We went to Yohmor to find where Hussein Ali Ahmad had received his terrible wounds while pruning his orange tree. The village is at the end of a broken road, six miles south of Nabatiyeh, and is overlooked by the ruins of Beaufort Castle, a crusader fortress on a ridge above the deep valley along which the Litani river runs.

Israeli bombs and shells have turned about a third of the houses in Yohmor into concrete sandwiches, one floor falling on top of another under the impact of explosions. Some families camp in the ruins. Villagers said that they were most worried by the cluster bombs still infesting their gardens, roofs and fruit trees. In the village street, were the white vehicles of the Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG), whose teams are trying to clear the bomblets.

It is not an easy job. Whenever members of one of the MAG teams finds and removes a bomblet, they put a stick, painted red on top and then yellow, in the ground. There are so many of these sticks that it looks as if some sinister plant had taken root and is flourishing in the village.

"The cluster bombs all landed in the last days of the war," said Nuhar Hejazi, a surprisingly cheerful 65-year-old woman. "There were 35 on the roof of our house and 200 in our garden so we can’t visit our olive trees." People in Yohmor depend on their olive trees and the harvest should begin now before the rains, but the trees are still full of bomblets. "My husband and I make 20 cans of oil a year which we need to sell," Mrs Hejazi says. "Now we don’t know what to do." The sheer number of the bomblets makes it almost impossible to remove them all.

Frederic Gras, a de-mining expert formerly in the French navy, who is leading the MAG teams in Yohmor, says: "In the area north of the Litani river, you have three or four people being killed every day by cluster bombs. The Israeli army knows that 30 per cent of them do not explode at the time they are fired so they become anti-personnel mines."

Why did the Israeli army do it? The number of cluster bombs fired must have been greater than 1.2 million because, in addition to those fired in rockets, many more were fired in 155mm artillery shells. One Israeli gunner said he had been told to "flood" the area at which they were firing but was given no specific targets. M. Gras, who personally defuses 160 to 180 bomblets a day, says this is the first time he seen cluster bombs used against heavily populated villages.

An editorial in Haaretz said that the mass use of this weapon by the Israeli Defence Forces was a desperate last-minute attempt to stop Hizbollah’s rocket fire into northern Israel. Whatever the reason for the bombardment, the villagers in south Lebanon will suffer death and injury from cluster bombs as they pick their olives and oranges for years to come.

Source: The Independent  

Even injured political prisoners are forced to work, according to Friday’s Nablus-based report. A former prisoner stated, “I had a broken bone but the soldiers forced me out of my cell to work anyway, without any consideration for the pain.”

There are approximately 375 Palestinians in Telmond Prison, with most of them being children. The oldest Palestinian in Telmond is 22 years old. The child laborers are given two meals per 24 hours, one at 11:00 pm and another at 6:00 am.

Israeli prison officials also attempt to extract information from children regarding members of the armed resistance and engage in frequent psychological abuse

According to the Information Center there are 200 children less than 16 years old in Israeli prisons begin subjected to some of the worst forms of exploitation and humiliation. A total of 376 Palestinian children are currently imprisoned in Israeli prisons and detention camps.

Firstly, it should be noted that the airport police, all ex aeronautical military police, were previously under the control of the Defence ministry and military command. Since the ‘Four winds’ (drugs) scandal however, control of this unit has passed to political funcionaries of the Kirchner (Argentine President) government. For various reasons, the unit is experiencing serious problems, among which is the precarious nature of their job security caused by the many failures of their new bosses in the interior ministry of the Krichner government and the many conflicts between the two.

According to various airport sources, including the members of the airport security unit, a verbal argument erupted between members of the unit and and members of the Krichner government who wanted to free the Israeli diplomat because there was no precedent for this type of arrest, which included the implication that if anything were happen as a result of the release of the bomb-laden Israeli diplomat, the blame would fall on the airport security unit.

Towards the invention of a "third attack"

For years, various reporters and indepdendent researchers have been highlighting the false nature of the "attacks" on the Israeli embassy in Argentina and on the headquarters of AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association which was "truck bombed" in July 1997 and the blame placed on Hizb’allah)

For example, the online magazine "Libertad de opinion" conducted an exclusive investigation into the Israeli embassy truck bombing in Buenos Aires in July 1997 (blamed on Islamic Jihad) in which it revealed reports submitted to the Supreme Court by engineers who had studied the scene of the embassy bombing and who asserted that there was in fact no truck bomb, that the building was destroyed by an implosion from within the building and that a crater was created before hand to provide evidence for the claim by local Zionist organisations that a truck bomb was the cause.

