Fateful Triangle

by Noam Chomsky

  In short, the Commission presents sufficient evidence that the top leadership fully expected a massacre when they sent the Phalange into the camps. They justified the entry into West Beirut as an effort to prevent a Phalange massacre, and then proceeded to send the Phalange into the homes of their worst enemies—but with no intent to harm the population, the Commission “asserts” without equivocation. Again, one can only conclude that the Report is designed for true believers, not for people capable of independent thought.

  The Commission incidentally reveals its own moral standards when it states that “it was not incumbent upon the Prime Minister to object to the Phalangists’ entry into the camps or to order their removal,” even though he sent the IDF into West Beirut “in order to protect the Moslems from the vengeance of the Phalangists.” In short, though the Prime Minister fully expected a massacre, it was not his duty to do anything to prevent it. Truly an expression of “sublime” moral standards.

  The Commission also “determined” that “events in the camps, in the areas where the Phalangists entered, were not visible from the roof of the forward command post. It has also been made clear that no sounds from which it could be inferred that a massacre was being perpetrated in the camps reached that place.” That takes care of the reports of journalists who investigated the scene; for example, those who stood at the site of a mass grave and looked up to the Israeli command posts where they saw IDF soldiers watching them. It takes considerable talent to be able to refute on-the-scene investigations in Beirut from chambers in Jerusalem. In fact, when we look back to see what was actually “determined,” we find that it was carefully circumscribed. The Commission determined, as is no doubt true, that “it was impossible to see what was happening within the alleys in the camp from the roof of the command post.” But this was not the evidence cited by journalists on the scene who concluded, as was no doubt also true, that the IDF observers on the command post could see that a massacre was in progress, watch the bodies being dumped into the mass graves, and so on. See the direct reports sampled above.

  No less interesting is the explanation of why the IDF sent the Phalangists into the camp: the decision was taken with the aim of preventing further losses in the war in Lebanon; to accede to the pressure of public opinion in Israel, which was angry that the Phalangists, who were reaping the fruits of the war, were taking no part in it; and to take advantage of the Phalangists’ professional service and their skills in identifying terrorists and in discovering arms caches.

  These considerations are reiterated later, and described as “weighty,” perhaps sufficiently so as to justify sending the Phalangists into the camps even in the expectation of a massacre.

  The phrase “further losses” refers to Israeli losses. As we have seen, Israel had made attempts to enter West Beirut in August but withdrew after heavy losses, turning to terror bombings instead, then entering the city after the PLO fighters had departed with an American guarantee that Israel would not enter West Beirut and that the defenseless population would be protected from harm. Some 100-150 Phalangists were sent into the camps, a clear indication that the IDF expected no serious resistance; and in fact, journalists who had visited the camps had seen no indication that there could be resistance in these heavily bombed civilian areas. The talk of “2000 terrorists” can hardly be taken seriously, and as we have seen, was ridiculed by Israeli journalists who noted the size of the Phalangist force. As for the Phalangists’ “professional skills,” the only such skills that they had revealed were in murdering defenseless people. However, journalists and others had been much impressed by Israel’s extensive infiltration of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements as well as the Arab communities in Beirut and elsewhere, which provided remarkably detailed knowledge of what was taking place in Beirut and in the camps. It is difficult to see why these and similar “professional skills” would not have sufficed in the undefended Palestinian camps—where, it will be recalled, the Phalangists suffered two casualties—two killed, one part of the Report says, two injured, another part indicates, quite possibly the same two. As for the Commission’s sense of “public opinion in Israel,” it virtually reeks of anti-Semitism. The Commission is stating that Israeli public opinion would be satisfied somehow if the fox were sent into an undefended and heavily bombarded chicken coop to “clean out terrorist nests,” after having refrained from taking part in the actual fighting; see p. 664*.

  The Commission states that the IDF received “heavy fire” from Shatila and light weapons fire from both camps when it entered West Beirut. Contradicting itself, it also reports without comment the IDF spokesman’s announcement that “The entry of the I.D.F. forces was executed without resistance” and the Chief of Staffs report to Begin that “there was no resistance in Beirut.” If evidence existed of “heavy fire” from the camps, thus confirming the claims about the “2000 terrorists,” it is reasonable to suppose that it would have been presented. It does not appear to have been reported in the press, and the Commission offers no evidence. The Commission also claims that “there were armed terrorist forces in the camps,” possessing arms that they had used against IDF forces: “It is possible to determine that this armed terrorist force had not been evacuated during the general evacuation,” but had stayed behind “to protect the civilian population” (clear proof of their terrorist intent) and to renew terrorist activity later on. No evidence is provided to support any of these claims. Nor is there any explanation of why these armed terrorist forces that were directing heavy fire against the IDF were unable to resist or even inflict more than token casualties on 150 Phalangists who previously had been noted for their strict avoidance of combat (see section 3.3). Again, it is difficult to believe that any of this is intended to be taken seriously.

