Israel under UN investigation for using uranium weapons in Lebanon.

galway | anti-war / imperialism | other press Monday October 30, 2006 18:23 by TJ - Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

"Elevated war crime signatures".

Todays Independent (UK) newspaper and the Democracy Now website are reporting that the "United Nations Environment Programme is investigating allegations, first published in The Independent, that Israel may have used uranium-based weapons during this summer's war in Lebanon. Twenty UN experts, working with Lebanese environmentalists, have spent two weeks assessing various samples. They are planning to report their findings in December".

Chris Busby, the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, based in Brussels, reported last week that two soil samples thrown up by Israeli bombs in the south Lebanese villages of Khiam and At Tiri, centres of fierce fighting between Israel and Hizbollah, showed "elevated radiation signatures". Dr Busby warned that particles from the explosions were long-lived in the environment and could be inhaled into the lungs, causing "significant" health effects on civilians.

True to form, the Israeli military is denying this point blank with Major Avital Leibovitz, a spokeswoman for the Israel Defence Forces saying: "We deny using any weapons containing uranium." However, Israel's past history in blatantly lying about its criminality such as the cold blooded murders of Tom Hurndall, Rachel Corrie, James Miller, the use of phosphous in its summer onslaught on Lebanon, etc, has to be borne in mind - last week the Israeli military admitted for the first time that it had dropped phosphorous bombs on Lebanon.

In a related article published on 28th October in the UK Independent, Chris Bellamy, professor of military science and doctrine at Cranfield University stated that It "uncertain whether the munition was made in the US or by the Israelis themselves. If the Israelis or the Americans want to avoid accusations, at the very least, of a cavalier attitude to the use of nuclear waste products, they need to explain what was in that bomb and why it was there".