[News] At least 1, 700 Palestinians were slaughtered on Israel's say-so

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

September 14, 2007


At least 1,700 Palestinians were slaughtered on Israel's say-so, 25 
years ago this week




A Letter to Janet About Sabra-Shatilla

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Dearest Janet,

It's a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut today. Twenty-five 
years ago this week since the massacre at the Palestinian refugee 
camps at Sabra-Shatilla. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It 
actually rained last night.  Enough to clean out some of the humidity 
and dust.  Fortunately not enough to make the usual rain created 
swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial 
ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square, 
one of several so named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told 
me that on Sunday September 19, 1982, you watched, sickened, as 
families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of 
butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of 
slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some 
boys castrated, Christian crosses carved into some of the bodies.

As you later wrote to me in your perfect cursive:

"I saw dead  women in their houses with their skirts up to their 
waists and their legs spread  apart; dozens of   young men shot after 
being lined up against an ally  wall; children with their throats 
slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes 
still  wide open, her blackened  face  silently screaming in horror; 
countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart 
and  who had been thrown into  garbage piles."

Today Martyr's Square is not much of a Memorial to the upwards of 
1,700 mainly women and children, who were murdered between Sept. 
15-18. You would not be pleased. A couple of faded posters and a 
misspelled banner that reads: "1982: Saba Massacer", hang near the 
center of the 20 by 40 yard area which for years following the mass 
burial was a garbage dump. Today, roaming around the grassless plot 
of ground is a large old yellow dog that ignores a couple of chicken 
hens and six pullets scratching and pecking around.

Since you went away, the main facts of the massacre remain the same 
as your research uncovered in the months that followed. At that time 
your findings were the most detailed and accurate as to what occurred 
and who was responsible.

The old 7-storey Kuwaiti Embassy from where Sharon, Eytan, Yaron, 
Elie Hobeika, Fradi Frem and others maintained radio contact and 
monitored the 48 hours of carnage with a clear view into the camps 
was torn down years ago. A new one has been built and they   are 
still constructing a mosque on its grounds.

I am sorry to report that today in Lebanon, the families of the 
victims of the massacre daily sink deeper into the abyss. No where on 
earth do the Palestinians live in such filth and squalor. 'Worse than 
Gaza!" a journalist recently in Palestine exclaims.

A 2005 Lebanese law that was to open up access to some of the 77 
professions the Palestinians have been barred from in Lebanon had no 
effect.  Their social, economic, political, and legal status 
continues to worsen.

"It's a hopeless situation here now," according to Jamile Ibrahim 
Shehade, the head of one of 12 social centers in the camp. "There are 
15,000 people living in one square kilometer," Jamile runs a center 
which provides basic facilities such as a dental clinic and a nursery 
for children. It receives assistance from Norwegian People's Aid and 
the Lebanese NGO, PARD.   "This whole area was nothing before the 
camps were here and there has been very little done in terms of 
building infrastructure," Shehade explained.

Continued misery in the camps has taken a heavy psychological toll on 
the residents of Sabra and Shatilla, aid workers here say. Tempers 
run high as a result of frustration from the daily grind in the 
decrepit housing complex. In all 12 Palestinian camps in Lebanon 
tensions and tempers rise with increasing family, neighborhood, and 
sect conflicts. Salafist and other militant groups are forming in and 
around Lebanon's Palestinian camps but not so much here in the 
Hezbollah controlled areas where security is better.

In Sabra-Shatilla schools will run double shifts when they open at 
the end of this month and electricity and water are still a big 
problem.According to a 1999 survey by the local NGO Najdeh (Help), 29 
percent of 550 women surveyed in seven of the 12 official refugee 
camps scattered across Lebanon, have admitted being victims of 
physical violence. Cocaine and hashish use are becoming a concern to 
the community.

There is some new information about the Sabra-Shatilla massacre that 
has come to light over the years. Few Israelis but many of the 
Christian Lebanese Forces, following the national amnesty, wanted to 
make their peace and have confessed to their role.  I have spoken 
with a few of them.

Remember that fellow you once screamed at and called a butcher 
outside of Phalange HQ in East Beirut, Joseph Haddad?  At the time he 
denied everything as he looked you straight in the eye and made the 
sign of the cross.   Well, he did finally confess 22 years later, 
around the time of his youngest daughter's confirmation in his local 
parish. Your suspicions were indeed correct. His unit, the second to 
enter the camp, had been supplied with cocaine, hashish and alcohol 
to increase their courage. He and others gave their stories to Der 
Spiegel and various documentary film makers.

Many of the killers   now freely admit that they 
conducted  a  three-day orgy of rape and slaughter that left 
hundreds, as many as 3,500 they claim,   possibly more, of innocent 
civilians dead in what is considered the bloodiest single incident of 
the Arab-Israeli conflict and a crime for which Israel will be 
condemned for eternity.

