Following on from our use of other non-lethal methods of riot dispersal, Israel has reportedly started using “bouncing rubber ball bullets.”
But as this blog post on the subject from Sky News correspondent Dominic Waghorn illustrates, we just can’t win.
In this week’s clashes in Umm al Fahm, Sky cameraman Pete Milnes got this shot of a new weapon in the Israeli paramilitary police armoury.
Look closely at the police line towards the left to spot it. A bouncing rubber ball bullet hurtles towards the stone throwers. It is a rubber plastic ball. They are coloured blue and fired up in the air making them hard to see coming with the sky behind. Plenty of top spin guarantees they come back down to Earth, bounce and then into the target, in this case an Israeli Arab youth who yowls in pain.
They are fired at a relatively low velocity but hurt like hell when they hit you. Colleagues who have also been hit while trying to cover clashes say they are disconcerting because the seem to come from nowhere and leave a bruise and a stinging agony.
Not to be confused with what Brits call rubber bullets, thick rounds of plastic fired from guns and not plastic bullets either which are plastic coated steel projectiles.
The Israeli police tell me they are non lethal and non penetrative. You wouldn’t want one in the eye though.
Notice how Waghorn cannot just report the story. He feels the need to inject comments emphasizing how painful they are, as if to insinuate that the Israeli police are using them as a form of sadism, instead of as a way to disperse riots while avoiding fatalities.
Riots in which palestinians hurl rocks and molotov cocktails, which I can assure Mr Waghorn are potentially deadlier than these rubber ball bullets.
Update: Funnily enough, Waghorn has been accused of being “Israel’s Mossad correspondent at Skum News.”
