Fateful Triangle
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Historian Barbara Tuchman reacted to the massacres by recalling her earlier concern that “Israel’s determination to wipe out the Palestine Liberation Organization” in pursuit of its ‘justifiable aim” of “elimination of the P.L.O. threat” would “encounter difficulties,” because the “complications of the Arab world are not such as the Israelis can control.” As quoted, she had no further comment on the massacres except to say that “What concerns me is the survival and future of Israel and of Jews in the Diaspora—myself among them.” In contrast, Rabbi Arnold Wolf was “crushed and terrified by the massacre,” adding that “I think all of us have bloody hands.”133
6.5 “Putting a Snake into a Child’s Bed”: The United States and its Commitments 6.5.1 The Defenseless Remnants
Consider finally the last of the series of charges of responsibility cited
above: the charge of U.S. complicity. Recall the feeling of the Labor opposition during the war itself that they could not act after the U.S. had given the “green light” for the invasion. The initial U.S. response to the Israeli entry into West Beirut was tempered. White House spokesmen refrained from condemning the move, describing it as “limited and precautionary,” and “Israeli diplomatic sources expressed satisfaction last night over the moderate American reaction to the Israeli move into West Beirut,” in violation of the Habib agreements and the U.S. pledge to the Lebanese and Palestinians. “Despite persistent questioning, however, U.S. officials declined to criticize the movement of Israeli troops into West Beirut or to insist on their quick withdrawal.”134 The President, in fact, explained that “what led [Israel] to move back in [sic] was the attack after the assassination of the elected President by some of the leftist militia that is still there in west Beirut.” Reagan’s ‘justification for the Israeli move stunned officials in Washington,” who commented privately that even the Israelis hadn’t made that claim, though White House press secretary Larry Speakes conjured up some “private claims” by the Israelis that they were “provoked” by some fire “by leftists.” One can sympathize with the officials whose job it is to cover up after the President’s various random shots. Reagan also dismissed questions concerning Israel’s partial occupation of the Soviet Embassy (“Oh, you know the Russians. You can’t believe anything they say”).135
Israeli officials maintained that the privately-expressed U.S. view “was considerably less demanding of Israel than the public statement Thursday accusing Israel of violating the agreement under which the Palestine Liberation Organization withdrew from west Beirut.” They expressed anger over the official statement which “came only hours after a much more ‘understanding’ American line had been presented by Mr. Draper in private.” “The Israelis firmly believe that the private position is the authentic one,” and that the “tough statement” is for show, “because of Arab pressure.”136 The Israeli interpretation is not at all implausible. We have seen the same pattern with regard to settlement in the occupied territories, the invasion of Lebanon, and the sharp intensification of the attack on West Beirut in August. Throughout, Israel has held-—not unreasonably, given the concrete facts of diplomatic and material support—that whatever public show of anger there may be, they are being privately informed to proceed.
The official U.S. reaction to the massacre was also quite restrained. After the massacre reports had been made public, U.S. officials assigned Israel “indirect responsibility” for having failed to stop the massacre, and the President’s official statement noted only that Lebanese Army units were “thwarted” in their effort to establish control “by the Israeli occupation that took place on Wednesday.”137 Israel was blamed for having failed to prevent the tragedy, not for its role in implementing it. At the UN, the United States stood alone against the entire world, along with Israel, in refusing to condemn the massacre. See section 5.
