Sabra and Shatila

PREFACE

to the 2009 edition

At this time of the 60th commemoration for the 1948 Nakba/ethnic-cleansing of 88% of the Palestinian Arab population from what became the Zionist State of Israel, this second edition of the documentary study ‘Sabra & Shatila’ brings us to contemplate the ‘pogrom’ of these refugee camps resulting in some 3,000 deaths over a three-day period. The original edition, published in 1984, gave a voice for the Jewish opposition to the rampage and tragedy of Zionism.

This Sabra-Shatila massacre, next to Beirut in Lebanon, came to be viewed as an historic turning point, leading to the strategic defeat of Israel, which retreated to the Litani River in southern Lebanon and eventually retreated from nearly all of Lebanon (1982-2000). This genocidal massacre has still resulted in no criminal charges in the Belgium court initiative

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1117.shtml .

It is to be understood that a genocidal practice such as this military assault is not to be equated to the Nazi Holocaust (Cherban / Shoah) that sought the annihilation of entire nations such as the Jewish and Roma Peoples in Europe or the Holocaust of the Armenian People in Turkey. This is a qualitative political differentiation that is a consequence of the opposition generated in world public opinion and in the Jewish civil society in particular. Please read further in Appendix VI, p. 131.

Despite a Commission of Inquiry denouncing the Israel General Sharon, he nonetheless became Israel’s Prime Minister, during which time he was obliged to retreat unilaterally from the Gaza Strip as well as southern Lebanon. Sharon himself ended up as a living corpse when his macho arrogance led him to leave the hospital after his initial stroke, so walking into his last.

The most recent massacre, that of Gaza begun on December 27, 2008, was halted in 22 days by the international opposition, which erupted throughout the world and in all the Jewish communities internationally. One need not look any further than the 1982 massacre of Sabra and Shatila for the role model played out by the Israeli teenagers who went into Gaza ostensibly seeking one captured soldier who was actually injured during the campaign. In addition, the ‘Israel Defence Force’ killed two of their own soldiers who had been captured. Palestinian retaliation against Israeli civilians should be avoided as well and the differentiation to be made between the State of Israel and the unfortunate Israeli citizens captured in its web, is fundamental to the liberation of the Gaza Palestinians who are generally refugees.

Since 1982 and the 500,000 strong protest demonstration in the Zionist State, the international Jewish opposition has formed up into a movement in at least 17 countries comprising 40,000 members in the USA alone, as opposed to the 90,000 Zionist organizational members there. Likewise, around 75% of the Jewish community members are opposed to the continuing occupation of the West Bank Palestinian territories. Organizational representatives internationally include the JPLO (Jewish People’s Liberation Organization http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TPLO-OLPT) and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network ijsn@ijsn.net , as well as the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians (ACJC http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACJC2006). While this Jewish opposition is a current phenomenon, it is indebted to the heritage of the Jewish Workers’ Bund, the original Jewish anti-Zionist and civil rights movement, supported by a majority of the eastern European Jewish communities.

The original edition of ‘Sabra and Shatila’ in 1984 was fitted with a subtitle imposed by the publisher, which does not belong with the book. Furthermore, it was missing the mention that the consultant of the five drafts for this documentary study was Ambassador Abdullah Abdullah, the Director of the Palestine Information Office of the Arab League at that time (the then unrecognized Palestine Embassy in Ottawa). Please note that the original edition of 1984 is reproduced here with any errors indicated as such, [sic]. The original introduction by the Arab League Information Centre of Canada, Director Yassar Askari is included.

