by Noam Chomsky
Israel then proceeded to disarm the Muslim militias and to “the cleaning out of terrorist nests,” in Sharon’s words in his Parliamentary testimony. The Lebanese government demanded that Israel withdraw, as did the UN Security Council by unanimous vote, specifically noting Israel’s violation of the cease-fire agreements and previous Security Council resolutions. The Israeli delegate “made clear his country had no intention of obeying any Council demand for an immediate withdrawal,” in accordance with Israel’s customary practice since 1948 of defying UN resolutions, stating that Israeli troops will “relinquish their positions in west Beirut when the Lebanese armed forces are ready to assume control over these positions in co-ordination with the Israeli Defense Forces in order to insure public order and security.” He also maintained that it was the PLO, not Israel, that had violated the Habib agreements, referring to the mysterious 2000 terrorists.55 By this time the first official explanation for the invasion had been quietly abandoned and forgotten.
Israel had attempted to enter West Beirut on August 1 under cover of a 14-hour land, sea and air bombardment that was the fiercest, so far, of the war—at a time when, according to Maronite President Elias Sarkis, “negotiations for the evacuation of the guerrillas were moving ahead.” The Israeli attack, led by tanks, began pushing towards the Palestinian refugee camps, but was halted after a few hundred yards “by a combined force of Palestinian guerrillas, Syrian troops and Shiite militiamen fighting alongside the Palestinians”56—i.e., “terrorists” in official jargon. On August 4, the IDF again attempted a ground attack but withdrew after heavy casualties, including 19 soldiers killed (ch. 5, 5.4). After that, it kept to safer tactics: bombing and shelling of the defenseless city. Now, however, the PLO had been evacuated as a result of the Habib negotiations and the IDF could enter “a largely undefended city,” encountering “little return fire,”57 The IDF broke into the Soviet Embassy grounds, seizing the consulate building and holding it until late Friday,58 a gratuitous provocation that was passed over a bit too casually here; we return to the matter. Israeli armor also surrounded the Sabra and Shatila camps, where the population was now completely defenseless.
These two camps, along with the third major Palestinian camp (Bourj el-Brajneh), had been mercilessly bombarded from June 4, when Sabra and Shatila were subjected to a 4 hour attack with many casualties (see chapter 5, section 4.5) in alleged “retaliation” for the attempt by an anti-PLO group with not as much as an office in Lebanon to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador to England. “The Sabra and Shatila refugee camps had been so battered by Israeli attacks in the last three months that most people found them uninhabitable,” though thousands had returned to “their shattered huts in the last few weeks.”59 Shatila and Bourj elBrajneh had also been the main targets of the 10-hour non-stop air raids of August 12, when “the Israelis poured high explosive bombs on to the two Palestinian camps in west Beirut yesterday in an apparent attempt to destroy them before Palestinian guerrillas begin to evacuate the city.” “From the weight of bombs dropped over Chatila and Bourj el-Brajneh camps, it was difficult to imagine how anyone could survive the raids,” which included bombs “never previously seen over such heavily residential districts, projectiles that streaked from the aircraft and exploded at 50 ft. intervals in the sky in clouds of smoke, apparently spraying smaller bombs in a wider arc around.” The raids were so severe that the newscaster of the Lebanese radio “broke down while recalling the events of the morning and screamed: ‘the Israelis are neo-Nazis and they are murdering our people’.” The Prime Minister, who with the President had appealed to President Reagan to intervene, shouted: “If the Israelis want to kill us all, let them do it and let us get it over and done with.”60 It may be recalled once again that these are the people who, according to Conor Cruise O’Brien and others in the New Republic, New York Times, and elsewhere, were welcoming their liberation, though they were too ungrateful to allow the liberators to reap the fruits of their humanitarian rescue mission.
