Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Shatila: Remembering the Massacre

By Richard Hardigan | CounterPunch | September 30, 2015

“There is one scene I will always remember. There was one child. The mother died, but he was trying to take milk from his mother. He was still alive.”

Jamili’s face betrays little emotion as she recalls the scene from thirty-three years ago. She has told the story many times, and perhaps it has lost some of its power in its retelling. Jamili works for Beit Atfal Assamoud, an NGO that provides medical, social and educational services to the residents of the Shatila refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Beirut, and she is talking about her experiences during the massacre of 1982.

“The best way to forget about the horrible things that have happened in the past is to work, to help,” she tells me.

There are currently fifty-nine Palestinian refugee camps scattered throughout the Middle East. When Zionist forces instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing aimed to dispossess the Palestinians of their land in 1947-1948, close to 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes. The camps were built to house the refugees in the short term, but as the problem persisted, so did the camps. It is estimated that there are currently 2.5 million Palestinian refugees living in the camps, which are located in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.

Shatila is probably the most well-known of all the Palestinian refugee camps. In September of 1982, a local Christian militia, known as the Phalange, aided by its Israeli allies, entered Shatila and bordering Sabra, engaging in an orgy of torturing and killing that lasted several days. It is estimated that 3000 people died in this massacre, which has become one of the enduring symbols not only of the Lebanese civil war, but also of the continuing disregard in which Israel holds the Palestinian people.

Jamili was born in 1958, during Lebanon’s first civil war, and she moved with her family from Baalbek, site of the spectacular Roman ruins, to Shatila at the age of one. Although she was not alive during the Nakba – the Catastrophe – and the original establishment of the camp that followed it, she has heard countless stories from her relatives about this time. In the fifty-seven years since her move, she has witnessed all of the tragedies that have befallen Shatila. She can associate each event in the history of the camp with an episode in her life. Her history has become intertwined with that of Shatila.

“My house was destroyed seven times,” she tells me, “and we rebuilt it seven times.”

I have now been in Shatila almost four weeks, and as of yet, I haven’t had the opportunity to talk to anybody about their personal experiences during the massacre. When I first arrived, I was expecting that the tragic events of 1982 would somehow cast an enormous shadow over the camp, that it was something everybody was still dealing with on some level. And so I was hesitant to discuss this topic with anybody for fear that I might bring up some memories that might be best left undisturbed. But when I was introduced to Jamili a few days ago as part of a visit to Beit Atfal Assamoud, she began talking about the massacre immediately. When I asked her if we could discuss the matter in greater detail, she agreed to give me an interview.

We are sitting in comfortable black chairs in her office. A fan whirs in a corner of the room, making the heat a little less oppressive. There is an enormous sleek, black desk behind her, at which I have yet to see her sit. Jamili’s work involves connecting with the residents of the camp who come to seek her help, and I suspect she feels a big desk between them would make them feel uncomfortable.

Israel invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982 in order to rid the country of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had fled Jordan during Black September in 1970 and had since established a presence in the refugee camps of Beirut. Israel killed roughly 20,000 people, mostly civilians, during the invasion, and it managed to drive out the PLO.

“During the invasion, 90% of the camp was destroyed. We left Shatila and stayed in Hamra (a Beirut neighborhood a few miles north of Shatila). The people lived in schools and cinemas. My house had five rooms, but when we returned to the camp, we found that only one room was left standing.”

In August of that year, Israel pressured the Lebanese parliament to choose Bashir Gemayal, leader of the Israel-allied Maronites, as president. However, Gemayal was assassinated on September 14, and the Maronite Christian community, especially the Phalange, a brutal Maronite militia, blamed the Palestinians for his death. By this time the PLO had already left the camps, and only women, children and old men remained.

“The PLO had left. All of our youths were in prison,” says Jamili.

The international force that had overseen the evacuation of the PLO had by now departed, and the residents of Shatila were completely exposed.

Yassir Arafat had foreseen this possibility. In the negotiations for his departure from Beirut, he had expressed concern for the safety of the civilians he would be leaving behind in the camps. The US and the government of Lebanon had given their word that Israel would not be allowed to enter West Beirut and had ensured the safety of the Palestinians remaining in the camps. But these promises proved to be empty.

