Most Palestinians were killed by drones

by on February 3, 2010 16
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One point I found utterly amazing about the Independent article was that most of the Palestinians were killed by drones. This isn’t even nervous soldiers fearing for their lives in a combat zone. These are calculated killings by soldiers sitting in a control room somewhere. Call of Duty, yes–but to a video game?

He [the unnamed source for the piece, a highranking Israeli officer] added that the majority of casualties were caused in his brigade area by aerial firing, including from unmanned drones. "Most of the guys taken down were taken down by order of headquarters. The number of enemy killed by HQ-operated remote … compared to enemy killed by soldiers on the ground had absolutely inverted," he said.

Ira Glunts adds: I was surprised you did not include the quotes below from the Independent piece. They involve self-censorship:

Until now, the testimony has been kept out of the public domain. The senior commander told a journalist compiling a lengthy report for Yedhiot Ahronot, Israel’s biggest daily newspaper, about the rules of engagement in the three-week military offensive in Gaza. But although the article was completed and ready for publication five months ago, it has still not appeared. Yedhiot has not commented on why its article has not been published.

About Bruce Wolman

Bruce Wolman is a citizen journalist who has lived in Norway and the Washington area.
Posted in Gaza

{ 16 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Oscar says:
    February 3, 2010 at 10:25 am

    With the filing of the IDF “response” to Goldstone, it seems the other side is weighing in. This is a remarkable account in the form of a letter to the Electronic Intifada by Desmond Travers, a respected member of the Goldstone investigation team. It’ s stomach-churning:

    [C]oncerning your report and photograph describing an attack on an ambulance by means of a “dart bomb” . . . I examined this incident and offer a more precise term and also some analyses on the nature of the attack on the ambulance in question:

    The projectile that struck the ambulance was almost certainly a flechette-discharging shell fired from the main armament (that means “gun”) of a Merkava tank.

    The shell when fired travels a distance from the barrel before discharging its flechettes or “darts.” The darts of four centimeters length (about 13 grams weight) are ejected forward in a fan-like pattern at a velocity which means that the “fan” of flechettes saturates an area up to 300 meters forward of the tank. It is therefore an ideal anti-personnel weapon designed to clear an area of underbrush forward of a tank thereby securing it from a possible infiltrator with an anti-tank gun. It goes without saying that it is entirely inappropriate against unarmed civilians in an urban area.

    The arming of the shell so that it discharges its flechettes occurs 90 meters forward of the muzzle. If you examine the ambulance in question one can see that that arming process had not occurred and so therefore we can assume that the tank was “panning” the movement left to right across its front from a distance less than 90 meters away. This, in tank-shooting terms, is point blank range (zero in other words), and indeed the low-left impact site attests to the validity of my theory. In other words the ambulance was travelling at greater speed than the gunner could “pan” the gun in line with it. Poor shooting, in other words.

    I visited the family of the para medic volunteer who was killed in this incident. His family was in turn struck by two missiles when they and their friends and neighbours were visiting the two mourning tents outside his parents’ house. Again by a tragic irony they too were struck by flechettes, this time however fired from missiles likely to have been mounted on Unmanned Aviation Vehicles (UAVs or “zananna” as they had come to be known locally during Operation Cast Lead).

    Finally, these flechettes are designed ballistically to “tumble” on impact with flesh. This tumbling effect increases incapacitation and is, in my opinion, a questionable additional option and should be reviewed for unacceptability or otherwise under the Conventions.

    link to electronicintifada.net

    • aparisian says:
      February 3, 2010 at 11:07 am

      Thanks Oscar for this note. This flechette arms use makes me very crazily angry and i don’t know what to do about it!!!!!! I still remember the photo of the father kissing the front of his child killed by Israeli flechette and it makes me crazy!!!!!

      • Pamela Olson says:
        February 3, 2010 at 1:32 pm

        This is nothing new. In January of 2005 — right during the Presidential elections that Abbas eventually won — an Israeli tank hit a group of twelve children in Gaza, in broad daylight, with these weapons. The results were… well, there are really no words for this kind of thing.

        link to pamolson.org

      • Avi says:
        February 3, 2010 at 6:08 pm

        Thanks Oscar for this note. This flechette arms use makes me very crazily angry and i don’t know what to do about it!!!!!!

        Seeing the images coming live out of Gaza during the slaughter, reading the eyewitness accounts, interviews and stories Gazans and non-Gazans were sharing, I found myself anguished and desperately looking for a way to end this senseless barbaric violence. Just make it stop.

