Cut to pieces: the Palestinian family drinking tea in their courtyard Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles – the dreaded drones – caused at least 48 deaths in Gaza during the 23-day offensive
Clancy Chassay

Mounir al-Jarah slowly takes down the bricks he used to wall up the entrance to his sister's courtyard. Inside, flesh still clings to the walls; blood-soaked furniture and family items lie broken and mangled.
Mounir's eyes search around the old house as he recounts the events of 16 January, when a rocket fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle killed his sister, her husband and four of her children.
Sitting around drinking tea with the family in their small courtyard, Mounir heard the loud buzzing of an Israeli drone, clearly visible in the sky above.
He went inside for a moment and, as he returned, he saw a ball of light hurtling down toward him. There was a loud explosion and he was thrown backward. He gathered himself and stumbled out into the courtyard, where he saw the scene he says will never leave him.
"We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt – his eyes were gone. Wahid's father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn't see her head anywhere."
All six members of the family had been blown to pieces, coating each wall of the narrow enclosure with blood and body matter.
"You cannot imagine the scene: a family all sitting around together and then, in a matter of seconds, they were cut to pieces. Even the next day we found limbs and body parts on the roof, feet and hands," Mounir says.

Civilian casualties from Israeli drones Link to this video

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Unmanned aerial vehicles and the warfare of inequality management


Jimmy Johnson, The Electronic Intifada, 17 February 2009

Aeronautics Defense Systems, based in the Israeli city of Yavne, was recently awarded a contract by the Dutch Ministry of Defense "to supply unmanned air vehicle capacity to Dutch troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan." [1] The Netherlands is not the only nation to employ Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in foreign occupation. They are also utilized by Canadian, US, UK and Australian forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their foreign sale has developed largely because of significant use in the wars against and occupations of Lebanon and Palestine. A variety of Israeli firms are developing new unmanned aerial, terrestrial and nautical vehicles. As these are proven in combat, here it can be expected that they too will be exported to foreign forces.Israel was the first country to widely adopt and integrate UAVs into its armed forces beyond their use as gunnery targets for anti-aircraft training. The US made somewhat sporadic use of the machines for intelligence gathering in south China and Vietnam during the Vietnam war but it wasn't until Israel led the way that Washington started to recognize and exploit their potential value. "The Israeli Air Force pioneered several UAVs in the late 1970s and 1980s that were eventually integrated into the United States' UAV inventory. US observers noticed Israel's successful use of UAVs during operations in Lebanon in 1982, encouraging then-Navy Secretary John Lehman to acquire a UAV capability for the Navy." Military esteem of Israeli UAVs further grew after the first Gulf War when Israel Aircraft Industries' Pioneer "emerged as a useful source of intelligence at the tactical level during Desert Storm. Pioneer was used by Navy battleships to locate Iraqi targets for its 16-inch guns." [2] Earlier restrictions on UAV operational capacity have fallen away with the dramatic increases in computer processing power and sensor technologies that allow for higher resolution photo and video transmissions and improved communications. The speed of technological advance in the field has led to constant reassessment of unmanned vehicles' battlefield potential and the dedication of increasing resources to development and procurement by armed forces worldwide. The US's National Defense Authorization Fiscal Year 2001 legislation declared "It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that ... by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned." [3] Just five years later, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review increased that to 45 percent. [4]

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