On the day following Gemayal’s murder, Wednesday, September 15, the Israelis seized West Beirut, entrusting to the Phalange, whose hatred for the Palestinians had been inflamed by the assassination of their leader, the task of cleaning up the refugee camps.

On the evening of the following day, Thursday, the Phalange finally entered Sabra and Shatila, and the carnage began almost immediately. David Hirst provides a chilling description in his book Beware of Small States :

“They broke into houses and killed their occupants. Sometimes they tortured before they killed, gouging out eyes, skinning alive, disemboweling. Women and small girls were raped, sometimes half a dozen times, before, breasts severed, they were finished off with axes. Babies were torn limb from limb and their heads smashed against walls.”[1]

Unaware of the massacre, Jamili and her family sought shelter in a mosque in the center of the camp from the Phalange bombs that were falling on West Beirut.

“The houses, after the Israeli invasion, were not strong. The mosque was strong and standing. All of our neighbors left their houses, because they were weak. And we sat in the mosque. People came from outside and said there will be a massacre. Some people didn’t believe them. Where would we go? At the beginning we didn’t believe. But when many people came covered with blood and told terrible stories, then we were afraid.”

A group of old men decided to try to find a high-ranking Israeli officer and convince him to stop the bloodshed. Jamili’s father was among them, but at the last minute he opted to stay behind, a decision that most likely saved his life.

“And these men, until now we don’t know where they are. They went to tell they Israelis there are only children in the camp. They went to protect the camp. But they killed them. They were all friends of my father. Until now nobody really knows what happened. ”

As darkness fell in the evening, the violence continued. The Israelis fired flares over the camp to aid the militia with its grizzly work.

“They lit the streets of the camp. The hopeless thing is that the children saw the lights, and it made them feel happy. But we explained to them that it was the Israelis throwing bombs. Many houses burned. One bomb hit a neighbor’s house, and my father went to help put the fire out.”

Jamili spent that terrifying night in the mosque with her family.

“In the morning, at six o’clock, a group of women, children and old men came and entered the camp and passed by the mosque. They were crying and shouting, and then we believed that a massacre was going to happen.”

On Friday many of the residents of Sabra and Shatila escaped and made their way to two nearby hospitals – the Gaza and Akka hospitals.

“We carried our children and didn’t take anything. We went to the Gaza hospital.”

But even in the hospitals the terrified residents of the camp were not safe from the murderous intentions of the Phalange. In fact, on that day the militia entered the Akka hospital and murdered some of the wounded as they lay in their beds.

“The doctors and the nurses said ‘Don’t stay here. They will come to get you. Please leave this area.’”

“So we left. At that time I was with my family and all of my relatives. There were hundreds of people in the streets, carrying their children.”

Jamili’s destination was Hamra, the Beiruti neighborhood where she and her family had spent the bulk of the Israeli invasion. They had lived in a friend’s apartment, and they still had the key. That night they spent in an unfinished building on the way to Hamra.

“It had no doors or windows, but at least we had a place. In the morning hundreds of people from the camp came and shouted, and we felt that it was dangerous and that we must leave.”

On Saturday morning they were stopped by Israeli soldiers.

“They allowed the women and children to pass, but the young men had to stay. My brothers and uncles had to return back while the women and children continued to Hamra. Our men were not with us, and we were afraid. What would happen to them? We were running away from danger, and they were going to danger.”

By now journalists had entered Shatila, and news of the massacre had spread. When Jamili and her family reached Hamra they went to a supermarket to meet its owner, a man they knew. He was astonished to see them.

“’You are still alive?’ he asked us.”

By ten o’clock on Saturday morning the last of the Phalange had left Sabra and Shatila. The killing was over.

“I am lucky. I didn’t see anybody killed in front of me. But I saw the bodies. The mosque was filled with bodies. You can see the houses that were destroyed and the legs of the children appear from these houses. I saw all this.”

When Jamili saw the pictures in a newspaper, she was horrified. She imagined that all the bodies she saw belonged to her relatives, whom she had been forced to abandon outside of Hamra.

“All youths wear sport shoes and jeans and t-shirts. Their bodies were facing down. We felt that all our men had been killed. We decided to return back to the camp. On Monday morning we entered Sabra, and we were afraid to enter the camp. We saw the bodies in the street. I couldn’t stand. We couldn’t continue. We knew that all our relatives had died. I went to my house. I walked a few meters and then returned back. Because I was afraid to find out what happened.”

