End Israel's Use of Chemical Weapons Against Civilians

This is forwarded by that indefatiguable human rights campaigner, Dr Derek Summerfield.

Derek Summerfield waged a long war of attrition against the last president of the World Medical Association Yoram Blachar, who was also head of the Israeli Medical Association. In that capacity Blachar had dismissed all allegations of the use of torture by the Zionists as ‘arab propaganda’ and had become adept at turning a blind eye to the practice by the Israeli state of using doctors to help torture prisoners.

We have had reports for some time that Israel used the bombardment and invasion of Gaza in order to try out new and horrific chemical weapons. It is a good example of the West’s gross hypocrisy that chemical weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein were condemned but the use of chemical weapons by Israel and the USA are passed over in silence.

In the first Gulf War depleted uranium was used as anti-tank missiles and it is believed that much of the ‘gulf war syndrome’ stemmed from that and the medication given to counteract the effects of Iraqi chemical weapons that never were.

The examples given below are horrific but of course when it comes to Israel anything goes, because it is the US’s armed rottweiler in the Middle East.

Tony Greenstein

New weapons experimented in Gaza: population risks genetic mutations
Biopsies from 32 victims conducted at three universities: Rome (Italy), Chalmer (Sweden) and Beirut (Lebanon)

PRESS RELEASE

May 11th 2010

Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on biopsies from wounds provoked by weapons that do not leave fragments, a peculiarity of weapons utilized in Gaza that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors and that shows that weapons whose long term effects are still to be assessed were used.

The researchers compared the quantity in 32 elements present in the tissues through ICP/MS (a type of highly sensitive mass spectrometry) . The job, carried out by laboratories in the Universities La Sapienza of Rome (Italy), Chalmer (Sweden) and Beirut (Lebanon), was coordinated by New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas.

The relevant presence of toxic and carcinogenic metals founds in the wound tissues points to direct risks for survivors, but also to the possibility of environmental contamination.
Biopsies of tissues were performed by doctors of Shifa hospital, in Gaza city, who selected and classified the type of wounds. Research was conducted on 16 tissue samples belonging to 13 victims. 4 biopsies were taken in june 2006, during operation “Summer Rains”, while the others were taken in the first week of january 2009, during operation “Cast Lead”. All tissues were appropriately preserved and then examined by each of the three universities.

Tissues belong to four types of wound: amputation (marked with “A” in the study), charred (C), burns (B), multiple piercing wounds by white phosphorus (M). The following elements were found in quantities well beyond normal:

• Alluminium, titanium, copper, strontium, barium, cobalt, mercury, vanadium, cesium and tin in samples of A and C wounds;

• Alluminium, titanium, copper, strontium, barium, cobalt and mercury in M wounds;

• Cobalt, mercury, cesium and tin in B wounds;

• Lead and uranium in all wound types;

• Barium, arsenic, manganese, rubidium, cadmium, chromium and zinc in all, but M, wounds;

• Nickel in A wounds.

Some of these elements are carcinogenic (mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and uranium), others are potentially carcinogenic (cobalt and vanadium), others are also fetotoxic (alluminium, mercury, copper, barium, lead and manganese). The first ones can produce genetic mutations; the second ones can have the same effect on animals, but they are not proven to do the same on people; the third ones have toxic effects for people ad can affect either the embryo or the foetus in pregnant women. All metals found in amounts over the controls have pathogenic effects in human respiratory organs, kidney and skin and affect sexual and neurological development and functions.

The combination of metals in each type of wound is referred to as a “metal signature”, illustrated in the following image:

Legend

Columns represent elements, rows represent wound type

Red circles: very high amounts in all biopsies

Orange squares: very high amounts in some biopsies

Blue triangles: amounts similar to those found in normal derma

“Nobody – says professor Paola Manduca, spokesperson of the New Weapons Research Group, genetics teacher and researcher at the University of Genoa – had never conducted bioptic analysis on tissue samples from wounds. We concentrate the attention on wounds made by weapons that do not leave fragments, as these were pointed out several times by the doctors in Gaza, and because weapons which do not leave fragments were developed in recent years. We wanted to verify if metals were present which remained in the wound skin and derma. The use of metals in the weapons utilized in Gaza had been hypothesized, but never demonstrated before. To our surprise, beside finding the metal components of amputating weapons, even the burns provoked by white phosporus contain high amount of metals. Moreover, the presence of these metals in the weapons implies that they have been dispersed in the environment, in unknown amounts and range.; they have been inhaled by the victim and by bystanders, thus constituting a risk for survivors and for people that were not directly hit by the bombing.”

