Christian Phalangists. Sabra and Shatila: the story of an Arab provocation

Our visit began at a clinic owned by the Red Crescent Society. The society itself was organized in 1968, and there are 5 such clinics in Lebanon. They serve Palestinians and are located within a 5-minute walk of Sabra and Shatila:

The level of equipment of the clinic is quite high and can rival many identical ones in Russian regional centers. This dentist spoke fluently with us in Russian. It is noteworthy that 80 percent of doctors speak Russian, as they trained in the Soviet Union:

3.

Because Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have no right to anything: neither education, nor work, they have no money. There is no future either. Therefore, they need free medical treatment like air:

4.

We were shown a kind of folk art museum at the clinic. This key is very symbolic. Many years ago, when Palestinians were forced to leave their homeland, each owner wore the key to his home around his neck. Several decades have passed, and the keys still hang on the necks of many Palestinians. Because while they are alive, the hope of returning home is alive:

5.

For Palestinian children, even Santa Claus has no gifts - only bones and scraps:

6.

Childhood…

7.

Literal translation: “Isn’t what’s happening in Palestine the Holocaust?”

8.

A wide shopping street leads to Sabra and Shatila:

9.

There are different products sold here. Some of them show blue-eyed mannequins with a broken head:

10.

11.

Local "Eldorado":

12.

Most items are "second hand":

13.

Just outside the market is a mass grave where 3,000 Palestinians killed in the 1982 massacre are buried:

14.

Under this lawn, in places with bald patches, lie the remains of the dead. Then bulldozers simply dug a huge hole, in which those who wanted to live yesterday found themselves:

15.

What is surprising is the lack of respect for their own dead fellow countrymen on the part of the Palestinians. I shuddered from the realization that I was walking on the bones of women and children...

Only this piece of stone and the inscription on it remind of that tragedy:

16.

Outwardly, Sabra and Shatila are ordinary areas of Beirut. Contrary to my expectations, they are not surrounded by fences and barbed wire, and they are not guarded by soldiers:

17.

As in many Arab neighborhoods, there are surprisingly many wires here:

18.

It is interesting that each subsequent balcony, starting from the second floor, is further from the building than the previous one. As a result, on the top floors you can easily shake hands with a neighbor from the house opposite:

19.

The sky is incredibly blue. From bottom to top, the view is amazing:

20.

If only it weren’t for the wires... Because of them, it seems like you’re looking at the sky from a cage:

21.

The patios are very dirty. Chickens and garbage are an indispensable attribute of Palestinian neighborhoods:

22.

23.

National symbols are very common:

24.

25.

Since Palestinians are prohibited from working, there are always a lot of people on the streets.

There are a total of 12 registered and 7 unregistered refugee camps in Lebanon. The largest is home to about 75,000 people. In total, there are 320,000 refugees from Palestine in Lebanon, but the country's government claims that there are 600,000. This was done in order to maintain a religious balance in the country and not give refugees citizenship:

26.

27.

There are 3 portraits of Yasser Arafat on this wall alone. He is highly revered here and considered a national hero:

28.

Children are always children:

29.

And boys, growing up, remain them:

30.

31.

32.

Sabra and Shatila are Palestinian refugee camps located in West Beirut.

On September 16 and 17, 1982, during the civil war in Lebanon and during 1982, Lebanese Christian Phalangists, who were allies of Israel, carried out a military operation in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut to search for Palestinian militants, which turned into a massacre of civilians citizens.

According to various estimates, from 700 to 3,500 civilians were killed in Sabra and Shatila.

The massacre occurred after the September 14, 1982, assassination of Lebanese Christian President Bashir Gemayel and 26 others, whom the Phalangists believed were killed by members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The next morning, September 15, Israeli troops, contrary to previously reached agreements between the United States and Israel, occupied West Beirut (the United States had previously guaranteed the PLO the safety of civilians in West Beirut and that Israeli troops would not enter there).

By this point, PLO forces had left Beirut in accordance with international agreements calling for their complete evacuation and under the supervision of international military forces. Despite this, a number of sources claim that many PLO fighters still remained in the camps.

The Phalangists were allies of the Israelis and acted in coordination with them during the capture of West Beirut and planning to clear the camps of suspected militants there. The Israelis maintained a cordon around the camps during the massacre. Israel's role in the massacre is controversial and widely debated.

Some publications claim that the reason for the massacre was revenge for the massacre of civilians in the Christian city of Damour, perpetrated by the Palestine Liberation Organization and their allies in 1976, as well as for the murder of Bashir Gemayel.

There are disputed claims from eyewitnesses that the massacre was instigated by Syrian intelligence or that Israeli soldiers were directly involved in the massacre.

Historical background

Lebanese Civil War

From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon experienced a civil war between a number of community militias and pro- and anti-government political parties, alternately supported by various foreign states.

Palestinian organizations took an active part in the war, siding with the anti-government coalition “National Patriotic Forces”, which united various parties and groups, mainly consisting of Muslims.

As a result of the confrontation between these groups, several incidents of massacres of civilians occurred, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people.

So, on January 18, 1976, Phalangist Christians stormed Quarantine (the Muslim quarter of Beirut, controlled by the PLO), and in the accompanying massacre more than 1,000 people died, including civilians.

PLO fighters in turn captured the Christian town of Damour 2 days later on January 20, 1976, killing 584 people during the attack and the ensuing massacre.

In August of the same year, the Phalangists, after a long siege, captured the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zataar, which was the main Palestinian military base in Christian East Beirut, where, according to various estimates, from 1,500 to 3,000 Palestinians died during the assault and in the subsequent massacre.

Lebanon, which was in a state of civil war, was partially occupied by Syrian troops, who moved the camps of the PLO militants, with whom the Syrians fought at the first stage of the war, to the southern part of Lebanon - to the border with Israel.

Lebanon War (1982)

The presence of the PLO in Lebanon became a strong destabilizing factor in the late 1970s. Southern Lebanon was controlled by armed PLO units, and refugee camps turned into training bases for militants.

For a number of years, shelling and terrorist attacks on Israel have been carried out from bases in southern Lebanon. Israel responded with air raids and limited ground operations.

On June 6, 1982, in response to the assassination attempt by Palestinian terrorists from the OAN organization, hostile to the PLO, against the Israeli ambassador in London Shlomo Argov, Israel launched Operation Peace to Galilee.