The occupation of Palestine, which is considered to have begun in either 1917, 1948 or 1967; has engendered a public perception that is oftentimes confused between the State of Israel and the Jewish People as a whole. Let it be noted that a majority of the Jewish People do not live in Israel and that a majority of the Israeli Jewish community also do not favour continuing the occupation of the Palestinian territories of 1967. The differentiation between a military occupation and an entire culture is obligatory to realizing a solution that does not end up being diverted into a neo-fascist anti-Jewish diatribe. The solution of a shared Civil Society of both Peoples is the alternative to the Nation-State, rather than moral recriminations. Further information is available by contacting the author at SaaLaHa@fokus.name

Additional publications of Abraham Weizfeld include; The End of Zionism : and the liberation of the Jewish People, 1989

http://www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0006.htm

DEDICATION

2009

to an uncle

Myer Goldscheider

Bundist, Partisan and martyr

and

The Palestinian People

Abraham / eibie Weizfeld

B.Sc. U. of W., M.A. York U., Ph.D. cand. l’UQAM

Abraham Yecheszkhel Weizfeld Goldscheider

Loz mir alley leiben mit shulym und shytvis

As a commentary I should add that this documentary study, researched and written in the months immediately after this historic massacre, serves to support the basis for a legal indictment against the principal operatives named herein. Together with the efforts of the legal team in Belgium we look forward to when efforts such as this edition will bring the responsible parties to acknowledge their guilt or, that their guilt be acknowledged, together with the resolution of the existence of the Palestinian People. The new Appendix V document is a summery of the legal indictment deposted before the court in Belgium.

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive,

Suite 200 Bloomington, IN47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2009Abraham Weizfeld. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/9/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-6402-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4518-9 (ebook)

Copyright 1984 by Jerusalem International Publishing House, Inc. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Weisfeld, Abie H. (Abie Harvey), 1948-Sabra and Shatila ISBN 0-88628-035-4

1.   Beirut (Lebanon)-Massacre, 1982.

2.   Lebanon-History-Israeli intervention, 19823. Palestinian Arabs-Lebanon-Beirut.

I. Title.

DS87.53.W44 1984 956.92’044 C84-090059-7

Printed and Bound in Canada February 1984

The research, compilation, documentation and interpretation contained here and drafted over the period January-February, 1983 has been the responsibility of the writer Abie Weisfeld through his collaboration with the Palestine Information Office, Ottawa. …

Table of Contents

Preface to the 2009 edition

Dedication 2009

Introduction

I Preface

II Scope Of Investigation

III Historical Precedents

1. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon

2. Menachem Begin

3. Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir

IV The Military Mentality

1. The Israeli Educational System

2. The Phalangist-Haddad Allies Of Israel

3. Israeli Officials

4. The Israeli Invasion Of Lebanon And The Sabra/Shatila Massacre

V Israeli Awareness Of The Massacre

VI Contradictions In Testimony

VII Israeli Aid To Phalange Killers

VIII United States’ Complicity

Summary

1. Israeli Participation

2.   International Tribunal

3.   Conclusion

Addendum : First-Hand Accounts

IX Appendices

I: The Interim Report Of The Israeli Commission Of Inquiry

II: The Final Report Of The Israeli Commission Of Inquiry

III: Texts Of Editorials

IV Spiegel Article

V: Legal Action filed in Belgium (2009)

VI: On Antisemitism (2009)

VII: JTA : Jewish Global News Service (2009)

VIII: Gideon Levy In Haaretz

IX: Electronic Intifada (2009)

X Footnotes

XI Map

INTRODUCTION

Stark reminders of the Sabra and Shatila massacres are still felt and seen a year later throughout the Lebanese territories occupied by Israel. The brutal repression of the population living under occupation continues. Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian men and women remain under illegal Israeli detention in the Ansar Camp. The entire Palestinian population in southern Lebanon has been subjected to endless harassment, intimidation, death threats, kidnappings and executions by official and semi-official organizations.

In one of his statements, Mr. Chedli Klibi, Secretary General of the League of Arab States, cautioned world public opinion against being deceived by Israel’s attempts to absolve itself of any responsibility in the massacres. Israel launched a mere semblance of a formal trial of some civilian and military personnel in an obvious attempt to prove that the event, though regrettable, was unlike any that ever occurred throughout Israel’s history.

