Israel, not Iraq, holds that distinction of
being the first country in the region to use weapons of mass destruction with
genocidal intent. Salman Abu-Sitta digs into a dark history At a time when TV screens are filled with images of perceived
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq among people who are on the verge of
starvation, the West turns a blind eye to the first biological terrorist in the
Middle East, Israel, where the largest depot of WMD between London and Peking is
located.
When confronted with the anomaly, the United States ambassador
to the UN, John Negroponti, responds with typical cynicism, "Israel did not use
these weapons against its people or its neighbours." Assuming that the
ambassador is well-informed, this statement is a patent lie. Israel used
biological weapons even before it was created on Arab soil in 1948 and ever
since. The purpose, according to Ben Gurion, is genocide, and if not complete,
the purpose is not to allow the dispossessed Palestinians to return to their
homes.
POISONING ACRE WATER SUPPLY: In the wake of Haifa's occupation on
23 April 1948 by the Zionists, under the nose of the British Mandate forces
commended by General Stockwell, a man still historically discredited for this
failure, thousands converged on Acre, a nearby city, which was still Arab under
the "protection" of the British forces.
Acre was to be the next Zionist
target. The Zionists besieged the city from the land side, and started showering
the population with a hail of mortar bombs day and night. Famous for its
historical walls, Acre could stand the siege for a long time. The city water
supply comes from a nearby village, Kabri, about 10kms to the north, through an
aqueduct. The Zionists injected typhoid in the aqueduct at some intermediate
point which passes through Zionist settlements. (see map)
The
story can now be told, thanks to the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) files which have now become available, 50 years after the event. A series
of reports, under the reference G59/1/GC, G3/82, sent by ICRC delegate de Meuron
from 6 May to about 19 May 1948 describe the conditions of the city population,
struck by a sudden typhoid epidemic, and the efforts to combat it.
Of
particular importance are the minutes of an emergency conference held at the
Lebanese Red Cross Hospital in Acre on 6 May, to deal with the typhoid epidemic.
The meeting was attended by: Brigadier Beveridge, Chief of British Medical
Services and Colonel Bonnet of the British Army, Dr Maclean of the Medical
Services, Mr de Meuron, ICRC delegate in addition to other officials of the
city. The minutes stated that there are at least 70 known civilian casualties,
others may not be reported. It was determined that the infection is "water
borne", not due to crowded or unhygienic conditions as claimed by the Israelis.
It was decided that a substitute water supply should now come from artesian
wells or from the agricultural station, just north of Acre (see map), not from
the aqueduct. Water chlorine solution was applied, inoculation of civil
population started, movement of civil population was controlled (lest refugees
heading north towards Lebanon will carry the typhoid epidemic with them, as
intended by the Zionists).
In his other reports, de Meuron mentioned 55
casualties among British soldiers, who were spirited away to Port Said for
hospitalisation. General Stockwell arranged for de Meuron to fly on a military
plane to Jerusalem to fetch medicine. The British, who left Palestine in the
hands of the Jews, did not want another embarrassing incident to delay their
departure.
Brigadier Beveridge told de Meuron that this is "the first
time this happened in Palestine". This belies the Israeli story, including that
of the Israeli historian Benny Morris, that the epidemic is due to "unhygienic
conditions" of the refugees. If that was so, how come there was an almost equal
number of casualties among British soldiers? Why did such conditions not cause
epidemic in such other concentrations of refugees, under far worse conditions,
in Jaffa, Lydda, Nazareth and Gaza?
ICRC delegate, de Meuron admired
greatly the heroic efforts of Arab doctors, Al-Dahhan and Al-Araj from the
Lebanese Red Cross hospital in Acre, Dr Dabbas from Haifa and Mrs Bahai from
Haifa.
The city of Acre, now burdened by the epidemic, fell easy prey to
the Zionists. They intensified their bombardment. Trucks carrying loudspeakers
proclaimed, "Surrender or commit suicide. We will destroy you to the last man."