Your friend, Um Ahmad, still lives in the same house where she lost 
her husband, four sons and a daughter when Joseph, a thick-set 
militiaman carrying an assault rifle bundled everyone into one room 
of their hovel and opened fire. She still explains like it was 
yesterday, how the condoned slaughter unfolded, recalling each of her 
four sons by name, Nizar, Shadi, Farid and Nidal. I asked Joseph if 
he wanted to sit with Um Ahmad and seek forgiveness and possible 
redemption since has now become a lay cleric in his Parish.   He 
declined but sent his condolences with flowers.

Do you remember Janet, how we used to walk down Rue Sabra from Gaza 
Hospital to Akka Hospital during the 75-day Israeli siege in '82, as 
you used to say "to see my people"?  Gaza Hospital is gone now. 
Occupied and stripped by the Syrian-backed Amal militia during the 
Camp Wars of '85-87. Its remaining rooms are now packed with 
refugees. One old lady who ended up there recited how it's her 4th 
home since being forced from Palestine in 1948.  She survived the 
Phalangist attack on and destruction of Tel a Zaatar camp in 1976 
fled from the Fatah al Islam Salafists in Nahr al Bared Camp in May 
of this year and wore out her welcome at the teeming and overwhelmed 
Bedawi camp near Tripoli last month.

Most of your friends who worked with the Palestine Red Crescent 
Society are gone from Lebanon. Our cherished friend, Hadla Ayubi has 
semi-retired in Amman, Um Walid, Director of Akkar Hosptial, finally 
did return to Palestine following Oslo, still with the PRCS.   And 
its President, Dr. Fathi Arafat, your good friend, passed away in 
December of 2004 in Cairo less than a month after his brother Abu 
Ammar died in Paris.  They both loved you for all you had done for 
their people.

That trash dump near the Sabra Mosque is now a mountain.  Yesterday I 
did a double take as I walked by because I saw three young girls-as 
sweet and pretty as ever I have seen -- maybe 7 to 9 years old in 
rags picking thru the nasty garbage. Their arms were covered with 
white chemical paste.  Apparently whoever sent to scavenge sought to 
protect them from disease. As I climbed thru the filth to give them 
my last 6,000 LL ($4) they managed a smile and giggle when I slipped 
on a broken thin plastic bag of juicy cactus fruit skins and plunged 
to my knees.

In some areas of the camps there are mainly Syrians.  Selling cheap 
'tax free' goods.  Still some Arafat loyalists.  Mainly among the 
older generation.  Palpable stress among just about everyone it 
seems.  One young Palestinian explained to  me his worry that with 
the upcoming  Parliamentary election to choose a new 
President  scheduled for September 25,   there may be fighting and 
his October  6 SAT exams may be cancelled and he won't be able to 
continue his studies.

When you and I last spoke Janet, it was on April 16 of that year and 
I was en route to the Athens Airport to catch a flight to Beirut to 
be with you, you told me you were working on evidence to convict 
Sharon and others of war crimes.

Twenty years later, lawyers representing two dozen victims and other 
relatives attempted to have Ariel Sharon tried for the massacre under 
Belgian legislation, which grants its courts "universal jurisdiction" 
for war crimes.There had been great expectations about the case among 
the Palestinians and their friends, since as you remember, Sharon had 
already been found to bear "personal responsibility" in the massacres 
by an Israeli commission of inquiry which concluded he shouldn't ever 
again hold public office.   But hopes were dashed when the Belgium 
Court, under US and Israeli pressure, decided the case was 
inadmissible.I regret to report that all those who perpetrated the 
Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla escaped justice.  None of the hundreds of 
Phalange and Haddad militia who carried out the slaughter were ever 
punished. In fact they got a blanket amnesty from the Lebanese government.

As for the main organizers and facilitators, their massacre at 
Sabra-Shatilla turned out to be excellent career moves for virtually 
all of them.

Arial Sharon, found by the Israeli Kahan Commission Inquiry " to bear 
personal responsibility " for allowing the Sabra-Shatilla 
massacre   resigned as Minister of Defense but  retained his Cabinet 
position in  Begin's Government and over the next 16 
years   held  four more ministerial posts, including that of Foreign 
Minister, before becoming  Prime Minister in February, 2001. 
Following the Jenin rampage US President Bush anointed him "a man of peace."

Rafel Eytan, Israeli Chief of Staff, who shared Sharon's decision to 
send in the Phalange killers and helped direct the operation was 
elected to the Knesset as leader of the small ultra rightwing party, 
Tzomet.  In 1984 he was named Agriculture Minister and Deputy Prime 
Minister in 1996. He currently serves as head of Tzomet and is 
jockeying for another Cabinet position in the next government.

