More Illegal Weapons

US and Israel Targeting DNA in Gaza? 

The DIME Bomb: Yet another genotoxic weapon

James Brooks

"This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering, and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims?"

:: Part 1 of 3 ::

It’s been almost five months since the first report that Israeli drone aircraft have been dropping a “mystery weapon” on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since then, news media around the world have run stories depicting the strange and “horrific” wounds inflicted by the new bomb. The international press has spoken with Palestinian doctors and medics who say Israel’s new device is a kind of chemical weapon that has significantly increased the fatality rate among the victims of Israeli attacks. 

In mid-October, Italian investigators reported forensic evidence that suggests the new weapon may also represent the near future of US “counterinsurgency warfare”. Combined with photographs of the victims and testimony from attending doctors, this evidence points to the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME). 

DIME is an LCD (“low collateral damage”) weapon developed at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. Publicly, it is slated for initial deployment in 2008. DIME bombs produce an unusually powerful blast within a relatively small area, spraying a superheated “micro-shrapnel” of powdered Heavy Metal Tungsten Alloy (HMTA). Scientific studies have found that HMTA is chemically toxic, damages the immune system, rapidly causes cancer, and attacks DNA (genotoxic).

It is unfortunate that the US media have virtually blacked out the story of Israel’s new weapon, not least because our own military may soon be using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. The story might also have told us something about the grossly disproportionate brutality of Israel’s war on the Palestinian people—reason enough for the media to suppress it. 

Thanks to the intrepid Italians, the story could even have introduced Americans to their government’s DIME weapons program. This three-part article will ask whether Israel is ‘testing’ US DIME bombs in the Gaza Strip, and explore the workings, dangers, and projected use of DIME weapons and their roots in depleted uranium (DU) research. These parallels will lead us to consider DIME in its historical context, as the latest innovation in the US military’s long-running development of genotoxic weapons.

“They cannot return to life again”

The first reports about ‘Israel’s new weapon’ came from Dr Joma Al-Saqqa, chief of the emergency unit at Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa. Dr. Al-Saqqa said that Israel was using “a new ‘chemical’ weapon” and its siege was “a live exercise on a new ammunition that, so far, has resulted in killing 50 Palestinians and injuring 200.” He observed that, “despite the damage in internal soft tissue in the bodies of injured people, the fragments were not detected by X-ray. In other words, they had disappeared or dissolved inside the body.”

“There were usually entry and exit wounds,” Dr. Al-Saqqa reported. “When the wounds were explored no foreign material was found. There was tissue death, the extent of which was diff icult to determine….A higher deep infection rate resulted with subsequent amputation. In spite of amputation there was a higher mortality.” The effects of the weapon seemed “radioactive”. 

According to Palestine News Network, Dr. Al-Saqqa “confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again.”

“When the shrapnel hit[s] the body, it causes very strong burns that destroy the tissues around the bones…it burns and destroys internal organs, like the liver, kidneys, and the spleen and other organs and makes saving the wounded almost impossible. As a surgeon, I have seen thousands of wounds during the Intifada, but nothing was like this weapon.”

However, Dr. Al-Saqqa could not analyze the chemistry of the bizarre wounds. On the first day of the siege, June 27, Israel had conveniently destroyed Gaza’s only criminal laboratory. 

Despite his pleas to the “international community” to investigate and lend assistance in treating the victims, “no one has lifted a finger”, the doctor was quoted in mid-July. “What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing.” 

On August 3, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd had visited Dr. Al-Saqqa’s hospital, “where the staff is struggling to deal with wounds resulting in an unusually high number of amputations.” Commissioner AbuZayd commented that “what we saw in Al-Shifa...was rather horrific.” 

According to Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International), “75 per cent of war-wounded patients admitted at one hospital needed amputations” following an Israeli attack on Gaza City. 

The World Health Organization was reportedly considering an investigation into the injuries. Physicians for Human Rights - Israel “agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation.” 

Tungsten in Tissue Samples: A DIME Weapon?

On October 19, Italy’s Rai24news televised an investigative report that supplied crucial new information. The Italian investigators had tissue samples from the victims in Gaza analyzed by Dr. Carmela Vaccaio at University Parma. Dr. Vaccaio reportedly found “a very high concentration of carbon and the presence of unusual materials, such as copper, aluminum and tungsten.” The doctor concluded that her "findings could be in line with the hypothesis that the weapon in question is DIME."

Rai24news reporters also talked to Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former chief of the IDF's weapons development program. General Ben-Israel appeared to be familiar with DIME weapons. He explained that, "one of the ideas is to allow those targeted to be hit without causing damage to bystanders or other persons." 

The US Air Force refers to this emerging realm of weaponry as FLM (Focused Lethality Munitions). FLM is expected to provide the ‘weapons of choice’ for targeting “terrorists hiding among civilians”, as a cheerleading Wall Street Journal article put it. 

With “focused lethality [and] higher energy materials...nano particles, intelligent fuzing, [and] mass focus lethality”, the Air Force “will be able to strike effectively, wherever and whenever necessary, with minimal collateral damage.” Ominously, the military thinks these weapons will allow it to target sites "previously off limits to the warfighter." 

This warfare of the future is reminiscent of what Israel has been doing for years, but with one-ton bombs, 155-mm artillery shells, and tank-fired antipersonnel flechette bombs. Are FLM weapons like DIME an improvement? Or will they actually increase civilian casualties and suffering, and mimic depleted uranium weapons by inducing disease and genetic damage in their victims? These disturbing questions will be explored in the next installment of this article.