On September 1, 1982, after fierce fighting in the Beirut area, the PLO armed forces left Lebanon under the supervision of international forces as part of agreements with Israel.

In response, Israel pledged not to send troops into West Beirut, which is populated by Palestinians and Muslims. The US has guaranteed the safety of Palestinian civilians remaining in Lebanon.

On September 15, following the September 14 assassination of Bashir Gemayel, a Lebanese Christian who had been elected Lebanese President less than a month earlier, Israeli troops entered West Beirut, contrary to previous agreements.

Lebanese Christians believed that the Palestinians were to blame for Gemayel's death.

Sabra and Shatila camps

The Sabra and Shatila camps were formed after most of the Arab population of Palestine fled their homes at the call of their leaders or were expelled by the Israeli army as a result of the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-49.

After the war, Israel requisitioned the refugees' lands and homes and prohibited them from returning to Israeli territory. The Lebanese government refused to grant citizenship to the refugees and their socio-economic conditions were and remain extremely poor.

According to Franklin Lamb, head of the Sabra Shatila Foundation, in 2009 Sabra and Shatila are the poorest of the world's 59 Palestinian refugee camps and even poorer than the Gaza Strip camps, with an unemployment rate of more than 40%.

In 1970, after attempting to create a “state within a state” in Jordan, PLO fighters were expelled from Jordan and moved to Lebanon.

Their bases were refugee camps, including Sabra and Shatila. The appearance of Palestinian militants in Lebanon destabilized the religious and ethnic composition of this country, which played an important role in the beginning of the long-term civil war in Lebanon.

According to Nagi Najar, director of the Christian organization Lebanon Foundation for Peace, Etienne Sacker, leader of the Guardians of the Cedar party, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Sabra and Shatila camps were the main training center for international terrorism.

Most of the terrorists from all over the world (Red Brigades from Italy, Baader-Meinhof from Germany, Basque ETA, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, Abu Nidal, Islamists from Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Algeria) were trained there by Arafat’s specialists in hijacking planes and using plastic explosives and car bombings in Europe and around the world against US and Israeli missions.

Many Lebanese captured by the PLO did not emerge from these camps alive. As a representative of the party hostile to the Palestinians in the Lebanese civil war, Najjar also states that the Sabra and Shatila massacre “was not a mistake, but represented the failure of the Christian community to continue to tolerate its extermination and planned genocide.” Nayjar writes:

“Arafat’s actions in Lebanon can only be described as barbaric. Christians had their heads cut off, young girls were raped, children and their parents were killed right in the streets. Palestinians attacked Christians without distinguishing between men and women, adults and children. They considered all Christians their enemies and killed them, regardless of age and gender.”

According to A. Klein, there is reason to believe that in September 1982, Mohammed Safady, one of the three Black September terrorists who participated in and survived the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972, was killed in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Phalangists

The Phalangists belonged to the nationalist Lebanese Christian party "Lebanese Phalanges".

The party was founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayel. The party played a significant role in the country's politics, adhering to a pro-Western course.

During the armed clashes of 1958, the Phalangists, in alliance with the Dashnaks party, defended the country's president, Camille Chamoun, against a bloc of Muslim-leftist organizations led by Kamal Jumblatt.

In 1968, the Phalangists, together with the National Liberal Party of Lebanon and the National Bloc Party, formed the so-called. The Triple Alliance, which held 30 of the 99 seats in the Lebanese parliament. Later, the National Bloc left the alliance, disagreeing with the Cairo Treaty of 1969.

On April 13, 1975, the Phalangists shot down a bus carrying 26 Palestinians, in response to an assassination attempt on their leader, Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, by Palestinian militants. This incident sparked a decades-long civil war in Lebanon.

In 1980, as a result of an assassination attempt on the son of Sheikh Pierre, Bashir Gemayel, commander of the united Christian militia “Lebanese Forces,” his 18-month-old daughter Maya and 7 other people died.

Since the beginning of the civil war in Lebanon, the Israeli side has established close ties with the Phalangists and supplied them with weapons, uniforms and other materials. The Mossad was responsible for the connection between the Israeli side and the Phalangists.

In 1982, the Phalangists warmly supported the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. However, they refused to take part in military clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinians and left-wing organizations.

In an interview with Israeli television, the head of the Phalangist party, Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, when asked why the Phalangists do not take part in armed hostilities, said that they do not want to become strangers in the Arab world. The Lebanese nationalist organization Guardians of the Cedar, led by its leader Etienne Saker, openly sided with the Israelis.

During the offensive in the south of the country, Israeli troops were warmly welcomed by both Christian and Muslim (mostly Shiite) populations, tired of constant arbitrariness on the part of Palestinian organizations. According to the Kahan Commission, the head of the Israeli gen. Eitan's headquarters ordered the Phalangists to refrain from participating in the battles, because he feared that they would take revenge on the civilian population.

The Phalangist leadership believed that Palestinian refugees jeopardized the position of Christians in Lebanon (from a political and demographic point of view) and advocated their expulsion from the country, including using violence. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Phalangists wore Israeli military uniforms with an emblem that included the inscription "Ketaib Lubnaniyeh" and an image of a cedar tree.

Opinions about the presence of PLO fighters in Sabra and Shatila

The PLO said its fighters had completely left Beirut two weeks before the massacre, in accordance with agreements.

However, shelling by Israeli troops during the encirclement of the camps and a number of evidence show that on the day of the operation there were a number of armed people from the Palestinian and Lebanese-Muslim sides in the camps.

Their number and identity are a matter of debate. In particular, after the murder of Gemayel, he stated that the PLO left 2-3 thousand militants in West Beirut.

Israeli journalists Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, in the book “Israel's Lebanon War,” wrote that before the start of the operation, up to 200 armed and well-equipped militants could remain in the camps, based in underground bunkers built by the PLO in previous years.

Information about the presence of PLO militants in Sabra and Shatila, as well as well-camouflaged underground fortifications, was confirmed by a PLO ally, the famous international terrorist Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez, who has repeatedly visited these camps:

“In Shatila, the underground shelters were not discovered by the Lebanese forces and the Popular Front fighters in Shatila survived the massacre... They were in Shatila, they were underground. This did not happen in Sabra, and they actually killed a lot of people there.”