  Recall that in addition to “asserting,” in defiance of its own evidence and plain common sense, that there was no intent to harm the civilian population when the murderous gangs were sent in, the Commission also “asserts” that “the events that followed did not have the concurrence or assent of anyone from the political or civilian echelon who was active regarding the Phalangists’ entry into the camps.” They pointedly exclude here the “military echelon,” though without drawing any specific conclusions from this exception. They also make the unqualified assertion that “No intention existed on the part of any Israeli element to harm the non-combatant population in the camps” (my emphasis). Let us look further into how the selection of evidence to which the Report restricts itself bears on these assertions and exceptions.

  The Commission recognizes that “the Chief of Staff told the Minister of Defense things about the conduct of the Phalangists that could have led the Minister of Defense to understand that the Phalangists had perpetrated the murder of civilians in the camps,” though he “expressed his satisfaction with the Phalangist operation and agreed to their request to provide them with tractors so that they could complete their operations,” also authorizing them to stay on in the camps (on Friday afternoon, at a time when the massacres were common knowledge, as noted earlier). The Commission discovered that on Thursday evening, September 16, shortly after the Phalangists had entered the camp, Brigadier General Amos Yaron, who was in command in the Beirut area, received information “that the Phalangists were killing women and children in the camps”; “it became known to Brigadier General Yaron that the Phalangists were perpetrating acts of killing which went beyond combat operations, and were killing women and children as well.” Beyond alleged warnings to Phalangist liaison officers, “he did nothing to stop the killing.” No order was issued to prevent the Phalangists “from replacing forces on Friday,” and in fact the Chief of Staff ordered this replacement Friday afternoon.

  What was the evidence available to General Yaron, according to the Commission? One hour after the Phalangist entry into the camps at 6PM on Thursday, an Israeli officer intercepted a radio message ordering the killing of 50 women and children and transmitted the information to General Yaron
at once. An hour later another radio communication indicated that 45 people captured were to be killed. At the same time, 8PM, a Phalange liaison officer “told various people” that about 300 people had already been killed by the Phalangists (later he reduced it to 120). About an hour later the Divisional Intelligence Officer of the IDF presented his “intelligence survey” in which he said that

  The impression is that their [the Phalangists’] fighting is not too serious. They have casualties, as you know—two wounded, one in the leg and one in the hand… And they, it turns out, are pondering what to do with the population they are finding inside. On the one hand, it seems, there are no terrorists there, in the camp; Sabra camp is empty. On the other hand, they have amassed women, children and apparently also old people.

  He added the report from a Phalange officer indicating that these people should be killed. Note that the elusive 2000 terrorists had pulled their disappearing act once again, refuting what had been “determined” by the Commission, as just quoted, namely, that the “armed terrorist force” had not been evacuated. On Friday, additional evidence of atrocities was accumulated, as revealed in a report that the Phalangists had “butchered” civilians (early Friday morning) and direct observation of Phalangist murders. The murderers were then sent back in to complete their work—in fact, they were ordered to leave the following morning only “due to American pressure,” according to the Chief of Staff.

  In short, it is quite impossible to believe that there was no “concurrence or assent” in the events that followed the entry of the Phalangists into the camps on the part of the “military echelon,” and the Defense Minister, from the “political” echelon, had been apprised of the facts.

  The picture that emerges from the Kahan Commission Report is therefore quite clear. The higher political and military echelons, in their entirety, expected that Phalangists would carry out massacres if they were admitted into Palestinian camps. Furthermore, they knew that these camps were undefended, so they were willing to send in approximately 150 Phalangists known for their unwillingness to engage in any conflict with armed men. Within 1-2 hours after the Phalangists had entered on Thursday at 6PM, clear evidence reached the command post 200 meters away from the camps and overlooking them that massacres were taking place, and that there was no serious resistance. At the command post, the IDF and Phalange commanders and their staffs, including intelligence and liaison, were present and in constant contact. The IDF then provided illumination, and the next day, after receiving further corroboratory evidence that massacres were in process and that there was no resistance, sent the Phalange back into the camps, with tractors, which the IDF knew were being used to bury bodies in the mass grave which they could observe (the latter fact is ignored by the Commission). The Phalange were selected for this operation because, as the Chief of Staff stated, “we could give them orders whereas it was impossible to give orders to the Lebanese army.” And in fact, the IDF did give the Phalange orders, from the—moment they sent them into the camps to conduct their murderous operations, to the time when they were sent back in on Friday afternoon to complete them, to Saturday morning when they were withdrawn because of American pressure, at which time the IDF began rounding up those who had escaped and sending them to Israeli concentration camps (again, this fact is not discussed by the Commission). That is the story as it emerges from the Commission Report (with the exceptions noted). What will a rational person deduce from this record?