This research was preceded by two other studies conducted by Nwrg. The former was published on December 17th 2009 and reported the presence of toxic metals in areas of craters provoked by the Israeli bombing on the Gaza Strip. The second was published on March 17th 2010 and reported the presence of toxic metals in hair samples of Palestinian children of Gaza Strip area hit by Israeli bombings. Both point to the presence of environmental contamination, aggravated by the living conditions on the ground and often in shelters exposed to wind and dust, due to the impossibility to rebuild housing imposed by the Israeli blockade to the entrance of needed building materials and tools.

Biopsies: wound types examples from which tissue samples have been taken
A B C M
PRESS CONTACTS Fabio De Ponte Tel. +39-347-9422957 Email: info@newweapons. org Sito: www.newweapons. org

See also Dispersing Demonstrations--Or Chemical Warfare?

End Israel's Policy of Transfer & Deportation

As I have already pointed out http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2010/04/prelude-to-transfer-military-orders.html the Israeli State is, at this very moment, beginning the process of transfer from the West Bank, which is a precondition for the maintenance of a ‘democratic, Jewish state’. It can be democratic as long as there are as few Arabs as possible!

Of course the Western leaders, with their new sanctions against Iran, see, hear and say nothing, like the 3 wise monkeys of old.

Below is a call from a range of Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups for an end to the policy of deportation by the occupying power, Israel, which is clearly illegal in international law (not that Israel, the international outlaw is overly concerned).

Those idiots who still call for 2 States are doing the work of Netanyahu and Lieberman. They foster illusions that it is possible to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel, when everyone knows that such a creature, if it were to come into existence, would be a horrible little police state taking its order from the Zionists – in fact much like the Palestinian Authority today!

It is unfortunate that someone who is as brilliant as Norman Finkelstein, in his hero worship of Noam Chomsky, has taken up this useless call. But the reality is that Israel has no intention of creating a Palestinian state. It would rather have 1 state minus the Palestinians. That is why we have to raise loud and clear the demand for equality between Israelis and Palestinians in the whole of what was Mandate Palestine.

Tony Greenstein

Palestinian and Israeli Human Rights Groups Call for End to Israeli Military West Bank Deportation Policy

We, the undersigned, express our opposition to Israel's policy of unlawful transfer and deportation from the West Bank, which has escalated in the form of the Order regarding Prevention of Infiltration (Amendment No. 2) (No. 1650) ("Order 1650"). The order, effective April 13, 2010, defines anyone present in the West Bank as an "infiltrator", unless he or she is in possession of a permit from Israel, and subjects those without permits to deportation, transfer, criminal charges, fines, and/or imprisonment. It is part of a series of steps taken by Israel to remove Palestinians from the West Bank by declaring them to be illegally present in their own homes.

The order is vaguely worded, such that it could apply to anyone, but the groups that appear to be targeted are:

1. Bearers of Palestinian ID cards whose registered addresses are in the Gaza Strip in the Israeli copy of the Palestinian population registry.

2. Those individuals without official status ("status-less"), including spouses of Palestinian residents for whom Israel refuses to approve ID cards and others who have not been added to the population registry or have had their status revoked or deleted by Israel;

3. Foreigners visiting or working in the West Bank, including those for whom Israel refuses to renew visas.

Since 2000 Israel has significantly halted the Palestinian population registry update. Accordingly, tens of thousands of people, including those who were born and/or living in the West Bank for decades, are at risk of being torn away from their homes, families, schools, and jobs – because Israel has declared them "illegal" in their own land. Already, some of these people are limiting their own movement for fear of being arrested and removed from their homes. At a time when Israel is promising to "ease" restrictions in the West Bank, Order 1650 is choking the civilian population.

The order and the deportation policy violate Israel's obligations under international law. They breach the prohibition, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, against forcible transfers or deportations of protected persons in occupied territory and therefore effectively legislate for the commission of grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. They breach the obligation, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to allow persons legally present in their territory to enjoy freedom of movement and to choose their places of residence. They breach the obligation undertaken by Israel in the Oslo Accords - and enshrined in the Palestinian right to self-determination - to recognize the West Bank and Gaza as a single territorial unit, in which freedom of movement is to be facilitated.

