BMA’s anti-Israel backer made ‘vaporiser’ claim
V ONE OF the backers of an anti-Israel letter published by the British Medical Journal last month had earlier suggested that Israel tested silent “new particle weapons” in Gaza that vaporise all living things, the JC can reveal.
Campaigner Dr Swee Ang, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Barts Health NHS trust and a founding trustee at the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, joined more than 200 doctors last month in speaking out against a “return to the ‘normality’ of occupation and blockade” in a BMJ letter about the 11-day war.
It has since emerged that in 2008 she co-wrote a blogpost for the since-closed Lancet Global Health Network website about an “extremely destructive” silent bomb targeting people in Gaza: “The bomb arrives as a silent projectile at most with a whistling sound and creates a large area where all objects and living things are vaporized with minimal trace. We are unable to fit this into conventional weapons but the possibility of new particle weapons being tested should be suspected,” the piece, titled The wounds of Gaza, and co-written with Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, said.
It was taken down in 2009 because it contained factual inaccuracies, the publisher said at the time.
The article also backed the idea of setting up a defence force for Gaza. “If the international community is serious about preventing such a large scale of deaths and injuries in the future, it will have to develop some sort of defence force for Gaza. Otherwise, many more vulnerable civilians will continue to die,” the article said.
Dr Ang drew media coverage in 2014 after it emerged she had sent an email endorsing an antisemitic video made by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. She later said that she was unaware of his identity or KKK ties. Dr Ang did not return a request for comment.