Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which happened between September 16th to 18th in West-Beirut, Lebanon. During the massacre, hundreds of civillians, most of them either Palestinian or Lebanese Shiites were killed by the Lebanese Phalangists, it happened following a close collaboration between them and the IDF against PLO fighters.

Following the assassination of Lebanese Christian President Bachir Gemayel in September 14th, the Phalangists sought revenge and blamed the Palestinians for the assassination even though there was no evidence to support it. By noon on 15 September, Sabra and Shatila had been surrounded by Israeli soldiers, which set up checkpoints at the exits and entrances, and used a number of multi-story buildings as observation posts. Hours later, IDF tanks began shelling Sabra and Shatila. in the following morning, the IDF issued an order to its soldiers not to enter the refugee camps and to let the Phalangists search and “mop-up” the camps.

The first unit of 150 Phalangists entered Sabra and Shatila on the evening of September 16th, an hour and a half later it was decided by the Israeli cabinet and the Phalangists that the I.D.F. would guarantee the success of their operation, but won’t participate in it directly. The Phalangists were to go in there “with their own methods”. Several I.D.F. soldiers stationed nearby have noted in the next morning that killings were being conducted against the camp refugees. An Israeli tank crew that reported the killing of civillians to their battalion commander were told by him not to interfere. An Israeli lieutenant who asked a Phalangist about the killing of civillians was told that “pregnant women will give birth to children who will grow up to be terrorists”.

Siham Balqis, a survivor of the massacre from Shatila recalled that “They would pick on the men at random and make them crawl on the floor. If they thought they crawled well, they assumed it was due to some sort of military training, so they took them behind a sand bank and killed them”. Wadha Sabeq, who lived in a neighbourhood just outside the camps recalled that “You couldn’t look at the faces of the bodies, they were covered in blood and disfigured” and that “You could only identify people by the clothes they were wearing”.

The Lebanese army’s chief prosecutor claimed 460 civillians died in the massacre, out of which 15 were women and 12 were children, but the Red Crescent reported 2,000 civillians died in the massacre.

Remember Sabra and Shatila!

Remember the victims of reactionary forces and imperialism!