But it turned out that her male relatives had found shelter in a school outside the camp.

“When I saw them I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I felt foolish. When I found out that my whole family was safe, it was a perfect day.”

Jamili sighs. Her brown eyes glisten. Telling the story has brought back memories and emotions.

The massacre was over, but the problems for the residents remained, as the camp was almost entirely destroyed and had to be rebuilt.

“We had a group of about twenty girls. We could stand against the enemy. We were not afraid. What choice did we have? To die? To live or die, it was the same.”

And so Jamili and her friends threw themselves into the task of rebuilding the camp, because, among other things, it helped them forget what had happened. But one cannot forget such an event.

Jamili leans closer, her face showing the confusion, the inability to accept what had happened so many years ago. How could one group of human beings do this to another?

“Why did Israel make the massacre? For the children? For the old men? Nobody could imagine that a massacre would happen. Why? For whom? We didn’t have any men. Some of them left, and some of them died. Some of them went to prison.”

Today, thirty-three years later, Shatila faces a multitude of problems. The camp, originally built for 4000 residents, is contained in an area that is in the shape of a square of side length less than one kilometer. With the recent influx of refugees from the war in Syria, the current population is estimated to be close to 25,000. This high concentration of people makes itself felt in the ubiquitous crowds that fill the narrow alleyways, in the piles of garbage that accumulate too quickly for the trash removal workers to keep up with, in the many buildings that extend skyward to accommodate the residents, and in the lack of open spaces in the camp. Living conditions are horrifying. Electricity is cut for at least twelve hours a day, and the tap water is so salty that it corrodes the faucets. Guns are present throughout the camp, and tensions, already high because of the extreme overcrowdedness, often explode to the point of physical conflict. (One week after my arrival in the camp two people were murdered during a dispute over a motorcycle parking spot.)

Most of the people in the camp dream of going back to their village in Palestine. And so it is with Jamili.

“Our problems will stop when we return. Why cannot we return to our homeland? My village is empty. It has been destroyed. Until now nobody lives there. Why must we live in this bad situation?”

As Israel moves further and further to the right, it appears as unlikely as ever that Jamili or any of the other millions of Palestinian refugees will ever be able to return to their homes. As their wait continues into its seventh decade, the international community appears to be losing interest even in providing material support for them. Until a few weeks ago, a UNRWA budget shortfall threatened to close all schools in the refugee camps, an action that would have been a disaster for the residents. Saudi Arabia and a few other nations came up with the funding at the last minute, but the message that the world doesn’t care about the refugees was delivered, regardless. These are dangerous times for the Palestinian refugees, and it is crucial that the international community, especially the West, who bears responsibility for their displacement in the first place, doesn’t forget about their plight.

Notes.

[1] David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East

Richard Hardigan is a university professor in the United States.

September 30, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Thirty Years Later

By SONJA KARKAR | CounterPunch | September 16, 2012

It happened thirty years ago – 16 September 1982.  A massacre so awful that  people who know about it cannot forget it.  The photos are gruesome  reminders – charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of  rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were  recoiling from it all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of  survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy.  It was deliberate, it  was planned and it was overseen.  But to this day, the killers have gone  unpunished.

Sabra and Shatila – two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – were the  theatres for this staged slaughter.  The former is no longer there and the  other is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of man’s inhumanity to men, women  and children – more specifically, Israel’s inhumanity, the inhumanity of the  people who did Israel’s bidding and the world’s inhumanity for pretending it  was of no consequence. There were international witnesses – doctors, nurses,  journalists – who saw the macabre scenes and have tried to tell the world in  vain ever since.

Each act was barbarous enough on its own to warrant fear and loathing.  It  was human savagery at its worst and Dr Ang Swee Chai was an eye witness as  she worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the  wounded amongst the dead.  What she saw was so unimaginable that the  atrocities committed need to be separated from each other to even begin  comprehending the viciousness of the crimes. [1]

People Tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power  shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out – the  electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs

People with gouged out eye sockets.  Faces unrecognisable with the gaping  holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully  ended.

Women raped.  Not once – but two, three, four times – horribly violated,  their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to  preserve their dignity at the moment of death.

Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos,  so hard to know to whom they belonged – just mounds of bloodied limbs  amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood.