In May of 1999, the print edition of the same magazine (Libertad de opinion) published another shocking article in which it revealed the clues and questions that led many investigators to dismiss the "Islamic terrorist" hypothesis and to conclude that the the previously mentioned AMIA bombing in July 1997 was also the result of an internal implosion, on this occasion caused by the detonation of a box full of explosives that had been sent to the AMIA building by an Israeli community in Cordoba.

Today, Red Kalki is publishing details of both events so that readers can analyse and come to their own conclusions.

We observe that, despite the powerful interests who attempted to silence these issues, the claims of the ‘Libertad de opinion’ publication have stood the test of time, to the extent that, today, those who were originally accused of the "attack" have been freed due to a lack of evidence, and instead the ex-judge and Zionist Galeano, the ex-president of the DAIA (Delegation of Israeli Associations of Argentina) and the well know Zionist conman and bank robber, Ruben Baraja, are instead being prosecuted, while employee of the Argentine daily paper Pagina/12 and peddler of Zionist lies, Raul Kollman, is also being investigated.

A few weeks after Israel initiated its new aggression against Palestine and Lebanon, the Delegation of Israeli Associations of Argentina (DAIA) and the Wiesenthal Center, again began to proclaim to the press that a "third attack" in Argentina was in preparation. At the same time, the White House and the Pentagon began to announce results of their supposed investigations over the "latent dangers" in the Tripe Frontier area (area where the borders of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet) from the presence of the sizable "Arab Islamic community" there, including the suggestion that "al-Qaeda fighters" were ensconsed there.

With the war in the Middle East already begun, and as Red Kalki explained in our analysis of the conflict, a phenomenon, unexpected by Israel, occurred in the form of a unanimous rejection by the European and Latin-American left of organised Zionism. At the same time, South American governments refused to support Israeli terrorist policies, some through conviction and others in order to not appear as allies of colonialism.

In the particular case of Argentina, large-scale demonstrations by the Arab community took place which provoked the anger of local Zionist representatives, to the point that members of the Olmert government sent missives to the DAIA and the AMIA requesting that, in order to show their absolute and unfailing loyalty to Israel, they travel to Israel to personally express their support for the Israeli policy of unbridled genocide.

From all of this, it became clear to the Israelis that their image had passed from that of the victim to the victimiser. They concluded that the peoples of the world no longer looked upon them with pity but with repulsion, and as such, the Israelis are now desperately seeking to find new ways to re-esablish their role as that of the victim, a role which has always served them well to justify the mafia-like patronage of the US and the US military invasions of Israel’s neighbors.

According to sources, a dramatic "attack" is being planned for South America, in order to neutralise the growing rejection of Zionist barbarity among South American governments. During the recent conflict, no South American government desired to come out in favor of Israel, and likewise, none wanted to openly criticise Hizb’allah. Given the existing conditions in the country and the militant awakening of the Argentine Islamic community, to the rest of the world a "third Islamic terror attack" in Argentina might appear quite credible. There also exists the possibility of such a ‘false flag’ attack in Chile where another large Palestinian community resides. Either of these two countries appear as likely targets, keeping in mind the recent news of the arrest of the bomb-laden Israeli diplomat en route to Chile.

The arrest of the diplomat set off alarm bells in the Casa Rosada (Argentina’s ‘White House’). Instead of making the arrest public and demanding explanations from Tel Aviv, The Kirchner government chose to maintain a disconcerting silence and allowed the days to pass. Rafael Eldad, Israeli ambassador to Argentina and self-declared Zionist fanatic who has had and has sons in the Israeli military, following instructions from the Israeli government, must surely have intervened in a shameless way in the matter of the arrest of the bomb-laden Israeli diplomat.

What will happen in upcoming months?

This is the important question that Argentine security forces are asking. After the Israeli diplomat debacle; will Tel Aviv call off or push forward with a similar "third attack"?

In the Zionist leadership, we notice something of a tendency towards an absolute loss of control caused by the fact that reality is not conforming to its nefarious plans. In an act of rage and impotence at not having achieved its military aims in Lebanon, in the last few days of the conflict, Israeli war planes dropped tons of bombs on Lebanese houses, hospitals, schools and religious temples, reaffirming in this way the genocidal policies of the Israeli invaders.

At the same time, the Zionist leadership in Argentina shares this irrational hatred and is totally subordinate to the directives of the Israeli government. Given this situation, intelligence analysts from various countries agree that it is very difficult to predict the exact nature of the Zionist plans for Argentina and its neighbors.

We hope that the Argentine government will finally do what must be done – reveal what happened at the airport; provide the complete details of the Israeli diplomat’s identity; begin the necessary judicial investigation and demand immediate explanations from the Zionist regime in Israel. The Argentine government must also understand that to continue to cover up such matters, involves clearly forseeable risks to the security of the Argentine people and their country.