The presence of militants in Sabra and Shatila was also confirmed by the Israeli Kahan Commission. The report states that:

“According to information from various sources, the terrorists did not fulfill their obligations to evacuate all their forces from West Beirut and hand over their weapons to the Lebanese army, but left in West Beirut, according to various estimates, approximately 2,000 fighters, as well as many weapons depots. At the time the Phalangists entered the refugee camps there were forces of armed terrorists there. We cannot determine the size of these forces, but they had different types of weapons. It is possible to determine that these forces of armed terrorists were not taken out during the general evacuation, but remained in camps with two purposes. Namely: for the resumption of underground terrorist activity at a later period and for the protection of the civilian population remaining in the camps. It must be borne in mind that as a result of the hostility prevailing between various sects and organizations, the population without military protection was threatened with massacre.”

According to the commission, 7,000 members of the left-wing militia “Mourabitoun”, allies of the PLO, whose evacuation the agreement did not provide for, also remained in West Beirut.

Journalist Donald Neff believes that the allegations about PLO militants in Sabra and Shatila are an invention of the Israeli side.

According to Palestinian witnesses and some journalists, a small and poorly armed group of Palestinians and Lebanese tried to defend the camps.

Course of events

September 15th At 6:00 the Israeli army entered West Beirut. According to Kahan's report, at first there was no armed resistance, but after a few hours fighting broke out with armed militants in the city. As a result, 3 soldiers were killed and more than 100 were injured. In the process of encircling and blocking the Sabra and Shatila neighborhoods, heavy fire was opened from the eastern part of Shatila. One Israeli soldier was killed and 20 wounded. During this day, and to a lesser extent on September 16-17, RPGs and small arms fire were repeatedly opened from Sabra and Shatila at the command post and the soldiers of the battalion surrounding the camp. The Israelis responded by shelling the camps with artillery.

The facts about army losses cited by the Kahan Commission are denied by some journalists (see below), who claim that there was no shelling of the Israelis, and that the Israelis fired at defenseless camps. Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that the Israeli entry into west Beirut was "virtually unopposed" since Syrian and PLO forces had left the city a month earlier.

Sharon and the Israeli Chief of General Staff, Eitan, decided to use the Phalangists to clear the Palestinian refugee camps of the terrorists supposedly located there. The use of the Phalangists was explained, among other things, by the desire to reduce IDF losses in Lebanon, the desire to meet public opinion in Israel, not satisfied with the fact that the Phalangists were only “reaping the fruits” of the war without taking part in it, and the opportunity to use their professionalism in identifying terrorists and weapons caches. After Israeli troops entered West Beirut, Sharon, Eitan and the Phalangist leadership discussed the details of the operation, which was codenamed “The Iron Mind”.

Robert Maroun Hatem, who was then the chief of security for Hobeik (the leader of the Phalangists), wrote a controversial (see below) unofficial biography of his boss, From Israel to Damascus, in 1999, which was banned in Lebanon. In it he writes:

• “On the afternoon of September 16, 1982, before the Lebanese military entered the refugee camps, “Sharon gave clear instructions to Hobeika to take the necessary measures to keep his people within the bounds of the law.” Despite this, Hobeika gave his own order: "Total extermination... The camps must be wiped out."

According to Ynetnews:

• “During the meeting, IDF representatives emphasized that civilians should not be harmed.”

16 of September at 6 pm, in accordance with the plan, detachments of phalangists, a total of about 200 people, entered the Sabra and Shatila neighborhoods with the aim of “cleaning up the PLO terrorists.” Israeli soldiers provided a cordon and fired flares.

According to Morris, the firefight between the Phalangists and the inhabitants of the camps died down almost immediately after the Phalangists entered the camp - at 6 o'clock in the evening. The Phalangist forces split into small units and moved from house to house, killing their inhabitants. The massacre continued without interruption for almost 30 hours. Many camp residents slept the night the massacre began, not knowing that there were Phalangists in the camp. The sounds of gunfire did not frighten them as they had become familiar in the previous days.

Reports soon began to come in of a massacre of civilians taking place in the camp... On the second day of the massacre, Phalangists raided the Akka hospital located inside the camps, reportedly killing patients there, raping and killing two nurses, and mutilating their corpses (Curtis). The camp residents were then taken to a nearby stadium. According to Palestinian accounts, upon arrival there the men were told to crawl on the ground and those who crawled quickly were killed on the spot because it could indicate that they were militants (Pean).

September 17 Two Israeli journalists independently sought comment on reports of massacres of civilians by Sharon and Wu, but received no response.

Israeli journalist Ze'ev Schiff tried to get comments through Minister Tzipori about the message he received about the massacre of civilians at Yitzhak Shamir, but received no response.

The Phalangists remained in Sabra and Shatila until 8 am September 18. At 9 a.m. that day, Israeli and foreign journalists who entered the camp discovered hundreds of corpses in it.

According to Israeli journalists Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari:

“In addition to the mass murder of entire families, the Phalangists indulged in terrible types of sadism, for example, hanging an activated grenade around the neck of the victim. In one of the most horrific acts of barbarity, a child was kicked to death by a man wearing spiked boots. All Phalangist activity in Sabra and Shatila seemed to be entirely directed against civilians.
…
We have many descriptions of rapes, rapes of pregnant women whose fetuses were then cut out, women with their hands cut off, earrings torn out of their ears.”

An unknown number of unidentified corpses were buried by the Phalangists using bulldozers in ditches in a vacant lot in the southern part of the camps.

Accusations against a and a

In his article, Richard Curtis, executive director of the American Educational Trust, which publishes the Washington Report on Middle East Affair, states:

• September 15...Israeli troops subjected the Sabra and Shatila camps to sporadic artillery fire, despite the fact that there was no return fire from there, since the last PLO defenders had been evacuated two weeks ago, and all types of weapons, more than pistols, had been confiscated at the same time .

(the chronicle of battles and IDF losses given in Kahan’s report, as well as data from a nearby source about possibly non-evacuated PLO fighters, refute what Curtis wrote).

• On the afternoon of September 16, 5 elders came out of the camp with a white flag, who wanted to ask the Israelis to stop shelling the camps with artillery. But four of the envoys were killed at an Israeli army checkpoint (the sources do not specify by whom specifically). The same data, independently of Curtis, was cited by two Western journalists in Beirut in 1982 - leftist activists and longtime critics of Israel Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shon.

