Steve said:

What a disgustingly biased and rotten article.

Israel is not defending itself from anybody and has been responsible for all the violence which has ensued since they first forced their way into others’ land and began their genocide.

Israel started the terrorism in the Middle East, committed the worst acts of terrorism and has been caught many times committing terror whilst pretending it was their victims. The King David Hotel bombing is just the most famous. The following is typical of all the wars Israel has engaged in.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin! In an unguarded moment in 1982, when he was prime minister, he admitted publicly:
“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

I’m not going to get into a debate about Israel and their policies and actions involving Gaza, the West Bank or their neighbors. I’ll admit that there are things Israel has done and continues to do that I disagree with.

Those are political issues and, in many cases, there are legitimate arguments on both sides. That’s not what matters to me.

What I take issue with is the claims about depleted uranium. It plays no part in the ethics of Israel’s policies. In other words: It does not matter if Israel mounted a military campaign using munitions containing depleted uranium or lead or tungsten. If they are morally justified in using tungsten projectiles, then they are morally justified in using depleted uranium ones. If they are not morally justified in using tungsten projectiles, then they are no more or less justified in using depleted uranium ones.

Whether depleted uranium was used is as relevant as whether the projectiles were measured in imperial caliber gauge or millimeters.

That said, I doubt that they used depleted uranium. It has basically no advantages except in circumstances where it’s used in kinetic energy anti-armor rounds. For any kind of soft target or most structures it offers no advantages. It also tends to be more expensive by virtue of the difficulty in machining uranium.

It does not tend to stay in the air very long. Most falls from suspension. That which does stay in the air is dispersed to low concentrations. THere is already some uranium in the air. The earth is constantly generating dust that is suspended in the air, and some of it contains uranium by virtue of the fact that uranium is a very common mineral in the crust. Additional uranium is blown out the stacks of coal burning power plants or spread into the wind when phosphate fertilizers are applied to the ground.

The effects of these tiny amounts of uranium are negligible. If you should happen to inhale a few micrograms of the stuff it’s not going to do much of anything to you. It will be absorbed from your lungs into your bloodstream and filtered out by your kidneys.

Uranium is relatively easily filtered by the kidneys. It can cause renal tube damage if there’s enough of it, but there has to be a real real lot in your body and for an extended period of time to do that. The fact is your kidneys are pretty good at protecting themselves from toxins like uranium by diluting it and flushing it out.

The average human contains about 90-100 micrograms of uranium. That is just *average* and there are many who contain a lot more – depending on their diet and where they live. It’s not unusual for a person to have hundreds of micrograms of uranium in their body at any time.

This is a consequence of the fact that it exists in nature. Most groundwater supplies have some detectable level of uranium. Phosphate minerals contain uranium and plants will absorb a tiny bit.

None of this is reason for concern. The radioactivity of uranium is very very low. The total exposure is a drop in the bucket compared to the potassium-40 and carbon-14 in the average human, which produce orders of magnitude more radiation exposure. The chemical toxicity of uranium is pretty low. You would need to consume enormous amounts to actually have any real danger of any noticeable damage.

        Anon said:

There were always Zionists who were doing it for religion and not ethnicity (and they were very vocal about the homeland being nothing other than Palestine)

Zionism was not unique in conflating religious adherence with nationality. Greek nationalism was similar — the Karamanlis, who were Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians living in south-central Anatolia, were classed as Greeks by the Greek nationalists, while Greek-speaking Muslims living in present-day Greece were considered to be Turks. Similar things could be said about most of the other nationalisms which emerged among the Ottoman Empire’s Christian subjects (although this is perhaps because the Ottomans classified people by their religion, while ignoring ethnicity).

Actually, the 19th century was the beginning of racial anti-Semitism (in fact the very term “anti-Semitism” which was coined about that time, is a clue that it was a form of racism rather than religious bigotry).

        George Carty said:

Actually, as “Anon” pointed out, Zionism is an ethnic nationalism rather than a religious supremacism.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say rather, just more (Zionism was founded by secular Jews).