The official justification for the raids was that they were necessary to drive the PLO from Beirut, a goal assumed in the U.S. to be the legitimate prerogative of the Israeli army. Many journalists, however, noted that this was a cynical fraud—even if one accepts the remarkable conception of Israel’s rights—since negotiations were reaching their final stage, and as the Lebanese Prime Minister observed, “We have offered all the concessions requested from us for the PLO evacuation, and we have even reached the stage of defining the PLO’s departure routes.”61 Shatila and Bourj el-Brajneh were declared unfit for human habitation, the latter almost completely destroyed, “which means that the 24,000 Palestinians there are either dead or—for the most part—living now as squatters in northwestern Beirut,” where they were also subjected to vicious bombardment by IDE pilots, much admired here for their heroism in bombing undefended civilian areas.
The smaller camps were also not spared. Colin Campbell reports that a refugee camp at Mar Elias, a small camp inhabited by Palestinian Christians who had fled or had been expelled from their homes in 1948, was struck more or less incidentally by Israeli forces advancing on West Beirut on September 15. Israeli tanks “blasted away” at a school and destroyed the homes of 35 families, who “took refuge in a virtually demolished Lebanese Army barracks” after the liberators had passed through with a typical exhibition of the doctrine of “purity of arms.” Elders of the Greek Orthodox Church nearby agreed with camp residents that there were no guerrillas and no armed guards, no weapons or munitions (as an Israeli patrol searching the area confirmed), and no fire from the camp. Refugees remained without water or electricity and only a few days’ food, and pleaded with visitors for help. Among them were victims of the Israeli-backed Phalange attack on Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, in which thousands were massacred.62 The refugees at Mar Elias were the lucky ones, however.
5. A Chapter of Palestinian History
N
othing further appears to have happened in the ruins of Bourj elBrajneh, where the Lebanese army had taken control, but matters were different at Sabra and Shatila, which were “sealed
off’ by the IDF so that “no one could move in or out” and under direct Israeli observation from nearby command posts.63 Extensive and detailed reporting by many journalists tells essentially the following story.
On Thursday September 16, truckloads of Phalange and Haddad troops entered the camps, coming from behind Israeli lines to a staging area that Israel had established and following carefully prearranged and marked routes. The Phalangists appear to have been drawn largely from the Damouri Brigade, which had been operating behind Israeli lines since June. These units consisted of “some of the more extreme elements in the Christian militia,” “with a well-documented record of atrocities against Palestinian civilians,” coming from villages that had suffered brutal PLO retaliation for Phalangist massacres in 1976. The Haddad militia is virtually integrated into the Israeli Army and operates entirely under its command.”64
The forces that Israel had mobilized were sent into the now defenseless camps for “mopping up” and “to clear out terrorist nests” (Sharon). For anyone with a minimal acquaintance with the circumstances, it was not hard to imagine what would happen, and by Thursday night it was clear that these expectations were being fulfilled, with ample evidence that a massacre was in progress. Throughout Thursday night, Israeli flares lighted the camps while the militias went about their work, methodically slaughtering the inhabitants.* The massacre continued until Saturday, under the observation of the Israeli military a few hundred yards away. Bulldozers were used to scoop up bodies and cart them away or bury them under rubble. One “mass grave that has been specially bulldozed” was directly below an Israeli command center, with a view from an Israeli rooftop position “directly onto the grave and the camp beyond.” IDF troops “stationed less than 100 yards away, had not responded to the sound of constant gunfire or the sight of truckloads of bodies being taken away from the camps,” and told Western jou
rnalists that “nothing unusual” was going on while mingling with Phalangists resting between missions inside the camps.65
On Friday afternoon Chief of Staff Eitan and Generals Drori and Yaron met with the Phalangist command. Eitan congratulated them on having “carried out good work,” offered them a bulldozer with IDF markings removed, and authorized them to remain in the camps for another 12 hours. The killing continued. At 5AM Saturday morning the murderers began to leave the camps, and after 36 hours, the slaughter ended. On Saturday morning, “reporters entered the camp long before any Israeli soldiers,”66 and the full story began to reach the outside world. In fact, according to Defense Minister Sharon’s report to the Knesset, Israeli soldiers did not enter Sabra until Sunday, well after news of the massacre had reached the outside world, and did not enter Shatila at all, a fact that did not prevent the Israeli government from officially
* Phalangists allege that apart from providing flares, Israeli artillery also supported them on Thursday night by softening up a “problematic area in the camp” where there had been some resistance. They also claim that they were accompanied by Israelis in Phalangist uniforms. See “One Day in the life of a Phalangist,” Ha’aretz, Feb. 18, 1983; translated from Der Spiegel, Feb. 14, 1983.
