What future lies ahead for the people of Gaza?

Peter Eyre

To give some comparison as to how harmful DU can be, we can revisit the report that was published late last year, as per below. The reader will clearly see the medical status pre-Balkans War, and the post evidence. This comparison has been repeated in so many areas of conflict with the best example being the pre and post medical reports from Southern Iraq, centered on the Basra area. We see time and time again the UN fail in its ability to represent its members and their respective populations. Simple logic has now revealed that Low Level Radiation (LLR), such as DU, is certainly a major health hazard and that an independent enquiry is urgently required. It must be carried out without any involvement by the respective governments, departments of defense, military or representatives from the nuclear industry. It should be monitored under the watchful eye of a select committee with total media transparency.

This article was published in Croatian "Javno" 2008:

NATO - Still killing People in Kosovo

Back in 1999 NATO carried out a 78-day shelling of Serbia and Kosovo. They allegedly used depleted uranium which continues to kill people.

Nine years after NATO's bombing of Serbia, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is still taking lives in Kosovo, Serbia's Press online reported. The NATO allegedly used shells with depleted uranium which are still today causing an increase in the number of cancer patients. Prior to 1999, the number of Serbs who suffered from malignant tumors was three times lesser, according to the statistics of Serb hospitals. In Kosovo's Kosovska Mitrovica in 2005 there were 38 percent more cancer patients than in 2004.In those two years, a total of 3,500 cancer cases in Kosovo Albanians were diagnosed. Globally, six people out of a thousand suffer from malignant tumors on average. In the Kosovska Mitrovica hospital, there are 200 cancer patients to 1,000 people.

NATO used weapons banned by international conventions?

After 2000, groups of experts in atomic energy tested water, food, air, plants and animals to establish the damage caused by radiation from NATO shells. Beta and Gamma radiation was higher than the permissible level and radiation was discovered in the soil, water, plants and animals. After it gets into the soil, it takes some 250 years for depleted uranium to degrade.

The conclusions of the studies were that the environment on 100 locations in Kosovo was not safe for animals or people, but no bans or moving of the population was carried out.

European peace troops stationed in Kosovo knew there was great danger of radiation in these areas. Italian military experts concluded in 2005 that 34 soldiers had died from leukemia and various malignant tumors. Since then 150 soldiers from Kosovo were sent home.

In mid-2000 NATO published a map with 112 marked locations that had been shelled with depleted uranium. Over the 78 days of NATO bombing, a total of 31,000 shells with depleted uranium, weapons banned by international treaties, were dropped in Kosovo. Objavljeno: 17.11.2008. u 12:04h.

It is interesting to note that only one country so far as attempted to address this major world DU contamination problem. Belgium voted unanimously on the 22nd of March 2007 to ban DU ammunition from the 20th of June 2009. It was stated that the Belgium Ministry of Defense had said that they haven't bought any and won't buy them in the future. The Foreign Minister was asked whether a ban would be possible, he replied "We can't do it, because NATO and the UN aren't encouraging it. So long as there is no international ban, it isn't possible for a small country like ours to ban them".

The fact that Belgium has embarked on this path is truly a remarkable achievement. The Port of Antwerp has in the past played a major role in both receiving and dispatching weaponry. It is even more remarkable that this small country houses the NATO Headquarters, in Brussels and is the political headquarters of the Alliance and the permanent home of the North Atlantic Council NATO' as well as US Nuclear Weapons. Belgium has managed to reach this wonderful decision despite the Belgium Prime Minister receiving a call from the US Government asking him not to let the ban go through.

A lot of money has been spent on poor quality research and the propaganda machine to reassure the public that Low Level Radiation (LLR) is no threat to health despite the fact that other independent experts have said the opposite.

The following is an extract from http://www.counterpunch.org/du.html dated 5th February 2001: Months of bombing of Iraq by US and British planes and cruise missiles has left behind an even more deadly and insidious legacy: tons of shell casings, bullets and bomb fragments laced with depleted uranium. In all, the US hit Iraqi targets with more than 970 radioactive bombs and missiles.

More than 10 years later, the health consequences from this radioactive bombing campaign are beginning to come into focus. And they are dire, indeed. Iraqi physicians call it "the white death"-leukemia. Since 1990, the incident rate of leukemia in Iraq has grown by more than 600 percent.

"The desert dust carries death," said Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, an oncologist and member England's Royal Society of Physicians. "Our studies indicate that more than forty percent of the population around Basra will get cancer. We are living through another Hiroshima."

This is part of a larger horror inflicted on Iraq that sees as many as 180 children dying every day, according to mortality figures compiled by UNICEF.

So what is the future for Gaza and all the people in the region? Only time will tell. The coming months and years will reveal the truth through medical statistics and by taking further samples from victims, bomb sites and fragments. Will the IDF be forced to admit it has used such weapons on both Lebanon and Gaza.......I don't think so!