That was not a figure of speech. Palumbo, in The Palestinian Catastrophe,
notes the "typical" case of Mohamed Fayez Soufi. Soufi with friends went to get
food from their homes in a new Acre suburb. They were caught by Zionist soldiers
and forced at gun point to drink cyanide. Soufi faked swallowing the poison. The
others were not so lucky, they died in half an hour.
Lieutenant Petite,
a French UN observer, reported that looting was being conducted in a systematic
manner by the army, carrying off furniture, clothes and anything useful for the
new Jewish immigrants and also part of "a Jewish plan to prevent the return of
the refugees." Lieutenant Petite also reported that the Jews had murdered 100
Arab civilians in Acre, particularly those who refused to leave.
More
horrors have been reported by de Meuron. He spoke of "a reign of terror" and the
case of the rape of a girl by several soldiers and killing her father. He also
wrote that all male civilians were taken to concentration camps and considered
"prisoners of war" although they were not soldiers. This left many women and
children homeless, without protection, subject to many acts of violence. He also
notes the absence of water and electricity. He demanded from the Zionists a list
of civilians detained as "prisoners of war", demanded to know their whereabouts
and permission to visit them. More importantly he asked that Acre be placed
under ICRC protection and care. Anyone who reads the familiar dry and
matter-of-fact language of ICRC would not fail to notice the tone of abhorrence
of Zionist actions in de Meuron reports from Acre.
This episode, which
started with poisoning Acre water supply and ended with the collapse of the
city, the depopulation of its inhabitants, and its occupation by the Jews,
whetted their appetite to try this crime again.
GAZA POISONING: Two
weeks later, after their "success" in Acre, the Zionists struck again. This time
in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of refugees had gathered after their
villages in southern Palestine were occupied. The end however was different.
The following cable was sent from the commander of the Egyptian Forces
in Palestine to General Headquarters in Cairo:
"15.20 hrs, 24 May [1948]
Our Intelligence forces captured two Jews, David Horeen and David Mizrahi,
loitering around army positions. They were interrogated and confessed they had
been sent by Officer Moshe to poison the army [and the peoples'] water supply.
They carried with them water bottles divided in the middle. The top part has
potable water and the bottom part has a liquid contaminated with typhoid and
dysentery, equipped with a rear opening from which the liquid can be released.
They confessed they were members of a 20-strong team sent from Rehovot for the
same purpose. Both have written their confession in Hebrew and signed it. We
have taken the necessary medical precautions."
In Ben Gurion's War
Diary, the following entry is found on 27 May 1948:
"[Chief of Staff
Yigel Yadin] picked up a cable from Gaza saying they captured Jews carrying
malaria germs and gave instructions not to drink water". This is typical of Ben
Gurion's oblique writing of history. He was fully aware of the weight of history
when such crimes are discovered. Nuremberg trials were held only three years
before. More on the background of this cable was given in Yeruham Cohen's book,
In Daylight and Night Darkness, Tel Aviv, 1969, pp66-68 (in Hebrew).
The criminals were executed three months later. On 22 July 1948, the
[Palestinian] Higher Arab Committee (AHC) submitted a 13-page report to the
United Nations accusing the Jews of using "inhuman" weapons and waging a
genocide war against the Arabs through the use of bacteria and germs, developed
in specially-built laboratories. The report also accuses the Jews (the word
Israel was not used) of spreading cholera in Egypt and Syria in 1947/48. The
story was picked up by the award-winning journalist, Thomas J Hamilton of the
New York Times and published on 24 July 1948. The story now has a new
twist- adding Egypt and Syria to the Jewish field of operations.
CHOLERA
IN EGYPT AND SYRIA: The summer of 1947 was hot with diplomatic activity. The
United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was busy touring
Palestine and Arab countries in order to propose the partition of Palestine such
that the new Jewish immigrants to Palestine, who controlled only six per cent of
Palestine under the British Mandate, be given a big chunk of Palestine (turned
out to be 54 per cent) in order to establish a foreign state in the midst of
Arab land.