taking credit for bringing the massacre to a halt, when the international response began to come in; see below. It is obvious from the circumstances and the troop deployments that the IDF was well aware of what was happening in the camps to which it had dispatched the gangs of murderers it had organized, just as the Czar’s police and army could not have failed to know what was happening in the Jewish quarter of Kishinev. Military correspondent Hirsh Goodman of the Jerusalem Post reported that “The senior command of the IDF knew on Thursday night that civilians were being killed by Phalange troops in the Shatilla refugee camp.” IDF commander General Yaron received a radio communication from the Phalange commander in Shatila stating that “300 civilians and terrorists have been killed,” one of a series of facts that are in “direct contradiction” to public statements by Defense Minister Sharon and Chief of Staff Eitan that there were only “suspicions” until Saturday morning.67 Further evidence that Yaron was aware of the massacre by Thursday evening was provided by the Kahan Commission of Inquiry, to which we turn below. According to the Jerusalem Post, American intelligence provided “hard intelligence information…confirming that Israeli military officers in Beirut were well aware of the brutal killings many hours before the Israeli Defence Forces actually went into the camps,” which was well after journalists had done so. “‘They simply sat on their hands,’ one well-placed U.S. source said, referring to high-ranking Israeli military authorities waiting outside the camps in West Beirut. ‘They did nothing to stop the carnage’.” U.S. officials said that Sharon and Eitan regarded the operation as “justified” because of “the supposedly greater need to ‘purify’ all of the Lebanese capital of terrorists. If innocent people have to die, that’s the price of all wars.”68 Perhaps the Czar’s officers harbored similar thoughts.
By 10PM Thursday, medical workers reported that 2000 terrified civilians had reached their hospital seeking refuge and crying “Phalangists, Haddad, Israel,” pointing to their necks to indicate that people were having their throats cut. By 5:30 AM Friday morning Israeli intelligence received further information that 300 “civilians and terrorists” had been killed, transmitting the information to the Defense Ministry. By 8AM Israeli soldiers informed their commanding officers “that they saw Phalangist soldiers killing civilians in their homes,” while others were being beaten and kicked. The soldiers were informed by superior officers: “we know, this isn’t to our taste, but we are not to become involved.”69
By Friday journalists were reporting the atrocities. Loren Jenkins of the Washington Post reported that “although a tight Israeli Army security cordon tried to keep outside observers from the Palestinian refugee camps in the southern suburbs, there were reports by civilians who managed to escape of violent reprisals by the militiamen,” giving details.70 Colin Campbell of the New York Times reported on Friday that
With Israeli tanks standing guard outside, Israeli-backed Phalangist militiamen moved by foot and jeep into the battered Sabra and Shatila camps. Automatic weapons fire could be heard from within, and women weeping hysterically began appearing in downtown west Beirut and saying that their husbands and sons had been taken away by armed Phalangists.71
On Friday morning, Ze’ev Schiff learned of the atrocities and reported the fact to government officials, though he did not make it public. “It is not true,” he wrote subsequently, “that the crime was known to us—as official sources claim—only by noon on Saturday after the reports of foreign correspondents in Beirut. On Friday morning when I learned of the slaughter in the camps I passed the information on to a high-ranking official [Minister Mordechai Zipori], and I know that he acted immediately”—in fact, he informed Foreign Minister Shamir, who claimed before the Kahan Commission that he did not understand the message. Schiff added that “this affair will haunt us. Now it will be claimed that we disarmed the Mourabitoun and the leftist militias and detained the Palestinian men in order to enable the Phalangists to annihilate their children, women and old people without resistance.”72
While the atrocities were in progress, only the soldiers in the Israeli observation posts had a view of what was happening. Friedman points out that the mass graves could be seen with the naked eye from “the site of the telescope and binocular-equipped Israeli observation post,” but “whether the Israelis actually looked down and saw what was happening was unknown.” What is known is that IDF soldiers “lounged about…reading magazines and listening to Simon and Garfunkel music.” “It is not clear whether the Israelis had any inkling of what was happening in the camps, although from their observation posts it would not have been difficult to ascertain not only by sight but from the sounds of gunfire and the screams coming from the camp.”73 It is also not clear whether this is intended as irony.