U.S. perfidy on this matter is in fact far deeper. During the Habib negotiations, the United States gave explicit assurances to the Lebanese and Palestinians that the safety of the Palestinians would be guaranteed after the departure of the PLO fighters; Habib wrote the Lebanese Prime Minister that “my government will do its utmost to ensure that these assurances [on the part of Israel] are scrupulously observed.” Citing the Habib letters, Milton Viorst observes that the American commitments “were crucial to the PLO’s agreement to evacuate Beirut,” leaving the civilian population unprotected. The text of the agreement had been quoted earlier by Alexander Cockburn:
The Governments of Lebanon and the United States will provide appropriate guarantees of the safety…of law-abiding Palestinian noncombatants left in Beirut, including the families of those who have departed... The U.S. will provide its guarantees on the basis of assurances received from the Government of Israel and the leaders of certain Lebanese groups with which it has been in contact.138
An implied commitment was that Israel would not enter Beirut after the peaceful withdrawal of the PLO. The American peace-keeping force had the dual obligation of overseeing the departure of the PLO and safeguarding the civilian population, in accordance with the explicit American commitment. It withdrew after the first of these tasks was performed, two weeks before its original mandate ran out, effectively terminating the multinational commitment to protect the civilians left in peril. The ABC News Closeup investigation cited earlier states: “The multinational force is committed to protect civilians for 30 days, but the Americans insist on leaving Beirut two weeks ahead of schedule, which forces the French and Italians to pull out as well.” Shortly after, the IDF moved into Beirut and the massacre took place. The killers are called “Israeli-backed,” Cockburn comments, “but they should, with equal accuracy, be termed ‘U.S.-sanctioned’ since their onslaught on the camps was only possible in the event that the U.S. flouted a specific guarantee.”
Viorst was informed by the State Department that the U.S. had “never formally lodged a protest, either for the occupation of Beirut or for what happened at Shatila and Sabra.”
6.5.2 The “Brought-in”* Viorst also cites a second Habib letter, no less significant, concerning Palestinian prisoners, urging that they be accorded humane treatment. “American officials acknowledge, nonetheless, that very little has been done to follow up on the letter’s pledges.” According to Viorst, the Israeli government announced that there were 8000 such prisoners in Israel in addition to the 6-7000 in Lebanon. (Note that this estimate accords with the Red Cross figures reported by Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein; see chapter 5, section 5.1). Viorst cites a Red Cross spokesman who stated “that the Israelis have permitted no visits of facilities in Israel, and otherwise decline to cooperate with the Red Cross, so it has no idea of what it is happening there.” We have already had a glimpse of what is happening in the Lebanon “concentration camps,” as Israeli eyewitnesses term them, where the Red Cross does have some access, and in the Israeli military command post in Sidon. The State Department could cite no specific case of American intercession on the prisoner issue, despite the Habib commitment. In a sense, this is not surprising, since the American press, public, and even humanitarian organizations have also shown no signs of concern over this major atrocity, the exact dimensions of which are not yet known, and may never be known.
It should be noted that reports months after the war from European * The many thousands of people carted away to Israeli prisons and concentration camps are not referred to as “prisoners,” which would raise questions about international conventions and other human rights considerations. Rather, a new Hebrew word has been coined to refer so them: they are the ones “brought in.”
groups concerned with the scandalous issue of the IDF’s prisoners have been shocking (I know of no reports from American groups). They incidentally cite credible information that apart from the wholesale round-up of the male Palestinian population and many Lebanese men, women were also imprisoned, some possibly tortured. This additional atrocity was revealed when Israeli lawyer Felicia Langer appealed for the right to visit Maryam A
bdel-Jelil, who had been detained and interrogated in the Israeli military compound in Tyre and then removed to a women’s prison in Israel after her arrest on November 1, 1982 at a refugee camp near Tyre where she was a teacher and social worker (Palestinians imprisoned in the Peace for Galilee Operation—and subsequently—are not granted the right to see lawyers, or to be visited at all, another fact that arouses no interest among the American civil libertarians and humanists who are helping to finance these operations). According to the same sources, she was secretly released after Langer’s inquiry and found in a Tyre hospital, in a physical and mental condition that indicated that she had been brutally treated. Since then other cases have been discovered. The same sources also allege that in a number of cases the women arrested and deported were the last remaining support for the families who survived in the devastated camps.139
Dr. Israel Shahak, Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, reports that according to information he has received the Civil Rights, reports that according to information he has received the 20,000, more than 3/4 of them Lebanese. The 4000-4500 Palestinians were all in the Ansar camp in Lebanon, apart from seven women in the Neve Tirza women’s prison in Israel. The Lebanese appear to be held in camps scattered in remote areas in Lebanon, under atrocious conditions. There were thousands of prisoners in Israel a few months earlier, as Viorst reported, but with few exceptions they were returned to camps in unknown locations in Lebanon, or freed after the brutal treatment that they have reported on their release; see chapter 5, section 5.3 for a few examples. Many Palestinian men have disappeared in the zones controlled by Israel’s client Major Haddad.* Given the general lack of interest in this matter by Westerners who would be concerned if the victims were human beings rather than Palestinians, and who would be evoking images of the Nazis if the victims were Jews, it is impossible to offer a fuller accounting.