The Arabs, still under the tutelage of Britain, were debating
how to resist the Western-supported scheme to take away their land. The forces
to reckon with were neighbouring countries with common borders with Palestine.
Lebanon was weak. Trans-Jordan was still controlled directly by the British and
King Abdullah was conciliatory to the Jews. This left Egypt, the stronger Arab
country and Syria, recently freed from the clutches of the French Mandate. Syria
was the centre of Arab resistance to the foreign occupation of Palestine.
Training centres were established in Qatana to prepare Arab volunteers to enter
Palestine under the banner of "The Arab Rescue Army". Egypt and Palestine were
thus the most important targets.
In his 220-page continually updated
report, entitled: Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological
Agents since 1900, dated February 2001, Dr W Seth Carus of the Center for
Counterproliferation Research, National Defence University, Washington, DC,
lists the following subtitle, p.87: Case 1947-01: "Zionist" Terrorists
1947-1948.
Under this section, he mentions that the cholera
outbreaks in Syria and Egypt received extensive attention in the international
press. The first report about the cholera in Egypt was published in the Times
of London on 26 September, 1947, p4. By the time the final cases appeared in
January 1948, 10,262 people died.
He also states that the outbreak in
Syria is much smaller. It was limited to two towns, about 60 kilometres south of
Damascus, i.e. close to Palestine border. The first report appeared in the New
York Times on 22 December, 1947, p5.
The Syrian army formed a cordon
sanitaire and the casualties were limited to 44, including 18 deaths. Soon
after, the Beirut French-language newspaper, Orient, reported that
several Zionist agents, who employed cholera to disrupt the mobilisation of the
volunteers' army, were arrested. Their destiny is unknown.
These
incidents, together with Gaza poisoning, Carus states, were described in the AHC
complaint to the UN and quotes the report in saying that:
"The Jews plan
to use this inhuman weapon against the Arabs in the Middle East in their war of
extermination."
Carus adds information from other sources about the Gaza
poisoning. Rachel Katzman, Horeen's sister, Carus stated, said: "I met one of
[my brother's] commanders in a lecture in Jerusalem. I asked him whether my
brother had really attempted to poison wells. 'These were the weapons we had',
he said, 'and that's that.'"
Carus also adds another source about Acre
poisoning: This source sates, "This account also claims that the Israelis
poisoned the water supply of the Arab town of Acre, causing a major outbreak,
and other Arab villages to prevent the villagers from returning, citing military
historian Uri Milstein as a source" [Wendy Barnaby, The Plague Makers: The
Secret World of Biological Warfare, London, Vision Paperbacks, 1997,
pp114-116].
The writer has obtained a copy of an e-mail in which an
Israeli peace activist asked Uri Milstein about Acre poisoning story. Milstein,
the military historian, is described in the e-mail as "very knowledgeable,
intelligent, courageous, original, honest" -- although his views belong to the
Israeli far-right (!). Milstein replied:
"I am sorry to say it, but
the story is true and the name of the operation was "Shlach Lachmecha" -- that
is "donate your bread", which is a part of Hebrew saying: donate your bread
because sooner or later you will get it back, meaning you have to be generous
and one day, you will profit from it yourself. Is this not a cute name for an
operation to use biological weapons?"
HOW DID BEN GURION START ALL
THIS? On the fourth of March 1948, Ben Gurion wrote a letter to Ehud Avriel, one
of the Jewish Agency operatives in Europe, ordering him to recruit East European
Jewish scientists who could "either increase [our] capacity to kill masses or to
cure masses; both are important". This truncated quotation is given by Avner
Cohen who cited an author in Ben Gurion Research Centre at Sdeh Boker.
To understand the meaning of this quotation we must recall Ben Gurion's
doctrine: the destruction of the Palestinian Society in Palestine is a necessary
condition for the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins. As a
corollary to this doctrine, ethnic cleansing became an integral part of Zionism.