Newsweek correspondent Ray Wilkinson measured the distance from the Israeli command post to the camps at 250 paces and examined the line of sight from the Israeli command post. The camps are “plainly visible,” he reported, down to the “smallest detail,” with binoculars. Israeli soldiers equipped with high-powered binoculars could observe what was happening from this command post atop a 7-story building and from a Lebanese army outpost “which provided a view straight down into the camps.” There they watched, and “stood by as the murderers dug a 50-square-yard mass grave and dumped Palestinian bodies into it—all within the direct line of sight of the Israeli observation post,” while bulldozers “rumble[d] out of Sabra, their scoops filled with bodies.”74 This was before Chief of Staff Eitan authorized provision of another bulldozer, with IDF markings removed, on Friday afternoon as he sent the Phalange back into the camps to continue their “good work.”
During the slaughter, Newsweek correspondent James Pringle was prevented from entering the Sabra camp by Israeli soldiers and Haddad militiamen:
As rifle fire crackled inside the camp, Pringle asked one of Haddad’s men what was going on. “We are slaughtering them,” the militiaman replied cheerfully. Nearby an Israeli colonel who identified himself only as “Eli” said that his own troops would not interfere to “purify the area.” Asked whether he was afraid that Haddad’s men might commit atrocities, the colonel replied: “We hope they will not do anything like that.”75
Loren Jenkins of the Washington Post stood on top of a mass grave looking up at the Israeli Army main observation post, a place where before their own advance into the city, they had set up giant telescopes for spotting snipers. And as I stood there Saturday morning looking up, there were six Israelis looking straight down at me. They stood and watched throughout this whole horrible tragedy as people were brought here, shot, dumped in this grave and packed up. This was a basically undefended civilian camp.
ICRC representatives in Shatila and Lebanese Army sol
diers also commented that it is impossible to imagine that the IDF “could not see what is happening here. It is right under the Israelis’ noses.” And soldiers reported that on Thursday evening, Palestinian women “hysterically told them that the Phalangists were shooting their children and putting the men on trucks.” The commanding officer, informed of this, responded: “It is OK, do not worry.”76
The reader might want to keep these eyewitness investigations and reports in mind, as we turn to the much-lauded Report of the official Kahan Commission of Inquiry later on.
An investigation by ABC news revealed that at least 45 Israeli officers knew by Friday afternoon that a massacre was in progress—that is, at the time when the Chief of Staff was authorizing the Phalangists to return to the “good work” for which he congratulated them. On Friday afternoon, Palestinian women who escaped from the camps were filmed pleading with Israeli troops to intervene to stop the massacre, but were told by the soldiers that they could not leave their posts; the women were sent back into the camps. A few hours earlier, Norwegian journalist John Hambro attempted to enter the camp but was blocked by a bulldozer with the scoop filled with dead bodies. An Israeli officer confirmed that “It is certain, beyond any doubt, that by Friday afternoon everyone knew. I know that on Friday afternoon it was already known that people were being killed in Shatila.” A doctor at the nearby Gaza hospital reported that “the patients—the victims—are virtually all women and children,” suffering from gunshot wounds.77
Testifying before the official Commission of Inquiry, General Amos Yaron, who commanded Israeli forces in the Beirut area, described the replacement of the Phalangists with fresh troops Friday afternoon and “indicated that Eitan showed no reluctance to allow the militia units to remain in Sabra and Shatila until the next morning. He testified that the main reason the Phalangist units were ordered out of the camps on Saturday, September 18, was not fear of civilian deaths but because unnamed American officials were pressing the Israelis to have them removed.”78
