281
Israel: White Phosphorus Used in Gaza, Lebanon
(www.reuters.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
281 points (94.6% liked)
News
22910 readers
3605 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
They probably used it, in 2013 Israel said they would phase out the use of WP but is not clear when this project would finish, also WP was used in literally every conflict before this by Israel. It is also important to note that WP is not forbidden by international law, but only close to civilians.
IMO is obvious that Israel would use this kind of weapon, IDK why ppl are so impressed. They are using the same tactics used by Russia of trying cut supply of food, fuel and water supplies in order to destroy the morality of everyone there.
And this is why I hate, while sharing all the beliefs of the discourse, USA and and west Europe, because what they say publicly does not match what they do.
At least China say openly that they want to protect their stuff, even when their stuff is not exactly their. USA and west Europe, in other hand, claim a moral superiority to their decisions while justify killing civilians with the Hammas violence, if you call it out they complain about whataboutism, dude, they are ignoring international law.
But isn't basically everywhere in Gaza close to civilians? Gaza city has about the same population density as Boston.
Yes it is, I'm not saying the opposite, it was just a fact I found interesting to share.
Pro tip: you can't head off claims of whataboutism my preemptively trivializing them. It doesn't work that way.
WP is forbidden as an incendiary weapon, not as a smoke screen or for illumination. I know the distinction seems silly, but there are actually no WP incendiary weapons in NATO inventories anymore. I don't know about Israel, but I assume the same is true since they have a lot of the same supply chains.
There is a pretty big functional difference though. WP incendiary rounds are basically cluster munitions intended to contain a solid chunk of relatively slow burning WP so that it can settle on objects and remain in contact for an extended period while it burns. This is why it's such a horrific weapon - because it will literally burn through roofs and people and keep burning.
WP smoke and illumination rounds can obviously light fires as well, but they are intended to burn much quicker to produce greater volumes of smoke and light. While you definitely don't want to get a coating of burning WP powder on your roof, it's much less dangerous than a golfball sized sub muntion which will spend a solid 10 minutes at 3000F.
None of the alleged videos of Israel using WP show incendiary rounds IMO. They are all illumination rounds. Though they do often seem to be deployed in a way which is more likely to make fires. Russia does the same thing. They use illumination rounds in a direct fire capacity to blind and discombobulate. This is still probably a war crime.
WP with a design meant to create shrapnel is absolutely banned. The only legal Phosphorus rounds are ones that have a small bursting charge after striking the ground.