We at Red Kalki feel that we have done our duty in informing the citizenry.

Translated from the original by Joe Quinn for Signs of the Times.

Editor’s note: See this link for details on the abovementioned attacks on Israeli targets in Argentina over the past 15 years

The north has been effectively severed from the south allowing the IDF to continue its ethnic cleansing operations as well as its search-and-destroy missions for Hezbollah fighters. They have meticulously destroyed all the main points of entry at the Syrian border and blockaded the coastline. Israel believes that their earlier occupation (which ended in year 2000) failed due to the unrestricted flow of supplies and weaponry from Syria and Iran. The Bush administration has assisted this effort by providing crucial intelligence from the NSA about the movement of material from the outside.

By now, it should be apparent that Israel’s military campaign has nothing to do with Hezbollah’s capturing of the 2 Israeli soldiers on July 14. The present plan, which was drawn up more than a year ago (and which high-ranking members of the Bush administration were fully briefed) is designed to establish a new northern border for Israel at the Litani River and create an "Israel-friendly" regime in Beirut.

The plan to annex the land south of the Litani River dates back to the founding of the Jewish state when Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion described the country’s future borders this way: "To the north the Litani River, the southern border will be pushed into the Sinai, and to the east, the Syrian Desert, including the furthest edge of Transjordan." (See Map of post WW1 Zionist plan for region

http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Story1045.html  )

In 1978 the IDF launched Operation Litani with the intention of annexing the southern part of Lebanon and setting up a Christian client-regime in Beirut that would take orders from Tel Aviv. Israel said that it needed a "buffer zone" for its security, the same excuse that it uses today. The 1982 invasion devolved into an 18 year onslaught which ravaged the Lebanese economy and killed more than 20,000 civilians. In 2000, Israel was driven from Lebanon by the persistent attacks of the Lebanese resistance organization, Hezbollah.

The media portrayal of the current conflict is blatantly absurd. It has nothing to due with "captured soldiers" or Israel’s "right to defend itself". This is a traditional war with clear territorial and political objectives. The border controversy is nonsense. Israel is trying to seize more land to realize its vision of "Greater Israel" while reducing an adjacent Arab country to a "permanent state of colonial dependency". This explains the vast and deliberate destruction to Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure. Israel’s dominance requires that its neighbors endure abject poverty and oppression. By destroying the infrastructure and life-support systems, Israel hopes to eliminate the rise of a potential rival as well as to diminish the ability of the Lebanese resistance to wage war against the Jewish state. Once Lebanon is decimated, it will be delivered to Zionists at the World Bank (Paul Wolfowitz) who will apply the shackle of reconstruction loans and structural readjustment, which will keep Lebanon as an indentured servant to the global banking establishment. This model of economic servitude has been used throughout the developing world with varying degrees of success. It anticipates Israel’s regional ascendancy while ensuring that Lebanon’s sovereignty will be compromised for decades to come.

The United States has played a unique role in Israel’s war on Lebanon. In its 230 year history the US has never deliberately assisted in an attack on an ally. That record will end with Lebanon.

Lebanon was demonstrably "pro-American" government on friendly terms with Washington. In fact, American NGOs and intelligence organizations helped to activate the "Cedar Revolution" which gave rise to the Fouad Siniora government and the eventual expulsion of Syrian troops. To a large extent, Washington and Tel Aviv had achieved what they wanted to by meddling in Lebanon’s political affairs. The country was singled out as a shining example of Bush’s "global democratic revolution", which was the stated goal of American intervention in the Middle East.

Lebanon has since been rewarded for its cooperation by the total obliteration of its economy and infrastructure. The Bush administration has abandoned any pretense of being an "honest broker" and is now providing Israel with precision-guided missiles to prosecute a war against a (mainly) civilian population. They are also actively collaborating with the Olmert regime to foil all plans for an immediate ceasefire. The United States is a fully-engaged partner in the premeditated destruction of a democratic country. It is as much a part of the Israeli aggression as any IDF tank commander rumbling towards Beirut.

The United Nations has been sidelined by the administration’s obstructionism at the Security Council. The efforts of the Bolton-Rice team are tantamount to a "declaration of war". So far, the Israeli offensive has uprooted nearly 1 million people in the south; making refugees of approximately 25% of the Lebanon’s total population. The UN has done nothing to respond to this calamity. Its ineffectiveness casts doubt on whether it will survive the present crisis. Security in the new century will ultimately depend on alliances between the individual countries. The UN model of one, monolithic international institution trying to "preserve the peace" has proved to be a wretched failure.