There were always Zionists who were doing it for religion and not ethnicity (and they were very vocal about the homeland being nothing other than Palestine) but it was more a reaction to the Christian anti-semitism of 19th century Europe (which eventually resulted in the Holocaust).

As if he ever really cared about the deaths of some Muslims any more than he cares about the deaths of some Jews.

        Steve said:

Israel is not defending itself from anybody and has been responsible for all the violence which has ensued since they first forced their way into others’ land and began their genocide.

I’m no friend of Israel, but don’t you think that word “genocide” is a tad inappropriate? If the Nazis had ruled Poland for as long as the Israelis had occupied Palestine, there’d hardly be any Gentile Poles left, let alone Jews…

Actually, as “Anon” pointed out, Zionism is an ethnic nationalism rather than a religious supremacism. The problem is that while in pretty much all other types of nationalism, the people concerned already had a homeland (a piece of territory where their group was the majority population), and the nationalists’ objective was either to:

1) Liberate the homeland from the rule of a foreign empire (eg liberate Czechia from the Austrian Empire, or liberate Greece from the Ottoman Empire), or
2) Liberate the homeland from the rule of three foreign empires (Poland), or
3) Overthrow the myriad of petty princes ruling the homeland so it can be unified as a single state (Italian and German nationalism).

By contrast, the Jews had no homeland, and so the Zionists would have to conquer one from some other people (they chose Palestine because of its religious significance). And in order to set themselves up as a nation-state (as opposed to imperial overlords of the existing inhabitants) they would have to expel most of the existing inhabitants.

Aren’t you ashamed to be nicking propaganda that was first used in the service of a butcher of Muslims far worse than the Israelis?

You know, Steve, that if they have been going for genocide, they’re really bad at it, given that the Palestinian pop is larger now than it was 44 years ago when Israel took the land from Egypt and Jordan.

        Steve said:

What a disgustingly biased and rotten article.

What a disgustingly bigoted and rotten comment.

While Likud (and the other ultra-religious parties) do deserve a lot of the blame it isn’t entirely the Israelis’ fault.

Though the US providing such uncritical support (largely because US Christians want the Jews to start their end times crap for them) hasn’t exactly been helping.

Much of the early Zionist movement was more based on ethnicity and not so much religion in which case it isn’t all that much different than other demands for an ancestral homeland.

Statistics?

I’ll go wait for you to make them up.

Israel is not defending itself from anybody and has been responsible for all the violence which has ensued since they first forced their way into others’ land and began their genocide.

Israel started the terrorism in the Middle East, committed the worst acts of terrorism and has been caught many times committing terror whilst pretending it was their victims. The King David Hotel bombing is just the most famous. The following is typical of all the wars Israel has engaged in.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin! In an unguarded moment in 1982, when he was prime minister, he admitted publicly:
“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.” Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Haaretz, 19 March 1972.

Israel never observed the cease-fire of 2008 to begin with. From the beginning, it announced a “special security zone” within the Gaza Strip and announced that Palestinians who enter this zone will be fired upon. In other words, Israel announced its intention that Israeli soldiers would shoot at farmers and other individuals attempting to reach their own land in direct violation of not only the cease-fire but international law.

Despite shooting incidents, including ones resulting in Palestinians getting injured, Hamas still held to the 2008 cease-fire from the time it went into effect on June 19 until Israel effectively ended the truce on November 4 by launching an airstrike into Gaza that killed five and injured several others.
Israel’s violation of the cease-fire predictably resulted in retaliation from militants in Gaza who fired rockets into Israel in response. The increased barrage of rocket fire at the end of December was used as justification for the continued Israeli bombardment, but was a direct response to the Israeli attacks.

The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated pieces of property in the world. The presence of militants within a civilian population does not, under international law, deprive that population of their protected status, and hence any assault upon that population under the guise of targeting militants is, in fact, a war crime.

Who is the occupier? Who is the most powerful military force? Who controls and blocks the necessities of life? Who has sent raiding missions across the border most often? Who has sent artillery shells and missiles at close range into populated areas? Who has refused the repeated comprehensive peace offerings of the Arab countries issued in 2002 if Israel would agree to return to the 1967 borders and agree to the creation of a small independent Palestinian state possessing just twenty two percent of the original Palestine?