We call upon the Government of Israel to rescind Order 1650, to desist from its policy of deportation and transfer, and to recognize the right of Palestinians and foreigners to live in, work in, and visit the West Bank, in accordance with international law and the international agreements to which Israel has committed, and to allow protected persons to move freely within the West Bank and to enter and leave freely.

We call upon the international community to take concrete and immediate steps to ensure that Israel refrains from prohibited practices of deportation and transfer of a civilian population, including by raising this issue at the highest political levels.

For further details and interview coordination:

▪ Alva Kolan, HaMoked , 054-3347353

▪ Keren Tamir, Gisha, 052-8919190

▪ Shawan Jabarin, Al Haq, 059-9522701

List of Signatories

Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Al Dameer Association for Human Rights

Al-Haq

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights – Gaza

Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

B’tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

The Campaign for the Right to Enter

Defence for Children International - Palestine Section

Ensan Center for Human Rights and Democracy

Gaza Community Health Programme

Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement

Hamoked - Center for the Defence of the Individual

Haraka: the Palestinian Coalition for the right of mobility and choice of place of residence

Jerusalem Legal Aid Center

Mattin Group

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

Public Committee Against Torture in Israel

Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies

Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling

Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights

Chomsky Expelled by the Only Democracy in the Middle East

When I first heard that the Zionist State of Israel had just barred Noam Chomsky from entering it, the first thing I thought was ‘thank god for Netanyahu/Liberman’. They can achieve far more than we will ever manage when it comes to explaining why Israel is not a normal or democratic state but a racial oddity.

Then I remembered Euripides saying about ‘Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first drive mad’. Clearly that is now happening. Any criticism of Israel, especially from Jewish sources, now drives them mad. And when they are driven mad they do unpredictable things. Almost like a drug addict who self-harms. Except in this case Israel is dependent on American arms and money as well backed up by its own sense of superiority.

Chomsky, an 81 year old, world renowned linguist, is someone who is, in many ways a soft-Zionist. He was never opposed per se to a Jewish State. He even opposes the Boycott campaign though he supports hitting those who supply arms to Israel. He was told at the border with Jordan that he was being barred because the Israeli government didn’t like what he was saying! This is, of course, the classical definition of a police state. And in many ways Israel is a police state, certainly for Arabs and non-Jews.

Most western states have come to adopt, however faltingly, the Voltarian principles of free speech and the right to offend. In Israel the chauvinism and sheer racism makes free speech anything but free. For speaking out and especially for organising around one’s opposition to state policies, however peacefully, there is no free speech but plenty of prison space.

The deportation of Chomsky is yet another own goal of the Israeli state. We are often told that Kadima the Israeli opposition is a ‘centrist’ party. The comments of Kadima MK Otniel Schneller give the lie to this, or rather in Israel Kadima is indeed a centrist party, but not the centre most of us know. It is equidistant between the right (Israeli Labour) and the far-right. As Schneller explained “It's good that Israel did not allow one of its accusers to enter its territory,” said Schneller. “I recommend [Chomsky] try one of the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt.” This racist pig had made it clear that those who oppose the Israeli State should be forced to crawl on their hands and knees for sustenance in life.

Tony Greenstein

Declaring war on the intellect - Israel and Noam Chomsky

In barring a renowned academic from Israel and the West Bank, the government's outrageous treatment of its critics has reached new heights.

Haaretz Editorial

By stopping the illustrious American scholar Prof. Noam Chomsky at the Allenby Bridge and barring his entry into Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the government's outrageous treatment of those with the audacity to criticize its policies has reached new heights. Israel looks like a bully who has been insulted by a superior intellect and is now trying to fight it, arrest it and expel it.

Chomsky is a controversial and bold intellectual. His linguistic research has brought him unquestionable respect, but his political writings and speeches, in which he bluntly and acerbically attacks any government that he thinks deserves it, have made him unpopular both inside and outside the United States.

Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine any country that would not feel honored to be visited by Chomsky, apart from Israel, which has its own accounts to settle with him. As a Jew who lived here for a brief period in the 1950s and is fluent in Hebrew, Chomsky takes a great interest in events here. In many articles, petitions and open letters, he has been sharply critical of Israel's actions and policies.

