#sabra and shatila

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

Repost from @letstalkpalestine

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Today marks 44 years since the start of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. What was once one of the bloodiest episodes of Palestinian history has now been eclipsed by the Gaza genocide. The story is always the same: the Israeli state requires the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

The Nakba continues. When it will end is up to us.

In memory of those we lost and who are still being taken from us 🤍🇵🇸

[a-typical]

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé (2006)

[edwordsmyth]

"A warring sun in Beirut thunderous April cool breeze on the ships yellow sun on a pole an eye in the gun's hole a dead from Palestine A purple sun in my friend's pocket meanderings in PARIS a bird on a dead Palestinian's toe a fly at the butchery Beirut-sulphuric-acid STOP the Quarantina is torching its inmates STOP Beirut a sun on the finger a sun in the gut a sun climbing an elephant cannibal anthropophagus sun wart on the cargoes ! ! ! ! ! a yellow sun on the face cancer on the Palestinian cruelty of the palm tree I led a ship under the sea to the living and the dead yes yes yes a black sun 45 black corpses for a single coffin black eye listening I saw a hawk eat a child’s brain in the dumps of Dekouaneh

A dead sun was a toy in Sabra I cut the sky in two

a sun rotten and eaten by worms floats over Beirut silence is sold by the pound

Bedouins covered by sarcophagi know that a tattooed moon floods you with dynamite!

the sun blown-up a child blown-up a fish blown-up the street blown-up eat and vomit the sun eat and vomit the war hear an angel explode" -Etel Adnan

[irhabiya]

anyone remember when a zionist on twitter recounted an incident that they claimed had happened on october 7th but turned out they were lying through their teeth, and even worse, the reported incident was actually from the sabra and shatila massacre? anyone keeping count of how many times zionist pigs rehash the vile, cruel things they've done to palestinians only substituting themselves in as the victims of the story? isn't it remarkable that any evidence of examples of the incomprehensible evil and violence that they swear by to justify everything they've done since october always turns out to be distinctly absent from reports of october 7th, and always present in reports of daily palestinian life for decades now?

[phobic-human]

The Uprising

Arabic translation: The stone (icon of the intifada or uprising) avenges Palestinian blood (reference to the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacres)

Artist: Mark Rudin/Jihad Mansour (1945-2023)

Circa 1989

[news4dzhozhar]

This is for those people who try to pretend that October 7th was the start of it all (or that the events of that day exist in a vacuum). People need to be reminded of the history.

[hussyknee]

Just found out that the baby baked in an oven thing Zionists accused Hamas of doing is actually something Zionists themselves did during the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948. And the fetus cut out of the pregnant woman's womb is something that was done in the massacre of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese militants in concert with Zionists. We already know that they rape women and children in detention. I think the only other huge fucking lie about Oct 7th was the beheaded babies, and I'm legitimately afraid of learning whether or not that was also just something Zionists themselves did at one point.

I mean it's not even improbable because this type of unfathomable cruelty is par for the course with genociders, that only happen when the dominant group has so much disproportionate power in the region that there is only mindless hatred and perfect impunity. (The Brits used to use native infants as crocodile bait.) The reports of IOF ripping babies from their mothers arms, shooting them dead, throwing them aside and dragging the mothers off in front of witnesses were numerous even before this. I've also heard reports of young parents being dragged off and abandoning their toddlers and infants on the roadsides (saw a video of it and I'm going to be haunted to my grave). So those premature babies being left to die of starvation at the hospital was shocking but only surprising because there were so many eyes on the situation due to the efforts of the aid workers and journalists. We thought that Western governments wouldn't pull this shit with the whole world watching. As it turned out, the only reason the last twenty-odd premature babies at Al Shifa Hospital survived was because the director of the place refused to leave them until they were safely shipped off to Egypt (unaccompanied, God knows if the parents will ever get them back. Egyptian governments refused to let the few critically injured people allowed safe passage by the US to go through without visas and passports so they died in the ambulances). Then the IOF kidnapped the director right afterwards. He's still missing.

The organ harvesting thing is also true btw. We've been talking about it ever since they made off with those dead bodies at Al Shifa Hospital. Whether they were going to use them to stage their own propaganda, harvest their organs and skin, or just did it to deprive their families of giving them a burial. Probably all three.

I'm so tired of you people refusing to pay any attention to the news streaming out of Gaza via their own citizen journalists and Al Jazeera and Quds News and families of activists and then accusing us of spreading conspiracy theories! "There's so much misinformation" just say you don't trust Palestinians to tell the truth about their own genocide with your whole chest. Say that your charges of antisemitism is about how much you fear Black people and Muslims. Say that you don't reblog calls for the Jewish community to interrogate their whiteness and their enmeshing with Zionism over the decades because you feel like "it's not your place" to amplify Black and brown people challenging whiteness. Say that you shut us down and police our language about Zionists because you're philosemites who believe Jews could never be as genocidal and bloodthirsty as every other group on the world given the same power. Say that you still don't think Zionists are "as bad as" Nazis because they haven't murdered enough people yet.

I'll take the Zionists cheering over the deaths of people we're mourning over all the hidden polite lethal racism you're hiding under your white liberal tongues. I can't take this death by a thousand cuts shit anymore. Seriously why are you scrolling past? You think we aren't talking about you?

