Webloggin » White Phosperous Lies

Last week an article in the Times of London reported that Israel was using white phosphorous shells. It was a charge that was echoed by Samir Kuntar’s BFF, Dion Nissenbaum, who questions the Israeli spokeswoman.

Yaacov Lozowick had some doubts about the Israeli military claimed, but noticed that someone did a little research. The photographic evidence, well, showed that Israel’s use of white phosphorous was, indeed, legal. Confederate Yankee looked at the marking on the shell casings and did a little research.

The full article goes into far more detail about the nuance about the difference between the use of “quick smoke” and “immediate smoke” for battlefield missions, but one thing is painfully obvious–these are artillery shells and they contain white phosphorus, but they are not incendiary weapons, and they are not, by any remote measure, illegal to use in Gaza or anywhere else. They are smoke shells, used to create smoke screens. The kind of white phosphorus artillery shells used as incendiary munitions are those called burster-type white phosphorus, and Global Security explains the difference between the incendiary and smoke rounds in sufficient detail .

The airburst Cernig and other terrorist apologists laments as an illegal attack is instead how a smokescreen is created to protect advancing soldiers. It is decidedly not an incendiary weapon, is decidedly not illegal, violating no laws or conventions.