[News] Did Israel Use Uranium Weapons?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk10302006.html

October 30, 2006


Did Israel Use Uranium Weapons?


Dirty Bombs Over Lebanon

By ROBERT FISK

Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon 
this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese 
lives, most of them civilians?

We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on 
Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern 
Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving 
tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese 
civilians every week. And we now know--after it first categorically 
denied using such munitions--that the Israeli army also used 
phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under 
the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel 
nor the United States have signed.

But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in 
Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah 
guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that 
uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons 
inventory--and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr 
Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European 
Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli 
heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both 
have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory 
in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry--used by the Ministry of 
Defence--which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in 
the samples.

Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons 
for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel 
small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental 
weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a 
uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a 
bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing 
enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the 
explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that 
might result from burning uranium.

Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as 
fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste product of the enrichment process 
is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank 
missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive 
than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.

Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of 
weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on 
civilian areas--until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians 
whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.

I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary drawer in West 
Beirut during the Israeli siege of the city, suddenly burst back into 
flames. Israel officially denied using phosphorous again in Lebanon 
during the summer--except for "marking" targets--even after civilians 
were photographed in Lebanese hospitals with burn wounds consistent 
with phosphorous munitions.

Then on Sunday, Israel suddenly admitted that it had not been telling 
the truth. Jacob Edery, the Israeli minister in charge of government 
and parliament relations, confirmed that phosphorous shells were used 
in direct attacks against Hizbollah, adding that "according to 
international law, the use of phosphorous munitions is authorised and 
the (Israeli) army keeps to the rules of international norms".

Asked by if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based munitions 
in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry 
spokesman, said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not 
authorised by international law or international conventions." This, 
however, begs more questions than it answers. Much international law 
does not cover modern uranium weapons because they were not invented 
when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions were drawn up 
and because Western governments still refuse to believe that their 
use can cause long-term damage to the health of thousands of 
civilians living in the area of the explosions.

American and British forces used hundreds of tons of depleted uranium 
(DU) shells in Iraq in 1991--their hardened penetrator warheads 
manufactured from the waste products of the nuclear industry--and 
five years later, a plague of cancers emerged across the south of Iraq.

Initial US military assessments warned of grave consequences for 
public health if such weapons were used against armoured vehicles. 
But the US administration and the British government later went out 
of their way to belittle these claims. Yet the cancers continued to 
spread amid reports that civilians in Bosnia--where DU was also used 
by Nato aircraft--were suffering new forms of cancer. DU shells were 
again used in the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq but it is too 
early to register any health effects.

"When a uranium penetrator hits a hard target, the particles of the 
explosion are very long-lived in the environment," Dr Busby said 
yesterday. "They spread over long distances. They can be inhaled into 
the lungs. The military really seem to believe that this stuff is not 
as dangerous as it is." Yet why would Israel use such a weapon when 
its targets--in the case of Khiam, for example--were only two miles 
from the Israeli border? The dust ignited by DU munitions can be 
blown across international borders, just as the chlorine gas used in 
attacks by both sides in the First World War often blew back on its 
perpetrators.

Chris Bellamy, the professor of military science and doctrine at 
Cranfield University, who has reviewed the Busby report, said: "At 
worst it's some sort of experimental weapon with an enriched uranium 
component the purpose of which we don't yet know. At best--if you can 
say that--it shows a remarkably cavalier attitude to the use of 
nuclear waste products."

The soil sample from Khiam--site of a notorious torture prison when 
Israel occupied southern Lebanon between 1978 and 2000, and a 
frontline Hizbollah stronghold in the summer war--was a piece of 
impacted red earth from an explosion; the isotope ratio was 108, 
indicative of the presence of enriched uranium. "The health effects 
on local civilian populations following the use of large uranium 
penetrators and the large amounts of respirable uranium oxide 
particles in the atmosphere," the Busby report says, "are likely to 
be significant ... we recommend that the area is examined for further 
traces of these weapons with a view to clean up."

This summer's Lebanon war began after Hizbollah guerrillas crossed 
the Lebanese frontier into Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and 
killed three others, prompting Israel to unleash a massive 
bombardment of Lebanon's villages, cities, bridges and civilian 
infrastructure. Human rights groups have said that Israel committed 
war crimes when it attacked civilians, but that Hizbollah was also 
guilty of such crimes because it fired missiles into Israel which 
were also filled with ball-bearings, turning their rockets into 
primitive one-time-only cluster bombs.

Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the latest Lebanon 
war was a weapons testing ground for the Americans and Iranians, who 
respectively supply Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as 
Israel used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so the 
Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit an Israeli 
corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing four Israeli sailors and 
almost sinking the vessel after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.

What the weapons manufacturers make of the latest scientific findings 
of potential uranium weapons use in southern Lebanon is not yet 
known. Nor is their effect on civilians.

Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560254424/counterpunchmaga>Pity 
the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, 
<http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Bookshop.html>The 
Politics of Anti-Semitism. Fisk's new book is 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400041511/counterpunchmaga>The 
Conquest of the Middle East.


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