Opinion Editorials, September 2007
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Commemorating the Sabra and Shatila Massacre
By Marion Kawas
ccun.org, September 20, 2007
It was September 1982. The summer had been brutal, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon being the issue we lived with, woke up to, and went to bed with. There was no internet, and our days were consumed with obtaining even the smallest slivers of news about the Palestinian and Lebanese casualties of the war, that numbered in the tens of thousands. We organized rallies, raised money for humanitarian aid, but none of it could erase or even reduce the emotional turmoil we constantly faced.
And then, as we all debated how and why the PLO forces left Beirut with supposed U.S. guarantees for the safety of civilians, we began to receive the flickering images on our TV screens of piled up and disfigured bodies from Sabra and Shatila. At first, the full horror of it was not immediately realized, and again, it took some time before all the details emerged. Maybe that was easier, a blessing of sorts, because the whole was too great to comprehend in one blow. At least 3000 civilians (bodies were dumped in mass graves so figures are at best conservative) butchered and mutilated by Lebanese fascist forces with the full support of the occupying Israeli army in manners almost too gruesome to think about. And all of this with American guarantees for civilian safety.
We were like people in shock, numbly going ahead with plans for large protests but knowing at some deeper level, that the tragedy here would take a long time to process.
Many events happened in the aftermath but none brought the smallest amount of justice to the Sabra and Shatila victims. Ariel Sharon was found complicit even by Israeli institutions, but then returned as prime minister some years later. The victims tried to receive some modicum of accountability with their lawsuit in Belgian courts, which was then squashed by pressure from U.S. and other governments. Once again, the massacre of Palestinians was an inconvenient reality, and the memory of it even more inconvenient.
As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the Palestinian struggle seems as betrayed by international silence now, maybe even more so. This unbearable weight of their history is almost too much for the Palestinian national psyche, but please note the “almost”. Palestinians cling to their history, refuse to rewrite it, refuse to minimize it, refuse to ignore it, and refuse to forget it. Perhaps this is the greatest strength of the Palestinian struggle for survival – the refusal to deny the painful truths that are still being created on this 25th anniversary.
This commentary was authored and read on Voice of Palestine, Vancouver, Canada www.voiceofpalestine.ca on September 18/07 by show co-host Marion Kawas.
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