Alberta, Noviembre-Diciembre 2006
17
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
Abuse and
Torture: Process
and goal
D
id 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 productof 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
Did Israel Use Uranium Weapons?
Dirty Bombs Over Lebanon
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 (Counterpunch)
In the
1950's the
United
States
Department
of Defense
became
interested
in using
depleted
uranium
metal in
weapons
because of
its
extremely
dense,
pyrophoric qualities and because it was cheap
and available in huge quantities. It is now
given practically free of charge to the military
and arms manufacturers and is used both as
tank armour, and in armour-piercing shells
known as depleted uranium penetrators. Over
15 countries are known to have depleted
uranium weapons in their militaray arsenals -
UK, US, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel,
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan,
Thailand, Iraq and Taiwan - with depleted
uranium rapidly spreading to other countries.
members and collaborators through privatization..."
The term privatization was created and used by
the Nazis; they privatized state controlled monopolies
to benefit the richest, gaining their support and
profiting themselves from what belonged to all
Germans.
Privatization was an effective way for
corporations to profit together with Party members;
today neoconservatives apply it similarly. In Germany
corporations like Volkswagen, Audi, Daimler-Benz,
Siemens, Leica, Allianz, BASF, Bayer, BMW,
Dresdner Bank, Fred Krupp, Hoesch Krupp, Hoechst,
Ford Werke A.G., benefited directly from this structure
and from slave work in Nazi Germany.
A Personal Key: Lack of
Empathy
Alice Miller, prominent psychiatrist, explored the
important connection between lack of empathy at
personal and societal level and the facilitation of
victimization. We know that abuse and violence are
often learned at home; children who are abused, or
witness abuse, can learn to become victims or
victimizers. A prerequisite for developing true
compassion for others is empathy with self and others
-something, maltreated children may not develop.
All criminals and the cruelest dictators display
lack of empathy:
"They murder others (or have them murdered)
without the slightest compunction. A child forced to
suppress his own emotions will have no compassion
for himself and consequently no compassion for
others. This encourages criminal behavior that is
frequently concealed behind moral, religious, or
apparently progressive discourse."All criminals and
the cruelest dictators display lack of empathy.
Corporal punishment is traumatic to children:
"It may produce obedience but in the long term
results in inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying,
cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that
of one's own children, drug addiction and suicide,
unless there are enlightened or at least helping
witnesses on hand to prevent that development.
There is a fundamental link between child rearing
practices in society and the type of society we favor:
"The point at issue is not only the welfare of individual
families -- the vital interests of society as a whole are
at stake. Physical cruelty and emotional humiliation
not only leave their marks on children, they also inflict
a disastrous imprint of the future of our society.
Information on the effects of the "well-meant smack"
should be part and parcel of courses for expectant
mothers and of counseling for parents."
Finally, as Miller argues, at the root of these
great crimes against humanity is the oppressive child
rearing practices we favor and the abuse of women
and children in the home:
"Our knowledge will serve as a warning against
our blindness and encourage us to give it up once and
for all and to struggle against collective repression.
The mistreatment of children and its immeasurable
danger for society, is demonstrated by Hitler's case.
My explanations are by no means intended to suggest
pity for a man as merciless as Hitler. It was in large
part owing to Hitler and his history that I became
aware of the dangers of our traditional morality. We
are exhorted to honor our parents and never question
them no matter what they have done. Yet when I
realize that millions of human beings had to die so
that Adolf Hitler could keep his repression of
childhood trauma intact, that millions were subjected
to humiliation in concentration camps so that he never
had to recognize how he had once been humiliated,
then I believe that one can't point out these
connections often enough in order to shed light on
this unconscious production of evil."