01/05/2009 03:43:32 PM EST
Israel using cluster bombs and white phosphorus
posted by callisto
NOTE: I don't give one damned bit about Hamas members, but I do care about innocent civilians, the people without the weapons in their hands.
In it's ground offensive Israel has started to deploy white phosphorus shells and cluster bombs on densily populated civilian areas.
A month after the world signed a
treaty prohibiting the use of
cluster bombs, Israel uses them on civilians (they never signed it, neither did the US, way to go to hold the moral highground)
White phosphorus, wildly seen as a chemical weapon, except by a couple including Israel and the US (moral leadership, but we've come to expect it ever since the landmine treaty).
Even US military seems conflicted on it:
"Within the US Army, there appears to be conflicting advice on the use of WP against humans. According to the field manual on the Rule of Land Warfare, "The use of weapons which employ fire, such as tracer ammunition, flamethrowers, napalm and other incendiary agents, against targets requiring their use is not violative of international law."[35] However, the ST 100-3 Battle Book, a student text published by the US Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth states that "It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets."Israeli military and intelligence for that matter are elite, when an army like that uses these kinds of weapons, it's not out of necessity, but out of choice.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation, but by using these weapons Israel is engaging in state terrorism in my book, these things might have been normal in 1940, but not anymore.