September 16, 2020, marks the 38th anniversary of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982.
On the day, the Zionist terrorists and Phalangist militias of Lebanon attacked two Palestinian refugee camps called Sabra and Shatila located in the southwest of Beirut during September 16-18, 1982.
Ariel Sharon, Israel’s minister for military affairs in 1982, had the responsibility for the Israeli forces, who controlled the region of the Sabra and Shatila camps and was in charge of the butchery.
According to Khamenei.ir, over 3000 Palestinian and Lebanese innocent civilians were killed in the heinous massacre. The United Nations General Assembly condemned what happened, described it as "an act of genocide" and issued a resolution that was passed by 98 affirmative votes.
The states which make claims about advocating democracy and human rights abstained from voting on the resolution.
On that day, the world woke up to what seemed to an incurable wound for the Palestinians. The world woke up to one of the most heinous massacres in the history of humanity against the Palestinians, to slaughtered bodies without heads, eyeless heads, as well as broken bones.
The carnage against the residents of the two camps continued for three days, from September 16 to September 18, during which numerous martyrs, including men, children, women, and elderly unarmed civilians, mostly Palestinians, were murdered.
The butchery was kicked off after the Zionist army led by the Minister of War Ariel Sharon and his chief of staff Rafael Eitan, surrounded the refugee camps, and facilitated the entry of Lebanese Christian militias to commit the massacre with a complete media blackout. They used knives and other weapons in the killings. The Israeli army besieged the camp and lit it at night to facilitate the bloodbath.
Only children, the elderly, and women were in the besieged camps. The Lebanese gunmen killed women and children in cold blood. Most of the bodies were strewn in the streets of the camp and then bulldozers entered the camp to demolish the houses and hide the crime.
The massacre was carried out in revenge from the Palestinians who stood up to the Zionist regime’s war machine following three months of siege, which ended with international guarantees to protect the unarmed inhabitants of the camps after the Palestinian resistance fighters left Beirut, but the broker states did not live up to their obligations and abandoned the innocent people of the camps, leaving them to be killed or wounded.
The massacre aimed at spreading terror in the hearts of the Palestinians, urging them to migrate outside Lebanon, fueling internal strife there, and completing the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which targeted the Palestinian presence there, and to incite the Palestinians against their leadership at the pretext that they left Lebanon and left them without protection.
The carnage in Sabra and Shatila was not the first massacre committed by the Zionist regime against the Palestinians, and it was not the last. It was preceded by the massacres of Qubiya, Deir Yassin, and Al-Tantura, and followed by the Jenin and the Gaza massacres, and other massacres. Despite the big number of deaths and the way civilians were murdered, the perpetrators are still at large.
Sabra and Shatila were completely free of any armed and military forces and the crimes of the Zionists are considered as an obvious crime against humanity and Palestinian women, children, and senior citizens.
The main perpetrators of this crime are, on the one hand, the Israeli army and the then Minister of War, Ariel Sharon, and on the other hand, there are other Phalangists in Lebanon under the leadership of Samir Geagea under the name of “Lebanese Forces”.
On the eve of the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the analysts noted that the Zionist regime was founded by westerners, and all the western and dominant powers are responsible for creating such a regime which is the worst human evil.
Each of the westerners plays a different role in the foundation of the Zionist regime. Britain is the major agent in creating it. The US is the main agent in bolstering the power of it and France has provided nuclear facilities for it and Germany has donated economic funds to the regime.
To indicate the involvement of the US in the crime, reconsider what has been recorded in the history; the US government has sent Palestinian forces out of the camp and shipped to Tunisia on a pledge to ensure the security of the camps, but had not fulfilled its obligation and betrayed the agreement.
In 2001, the Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon, who had killed thousands of Arabs in mid-September 1982, got the premiership office in the Zionist regime.
Sharon was the former prime minister of the Zionist regime. His legacy included the killing of tens of thousands of Arabs over his six-decade military and political career. He died in 2014, age 85, following eight years in a coma after massive strokes. He was dubbed the ‘Butcher of Sabra and Shatila’ for commanding the killing of thousands of civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites in 1982.
If crimes such as Sabra and Shatila were not neglected in the history, perhaps the UAE and Bahrain would not have dared to normalize the relations with Israel, and perhaps western public opinion would not have allowed their governments to support Israel.
Compiled and translated by Amin Mohammadzadegan Khoyi
Edited by Hamid Shamlou
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