Torture, No - Terror, Absolutely

The men shown here are hunting for unexploded cluster bomblets from Israeli weapons fired into southern Lebanon. The UN reports they're still finding an average of ten new sites every month. Israel, which left the Lebanese countryside littered with these weapons, won't tell the UN where they are. From the UN Human Affairs Office news service, IRIN:

"Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new sites per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.

All these weapons systems are computerised and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance,” Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN. The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets - most US-supplied - onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006 July war with Hezbollah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been agreed.

Cluster bombs, or sub-munitions, are legal, and manufacturers say their failure rates should be between 10-15 percent. The UN estimates in general the weapons fail between 20-30 percent of the time. In south Lebanon MACSL estimates between 30-40 percent of the bombs dropped failed to explode, rising up to 80 percent in some places.

The high failure rate may partly be explained by Israel’s use of Vietnam-war era munitions, such as the M42, M77 and Blue 63, all US or Israeli-made and the MZD2, made in China, many of which MACSL said had gone beyond their expiry date by the time they were dropped on Lebanon.

The Israelis also dropped the new M85 cluster bomb that is designed to self destruct if it fails to explode on impact and which manufacturers say has a 1 percent failure rate. MACSL’s Dalya Farran said they estimate the bomb, used for the first time on battlefields in Lebanon, had a 10 percent failure rate."

Refusing to assist in clearing these weapons or at least disclosing where they can be found is state terrorism, plain and simple. These weapons are serving no military purpose unless the Israeli government and its military see some benefit in killing and maiming Lebanese civilians.