In solidarity with Lebanon's The Land Remembers campaign for an immediate and unconditional ban on white phosphorus munitions in all forms of warfare and St. Louis, Missouri's ICL Out of STL campaign to block the city of St. Louis from giving $200 million for expansion to Israel Chemicals Limited, a company that, with its partner Monsanto (Bayer), is the monopoly supplier of white phosphorus weapons to the U.S. War Department, the Organic Consumers Association is asking Congress to stop buying white phosphorus weapons and work for a ban.
TAKE ACTION: Ban Monsanto (Bayer) & Israel Chemicals Ltd's White Phosphorus Weapons!
The Land Remembers petition states, "White phosphorus is a chemical weapon that ignites upon exposure to oxygen, burning at over 800°C. It inflicts horrific injuries, contaminates land and water, and renders entire regions uninhabitable for generations. In South Lebanon, its repeated use has scorched fields, homes, and bodies — turning landscapes into lingering sites of violence and toxicity."
This is a tragedy not only for the people of Lebanon, but for the entire region's food security and world food heritage. Lebanon has the highest proportion of agricultural land in the Middle East. "Modern wheat’s earliest ancestors – einkorn, emmer, and spelt – can still be found growing here in the wild." That's according to Land Stories, a project of Jibal, a non-governmental organization dedicated to environmental and social justice that works with Lebanese farmers who are preserving the ancient traditions of "the Fertile Crescent, home to history's first farmers and the center of origin of the Triticeae family of wild grasses, to which wheat, rye, and barley belong."
Israel's use of white phosphorus weapons is supported by the U.S. Department of War and its monopoly suppliers of white phosphorus, Monsanto (Bayer) and Israel Chemicals Ltd. This was exposed in Corruption Tracker's 2024 report, "Behind the Smoke: The Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus."
ICL Out of STL has the receipts showing that since 2020, the War Department has ordered and paid for over 180,000 pounds of white phosphorus to be produced by Israel Chemicals Ltd at its Carondelet location and shipped via the river to the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. "From Pine Bluff, the white phosphorus is then shipped to the Israeli occupation forces and used against Palestinian civilians in internationally recognized war crimes. White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary weapon that heats up to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit, melts flesh off of bone, and international law bans its use against civilians. White phosphorus artillery shells with Pine Bluff Arsenal codes were identified in Lebanon and Gaza after the Israeli Defense Forces unlawfully used them over residential homes and refugee camps, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International."
The Land Remembers petition was launched by the Collective for Architecture in Lebanon at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale in an artistic presentation of a seed library, including bricks of soil embedded with seeds. To learn more, watch this fascinating discussion with members of the collective about rare varieties of agricultural and ornamental plants preserved in Lebanon:
At the 2025 People's Food Summit, OCA political director Alexis Baden-Mayer spoke with Beirut-based historian and writer Zeaad Yaghi, author of the report "Pathways Towards Food Sovereignty in Lebanon," on the current food crisis, exacerbated by Israel's use of Bayer and Israel Chemicals Ltd's white phosphorus weapons supplied by the U.S., as well as ICL Out of STL activists in St. Louis fighting ICL's city-funded expansion:
TAKE ACTION: Ban Monsanto (Bayer) & Israel Chemicals Ltd's White Phosphorus Weapons!