The tiny state of Israel (It gets smaller the further it advances across Palestinian territories) is now the tenth largest arms exporter in the world. In 2022 alone, more than $12.5 billion in defense exports were collected. Its army is one of the best armed and trained and even has nuclear weapons.
But before they are exported to the world, the weapons developed by Israel must be tested to prove their performance and effectiveness. And Israel does this to human guinea pigs, the Palestinians. That’s what it shows Report by Paddy Dowling published on Al Jazeera.
“Tissue torn from flesh”
Ahmed Saeed alNajar, 28, was driving his taxi in Rafah during the third Gaza war in 2014 when a drone missile came through the open sunroof of his taxi. It exploded in the car, decapitating all six passengers, including his best friend, and killing them instantly.
The car was attacked by an Israeli Spike missile, which can be modified to carry a cluster bomb made of thousands of 3mm tungsten cubes designed to hit an area about 20 meters in diameter. According to Erik Fosse, a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, the cubes penetrate the metal and “tear the tissue from the flesh,” literally destroying anyone within reach.
AlNajar, who was rescued from the wreckage of his car, suffered severe burns, the loss of his right eye, multiple shrapnel wounds and the loss of his right leg at midthigh, which was amputated in the explosion.
But as early as 2014, the drones that carry the Spike missile were in high demand in other countries.
The Heron TP “Eitan” drone is Israel’s largest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and entered service in 2007. Manufactured by stateowned Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Israel’s largest aerospace and defense company and the country’s largest industrial exporter it can fly for up to 40 hours continuously and carry four Spike missiles.
According to the nongovernmental organization Drone Wars UK, the Eitan was first used to attack civilians during “Operation Cast Lead” in the 200809 Gaza war. According to Defense for Children International, of the 353 children killed and 860 injured during Operation Cast Lead, 116 died from dronefired missiles.
After the war, IAI recorded an increase in orders for Heron variant drones from at least ten countries between 2008 and 2011. During this period, more than 100 drones were purchased, rented or acquired through joint ventures.
That doesn’t mean Israel wages wars to test its weapons while simultaneously promoting them to potential buyers, experts say. “No one goes to war just to show off their weapons,” said Lawrence Freedman, professor emeritus of war studies at King’s College London.
However, “in every war against Gaza, a range of weapons and surveillance technologies have been used against the Palestinians, which were then marketed and sold to various nations around the world,” said Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist and author. from the Palestine Laboratory.
“An insurance policy”
Arms exports have benefits beyond the revenue they bring to Israel.
“It is more than that, it is also an insurance policy to protect against the intense pressure to change their behavior during the decades of Palestinian occupation,” Loewenstein said.
Last month, Colombian President Gustavo Petro refused to condemn Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack as a “terrorist attack,” instead replying that “terrorism is killing innocent children in Palestine.”
In response, the Israeli government suspended all sales of defense and security equipment and related services to the Latin American country.
Israel is by far the world’s largest exporter of military drones: in 2017 it was estimated that it was responsible for almost twothirds of all UAV exports (aircraft that can fly without requiring a human on board) in the previous three decades .
According to the Israel Military and Security Export Database (DIMSE), Elbit, manufacturer of the Iron Sting, supplies up to 85% of the ground equipment purchased by the Israeli military and about 85% of its drones.
But after the Gaza war in 2014, its export market also grew significantly. Elbit promotes its Hermes UAVs as “combat proven” and the “IDF’s primary platform in counterterrorism operations.”
The Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 were both used extensively in Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 2014 war in which drone strikes accounted for 37 percent of deaths, according to an estimate by the Gazabased Al Mezan Center for Human Rights .
Elbit subsequently secured contracts for the new Hermes 900 drone with more than 20 countries around the world, including the Philippines, which purchased 13, as well as India, Azerbaijan, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Iceland, the European Union, Mexico , Switzerland and Thailand. In March 2023, Elbit Systems announced its 120th order for the Hermes 900.
Hard to prosecute, armed dictatorships and coups
Despite all the successes in military exports, the full extent of Israel’s defense industry sales remains hidden.
A 2019 Amnesty International report said the entire process by which Israel sells weapons is shrouded in secrecy: “Without sales documentation, there is no way to know when.” [estas armas] were sold, by which company, how many and so on.”
Amnesty concluded that “Israeli companies exported weapons that arrived at their destination after a series of transactions, thereby circumventing international monitoring.”
