Media Release published in French on 29 October 2023
On 28 October 2023 the Israeli army reported the bombing of 150 underground sites in Gaza during the night of 27-28 October, as a prelude to its announced land offensive.
These bombings are not new. The first of this kind happened late 2008 to early 2009 during the "Hardened Lead" operation, using American-made bombs delivered to Israel shortly before then by the USA. These were bombs called GBU-39B (Guided Bomb Unit 39B), also called SDB-1 (Small Bomb Unit-1), made by Boeing, with a penetrating casing made of Depleted Uranium - though that metal was kept secret.
At the time, knowing that the dispersion of radioactive DU presents a genetic and genocidal risk, ACDN attempted to alert French and international opinion about it. The alert was heard internationally, but as usual the French media preferred not to breathe a word of it.
It is surprising that the IDF, which mocks this radioactivty and uses in its tanks some arrow-heads tipped with DU (see the photo below), has not begun with these bombs, since underground is where the leaders and agents of Hamas place their weapons, their munitions, their food supplies, and since they find underground the protection that they refuse to the population living on the surface. The IDF could have used only those, which would have spared the lives, the physical safety, and the survival of the Gazan (and foreign) civilians - i.e. the carnage perpetrated by Israel since 7 October in retaliation for the carnage done that day by Hamas. That would have also spared Israel its growing unpopularity, and saved the Jews of the world from an increase in antisemitism.
It is highly probable that the underground sites in Gaza targeted today are being hit either with the remainder of the GBU-39s delivered in 2008, or with other ones sent more recently by the USA, for example the day after October 7 - and that could explain, among other reasons, the delay in beginning the "land offensive".
Useful information about the GBU-39B is in our REPORT On the use of radioactive weapons in the Gaza Strip during « Operation Cast Lead » (27 December 2008 - 18 January 2009) published on 4 July 2009. Journalists wishing to inform the public could refer to it and quote it, mentioning the source of course, or providing a link.
Dan Cohen, a comrade of the soldier Gilad Shalit (then a hostage) near the Gaza border. Photo published on 25 June 2007 on the website of the paper Yediot Aharonot.
At first sight, there is no link between the current bombing of Gaza and the fact that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. Yet that is what gives the Israeli government the feeling of being invincible or at least the assurance that pushes it to impose its unjust and colonial laws on the Palistinians, in contempt of international law. Yet the atom bomb does not give protection from terrorism or from war. On the contrary, it provokes terrorism and encourages war.
Now as wars are waged in Ukraine and the Middle East, despite all the atom bombs supposed to ensure peace by terror (even because of them), it is time to repeat what ACDN has not stopped saying since it was founded in 1996: there will not be lasting peace anywhere in the world as long as these weapons exist. We must more than ever negotiate their abolition - that would mean resolving at the same time, by diplomacy, the regional conflicts from central Europe to the Far East, passing through the Middle East. Abolition and detente cannot be separated. Only this virtuous circle can lead to peace.
As we wrote in 2005: "The existence of Israel is an unavoidable fact. One can always dream - as did Hannah Arendt and others - of an israelo-palestinian federation, a secular, tolerant state that would be pluri-ethinic and pluri-cultural. That is perhaps the solution for the future (let the people concerned say so!), the solution that would pacify hearts and minds, and reduce the politico-religious fanaticism which fosters terrorism and state conflicts. We are far from that, and from any other peaceful solution. But Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons is precisely the thing which keeps the fire burning underneath."
Of all the nuclear-armed states, Israel is probably the one which, if negotiations began, would be most opposed to abandoning its nuclear bombs. Yet no state would have greater interest in doing so: Israel will not forever keep its nuclear monopoly in the region. It would be better to exchange it now for a peaceful cohabition with the Palestinians, by recognising their rights, and with a reciprocal recognition of its existence by the Arab and Muslim countries that surround it.
See on line:
Vanunu and the question of nuclear weapons lie at the heart of the problems in the Middle-East
Arab states say Israel used ammo in Gaza that contained depleted uranium