If Palestinians cannot be removed by massacres and expulsion, they shall be
removed by "extermination". Such words were specifically used in AHC letter
mentioned above. The significance of this word is that it was rarely used by
Arabs regarding their fate. Europe's horrors were either remote or not widely
known then.
The caveat by Ben Gurion as "to cure the masses" is yet
another twist by Ben Gurion with an eye on history. For it is inconceivable that
the Arabs have the ability or the will in 1948 to cause "mass killing" of the
Jews using biological weapons. As it happened, Ben Gurion was the first to use
such weapons. His legacy, much more refined and expanded, remains true till
today.
Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the Center for International and
Security Studies, and the Program on Security and Disarmaments at the University
of Maryland, wrote a comprehensive paper on Israel's chemical and biological
weapons, which was published in the Non-Proliferation Review, Autumn
2001. Notwithstanding his background, which furnishes a sympathetic
understanding of Israel's motives, his paper traces in 50 pages of detail, from
open sources and few interviews, the establishment and development of Israel's
centre for biological terrorism.
Thrusting Israel in the heart of the
Arab world, Ben Gurion was determined to achieve this extraordinary objective
against all odds. "We are inferior to other peoples in our number, but no other
people is superior to us in intellectual prowess," Ben Gurion remarked.
In the 1940s, he gathered around him Ernst David Bergmann, Avraham
Marcus (Marek) Klingberg (from the Red Army) and the brothers Aharon and Ephraim
Katachalsky (Katzir) -- all experts in microbiology. They formed the nucleus of
the Science Corps in the Haganah during the British Mandate. Ephraim Katachalsky
was named commander of this new unit, renamed HEMED, in May 1948. A dispute
arose between Chaim Weizmann who wished to establish a scientific institute for
"clean" science, while Ben Gurion insisted on building a "dirty" centre for
biological weapons. Both got their wishes realised. Weizmann Institute for
scientific research was built in Rehovot. A new unit within HEMED, devoted to
biological weapons and named HEMED BEIT, was formed as a branch of the Israeli
Army. Its head was Alexander Keynan, a microbiologist from the medical school at
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
With the depopulation of 530
Palestinian towns and villages in Al-Nakba of 1948, many buildings and
homes became vacant and over half of the Jewish immigrants in the 1950s were
housed in them. The Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin selected a home for the new
biological weapons development unit in a mansion located within a large orange
grove west of Nes Ziona. This unit, publicly known as Israel Institute for
Biological Research (IIBR), is still there today. The building was expanded,
surrounded by a three metre wall, movement sensors and watch towers.
While IIBR represents the front of a scientific institution, producing a
"clean" papers and receiving invitations to scientific conferences, the real
biological weapons developed is carried within IIBR in a highly classified
centre (Machon 2, one of four) funded and controlled directly by the Ministry of
Defence.
IIBR Web site states that the institute's staff comprises 300
employees, 120 of them PhD holders, in addition to 100 certified technicians.
But these figures are misleading because there are many other scientists who
hold positions in microbiology departments in faculties of medicine in Tel Aviv
University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Ephraim Katzir was
rewarded for his service to the state by being elected as president of Israel in
1973. Aharon Katzir was killed in the Japanese attack on Lydda airport on 30
May, 1972.
Soon after the poisoning of Acre and Gaza, Ben Gurion
launched a crash project to develop "a cheap non-conventional capability" in
1955. Why the rush? As Cohen reports, Munya Mardor, the founder of Israel's
Weapons Development Authority (RAFAEL), says that Ben Gurion was "evidently
concerned that we would not meet the deadline he had set, worrying that the
enemy would have such capability and we would have nothing to deter or
retaliate". It turned out that the rush was to meet the deadline for the Suez
Tripartite Aggression of 1956. Ben Gurion was prepared to bomb Egypt with
biological weapons if his campaign failed. As if that was not enough, Israel
signed an agreement with France to build a nuclear programme in the same year.
Ben Gurion's emissary to France was none other than the peace-loving diplomat
Shimon Pensky (Perez).
