Remembering Sabra and Shatila

It has been thirty-six years, since the 16th of September 1982, when thousands of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians were massacred in the Western-Beirut densely packed and impoverished refugee camp area, known for Sabra and Shatila.

The bloodbath’s untold horrors and the barbaric acts of cruelty, one can imagine, have since become a national Palestinian and Lebanese emblem, commemorated year after year across historic Palestine, Lebanon and the diaspora.

Bachir Gemayel, the former Lebanese Phalange militia leader and the command of intelligence chief Elie Hobeika butchered the civilians at the Zionist Ariel Sharon’s command, butchering men, women, elderlies and children.

The Zionist illegitimate entity had months earlier invaded Lebanon and taken control of the camps. Sharon, then, the War Minister, ordered the Phalangists to mop up Sabra and Shatila camp, entirely surrounded it and trapped fleeing civilians.

The camp was populated by destitute families of Palestinians that had fled from the pogroms in 1948 carried out by the Zionist Haganah criminal gangs, in addition to some Lebanese IDPs.

The genocide was carried out away from the eyes of the world, described as “among the most heinous crimes of the 20th century” as it was absolutely appalling, however, there has been no substantial judicial investigation, and the perpetrators remain unprosecuted.

The exact toll of victims still inaccurate, some of the bodies were found cut and burned, buried in mass graves or carted away by the militiamen; estimated to be between 750 and 4,000 Palestinians and also Lebanese.

Sabra and Shatila genocide remain an omnibus presence in the Palestinian refugees’ memory. Years have not erased the memories of the survivors of the massacre as if it was yesterday, demanding justice and bringing those flock of bloodthirsty wolves and their Zionist watchmen.

The United Nations’ General Assembly then condemned the crime and regarded it as “an act of genocide.”

Entire families were buried and the area’s residents were trapped in their homes. Women were raped and the elderly were burned to death. Screams, moans and the sound of flares and bombs overwhelmed the sickening spectacle. The Zionists had surrounded the site with armed guards and checkpoints to ensure that no one escape.

The American journalist Janet Lee Stevens was in Beirut and witnessed, “I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall.”

The journalist added, “Children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.”

Beyond a doubt, the hypocritical Western mainstream media mention nothing about this genocide and the quite long list of Zionist, American and British genocides against humanity.

Currently, the Gaza massacre is part of this longstanding process of Zionists’ crimes. The United States urges countries to become democracies, yet it has had a hand in overthrowing and interfering in many popularly elected governments’ affair, simply because they resist and refuse to give those imperialist colonialist access to their natural resources. Yemen and Syria, for instance, are the most obvious fresh instances.