitude.
and your argument, which I agree with, could form the basis of a practical case against the use of this weapon.
Well, it seems the DIME explosives are more deadly. The kill rate is higher and the wounded rate is lower.
One could say that when using explosives in an urban environment it might be better to use weapons that wound more people but more people live. I guess that way it at least gives the innocents a chance at survival and the ‘bad guys’ are at least incapacitated by being wounded or killed.
Problem is Israel has proved it is pretty indiscriminate in its use of force no matter what bombs it uses.
It just makes it all the more grim to say “oops, sorry, didn’t mean to hit that innocent child” and then have to watch all the wounded die because the bomb was so lethal.
Quit a message to send to the Palestianians. Your wounded will die horrible deaths–even your innocent wounded.
I guess that’s the message.
Better yet, don’t use explosives in an urban environment.
The rationale for the weapon is its supposed LCD capacity. In view of the Gaza observations that is a highly dubious claim (what’s new from the MI Complex).
And the weapon does not necessarily kill immediately – it has carcinogenic properties, thus is a slow, painful killer.
I don’t know that the accounts from Israel really say one way or the other whether the weapon does what it is intended to do. If you use the weapon indiscriminately, you’ll hit unintended targets.
I guess the more critical issue is whether the weapon should be banned from our own military and what is the basis for making that determination? The fact that the weapon is carcinogenic? I guess you could use that as a basis. I’d like to see more data before I make a determination.
I think the core issue is that dropping bombs on human beings creates very unpleasant outcomes. You should not do it unless you are absolutely compelled to do it in self-defense.
If it doesn’t kill you now, it will probably kill you later.
Well gee, let’s just let Israel do whatever in hell they want to these poor fucking captive women and children. Just asking an honest question about human guinea pigs for mega evil weapons – sick.
don’t be an idiot.
I’m discussing a category of weapon called a ‘LCD’ for Low Collateral Damage.
You have a description of what the weapon does to people it does damage, but you don’t have a description of how, or whether, it succeeds in its main purpose, which is to reduce the incidence of collateral damage.
What I am discussing is the efficacy of the bomb as a LCD weapon, not whether or not Israel was justified in using it. As far as I am concerned, Israel wasn’t justified in using any weapons whatsoever in its latest incursion into Gaza. And that is not why I asked the question.
Genotoxic?
Mengele bastards.
Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic).
Does it only attack the DNA of Arabs?
Israel was trying to develop weapons with the S. African government to do this years ago.
Now the Americans are involved?
PNAC Says that “Race Specific Bio-Weapons May Be A Useful Political Tool”
——————————————————————————–
“Advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”
“Does it only attack the DNA of Arabs?“
It attacks the DNA of human beings.
They were trying to develop something specific to Arabs.
Has it been done?
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1998/11/16272
Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times. (Also Jane’s Defense)
The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.
The “ethno-bomb” is reportedly Israel’s response to the threat that Iraq may be just weeks away from completing its own biological weapons.
The “ethno-bomb” program is based at Israel’s Nes Tziyona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes.
The task is very complex because both Arabs and Jews are Semitic peoples. But according to the report, the Israelis have succeeded in isolating particular characteristics of certain Arabs, “particularly the Iraqi people.”
Dedi Zucker, a member of the Israeli parliament, denounced the research in the Sunday Times. “Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied.”
Last month, Foreign Report claimed that Israel was following in the ignominious footsteps of apartheid-era research, in their supposed efforts to develop an “ethnic bullet.”
This story sounded bogus when it first came out, and it still sounds bogus. There are no genetic characteristics that would be common to “Iraqi people”. Iraq is not some isolated island, it is part of a very large region in which different peoples have migrated in from other regions and out to other regions for millennia, and still do.
Iraqis are a very, very, very diverse people. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who are descendants of African black slaves, there are Iraqis who are Indian and Pakistani in origin. There are Kurds, Persians, Arabs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Indians, Turks, Turkmens, Circassians, Armenians, just to name the groups that come immediately to mind. Even the Arabs are very diverse in their origins. Additionally, tribal territories do not exist within national boundaries, and most of the tribes span at least two or three different countries.
And then there are the millions of Arab Jews, many if not most of whom would very likely be vulnerable to such a weapon.
And then there is the little matter of genocide. Targeting everyone with a particular genetic configuration is genocidal by definition.
The idea of a genetically specific anti-Iraqi or anti-Arab weapon just does not make sense in the real world.
Oh – and biological weapons are universally banned, are they not? No matter what you might think of Israel and Israelis, even if they COULD develop such a weapon, it is impossible to imagine how they would be able to justify or excuse developing and using a genetically specific (by definition genocidal) infectious agent. Even they would not be so brazen, nor in my opinion, would they get away with it.
It is possible to develop such a weapon but it would be imprecise and likely to spin out of control, effecting people that were not the intended targets and also having unpredictable side-effects. And I agree with you that the Israelis would not develop or utilize such a weapon for a whole host of reasons.
One thing it pays to remember is that Israelis are overwhelmingly Jewish and have, as a result, an incredibly strong ethical culture based on teachings that are thousands of years old. When trying to influence Israeli policy it is useful to appeal to the power and wisdom of their own ethical teachings. This is a little more difficult than how King used Christian ethical teaching in the Civil Rights Movement because Muslims have to go outside their own religion and validate another religion in the process. But it isn’t terribly awkward considering how central the Old Testament is to the Koran.
