In Memory of the 2,000+ victims of Sabra & Chatilla who died when the Zionists set the Fascist Phalange on unarmed and defenceless women and children

The Night that Arik Sharon and the Zionists set the fascist wolves onto Palestinian women and children

Perhaps the most haunting memory I have concerns the visit I made to Lebanon in the summer of 1979 at the invitation of the PLO. We were refused visas by the London Embassy of Lebanon and instead had to travel via Syria across the land border. I was on a delegation from the British Anti-Zionist Organisation.

At that time Lebanon was still in the throes of a civil war. In June 1976, with the United States and Israel having given the green light, Syria invaded Lebanon in order to ensure that the Phalangists and their Maronite allies weren’t defeated by the combined forces of the left in the Lebanese National Movement, which the PLO supported, somewhat reluctantly at first.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

There are still some fools who have illusions in the Syrian Ba’ath Government.  But when the Palestinians and their allies were on the brink of power in Lebanon Syria, with the full blessing of Saudi Arabia and the Arab League, invaded Lebanon to prevent their triumph.

In 1979 there was a vacuum in Lebanon. No group held power. The leftists, Druze, Palestinian, Shi’ite and Murabitoun, the Sunni Nasserist militias held power in West Beirut. The Phalange and Christians occupied East Beirut.

Ariel Sharon, Defence Minister and mass murderer who was personally responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatilla.  He was also best friend of Shimon Peres, leader of the Israeli Labour Party

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

A member of our delegation and myself decided to visit what remained of the refugee camp Tel al-Zatar in East Beirut. It had been subject to a 3 month siege from June till August when it fell to the fascist forces aided by Syria. Up to 50,000 lived in the refugee camp and an estimated 4,000 Palestinians were massacred by Syria’s ‘Christian’ allies.  To this day thousands of the dead remain unaccounted for.

Our delegation to the PLO in 1979

In order to see what remained of the camp it was necessary to cross the border, a veritable no-man’s land with the Lebanese Army dug in, between West and East Beirut and we had to get 2 taxis as no taxi would cross into hostile territory.  On our way back we were detained by the Lebanese army because we had no visas in our passports.

Beirut synagogue at Wadi Abu Jamil which I visited in 1979 - during Lebanon's civil war it came under siege from Israel's Phalangist friends - it was relieved by troops of the PFLP

We explained to them that we had come to Lebanon at the invitation of the Syrian occupying power, which was technically true! After about an hour or so we were released since the Lebanese army was de facto under the control of the Syrian military.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Whilst in Beirut we were given tours of the camps including sewing and woodwork workshops. There are a couple of photographs here.  It is a sad and sobering thought that most of those we met would have been butchered just 3 years later because of the utter stupidity of the PLO and Arafat in leaving the camps undefended and taking the word of the Zionists and their American backers to protect the camps. It was criminal irresponsibility not to ensure that if they had to leave, that sufficient arms weren’t left behind to ensure that the camps would remain protected.

children playing in the streets and alleways of the refugee camps - 3 years after this photo was taken most if not all of them would have been slaughtered by Israel's Phalangist allies

On 6^th June Israel invaded Lebanon. The pretext was the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London, Shlomo Argov.  In fact the assassination attempt had nothing to do with the PLO and was the work of the Abu Nidal group, which had been expelled by the PLO and which was the creature of Iraq’s Ba’athist government. In any event it was a pretext and Argov himself later condemned the invasion.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Israel's invasion of Lebanon began June 6, 1982. Following the assassination of the Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel on September 14^th, whom Israel had imposed on Lebanon and who Syria is widely suspected to have assassinated in a car bomb, Israeli troops entered and occupied West Beirut, contrary to all its previous promises.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

A deal was reached between the PLO and Americans whereby the PLO troops left for Tunisia by ship and the US promised to defend and protect the Palestinian refugee camps. Once again the PLO believed American promises although of course their position by then was extremely weak.

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

On September 16, 1982, the Phalangists, fascists who were known to harbour a deep hatred for the Palestinians, entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut. The excuse for allowing the Phalange to enter the camps was that the PLO had left hundreds of ‘terrorists’ behind. The Phalange massacred an estimated 2,000 civilians.