Major-General Yehoshua Saguy, Army Chief of Intelligence: found by 
the Kahan Commission to have made "extremely serious omissions" in 
handling the Sabra-Shatilla affair later became a right-wing Member 
of the Knesset and is now mayor of the ultra-rightist community of 
Bat-Yam, a little town near Tel Aviv.

Major-General Amir Drori, Chief of Israel's Northern Command: found 
not to have done enough to stop the massacre, a "breach of duty", 
recently was named as head of the Israeli Antiquities Commission.

Brigadier-General Amos Yaron, the divisional commander whose troops 
sealed the camps to prevent  victims from escaping and  helped 
direct   the  operation along with Sharon and Eitan  was  found to 
have" committed a breach of duty".   He was immediately promoted 
Major-General and made head of Manpower in the army, served as 
Director-General of the Israeli Defense Ministry and Military 
Attaches at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He is currently 
working for various Israeli lobby groups as a scholar in 'think thanks'.

Elie Hobeika, the Chief of Lebanese Forces Intelligence, who along 
with Sharon master-minded the actual massacre fell out with the 
Phalange in 1980s under suspicion that he was involved in killing 
their leader, Bachir Gemayal.

He defected to the Syrians, acquired three Ministerial posts in 
post-civil war Lebanon Governments, including Minister of the 
Displaced (many thought he know a lot about this subject) of 
Electricity and Water and in 1996, Social Affairs.

  On January 24, 2002, twenty years after his involvement at 
Sabra-Shatilla he was blown up in a car bomb attack in East 
Beirut.  Two of his associates who were also rumored to be planning 
to 'come clean' regarding Sharon's role were assassinated in separate 
incidents. A few days before Hobeika's death he stated that he might 
reveal more about the massacre and those responsible and according to 
Beirut's Daily Star staff who interviewed him, Hobeika told them that 
his lawyers had copies of his files implicating Sharon in much more 
than had become public.  These files are now is the possession of his 
son who, following Sharon's death, may release the files.

They still remember you in Burj al Buragne camp.  A few weeks ago one 
old man told me: "Janet Stevens? No, I didn't know her. He paused and 
then said, .Oh!..you mean Miss Janet!   She spoke Arabic...I think 
she was American.  Of course I remember her! We called her the little 
drummer girl. She had so much energy. She cared about the 
Palestinians.  That was so long ago. She stopped coming to visit us. 
I don't know why.  How is she?"

And so, Dearest Janet, I will be waiting for you at Sabra-Shatilla , 
at Martyrs Square, on Saturday,   September 15, 2007.

You will find me patting and mumbling to that old yellow dog.  He and 
I have become friends and we will pay our respects to the dead and I 
will reflect on these past 25 years and we will watch for and wait 
for you.   You will find us behind the straggly rose bushes on the 
right as you enter.

Come to us, Janet.   We need you.  The camp residents need you, one 
of their brightest lights, on this 25th anniversary of one of their 
darkest hours.   You were always their mediator and advocate...and 
until today you are their majorette for Justice and Return to their 
sacred Palestine.

Forever, Franklin

Janet Lee Stevens was born in 1951 and died on April 18, 1983, at the 
age of 32, at the instant of the explosion which destroyed the 
American Embassy in Beirut.  Twenty minutes before the blast, Janet 
had arrived at the Embassy to meet with US A.I.D. official Bill 
McIntyre because she wanted to advocate for more aid to the Shia of 
South Lebanon  and for the  Palestinians at  Sabra, Shatilla, and 
Burg al Burajneh camps,   stemming from Israel's 1982 invasion and 
the  September 15-18 massacre.  As they sat at a table in the 
cafeteria, where she had planned to ask why the US government has 
never even lodged a protest following the Israeli invasion or the 
Massacre, a van stolen from the Embassy the previous June   arrived 
and parked just in front of the Embassy.  Almost directly in front of 
the cafeteria.  It contained 2,000 pounds of explosives. It was 
detonated by remote control and tons of concrete pancaked on top of 
Janet and Bill, killing 63 and wounding 120.   Remains of Janet's 
body were found two days later, unidentified in the basement morgue 
of the American University of Beirut Hospital by the author. She was 
pregnant with our son, Clyde Chester Lamb III. Had he lived he would 
be 24 years old. Hopefully taking after his mother he would, no 
doubt, be a prince of a young man.

Franklin Lamb's book on the Sabra-Shatilla Massacre, now out of 
print, was published in 1983, following Janet's death and was 
dedicated to Janet Lee Stevens.Lamb, Franklin P.: International legal 
responsibility for the Sabra-Shatilla-massacre / Franklin P. Lamb - 
Montreuil: Imp. Tipe, 1983 - 157 S. Ill., Kt.He can be reached at 
<mailto:fplamb at gmail.com>fplamb at gmail.com.




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