The camp residents they interviewed claimed that the killed parliamentarians wanted to explain to the Israelis that 1) the camps were in a state of complete surrender and 2) that there were no weapons in the camps, since they had been handed over to the multinational forces two weeks earlier...

• According to Curtis, Israeli soldiers did not let a group of women out of the cordon zone who were trying to escape the Phalangists.

It should be noted that the American Educational Trust organization was identified by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as anti-Israel, and Curtis himself was among the speakers at the Liberty Lobby, which the ADL defines as the most active and influential anti-Semitic organization in the United States.

Pierre Péan of Le Monde writes:

• “According to Palestinian accounts, Israeli soldiers took part in arrests, looting, beatings and executions directly next to and inside the camps. According to the same evidence, some of the men, children and male teenagers arrested by the Israelis were later killed."

Example of evidence:

• “... I don’t know if they spoke Hebrew, but I’m sure that they were Israelis, since they wore uniforms different from the Lebanese ones and did not know Arabic.”

Klaus Larsen, a correspondent for the Lang of Folk newspaper (Denmark), also wrote that the lower ranks of the Israeli army were in the camp along with the Phalangists. As evidence, he cited not only the testimonies of surviving Palestinian witnesses, but also the physical evidence they handed over: the documents of IDF Sergeant B. Chaim (identity card No. 5731872) and soldier's badge No. 3350074 found in the ruins.

The Israeli Kahan Commission (see below) completely rejected (calling them baseless slander) accusations of direct participation of the Israeli military in the massacre, including Larsen's accusations.

The commission presented evidence that Sergeant Benny Haim Ben-Yosef, whose documents were found in the Sabra camp on September 22, was wounded on September 15 by gunfire from the camp and evacuated to Israel. His jacket, which was on fire, containing a bag of documents, was thrown onto the road by a medical worker, since it also contained grenades that could explode.

Accusations against Syria and Syrian intelligence

According to Robert Maroun Hatem, the massacre was organized by his boss, Elie Hobeika, at the direction of Syrian intelligence in order to discredit Israel.

Robert Marun Hatem, nicknamed "Cobra", at that time the bodyguard of the Phalangist commander Eli Hobeika, in his book "From Israel to Damascus" argued that the latter, being a Syrian agent, deliberately, contrary to the instructions of the Israeli military command, carried out a massacre of civilians in order to compromise Israel.

Hatem's accusation is supported by the fact that Hobeika lived in Lebanon for many years after the massacre and even served as a minister in the country's pro-Syrian government. Neither the PLO (expelled from Lebanon in 1982), nor Syria, nor their Muslim allies in Lebanon pursued Hobeika, despite his direct involvement in the massacre. Moreover, Syria guarded Hobeika until 2001 (Saleh al-Naami, Hamas).

Hobeika's murder on January 25, 2002, three days before he was due to fly to Brussels for a proposed trial into Sharon's role in the massacre, has given rise to many interpretations.

Kahan Commission

After the details of the massacre became known, the Israeli opposition demanded an investigation into the extent of Israel's responsibility for the incident.

On September 24, a demonstration took place in Tel Aviv (according to various estimates - from 200 to 400 thousand participants) demanding the resignation of the head of government and Minister of Defense A. Sharon and the appointment of a judicial commission. It was one of the largest protests in Israeli history, involving almost 10% of the country's population.

At first, Begin's government said Israel bore no responsibility for the massacre. A government statement was released calling all accusations against Israel "blood libel" and anti-Semitism. “The goyim kill the goyim, and the Jews are to blame!” Begin said at a government meeting and refused to dismiss Sharon.

The newspaper “Davar” (the organ of the opposition workers’ party Mapam, now Avod), which from the very beginning took a sharply negative position towards the war, wrote:

“A crime that was prepared by those who carried out the Deir Yassin massacre and commanded the raid on Qibiya…. disgraces an entire nation today.

Due to growing discontent within Israel, despite the opposition of many ministers who believed that the investigation would harm the country, Prime Minister Menachem Begin created an independent commission on September 29, 1982 under the leadership of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel Yitzhak Kahan.

The commission's report states that the massacre was carried out by Arabs against Arabs, and that not a single Israeli soldier or direct ally of Israel (meaning parts of the Lebanese South Army) took part in it.

At the same time, the commission found that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was negligent by not taking into account the possibility of revenge on the part of Christian Phalangists and allowing their armed forces to move freely and uncontrollably throughout the territory. The commission recommended that Sharon “draw personal conclusions” (Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister).

The commission also found unsatisfactory the actions of Chief of the General Staff Rafael Eitan, Chief of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Sagi (dismissed from his position) and Mossad Director Nahum Admoni. The latter's guilt was considered insignificant. In addition, the commission made claims against Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who did not pay attention to the information conveyed to him by Minister Mordechai Tzipori immediately after the start of the massacre in Sabra and Shatila.

After the commission's report, the cabinet voted for Sharon's resignation as defense minister, although he remained as minister without portfolio.

The Kahan Commission report was praised in the United States and Western Europe as a significant example of self-criticism in a democracy.

The French Minister of the Interior noted:

• “This report honors Israel and provides the world with a new lesson in democracy.”

• “It is difficult to find another nation at war that would allow itself to be the subject of such open self-criticism.”

Phalangist leader Hobeika complained that he was not interrogated and “could not prove his innocence.”

Attempts to prosecute Ariel Sharon

Six months after the massacre, Time magazine controversially interpreted the conclusions of the Kahan Commission, claiming that Sharon “advised” the Phalangists to take revenge in this way (that is, with a massacre).

Sharon sued Time for libel. The jury admitted that the magazine slandered Sharon and damaged his reputation, but for the public figure to formally win the case, it was also necessary to prove that the editors acted with malicious intent and disregard for the truth - this point of the claim was not proven.

In 2001, in a Belgian court, relatives of those killed in 1982 in Beirut made an unsuccessful attempt to prosecute Sharon as a war criminal. The case was brought to the Belgian court because Belgium passed a law in 1993 allowing war crimes committed anywhere in the world to be tried.

