(Beirut, October 12, 2023) – Israel’s use of white phosphorus in
military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of
serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in
releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus. Human
Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10
and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of
artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural
locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people
who described an attack in Gaza.

White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and
obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects,
has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and
set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on
fire. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely
populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and
violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting
civilians at unnecessary risk.

“Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it
poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said
Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights
Watch. “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst
in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause
egregious harm to civilians.”

<continue reading>

https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/israel-white-phosphorus-used-gaza-lebanon

Benjamin Netanyahu should be hanged as a war criminal.

https://youtube.com/shorts/cS37emjPslA?si=FF20GPIEdHopsgrY

In article <k99jiihnbfsajmugngthgm6prutmp8ajpu@4ax.com>,
thickirish@cunt.com says...
>
> ?Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it
> poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,? said
> Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights
> Watch. ?White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst
> in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause
> egregious harm to civilians.?
>
>

I do not know what was used by the US in WW2 in Japan but we fire bombed
a city and burnt it to the ground. The 2 nukes killed many of the
citizens. Some of that was allegedy for pay back for the attack at
Pearl Harbor. Seems we did not worry about human rights back then.

Ralph Mowery wrote:
===================
>>
>
> I do not know what was used by the US in WW2 in Japan but we fire bombed
> a city and burnt it to the ground.

** It was good old Napalm, ignited by a white phosphorus fuse.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo

> The 2 nukes killed many of the
> citizens. Some of that was allegedy for pay back for the attack at
> Pearl Harbor.

** Fake news.

The aim was to finally shock Japan into surrendering and end the war pronto.
It worked.

> Seems we did not worry about human rights back then.

** Japan never did - see one example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre

..... Phil

On Saturday, October 14, 2023 at 4:26:19 PM UTC+11, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:32:00 -0400) it happened Susan Cohen <thick...@cunt.com> wrote in <k99jiihnbfsajmugn...@4ax.com>:

<snip>

> So WW3 is at the horizon, I personally think 2024..
> rules of war? There are none!
> There is an old saying I think: 'Never start a fight that you cannot win'
> Hamas killed many and the reaction of Israel killed even more,
> So maybe politics would be a way out, but then you need different leaders in Israel,
> return the land to the Palestinians, settlements...
>
> Israel won't.
> When US collapses after getting nuked by the rest of the world (they keep asking)
> maybe after that WW3, if any left, climate change mass migration..
> Human species..
> ?

Not that Jan Panteltje is a member of the human species. He hasn't proved it by mating with another member of the species and producing off-spring that are recognisably human. He may pass for human, but we'd have to sequences his genome to be sure, and my guess is that he'd fail.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Friday, October 13, 2023 at 4:32:09 PM UTC-4, Susan Cohen wrote:
> (Beirut, October 12, 2023) – Israel’s use of white phosphorus in
> military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of
> serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in
> releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus. Human
> Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10
> and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of
> artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural
> locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people
> who described an attack in Gaza.
>
> White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and
> obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects,
> has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and
> set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on
> fire. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely
> populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and
> violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting
> civilians at unnecessary risk.
>
> “Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it
> poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said
> Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights
> Watch. “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst
> in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause
> egregious harm to civilians.”
>
> <continue reading>
>
> https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/12/israel-white-phosphorus-used-gaza-lebanon
>
>
>
> Benjamin Netanyahu should be hanged as a war criminal.

HRW is out to lunch. There is no tactical or strategic reason for Israel to be using white phosphorus in Gaza, at this point of time. Many of the traditional reasons for its use are totally obsolete. If anyone is observing a white phosphorus detonation, it almost certainly due to a bomb or artillery hit on an Hamas weapons cache containing the incendiary. The mid-air explosion looks more like a rocket intercept than an airburst.

On Friday, October 13, 2023 at 6:36:54 PM UTC-4, Ralph Mowery wrote:
> In article <k99jiihnbfsajmugn...@4ax.com>,
> thick...@cunt.com says...
> >
> > ?Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it
> > poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,? said
> > Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights
> > Watch. ?White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst
> > in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause
> > egregious harm to civilians.?
> >
> >
>
> I do not know what was used by the US in WW2 in Japan but we fire bombed
> a city and burnt it to the ground.

