Sabra and Shatila
"The following morning, at 11:30 a.m. on Friday 17 September, General Drori ordered the militiamen to stop their operation, but after a further meeting with Phalangist officers the Israelis agreed to let them remain in the camps until the following day. Hobeika was also given permission to use two battalions of fresh troops and in the afternoon another force of militiamen entered the camps where they began a new round of killing. The Israeli commander in Beirut, General Yaron, has since admitted that, in spite of the fact that Israeli officers had known for several hours that the massacres were taking place, the Phalangists were allowed to call up reinforcements and remain in the camps for a further thirty-six hours. The militiamen rampaged around Sabra and Shatila until Saturday morning killing indiscriminately: nurses were raped by the killer gangs and then shot, children were scalped, patients from two hospitals were dragged from their beds and knifed to death. The Phalangists left most of their victims where they killed them, in their homes or in the streets, but some of them borrowed Israeli bulldozers and tried to cover up their deeds by shovelling corpses into mass graves. Because some of the victims were taken away and never seen again, and because it was decided not to open up some of the graves, it will never be known how many people were butchered. But perhaps as many as 2,000 people were killed and not even Sharon can pretend that these were the 'terrorists' he was allegedly looking for."
<span>“The price asked by Israel to stop the destruction of Beirut was for the 14,000 PLO fighters to abandon the city - leaving behind their families. The US brokered peace deal guaranteed the safety of the Palestinians left behind in the camps - a multinational peacekeeping force would be deployed to protect them. The US didn't honour its word and three weeks after the PLO evacuation they withdrew the multinational force giving the green light to Israel to invade West Beirut and massacre the Palestinians in the camps.”</span>
ReplyDelete<p>
</p><p><span>http://www.inminds.com/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html</span></p>
I remember when this happened. I was young enough to have not developed a lot of cynicism and I just couldn't accept that the world would allow something like this to take place. The Lebanese phalangists, Israelis, americans and all involved have yet to answer for this.
ReplyDeleteAnn, sorry to break it to you but the US isn't that influential or powerful. Do you think Americans understood let alone significantly influenced what happened in Lebonon. ;)
ReplyDeleteBut the US is FAR FAR MORE POWERFUL and INFLUENTIAL than BRITAIN.