Fragmentation bombs disguised as toys

'Brutalizing Palestinian kids is Israeli policy'

Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:54PM GMT

Interview with Ralph Schoenman, the author of Hidden History of Zionism

SC/HGL

Terrorizing little children is a routine policy of Israel, author Ralph Schoenman says.

There is a pattern of Israeli soldiers routinely brutalizing young Palestinian children on a large scale in order to terrorize the entire population, Ralph Schoenman says.

Schoenman, who is the author of Hidden History of Zionism, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV in which he discussed the case of the two Israeli soldiers who were recently convicted of using a Palestinian child as a human shield during the Gaza war.

On Sunday, an Israeli court issued its final verdict on the case, giving the two soldiers suspended sentences of three months and stripping them of the rank of staff sergeant.

Following is the text of the interview:

Press TV: The deputy Knesset speaker slammed the verdict saying it proves that for Israel, the life of an Arab has less value. What does that say about the Zionist claims that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East?

Schoenman: Well, the Zionist claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is ludicrous on many grounds. The fundamental ground of course is that rights are always defined in terms of Jewish identity. Rights are not defined on the basis of citizenship. In fact, the Jewish National Fund, that had regulations adopted by the Israelis, states early on that... in order to be entitled to own land or work land or share-crop it, you have to show at least four generations of maternal Jewish decent. To talk about this as a democracy is an insult to people's intelligence. But fundamentally, what you're describing here is the routine use of children as targets of torment.

The particular that is being cited... the Israeli soldiers convicted of using a nine-year-old boy in Gaza as a human shield and then getting suspended sentences of three months, is being treated as if this is some kind of unique event. In fact, it is a routine treatment of Palestinian children from the inception of the Israeli [regime] and in every armed conflict in which it has engaged.

Story after story after story we've documented over the years. In this year in Nablus on February 18, 2010, a girl of 16 was used as a human shield while they searched her house. Her 15- and 17-year-old brothers were brutalized in front of them. This is with a family that has a father that is diabetic and has had both legs amputated. He's dependent upon the labor of his children to sustain the family. They are detained.

Indeed, the pattern of brutalizing Palestinian children is not, as I state, an isolated incident. Every time the Israelis engage in an operation in the West Bank, which is continuously, the same phenomenon occurs. On March 8, Amir Almontaser, a ten-year-old Hebron child, was savagely beaten after his twelve-year-old brother Hassan had endured similar treatment the week before. At 2 a.m., Israeli soldiers broke into their house, snatched Amir from his bed, threatened his parents with death by gunfire if they interfered, took him down the stairwell, and brutally beat him, causing internal abdominal bleeding. In complete shock, Amir could not open his mouth or speak for a week. This is the routine treatment of children and is a way of terrorizing the entire Palestinian population.

Press TV: After the sentence was handed down, an IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldier said, and I quote, "Does that mean the decisions soldiers make during an operation should enter a courtroom? Will we find ourselves in court every time we are forced to confront a civilian population?" End quote. Would such a justification hold in any real court of law?

Schoenman: Well, please, let's put this in context. These actions arise over the unrelenting onslaught on the population of Gaza. The official statistics of civilians, that is to say people who have no connection to any fugitive resistance on the part of the population, and since when is resistance to an occupation a crime, but of just those who were designated as civilians, some 1500 were killed in Gaza.

There is no exceptionalism when it comes to children. There are automatic weapons sites that are set up by Israel so that anything that moves over areas hundreds of yards across is automatically caught in cross-fire. This is the routine message through which the population is terrorized in Gaza. (And) it's not restricted to Gaza.

One particular point about the treatment of children. When my wife and I were in Lebanon at the time of the Israeli invasion of 1982, living in Palestinian camps, the routine procedure on the part of the Israelis was to drop fragmentation bombs across the villages, across the refugee camps, and across the fields of Palestinians and Lebanese alike. These fragmentation bombs were disguised as toys -- they were disguised as little telephones, they were disguised as little playthings and balls. They were brightly colored and designed to attract children, to attract civilians to pick them up, and they detonated, sending fragments of razor-sharp pieces of steel in all directions, lacerating the organs of the victim, causing amputations, causing internal bleeding that could not be stopped, routinely across the Palestinian villages and refugee camps of Lebanon amongst the areas of Lebanon that were under siege.

Children and civilians are the primary target because the object of the exercise is to terrorize the population, to drive them out of the land and occupy that land yet again. That's the process of Zionist colonization.

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Many disguised as toys, Still being found by children

Israel's Bombs in Lebanon:"ABOUT A MILLION CLUSTER BOMBS WHICH DID NOT
EXPLODE" ARE SCATTERED ACROSS SOUTH LEBANON



http://www.dawn.com/2007/03/07/int10.htm

March 07, 2007

Gambling with death in Lebanon's fields

By Sylvie Groult


AIN BAAL (Lebanon): For weeks Ali Nasser waited for the bomb disposal
team. But the arrival of spring left him no choice but to go to his
fields, sown last year by the Isreali military with hundreds of
unexploded cluster bombs.

