Israel's Chemical Weapons Capability

"Following the horrors of World War I... civilized nations joined together to ban chemical warfare... The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons. Establishing this deterrent is a vital national security interest of the United States." (From Full text of Trump's address regarding airstrikes in Syria)

OK. Well, now you've punished Syria for its alleged gas attack, how about Israel for its actual gas attacks? James Brooks' extensive essay The Israeli poison gas attacks: A preliminary investigation, (mediamonitors.net, 8/1/03) details these.

Here's a most interesting extract from chapter IV, Israel's chemical weapons capability:

"Regardless of official pronouncements, the Israeli government has had a deep and abiding interest in the full range of chemical and biological warfare agents. It is well known that Israel has been developing chemical and biological weapons for decades at its Institute of Biological Research (IIBR) complex in Nes Ziona, near Tel Aviv. The facility has been involved in, among many other things, 'an extensive effort to identify practical methods of synthesis for nerve gasses (such as tabun, sarin, and VX) and other organophosphorus and fluorine compounds.'

"One of the IIBR's specialties is inventing novel delivery systems for chemical weapons. One example is a revolver with a range of 150 feet. On impact, a bullet from this weapon injects a needle impregnated with a deadly toxin. The whole affair is designed to penetrate just enough to deliver a fatal dose, and leave little or no trace of the needle.

"IIBR's expertise is also highly scalable. In the aftermath of a tragic 1992 air crash in Amsterdam, the large scale production of nerve gases at IIBR became very difficult to deny. An El Al 747 jumbo cargo jet, flying from New York to Tel Aviv, plowed into a 12-story Amsterdam apartment building, killing the four people on the plane and at least 43 people on the ground in an instant inferno. Teams in while Hazmat suits, never identified or acknowledged by officials, descended on the scene and hauled away certain debris. The Dutch and Israeli governments assured the public that the plane had been carrying 'perfume and gift articles,' and 'no dangerous material' was on board.

"In time, a syndrome of debilitating and chronic health disorders beset at least 850 local survivors. They and their doctors suspected a connection to the El Al crash. In 1998, a Dutch newspaper partially leaked the flight manifest; 20,000 pounds of chemicals had been on the plane, including large amounts of three of the four ingredients needed to make sarin, a deadly nerve gas - enough, when properly mixed, to annihilate a major world city.

"Finally, El Al admitted the presence of the three chemicals. But the identity of one-third of the chemicals on the plane remains a secret to this day. A Dutch citizens group, OVB, literally dug deeper to learn more. They found that soil at the crash site was tainted with uranium, zirconium and lanthanum. Tests also found depleted uranium in the stool samples of local survivors, which, doctors said, corresponded well with the symptoms suffered in the post-crash health syndrome."

See also Salman Abu Sitta's essay, Traces of Poison, weekly.ahram.org.eg, 27/2/03.