September 29: Israel Investigates the Massacre

On this date in 1982, following an enormous Peace Now protest rally in Israel, Prime Minister Menachem Begin launched a state investigation into the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps (impoverished Beirut neighborhoods, actually) in Lebanon two weeks earlier. The massacre, three months into Israel’s war in Lebanon in hot pursuit of the PLO, was conducted by Lebanese Christian Falangist forces allied to Israel. Some 800 Palestinians were murdered, including many women and children, amid rapes and atrocities, while Israeli soldiers guarded the camp exits and allegedly lit the night sky with flares. In February, 1983, the Kahan Commission (headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Yitzchak Kahan) issued its report, which held Defense Minister Ariel Sharon responsible for approving the Phalangists’ entrance into the camps, ignoring the likelihood of massacre, and doing nothing to stop them. The report also held Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan and intelligence chief Yehoshua Sagi guilty of indifference and disregard for Palestinian lives, and was indirectly critical of Begin for turning his eyes from the events. The Commission urged that Sharon be dismissed and barred from public office; in 2001, he became prime minister.

“It was impossible for [the Israelis] to see exactly what was happening in the narrow alleyways . . . But soon after the massacre started, reports came in from individual Israeli soldiers about the killings. Not once did the Israeli military command try to respond by putting an end to the slaughter. Groups of civilians, coming out of the camps with white flags, were being sent back.”—Dr. Ben Alofs, Dutch witness to the massacre.