The court accepted the case, but later rejected it because, according to Belgian law from 1876, the accused must be in Belgium at the time of the commission of the crime or at the time of his trial. A number of sources believe that this was more a political than a legal decision.

Murder of Elie Hobeika

Hobeika, the commander of the Phalangists who “distinguished themselves” in Sabra and Shatila, was killed on January 25, 2002, three days before his flight to Brussels, where they wanted to build an accusation against Ariel Sharon on his testimony.

He died in a car explosion, and 5 more people were killed. A previously unknown Lebanese anti-Syrian group claimed responsibility for the explosion, but the report raised doubts among many.

One of Hobeika's former assistants was also killed along with his wife by unknown assailants using a pistol with a silencer in Brazil, and another died under strange circumstances after crashing his car into a tree in New York.

Both died ahead of the hearings in Belgium around the same time as Hobeika, one on January 31, 2001, and the other on March 22, 2002.

Version about Syrian involvement

According to V. Mostovoy, not confirmed by other sources, Hobeika’s lawyer spoke at a press conference, where he literally said the following:

• “My client told me that he would tell the truth: Sharon did not order the massacre... Christians entered the Palestinian refugee camps because they learned that Arafat had left hundreds of his bandits there with weapons, and they were shooting at the Phalangists and Sharon’s soldiers.”

The lawyer believed that Hobeika was killed because his testimony did not suit the “terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization, its leader Yasser Arafat and Syrian intelligence.”

A Belgian senator, Vincent Van Quickenborne, who visited Hobeika before the killing, told Al Jazeera on January 26, 2002, that Hobeika told him he had no plans to blame Sharon for the massacre. Khobeika also stated that he himself was completely innocent, since “he was not in Sabra and Shatila that day.” Quickenbourne does not exclude the possibility that Hobeika said that he was not going to accuse Sharon, fearing for his life...

Haaretz newspaper journalist Zvi Barel and some prominent figures in Lebanon believed that Syria was behind Hobeik's murder, fearing that its role in the massacre would be revealed.

According to The World Lebanese Cultural Union, after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Hobeika tried to offer his services to the CIA in capturing Mughniyeh, the former chief of intelligence services of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. After this, at the end of 2001, the Syrians completely stopped guarding Hobeik, instructing Lebanese legal authorities to take appropriate actions against him, or at least threaten them with them.

Version of Israeli involvement

The Lebanese Interior Minister and the Arab press blamed Hobeika's murder on Israel and Ariel Sharon, who was Israel's defense minister at the time. According to the Arab press, in this way the Israeli intelligence services silenced the main witness of Sharon's participation in the massacre. The Daily Star wrote that Hobeika told its editor that he had made and given to his lawyers in the event of his death an audio recording that exposed Sharon's role in the massacre as "even greater than is commonly believed." However, as of December 2010, there is no information about the publication of such an audio recording.

In response to accusations in the Arab press of Hobeika's murder, Sharon said, "From our point of view, we have no connection with this case at all, and it is not even worth commenting on."

International reaction

The UN Security Council condemned the massacre. The resolution to the UN General Assembly qualifies the massacre in Sabra and Shatila as an act of genocide.

US President Ronald Reagan said he was horrified by the attack and stated that "All decent people should share our outrage and disgust."

The international community blamed the massacre of civilians on Israel, whose troops provided a cordon around the camps but were not directly involved in the massacre. According to this view, the massacre was made possible by the inaction of local Israeli commanders and the military high command.

A number of sources believe that the massacre in Sabra and Shatila received undeservedly a lot of attention precisely because of the involvement of Israel. This opinion, in particular, is shared by scientists from the Institute for the Economy in Transition.

However, when Muslim militants attacked the Shatila and Burj el-Barajna camps in May 1985 and, according to UN sources, 635 people were killed and 2,500 wounded, there were no public protests or investigations similar to the 1982 massacre. It did not cause international protests in address of any of the parties involved; and a two-year mutual extermination of supporters of the pro-Syrian Shia organization Amal and the PLO, in which more than 2,000 people died, including many civilians. International reaction was also minimal in October 1990, when Syrian troops overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon and killed 700 Christians in eight hours of fighting.

Yehuda Avner, director of the non-governmental organization MESI, former official in the offices of five Israeli prime ministers (Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres) and former Israeli ambassador to England and Australia, points out that Begin was correct in writing to the senator in 1982 USA to Alan Cranston:

• “The first, terrifying fact is that Arabs killed Arabs. The second is that Israeli soldiers stopped the carnage. And the third is that if the current smear campaign against Israel continues without an indignant reaction from decent people, yes - indignant, then within a few weeks or months there will only be a general opinion that it was the Israeli military that committed these terrible murders.”

“Just do an internet search,” Avner writes. “Think of the angry response to the second Lebanon War in 2006 in light of the first in 1982. The paradox triumphs."

In art

In 2008, Israeli director Ari Folman directed the animated film “Waltz with Bashir,” which tells the story of the war in Lebanon and the events in the Sabra and Shatila camps. The film is a series of interviews with Israeli army soldiers who took part in the war and witnessed the massacre.

The inability of the Arabs to resist the military power of Israel pushes them to search for
"alternative" ways to fight the Jewish state.

The Arabs attach particular importance to provoking international pressure on Israel, suggesting that only this can force Israel to make concessions.

In September 1982 In Beirut, Christian militants from the Lebanese Phalanges, led by pro-Syrian agents, massacred several hundred Palestinians, Pakistanis, and Algerians in two Muslim areas - Sabra and Shatila. The Arabs used this provocation to accuse Israel of genocide. The provocation then worked - under powerful international pressure, Israel withdrew its troops from Beirut.
Subsequently, a similar technique was successfully used by Islamists in Kosovo, but Arafat, who tried to follow the beaten path during

the intifada he unleashed, he lost - Israel did not allow the Arabs to play on the “humanitarian” field they so loved, which resulted in the suppression of the Palestinian uprising.

The entire history of the Arab-Israeli wars clearly shows the inability of the Arabs to resist the military power of Israel. The feeling of their weakness has deeply entered the consciousness of the Arabs and therefore, in order to achieve their goals, they are trying to use international pressure on Israel as the only way to force it to make concessions. To provoke pressure on Israel, the enemy often carries out mass murders of his own compatriots, trying to blame Israel for these crimes.

