I am being shown around what is left of the Leban Lait Dairy plant by Deeb Mounzer, a mechanical engineer and one of the union reps. It was one of the biggest diary producers in the Middle East. On the 5th day of the war it was attacked by fighter jets in a strike whose precision was matched only by its ferocity. The factory is a twisted pile of metal drenched in millions of gallons of dairy that has been fermenting in the sun for weeks. The stench is unbearable and clouds of flies swarm around the wreckage. Deeb tells me that 270 people are now unemployed and no one is insured for war. The present estimate for getting even part of the factory operational is 1-2 years. The cows in the nearby supply farm are weak and neglected and no longer able to produce milk. Israel’s excuse for this outrage was that the factory was a possible weapons storage and funded Hizbollah. This allegation was repeated by all the corporate media in the west.
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The funding argument beggars belief. A manager tells me that the workforce was a mixture of Christian, Sunni, Shiite and Marinite. One of the factory owners is a Christian called Nabil de Freige, a deputy in the pro-USA Saad el Hariri in the Lebanese Parliament. The other owner is Mohammed Zaidan a Sunni from Sidon.
With regard to storage, the only part of the factory that is still standing is the stock area where the products now rot on the shelves. It is clear that the missiles were targeted into the factory’s core taking out the European-made production lines and processing facilities. The machinery was state of the art and the secret of the plant’s success. French engineers visited every month to monitor the equipment and it’s progress, another nail in the coffin of the weapons storage theory.
For the past few years, the success of the factory had ensured that it consistently won a tender to supply diary to the UN worth $15,000 dollars a week. This was set to increase massively with the announcement of 15,000 new UN troops into South Lebanon. Israeli rivals had regularly tried and failed to win the lucrative contract. Now the factory is gone the UN will have to go elsewhere for their milk. The only producers in the area capable of such an order happen to be in Israel. Proof if it’s needed that arms manufacturers are not the only people to profit from war.
Words and pictures copyright the author but free to progressive media, NGOs etc.
Contact by email for details.
With regard to storage, the only part of the factory that is still standing is the stock area where the products now rot on the shelves. It is clear that the missiles were targeted into the factory’s core taking out the European-made production lines and processing facilities. The machinery was state of the art and the secret of the plant’s success. French engineers visited every month to monitor the equipment and it’s progress, another nail in the coffin of the weapons storage theory.
For the past few years, the success of the factory had ensured that it consistently won a tender to supply diary to the UN worth $15,000 dollars a week. This was set to increase massively with the announcement of 15,000 new UN troops into South Lebanon. Israeli rivals had regularly tried and failed to win the lucrative contract. Now the factory is gone the UN will have to go elsewhere for their milk. The only producers in the area capable of such an order happen to be in Israel. Proof if it’s needed that arms manufacturers are not the only people to profit from war.
Words and pictures copyright the author but free to progressive media, NGOs etc.
Contact by email for details.
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