The Israelis fired flares throughout the night to light up the killing fields - thus allowing the militiamen to find their way through the narrow alleys of the camps. The massacre went on for two days. When the massacre had Israel supplied the bulldozers to dig mass graves. Refugees who had escaped to the perimeter of the camp were turned back by the Zionist soldiers.

Israel in the form of its Prime Minister, Menachem Begin tried to excuse their behaviour by blaming it on the ‘Christians’ but it was like putting a rattlesnake in a baby’s cradle. It was inevitable that the Phalange would perpetrate a massacre. 

The remains of Tel al-Zataar  refugee camp which was destroyed, along with its inhabitants in 1982 after the Phalange besieged it, with the support of Syrias Baathist government

Israeli troops surrounded the camps to prevent the refugees from escaping. In Israel a 300,000 demonstration was held to protest the massacre and the government set up the Kahane Commission. In 1983 Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister, was held to bear "personal responsibility" for the slaughter. However this was a whitewash.  The decision to invade Lebanon and then Beirut was a collective decision of the Israeli cabinet, not least its Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

Many people thought that Sharon’s career was over but I predicted, and unfortunately I was right, in an article in Tribune, that Sharon would sooner or later come back as Prime Minister. I was right and this most bloodthirsty of monsters came back in time to trigger of the Al Aqsa Intifada.

It is worth reminding ourselves that all the Israeli Zionist parties, from Likud to the ‘leftist’ Mapam and what became Meretz, supported the invasion of Lebanon. Only Israeli anti-Zionists were opposed from the start though, as the Lebanese resistance took its toll, more and more people began to oppose what happened. 

Dov Yermiyah, dissident Israeli Colonel who was dismissed for his criticisms of the Zionists' barbarity

Perhaps the most famous opponent of the war was Dov Yermiya, a reserve Lieutenant Colonel who openly condemned Israel’s bombing of Ain al Hilweh refugee camp.  He said it reminded him of World War II. Because of his open criticisms of the war he was dismissed and he later wrote a War Diary of describing what he had seen. Dov died aged 101 and shortly before his death he announced that he had rejected Zionism. He said of Israel that ‘we have become a nation of savage thugs.’

For further information see Sabra and Shatila:  New Revelations on America’s complicity in what happened.

Below is a personal testimony as to what happened by Dr Alfout Mahmoud.

Two Palestinian women walk past the dead bodies

Continuous Terror

by Dr. Olfat Mahmoud

It was 10 am on Wednesday, September 16, 1982 and I was on duty at Accra Hospital, one of the Palestinian hospitals for Palestinian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon was ongoing and the camps were surrounded by Israeli troops. Throughout the night we had heard stories of terrible things happening in Sabra and Shatila camp just adjacent to us but did not believe them.

“Suddenly we were interrupted by the sound of intense gunfire at the hospital entrance. The foreign nurses urged us all to leave immediately as they were not in danger and could care for the patients. The Lebanese militia were attacking from the position the Israelis had just vacated. Several other nurses and I were on the ground floor. We ran to a window at the back of the hospital, with seconds to spare we clambered out and ran into the garden of a villa behind the hospital. The front gate of the villa was locked; the only way out was over the fence. Once over this, we ran for our lives towards the bridge and then scattered.

We heard that Lebanese militiamen had also killed nurses at Gaza Hospital located inside Sabra and Shatila camp. The foreign nurses and doctors there testified on the Saturday morning, as militiamen were marching them down the camp's main street, they saw hundreds of mainly women and children under guard sitting by a large and recently dug pit. Soon after this, they heard repeated shooting for 10 minutes or more, accompanied by screams and cries.

For two days and nights after the massacre, I slept as if in a coma. I had nightmares filled with the people who'd been slaughtered, all the people I'd known and loved and who were no longer there. When I finally woke up, I found a black cloud of grief and despair had settled around me. Nothing could shift it. It was shot through with flashes of terror that at any moment soldiers would come crashing through the door to kill me and my family. I couldn't bear to listen to the news, and I would cry easily. I just wanted to run away from everything, but my limbs felt too heavy to move. My body was like lead. And my throat was constricted constantly.” *

This is part of my memory of the massacre that took place in the Sabra and Shatila camp in Beirut, Lebanon 38 years ago. Over 2,000 women children and old men were massacred. I can never forget this and nor can all those who witnessed it and were survivors like me.