Anver Cohen says that the location of IIBR is
classified and not shown on maps or aerial photographs. It is still possible,
however, to determine its location with accuracy.
WHERE IS IIBR? In the
1930s, the road from Ramleh to Nabi Rubin, a popular religious site visited
annually, passes through Wadi Hunein, a good sandy soil with spots of marshes.
The wealthy Al-Taji Al-Farouki family from Ramleh purchased large tracts of this
land and developed it into successful citrus groves which exported hundreds of
thousands of Jaffa orange boxes to Europe. Shukri Al-Taji built for himself a
beautiful mansion (photo) -- a two-storey rectangular building on top of a hill,
on a plot of land, 134,029 m2 in area. The plot number is 549/32 and the
property deed is entered in the Land Registry under E42/260 on 16 March 1932. He
also built a mosque on the asphalt road from Jaffa to Qubeiba. On another hill,
one kilometre to the west, his cousin Abdel-Rahman Hamed Al-Taji built a house
which consists of several buildings. The mansions in the midst of vast orange
groves depicted an idyllic scene in quiet surroundings.
This is the
location chosen by Yigal Yadin for his biological weapons research. Shukri Al
Taji mansion became the home of IIBR. The IIBR Web site (www.iibr.gov.il)
proudly shows on the opening page its building entrance, which is nothing but
Shukri's mansion with its arched façade and tall lush trees (compare with
photo). Shukri died broken hearted in Cairo some ten years later.
If you
drive from Nes Ziona going west on road 4303, then turn left at road 42 heading
south, you will find IIBR at your right at a distance of 500 metres. (see photo
of the location). The coordinates of IIBR are:
According to Palestine/
Israel grid : 128.263 E, 147.022 N
New Israel grid : 178.263 E, 647.022
N
Geographical coordinates : E 34D 46' 27 N 31D 55' 7
The area
is called "Ayalon" in Hebrew. Directly to the west on the sea coast is the
missile launching pad of Palmahim.
Other Al-Taji buildings were
expropriated and used. The mosque is transformed into a synagogue, named "gulat
Israel". Abdel-Rahman's house became a mental hospital.
CHASING THE
CULPRITS: Sara Leibovitz-Dar is a persistent investigative journalist. The
trauma experienced by her parents in their native Lithuania left an indelible
mark on her. She abhorred injustice and, particularly, the meek acceptance of
it. She investigated the Gaza and Acre poisoning and shooting down of the
civilian Libyan aircraft. The Israeli military historian, Uri Milstein,
identified for her the names of the officers responsible for biological crimes.
In 1993, Sara tried to interview the commander who was responsible for
Acre poisoning. He refused to talk. "Why do you look for troubles that took
place 45 years ago?" he asked. "I know nothing about this. What would you gain
by publishing?"
Again, Sara interviewed the officer responsible for Gaza
poisoning. He refused to respond, "You will not get answers on these questions.
Not from me and not from anyone." Sara was persistent. She asked Colonel Shlomo
Gur, former HEMED chief, whether he was aware of the secret operations in 1948.
"We heard about the typhoid epidemics in Acre and about the Gaza operations.
There were many rumours but I did not know whether they were true or not," he
responded.
Sara published her findings in Hadashot under the
title "Microbes in State Service", on 13 August, 1993, pp6-10. Sara, who now
moved to Ha'aretz, concluded with the following comment,
"What
was done then with deep conviction and zealotry is now concealed with shame."
True to the Israeli tradition, Sara declined twice to respond by e-mail to an
enquiry from the writer.
Not all are afraid to talk. Naeim Giladi is an
Iraqi Jew who was lured to Israel by Mossad agents in the early 1950s. Working
with the zealotry and dedication of a new Zionist, he soon found out that within
the Ashkenazi establishment "there was not much opportunity for those of us who
were second class citizens", he told the editor of The Link in New York
where he immigrated after leaving Israel. "I began to find out about the
barbaric methods to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as possible.