The scene in the south of Lebanon is hauntingly similar to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948; the Nakba. Once again, Israel is seen driving Muslims from their homes in an attempt to expand its territory. The "deliberate" attack on Qana, which killed 57 civilians, as well as the bombing of clearly marked ambulances and "white flag-waving" mini-buses chock-full of fleeing villagers, shows that the Israeli high-command still understands the importance of using terror as a means of controlling behavior. Israel’s carefully calculated atrocities have had the desired effect; triggering the mass-exodus of hundreds of thousands of frightened civilians and leaving Hezbollah guerillas to fight it out with the IDF.

The Bush administration is now attempting to pacify its critics by pushing a resolution that calls for a "full cessation of hostilities". The resolution does not demand that Israel stop attacking Hezbollah nor does it require the IDF to leave Lebanon. It is Munich all over again; a miserable "sell-out" by the Security Council that guarantees a steady increase in the violence as well as an intensification of the rage that is sweeping across the Muslim world. The UN has unwittingly endorsed Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and created the foundation for another generation of terrorists. The resolution shows that the UN is nothing more than a "cat’s paw" for US/Israeli geopolitical ambitions and that the "post-colonial" European allies are willing to succumb to the neocon plan for a "New Middle East".

The UN is not an "honest broker"; its bumbling attempts at peace have only provided the cover of international legitimacy to Israel’s rampage. Israel will now continue its crusade unobstructed; setting up outposts throughout the south, pushing the Shia off their land, attacking Hezbollah as they see fit, and installing an Israeli-client in Beirut.

Israel will never return to its "internationally recognized" northern border unless it is beaten-back by the Lebanese national resistance, Hezbollah.

What does Israel want?

The only way that Israel can maintain its dominance in the region is by becoming a main-player in the oil-trade. Otherwise it will continue to be dependent on the United States to strengthen its military and defend its interests. Israel’s determination to "stand on its own 2 feet" is outlined in the neocon plan for "rebuilding Zionism" in the 21st century; "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". The document is the blueprint for redrawing the map of the Middle East and eliminating rivals to Israeli power. Most of the attention has been focused on the parts of the paper which presage the attacks on Iraq, Lebanon and Syria; including this ominous passage:

"Securing the Northern Border: Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran, as the principle agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syria is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.

striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove to be insufficient, string at select targets in Syria proper." ("A Clean Break"; Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser)

Clearly, this is the basic schema for US/Israeli aggression in the region. What has been overlooked, however, is Israel’s determination to "break away" from its traditional dependence on American support. As stated in the text:

(Israel intends to) "forge a new basis for relations with the US­stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West. This can only be done if Israel takes serious steps to terminate aid, which prevents economic reform. Israel can make a clean-break from the past and establish a new vision for the US-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity, and mutuality­not one narrowly focused on territorial disputes. (Israel) does not need US troops in any capacity to defend it…and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past….No amount of weapons or victories will grant Israel the peace it seeks. When Israel is on sound footing, and is free, powerful, and healthy internally, it will no longer simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict; it will transcend it".

Israel’s "economic freedom" depends in large part on its ability to become a central petroleum-depot for the global oil trade. In Michel Chossudovsky’s recent article "Triple Alliance: US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon", the author provides a detailed account of the alliances and agreements which underscore the current war. As Chossudovsky says, "We are not dealing with a limited conflict between the Israeli Armed Forces and Hezbollah as conveyed by the Western media. The Lebanese War Theater is part of a broader US military agenda, which encompasses a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean into the heartland of Central Asia. The war on Lebanon must be viewed as ‘a stage’ in this broader ‘military road map’". Chossudovsky shows how the recently completed Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline has strengthened the Israel-Turkey alliance and foreshadows an attempt to establish "military control over a coastal corridor extending from the Israeli-Lebanese border to the East Mediterranean border between Syria and Turkey."

Lebanese sovereignty is one of the unfortunate casualties of this Israel-Turkey strategy. Most of the oil from the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline will be transported to western markets but, what is less well-known, is that a percentage of the oil will be diverted through a "proposed" Ceyhan-Ashkelon pipeline which will connect Israel directly to rich deposits in the Caspian. This will allow Israel to supply markets in the Far East from its port at Eilat on the Red Sea. It is an ambitious plan that ensures that Israel will be a critical part of the global energy distribution system. (See Michel Chossudovsky, ,The war on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, July 2006)

Oil is also a major factor in the calls for "regime change" in Syria. An article in the UK Observer "Israel Seeks Pipeline for Iraqi Oil" notes that Washington and Tel Aviv are hammering out the details for a pipeline that will run through Syria and "create and endless and easily accessible source of cheap oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia." The pipeline "would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria, and solving Israel’s energy crisis at a stroke."

