Does the picture in the article look like white phosphorous to you?
WP or Willy Peter(as I'm old school) dates back to WW1 and has been traditionally a very good smoke agent for smoke screens. The picture with the article first posted IMO doesn't look like WP because the yellow color indicates a higher sulfur content. My guess or assumption since they had no actual photo of a Gaza WP explosion, the newsroom pulled the first photo to attach to the story.
The photo is irrelevant because no such photo evidence at this point is needed for proof. The story is founded on Israeli admission that they used WP in Gaza. To quote an Israeli gov't official from story itself:
“Yes, phosphorus was used but not in any illegal manner,” Yigal Palmor, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told The Times.
Your point of the photo being factually incorrect is valid and most likely correct as well but it doesn't undercut the fact that WP was used. Now the debate will center on "in what manner" which will swirl the debate of legality or not. The Geneva Convention prohibits WP use on civilians and in civilian areas as does Art. 1 of Protocol 3 of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/int/convention_conventional-wpns_prot-iii.htm and this is where the debate will now center. Was the purpose for smoke or was the smoke a decoy and the real idea was incendiary? I'm sure this will get hotly debated as this goes forward.
I wanna address something going forward that not only sez where I'm coming from in the age old conflict of Jew verses Muslim but it also gets to the heart of why I think our presence in the Middle East will be fruitless in the end no matter how great a job we do. Old Testament Jewish Law as well as Talmudic Law does not distinguish women and children ie civilians in warfare when jewish peoples oppose non-jewish peoples in war. Their law is clear that all will be slaughtered as "YHWH" commanded them to do. You do not have to look far at all to find such beliefs common even among christian ranks. Here's just one quick example:
Israel was required to obey God's commandments as a representative son. Israel was under the covenant. In order to declare the covenant authoritatively, a person must be under the terms of the covenant. To remind them that they were under these terms, Moses warned them of God's chastening. There had been negative sanctions imposed on national Israel for her disobedience. These sanctions testified to Israel's status as a son. Chastening was a negative sanction intended to restore the father-son relationship. It was not a sanction designed to beat down and destroy those brought under them. It was not the permanent negative historical sanction that God demanded that Israel impose on the inhabitants of Canaan.
Israel's status as a firstborn son reveals why God told Israel to destroy Canaan. The Canaanites were second-born sons of God: disinherited sons. They were occupying the inheritance of the firstborn son. But why did this give Israel the right to kill them? In the Mosaic law, there was only one case where a family member was authorized to take part in the execution of another family member: when the convicted member had tried to lure the sanctions-bringing member to worship a false God (Deut. 13:6-10).
Canaanites were a threat to Israel because they would eventually lure Israel into false worship. This was the reason God gave Israel for destroying the Canaanites. The presence of Canaanites in the land would be a constant source of temptation (Ex. 34:11-16). If allowed to remain in the Promised Land, the Canaanites would eventually become bonded to Israel through marriage (Ex. 34:16). As the second-born sons in the household, they would lead Israel into rebellion against the Father. God knew this, and so He announced that He had judged the Canaanites in advance and had found them guilty. Israel had to serve as God's executioner. The firstborn sons and the second-born sons could not occupy the same landed inheritance.
https://web.archive.org/web/2005042...ve.com/freebooks/docs/html/gnde/Chapter19.htm
Going further at the link, Ismaelites were firstborn but they've even rationalized an answer to offset that problem too.
This theme of the inheritance of the firstborn and second-born sons is found repeatedly in Genesis. Again and again, the firstborn son proved to be the disinherited son. It began with Adam's rebellion; the inheritance was transferred to God's chronologically second-born son, Jesus Christ.
(2) The second-born Son became the firstborn judicially. This theme of the rebellion of the firstborn continued with Cain's slaying of Abel. Esau was also the firstborn, but God told Rebekah that the younger would rule the elder (Gen. 25:23). This repeated reversal of the legal pattern of inheritance was based on God's grace in re-inheriting the younger brother through adoption while condemning the disinherited older brother. The Canaanites as elder brothers had gained possession of the land, but as disinherited sons, their claim was invalid. Israel, by God's grace, had become the firstborn son with lawful title.
This is the rational for the Christian to now dis-inherit the Jew as the sons of YHWH and therefore jewish Kingdom is meaningless. And at the conclusion at the link, now in the fullness of time and as Israel takes possession of her promise from YHWH, she will obey YHWH and cleanse the land in order to obey.
The second-born gentile sons of Canaan had been disinherited by God in Abraham's day: "But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full" (Gen. 15:16). This verbally imputed disinheritance -- what we might call definitive or judicial disinheritance -- was to be achieved progressively: "I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land" (Ex. 23:27-30). This disinheritance was to be finally achieved in history: "When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girga****es, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them" (Deut. 7:1-2).
Oddly enough muslim law which also springs from the same Abrahamic source contends the same thing when is comes to purifying the land of non-beleivers. In this part of the world you are literally dealing with the same religious laws and foundations on each side at the fundamental level but the difference is one believes Moses the great anchor of law and the other believes it to be Mohammad. I say let these 2 brothers fight it out now and be done with it and the winner inherits their father Abraham's promise in Gen. 15.
"Show no mercy unto them" sure seems to fit the bill but in all honesty the muslims show the same towards others outside their faith so I say it's a family tradition!
Will the UN and other international bodies now challenge religious dogma as they move forward looking for solutions to peace? This could get real interesting IMO. I wonder sometimes if Marx wasn't right when he said religion is the opiate of the masses!
For the record I happen to know the author of the link above and while I could have posted vastly more provocative material say from a John Hagee or other christian Zionist voice, I choose Dr. North because he is moderate by far in belief in these areas (his post-millennial views don't necessiate the need of a new jewish state to fulfill prophetic needs of coming Kingdom) but yet he still displays a strong root problem even in moderation in trying to resolve a solution in the Middle East IMO although the point of the linked article was not for that purpose. I posted to show the attitude of people that compounds the whole problem in the first place as it relates to dogma and doctrine.
You can change all the conditions of the region you like but at the heart of the conflict are millenia old religious dogmas that most likely only death itself will ever break. Although I don't conclude in the same manner in areas of christian thought as Dr. North and his late father-n-law Dr. RJ Rushdoony, I know both men, read many of their works and respect them both very highly. It was Rushdoony himself who in the early 80's who first exposed me to Mises and libertarian ideas but then I walked further to the obvious end of the road and found Rothbard and anarchism. I believe North has to some degree done the same.
Our only choice is to get out of the middle of this fight completely, back neither side in any way, shape or form and when the death and destruction becomes severe enough on both sides, maybe then they can work it out as literal brothers should! There in lie the road to peace in the Middle East.
JMHO.
