Sabra and Shatila massacre

Sabra and Shatila massacre:

The commemoration of the Sabra and Shatila massacre creates a flood of tremendous feelings of pain, sorrow, oppression and anger… While time has passed, we have at the same time a large number of questions and wonderings concerning the developments and events of this massacre on the parties involved and on the perpetrators. As well as other questions related to the memory of the historic conflict and the series of Zionist massacres against the Palestinians and Arabs, and, related to this, are the historical accounts for the series of Zionist massacres .. When and how will the leaders of Zionist terrorism pay the price for their accumulated crimes…?! among which was the horrific massacre in Sabra and Shatila. When we remember the day of the massacre while following forcibly the sterile negotiations about the political settlement, we can’t help but wonder: If the negotiations will bring back the lands and rights usurped, will the price for the series of criminal Zionist actions, that are still ongoing on Palestinian land be paid…?!

4-2-1- The details of the massacre[i]

We stop here to remember the massacre and to reminisce the details knowing that we are firmly in the face of a racist and terrorist state that will not break away from its nature.

–    The invasion of West Beirut

At five o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, 15/9/1982, the Israeli operations began to invade West Beirut after the mines and barricades were lifted from the crossing points and streets, while the Lebanese National Movement forces were demilitarized or dispersed.

The invasion began with one thousand soldiers, who were flown in on aircrafts to Beirut airport in a hurry. Before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in the morning of Thursday, the collar of the attackers had completely tightened around the area.

–    Entering towards the camps

Israeli forces entered the Lebanese capital on the evening of Tuesday, 14/09/1982, towards three camps for Palestinian refugees in west Beirut.

These forces did not meet with any counter forces on their way to the camps. The event happened after the broadcast news of the blow up of the building occupied by the leadership of the Kataeb Party located in Ashrafieh, where Bashir El Gemayel, was presiding over a meeting of the leaders of the Lebanese Forces. Before making sure Bashir El Gemayel was among the victims, Sharon consulted with his Prime Minister Menachem Begin and they took the decision to enter Fakhani and Sabra and Shatila, to which the leading roads were closed.

–    The killings began at 12 noon on Thursday, 16/09/1982 and at five o’clock, after the governmental decision of the Israeli Cabinet meeting was announced.

During the genocides many types of artillery were used such as manual and cluster bombs, knives, daggers, hatchets, ropes and there are indications that a number of killers (if not all) were not in their normal conditions Thursday evening. They were either drunk or drugged the use of exciting drugs was also noted, as remnants were found at the crime scene. There is no doubt that the ugliness of the mutilation of living children, women and men before killing them, indicates that the killers were of a very peculiar kind.

Acts of killings took place amid tight Israeli military collar on the region and a hushed media.

The killing was intense and at its peak, and Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished and crumpled the victims in the pits, which turned into mass graves.

The outcome of the massacre caused the death of five thousand martyrs.The the victims of Sabra and Shatila paid with their lives uncovering the truth of Zionism and it’s real face for the world to see.. However, a magical mask quickly came back and covered the true face of Zionism and easily removed it from the memory of the global opinion showing the face that serves the interests of its owner and its objectives in the time and place deemed appropriate.

4-2-2- An issue and a tragedy

Their issue and their tragedy is greater than all the calamities of the world… amassed in the absence from the eyes of the Arab and international conscience, pieces of bodies, cut into pieces and buried in a mass grave in silence, no one even knew their names… Those are the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, committed by the Israelis in cold blood in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The tragedy gets bigger accompanied by a strange feeling of sorrow and grief. The martyrs were killed unfairly, without committing any fault to be blamed for; but because they were owners of an issue, be they Palestinian or Lebanese or Arabs who were assembled by the ordeal during the Nakbah day.

The scene of the Sabra and Shatila cemetery in the southern suburbs of Beirut implies to the viewer that there was a deliberate plot, to erase from the memory of the Arab nation the image of the terrible massacre of the age, committed by the Israeli occupation soldiers and their agents on the afternoon of September 16, 1982. It is a space that does not exceed 150 square meters in which more than five thousand martyrs are lying, among them are elderly, women, children and young people, almost forgotten because of their Arab identity and their Arab cause. Humanity ignored these martyrs who died; a revolution and resistance were created leading to the victory of Arabs in southern Lebanon and the creation of the stone revolution in occupied Palestine.

