History of massacre by Israelis

[Will Williams]

This incident, made possible by American backing, was where Ariel Sharon earned his nickname,"Butcher of Beirut."
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31 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila: justice delayed but gaining ground

Franklin Lamb
21 September 2013

Each year, during the third week of September, Lebanon and this region, as well as international supporters, pause to reflect upon and commemorate the victims one of the twentieth century’s most horrific and cynical crimes perpetrated by a member state of the United Nations. The Sabra-Shatila massacre took place September 16-19th in Beirut, a well-documented 48 hours of slaughter that saw the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp surrounded and sealed off by the occupying Israeli army, whose intent was to block and force back inside the killing field anyone seeking to escape the predicted orgy of butchery (see Bayan al Hout, Sabra and Shatila September 1982, Pluto Press).

Under a sky illuminated by night flares, and within close earshot of the screams emerging from the horror, IDF commanders sat perched above the camp watching through binoculars as if at a coliseum sporting event, looking down, occasionally pointing, monitoring the killers through line- of-sight as well as by radio contact. The victims were a defenseless civilian population. The instrument used to kill them? A drug, alcohol, and hate-filled militia which had been provided abundant aid and assistance, including a bulldozer to bury evidence of its crimes. Israel, whose continued occupation of Palestine is possible only because of arms, funding and diplomatic cover from the United States, and despite its accelerating pariah status, has largely escaped international legal accountability for its crimes at Sabra-Shatila, even though universally condemned for the carnage it organized and oversaw there.

Justice for the victims of Israel’s “Peace for Galilee” aggression in mid-September of 1982 has been delayed for three decades, and though the bloodbath which took place has been studied and documented—along with the suffering of the Palestinian people as a whole at the hands of the Zionists occupying their country—no legal recourse is available to those whose families were slaughtered 31 years ago. The international community has failed to recognize their fundamental human rights for justice, denying them even the right to be heard and have their claims adjudicated.

But this quest for justice—and that is what it is— has intensified, continuing to gain momentum in a variety of forms.

“However long it takes we will work relentlessly for full accountability from those responsible for Sabra-Shatila,” Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat declared this week.

One young man from Shatila who lost five relatives during the slaughter three decades ago put it somewhat differently: “Long after Palestine is liberated, our country and the world will remember this horrific crime and those who continue to protect the criminals with arms, their taxpayer’s money, diplomatic cover, and political collaboration.”

This year’s commemoration, as is the case every year, is impacted by local and regional conditions and political developments. The socio-economic status of the nearly 90,000 Palestinian refugees forced into Lebanon as a result of the 30-month-old civil war in Syria was among several topics this observer heard frequently discussed this week. To the already-tightly-packed Shatila camp, 230 more families have been added. Also much talked about are the effects of the war in Syria on Lebanon’s economy, travel warnings by various Western countries against coming to Lebanon, as well as the impact this may have upon people from around the world wishing to be in Beirut at this time of year to express their solidarity with Palestine and their respect for the victims of the 1982 massacre.

During this week international delegations are visiting Shatila and other camps as well as the notorious Al Khiam Prison and torture center. The latter facility was under Zionist control for 22 years—from 1978 all the way up until the expulsion of the occupiers in May of 2000, a retreat that was induced by the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and which included some Palestinian fighters...
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More, here: http://therebel.org/index.php?option=co ... m=2010_788