        Every passing hour meant that dozens if not hundreds of civilians could be killed. In the first few hours of the attack more than 200 Gazans were already dead at the hands of the Israeli killing machine. And the feeling that takeover you when you are helpless, unable to do anything to stop it, makes you feel paralyzed and weak.

        I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be there, on the ground, under the barrage of bombs, white phosphorus and flechettes. Hell from above perhaps, begins to describe it.

    • Richard Parker says:
      February 3, 2010 at 1:28 pm

      The use of flechettes is not new

      Flechettes were first used as an air-dropped weapon in World War I by combatants on both sides. These were about four inches long (10 cm) and weighed a couple of ounces (60 g). Dropped from airplanes or Zeppelins over enemy trenches or airfields, these gravity missiles were capable of penetrating a helmet and the wearer’s skull. Similar weapons were ‘Lazy Dogs’ (or ‘Devil Dogs’), used by the U.S. in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. These 1 3/4″ length (4.5 cm) bomblets were air-dropped at height in canisters by aircraft or scattered from buckets by helicopter crews, reaching high sub-sonic speeds as they fell. Targeted at enemy personnel and unarmored vehicles, the flechette hit the targets with the force of a bullet.
      Smaller flechettes were used in special artillery shells called “beehive” rounds (so named for the very distinctive whistling buzz made by thousands of flechettes flying downrange at supersonic speeds) and intended for use against troops in the open – a ballistic shell packed with flechettes was fired and set off by pressure-sensitive detonators, scattering flechettes and shrapnel in all directions. They were used in the Vietnam War by artillery gunners to defend their positions against infantry attacks.
      The CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon is an air-dropped guided bomb containing 3,700 non-explosive steel and tungsten penetrator rods of various sizes. It was designed to attack targets where an explosive effect may be undesirable, such as fuel storage tanks in civilian areas.

      link to en.wikipedia.org

      Cluster bombs are a similar weapon.
      link to en.wikipedia.org

      Up to a million unexploded cluster bombs fired by Israel could be in south Lebanon, nearly three times as many as previously estimated, UN demining experts said Tuesday. [14 Sept 2006]
      Israel has not responded to repeated UN requests to hand over detailed information about the cluster bomb strikes, making the task of clearing the bomblets far more difficult, they said.
      ”The situation in south Lebanon now, as a result of 34 days of bombing is that there is extensive unexploded ordnance lying all over the place,” Chris Clark, the top UN demining official in Lebanon, told a news conference.

      link to ynetnews.com

      The Israeli ‘Defense Forces’ fired off most of their remaining stocks of US-made cluster bombs during the weekend that followed UN Res.1701, calling for peace between the two parties.

      This was a parting shot, after defeat by Hizbollah, magnified by a million latent killers.

      They daren’t give the cluster bomb maps to the UN, because they don’t actually know or remember where they shot them.

    • Richard Parker says:
      February 3, 2010 at 1:55 pm

      Thankyou OscarThis is a very precise description, by an experienced expert, who knows what he is talking about.
      link to electronicintifada.net

      Can you imagine the fear of 1.5 million Gazans when they hear the sound of a zananna (drone) overhead?

      The targetting of mourning tents is particularly nasty.

      Remember, most of this killing is done by video game players far away.

  2. Rehmat says:
    February 3, 2010 at 10:51 am

    Israel has pioneered the ’sky terrorism’ – the drone in 1982. Last year when Tehran unveiled its home-made drone – the media claimed that Iranians have stolen their technology. Israel Occupation force (IOF) has used hundred of its drones in Gaza and Lebanon. The US and NATO forces have used Israel-made drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Russia has become the second largest customer after the US of Israeli drones. Turkey is also expected to receive long-delayed four Israeli drones. Israel’s drone manufacturers are in the process of developing more effective drone to be used against Islamic Iran…….

    Terrorists to train Indians to fight local terrorists
    link to rehmat1.wordpress.com

  3. Egbert says:
    February 3, 2010 at 1:16 pm

    potsherd wrote: “I have not specifically heard whether the US also uses these flechette weapons with its drones”

    The US armed forces are insufficiently moral. Consequentally, they are not allowed to use such reprehensible weapons.

  4. eljay says:
    February 3, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    The PR of this is very bad, but only because we have not taken the time to consider “the other”… *rolleyes*

  5. David says:
    February 3, 2010 at 4:33 pm

    Note connection of BDS target Motorola to Israeli drones:
    link to endtheoccupation.org

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