If the Arab memory is in the depths of the corridors of the era of defeat and refraction against Israel and its allies, the memory of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, always comes to pay tribute to the tragedy, which draws the silent world’s conscience on Israel’s crimes which have been going on for more than half a century.

4-2-3- No mercy was shown to anyone[ii]

Residents from both camps gave vivid testimonies about the hideous massacre.

–    Haj Abu Ibrahim Zuayter, and his wife, Um Ibrahim narrated scenes of the massacre, they lost 42 people from their family in this massacre, Haj Zuayter said: “no mercy was shown to anyone, even cats and dogs were not spared from their hatred, and their toxic crimes, we’ve collected the victims among our family in jute and nylon bags, two days after the massacre and they are in the conscience of all the officials and the world, and their cause is with all the humanitarian organizations”.

–    Um Ibrahim said: “The victims were like slaughtered cattle in the street, blood was covering everyone, the elderly and young, they were crammed into piles of human meat, some of them slaughtered from vein to vein, others dismembered, and the bodies were all distorted to the point that we could not recognize our own children… (Like in a slaughterhouse)”.

–    Haj Zuayter adds: “Only coincidence saved us, because we were lucky and were able in the absence of the criminals to leave the place. When we came back after two days we saw the atrocities that cannot be imagined by any sane person, nor accepted by any conscience – the tragedy was very large, our strength were patience and faith in the justice of our cause, and our sacred right to live. They thought they were killing a homeland; they failed to know that the death of those innocent martyrs would set off a revolution and create a resistance and heroes, from the womb of the tragedy, who know how to defeat enemies and achieve victory”.

–    The only living witness to the facts of the massacre is Mohammed Shamas, 38 years old, who miraculously survived, and rose from the dead after 36 hours of the massacre… he was among those who were destined to live he was a quiet man, and had seven children who gathered around him. He said: “on the afternoon of that fateful day, the enemy circled the neighborhood from all sides, and Hobeika was standing on that surface (he pointed with his hand to a building on the opposite of the entrance to the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila). Gunmen gathered the population in the street, old people, young people, children, men and women and ordered them to kneel; the ones who did not find a place to kneel stood facing the wall”

Mohammed Shamas stops a little, almost bursts into tears and adds: “the last scene before the massacre begins with our neighbor Abu Marhaf, holding 500 LBP who were taken by a gunman.Abu Marhaf asked the gunman to split the money with him as he didn’t have any money left.Beforebefore the gunman answered him, the shooting started randomly, and in a second, thousands of victims died lying in their own blood. The shootings were repeated several times to ensure the death of everyone, and the gunmen were moving among the victims, slaughtering the ones who were still breathing, blowing up their heads, dismembering them without any mercy and raping women until the place turned into a “slaughterhouse”.

And how did you survive the massacre?

Shamas sighed, shaking his head, saying: “When they started shooting bullets, I fell on purpose on the floor over my father and my brother, they did not get me on the first round, but they returned on the second round firing their hateful bullets on everyone individually, and I took my share of seven bullets on my body, bodies of some victims fell on me but did not kill me”.

Did someone notice that you did not die?

No… Because I pretended to be dead, and when they stood over my head I stopped breathing and did not move a finger for more than ten minutes, they did not leave the place before making sure everyone was dead. They brutally stepped with their shoes on the heads and bodies of children and women … they killed every living thing, even cats and dogs were not spared from their bullets. I may have lost consciousness for a while, and the weight of the dead bodies piled up on top of me prevented my withdrawal from the dead. Hobeika was watching what was going on from afar with binoculars, I saw him with my own eyes”.

“On the third day of the massacre, on the morning of 18.09.1982, I managed to move, after I removed off my chest the bodies of my father and my brother, I crawled among the thousands of bodies piled everywhere asking for help, my bleeding wounds prevented my arrival to a safe place, all the bodies were bloated, I had no choice but to cross over them. I remember well when my hand was touching someone’s body, peeling off their skin which got attached to my hands.

After a long fight between life and death, the gunmen left the area, ambulances from the Lebanese Red Cross and the Palestinian Crescent arrived and I do not know what happened later and I woke up in the hospital… It was the massacre of the era”.

[i]. Details of the massacre, as published and documented in various media agencies and Arab and Palestinian newspapers.

[ii]. Details here, as published in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, citing Al-Ahram 18/09/2000 Cairo.