The tragedy of Sabra and Shatila was and still is a powerful reminder of the occupation of Palestinian land. It is a powerful reminder of the failure of international efforts to find a peaceful settlement to Israeli illegal occupation and to the Palestinian refugees’ endless cycle of displacement. This massacre is only one of the terrible massacres that have affected Palestinians but for me it was and is still an unforgettable traumatic event. Many survivors continue to live in Sabra and Shatila, struggling to make a living and haunted by their memories of the slaughter. To this day, justice has not been served for the war crimes that took place there despite efforts to take this massacre to the International War Crimes Tribunal. It serves as a powerful and tragic reminder of the vulnerability of Palestinians and Palestinian refugees.

On August 4, 2020, the Beirut port suffered from a terrifying and devastating blast that killed over 200 people, made homeless around 300,000 and caused extensive damage to the city. I have been through wars and the massacre but as I heard the shattering of glass, and the movement of the house, I was truly terrified and initially thought that the house was collapsing around me. Just few weeks after that, a new fire erupted in the port. All what happened and is still happening, brought back the painful memories of Sabra and Shatila massacre.

When Sabra and Shatila massacre happened and the killing and slaughter ended, its effects lived on. People were terrified and children would scream whenever they saw the army passing by. Now, after these recent tragic events in Beirut the consequences remain. The sound of breaking glass causes my heart and others to stop with fear. When the fire erupted in the port last week, we all started to open the windows and doors hoping to minimize damage from an expected blast. Many left their houses in terror. Even though we were still under the pressure of widespread cases of COVID-19 and the streets were crowded.

As years pass people in Lebanon, including us Palestinian refugees, continue to witness tragedies that bring back terrifying and tragic memories. I always ask myself, why are innocent people dying because of greed, negligence, corruption, brutality, and lack of humanity? In the face of this ongoing and overwhelming despair my solace comes through my humanitarian work to fight for justice and dignity for Palestinian refugees. I call on people everywhere to fight for justice in whatever way what they can. I have also found strength in prayer and my religious beliefs and so I pray daily for peace and justice for my people and for the other 80 million of refugees and displaced people in the world.

*This is an excerpt from Tears for Tarshiha by Olfat Mahmoud

Sabra & Shatilla - the Palestinian Liddice

Butchered by Israel’s Fascist Friends

The Palestinians have known many tragedies.  When I went to Lebanon in 1979, at the invitation of the PLO, it was via Syria because the Lebanese Embassy in London, controlled by the Phalangists, refused to issue a visa.

The Phalange, named after the Spanish fascist Falange, were founded by Pierre Gemayel, an open supporter of Hitler.  It was no surprise that the Phalangists had been close friends and allies of Israel.  When Bashir Gemayel, who had been ‘elected’ to President under Lebanon’s confessional state structure, he was assassinated a few days later, almost certainly by the Syrians, who had been invited into Lebanon to suppress the Left in the Civil War in 1977.

When I arrived I crossed into East Beirut and saw the ruins of the Tal a Zaatar refugee camp which had been annihilated by the Christian phalangist militias.  I also visited the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.  In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon and perpetrated what can only be described as genocide.  20,000 were killed and over 100,000 were injured.  Under Ariel Sharon, Likud’s Defence Minister, Israeli troops lay siege to Beirut.  As Arafat and his men moved out to Tunisia, Israeli troops moved in.  Between the 16th and 18th September 1982, up to 3,000 Palestinians were slaughtered by the armed Phalangist militias, seeking revenge for the assassination of Bashir Gemayel.

Israeli troops provided them with cover and helpfully provided lighting by firing flares into the night sky.  For 3 nights Israeli troops did nothing as the massacre unfolded.  The impact across the world was instantaneous and even in Israel, for the first and last time, a mass demonstration, firstly of 100,00 and then 400,000 protested at the savagery perpetrated in their name.  Israel’s Kahan commission held Sharon directly responsible.  The UN’s own Committee of Inquiry under Sean MacBride found Israel directly responsible for what had happened and indeed it had literally set the Phalangist forces on the camp, actually turning back fleeing refugees.

Janet Lee Stevens, an American journalist, later wrote  to her husband, Dr. Franklin Lamb,[28]

"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."

Sabra and Shatilla and the invasion of Lebanon changed the image of Israel forever in the West.  No longer was Israel seen as the plucky David of the Middle East.  Instead it came to be seen as the surrogate of the United States, an example of ethnic cleansing in action.  I remember how the Peace Now campaign, which had organised the demonstrations in Israel, came to be used as a propaganda tool by the Likud administration under Begin.