The facts of the events of that time are well known. Started June 6, 1982 The Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Operation Peace of Galilee, was aimed at destroying the bases of Palestinian terrorists and Syrians in Lebanon. Already June 13, 1982 Israeli tank and motorized infantry divisions entered the capital of Lebanon - Beirut and encircled Palestinian and Syrian formations in the western part of the city. Blocked areas of the city were subjected to continuous air and artillery strikes.

Finally, at midnight on August 12, 1982. The leader of Palestinian terrorists, Arafat, capitulated. According to the surrender agreement, Arafat and a handful of henchmen were guaranteed escape from Lebanon, but the mass of Palestinian terrorists scattered among the population of the Muslim areas of Beirut.

To control the surrender of Palestinian gangs, the Israeli military command allowed on August 21, 1982. entry into West Beirut of “multinational forces” from the USA, France and Italy (5,400 people in total). Already at the beginning of September, the expulsion of Palestinians and Syrians ended on September 3, 1982. The "multinational force" was withdrawn from Beirut.

Israel's military victory in Lebanon opened up prospects for the creation of a pro-Israeli Christian state in Lebanon. It must be said that plans to create a Christian state in Lebanon were discussed in Israel even under Ben Gurion, and secret contacts with the leadership of the Christian community of Lebanon had a long history.

An Israeli general (in a red paratrooper's beret) at the base of Christian formations in South Lebanon. To his left is the Lebanese Christian major Saad Haddad, "commander of the Army of South Lebanon" (early 80s)

Lebanon is characterized by centuries-old hostility between the communities inhabiting it on ethnic and religious grounds. The clashes reached a particularly wide scale during the civil war in Lebanon, which began in 1975.
Dozens of civilians, mostly Christians, were tortured and killed in the northern Lebanese town of Chekka. On January 20, 1976, Palestinians from the Yarmouh Brigade entered the city of Damour, located south of Beirut.
Within a few hours, the Palestinians massacred almost all the Christian inhabitants of this city. Hundreds of civilians in the Christian towns of Hadath, Ain El-Remma-neh, Jizr El-Basra, Dekaune, Beirut and southern Metn were killed in daily attacks by the PLO under Arafat.

Arafat's actions in Lebanon can only be described as barbaric.

Christians had their heads cut off, young girls were raped, children and their parents were killed right in the streets. Palestinians attacked Christians without distinguishing between men and women, adults and children.

They considered all Christians their enemies and killed them, regardless of age and gender."

In March 1978 - in response to the actions of Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli army carries out Operation Litani and occupies southern Lebanon.

In June of the same year, Israel withdrew its troops from Lebanon, handing over control of the border strip to Christian militia led by Major Saad Haddad. Major Haddad and 400 Lebanese Christian soldiers formed the backbone of the South Lebanon Army (SLA) (called the Free Lebanon Army until 1980). The LLA was under the control of Israeli officers; the maintenance and arming of this military formation of Lebanese Christians was carried out by Israel. In the ALA, along with Christians, many Shiite Muslims (2 battalions) and Druze (1 battalion) served. After Haddad's death in 1984. The LLA was headed by Lebanese Army General Christian Antoine Lahad. Both Haddad and Lahad were labeled "traitors and Israeli agents" by the pro-Syrian Lebanese government.

Lebanese Army Major Christian Saad Haddad, who led the Israeli-controlled South Lebanon Army.

Soldiers of the Army of South Lebanon - in Israeli uniforms, with captured Soviet weapons, also provided by Israel.

Israel had close contacts with the Lebanese Christian leadership. Israeli leaders have repeatedly secretly visited Christian areas of Lebanon. In January 1982 Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon secretly visited Lebanon. He met with Kamil Chamoun (former Lebanese President) and Lebanese Forces commander Bashir Gemayel. Sharon made it clear that the result of the Israeli army's invasion of Lebanon should be the creation there of a Christian government friendly to Israel, headed by Israel seeing Bashir Gemayel.

This development of events caused fear and despair among the Arabs - the Arabs could not accept the appearance of a Christian state in Lebanon, but they were unable to resist Israel's plans on the battlefield.

Only a major provocation could dramatically change the status quo in Lebanon.

Such a provocation was the murder on September 14, 1982 of the newly elected Lebanese President, Christian Bashir Gemayel, by a bomb allegedly planted in his office by a pro-Syrian militant.

Lebanese President is Christian Bashir Gemayel. Killed in a terrorist attack organized by pro-Syrian agents on September 14, 1982. I was hoping to sign a friendship treaty with Israel.

After the assassination of the president, events in Lebanon take on a new dynamic.
The next day, September 15, Israel sent its troops into the Muslim part of Beirut. The purpose of this action was to suppress possible unrest and clear the territory of many Palestinian militants hiding there after Arafat's flight.

On September 16, 1982, at 6 pm, up to 150 militants from the Lebanese Phalanx organization, led by Eli Hobeika, entered the territory of Sabra and Shatila. Christian Phalangists were armed with small arms, knives and axes. Robert Khatam claims that there were no executions of civilians in Sabra and Shatila - there was a battle, the Phalangists also had losses, but from the moment they entered, the Phalangists shot at everything that moved, many of them swallowed drugs and acted “high.”

In addition, the camps consisted mainly of tin barracks - bullets and shrapnel could penetrate several of them, hitting those inside along the way.

In Sabra and Shatila, Christian Phalangists killed, according to various estimates, from 450 to 2,750 people. The exact number of those killed is still unknown.

The overwhelming number of those killed were men of military age and older.

