Dumb munitions inevitably lead to indiscriminate killing
JVL Introduction
Israel’s claims to have the highest regard for civilian life in its carpet bombing of Gaza is belied by one simple truth: a large proportion of the bombs being dropped are “dumb”.
They are without guidance systems, reliant on gravity, and any selection of targets comes with a wide margin of error.
They are, indeed, similar to Hamas’s unguided rockets, which Israel, the US and human-rights organisations have condemned precisely because they are indiscriminate in their effects when fired into dense population areas.
The revelation here is that many of these are being drawn from War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Israel, weapons stockpiled by the US in Israel, containing any number of dumb bombs, in addition to those Israel manufactures for itself.
By way of example:
The 155mm shells [known to have been recently transfered to Israel] are particularly hazardous, according to Marc Garlasco, a former UN war crimes investigator, as each shell releases 2,000 lethal fragments, and “their accuracy degrades over distance, increasing the likelihood of civilians and civilian infrastructure getting hit by errant shells”.
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Wed 27 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Gaza war puts US’s extensive weapons stockpile in Israel under scrutiny
Israel appears to be receiving munitions from stockpile, but there has been little transparency
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Yes, the carpet-bombing with ‘dumb’ weapons shows the utter contempt for Palestinian lives, but is it not even worse that the most advanced 21st-century weapons are being used to carry out deliberate assassinations of poets, journalists, activists of every kind? Perhaps the dumb weapons are now in store for Lebanon and the advanced ones are headed for Qatar. How the UN can allow this to continue is beyond me.
@ Amanda Sadly, the UN can only do what its constitution and membership countries permit it to do … and what it can afford to do with the resources the countries give it. It’s far from being the “world’s policeman”. It’s even further from being a world government in embryo.