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Remembering the Killing Fields of Sabra and Shatila
by Wahida Valiante
Saturday, September 16th, 2002 marks 20 years since the worst atrocity
of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. On that date, Lebanese Christian
Phalangists began a three-day killing spree in the Sabra and Shatila
Palestinian refugee camps. They had been let in after Israeli soldiers
sealed off the two camps when they occupied the western sector of
Beirut, the Lebanese capital. This horrific operation cost the lives
of 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians, almost all of them civilians --
defenseless old men, women, children, and infants. Three months later,
on December 16, 1982, the terrorism at Sabra and Shatila was condemned
by the United Nations General Assembly, which declared it an act of
genocide.
Responsibility for the original decision to move troops into west
Beirut was taken by then Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, and
his defence minister Ariel Sharon, now Israel's current PM. The
Lebanon invasion, designed to drive out the PLO, was given the green
light by then U.S. secretary of state, Alexander Haig.
"While the actual slaughter was carried out by the Lebanese
Phalangists, responsibility for the massacre rests on the shoulder of
the Israelis who armed and paid them, and lit the skies above camps
with flares as the killing went on through the night, and who had
planned the massacre. It also rests on the United States, which
undertook to guarantee the safety of the population of the two camps
after the PLO had departed from Lebanon." (Bitter Harvest)
Former American under-secretary of state, George Ball, says in his
book, Error and Betrayal: "In America our nation's responsibility for
the whole tragic incident has gone largely unnoticed, yet the facts
are clear enough. We put our own good faith behind Israel's word of
honor, otherwise the PLO would have never agreed to leave. The PLO
trusted America's promise that the Palestinians left behind will be
safeguarded. When America promised 'to do its utmost' to ensure that
Israel kept its commitments, they took that commitment at face value.
They would never have trusted an Israeli promise, but they trusted us.
We betrayed them."
As we emerge from honouring and remembering the first anniversary of
September 11th, 2001-- when more than 3,000 lost their lives in the
terrorist acts that resulted in the collapse of New York's twin World
Trade Centre towers -- I wonder how many American and Canadian
politicians and media moguls will recall September 16th,1982, to
honour those thousands who lost their lives in the killing fields of
Sabra and Shatila. The toll there was about five times higher than at
the World Trade Centre, but there have been no candlelight vigils,
memorials, or other public observances to mourn the death of these
innocent Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.
There were no fiery speeches about democracy, freedom and liberty by
an American head of state, no high-profile condemnations of the evil
committed by the Israeli army and the Lebanese Christian Phalangist
militias. All America did during those bloody months of July and
August 1982 was to plead with its client state Israel to show
"restraint."
Ariel Sharon, who the current U.S. president George W. Bush calls a
"man of peace," is still an indicted but unrepentant war criminal for
his role in facilitating the Sabra and Shatila massacre, a role
confirmed by the Israeli government's own investigation. And according
to historian Avi Shlaim in his recent book, The Iron Wall, three
decades earlier the same Sharon, as a young military officer, led an
elite Israeli commando force, Unit 101, on brutal raids against
Palestinian civilians, of which the massacre in the West Bank village
of Qibya, on October 14, 1953, was perhaps the most notorious.
Sharon's unit blew up 45 houses there, killing 69 civilians. Two-
thirds of them were women and children.
Empowered by George Bush, war criminal Ariel Sharon is once gain
causing havoc in the lives of Palestinians, who are being forced to
live under conditions reminiscent of concentration camps, hemmed in by
Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships, missiles, walls, and barbed wire.
This is all made possible because American taxpayers are footing the
bill to make Israel the dominant military power in the Middle East.
It was an American-made missile that recently missed its target and
killed two children, aged 10 and six, in the courtyard of their home
near Jenin. In the article, Bush is Walking into a Trap, veteran
journalist Robert Fisk writes: "America's name is literally stamped
onto the missiles fired by Israel into Palestinian buildings in Gaza
and the West Bank. And what did the developer of the missile say to me
when I showed him photographs of the children his missile had killed?
'Whatever you do,' he told me, 'don't quote me as saying anything
critical of the policies of Israel'."
No wonder Palestinians remain fearful. On Saturday, August 31, there
were 11 Palestinians killed within the space of only 24 hours, two of
them children. Yet there have been no suicide attacks on Israeli
civilians since August 4.
During April of this year, Israel's fierce military assault on the
Palestinian refugee camp at Jenin in the West Bank became another
horrific reminder of Israeli genocidal policies. Helicopter gunships
fired rockets into homes, some with people trapped inside, while huge
armoured bulldozers ripped a wide swath through the camp, leaving
thousands homeless and possibly hundreds buried under the rubble.
Terje Roed-Larsen, United Nations Mideast envoy and no enemy of
Israel, described the aftermath of Jenin as "shocking and horrifying
beyond belief." He feared it would fuel "hatred and aggression"
against Israelis.
Despite the solemn pledges proclaimed in its charter to reaffirm
fundamental human rights and the dignity and worth of the human
person, the United Nations has consistently failed to protect
Palestinian lives. Israel has broken every international law
concerning human rights, yet has never been punished for its ongoing
defiance and genocidal acts of terrorism. Along with America's
failure to act with justice in the Middle East and its parallel
disregard for Palestinian lives, these two intractable powers have
created a very dangerous and desperate world.
There could be no better way to honour the lost lives of innocent
Americans and Palestinians than to get Israel out of Palestine as soon
as possible and to support meaningful steps to ensure peace with
justice in all of the occupied territories. As Canadians and people of
conscience, we have a clear moral duty to work towards that end.
Mrs. Valiante is
national vice-chair of the
Canadian Islamic Congress. She is a
professional family counselor who recently visited Palestine as
part of a fact-finding medical team. While there, the team visited
refugee camps, health care clinics, hospitals, orphanages, local
and international charities and women's refugee
centres, and spoke with social workers and local
Palestinian families.
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