Families executed.  Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of  homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up  for a more orderly execution.

There were also journalists who were there in the aftermath and who had  equally gruesome stories to tell, none of which made the sort of screaming  front page headlines that should have caused lawmakers to demand immediate  answers.  What they saw led them to write shell-shocked accounts that have  vanished now into the archives, but are no less disturbing now. These  accounts too need to be individually absorbed, lest they be lumped together  as just the collective dead rather than the systematic torture and killing  of individual, innocent human beings.

Women gunned down while cooking in their kitchens. [2]  The headless body of  a baby in diapers lying next to two dead women. [3]  An infant, its tiny  legs streaked with blood, shot in the back by a single bullet. [4]   Slaughtered babies, their bodies blackened as they decomposed, tossed into  rubbish heaps together with Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of  whiskey. [5]  An old man castrated, with flies thick upon his torn  intestines. [6]  Children with their throats slashed. [7]  Mounds of rotting  corpses bloated in the heat – young boys all shot at point-blank range. [8]

And most numbing of all are the recollections of the survivors whose  experiences were so shockingly traumatic that to recall them must have been  painful beyond all imaginings.   One survivor, Nohad Srour, 35 said:

“I was carrying my one year-old baby sister and she was yelling “Mama!  Mama!” then suddenly nothing.  I looked at her and her brain had fallen out  of her head and down my arm. I looked at the man who shot us. I’ll never  forget his face. Then I felt two bullets pierce my shoulder and finger.  I  fell.  I didn’t lose consciousness, but I pretended to be dead.”[9]

The statistics of those killed vary, but even according to the Israeli  military, the official count was 700 people killed while Israeli journalist,  Amnon Kapeliouk put the figure at 3,500. [10] The Palestinian Red Crescent  Society put the number killed at over 2,000.[11]  Regardless of the numbers,  they would not and could not mitigate what are clear crimes against  humanity.

Fifteen years later, Robert Fisk, the journalist who had been one of the  first on the scene, said:

“Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt  that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a  deed this morning?  Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United  States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of  Sabra and Shatila.”[12] 

Thirty years later it is no different.

The political developments 

What happened must be set against the background of a Lebanon that had been  invaded by the Israeli army only months earlier, supposedly in ‘retaliation’  for the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London on 4  June 1982.  Israel attributed the attempt to Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation  Organisation (PLO) then resident in Beirut. In reality, it was a rival  militant group headed by Abu Nidal.   Israel wanted to oust the PLO from  Lebanon altogether and on 6 June 1982, Israel began its devastating assault  on the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian population in the southern part of  Lebanon.  Lebanese government casualty figures numbered the dead at around  19,000 with some 30,000 wounded, but these numbers are hardly accurate  because of the mass graves and other bodies lost in the rubble. [13]

By 1 September, a cease-fire had been mediated by United States envoy Philip  Habib, and Arafat and his men surrendered their weapons and were evacuated  from Beirut with guarantees by the US that the civilians left behind in the  camps would be protected by a multinational peacekeeping force.  That  guarantee was not kept and the vacuum then created, paved the way for the  atrocities that followed.

As soon as the peacekeeping force was withdrawn, the then Israeli Defence  Minister Ariel Sharon moved to root out some “2,000 terrorists” he claimed  were still hiding in the  refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.  After totally  surrounding the refugee camps with tanks and soldiers, Sharon ordered the  shelling of the camps and the bombardment continued throughout the afternoon  and into the evening of 15 September leaving the “mopping-up” of the camps  to the Lebanese right-wing Christian militia, known as the Phalangists.  The  next day, the Phalangists – armed and trained by the Israeli army – entered  the camps and proceeded to massacre the unarmed civilians while Israel’s  General Yaron and his men watched the entire operations.  More grotesquely,  the Israeli army ensured there was no lull in the 36 hours of killings and  illuminated the area with flares at night and tightened their cordon around  the camps to make sure that no civilian could escape the terror that had  been unleashed.