The world, declared Mr. Klibi, is more aware today than at any other time, that these forms of atrocities are at the core of Zionist ideology. One need only recall the series of Israeli massacres directed at the Arabs in Deir Yaseen, Qubia, Nahaleen, Kfar Kassem, Khan Yunes, and Rafah, he emphasized.

The massacres at the Sabra and Shatila camps were, in reality, no accident. They were examples of a pre-planned, carefully detailed policy of genocide against the Arab Palestinians. According to the report of the Second Session of the International Commission of Enquiry into Israeli Crimes Against the Lebanese and Palestinian Peoples-held in Geneva, Switzerland, February 27 and 28, 1983-the destruction of the refugee camps is part of the global policy of aggression, annexation and extermination taken by the Begin government, and … they bring out the racist aspects of Zionism.

The report states that the Israeli minister in charge of refugee affairs, Yaakov Meridor, confirmed the anti-humanitarian essence of the pre-meditated, forced expulsion plan of the Palestinian refugees. He admitted, at the October 13, 1982 meeting of the Israeli government, that his plan consisted, as a first step, in the evacuation of refugees from south Lebanon to the north. The systematic destruction of Palestinian . camps and the terror in the southern area of this Arab country were aimed at provoking the flight of Palestinian refugees to Syria and Jordan.

The Commission goes on to state that undisputable facts attest that the Israeli Defence Minister Sharon, Chief of Staff Eytan, the Lt. General Amir Drori, Brigadier-General Amos Yaron, Col. Moshe Levi and other Israeli military leaders participated in the instruction of the gangs responsible for the killings at Sabra and Shatila. It was upon Sharon’s orders that Israeli army units illuminated these Palestinian camps during the night. The electricity supply of west Beirut had been deliberately cut off to hide the massacres.

Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk states that one can speak of the extermination of a total of over 3,000 persons. Through that heinous crime, we once again recognize the characteristic ruthlessness of those who instilled terror in our region and adopted it as their state policy.

"… The Commission notes that Israel, equipped by the USA with modern arms and munitions, has used this material in violation of the agreements existing between the two countries, on the face of which American arms delivered to the Israeli army could only serve for the defence of Israel. In Lebanon they were used in an operation of aggression and conquest. The world press has on various occasions pointed out violations of the American-Israeli agreements, but the government of the United States has taken no measure of sanctions against Israel, nor did it try to put an end to these violations; one can say that they practically encouraged the aggressor to the detriment of its victim. This attitude of the American administration can only be qualified as being an accomplice of Israel in its crimes.

The types of arms mostly supplied by the United States are: vacuum bombs, fragmentation bombs, cluster bombs, phosphor bombs, anti-shelter rockets . The way in which they were used by the Israeli army leaves no doubt whatsoever about the determination of the Begin government to fundamentally conduct a war of terror and extermination against the civilian population-which lost tens and tens of thousands of killed and wounded.

World public opinion has the choice of either condoning the perpetrators of the massacres, or of establishing the events of September 16-18, 1982, as a turning point from which any future acts of terror will on no account be tolerated.

Yassar Askari, Director,

Arab League Information Centre, Ottawa

Preface

This study wants to address three basic questions: firstly; was this massacre an isolated incident? Secondly; is it merely the personality of this trio of war-mongers, Begin, Sharon and Shamir, that led to their barbaric onslaught, and thirdly; do not the Israeli authorities and their Zionist ideology carry primary responsibility for the massacre?

This is directed first and foremost to the Jewish Israeli or non-Israeli, who should learn from the experience of the German people implicated in the conspiracy of silence by their children when they are asked by them; … What did you do to stop the massacres perpetrated against the Jews during the 2nd World War. The study then directs itself to those who term themselves citizens of the Free World, not to establish a guilt complex in their conscience but, to ring the bell that they should act, and act right now-not to bring to life those