6.5.3 More on Hypocrisy Returning to the charge of “hypocrisy” expressed by Israel with regard to angry U.S. unofficial reactions, one can again perceive its merit. The initial U.S. response encouraged Israel to proceed into West Beirut, and it was only reasonable to expect that some version of Sharon’s procedures would be implemented once the population was left defenseless by Israeli military operations.
The essential point was expressed quite accurately by Meron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem whose research on the settlement programs was discussed in chapter 4:
What’s our Army if not the product of American aid? Didn’t Reagan proclaim Jewish settlements on the West Bank “not * Personal communication. For more information, see the references cited in note 139 and chapter 5, section 5.3; also “Women at risk,” Middle East International, March 4, 1983, describing the techniques used to force women left alone with their families to inform on their husbands or pressure them to surrender to the Israelis, for example, the case of Abla al-Hassan, taken to an Israeli prison leaving her four children (one an unweaned infant, one a mongoloid) without care.
illegal?” Didn’t Haig sanction the first phase of the Lebanese invasion? Everything that has happened in Israel until now has carried the stamp of American approval, or at least it was tolerated by your governments. If the genie is out of the bottle, it was Washington that helped to turn him loose.140
His remarks are just. It is, he correctly says, “just too slick to say that Israel has lost its soul and leave itat that.” It will not do for Americans to blame the Phalange, or Begin-Sharon, or their silent partners in the Labor Alignment, or Israeli rejectionism, expansion and oppression over many years. Without crucial American support at every level, matters would have been quite different, not only in the past few months. In short, the circle of responsibility cannot be so narrowly drawn, convenient as it may be to do so.
Commenting on the massacre, the Israeli writer Amos Elon makes this observation: A man who puts a snake into a child’s bed and says: “I’m sorry. I told the snake not to bite. I didn’t know snakes were so dangerous.” It’s impossible to understand. This man’s a war criminal.141
He therefore judges Begin and Sharon to be war criminals, as did a number of other Israeli commentators.* The argument cuts deeper, * See also the comment by Ze’ev Schiff: “whoever allowed the Phalangists to enter the refugee camps on their own can be compared to one who allows a fox into the chicken coop and then wonders why the chickens were all eaten”; New Outlook. October 1982. Also “Tales of Foxes and Birds,” Davar, Sept. 29, 1982, by Yizhar Smilansky, one of Israel’s outstanding novelists, responding to
however. What about those who gave the “green light” when Israel invaded West Beirut, or when Israel invaded Lebanon in the first place to “clean out terrorist nests”? Or those who applauded these and earlier ventures or remained silent about them? Did they not know that snakes are dangerous?
