Rene — Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Comments Off on Rene — Robert Fisk: Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bombRobert Fisk: Mystery of Israel’s secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
The Independent/UK
28 October 2006
Did 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-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 The Independent 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 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.
Did 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-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 The Independent 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 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.