The Israeli Mossad is already operating in northern Iraq where the pipeline will originate and have developed good relations with the Kurds. The only remaining obstacle is the current Syrian regime which has already entered the US/Israeli crosshairs. The Observer quotes a CIA official who said, "It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving this administration and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel’s energy supply as well as that of the US. The Haifa pipeline was something that existed, was resurrected as a dream, and is now a viable project­albeit with a lot of building to do."

Former US ambassador James Atkins added, "This is a new world order now. This is what things look like particularly if we wipe out Syria. It just goes to show that it is all about oil, for the United States and its ally."

The Middle East is being reshaped according to the ideological aspirations of Zionists and the exigencies of a viciously-competitive energy market. Behind the bombed-out ruins of Qana and the endless sorties laying Lebanon to waste, are the tireless machinations of the energy giants, the corporate media, the banking establishment and Israel.

Don’t expect a quick return to peace. This war is just beginning.

Robert Fisk: Desert of trapped corpses testifies to Israel’s failure

Far from humiliating Iran and Syria – which was the Israeli-American plan – these two supposedly pariah states have been left untouched and the Hizbollah’s reputation lionised across the Arab world. The "opportunity" which President George Bush and his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, apparently saw in the Lebanon war has turned out to be an opportunity for America’s enemies to show the weakness of Israel’s army. Indeed, last night, scarcely any Israeli armour was to be seen inside Lebanon – just one solitary tank could be glimpsed outside Bint Jbeil and the Israelis had retreated even from the "safe" Christian town of Marjayoun. It is now clear that the 30,000-strong Israeli army reported to be racing north to the Litani river never existed. In fact, it is unlikely that there were yesterday more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers left in all of southern Lebanon, although they did become involved in two fire-fights during the morning, hours after the UN-ceasefire went into effect.

Down the coast road from Beirut, meanwhile, came a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Shia families, bedding piled on the roofs of their cars , many of them sporting Hizbollah flags and pictures of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s chairman, on their windscreens. At the massive traffic jams around the broken motorway bridges and craters which litter the landscape, the Hizbollah was even handing out yellow and green "victory" flags, along with official notices urging parents not to allow children to play with the thousands of unexploded bombs that now lie across the landscape. At least one Lebanese child was killed by unexploded ordnance and another 15 were wounded yesterday.

But to what are these people returning? Haj Ali Dakroub, a 42-year old construction manager, lost part of his home in Israel’s 1996 bombardment of Srifa. Now his entire house has been flattened. "What is here that Israel should destroy all this?" he asked. "We don’t deny that the resistance was in Srifa. It was here before and it will be here in the future. But in this house lived only my family. So why would Israel bomb it?"

Well, I did happen to notice what appeared to be the casing of a missile hanging from the balcony of a much-damaged house facing the rubble of Ali Dakroub’s home. And a group of Hizbollah militiamen, one of them with a pistol tucked into his trousers, walked past us nonchalantly and disappeared into an orchard. Was this, perhaps, where they kept some of their rockets?

Mr Dakroub wasn’t saying. "I am going to rebuild my home with my two sons," he insisted. "Israel may come back in 10 years and destroy it all over again and then I’ll just rebuild it all over again. This was a Hizbollah victory. The Israelis were able to defeat all the Arab countries in six days in 1967 but here they could not defeat the resistance in a month. These resistance men would come out of the ground and shoot back. They are still here."

"Come out of the ground" is an expression I have heard several times these past four weeks and I am beginning to suspect that many of the thousands of guerrillas did indeed shelter in caves and basements and tunnels, only to emerge to fire their missiles or to use their infra-red rockets on the Israeli army once it made the mistake of sending troops into Lebanon on the ground. And does anyone believe that the Hizbollah will submit to their own disarmament by a new international force of UN and Lebanese troops once – if – it arrives? There was a symbolic moment yesterday when Lebanese soldiers already based in southern Lebanon joined Hizbollah men in Srifa to clear the rubble of a house in which the bodies of an entire family were believed buried. Lebanese Red Cross and civil defence personnel – representatives of the civil power which is supposed to claw back its sovereignty from the Hizbollah – joined in the search. The mukhtar, who so blatantly regarded the Hizbollah as heroes, is also a government representative. And at the entrance to this shattered village still stands a poster of Nasrallah and the Iranian President Ali Khamenei.

Far from driving the Hizbollah north across the Litani river, Israel has entrenched them in their Lebanese villages as never before.