As it happened in the United States, Jews were the strongest allies of the civil right movement precisely because of their shared religious heritage and their common experience of oppression. This is also why the strongest allies of the Palestinians in this country are usually Jewish.
There is nothing in Jewish culture that would permit or encourage the use of such weapons.
We see from Jenin to Gaza that the leadership doesn’t care about ethics.
In June 1997, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that Secretary Cohen “quoted other reports about what he called ‘certain types of pathogens that would be ethnic specific so that they could eliminate certain ethnic groups or races.'” Then after a later interview with the Defense Secretary in August 1997, it was stated again in Jane’s Defense Weekly that “he also continued to insist that the science community is ‘very close’ to being able to manufacture ‘genetically engineered pathogens that could be ethnically specific'”.
As I said, that type of weapon would be, by definition, a weapon of genocide. There can be no question about that fact. Morality aside, it would be politically out of the question.
Neither historical nor present-day reality supports your assumptions about Jewish ethical culture as it applies to Zionism or Israel. In fact, one of the things that turns many secular and religious Jews against Israel – or at least generates serious concerns and criticism – is precisely the fact that so much of its policy and behaviour grievously violates Jewish ethical principles.
As for your comment about Muslims having to “validate another religion”, that is a bit insulting. The Qur’an explicitly validates Judaism and Christianity, and considers Jews and Christians believers. It is not just that the Tenach is central to the Qur’an, it is far more explicity than that.
On the other hand, Jews I know who were active in the civil rights movement were not involved out of any sense of religious kinship any more than the atheists who were involved.
This story sounded bogus when it first came out, and it still sounds bogus
Not it didn’t and still doesn’t. Ever heard of Project Coast?
Will the New Biology Lead to New Weapons?
Latest ACA ResourcesBiological Weapons
BWC States Address Safety, Security Measures
Arms Control Today (January/February 2009)
BWC Experts Discuss Biosecurity, Awareness
Arms Control Today (October 2008)
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) At A Glance
Fact Sheets & Briefs (July 1, 2008)
Mark Wheelis
Biology is in the midst of what can only be described as a revolution. It began in the mid-1970s with the development of recombinant DNA technology. Slowly at first but with increasing speed, related technologies have been developed that have dramatically expanded the experimental capabilities of modern research biologists and that are rapidly being adopted in such areas of applied biology as drug development.
These new technologies include genomics, proteomics, microarray technology, high-throughput screening techniques, combinatorial methods in both chemistry and biology, site-specific mutagenesis, knock-out mice, and many others.[1] Collectively, these technologies are referred to as genomic sciences, or the “new biology.”
This technology will have great power both for peaceful and hostile uses.
Ethnic Weapons
There has been much talk of ethnic-specific or genotype-specific biological weapons, and they are likely to become technically feasible. Their development will be easiest for agricultural targets because cultivated plants and domestic animals tend to have very little genetic variability. Such genotype-specific weapons could, for instance, specifically target a cultivar of corn widely planted in the United States but not in other countries. The rapidly increasing use of genetically engineered crop plants in the developed world provides genetic targets for such designed pathogens, or natural genetic sequences unique to specific types of crops or breeds of animal could be targeted.
Engineering an ethnic-specific weapon targeting humans is much more difficult, as human genetic variability is very high both within and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, it is possible to find combinations of traits, no one of which alone correlates highly with ethnicity, that together do. Using such combinations as a basis for pathogen specificity makes for a formidable problem in genetic engineering, but there is no reason to believe that it will not eventually be possible. If so, pathogens could be designed that are essentially restricted to one race or ethnic group; however, they would only infect a limited proportion of that group (perhaps on the order of 10 percent or so of the targeted group).
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Wheelis
I am not particularly knowledgeable about weapons, but it is very difficult to see how a weapon of this nature could possibly be made to attack specific DNA sequences, even if there were such a thing as “Arab DNA”, and it was possible to isolate it. It’s just not that type of a weapon.
More on
Democracy Now
when Italian TV reported on Gaza as a testing ground for DIME weapons in 2006:
http://tinyurl.com/yhgpy4
http://tinyurl.com/9sjc39
The shorter the persons, the greater percentage of their bodies are injured by DIME. Tell me again how these smart bombs kill terrorists and minimize civilian casualties (especially children).
I remember reading about the legs being taken off of a pregnant woman.
Perhaps, this horrific weapon is an Israeli version of shock and awe. Anything to cow the Palestinians into a silent acquiescence of their ancestral lands so the Zionists can spread their empire in the Holy Lands. I wonder how log Yahweh will tolerate the blasphemous behavior of His chosen people.
“the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.” Israeli Army Chief, Moshe Yaalon, 2002
Tell President Obama Your Views on Gaza: Call or Write
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1232292938792&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Blogs, YouTube: the new battleground of Gaza conflict
IDF is getting involved, more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0123/p04s03-wome.html
Gaza video…uncensored, and more:
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2469
“Loyalty to the state and Zionist ideology supersedes anything else.”
http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2449
Your post appeared on Alternet this morning:
Did Israel Use a Horrific ‘New Weapon’ in Gaza?
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune at 2:39 PM on January 22, 2009.
Al-Jazeera is reporting that Dense Inert Metal Explosives — DIME weapons — were used in Gaza.
That’s nice of them.