Among them were not only Palestinians, but also Algerians, Pakistanis and people from other countries. According to the CIA, there were 670 PLO officers in the Sabra, Shatila and Burj el-Burejne camps. Most of the killed and captured terrorists were found with IDs issued in Soviet training camps

The history of the Arab-Israeli wars shows the inability of the Arabs to resist Israeli military power. In their powerlessness, they are trying to use international pressure on Israel, not disdaining anything, even the massacre of their compatriots. A similar bloody provocation carried out in September 1982 in Sabra and Shatila, two Muslim neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital Beirut, inhabited by citizens of Islamic and Arab states, became notorious. Christian militants from the Lebanese Phalanx organization claimed responsibility for the massacres, which became the reason for unleashing a powerful anti-Israeli propaganda campaign and pressure on Israel. On June 6, 1982, Israeli troops entered Lebanon with the aim of destroying the bases of Palestinian terrorists and Syrians in this country. Already on June 13, tank and motorized infantry divisions entered Beirut and surrounded Palestinian and Syrian formations in the western part of the city. At midnight on August 12, Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat capitulated. Under the surrender agreement, Arafat and a handful of henchmen were guaranteed escape from Lebanon, but the terrorists dispersed among the population of the Muslim areas of Beirut. Israel's military victory in Lebanon opened up prospects for the creation of a pro-Israeli Christian state; these plans were discussed in Israel under Ben-Gurion. Secret contacts with the leaders of the Christian community of Lebanon have been maintained for a long time. The communities inhabiting Lebanon have been at war with each other on ethnic and religious grounds for centuries. The clashes reached a particular scale during the civil war, starting in 1975, when the warring parties - Christians and “Palestinians” - mercilessly massacred each other. Then the number of victims exceeded 100,000 people, and it was especially hard for the Christians there. Lebanese Christian Nagi Nayjar wrote: “Yasser Arafat and his thugs committed crimes against Lebanese Christians that were practically not covered by the international press. Arafat’s actions in Lebanon can only be described as barbaric. Christians were beheaded, young girls were raped, children and their parents were directly killed in the streets. Palestinians attacked Christians, without distinction between men and women, adults and children. They considered all Christians their enemies and killed them, regardless of age or gender." However, Lebanese Christians were not distinguished by pacifism. Christian militias slaughtered the population of the Palestinian camps of Quarantine (January 1976) and Tel Zaatar (August 1976). It should be noted that the Christian world calmly watched the Arabs exterminate their co-religionists in Lebanon. Christian countries and the Vatican, fearing an Arab reaction, did not come to their aid, and the media hushed up the genocide of Lebanese Christians. The only country that extended a helping hand to Lebanese Christians was Israel. In December 1975, Major of the Lebanese Army, Christian Saad Haddad, approached the Israeli authorities with a request to provide assistance to the Christian population of southern Lebanon. In January 1976, a flood of Israeli military and humanitarian aid poured across the Israeli-Lebanese border to Lebanese Christians. In March 1978, in response to the actions of Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli army carried out Operation Litani and occupied southern Lebanon. In June of the same year, Israel withdrew its troops, handing over control of the border strip to Christian militia led by Major Saad Haddad. Major Haddad and 400 Lebanese Christian soldiers formed the backbone of the South Lebanon Army (SLA). The LLA was under the control of Israeli military advisers; the maintenance and arming of this military formation of Lebanese Christians was carried out by Israel. In the ALA, along with Christians, Shiite Muslims (2 battalions) and Druze (1 battalion) served. After Haddad's death in 1984, the ALA was led by Lebanese Army General Christian Antoine Lahad. Israel had close contacts with the Lebanese Christian leadership. Israeli leaders have repeatedly secretly visited Christian areas of Lebanon. In January 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon secretly visited Lebanon. He met with former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun and Lebanese Forces commander Bashir Gemayel. Sharon made it clear that the result of the Israeli army's invasion of Lebanon should be the creation there of a Christian government friendly to Israel, headed by Israel seeing Bashir Gemayel. The invasion of Israeli troops in June 1982 effectively saved Lebanese Christians from genocide. Israeli plans to create a Christian state friendly to Israel in Lebanon were close to fruition. On August 23, presidential elections were held in Lebanon, which was won by Bashir Gemayel. He secretly arrived in Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the city of Nahariya. The signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon was discussed. Bashir Gemayel said Begin "is a great politician and that Lebanese Christians will never forget what he, Menachem Begin and the State of Israel did for them." This development of events caused fear and despair among the Arabs, who could not come to terms with the emergence of a Christian state in Lebanon, but were unable to resist Israel's plans. Only a major provocation could dramatically change the status quo in Lebanon. Such a provocation was the death of Bashir Gemayel on September 14, 1982 from a bomb explosion allegedly planted in his office by a pro-Syrian militant. After the assassination of the president, events in Lebanon acquired a new dynamic. The next day, September 15, Israel sent troops into the Muslim part of Beirut in order to suppress possible unrest and clear the territory of many Palestinian militants hiding there after Arafat's flight. The Israeli command allowed the Christian formations "Lebanese Phalanx" to participate in this operation. There was nothing unusual about this - in the past they were often involved by the Israeli command to carry out purge operations. The commander of the 96th division of the Israeli army, Major General Amos Yaron, in whose occupation zone the Sabra and Shatila camps were located, instructed the commanders of the Lebanese Phalanges: the Phalangists were to arrest hiding terrorists and suppress possible pockets of resistance; they were strictly forbidden to harm civilians. It should be noted that pro-Syrian agents played a prominent role in the leadership of the Lebanese Phalanges. The commander of the Phalangists in Sabra and Shatila was Eli Hobeika, whose connections with Syrian intelligence prove that he later became a minister in the pro-Syrian government of Lebanon. As Robert Hatam, the former chief of counterintelligence of the Lebanese Phalanges, said in an interview with the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper, by introducing the Phalangists into Sabra and Shatila, Eli Hobeika pursued two goals: to avenge the death of Bashir Gemayel and to frame the Israelis, primarily Ariel Sharon. On September 16, about 150 Christian Phalangists entered Sabra and Shatila under the command of Eli Hobeik. Robert Khatam claims that there was no execution of civilians - there was a battle going on, the Phalangists also had losses, but from the very beginning the Phalangists shot at everything that moved, many of them swallowed drugs and acted “high.” In Sabra and Shatila, Christian Phalangists killed 450 people, of whom the vast majority of those killed were men of military age or older. There were not only Palestinians there, but also Algerians, Pakistanis, and people from other countries. Many killed and captured terrorists were found with IDs issued in Soviet training camps. The provocation worked - the Arabs accused Israel of massacres in Sabra and Shatila. Powerful international pressure forced the Israeli command to withdraw troops from West Beirut, where peacekeeping troops entered (the United Kingdom later joined the US, French and Italian units). Control of the city passed to foreign troops.

The provocation worked - the Arabs accused Israel of massacres in Sabra and Shatila. Powerful international pressure forced the Israeli command on September 20, 1982. withdraw troops from West Beirut, international forces were reintroduced there (U.S., French and Italian units were later joined by British units).

