The United States used it in Fallujah in 2004. Israel reportedly deployed it in Lebanon in 2023. And now, according to Human Rights Watch, it's back again. In the second front in the current spiraling Middle East conflict that has opened in Lebanon—HRW reports—Israel has reportedly used white phosphorus munitions once again over populated areas.
This was not the first time I had read about this chemical—a deadly incendiary often used for illuminating areas, but which causes gruesome burns if it touches human skin—in the past week. The New York Times reported a few days ago that one of the motives behind Trump's executive order to protect the chemical glyphosate is due to its role in producing WP—a major source of profit for U.S. arms makers.
From mustard gas to napalm to white phosphorus, then—round and round it goes. It seems the history of war just keeps repeating itself. Human beings just can't stop coming up with ways to drop scalding deadly chemicals on one another. To quote Thomas Hardy (whose poems Lytton Strachey once observed offer few comforts to the sentimentalist):
"Peace on earth" was said, we sing it
And pay a million priests to bring it
After two thousands years of mass
We've got as far as poison gas.
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