I spoke on a number of campuses and remember the first Union General Meeting at Sussex well.  They had a Peace Now speaker and the Zionists tried to stop me speaking on grounds of ‘anti-Semitism’.  That went down like a lead balloon.  A motion, calling for a democratic, secular state in Palestine, which I supported was proposed, it passed by about 2-1 in a meeting of nearly 900 students in Sussex’s Mandela Hall.
Earlier in the summer I had chaired the inaugural meeting of the Labour Committee on Palestine, with Andrew Hornung as Secretary and Ted Knight as Treasurer.  Later that year the WRP, with which Knight was associated, took over the LCP with the support of Socialist Action, and we had to set up another campaign.  But when it was formed the LCP was almost immediately successful, with the Labour Party nationally passing an emergency motion supporting a democratic, secular state in Palestine!

The victims of Sabra and Shatilla suffered the most bestial of crimes at the hands of Israel’s fascist surrogates.  Crimes which surpassed the savagery of the Nazis and were only emulated by Romania’s Iron Guard.  But the legacy of Sabra and Shatilla has changed the political climate in the West ever since.

Tony Greenstein

A Palestinian woman carries a portrait of her relatives who were killed during the Sabra and Shatila massacre during a march to mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre in Beirut, 18 September 2012. (Sharif Karim / Reuters)

“They shot my father in the head”: interview with survivor of Sabra and Shatila massacre

Moe Ali Nayel The Electronic Intifada Sabra-Shatila camp 19 September 2012

On Sunday, the 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre was commemorated by people of different nationalities around the world. In Lebanon the commemoration was only observed by Palestinians living in refugee camps; Lebanese people were not concerned.

The massacre carried out by the Phalange, a Christian Maronite militia acting in full cooperation with Israel, was among the most atrocious episodes of recent history. But it is still absent from our collective Lebanese memory.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is another taboo in Lebanon that needs to be addressed publicly and soberly; maybe admitting the wrongdoing could prevent us from further subjugating the Palestinian refugees who are residing here temporarily until they return to their occupied homeland.

The perpetrators of the massacre are still alive and could be found inside and outside Lebanon; so too are some of the witnesses who survived the massacre, and lost their loved ones. They are still awaiting justice.

On 16 September 1982, Jameela Khalifeh was a teenage girl. The three long days of slaughter still haunts her memories.

This week, Khalifeh welcomed us with a smile to her dim apartment on the busy Sabra strip. Outside, there was bustling life: people stopping and shopping at vegetable stalls and bootleg DVD stores.

“I was 16 and had just got engaged,” Kahlifeh said. “I was living at my parents’ home with three sisters and my brother.”

“We won’t forget”

Holding out a photo, she added: “This is my father Mohammad Khalifeh, this picture was taken after they shot him in the head and dumped his body on the side of the street.” On the back of the picture, there is a certificate issued by the Palestine Liberation Organization. It contains Mohammad’s name and the words “So we won’t forget.”

“On 16 September, during the invasion, Israeli soldiers descended onto the camp from the Sports City stadium located on a hilltop overlooking the camp. We knew that the Israelis were stationed in the stadium and they [the Israelis] knew that the fedayeen [PLO fighters] had evacuated the camp, therefore we assured each other they wouldn’t kill us unarmed families.

“Next to the Israeli soldiers there were the Phalange militants who spoke in a Lebanese dialect; each militant dressed in a cowboy hat and a white armband with a green cedar on it [the logo of the Phalangists’ political party]. I remember the Israelis were speaking broken Arabic to the Lebanese militants but mostly they spoke in Hebrew. My mother understood Hebrew from the time she used to live in Palestine before 1948.

“While we were fleeing, we got stopped by a Phalange militant who pointed his rifle to my mother’s belly, but the Israeli soldier told the Lebanese militant, ‘Don’t kill the Madam and the babies; we are here to kill men only.’ We came out to the streets; my father was with us in the shelter beneath the building, and the Israelis — with the Phalangists — started to call us through microphones urging us to come out from the shelters, announcing: ‘If you surrender you will be safe.’

