Horrific US Weapon Vaporizes Palestinians

Al Jazeera reports that a series of advanced US-made thermobaric (“thermobarbaric”) weapons have been supplied to the IDF, which has used them in Gaza.  The weapons combine chemical elements to raise the temperature of the explosion to 3500ºC (6332ºF). It impacts the target with horrific results, in which the victim’s entire body vaporizes, leaving nothing but blood stains and bits of skin not consumed in the explosion:

Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.

“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminum, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”

…The intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.

Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.

“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”

According to Gaza Civil Defense teams, which have meticulously documented such attacks, they’ve killed 3,000 Palestinians.  In the school massacre referenced below, 100 people were slaughtered:

At dawn on August 10, 2024, Yasmin Mahani walked through the smoking ruins of al-Tabin school in Gaza City, searching for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming, but of Saad, there was no trace.

“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic for an investigation that aired on Monday. She searched hospitals and morgues for days. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

These macabre weapons are blatantly illegal under the laws of war because they indiscriminately kill civilians and combatants and because they violate the laws or proportionality. Nor is this the first instance in which such weapons have targeted civilian victims.  In previous invasions of Gaza, the IDF has used white phosphorus and another ghoulish weapon called DIME:

Israeli is using the Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) weapon devastating lethal effect in Gaza [2006]. The tungsten and carbon in the bomb explode with such force that they create micro-shrapnel which in effect severs the limbs of victims just below the genitals. It essentially fries the skin and organs with which it comes into contact and amputates limbs with the effect of a circular saw.

…Maj.-Gen (res.) Yitzhak Ben-Israel, former director of the IDF’s weapons lab speaks ghoulishly of the weapon being perfectly suited for urban environments (like Gaza) because according to him, you can kill an intended victim while leaving an innocent bystander standing nearby unharmed.

Neither the IDF nor the Israeli weapons industry developed DIME. That honor goes to–you guessed it–the US Navy:

DIME munitions…were developed by the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. and tested at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, according to the Navy League of the United States.

Just as the Nazi Luftwaffe exploited the Spanish Civil War to perfect its weapons and air combat training in preparation for WWII, the US is exploiting Palestinians as “useful” victims in testing its most obscene experimental weapons systems.  After it completes a proof of concept in the killing field, they can be sold to buyers around the world, who can perform their own acts of mayhem on an ever widening circle of victims.  Israel and the US are monstrous partners in sowing global misery.  They are criminal states. Yet they may never be held accountable because both have conducted a scorched earth battle against international human rights bodies like the ICC and ICJ.  They no longer can offer effective forms of accountability because member states refuse to enforce their judgments.

The rules based order is dead. We may blame Israel and the US. But every western country that refuses to uphold ICC rulings is equally culpable.  Humanity created a wonderful tool to enforce a global moral code that banned genocide.  Humanity has now destroyed it.  Paraphrasing Hosea: “We have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.”