6.6 The “Principal Culprits” At the time of the Kishinev massacre, Tolstoi extended the circle of responsibility to the “principal culprits” with their “propaganda of falsehood and violence.” One of Israel’s most courageous journalists, Uri Avneri, did the same. “Every child now killed in the bombardment of Beirut, every child buried under the ruins of a shelled house, is being murdered by an Israeli journalist,” he wrote during the bombing of Beirut. His reasoning extends to the present case as well, and applies with no less—perhaps more—force in the United States than in Israel, where many outstanding journalists have in fact reported much that has often been concealed and distorted here, over many years. Avneri’s point is that in Israel the Palestinians have been thoroughly dehumanized, as when the press announces that “terrorist nests have been bombed and shelled in Beirut,” knowing that it is “a lie” and that “The bombs hit civilians, women, men, children and the aged.” Furthermore:
Terrorists have no “nests.” Animals have nests, birds too. People—good or bad—have houses, offices, headquarters.
the radio comment by Minister Yosef Burg: “Christians killed Muslims; How are the Jews guilty?” The “original sin” of Israeli journalists was the very use of the word “terrorist” (or to be more precise, the new term, “mehablim,” invented for the purpose) to include “all PLO fighters” and later “all PLO members—diplomats, officials, teachers, physicians, nurses in the Palestinian Red Crescent,” and finally “the whole of the Palestinian people” so that “we bomb ‘terrorist camps,’ meaning Palestinian refugee camps in which PLO fighters may or may not be located.” When Palestinian refugees become “terrorists,” they can “be bombed, shelled, expelled, denied their humanity... The ruins of Beirut, with the bodies of the women, men and children buried underneath, serve as the memorial” of this journalistic practice. 142
A. B. Yehoshua made the same point after the Beirut massacres, six weeks later: “When they speak of extermination and cleansing, when they call the Palestinians two-legged beasts—it is no wonder that a soldier permits such horrors to take place right next to him.” The point had been made before by others, among them a group of Israeli doves who published a statement in June entitled “Life and Death in the Hands of the Language,” which discusses such phrases as “nests of terrorists” (like nests of insects), “purification” of these nests (with its religious connotations, understood by every Israeli), “extermination” (as of insects) and “two-legged beasts” for the “terrorists” inhabiting the “nests,” expressions that have been devised and used to dehumanize the Palestinian enemy and justify whatever has been done to them, again, a practice that is not without its antecedents in Jewish history, with roles reversed.143 The effect was once again evident in the following weeks.
The “ideological support” for Israel in the United States, with its systematic falsification of the historical record and its practice of defaming the Palestinians and ignoring their torment, merits similar words. The Palestinians have been deprived of their humanity and left as fair game for the atrocities that they have suffered, and will continue to suffer. Nothing is easier than to shed responsibility, to con
demn the crimes—often real—of someone else. There is much that could have been done to present a fair and honest picture of what was and had been happening, and to change the U.S. policies that have predictably led to the rise of a Greater Israel that is a threat to its own citizens, to those subject to its military power, and to many others as well, and that lie behind the specific events of 1982. To the extent that we do not do what can be done, we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. If these are truisms, and they are, they nevertheless will bear repetition so long as they are ignored.
6.7 Reactions: Israel and Elsewhere Israel surely suffered a deterioration in its image abroad as a result of the war. A dramatic example was given by Yoel Marcus of Ha’aretz, who regards the war “from its beginning to its end (which is not yet on the horizon [in October]) as the fulfillment of the most terrifying prophecies that one could imagine.” He reports on a visit to South Africa, where he had expected to find “the last island of popular sympathy remaining for us in the world” in our second most important ally after the United States.” The bombings of Beirut were condemned, and also the massacres. “Who would have believed that even in the eyes of the state that is denounced as the most immoral in the world, Israel is regarded as immoral?” “We carry out a policy of Apartheid, we oppress the Blacks, not giving them a decent education, and their wages are miserable—but we do not murder women and children,”* he was told by
*This is, of course, a lie, though Marcus does not mention the fact. For just one example, see section 5.
a South African editor.144 Marcus exaggerates; in the United States, and Europe as well, the strongly pro-Israel bias of the past and the dehumanization of the Palestinians persists. A clear indication is the lack of concern for the thousands of people taken to Israeli “concentration camps,” or the fate of the Palestinians whose civilian society was demolished by the conquering army, or the Samidin of earlier conquests.