That would be Tokyo bombing of March 1945, five months before the surrender.. The death toll was estimated at 200,000 by the U.S. And at the time Japan confirmed the estimate, but only to downplay the damage. More modern analysis of digitized vital statistics kept by Japan have since upgraded the the actual death toll to a more realistic 1.5 million deaths.

>The 2 nukes killed many of the
> citizens. Some of that was allegedy for pay back for the attack at
> Pearl Harbor. Seems we did not worry about human rights back then.

The U.S. was being quite deceptive with their B-29 bombings. It was known at the time the atomic bomb was on the way, so they targeted militarily important cities in Japan for which immediate destruction was vital, but they left some cities un-bombed and pristine because they wanted as stark a contrast as possible post-nuke. That would be Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Kyoto for sure, and maybe some others on standby in the event of weather interference ( which got Nagasaki and saved Kyoto btw). The bomb used on Hiroshima was the world's first dirty bomb. The A-bomb developers knew they had a problem with storage and disposal of excess U-235, so they packed it in the very primitive Hiroshima bomb. The Hiroshima bomb did not use the implosion method of detonation, it used a gun trigger. The gun trigger uses a low explosive to send half the critical mass down a small gun barrel at very high velocity, which then collided into more critical mass at the terminus, causing a low yield detonation, estimated to be approximately 1%, which is probably and overestimate and lie. So the overwhelming mass of the nuclear material went unreacted to be scattered to the four winds. This was an effect the strategists were intentionally striving for. Succeeding bombs used implosion.. That and more caused the 'ultimate' death toll to be MUCH MUCH greater than the anyone admitted to. Everyone thinks Truman ordered the bomb drop, but in reality, he did no such thing. The only order Truman ever gave was to stop dropping them entirely, after he saw the aerial reconnaissance of the destruction in Hiroshima. The first bombings were already pre-authorized during the Roosevelt administration and their orders were to proceed when ready, no executive level permission required.

The WW2 fire bombing of Hamburg and Dresden were just as horrendous.

All these incendiaries use gelatinous petroleum, gasoline or diesel, which is first dispersed and then later ignited by something intense like phosphorus. The idea is the gelatin hits and sticks to a point area, so when ignited it will burn at one concentrated spot at very high intensity, causing the target to combust.

The fire bombings were much more than just dumping a load of bombs. There was very careful assessment of the flammability of the target areas, in addition to the idea they would ignite a bunch of small fires over a wide area which would then coalesce into a humongous firestorm engulfing the entire city.

Long history here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_device

On Friday, October 13, 2023 at 10:26:19 PM UTC-7, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:32:00 -0400) it happened Susan Cohen
> <thick...@cunt.com> wrote in <k99jiihnbfsajmugn...@4ax.com>:
> >(Beirut, October 12, 2023) – Israel’s use of white phosphorus in
> >military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of
> >serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in
> >releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus. Human
> >Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10
> >and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of
> >artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural
> >locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people
> >who described an attack in Gaza.
> >
> >White phosphorus, which can be used either for marking, signaling, and
> >obscuring, or as a weapon to set fires that burn people and objects,
> >has a significant incendiary effect that can severely burn people and
> >set structures, fields, and other civilian objects in the vicinity on
> >fire. The use of white phosphorus in Gaza, one of the most densely
> >populated areas in the world, magnifies the risk to civilians and
> >violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on putting
> >civilians at unnecessary risk.
> >
> >“Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it
> >poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said
> >Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights
> >Watch. “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst
> >in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause
> >egregious harm to civilians.”
> It is funny how the US just stated that Israel should respect the 'rules of war' I think they call it,
> after US nuked Nagasaki, Hiroshima civilians, used Agent Orange on civilians in Vietnam, used depleted Uranium ammo in Iraq
> and now supplies cluster ammo and depleted Uranium ammo to Ukraine.
>
> So what is 'rules of war?' there ARE no rules of war.
> If somebody attacked me I would strike back ..

By treaty and precedent, some rules DO apply to armed conflict,
and are important for... eventual peace and peace treaties.

> There is an old saying I think: 'Never start a fight that you cannot win'

Exactly how Gandhi saw it. There's a problem with use of violence, in
that it causes a delay in any kind of peace and reconciliation. Nonviolent
means are the quickest path, the best precursor, to any satisfactory
peaceful result.

If there's no peace, no one wins anything of importance.