CARTOON: American Fragmentation Bombs Shredding & Maiming Children Across Gaza

"Israeli officials have also said the military is operating without "restraints" and soldiers have testified that women and children are seen as legitimate targets."

FRAGMENTED MORALITY…

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STATE WAR CRIME: Doctors Report Israeli Use Of Illegal Fragmentation Bombs Eviscerating Children Throughout Gaza

A man carries a child injured in an Israeli attack at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on July 9, 2024. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

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Doctors said they found shrapnel made of three-millimeter-wide metal cubes while operating on children whose bones and organs had been seriously injured despite just scratches on their skin.

"X-rays showed demolished bones with a pinhole wound on one side, a pinhole on the other, and a bone that looks like a tractor trailer drove over it," Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, told The Guardian.

By Julia Connely
Common Dreams (7/11/24)

Doctors who have had to perform "a constant flow of amputations" on injured children in Gaza said Thursday that the injuries they have witnessed were consistent with the use of "fragmentation bombs" loaded with shrapnel—which Israel has used in the past and which rights groups have said are designed to cause maximum casualties.

Volunteer doctors who have worked at European Hospital and al-Aqsa Hospital over the past three months told The Guardian that a majority of the patients they operated on were children who had wounds that were barely discernible—called "splinter injuries" by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California—but caused catastrophic internal damage to the children's bodies.

"About half of the injuries I took care of were in young kids," said Sidhwa. "Children are more vulnerable to any penetrating injury because they have smaller bodies. Their vital parts are smaller and easier to disrupt. When children have lacerated blood vessels, their blood vessels are already so small it's very hard to put them back together. The artery that feeds the leg, the femoral artery, is only the thickness of a noodle in a small child. It's very, very small. So repairing it and keeping the kid's limb attached to them is very difficult."

“Fragmentation sleeves"

The Guardian also spoke to explosives experts who reviewed pictures of the shrapnel found by medical staff and the doctors' descriptions of the tiny external wounds they treated on seriously injured children, and said the accounts were consistent with bombs the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fits with "fragmentation sleeves" around warheads.

Amnesty International first documented the IDF's use of fragmentation bombs in Gaza in 2009 and said the explosives "appear designed to cause maximum injury and, in some respects, seem to be a more sophisticated version of the ball-bearings or nails and bolts which armed groups often pack into crude rockets and suicide bombs."

One weapons expert told The Guardian that Israel has claimed the weapons are more precise than large bombs designed to damage and destroy buildings.

"But when they are fired into areas with high concentrations of civilians living in the open with nowhere to shelter, the military knows that most of the casualties will be those civilians," said the expert, who spoke anonymously because he works with the U.S. government, a vehement supporter of Israel's assault on Gaza and the largest international funder of the IDF.

The U.S. and Israel have repeatedly dismissed international outcry over civilian casualties in Gaza, where at least 38,345 people have been killed since October. [Note the medical journal The Lancet has put the total number at 186,000-plus.] The Biden administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government have insisted that the IDF is targeting Hamas, even as top Israeli officials have also said the military is operating without "restraints" and soldiers have testified that women and children are seen as legitimate targets.

The Guardian story is the latest evidence that Israel has "launched a full-on war against a civilian population," said Canadian Member of Parliament Charlie Angus of the New Democratic Party.

Demonic design

Doctors said they found shrapnel made of three-millimeter-wide metal cubes while operating on children whose bones and organs had been seriously injured despite just scratches on their skin.

"X-rays showed demolished bones with a pinhole wound on one side, a pinhole on the other, and a bone that looks like a tractor trailer drove over it," Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, told The Guardian.

Last December, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that in the first 10 weeks of Israel's bombardment of Gaza, about 1,000 children had lost at least one limb to amputation. The current number is unknown.

Doctors have reported that severe shortages of medicine and medical supplies have made it more likely that they will have to amputate injured arms and legs. Children are also more likely to struggle to recover from their operations without antibiotics and painkillers, and unsanitary conditions have made infections common.

Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said the doctors' accounts brought to mind the Biden administration's claim months ago that a cease-fire "would only benefit Hamas."

"Restraining Israel in October rather than enabling its operations in Gaza," said Finucane, "could have avoided a lot of dead and mangled children."

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YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Despite Israeli War Crimes, Biden Sends Israel Even More 500-Pound Bombs

Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel more than 20,000 heavy bombs, which have been used in some of the deadliest massacres in Gaza.

A U.S. soldier secures a load of 500-pound bombs in this undated photo. At some point, every soldier in the US military needs to ask themselves if they really want to be part of genocidal war crimes. There are no “good” or “innocent” participants in a campaign of war crimes. (Photo: U.S. Army)

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By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams (7/10/24)

The Biden administration has ended a two-month pause on the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel despite the frequent use of U.S.-supplied weapons by Israeli forces to commit alleged war crimes and genocide in Gaza.

Citing an unnamed Biden administration official, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the bombs "are in the process of being shipped" to Israel and should arrive in the coming weeks.

In May, the Biden administration suspended transfers of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs manufactured by aerospace giant Boeing over fears the devastating munitions would be used in airstrikes on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge.

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Since October the U.S. has sent Israel 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.

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By that time, Israel had already dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs—which the U.S. military avoids using in civilian areas because they can destroy entire city blocks—on Gaza, including in an October 31 attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.

Intentional, deliberately targeting civilians

Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Office said Israel's use of 2,000-pound bombs and other U.S.-supplied weapons likely violated international law by deliberately targeting civilians in disproportionate attacks. Israeli military commanders have also been criticized for using artificial intelligence-based target selection to approve bombings they know will cause high civilian casualties.

The Biden official told the Journal that the pause on 2,000-pound bomb shipments will remain in effect.

"Our main concern had been and remains the potential use of 2,000-pound bombs in Rafah and elsewhere in Gaza," they said. "Because our concern was not about the 500-pound bombs, those are moving forward as part of the usual process."

Doing what Boeing does best: kill

But Israeli forces have killed many civilians with smaller bombs too. The New York Times reported Wednesday that multiple weapons experts including a a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician identified a fragment from a Boeing-made GBU-39 250-pound bomb used in Tuesday's attack on a refugee tent encampment outside the al-Awda school in southern Gaza that killed and wounded scores of civilians, including many women and children.

Palestinian and international agencies say Israel's 278-day Gaza assault and siege have left at least 137,500 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for crimes including extermination.

American genocide denial

Despite overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes, the Biden administration remains Israel's most steadfast supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid, approving more than 100 arms shipments, and offering diplomatic cover in the form of United Nations Security Council vetoes and what critics call genocide denial. …

Israel had already dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs—which the U.S. military avoids using in civilian areas because they can destroy entire city blocks—on Gaza, including in an October 31 attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.

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