The memory, of course, remains. For a man who lost his entire family during the long-ago massacre - being able only to watch as the young people of Shatila were lined up after the next murders and driven to their deaths. But - like dirt being dumped on top of a garbage heap among concrete shacks - the smell of injustice still lingers in the camps where 1,700 Palestinians were massacred 30 years ago. Not a single person was tried or convicted for the massacre, which even an Israeli writer at the time compared to the killing of Yugoslavs by Nazi henchmen during World War II. Sabra and Shatila are a monument to criminals who escaped responsibility and got away with everything.

Khaled Abu-Nur was a youth training to become a militiaman when he left the camp for the mountains before the Phalangists, allies of Israel, entered Sabra and Shatila. Does he suffer from remorse that he was not there, among everyone, fighting murderers and rapists? "All we feel today is depression," he says. “We demanded justice, an international court - and nothing. Not a single one was brought to justice. No one stood trial. And that's why we had to suffer in the 1986 "camp war" (at the hands of the Lebanese Shiites), and that's why the Israelis were able to massacre so many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the 2008-09 war. If they had been tried for what happened 30 years ago, the killings in Gaza would not have happened.”

Such words, of course, sound convincing. As presidents and prime ministers lined Manhattan to mourn the international crimes against humanity at the World Trade Center in 2001, at least one Western leader dared to visit the damp and unkempt gravesites of Sabra and Shatila, shaded by a few shabby trees and faded photographs. dead. Or - within 30 years - at least one Arab leader would bother to visit the final resting place of at least 600 of the 1,700 victims. Arab rulers bleed in their hearts for the Palestinians, but air tickets to Beirut are perhaps a little expensive these days - and who among them would want to offend the Israelis or the Americans?

It is ironic - but nonetheless significant - that the only country to conduct a serious (if flawed) official investigation into the massacre was Israel. The Israeli army sent killers into the camps and watched - and did nothing - while these atrocities were committed. An Israeli lieutenant named Avi Grabowski gave the most comprehensive testimony on this matter. The Kagan Commission held then-Defense Secretary Ariel Sharon personally responsible because he sent ruthless anti-Palestinian Phalangists into the camps to "get rid of the terrorists" - "terrorists" who turned out to be as non-existent as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 21 years later.

Sharon was fired, and then he became prime minister - until he had a stroke, which he survived, but which even took away his ability to speak. Elie Hobeika, the Lebanese Christian militia leader who led the assassins into the camp - after Sharon announced to the Phalanx that the Palestinians had just killed their leader, Bashir Gemayel, in an assassination attempt - was killed a few years later in East Beirut. His enemies claimed that the Syrians killed him; friends blamed the Israelis; Hobeika, who had defected to the Syrians, declared that he would “tell everything” about the atrocities in Sabra and Shatila to the Belgian court, which was about to try Sharon.

Of course, those of us who entered the camps on the third and final day of the massacre - September 18, 1982 - have our own memories. I remember an old man in pajamas, lying on his back in the main street, with his innocent cane beside him; two women and a child shot dead next to a dead horse; the private home where I hid from assassins with my colleague Lauren Jenkins of the Washington Post, only to discover the body of a young woman lying in the yard next to us. Some of the women were raped before they were killed. Myriads of flies, the smell of decomposition... This is not forgotten.

Abu Maher is 65 years old. Like Khaled Abu-Nur, his family initially fled their homes in Safad, modern-day Israel - and remained in the camp throughout the massacre, initially disbelieving the women and children who urged him to flee their home. “The neighbor started screaming, and I looked out the window and saw her shot... And her daughter was trying to escape, and the killers were chasing her, shouting: “Kill her, kill her, don’t let her get away!” She screamed at me, what could I do... But she managed to escape.”

Then, year after year, trips to the camp were repeated... And I developed a surprisingly detailed story. Investigations by myself and Carsten Tveit of Norwegian Radio have proven that many of the boys Abu Maher saw escaping alive after the initial massacre were subsequently handed over by the Israeli army back to the Phalangist killers - who held them captive for several days in East Beirut. and then, when they could not exchange them for Christian hostages, they were executed and buried in mass graves.

And the arguments in favor of forgetting all this sound cruel. Why remember the few hundred Palestinians slaughtered when 25 thousand people have been killed in Syria in the last 19 months alone?

Supporters of Israel and critics of the Muslim world have written to me over the past two years, berating me for my repeated references to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, as if my own status as an eyewitness to that atrocity—as a war criminal—was subject to a statute of limitations. Based on a collection of these reports of mine, cross-checked with my own reports on the Turkish occupation, one reader wrote to me that he “concluded that I have an anti-Israeli bias in the Sabra and Shatila case... solely on the basis of the disproportionate number of references to it crime."

Is it possible to make too many of them? Dr. Bayan al-Hout, the widow of the former PLO ambassador in Beirut, wrote the most authoritative and detailed account of the war crimes in Sabra and Shatila - for it is what it is - and concludes that in subsequent years people were afraid to remember this event . “Then international groups started talking and asking about it. We must remember that we are all responsible for what happened, and the victims still bear the scar of these events - even those who have not yet been born will have a scar - but they need love...” And in At the conclusion of his book, Dr. Al-Hout asks some difficult—indeed, scary—questions: “Were the guilty the only ones responsible? Were the people who committed these crimes the only criminals? Even those who gave the orders - were they the only ones responsible? Who's really to blame?

In other words, isn't Lebanon responsible for the Lebanese Phalangists, Israel for the Israeli army, the West for its Israeli allies, and the Arabs for their American ally? Dr. Al-Hout ends his investigation with a quote from Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who rebelled against the Vietnam War. “In a society that enjoys freedom,” the rabbi said, “some of the people are guilty, but all of them are responsible.”

Chronicle: Sabra and Shatila

Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon's Christian president, is killed by a pro-Syrian militant, but his supporters blame the Palestinians.

Christian militias from Lebanon enter the Sabra and Shatila camps to carry out revenge attacks on Palestinian refugees. Israeli occupation forces keep the camps surrounded and fire flares to assist attackers at night.

After three days of rape, shooting and brutal executions, the militia finally abandon the camps, leaving 1,700 people dead.

Translated by V. Tushkanchikov