The alternative is to lose the tobacco crop which provides the means
of feeding his 11 children, and which normally brings him $6,580 a year.

"How can I feed my family? I can't wait, I must sow the crop," said
this farmer in south Lebanon where hundreds more like him face a daily
gamble with death in their own fields.

THE UNITED NATIONS ESTIMATES THAT "ABOUT A MILLION CLUSTER BOMBS WHICH
DID NOT EXPLODE" ARE SCATTERED ACROSS SOUTH LEBANON WHERE THEY HAVE
KILLED 30 PEOPLE AND WOUNDED 187 SINCE THE 34-DAY WAR ENDED ON LAST
AUGUST 14.

But, said Nasser: "If I don't deliver the tobacco to the state, I have
no money. So I continue to work – each morning I go to the fields with
my children." Nasser, 54, found the first cluster bombs – bomblets
enclosed in a larger bomb which scatter on impact – last year after
the end of Israel's offensive against Lebanon and Shia Hezbollah
guerrillas.

"IT WAS IN AUGUST, SEVEN DAYS AFTER THE END OF THE WAR. I WENT WITH
THE WHOLE FAMILY TO OUR FIELDS," HE RECALLED. "MY DAUGHTER DISCOVERED THEM, ONE SHAPED LIKE A BALL, ANOTHER WITH A RIBBON, AND ONE WHICH RESEMBLED A TELEPHONE. SHE STARTED LAUGHING – SHE DID NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE." 
He went for help to the UN's anti-mine coordination
centre. "They came for a first time and told me they would return,"
the farmer said, adding that nothing happened.

By September he was getting desperate to attend to his plants and, on
the advice of a neighbour, approached a Palestinian living in a nearby
camp.

"For $100 he worked for a whole day. He picked up bomblets and hurled
them as far as he could so they exploded," Nasser said.

"Others he collected using sticky paper and depositing them in a fruit
crate on a layer of straw. The crate stayed there for three days and
then disappeared with the contents." Relieved, Nasser went back to
working with his tractor in the fields on the edge of Ain Baal
village, near the port city of Tyre.

But early in February, cluster bombs started to reappear. Three
surfaced, while Nasser suspects others still lurk buried in the soil.

"I returned to the anti-mine centre. The next day they came, took the
three away and told me `Don't touch your land, we are going to return'
to clear it. I am still waiting," he said.

At the anti-mine centre, spokeswoman Dalya Farran said 855 areas with
unexploded bomblets had been listed, and added that "more than 100,000
of these devices" have been recovered by the 63 teams, civilian and
military, working to made the region safe again.

But the controversial weapons have continued to claim victims such as
15-year-old Ahmad Naji, who had attended a school lecture on the
dangers of the bomblets just two weeks before he lost his left foot.

"The cluster bomb was hidden under a stone. It exploded when I put my
foot on it," said the teenager, sitting at home in Batoulay village
and wearing a gold medal he had earlier won for running, his favourite
pastime.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated that the
Israeli offensive on Lebanon and the war with Hezbollah cost the
country's agricultural sector $280 million.

In the south, planted with tobacco and olive trees, the FAO says one
quarter of cultivated land has been made unusable by unexploded munitions.

The United Nations has asked Israel for months – in vain – to tell it
where the Jewish state's aircraft unleashed their deadly cargoes.—AFP
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Politics - Senator Kucinich's ethical battle against cluster bombs.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Politics+-+Senator+Kucinich%27s+ethical+battle+against+cluster+bombs.-a0260356434

NNA - 02/07/2011 U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich visited Nabih Berri Complex for the rehabilitation of the disabled and victims of cluster bombs in Sarafand-south Lebanon on Saturday, promising to deliver a message to his government on the need to stop the production of these terror weapons.

Cluster bombs could be air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapons that eject smaller munitions or bomblets. Because cluster bombs release many small bomblets over a wide area they pose risks to civilians both during attacks and afterwards. During attacks the weapons are prone to indiscriminate effects, especially in populated areas. Unexploded bomblets can kill or maim civilians long after a conflict has ended, and are costly to locate and remove. In July war of 2006, launched by Israel on Lebanon, Israeli fighter planes dispersed a large number of cluster bombs across south Lebanon. Most of these bombs were disguised in the shape of children's toys. Sadly, majority of the victims of these cluster bombs are children.

"The US has a moral responsibility to help Lebanon in this field," said the Ohio Democrat, explaining that the US continued to produce these deadly and treacherous bombs, "Once I return home, I will insist on helping [Lebanon]." Kucinich argued that production of cluster-bombs should halt mainly for the safety of mankind, "We must stop this baby-killing machine...this is the message I will carry home with me." R.Z.

NNA 2011 LEBANON

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