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Unconventional Weapons: Comments From the 'New Weapons Committee'

Missionary International Service News Agency

13 Jan 2009

“We are in contact with the doctors working in Gaza, we have seen the images, already studied the weapons used by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and we have reached the conclusion that the wounds we are seeing in Gaza are identical to those seen in Lebanon; there DIME and white phosphorous weapons were used”, said Paola Manduca, a genetics professor and member of the Genova based ‘New weapons committee’ comprising researchers from all over the world studying the effects of new weapons on individuals and populations. “Dime – says Dr. Manduca – are made in the USA and they first appeared in 2004; theoretically they should be on sale based on official statements; in fact, it has been ascertained that Israel used these weapons in Lebanon in 2006”. The ‘New weapons committee’ representative noted that ‘DIME’ have been devised for urban warfare and conceived, say their inventors, as ‘adequate tools’ to reduce collateral damage because their power can be adjusted as well as their destructive range varying from 5 to 10 meters. “The ‘Dime’ – says Dr. Manduca – contain nano-particles of heavy material that according to the thickness of the shell can be spread in either a homogeneous manner or they can be made to assume particular forms; the many amputations have likely been caused by ‘Dime’ which release the particles delivering them as a blade that makes a clean cut of anything it finds within its range of action; this explains why so many people, children, women, have suffered amputations of limbs, without fragments on the rest of the body; the trigger can also be modified on the basis of need. If we wish to compare ‘Dime’ to something more familiar, one can imagine giant axes being launched against you at very high speed”. Dr. Manduca added that the weapons leave those who are hit with very serious disabilities. Some of the images witnessed by the researchers of the ‘New weapons committee’ also suggest that Israel has used white phosphorous weapons: “We do not yet have sufficient witness accounts – said Dr. Manduca – but some TV images would imply they have been used; unlike ‘Dime’, experimental weapons for which there is no special international position, the use of white phosphorous in civilian areas such as Gaza is explicitly forbidden by a Geneva convention because it burns anything containing oxygen such as a human body”. According to Manduca, the asphyxiating gases that some reporters have described as having been used in Gaza are likely ‘CS gas’, a type of more intense tear gas that make it almost impossible to breathe. [AB]