The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological warfare, but Israel
was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. Jewish forces
would empty Arab villages of their population often by threats, sometimes by
gunning down a half-dozen young men so that the Arabs could not return. The
Israelis put typhus and dysentery bacteria in the water wells to prevent the
refugees from returning". [The Link, Vol. 31 Issue 2, April-May 1998].
Another witness who spoke, former Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, claims
that lethal tests have been performed on Arab prisoners inside the IIBR
compound.
THE DUTCH INVESTIGATION: On 4 October, 1992 at 6.21pm, El Al
Flight 1862 left Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on route to Tel Aviv, carrying
three crewmen, one passenger and 114 tons of freight. Seven minutes later, it
crashed in a high-rise apartment complex in Bijlmer. El Al Flight 1862 became
the worst air disaster in Dutch history, killing at least 47 (the actual number
is unknown because many victims were immigrants) and destroyed the health of
3000 Dutch residents. Cases of mysterious illnesses, rashes, difficulty in
breathing, nervous disorders and cancer began to sprout in that neighbourhood
and beyond.
The Dutch government, in collusion with Israel, lied to its
citizens saying the plane was carrying perfumes and flowers. Some flowers! It
took the energetic and persistent science editor in the Dutch daily NRC
Handelsblad, Karel Knip, several years to discover the facts. Knip published
on 27 November 1999 the most detailed and factual published investigation about
the workings of biological terrorism housed in IIBR.
First he found out
that the plane was carrying 50 gallons, among other things, of DMMP a substance
used to make a quarter ton of the deadly nerve gas Sarin, 20 times as lethal as
cyanide. It was carrying a shipment from Solkatronic Chemicals of Morrisville,
Pennsylvania to IIBR in Israel, under a US Department of Commerce licence. This
is contrary to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to which the US, but not
Israel, is party.
With dogged determination, Knip reviewed the
scientific literature produced by IIBR and the microbiology departments of the
Faculty of Medicine in the University of Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University
since 1950. He was able to identify 140 scientists involved in biological
weapons (BW) research. The number could be more as scientists have dual
positions or they move around. Many take their sabbaticals invariably in the
United States. There are strong links with Walter Reed Army Institute, the
Uniformed Services University, the American Chemical and Biological Weapons
(CBW) Center in Edgewood and the University of Utah.
Remarkably, Knip
was able to identify three categories of IIBR production: diseases, toxins and
convulsants, and their development in each decade of the five past decades.
(See table)
The research moved from virus and bacteria to toxins
because they are many times more poisonous. Nerve gases known as Tabun, Soman,
Sarin, VX, Cyclo-Sarin, RVX and Amiton are all deadly gases and function in the
same way.
Knip went further. He sought the assistance of experts in this
field such as Professor Julian Perry Robinson, University of Sussex, Brighton,
Dr Jean Pascal Zanders of SIPRI, Stockholm and Professor Malcolm Dando,
University of Bradford. They guided his research and explained his findings.
Knip also discovered close cooperation between IIBR and the
British-American BW programme. This programme deals with viruses and bacteria
spread by rodents and insects and covers smallpox, fungal diseases and
Legionnaires disease. It is to be noted that there was a breakout of this
disease in Philadelphia some years ago, and, surprisingly, in an Eilat hotel in
mid- January this year.
The interest in the plant poison Elate-Ricin is
confined to very few institutions beside IIBR. It will be recalled that amateur
biologists were arrested in UK in January attempting to prepare Ricin.
The novel and dangerous trend in BW research in IIBR is the development
of incapacitants which paralyse, disorient, cause uncontrollable movements and
severe pain in the stomach. Most of these incapacitants have antidotes to repair
the damage done. These incapacitants have been and are used against the
Palestinians in the Intifada.
There is also extensive collaboration on
BW research with Germany and Holland. That is probably the reason for the Dutch
official silence over the deadly crash over Amsterdam.
