Zionist Regime Admits Using Drones to Kill Palestinians
WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime on Wednesday described what has been an open secret for two decades — that it has used drones not just for surveillance but also in strikes within the occupied territories, against Palestinians in Gaza, and possibly targets as far away Sudan.
Zionist censors in July permitted publication of information about the armed drones and the chief of regime’s artillery corps — which runs the drones together with the air force — used his speech at an industry forum to give what he described as a first public account of the armed versions of the pilot-less planes.
Whereas previously he could only offer hints, “today I can speak of this openly,” Brig.-General Neri Horowitz told the annual UVID DroneTech conference hosted by the regime’s magazine in Tel Aviv.
He said the armed drones not only provide the occupying regime with additional firepower, but also allow, in a single platform, for both the detection and attack against targets. However, in practice the attacks have left many civilians dead.
He disclosed that when fighters from Egypt burst into southern parts of the occupied territories in a hijacked armored vehicle in May 2012, they were destroyed in a drone strike.
The Zionist regime is expanding its drone forces, whose personnel are 30 percent female, Horowitz said, adding that the artillery corps was replacing its cannon insignia with concentric circles representing the incorporation of the aerial platforms.
At the same conference, Brig.-General Omri Dor, commander of Palmachin air base, said drones now accounted for 80 percent of the regime’s military’s operational flight hours.
However manufacturers of armed drones remain barred from advertising them and none of them were among the models on display at the conference.
‘Rising Extremism
Among Zionists’
Outgoing Zionist war minister, Benny Gantz, warned Wednesday of rising extremism inside the occupied territories, Anadolu News Agency reports.
“The extremism in society and in the cabinet is what bothers me,” Gantz said in statements cited by The Jerusalem Post newspaper.
Opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is set to form the upcoming cabinet in the regime after his right-wing alliance won last week’s legislative elections.
Netanyahu’s camp won 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset (the regime’s parliament) against 51 seats for members of the current cabinet led by prime minister, Yair Lapid.