  Despite the overwhelming evidence of high level planning and complicity in the massacre, in the advance planning and as it was running its course, the Commission rejected these conclusions. It did, nevertheless, assign some limited “indirect responsibility,” basing its recommendations on “the obligations applying to every civilized nation” and crucially, the fact that “the Jews in various lands of exile, and also in the Land of Israel when it was under foreign rule, suffered greatly from pogroms perpetrated by various hooligans; and the danger of disturbances against Jews in various lands, it seems evident, has not yet passed,” so it is only prudent to note the responsibility of authorities who do not kill with their own hands.

  One may be interested in comparing the tempered and limited critique given by the Commission with the passionate denunciations of those who stood by while hooligans murdered 45 Jews in Kishinev, or of British authorities during the Hebron massacre, or of Nazis who let Ukrainian and Croatian anti-Semites rampage. One might also compare the rapturous response to the Kahan Commission’s recommendations with Dubnow’s report of the horrified reaction of the “civilized world” to the Czar’s judicial inquiry, which “was conducted with a view to obliterating the traces of the deliberate organization of the [Kishinev] pogrom,” and to court proceedings that sentenced a score of murderers to hard labor and penal service, but not those who instigated or failed to halt the crime. We derive a certain measure of the progress of civilization in the past 80 years.

  The Commission states that all concerned “were well aware that combat morality among the various combatant groups in Lebanon differs from the norm in the I.D.F., that the combatants in Lebanon belittle the value of human life far beyond what is necessary and accepted in wars between civilized peoples.” There was no more of a “war” when the Phalange entered Sabra and Shatila than when Sharon’s Unit 101 entered Qibya, or when IDF forces massacred hundreds of people in the Gaza region after hostilities ended in 1956. Nothing more need be said about the “norms” exhibited during the destruction of Ain el-Hilweh or the siege and bombing of Beirut while there was “a war,” of a certain sort. So much for “civilized peoples.”

  Israel’s responsibility, the Commission determined, is “exhausted” by the failure to give adequate attention to the possibility that there might be massacres (though the “weighty considerations” already noted might have justified sending in the Phalangists even in the light of such expectation) and the failure to take “proper heed” of the reports that something unpleasant might be happening. “No complaints could be addressed” to Defense Minister Sharon for sending the Phalange into the camps “if such a decision had been taken after all the relevant considerations had been examined,” and no “responsibility should be imputed to the Defense Minister for not ordering the removal of the Phalangists from the camps when the first reports reached him about the acts of killing being committed there”—Friday evening, the Commission alleges, that is, well after numerous journalists, officers and soldiers knew of the facts, an incredible conclusion. It was not Sharon’s duty to order the Phalange to leave the camps even when he learned of the facts, again a demonstration of sublime moral standards. One might ask—as several Israeli journalists had already done—whether the IDF would have taken a similarly casual attitude, with the support of the distinguished Commission, if it had learned that PLO terrorists were killing hundreds of Jews in Kiryat Shemona or Tel Aviv.

  The Commission recommended that Sharon resign—as he did, to be replaced by Moshe Arens, who basically shares his views, remaining in the cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and joining two important committees, the steering committee directing the negotiations with Lebanon and the Ministers’ Committee for Security, a decision that led Ha’aretz to comment editorially that the government managed to sabotage “the most important recommendation made by the Commission of Inquiry.”* As for Chief of Staff Eitan—who expected massacres and ordered the Phalange back into the camps well after he learned that his expectations had been fulfilled—the Commission made no recommendation, on the grounds that he was soon to retire. General Yaron, who knew of the killings Thursday evening and did nothing, was to be relieved of field command for three years; shortly after, he was given a higher level appointment as head of army manpower and

  * Editorial, Ha’aretz, Feb. 21, 1983 (Israeli Mirror). Amir Oren predicts that Sharon will be returned as Defense Minister, citing the opinion among the leadership that the Kahan Commission Report did not exclude this possibility and their reported analogy to soccer ma
tches, where a player can be penalized but then returned to his position. Koteret Rashit, Feb. 23, 1983. On Yaron, see New York Times, May 17, 1983.

  training. The director of military intelligence is to step down. So justice is done; Israel has achieved “salvation” and again demonstrated its “sublimity.”

  The Commission recognizes that some will not be satisfied with its Report, “those who have prejudices or selective consciences, but this inquiry was not intended for such people.” It is certainly true that the inquiry was not intended for people who have a prejudice in favor of truth and honesty, but it will more than suffice for its intended audience, as the reaction to it illustrated. A number of commentators were quick to point out that the Report would help to broaden support for Israel in Congress and among the public, as it did (see p. 674*). If one may deduce intent from rational expectation of consequences, then it would seem fair to say that the intent of the Commission was realized.