Anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

[give her dixie]

As today marks the 28th anniversary of the brutal massacres in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beruit, the following video and article by Robert Fisk gives an insight to one of the most brutal attacks to have ever taken place in the middle east over the past 50 years.
Robert Fisk was one of the 1st to arrive in the camps following the brutal attacks that left between 700 and 3,000 civilians dead inside 40 hours.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pWwkVfbY10


SABRA AND SHATILA

By Robert Fisk

What we found inside the Palestinian camp at ten o'clock on the morning of September 1982 did not quite beggar description, although it would have been easier to re-tell in the cold prose of a medical examination. There had been medical examinations before in Lebanon, but rarely on this scale and never overlooked by a regular, supposedly disciplined army. In the panic and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country. But these people, hundreds of them had been shot down unarmed. This was a mass killing, an incident - how easily we used the word "incident" in Lebanon - that was also an atrocity. It went beyond even what the Israelis would have in other circumstances called a terrorist activity. It was a war crime.

Jenkins and Tveit were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was "Jesus Christ" over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. Bur there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.

Where were the murderers? Or to use the Israelis' vocabulary, where were the "terrorists"? When we drove down to Chatila, we had seen the Israelis on the top of the apartments in the Avenue Camille Chamoun but they made no attempt to stop us. In fact, we had first been driven to the Bourj al-Barajneh camp because someone told us that there was a massacre there. All we saw was a Lebanese soldier chasing a car theif down a street. It was only when we were driving back past the entrance to Chatila that Jenkins decided to stop the car. "I don't like this", he said. "Where is everyone? What the f**k is that smell?"

Just inside the the southern entrance to the camp, there used to be a number of single-story, concrete walled houses. I had conducted many interviews in these hovels in the late 1970's. When we walked across the muddy entrance to Chatila, we found that these buildings had been dynamited to the ground. There were cartridge cases across the main road. I saw several Israeli flare canisters, still attached to their tiny parachutes. Clouds of flies moved across the rubble, raiding parties with a nose for victory.

Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines.

The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist a Swiss watch recorded the correct time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner.


On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead.

Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror.

"...As we stood there, we heard a shout in Arabic from across the ruins. "They are coming back," a man was screaming, So we ran in fear towards the road. I think, in retrospect, that it was probably anger that stopped us from leaving, for we now waited near the entrance to the camp to glimpse the faces of the men who were responsible for all of this. They must have been sent in here with Israeli permission. They must have been armed by the Israelis. Their handiwork had clearly been watched - closely observed - by the Israelis who were still watching us through their field-glasses.

When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel's friends rather than Israel's enemies?

That, I suspected, was what this argument was about. If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre.

But in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians. The guilty were certainly Christian militiamen - from which particular unit we were still unsure - but the Israelis were also guilty. If the Israelis had not taken part in the killings, they had certainly sent militia into the camp. They had trained them, given them uniforms, handed them US army rations and Israeli medical equipment. Then they had watched the murderers in the camps, they had given them military assistance - the Israeli airforce had dropped all those flares to help the men who were murdering the inhabitants of Sabra and Chatila - and they had established military liason with the murderers in the camps

[mylestheslasher]

Dixie, I read that piece before and it is bloody hard to read. It sums up just what the Israelis think of Palestinians and more particular innocent palestinian civilians. It is also worth noting that the same "christian" militia were also responsible for torturing and murdering Irish peace keeping solidiers in Lebanon in the same war.

[give her dixie]

Not only was Ariel Sharon found guilty of allowing the massacres to happen, but he was told by the court that he was to never hold public office again. He had to resign as Minister of Defence, however, 9 years later he was elected Prime Minister, and went on to rule with drastic consequences for years later.
Following a stroke a few years ago, he now lies in a vegative state, in a coma.

Also, the highly respected Sean McBride chaired a panel of experts who went on to investigate the events surrounding the massacres.
Below is a brief summary:

MacBride commission report
In 1982, an independent commission, the International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon, was formed. Chaired by Sean MacBride, the commission included the following members:

Professor Richard Falk, Vice Chairman, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Princeton University,
Dr Kader Asmal, Senior Lecturer in Law and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Trinity College, Dublin,
Dr Brian Bercusson, Lecturer in Laws, Queen Mary College, University of London,
Professor Géraud de la Pradelle, Professor of Private Law, University of Paris, and
Professor Stefan Wild, Professor of Semitic Languages and Islamic Studies, University of Bonn.
The commission toured the area of fighting and examined witnesses in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Syria, UK, and Norway. The government of Israel refused to cooperate. The commission's report, Israel in Lebanon, concluded that:

1.The government of Israel has committed acts of aggression contrary to international law.
2.The Israeli armed forces have made use of weapons or methods of warfare forbidden in international law, including the laws of war.
3.Israel has subjected prisoners to treatment forbidden by international law, including inhuman and degrading treatment. In addition, there has been a violation of international law arising out of a denial of prisoner-of-war status to Palestinian prisoners or detainees.
4.There has been deliberate or indiscriminate or reckless bombardment of a civilian character, of hospitals, schools, and other nonmilitary targets.
5.There has been systematic bombardment and other destruction of towns, cities, villages, and refugee camps.
6.The acts of the Israeli armed forces have caused the dispersal, deportation and ill-treatment of populations, in violation of international law.
7.The government of Israel has no valid reasons under international law for its invasion of the Lebanon, for the manner in which it conducted hostilities or for its actions as an occupying force.
8.The Israeli authorities or forces were involved directly or indirectly in the massacres and other killings that have been reported to have been carried out by Lebanese militiamen in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila in the Beirut area between 16 and 18 September.[9]

[orangeman]

Shocking and what's even more shockingis that it's not much better almost 30 years later.

[haveaharp]

What of the claims that the above was in retaliation to the Damour massacre which took place on January 20, 1976. Not shit stirring here, just would like to hear the background. Normally they arent that slow with the retaliation.

[mylestheslasher]

What of the claims that the above was in retaliation to the Damour massacre which took place on January 20, 1976. Not shit stirring here, just would like to hear the background. Normally they arent that slow with the retaliation.

That was 6 years earlier. Don't think it was though, that is just the way Israel fights wars. Robert Fisks book - The war for civilisation is a must on the middle eastern conflict.

[red hander]

Is Sharon still in a vegetative state after his stroke a few years back?  If he is, then I suppose not even the devil wants the bastard stinking the place out

[Aerlik]

Is Sharon still in a vegetative state after his stroke a few years back?  If he is, then I suppose not even the devil wants the b**tard stinking the place out

That's cause Reagan still hasn't finished festering and the devil has a spot waiting for Thatcher before he'll let in Sharon.

I remember clearly the day when the news broke about that horrific Zionish-inspired murderfest. Want to watch a pro-Israel sympathiser squirm?  Three words...Zabra and Chatilla.