An official of a California company that sells tear gas to Israel said Wednesday that its use is “the most humane way of controlling crowds.”
“That’s why it was developed in the first place,” Burl Alison, a vice president of the Los Angeles-based Trans Technology Corp, said in a telephone interview.
She was responding to a demand from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) that the company stop shipping tear gas canisters to Israel.
In a March 31 letter to Trans Technology President Dan McBride, Abdeen Jabara, president of the ADC, charged that the “lethal gas” is responsible for the deaths of 32 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, since the disturbances began in early December, as well as at least 100 miscarriages suffered by Palestinian women.
He asked that no more gas be sent to Israel “until such time as Trans Technology is satisfied that its product is being used in accordance with its own published guidelines for usage.”
Yosef Gal, the spokesman at the Israeli Embassy here, said Wednesday that the ADC’s death figures were “purely propaganda.”
He said that Israel’s use of tear gas possibly caused one death in the territories since December, but even that was not certain.
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