Rasa - Saudi Arabia is using child soldiers in its war on Yemen, and this goes against international laws and norms. RNA - This has helped the usurper regime to market its military technology as “battle-tested” and “combat-proven”. As a consequence, not only have Israeli arms exports, including banned weaponry, quadrupled between 2002 and 2018, the regime is leading supplier of drones, and was even given a contract by the US to build a high-tech “virtual wall” on the US-Mexico border in 2014:
- Less than one month after Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza dubbed Operation Protective Edge - in which more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed, including more than 500 children - Israel hosted an annual drone conference. Organized in partnership with the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, “Israel Unmanned Systems 2014” offered Israeli weapons’ manufacturers an opportunity to show their products, many of which were tested on Palestinians earlier that year. One of the sponsors of that conference was G-NIUS, which was formed as a joint venture between Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of Israel’s most prominent arms manufacturers.
- Because of its use during the assault on Gaza, G-NIUS was able to present its product as “combat-proven.” It so happened that Elbit’s stock jumped to its highest level since 2010 during the 2014 Gaza attack. A piece in Bloomberg Businessweek explained, “The conflict between Israel and Hamas is fueling speculation that Elbit Systems Ltd., the nation’s biggest listed developer of military technology, will see more government orders for its defense products.”
- One product that was deployed operationally for the first time during Operation Protective Edge was Elbit’s Hermes 900, an advanced aerial attack and surveillance drone. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, “The Israeli army used this drone to deliberately target civilians during the 2008-2009 attack on Gaza, killing scores of Palestinians.”
- In East Jerusalem Al-Quds, Israel has used black sponge bullets against Palestinian protesters. These bullets are manufactured by Combined Tactical Systems, a Pennsylvania-based firm that also supplies Israel with tear gas. The company’s brochure for these bullets contains a note marked “Caution.” It reads: “Shots to the head, neck, thorax, heart or spine can result in fatal or serious injury.”
- According to Shlomo Brom, a retired Israeli brigadier general, who works at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel-Aviv, Israeli arms companies use the fact that their products have been tested on Palestinians to gain international business. He says, “Israeli marketing professionals try to use any advantage and if they can use the advantage that this system was tested operationally and it worked, they will, of course, use it for marketing.”
On balance, and despite international criticisms and condemnations, “proven combat performance” is still one of Israel’s strongest military technology and weapons sales promotions. The international civil society has the legal means and tools to stop Israel from using Gaza and the West Bank as its weapons lab, or the unarmed and defenseless civilian Palestinians as guinea pigs in a deliberate conflict that is a profitable business for Israel and its American partners.
There can be no denying that Israel profits from the prolonged conflict and from the testing of arms on the population Israel occupies and then the marketing and sales of these weapons as “combat proven,” on the more than four million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. As is often the case, Israeli wars serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, strategies and weaponry, allowing them to develop and market systems for long-term surveillance, control and subjugation of an “enemy” population.
The lessons learned are clear: It is in the best interests of the international community that they not remain silent, or worse, buy Israel’s “combat-proven” weapons. Capitalizing on widespread horror at Israeli human-rights abuses, it is still possible for the United Nations to successfully integrate Palestinian human rights into the larger anti-war and progressive agenda at the General Assembly. Palestinian human and civil rights should be right there at the center of the UN General Assembly as many member states fight Israeli racism and terror, resist US-led wars of aggression and terror, and brighten the landscape for Palestinian rights with anti-Israeli apartheid resolutions and sanctions.
However, there is still a lot more works to do at the UN to get the United States and other Western governments to respect Palestinian human rights. This includes pressuring Western companies to withdraw from contracts and operations in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, and to withdraw from joint ventures in arms manufacturing and sales.
By ratifying so many resolutions against Israel at the UN, the international civil society has made it clear that it doesn't want to whitewash Israeli human rights abuses and it doesn't want to see the deepening of relationships between foreign governments and institutions responsible for Israeli violence and terror in occupied Palestine. It’s a sign that the tide has turned at the national and international levels towards support for Palestinian rights and away from backing Israel’s occupation.
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