Israel unilaterally broke the 2008 truce by an armed incursion on 4 November, which killed several Hamas men. In retrospect, this action must be seen as a deliberate attempt to provoke Hamas into a violent response, and thus provide Israel with a casus belli.

Hamas has recently shown signs of moderation. Its key spokesmen — including Khaled Mish‘al, head of its political bureau — have expressed their readiness to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. To Israel’s dismay, they have begun to distance themselves from the movement’s 1987 charter, which calls for Israel’s destruction.

Israel was founded on the belief that this piece of land was given to them by THEIR God as his chosen people and that they above all others have the right to claim superiority. It is who alone are granted citizenship under the law of return and Palestinians do NOT have that right, even though they had owned the land prior. So a Jew anywhere has the right to citizenship in Israel, while Palestinians are enslaved in the West Bank and Gaza, their every move controlled, their water stolen, their lives threatened, all so you Jews from WHEREVER can go there and claim your gift from your God.

It is a fact that Israel used Depleted Uranium Weapons in its attacks on Lebanon (based on more lies) and its attacks on Gaza. However the irony of this is tyhat Israel is seeing correspon ding increases in birth defects and in cancers, because after all, DU is indiscriminate and blows in the wind. This is not surprising because the little terrorist state has gone completely insane, its leaders make Hitlers band look like boy scouts and maybe no more evil and facist government has been seen in modern times. The only consolation to Israel’s victims is that the evil demon state is poisoning itself and its own polluted DNA at the same time as it brutalises them.

When the inevitable Arab-Israeli war of 1948 broke out, the Zionist army consisted of over 90,000 European-trained soldiers and possessed modern weaponry, including up-to-date fighter and bomber airplanes, while the Arab forces, very much a third-world army, consisted of approximately 30,000 ill-equipped, poorly trained men, leaving the outcome in little doubt.

Zionists obfuscate and deny this fact ever since and exaggerate their case as they always do with everything about their suffering.

        UraniumIsMurder said:

DEPLETED URANIUM IS NOT FOUND IN THE EARTH EXCEPT FOR WHERE WE PUT IT AND NOW IT IS EVERYWHERE AND CANT BE ESCAPED.

It’s not found on earth naturally yet, but if you wait long enough the natural uranium deposits will have enough of the shorter lived U-235 decay away top make them equivelent to depleted uranium. That is a strawman though because uranium-238 is found on earth and there is plenty of it, even if the isotope is not usually found on its own, it is less radioactive anyway. Depleted uranium is basically the same as natural uranium except a little less radioactive.

Uranium is abundant. You find it in soil. You find it in rock. You find it in sea water. Therefore, terrestrial dust has uranium dust in it, just like it has iron dust and aluminum dust. (oxides, that is, not the metal usually).

It was shown here that the single largest contribution humans have to uranium being added to the earths atmosphere and beind mobelized is coal burning.

Uranium is used as a projectile material for a simple reason, it cuts through armor like a hot knife through butter. It is not used much for anything else because it is more expensive to fabricate than other materials and it does not have much benefit when up against armor.

        George Carty said:

I don’t even understand WHY Israelis would use depleted uranium in Gaza. AFAIK Hamas doesn’t have any armoured vehicles (the targets that DU ammo is made for).

Which is a good reason why they didn’t use DU rounds, or if they did in very limited quantities. Politicians, propagandists, and activists have intoxicated each other with extremely misleading and unsubstantiated claims about the use of DU munitions, radicalizing the issue in a way that has had a chilling effect upon serious analysis. For once I would like to see soil samples, taken by a neutral party from these ‘contaminated’ areas put through a proper assay by a third-party lab. I would also like to see a proper radiological survey done with sealed calibrated instruments on suspected areas.

Some have been done by various media outlets, but guess what? They found nothing. But those stories don’t get repeated over, and over, like the dead baby lies do. The scientific debate is now bogged down in a mire because many of the statements made by extremists have become a muddled mixture of unverifiable statements, speculative assertions, and politically motivated falsehoods. In conditions like these good science doesn’t stand a chance.