“Israel” planned, LF executed: The Sabra and Shatila massacre
8 Min Read
Evidence continues to pile up, classified documents are unmasked, and a more complete picture of the 1982 Massacre committed by Israeli occupation forces through Israeli-associated far right militias emerges.
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Bodies at the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut in 1982 (Institute for Palestine Studies)
Newly-released classified documents from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office revealed details of atrocities committed during the 1982 Massacre, most notably a direct link between “Israel's” Mossad spy agency and the Lebanese far-right militia group responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees and Lebanese citizens, including children and women.
The document covers the years 1981-1982, including the planning and execution of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982.
The classified information was made available following “a court petition seeking information about the connection between the Mossad, Israel’s espionage agency, and the [far right] militias in Lebanon responsible for massacring Palestinian refugees”.
On September 16-18, 1982, militias of the Lebanese Forces (LF), the military wing of the far-right Kataeb Party at the time, also known as the Phalangists, carried out the brutal killings of between 460 and 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese citizens in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and the nearby Shatila refugee camp.
Remembering the time when Israeli brutality extended into Lebanon, through Israeli-associated right-wing militants. pic.twitter.com/pX3Yz5GZs0
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 16, 2021
Lebanese Forces: Trenched with blood
Israeli cooperation with the LF was already infamous: when the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched the 1982 invasion, they advanced to the outskirts of Beirut but held back in support of the LF as it advanced into the city and seized power.
The IOF maintained nearly complete control over the LF, dictating its actions during the invasion as well as its policies after assuming power, as per the document.
“We have the Lebanese to do what we want them to do,” the document read, according to Haaretz.
“That is the asset we have, now tell us what to do with it. Because the state isn’t all that organized in its decision-making, the ones who told us what to do with the asset wasn’t [Former Israeli PM Menahem] Begin, and the government, but rather the military,” the documents added.
Unsurprisingly, the documents have also unmasked that IOF and LF had been planning the Israeli invasion of Lebanon for over a year.
“It was Israel’s most planned war,” the document says. “The preparations had already begun in mid-1981, and they gained momentum towards the end of that year. In January of 1982, [IOF General and Defense Minister] Ariel Sharon met the [LF] leadership – and said to Pierre Gemayel: ‘We are embarking on a full-scale war and that as a result of it, there ought to be change in Lebanon-Israel relations.’’
The documents went on to reveal that the Israeli connections within Lebanese politics date back to the 1950s and the administration of Lebanese Prime Minister Camille Chamoun. After Lebanon descended into civil war in 1975, Chamoun's National Liberal Party joined forces with Kataeb to form the Lebanese Forces. Chamoun sought assistance from “Tel Aviv”, which began selling LF lethal weapons.
The documents have also detailed how the arms were covertly smuggled into Lebanon, stressing that they were “loaded onto rafts of a sort that carried quantities of arms. We would arrive on a given night with two shipments, and in the third stage we refined it even more.”
The Israeli Mossad said that it transferred 6,000 M-16 rifles and 60,000 rounds of ammunition for the Lebanese Forces, as well as 40 120-millimeter mortars with 12,000 shells and 100 81-millimeter mortars with 2,000 shells.
How “Israel” through LF, Phalangists horrified the world
The harrowing killings perpetrated by Phalangists against unarmed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the two refugee camps outside Beirut horrified the world.
According to an Israeli investigation of the Sabra and Shatila massacre known as the Kahan Commission, Security Minister Ariel Sharon and IOF Chief of Staff Raphael Eitan decided that the Lebanese Forces should be used to enter the Palestinian refugee camps located there. The two, along with several other senior Israeli security officials, met in a building 200 meters from the Shatila camp the day before the attack and gave the order for the LF to enter the camps”
A timeline of forty hours of ruthless slaughter
At 3:00 am on the 15th of September, Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, Major General Amir Drori, the LF's Chief of Intelligence Elie Hobeika, and the Lebanese militia's new commander-in-chief Fadi Frem met to discuss entry into the Sabra and Shatila camps. Sharon instructed, “Only one element, and that is the [IOF], shall command the forces in the area." While the Israeli occupation forces gave the orders, the Phalangist militiamen did the dirty work:
Fighter jets flew at a low altitude and tankers and troops surrounded the camps from all sides. Israeli snipers were at work, tanks were shelling the premises, and all exits and entrances were blocked by the Israelis. Families locked themselves in their homes.
By 11:30 am on the 16th of September, the Israelis announced that they had taken control of Beirut.
At 4:00 pm, jeeps supplied by the Israeli occupation forces drove into Shatila with the guidance of arrows drawn on the walls by the Israelis.
A platoon of 150 militia soldiers, armed with guns, knives, and axes, stormed the camp. Immediately, they entered homes, slit throats, axed, shot, and raped. On many occasions, they would also slit pregnant women's bodies open, leaving them and their fetuses to bleed to death. Entire families and neighborhoods were lined up on the streets and shot ruthlessly.
On Thursday and Friday, Israelis fired light flares into the camps to guide the militiamen in the massacre. One Dutch nurse described the camp as bright as "a sports stadium lit up for a football game."
By 8:40 PM, a briefing by an army general, Yaron, took place: He said that the militiamen are confused as to what to do with the men, women, and children. They were concerned that they found no terrorists, which left them to wonder what to do with the population they have rounded up.
At this point, the Israelis were divided on whether the operation should proceed or not. On the one hand, one commander thought things "may have gotten too far," another commander was impressed with the militiamen's work and that they should continue, as they called it, "mopping up" till 5 AM the next day. Upon requesting another bulldozer to "demolish illegal structures," the Israelis unconditionally granted it to the Phalangists.
On Friday the 17th of September, the systemic murder persisted. Bulldozers were at work: they were digging mass graves, and scooping bodies into piles on trucks just outside the camps. The "illegal structures,” which were inhabited buildings, would be destroyed so that bodies would be buried under the wreckage. At the height of this round of massacre, 400 militiamen were involved.
On Saturday at 6 am, loudspeakers passing through the camps would order civilians to give in to the militia, to exit their homes, and turn themselves in. At that point, it was reported that a thousand people marched out of their homes in lines. The Israeli-backed militiamen would take some of the civilians out of the line and execute them on the spot, whereas others would be dragged to trucks nearby the Kuwaiti embassy and kidnapped…never to be found again.
At 9 am, international journalists and media outlets entered the camps only to find piles of bodies lying down on the floor - many mutilated, maimed, and unidentifiable. Many graves were shallowly dug, leaving dead body parts to appear arbitrarily.
By 10 am, the militiamen left the camp and the Israelis stayed out of the "scene" so as to not be blamed for anything, refusing any accountability and denying any involvement in the disaster.
“Afterward, the area was closed off, and only a few journalists were able to get in and describe what they found. One described how many of the bodies of the dead had been severely mutilated: young men had been castrated, some people had been scalped..."
Founder of @MedicalAidPal, orthopedic surgeon, and author Ang Swee Chai details the atrocious #SabraAndShatila massacre. pic.twitter.com/zDW0SwqWQg
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 17, 2021
“They have raised a hand in a sign of victory and said we are the children of Shatila we are not afraid, let “Israel” come.”
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 18, 2021
Founder of @MedicalAidPal Ang Swee Chai to #AlMayadeen on #SabraAndShatila massacre. pic.twitter.com/Ti7WlClsCj
In a cruel and heartless statement, Prime Minister Menachem Begin commented on the massacre, at the time, by saying it is as "goyim killing goyim," the Hebrew word for non-Jews.
They did so, in fact, on Israeli orders, and with Israeli weapons.
Read more: The Lebanese Forces: A Long Bloody History