Inquiries, charges and off scot-free

Although Israel’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry did not find any Israeli  directly responsible, it did find that Sharon bore “personal responsibility”  for “not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger  of massacre” before sending the Phalangists into the camps. It, therefore,  lamely recommended that the Israeli prime minister consider removing him  from office. [14] Sharon resigned but remained as Minister without portfolio  and joined two parliamentary commissions on defence and Lebanese affairs.  There is no doubt, as Chomsky points out “that the inquiry was not intended  for people who have a prejudice in favour of truth and honesty”, but it  certainly gained support for Israel in the US Congress and among the public.  [15]  It took an International Commission of Inquiry headed by Sean MacBride  to find that Israel was “directly responsible” because the camps were under  its jurisdiction as an occupying power. [16] Yet, despite the UN describing  the heinous operation as a “criminal massacre” and declaring it an act of  genocide [17], no one was prosecuted.

It was not until 2001 that a law suit was filed in Belgium by the survivors  of the massacre and relatives of the victims against Sharon alleging his  personal responsibility. However, the court did not allow for “universal  jurisdiction” – a principle which was intended to remove safe havens for war  criminals and allow their prosecution across states. The case was won on  appeal and the trial allowed to proceed, but without Sharon who by then was  prime minister of Israel and had immunity.  US interference led to the  Belgian Parliament gutting the universal jurisdiction law and by the time  the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague the following  year, the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre could no longer be  tried because its terms of reference did not allow it to hear cases of war  crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide pre-dating 1 July 2002. Neither  Sharon nor those who carried out the massacres have ever been punished for  their horrendous crimes.

The bigger picture

The length of time since these acts were carried out should be no impediment  to exposing the truth.  More than 60 years after the Nazi atrocities against  the Jews in Europe, the world still mourns and remembers and erects  monuments and museums to that violent holocaust.   How they are done, to  whom they are done and to how many does not make the crimes any more or less  heinous. They can never be justified even on the strength of one state’s  rationale that another people ought to be punished, or worse still, are  simply inferior or worthless beings. It should lead all of us to question on  whose judgment are such decisions made and how can we possibly justify such  crimes at all?

The atrocities committed in the camps of Sabra and Shatila should be put in  the context of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.  The  MacBride report found that these atrocities “were not inconsistent with  wider Israeli intentions to destroy Palestinian political will and cultural  identity.” [17] Since Deir Yassin and the other massacres of 1948, those who  survived have joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing a litany  of massacres committed in 1953, 1967, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and  the killing continues today. The most recent being the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre –  that 3 week merciless onslaught, a festering sore without relief as the people are  further punished by an impossible siege that denies them their most basic rights.

Thus were the victims and survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre gathered  up in the perpetual nakba of the slaughtered, the dispossessed, the displaced and  the discarded  – a pattern of ethnic cleansing perpetrated under the Zionist plan  to finally and forever extinguish Palestinian society and its people.

This is why we must remember Sabra and Shatila, thirty years on.

Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine (WFP), a Melbourne-based  human rights group and co-founder of Australians for Palestine (AFP), an  advocacy group that provides a voice for Palestine at all levels of  Australian society.  She is the editor of the website  http://www.australiansforpalestine.com . Her email address is   sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org

Footnotes:

[1]  Dr Ang Swee Chai, “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, Grafton Books, London, 1989

[2]  James MacManus, Guardian, 20 September 1982

[3] Loren Jenkins, Washington Post, 20 September 1982

[4]  Elaine Carey, Daily Mail, 20 September 1982

[5]  Robert Fisk, “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”, London: Oxford University Press, 1990   [6] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[7] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[8] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[9]  Lebanese Daily Star, 16 September 1998

[10] Amnon Kapeliouk, “Sabra & Chatila – Inquiry into a Massacre”, November 1982

[11] Schiff and Ya’ari,, Israel’s Lebanon War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984,

[12]  Robert Fisk, Fifteen Years After the Bloodbath, The World turns its Back, shaml.org, 1997   [13] Noam Chomsky, “The Fatal Triangle” South End Press, Cambridge MA, p.221

[14] The Complete Kahan Commission Report, Princeton, Karz Cohl, 1983, p. 125     (Hereafter, the Kahan Commission Report).   [15]  Chomsky, ibid. p.406

[16]  The Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law by Israel during Its Invasion of the Lebanon, Sean MacBride, 1983 (referred to as the International Commission of Inquiry or MacBride report)   [17]  United Nations General Assembly Resolution, 16 December 1982

[18] MacBride report, ibid. p.179

Related articles

September 16, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 1 Comment