Déjà Vu

I am currently reading this thick book by Robert Fisk “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”. Robert Fisk is the Middle East Correspondent of the British daily The Independent. He is based in Beirut, Lebanon. The book was published 19 years ago in 1990. In it, Fisk describes the events taking place in Lebanon in the 1980s, including the Sabra-Shatila massacre.

What has been really striking is that about every ten pages I get this feeling of déjà vu.
“I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames. When I took them out half an hour later, they were still burning. Even in the mortuary, they smoldered for hours.
Dr. Amal Shamaa of the Barbir hospital, after Israeli phosphorus shells had been fired into West Beirut, 29 July 1982” (In: Fisk, Robert: Pity the Nation, page 282.)

The first time I had come across information that something special is going on in the warfare of Israel with its neighbors in the Middle East was in 2006, in an article in Al Ahram Weekly, an online digest in English of the Egyptian Al Ahram newspaper sometime in June or July, during the Israeli attack on Gaza named “Operation Summer Rain”. The article included an interview with a spokesman of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, who stated that the doctors at the hospital were confronted with patients who had horrific wounds, torn limbs and burns such as they had not seen before and were helpless to treat.

Then in the July War in Lebanon 2006, which started on 12 July and formally ended on 8 September, again there were indications that Israel was trying out new chemical and other munitions with devastating effects on human beings.

In early February 2007, at the three-day War Crimes Conference at the Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur, organised by the Perdana Global Peace Organisation, one of the speakers also showed the devastation of these new types of munitions: small entry wounds with extensive damage and burns inside, or bodies and limbs torn apart.

With all the above knowledge I am certain that Israel, after having tested the use of these new munitions and weapons in Gaza and Lebanon in 2006, used them systematically for the first time in their war on Gaza named “Cast Lead” in December 2008/January 2009. White phosphorus, DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosives), cluster bombs and flechettes (a sort of ‘cluster darts’ that can penetrate bullet-proof vests) were unleashed onto Gaza, killing and maiming thousands of human beings, civilians, men, women and children.

Coming back to ‘Pity the Nation’: now I know that the use of phosphorus on civilians by the so-called Israeli “Defense” Forces has a much further reaching history than I had known before.

I do hope that the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.net) established on 4 April 2009 in Brussels will uncover the history of such illegal warfare, take these war crimes into account, and make perpetrators and their supporting partners in crime accountable for their horrific deeds.