Like many other members of the intellectual left in the U.S., Chomsky has roundly condemned the occupation and displayed sympathy for the Palestinian struggle against it. In recent years, he has often been quoted as calling Israel an apartheid state. But despite this, he has firmly opposed any blanket boycott of Israel. He says it is the settlements that should be boycotted, as well as the bodies that support them, both in Israel and abroad (including in the U.S. ), but that it makes no sense to boycott the Israeli public in general or its academic institutions.

Israel, however, has lost its last remnants of tolerance for anyone who does not join its shrinking chorus of supporters. On the right, but not only there, Chomsky is seen as a deserter, a traitor and an enemy of the people. The details of the incident, as reported by Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, sound as if they were taken from the theater of the absurd or from some political satire on places and times that have gone down in infamy. The questions that were posed to Chomsky by a border inspector, on orders from his superiors, have to be read and reread to be believed.

"Israel," Chomsky was informed, "doesn't like what you say." Is this a reasonable pretext for a democratic state to detain someone for questioning or hold him up at the border? And who is this "Israel" that doesn't like what Chomsky says? The general public? The Interior Ministry? The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories? The government?

One does not have to be an ardent supporter of Chomsky in order to agree with his view that Israel is behaving like South Africa in the 1960s, when it understood that it was an outcast, but thought it could solve the problem with the help of a better public relations campaign.

Now that the affair has come to light, Interior Ministry sources are claiming it was COGAT that should have handled Chomsky, and that his detention was the result of a misunderstanding, whereas COGAT is claiming that it did not know of the scholar's arrival. This, at best, is blatant disingenuousness.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should apologize to Chomsky and make sure that he is allowed to move freely around Israel and throughout the West Bank, including Bir Zeit University. It is not yet too late to repair some of the damage caused by this harmful folly.

Noam Chomsky denied entry into Israel and West Bank

Interior Ministry seeking IDF approval to let American professor just into West Bank; rights group: Decision characteristic of totalitarian regime.

By Amira Hass

Professor Noam Chomsky, an American linguist and left-wing activist, was denied entry into Israel and the West Bank on Sunday.

No reason was initially given for the decision, but the Interior Ministry later said immigration officials at the Allenby Bridge border crossing from Jordan had misunderstood Chomsky's intentions thinking initially he was also due to visit Israel.

Chomsky, who is on a speaking tour in the region, was scheduled to speak at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank on Monday.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said officials were now trying to get clearance from the Israel Defense Forces, which controls access to the West Bank to allow Chomsky to enter that territory.

"We are trying to contact the military to clear things up and if they have no objection we see no reason why he should not be allowed in," said Hadad.
Chomsky said inspectors had stamped the words "denied entry" onto his passport when he tried to cross from Jordan over Allenby Bridge.

When he asked an Israeli inspector why he had not received permission, he was told that an explanation would be sent in writing to the American embassy. "They apparently didn't like the fact that I was due to lecture at a Palestinian university and not in Israel," Chomsky told Reuters by telephone from Amman.

Chomsky arrived at the Allenby Bridge at around 1:30 in the afternoon and was taken for questioning, before being released back to Amman at 4:30 P.M.

In a telephone interview with Channel 10, Chomsky said the interrogators had told him he had written things that the Israeli government did not like. "I suggested [the interrogator try to] find any government in the world that likes anything I say," he said.

Chomsky is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is considered among the foremost academics in the world. He identifies with the radical left and is often critical of both Israeli and American policies.

Chomsky said he last visited Israel and the West Bank in 1997 when he lectured at Ben-Gurion University and also at Bir Zeit. He said all his previous West Bank visits had been as a part of trips to Israel.

His Palestinian host, lawmaker Mustafa al-Barghouti called the decision "a fascist action, amounting to suppression of freedom of expression."

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel slammed the Interior Ministry for "using detention and deportation to prevent a man from expressing his opinion", calling it "characteristic of a totalitarian regime."

"A democratic country where freedom of expression is a guiding principle does not close in the face of criticism or ideas that are not comfortable and does not deny entry to guests only because it does not accept their opinions. Instead, it deals with these opinions through public discussion," said ACRI in a statement.

Kadima MK Otniel Schneller, on the other hand, praised the move.
"It's good that Israel did not allow one of its accusers to enter its territory," said Schneller. "I recommend [Chomsky] try one of the tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt."