“The Sabra and Shatila massacre (or Sabra and Chatila massacre; Arabic: مذبحة صبرا وشاتيلا) was carried out in September 1982 by a Lebanese Forces militia group against Palestinian refugee camps.
In an area under Israeli army control, Christian militiamen were permitted to enter two undefended Palestinian refugee camps leading to a massacre of hundreds to thousands of civilians (see below). Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defense Minister at the time and major protagonist of the invasion, was held responsible and forced to resign. The Lebanese Forces group stood under the direct command of Elie Hobeika, who later became a long-serving Lebanese Member of Parliament and, in the 1990s, a cabinet minister. The number of victims of the massacre varies according to source: the lowest confirmed estimate is 700; the highest is placed at 3,500.”
700-3500 dead as a result of one man’s murder, and all in a couple of days. No-one is disputing this, what happened at a Sabra and Shatila should not have happened. Period. Permission to enter the camps should never have been given by those in control of the area, the IDF and Israeli Defense Minster Ariel Sharon.
We should not remember what happened by displaying pictures of dead, mutilated bodies, claiming untruths about what happened or embellishing what happened. Renaming their killers or renaming the reason they died doesn’t show respect for those who died. Nor does using their deaths as propaganda tools. The people who died in Sabra and Shatila were worth more than to be used as dead meat to fuel a campaign of hatred in a conflict they really didn’t have anything to do with.
If the deaths of 700-3500 (PLO illegal combatants not counted) are to have any meaning at all, we need to give them back their dignity, by restoring the truth about what happened and bring those directly and indirectly responsible to justice.
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