Israel has not ratified the Arms Trade Treaty, which bans the sale of weapons that pose a risk of being used in genocide and crimes against humanity. Therefore, its arms exports have influenced the course of history of several nations, many of which were led by controversial regimes.
According to declassified documents, Israel sold weapons to the apartheid South African government in 1975 and even agreed to supply nuclear warheads although Israel denies this. Napalm and other weapons were supplied to El Salvador during the counterinsurgency wars between 1980 and 1992 that killed more than 75,000 civilians.
In 1994, Rwandanmade bullets, guns and grenades were allegedly used in the Rwandan genocide, which killed at least 800,000 people. Israel supplied weapons to the Serbian army, which waged war against Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.
Despite the Israeli government’s own declaration in 2018 that it had stopped sales to Myanmar, the Haaretz newspaper reported last year that weapons manufacturers continued to supply the military government until 2022, in violation of the 2017 international arms embargo against the country represent.
And in September this year, Israel delivered drones, rockets and mortars to Azerbaijan for its campaign to retake NagornoKarabakh, which displaced 100,000 ethnic Armenians.
Proven effectiveness in “human animals”
Two days after the Hamas attack on October 7, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant compared the Palestinian people to “human animals“.
For Loewenstein, the dehumanizing comments were no surprise. “During the Israeli occupation and countless wars, it is evident that Palestinians are treated as secondclass citizens. Like animals,” he said.
Over the years, the Israeli military has tested rubber bullets, robotic weapons with artificial intelligence and various forms of mass dispersal that have inflicted serious injuries on Palestinians.
Nabeel alShawa, a consultant orthopedic surgeon who has worked in Gaza since 1978, treated many Palestinians injured by Israeli fire during the 2018 Great March of Return when tens of thousands of Palestinians demanded return to the land where they lived in 1948 forcibly removed.
“For the Israeli snipers, it was just target practice with people,” he said. “Most patients were intentionally shot in the joints to cause maximum damage, not to kill.
“These new bullets that the Israeli army used caused injuries that I had never seen before. In some cases the limb appeared to be intact, but during the operation I could not distinguish between bone and soft tissue.”
New weapons test in Gaza in 2023?
Ashraf alQudra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said in a press release last week that medical teams in the enclave “observed severe burns on the bodies of Palestinians killed and injured by Israeli bombs whether caused by an unknown person.” . “Weapon or no weapon they haven’t seen that in previous conflicts.”
Dr. Ahmed elMokhallalati, of the burns and plastic surgery unit at alShifa Hospital, described the wounds as “very deep third and fourth degree burns, and the skin tissue is penetrated by black particles” in an interview with the Toronto Star most of the thickness of the skin and all the layers beneath it have been burned to the bone.”
ElMokhallalati said it was not phosphorus combustion, “but a combination of some kind of incendiary bomb wave and other components.”
The Israeli military has not yet commented on the Gaza Ministry’s statement. But mysterious firebombs, the debut of the Iron Sting and the alleged use of the new Spark drone in the current war suggest that Israel is once again testing new weapons in the conflict.
“Israeli weapons will continue to be attractive to international buyers because of occupation performance,” Loewenstein said. “But Israel doesn’t just sell weapons; They sell the ideology to other countries so they can get away scotfree.”
war crimes
On October 22, the Israeli army released footage of its Maglan commando unit firing a new 120mm precisionguided mortar bomb called the Iron Sting against Hamas in Gaza.
The bomb’s Haifabased manufacturer, Elbit Systems, has been touting its qualities on the PR page of its website since March 2021, when it was integrated into the Israeli military.
Benny Gantz, then Israel’s defense minister and now a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet, described Iron Sting as “Designed to accurately strike targets in both open terrain and urban environments while reducing the possibility of collateral damage and preventing injury to noncombatants“.
It’s a claim shared by Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s former spokesman, about the country’s general approach to its war on Gaza, with Israel, he said, “trying to be as surgical as possible.”
But more than a month after Israel bombed the Gaza Strip from the air following a surprise attack by Hamas, at least 11,400 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 30,000 injured in the besieged Strip and the occupied West Bank. More than 4,700 children in the Gaza Strip are dead. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in the attack on October 7th.
One of two things: Either Israel’s propaganda is a lie and Iron Sting doesn’t have the surgical precision they talk about; Or it happens and Palestinians are deliberately murdered, a practice known as genocide.
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