The massacre of Sabra and Shatilla
Syed Mustafa Ahmad
One of the horrible blasts in the world that took place in Beirut, Lebanon, is still haunting us. The blast created havoc in Beirut. We were mourning this heart-wrenching incident than the thirty seven years old barbarism was reminded by a minority of people in the world.
On 18, September 1982, Israeli soldiers and Lebanon’s Christian Phalangist groups created havoc in the refugee camps of the capital city of Lebanon, Beirut. They mercilessly killed the Arabs (the Palestinians) in the most brutal manner. Writing about this incident pierces one’s heart with a lot of pain because the original pain is lost in some wilderness; while the issues of no importance dominate the minds of people.
This incident is to get known through some authentic sources in order to know the reality of Israel briefly and what happened in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in reality.
Harun Yahya in his book “Palestine” says that the Zionist terrorist operations to intimidate Palestinians and drive them off their land following the Second World War resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But Israel’s attack on the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 will go down in history as one of the worst acts of Zionist genocide ever committed.
During the attack by Lebanon’s Christian Phalangist groups, with the support and direction of Israeli soldiers, more than 3,000 people, most of them women and children, were murdered. Subsequent research and investigation showed that Ariel Sharon, at that time Israel’s Defence Minister, was responsible for the operation. Due to this bloody attack, he is still known as “The Butcher of Lebanon”.
Robert Fisk, a journalist and Middle East expert, summed up the things in these lines. He says,” For everyone who stood in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut on 18 September 1982, his (Ariel Sharon) name is synonymous with butchery; with bloated corpses and disemboweled women and dead bodies, with rape and pilage and murder….Even when I walk these fetid streets today, the ghosts haunt me still.
Over there, on the side of the road leading to the Sabra mosque, lay Mr Nouri, 90 years old, grey-bearded, in pyjamas with a small woollen hat still on his head and a stick by his side. I found him on a hike of garbage, on his back….Just up the lane, I came across two women sitting upright with their brains blown out, next to cooking pot…One of the women appeared to have had her stomach slit open. A few metres away, I discovered the first babies, already black with decomposition, scattered across the road like rubbish…The flies racing between the reeking bodies and our faces, between dried blood and reporter’s notebook, the hands of watches still ticking on dead wrists. I clambered up a rampart of earth- an abandoned bulldozer stood guiltily nearby-only to find, once I was atop the mound that it swayed beneath me. And I looked down to find faces, elbows, mouths, a woman’s legs protruding through the soil. I had to hold on to these body parts to climb down the other side. Then there was the pretty girl, her head surrounded by a hall of clothes pegs, her blood still running from a hole in her neck.
In his classic work” World Orders: Old and New”, Middle East commentator, Noam Chomsky describes the Israeli government’s view of the Palestinian people and how American strategists evaluate this view: As for the Palestinians U.S. planners had no reason to doubt the assessment of Israeli government specialists in 1948 that the refugees would either assimilate elsewhere or “ would be crushed”: “ Some of them would die and most of them would turn into human dust and the waste of society and join the most impoverished classes in the Arab countries.” Accordingly, there was no need to trouble oneself about them. These basic interpretations have remained stable until today, taking concrete form as events unfolded.
Refugee camps
Harun Yahya says that in 1948, with the recognition of UN Resolution 181, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians instantly found themselves stateless in their own land. According to this resolution, Palestine was to be partitioned as follows: 55% of the land, including the greater part of the valuable coastal area, went to the Israelis, while the remaining 45%, including the narrow coastal strip of Gaza, half of Galilee, the Judean and the Samarian uplands, and a bit if the Negev, went to the Palestinians. Once the British pulled out of the region completely, a war started on May 15, 1948 between Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq on one side and Israel on the other. War ended in December and Israel emerged from the war with about 50% more land than it had been allotted under the UN plan.
As a result, more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs left behind everything that they owned and emigrated. About one-third of them settled in West Bank, another third in the Gaza Strip and the remaining third sought refuge in neighbouring Arab countries, principally Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. During the Six Say War of 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and a majority of Palestinians left these areas as well for neighbouring countries. The number of Palestinians scattered around the world today is estimated to be 3.5 to 4 million. Of these, about one million in West Bank and Gaza Strip refugee camps and along the borders of Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The others live outside the camps, but without any citizenship.
The above discussion shows one thing that what kind of life the Palestinians are living. Since 1948, they have been going through the barbarism of Israel, backed by the USA and its supporters. Authentic sources prove that the creation of Israel was to stab the whole Hijaz( modern Saudi Arabia and its neighbours like Oman, Jordan, Qatar, etc). This was the culmination of the two thousand wanderings in the different parts of the world since 70 A.C. Moreover, the important meeting in Switzerland in 1897, was the bedrock for the formation of Israel. A book” Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is an important book in understanding the motives of the Zionists. The protocols are being implemented. Recently, we came across the proximity of the Arab states and Israel. It is nothing but the greatest planning to pave way for the “ greater Israel”. The massacres like Sabra and Shatilla is one of the prototypes. But the massacre in itself is barbaric.
To expect something from the peace organizations, is a mirage. All the peace loving people of the world should try their best in resolving this issue. Under the nose of the UN and the OIC, the Muslims are killed and their homes bulldozed. Where is the conscience of the Muslim Ummah? Heavens are going to fall over us if the Muslims, being in power, keeps silent. Overall, one who supports the wrong is a wrongdoer as well. May the martyred Palestinians remain in peace!
(The writer is a teacher and can be reached at [email protected])
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