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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220912-the-lesson-of-sabra-and-shatila-is-far-reaching/">middleeastmonitor.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The lesson of Sabra and Shatila is far-reaching</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Dr Ramzy Baroud - September 12, 2022<br></div></div>
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<p>The 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/1660936" target="_blank">massacre</a> falls on 16 September. Around 3,000 Palestinian refugees were <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190916-remembering-the-sabra-and-shatila-massacre/">killed</a> at the hands of Lebanon's Phalangist militias operating under the command of the Israeli army.</p>
<p>Four decades have passed, yet no measure of justice has been received
by the survivors of the massacre or the relatives of the victims. Many
have themselves died, and others are aging while they carry the scars of
physical and psychological wounds in the hope that, perhaps, within
their lifetime they will see the executioners behind bars.</p>
<p>However, many of the Israeli and Phalange commanders who ordered the
invasion of Lebanon, and orchestrated or carried out the heinous
massacres in the two Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 are already dead.
Ariel Sharon, who was <a href="https://www.arabnews.com/node/1660936" target="_blank">implicated</a>
by the official Israeli Kahan Commission a year later for his "indirect
responsibility" for the grisly mass killing and rape, later rose in
rank to <a href="https://www.gov.il/en/departments/people/ariel_sharon_" target="_blank">become</a> Israel's prime minister in 2001. He died in 2014.</p>
<p>Even prior to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Sharon's name was
always synonymous with mass murders and large-scale destruction. It was
in the so-called "Operation Shoshana" in the Palestinian West Bank
village of Qibya in 1953, that Sharon earned his infamous reputation.
Following the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1967, the Israeli general
became known as "The Bulldozer"; after Sabra and Shatila, he was "The
Butcher".</p>
<p>The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Menachem Begin, is also dead. He exhibited no remorse for the <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/historiography-and-memory-lebanese-civil-war.html" target="_blank">killing</a>
of over 17,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians during Israel's 1982
invasion of Lebanon. His nonchalant response to the killings in the West
Beirut refugee camps epitomises Israel's attitude toward all the mass
killings and all the massacres carried out against Palestinians in the
past 75 years: "Goyim kill Goyim," he <a href="http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/courses01/rrtw/derbyshire.txt" target="_blank">said</a>, "and they blame the Jews."</p>
<p><strong>READ: </strong><strong><a title="The 'painful march for freedom' reveals the triumphant legacy of Palestinian prisoners" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220906-the-painful-march-for-freedom-reveals-the-triumphant-legacy-of-palestinian-prisoners/">The 'painful march for freedom' reveals the triumphant legacy of Palestinian prisoners</a></strong></p>
<p>Testimonies from those who arrived in Sabra and Shatila after the
days of slaughter depict a reality that requires deep reflection, not
only among Palestinians, Arabs and — especially — Israelis, but also
humanity as a whole.</p>
<p>The late American journalist Janet Lee Stevens <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/after-25-years-who-remembers/7140" target="_blank">described</a>
what she had witnessed: "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 alley 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."</p>
<p>Dr Swee Chai Ang had just arrived in Lebanon as a volunteer surgeon,
stationed at the Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Hospital in Sabra and
Shatila. Her <a href="http://www.inminds.com/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html" target="_blank">book</a>, <i>From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians</i>, remains one of the most critical readings on the subject.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://www.wrmea.org/jordan-lebanon-syria/from-death-to-life-forty-years-after-the-sabra-shatila-massacre.html" target="_blank">article</a>,
Dr Swee wrote that following the release of photographs of the "heaps
of dead bodies in the camp alleys", worldwide outrage followed, but it
was all short-lived: "The victims' families and survivors were soon left
alone to plod on with their lives and to relive the memory of that
double tragedy of the massacre, and the preceding ten weeks of intensive
land, air and sea bombardment and blockade of Beirut during the
invasion."</p>
<p>Lebanese and Palestinian losses in the Israeli war were devastating
in terms of numbers. However, the war also changed Lebanon forever and,
following the <a href="https://www.wrmea.org/jordan-lebanon-syria/from-death-to-life-forty-years-after-the-sabra-shatila-massacre.html" target="_blank">forced exile</a>
of thousands of Palestinian men along with the entire PLO leadership,
Palestinian communities in the country were left politically vulnerable,
socially disadvantaged and economically isolated.</p>
<p>The story of Sabra and Shatila was not simply a dark chapter of a
bygone era, but an ongoing moral crisis that continues to define
Israel's relationship with Palestinians; highlight the demographic and
political trap in which numerous Palestinian communities in the Middle
East live; and accentuate the hypocrisy of the West-dominated
international community. The latter seems to care only for some kinds of
victims, but not others.</p>
<p>In the case of Palestinians, the victims are often depicted by
western governments and media as the aggressors. Even during that
horrific Israeli war on Lebanon 40 years ago, some western leaders
repeated the tired mantra that, "Israel has the right to defend itself."
It is this unwavering support of Israel that has made the Israeli
occupation, apartheid and siege of the West Bank and Gaza politically
possible and financially sustainable; indeed, profitable.</p>
<p><strong>READ: </strong><strong><a title="Investigating the victim exposes the depravity of Israeli propaganda" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220830-investigating-the-victim-exposes-the-depravity-of-israeli-propaganda/">Investigating the victim exposes the depravity of Israeli propaganda</a></strong></p>
<p>Would Israel have been able to invade and massacre at will if it were not for US-western military, financial and political <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf" target="_blank">backing</a>?
The answer is a definite "no". Those who doubt such a conclusion need
only to consider the attempt, in 2002, by the survivors of the Lebanon
refugee camps massacre to hold Ariel Sharon accountable. They took their
case to Belgium, taking advantage of a Belgian law which allowed for
the prosecution of alleged international war criminals. After much
haggling, delays and intense pressure from the US government, the
Belgian court eventually <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/feb/15/israelandthepalestinians.unitednations" target="_blank">dropped</a> the case altogether. Ultimately, Brussels <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/08/02/belgium-universal-jurisdiction-law-repealed" target="_blank">changed</a> its own laws to ensure such diplomatic crises with Washington and Tel Aviv are not repeated.</p>
<p>For Palestinians, however, the case will never be dropped. In her <a href="https://www.amazon.com/These-Chains-Will-Broken-Palestinian/dp/1949762092" target="_blank">essay</a>,
"Avenging Sabra and Shatila", Kifah Sobhi Afifi' described the joint
Phalangist-Israeli attack on her refugee camp when she was only 12 years
old.</p>
<p>"So we ran, trying to stay as close to the walls of the camp as
possible," she wrote. "That is when I saw the piles of the dead bodies
all around. Children, women and men, mutilated or groaning in pain as
they were dying. Bullets were flying everywhere. People were falling all
around me. I saw a father using his body to protect his children but
they were all shot and killed anyway."</p>
<p>Kifah lost several members of her family. Years later, she joined a
Palestinian resistance group and, following a raid at the Lebanon-Israel
border, was arrested and tortured in Israel.</p>
<p>Although Israeli massacres are meant to bring an end to Palestinian
resistance, unwittingly they fuel it. While Israel continues to act with
impunity, Palestinians also continue to resist. This is not just the
lesson of Sabra and Shatila, but also the much bigger, far-reaching
lesson of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.</p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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