More bombs for the buck
A news item reported by Global Security [ https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/israel/2025/01/israel-250125-presstv01.htm ] and other media outlets (including corporate media) tells us that Trump has given the order to lift Biden’s ban on further deliveries of 2,000-pound / 900 kilogram bombs.
The ban was primarily a public relations ploy.
Some 10,000 of these bombs were already delivered to Israel in 2023 BEFORE 7 October. They are colossally destructive. Given their great number and their destructive capacity, they can have been sent only with a specific purpose in mind.
Last 30 June, on the basis of a leak that they had verified, Reuters reported that the U.S. had sent an additional 4,000 of them, bringing the total to 14,000 (in addition to smaller versions weighing 500 and 250 kilograms).
Of their 900 kilograms, ~740 kilograms are a uranium alloy, 97%-99% uranium, the rest usually copper. Ignited upon hitting its target, the uranium burns at up to 5,000° C. and is transformed into ceramic-like microscopic particles that are virtually indestructible. Their half-life is 4.5 billion (yes, BILLION) years, giving an overall radioactive life (decay chain) of 22 billion years. (The Solar System is reckoned to be some 4.5 billion year old.)
It is reasonable to suppose that many of the Gazans presumed to be buried in the rubble were simply vaporized by uranium weapons. To these bombs, by the way, must be added the thermobaric (“air-burst”) bombs. These were developed for use in Vietnam. They explode several meters over the target. The original ones contained aluminium powder which, ignited, creates temperatures high enough to incinerate everything underneath. They were used to create clearings in the jungle that could be used for helicopters landing and take-off pads. Members of the United State military nicknamed them “daisy cutters”.
Subsequently, as work on uranium-based weapons progressed, the aluminium powder was replaced by uranium powder, which creates much greater heat and concomitant incineration (“more bang for the buck”). The first Gaza hospital compound hit in October 2023 had some 500 persons sheltering in its courtyard. The hospital reported treating some 200, mostly for horrendous burns.
It is impossible that the other 300 simply escaped injury. Given the level of the shrapnel marks on the walls of the courtyard after the blast, it is obvious that cause of the blast was a thermobaric/air-burst bomb. It is also obvious that the missing 300 persons were simply vaporized in what was surely a trial run for use of such a weapon in an enclosed space. (One of the major objectives of war is to test weapons, for the best and irrefutable sales slogan for a weapon is “battle tested”. One need only go to an arms fair to see this.)
In the opening to one of his on-line reports, Chis Hedges strung together a series of images as a background to his voice-over introduction to the program. At 1:17, there is a ten-second segment showing a hit by a uranium weapon in Gaza, most likely a 900-kilo bomb (unless something else was being tested):
The sparks, clearly visible, are bits of the warhead, which is designed to shatter in order to expose as much as possible of the uranium to the air and allow it to burn at maximum temperatures. One can also clearly see the immediate updraft of hyper-heated air drawing the particles upward, whence they will be scattered by the winds as far afield as Western Europe.
Those ten seconds of image (a superb example of a picture being worth a thousand words) tell anybody who is interested in knowing what is happening in Palestine all that one needs to know.
Uranium emits alpha particles. They cannot travel far (two or three centimeters at best), but they are the most powerful (and most destructive) force in the universe. A single 2.5-micron particle lodged in the lung will irradiate a sphere of some 350 cells permanently — unless it is dislodged, in which case it is picked up by the blood. Since uranium is chemically similar to calcium, the particle is ordinarily carried to, and deposited in, the bone. Generally, the first illness reported by populations exposed to this dust is leukemia. This has been the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo etc. There are also huge and never-before-seen congenital deformities in new-borns in these regions.
The Times of India reported last August that the Israeli social services, which oversee care of veterans, had announced that they had some 70,000 veterans disabled for life, a number expected to rise to 90,000 by the end of the year. It is IMPOSSIBLE that the Palestinian resistance has seriously wounded so many members of the Israeli military.
Based on my extensive work with, and research on, the U.S. veterans from the 1991 Iraq war, I can confidently conclude that the gigantic number (if true) of disabled-for-life persons can be attributed to the inhalation of the uranium dust, as was the case with the U.S. veterans. In other words, they are suffering from poisoning by ionizing radiation.
The dust according to the Pentagon?
“It is harmless. It is depleted of its radioactivity. You could grind it up and sprinkle it on your ice cream and eat it, and it wouldn’t hurt you,” General John Shalikashvili, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and subsequently chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me and another journalist, Ginna Lewis, at the United Nations Office in Geneva.
Far from being shocked by such as statement, which we more or less expected, we were shocked by his overall demeanor, for he obviously sincerely believed what he was saying. However, one must bear in mind that one does not climb to the heights that Shalikashvili had attained without being docile and obedient — and obtuse enough to be able to swallow hook, line and sinker what comes down from the Pentagon “experts”.
The United State Department of Defense long claimed more or less the same thing. Now it is more or less silent. Yet, on United State military bases where uranium / depleted-uranium weapons are stored, they are under lock and key (on orders from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission), and only persons wearing hazmat suits may handle them.
The incredible suffering of the Gulf War veterans was summarily designated “Gulf War Syndrome” — a “mystery illness”. The V.A. was under strict instructions from the Department of Defense NOT to allow the toxicity of this dust to be acknowledged. Without a specific diagnosis, these persons (some 350,000 exposed) were denied medical care and follow-up by the Veterans Administration and essentially sent home to die a horrible death unless they had access to private medical care, which the overwhelming majority did not have.
Dr Rosalie Bertell of Toronto, an epidemiologist specialized in ionizing radiation, repeatedly pointed out that, of the 18 symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome, 17 were indisputably symptoms of ionizing radiation poisoning. Finally, after several years, constant militancy on the part of the veterans (Doug Rokke and Paul Sullivan of the Military Toxics Project in particular come to mind), unimaginable suffering (including multiple unique cancers in the same person), and tens of thousands of deaths, the condition was relabeled “Gulf War Illness”, allowing a diagnosis and care. (Better late than never…)
The delivery of the 2,000-pound bombs to Israel bodes ill for the “cease-fire” (already repeatedly broken, as reported in detail by The Electronic Intifada, [ https://electronicintifada.net/content/eis-ali-abunimah-arrested-switzerland/50333 ] whose director, Ali Abuminah was arrested yesterday in Zurich — as reported in the Neue Züricher Zeitung — for spreading misinformation about Israel, for his concomitant virulent anti-Semitism and for being “an Islamist Jew-hater” (einen islamistischen Judenhasser, according to Mario Fehr, member of the Zurich City Council and head of state security) [ https://www.pressreader.com/switzerland/neue-zurcher-zeitung-v/20250125/281633900911992 ].
As in the case of the first shipment of 10,000 bombs, there is a specific purpose behind this. Those who read the English-language Israeli newspapers on-line know that the Israeli government, from Netanyahu on down, intends to resume the genocide as soon as all the Israeli prisoners and hostages are released. In the meantime, they have moved on the phase two of the genocide in the West Bank.
Stay tuned.
R.J.