Sabra and Shatila Forgotten.

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Tuesday September 18, 2007 12:55 by PaddyK - No Organisation

25 years on and the world simply forgets the Sabra and Shatila Massacres.

What the UN described at the time as an "act of genocide" has gone unflagged by the Media on the 25 th Anniversary. One of the darkest days for our generation was the slaughter of thousands of defenseless Palestinian women, children and Old Folks in Palestinian Refugee camps in Lebanon on theis day 25 years ago. But looking and listening to the media it's as though it never happened.

+Enabled by the US who guaranteed Palestinian fighters the safety of their familes if they abandoned the camps.
+Engineered by regular Israeli forces who sealed off and bombarded the camps and illumminated them at night to facilitate round the clock operations.
+Enacted by Lebanese Phalangists with the words of encouragement from Ariel Sharon in their ears "Congratulations! Our friends' operation is approved." they went to work and raped , hacked and dynamited their way through the masses.

25 years on and the Palestinians still have no justice for these crimes and their pitiful circumstances remains the same in squalid refugee camps constantly under the threat of Invasion or bombardment.

Sonja Karkar catalogs and describes a litany of horrific attacks that should never have made it out of the dark Ages but actually happened in Labanon within our own lifetimes :

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2...13787

+People tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out, the electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs

+People with gouged out eye sockets. Faces unrecognisable with the gaping holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully ended.

+Women raped. Not once - but two, three, four times – horribly violated, their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death.

+Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos, so hard to know to whom they belonged - just mounds of bloodied limbs amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood.

+Families executed. Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up for a more orderly execution.

More on the atrocity here : http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/145.shtml

Eye Witness testimony and photographs : http://www.inminds.co.uk/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html

WARNING : Some of the Photographs are shocking and contain scenes of violence.