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Since time immemorial, the entire global media fraternity has been divided between Israel and

Palestine. While on one hand, a set of media has been strongly supporting Israel, on the other,there has been as staunch a support for Palestine. Amidst all this, the debate still lingers

which one of the two, Israel or Palestine, is wrong? But then, how can one be right and how

can the other be wrong? In other words, how can any one of them be right! Supporting any of

these nations would essentially and fundamentally mean supporting the very doctrine of war.

In no given circumstance has a war been the appropriate route to a solution! Thus, the very

discussion of which country is wrong or right gets futile, if one were to view the entirety of the

situation through the lens of humanity.

War, has alwaysespecially in recent historybeen a tool to display a nations military might.

It is a way of flaunting newly developed state-of-the-art weaponries and defence technologies.

War today provides a platform for selling arms in the open market. It is very easy to deceivethe world during any war and to shift global focus from the actual objectives. When United

States invades a minnow like Afghanistan or Iraq, the spotlight is shrewdly thrown on

perspectives like the clash of civilizations, terrorism, imposing democracy, or removing a

tyrant. The majority never notice the underlying and the real reason behind the invasion to

spur the global weapons trade market! Wars give opportunities to developed countries to test

and showcase newly developed weapons.

Arms trade is a huge business and it is (and has perhaps always been) expanding globally at a

breakneck speedwith the leading player in this space being United States, with its massive

infrastructure of research and development of weapons, that invariably warrants rabid

marketing and promotion for economic viability. Yes, thats the word there are no betterpromotional strategies for weapons than live demonstrations; and for implementation of the

same, the US has been in the want of some scapegoat investees. What can be a better

opportunity to display the might of weapons to potential buyers than during a war?

Capitulating to that, almost all media channels across the world, 24x7, in their local

languages, describe the destructive capacity of these weapons in their breaking news war

coverage. The result? Free global promotion, which otherwise would have cost millions and

would have also come under huge global criticism!

The desperation of American arms manufacturers to test new weapons is evident from the

fact that US alone has more than 44 arms manufacturing companies with a combined sales

amounting to more than $200 billion (as of 2007, per the SIPRI 2012 report) more than theGDP of around 150 different nations! Lockheed Martin, one of the largest manufacturers of

missiles and space artillery, alone sold arms worth $35,000 million in 2007, which, is seven

times the GDP of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The same kind of weapon propaganda goes on unabated in the Gaza Strip, where Israel acts

as a testing agent for US arms companies. And all these are not phenomena of the last two

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decades. Even during the 1960s, the experiments of the US war laboratory in Vietnam were

compared to the belligerent and ghastly war crimes committed by the Nazis!

Israels bid to engineer the usage of experimental weapons in Gaza is gaining momentum. A

weapon in vogue now is a shell containing white phosphorous, which causes terrible burn

injuries when in contact with the skin. Under international law, phosphorous is considered as

a chemical weapon when used against civilians yet, Israel is using it, despite having come

under an extensive barrage of criticism from international human rights groups. Israel

maintains that its arsenal stocks are in compliance with international standards; but the

phosphorous shells that it fires, is an anomaly to these claims. It must be mentioned here that

the arms that Israel uses are either imported directly from the United States or are developed

by independent American arms manufacturers or are built within Israel by a company, which

invariably has stakes in/from a parent US weapon maker. For instance, the often used DIME

(Dense Inert Metal Explosive) by Israeli forces is one that was developed by the United States.

The weapon is in its developmental stage and is being used in Gaza as a testing ground.

In the same light, Uncle Sams adventure in Iraq was a foreign mission deliberately designed

to set up a living laboratory inside the country to test Americas weaponry improvement. For

example, the marines deployed during the second Gulf War were endowed with a specific

Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) that was tested against the feeble resistance of Iraq.

Apart from LRAD, also in the queue was the Active Denial System that was tested during the

Iraq war. Some of the other lethal weapons tested on Baghdad civilians and those in other

parts of Iraq were e-bombs, sensor fused weapons, agent defeat bombs and laser weapons. All

these weapons were lethal and sometimes were even banned by international human rights

groups (one example is the laser weapon, which was banned in 1995). Similarly, built by the

General Atomic Aeronautical Systems in January 1994, the much-touted drones, which are

being sold across the world now, were first tested in the Balkans. And by 1995, these

intelligence gathering unmanned vehicles (UAV) were doing surveillance work over the skies

of Bosnia. They were also tested later in the skies of Kosovo; and by 2001, the Predator

drones were equipped with Hellfire missiles and got deployed even in places like Yemen as

assassination weapons. However, these unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs for short, became

famous in the weapons market only after they displayed their destructive might in Afghanistan

and later in Iraq.

Whenever the US and other developed nations are ready with a fleet of weapons that needs to

be tested, they create an Iraq, Afghanistan, or even a Gaza. War today has morphed into a

testing ground for weapons, from where the great arms trade begins! It all started decades

ago and continues as Gaza burns!