“Overwhelming stench”

“We came out from the shelter to the street; I remember the stench was overwhelming, and I was waving a white piece of cloth. My father finally decided to come out with us from the shelter. I made sure to stay by his side; I was truly attached to my father, holding his hand tight.

“The moment we emerged we were taken by Israeli soldiers and Lebanese militants. At this point my father became nervous. He looked at me and whispered, ‘I’m going home.’ The moment we joined families from the camp led by the militants, my father panicked, let go of my hand and ran home. When he got home he found militants inside the building, searching it, so he immediately ran back to us.

“While he was running towards us: they shot him in the head. My mother saw him getting shot, I didn’t.

“While we were being led at gunpoint, we found a small alley that led to the camp so we split off from the marching, cattled crowds and made it back to the main mosque in the camp. The mosque was full of people from Shatila. On arrival, we told them that they [the Phalange] are killing and slaughtering families but the elders of the camp said we were lying; that there was nothing, that we should calm down. Upon our insistence the elders decided to go see what was going on. The elder men never came back to the mosque. After waiting in the mosque for few hours with no news about the elders we and other families went to Gaza hospital at the the entrance to Sabra.

“We used to live in the street of Hay al-Gharbi next to the Doukhi grocery store. In our neighborhood only my family and our neighbor survived the killing, the rest were all killed. I remember seven or eight corpses on top of each other, in the street below our building; we had to step over them.

“The Israelis and Phalangists led us in a march, to finish us, to kill us like they did to the others. Luckily, we managed to escape through the alley. The Israelis were dressed in full military uniform with iron helmets. The Lebanese militants were dressed in cowboy hats, blue jeans and daggers hanging from their belts. Some among them wore black ski masks. All carried Kalashnikovs.

Putting Sharon in the dock

“A few years ago 300 of us hired the lawyer Shibli Mallat to sue Ariel Sharon [Israel’s defense minister in 1982, and later, prime minister] for the massacre and we wanted to take him to a tribunal in Belgium. We saw pictures of Sharon standing at the sports stadium next to Israeli tanks overlooking the camp, and we know he was watching the massacre and the killing of Palestinians. I still want Sharon to be put on trial even if he, ironically, has been in a coma for years and clinically dead.

“Thirty years after the massacre, take a look at how we live. We are seven people staying in two small rooms. Our life has been deteriorating for the last 30 years; we still can’t work and can’t move outside the camp to a decent place. We buy drinking and washing water on a daily basis. We buy electricity from a generator; the Lebanese government only gives us two hours of power a day. My two sons work at an aluminum factory. Because they are Palestinian they get paid less than their coworkers. And my 23-year-old daughter works at a café.

“My daughter went to get a loan from a bank like her coworkers did but when she got to the bank and showed her papers they told her, ‘Sorry, you can’t get a loan because you are Palestinian.’ Being a Palestinian in Lebanon is a daily, ongoing struggle for survival. That’s why each time a woman gives birth we make sure the newborn is brought up to believe in the right of return to Palestine and we emphasize that we are only guests here.

“We want to return to Palestine but until then I want to leave this country and go anywhere we’ll be treated as human beings. We never gave up, Palestine is ours, and we are going to return, but we are tired of not being able to live an honorable, decent life.

“We are from Jaffa. My mother never stops talking about the time she lived in Jaffa, and the way Israelis started coming as refugees, at first sheltering in houses, then starting to push Palestinians out of their houses.”

Atrocity ignored

On 16 September this year, Pope Benedict XVI visited Beirut, where he urged the Lebanese — both Christians and Muslims — to coexist in peace. The pope preached on various issues concerning the region but failed to mention the Sabra and Shatila massacre and the plight of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Many were furious with his omission of any reference to the massacre in his public address on Beirut’s waterfront. As he was speaking on the anniversary of the massacre, the omission was all the more hurtful.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is one of many atrocities that occurred during the long years of the Lebanese civil war. Ironically, political leaders, who were then warlords, were sitting on the frontline on Sunday during the Pope’s sermon; among those leaders were members of the Phalangist party, who are believed to be responsible for the massacre in Sabra and Shatila.

There will come a day when Lebanon will break the taboo of the Sabra and Shatila massacre and justice will be served to the families of the thousands killed 30 years ago. But until that day comes, Palestinian refugees will still be marginalized, living in inhumane conditions inside overcrowded camps.

Moe Ali Nayel is a journalist and fixer based in Beirut.