25th Anniversary of the Sabra-Shatilla Massacre

It was twenty-five years ago this week since the September 15-18, 1982 Massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatila. Will anyone remember? Does anyone really care anymore?

On Sunday September 19, 1982, [my wife, now deceased] 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 [she] later wrote to me in [her] 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”.

The old 7-storey Kuwaiti Embassy from where Ariel 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.

Continued misery in the camps has taken a heavy psychological toll on the residents of Sabra and Shatila, aid workers here say. 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.

Many of the killers [Christian Lebanese Forces, following the national amnesty] 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.

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.

[Excerpt of an article by Franklin Lamb, dissidentvoice.org]