There’s Dense Vegetation In Gaza?
Apart from white phosphorus, the Israeli army used a variety of other weapons in densely populated civilian areas of Gaza in the three-week conflict that began on 27 December.
Flechettes are 4cm long metal darts that are sharply pointed at the front, with four fins at the rear. Between 5,000 and 8,000 are packed into 120mm shells which are generally fired from tanks. The shells explode in the air and scatter the flechettes in a conical pattern over an area about 300m wide and 100m long.
An anti-personnel weapon designed to penetrate dense vegetation, flechettes should never be used in built-up civilian areas. The Israeli army has used them in Gaza periodically for several years. In most cases their use has resulted in civilians being killed or injured.
Amnesty International’s fact-finding team in Gaza first heard about the use of flechettes in the most recent conflict some ten days ago. The father of one of the victims showed the team a flechette which had been taken out of his son’s body.
In its latest post on Amnesty International’s Livewire blog, the team described how on Monday it visited towns and villages around Gaza and found more hard evidence of the use of flechettes.
(source)
Obviously a weapon needed because of the Amazon jungle-like dense vegetation that grows in Gaza.
The Israeli Army has used flechettes in Gaza periodically for several years. In most reported cases, their use has resulted in civilians being killed or injured. The last reported case was in April 2008, when Israeli soldiers fired a flechette shell at Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana while he was filming in Gaza, killing him.
He was filming the tank at the time and caught its firing of the flechette shell on camera in the split second before he was killed. Other civilians, including children, were killed and injured by the same flechette shell.
The Israeli Army said later that it had investigated the incident and concluded that its troops’ actions were justified – although the film footage of the incident showed clearly shows that Fadel Shana and others who were killed and injured were posing no threat to the soldiers in the tank when they fired the flechette shell, or to anyone else.
(source)
– everyone move along now, nothing to see here, we’ve investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong…. move along
…..when we went to a Bedouin village in north Gaza, we saw several flechettes embedded in the walls of houses and residents told us that the street had been littered with them after the attack. Today, we found more hard evidence of their use in two other villages.
In ‘Izbat Beit Hanoun, to the south-west of the town of Beit Hanoun, several flechette shells were fired into the main road, killing two people and injuring several others on the morning of 5 January. Wafa’ Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old pregnant mother of two, was one of those killed.
Her husband and her mother-in-law told us that the family had just had breakfast and were outside the house drinking tea in the sun. Wafa’ and her husband were standing by the corner of the house when they heard a noise, followed by screams.
They turned to go back into their house, but, at that moment, Wafa’ and several other members of the family were hit by flechettes. Wafa’ was killed outright. Her two-year-old son, who was in the house, was struck by a flechette which became embedded in his right knee.
Wafa’s husband, Mohamed Khalil Abu Jarad, and his father were both injured in the back and other parts of the body. One of the flechettes that hit Mohamed Khalil Abu Jarad is still lodged in his back, close to his spinal cord. It was clearly visible in an X-ray that he showed to us. Doctors have not attempted to remove it as they fear that he could be left paralyzed.
No doubt they will complete another investigation and find that this to was fully justified — there was probably a bush in front of the house or something…… move along now, move along.
If the bastards don’t like the “Warsaw Ghetto” comparison, how about Guernica?
I believe it is Beijing York who has made the Guernica analogy pretty much since the start of the Israeli offensive.
I wasn’t the only one, but thanks Frank.
Here is an adapted version from Mexican cartoonist, Angel Boligan:
http://www.damasceneblog.com/.a/6a00d8341d3d9553ef010536c466b3970b-popup
“…the IDF is divided about the employment of the round, with some officers arguing that the shell is effective against certain targets while others warn of an international backlash…Although the IDF spokesman refused to comment on operational matters, other IDF sources told JDW that commanders are under orders to use the round sparingly and insist it has been employed on only a “handful” of occasions in Gaza. They said the round is used against targets such as mortar crews who cannot be engaged effectively by automatic fire.” (source)
I looked this up a bit on Wikipedia and Google. I saw one reference to accusations of use by both sides in Chechnya, otherwise it would appear the IDF is the only force to use these in an unconventional war – they were developed originally to drop on trenches in WWI and the American manual specifies use against massed infatry assaults or on enemy positions. The IDF central command banned it from use in the west bank and a court case in Isreal tried to ban it – the Supreme Court didn’t because it isn’t illegal under the Geneva conventions. (source)
That reminds me of the court case brought by families of IDF soldiers killed in Jenin, who argued that going in on foot rather than just bombing the terrorists out was unacceptably dangerous. And of the irony of Bejing’s link to ‘damascusceneblog’ when 20,000 people died in Syria’s operation against a Muslim Brotherhood organization there. Nobody drew Syrian flags or Muslim crecents on bombs then, I’m guessing.
The problem with talking about how events like the bombing of Hama were dealt with by the public at large before http existed is that the world, and how information moves around it, has changed more than just a little bit since then don’t you think?
To address your other comments.
As I have mentioned here, and in other places, statements by the IDF suffer the same fate as statements made by Hamas and the US military – they lie, they knowingly lie, they have been caught in their lies, and they cannot be trusted. So while the IDF says it uses the weapon sparingly and in only a handful of incidents their credibility is in question. This is the same military that very recently steadfastly denied using white phosphorus, and then was forced to admit that they had in fact done so – why should they be trusted?
PS: You may have noted that I edited your comment to embed the links – for some reason long URLs sometimes muck up certain features comment features like “reply” and “quote”. The comment went to moderation as SPAM fighting measures include all comments with more than 1 link automatically being flagged and sent to the moderation pen.
Thanks for the explanation, I thought it was the two links.
One of the pages I dug up mentioned specific things in Jenin – the IDF targeting of ambulances keeping relief supplies out. I don’t know how you can deal with the Hamas use of ambulances – the author suggests stop and search which seems impractical. And I think the author is a bit blinkered, but was interested to find that:
“in order to make a quick and successful approach to arrest Palestinian leader Marwan Barguti, an army ambulance was used to transport soldiers to his
house.” source
I doubt the Israelis could provide relief supplies or medical services personally – they’d probably be shot. Still, I certainly don’t have the sainted view of the IDF I used to. I found the Jane’s quotes plausible because the split was between ‘useful for mortars’ and ‘bad PR’ where I would expect an intentional leak to focus on the casualties rather than the less flattering concern of the public relations effects of those casualites. Considering these things are banned from use in the less populated West Bank, I don’t see why they use them in Gaza at all even if they are useful for some targets.
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Shoot, I need to get out into cyberspace more. Sorry, Beijing. Great minds think alike, I guess.