The cooperation
with the US is quite open. The Congress "Joint Medical, Biological and Nuclear
Defence Research Programs" openly lists cooperation with Israel on nerve agents
and convulsants under the guise of finding antidotes. It is plainly simple to
realise that in order to develop the antidote it is necessary to identify the
poison itself. Dr Avigdor Shafferman, IIBR director, is a frequent contributor
to this programme. (see www.acq.osd.mil/cp/nbc98/annexd.pdf)- Annex D.
The Preparatory Commission for the Organisation for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague turns a blind eye to the Israeli criminal
activities. Ironically, Israeli researchers guide OPCW on methods to detect
Chemical Weapons. Israeli researchers R Barak, A Lorber and Z Boger of IIBR,
CHEMO Solutions and Rotem Industries respectively propose methods to detect
chemical warfare agents. No international body seems to be willing to apply
these methods on Israel.
The mechanism to do this monitoring is
available. The American Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center has the
wherewithal to inspect suspect laboratories. But it is unlikely to see a team of
inspectors headed by an American Blix searching the secret chambers of IIBR.
This may, however, not apply to conscientious scientists. Professor
Keith Yamamoto, of the University of California and Dr Jonathan King of MIT
criticised the American BW research and showed that attempting to modify toxins
(as IIBR does) can hardly be considered "defensive" research. But Israel's turn
in such criticism seems far-off at present.
THE PALESTINIAN VICTIMS: The
biological crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians in Acre and Gaza in 1948
are still being enacted today.
In 1997, Mossad agents tried to
assassinate Khaled Mish'al, Hamas Political Bureau's director in Amman. King
Hussein was furious at the blatant violation of Jordan's sovereignty and of the
Peace Treaty with Israel. As the attempt failed, thanks to Mish'al's bodyguard,
Israel sent a lady doctor with the antidote. The toxin used is likely to be SEB
applied through a special gun which has a range of 50 metres. and could inject
the toxin in the neck.
The stories about nerve gas applied against
school children abound. So are the cases in which CBW are used. Neil Sammonds
lists these cases:
ï Chemical defoliants against Palestinian crops in
Ain Al- Beida in 1968, Aqraba in 1972, Mejdel Beni Fadil in 1978 and Negev in
2002.
ï Chemical Weapons, including hydrogen cyanide, nerve gas and
phosphorous shells in the 1982 war on Lebanon.
ï Lethal gas against
Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners.
But the case which was widely
publicised all over the world and fully documented by several international NGOs
is the application of incapacitants, particularly in Khan Younis, in February
2001. The pictures of victims twisting with severe pain and uncontrollable
convulsions were splashed on TV screens everywhere.
James Brooks of
"Just Peace in Palestine/Israel" gave a detailed account of this BW attack on
civilians day by day as it happened. First, the victims thought it was tear gas.
It had a faint odour like mint. It smelled "like sugar", one victim reported. It
changed colour "like a rainbow". Fifteen minutes later, the victim felt that his
"stomach was torn apart, with burning sensation in [his] chest, could not
breathe". Soon convulsions started. The victim would jump up and down, left and
right, thrashing limbs around, with a kind of hysteria. Some victims were
unconscious. The victim would vomit incessantly and then pain would return. This
would go on for days or, for some, weeks.
In addition to the numerous
press and human rights reports, convulsing poison gas victims in Khan Younis
were filmed by the American filmmaker James Longley, in a documentary that
"pushes the viewer headlong into the tumult of the Israeli- occupied Gaza".
Longley compiled a 43-page document of interviews with 19 gas victims, their
relatives, nurses and doctors.
These devilish incapacitants drew the
protest of some NGOs but little else. No international investigation or
censureship of any kind, even though this was repeatedly used in March in Al-
Birch, Nablus and West Bank and yet again in Gaza later that month.
Just
the contrary. There was a wide-spread Zionist- orchestrated condemnation and
disapproval when, in November 1999, Suha Arafat, the president's wife, charged
the Israelis with the use of "poison gas" in the presence of the aspiring
politician Hillary Clinton. The height of hypocrisy and cynicism was attained
when the incensed Israeli authorities declared that Suha's factual statement is
"a violation of the peace process"!