[humanculi]

[drsonnet]

Moving towards Home

June Jordan

“Where is Abu Fadi,” she wailed. “Who will bring me my loved one?”       The New York Times, 9/20/82

I do not wish to speak about the bulldozer and the red dirt not quite covering all of the arms and legs Nor do I wish to speak about the nightlong screams that reached the observation posts where soldiers lounged about Nor do I wish to speak about the woman who shoved her baby into the stranger’s hands before she was led away Nor do I wish to speak about the father whose sons were shot through the head while they slit his own throat before the eyes of his wife Nor do I wish to speak about the army that lit continuous flares into the darkness so that others could see the backs of their victims lined against the wall Nor do I wish to speak about the piled up bodies and the stench that will not float Nor do I wish to speak about the nurse again and again raped before they murdered her on the hospital floor Nor do I wish to speak about the rattling bullets that did not halt on that keening trajectory Nor do I wish to speak about the pounding on the doors and the breaking of windows and the hauling of families into the world of the dead I do not wish to speak about the bulldozer and the red dirt not quite covering all of the arms and legs because I do not wish to speak about unspeakable events that must follow from those who dare “to purify” a people those who dare “to exterminate” a people

those who dare to describe human beings as “beasts with two legs” those who dare “to mop up” “to tighten the noose” “to step up the military pressure” “to ring around” civilian streets with tanks those who dare to close the universities to abolish the press to kill the elected representatives of the people who refuse to be purified those are the ones from whom we must redeem the words of our beginning

because I need to speak about home I need to speak about living room where the land is not bullied and beaten into a tombstone I need to speak about living room where the talk will take place in my language I need to speak about living room where my children will grow without horror I need to speak about living room where the men of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five are not marched into a roundup that leads to the grave I need to talk about living room where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud for my loved ones where I must not ask where is Abu Fadi because he will be there beside me I need to talk about living room because I need to talk about home

I was born a Black woman and now I am become a Palestinian against the relentless laughter of evil there is less and less living room and where are my loved ones?

It is time to make our way home.

June Jordan, “Moving Toward Home,” in Living Room: New Poems by June Jordan (New York: Thunder's  Mouth Press, 1993) and reprinted in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2007)

June Jordan wrote poem in 1982, after #Sabra and #Shatila. https://massreview.org/node/12147

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Just letting everyone know, before the IDF wises up and deletes this latest stupid piece of misinformation, not only do they have no proof for their claim of a pregnant woman with her belly ripped open by Hamas and that CNN has already apologized for spreading this claim without proof--similar acts were carried out by the IDF themselves during the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

An American journalist, Janet Lee Stevens, wrote about them, here is the archived article with the letter back to her.

As you later wrote to me in your perfect cursive, "I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles."

My own screencap before they delete, in case they do that again after too much backlash. The official twitter accounts tend to do that.

[elizabethskipp]

1982, 09, 16–18: Sabra and Shatila massacre

Following weeks of battles in Beirut, the PLO withdrew from Lebanon. On Wednesday 15 September Israel ordered the Lebanese Forces, the military wing of the Phalangist party (a right-wing Christian political party) to rid the PLO fighters in the Sabra neighbourhood and Shatila camp. The Lebanese Forces were “known for their brutality and history of atrocities against Palestinian civilians, they…

[phobic-human]

Never Stop The Struggle

Arabic translation: 2nd Anniversary of Sabra-Shatila: Massacres will never stop the struggle of Palestinians!

Artist: Marc Rudin/Jihad Mansour (1945-2023)

Circa. 1984

[cuba-redh]

Sabra y Chatila - Gaza Palestina - ... Por Ramón Pedregal Casanova

16 de septiembre de 1982 – 16 de septiembre de 2024. Aquel de 1982 miles de niños y niñas, mujeres y hombres fueron asesinados por la Falange Libanesa, escuadrón de la muerte al servicio del régimen colonial, entonces representado por Ariel Sharon. La historia que cuentan los encargados de encubrir a los responsables sionazis se compone de lo de siempre: los Palestinos refugiados, expulsados de…

[tropicalmark]

What was the Sabra and Shatila massacre? | Al Jazeera Newsfeed.

https://youtu.be/10nFMcZrToc

[alwayswiselight]

People need to be reminded of the fact that October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum. Israel's part in the Sabra-Shatila Massacre is just one of their hideous actions to ethnically cleanse Palestine since 1948. Personally, I will never forget nor forgive Zionists and my evil US government for supporting such atrocities since 1967.

This September will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre in West Beirut. Three thousand unarmed refugees were killed from 15-18 September 1982.

I was then a young orthopedic trainee who had resigned from St Thomas Hospital to join the Christian Aid Lebanon medical team to help those wounded by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. That invasion, named “Peace for Galilee”, and launched on 6 June 1982, mercilessly bombarded Lebanon by air, sea, and land. Water, food, electricity, and medicines were blockaded. This resulted in untold wounded and deaths, with 100,000 made suddenly homeless.

I was summoned to the Palestine Red Crescent Society to take charge of the orthopedic department in Gaza Hospital in Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, West Beirut. I met Palestinian refugees in their bombed out homes and learned how they became refugees in one of the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Before this encounter, I had never heard of Palestinians.

They recounted stories of being driven out of their homes in Palestine in 1948, often fleeing massacres at gunpoint. They fled with whatever possessions they could carry and found themselves in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

The United Nations put them in tents while the world promised they would return home soon. That expectation never materialized. Since then the 750,000 refugees, comprising half of the population of Palestine in 1948, continued to live in refugee camps in the neighboring countries. It was 69 years ago that this refugee crisis started. The initial 750,000 has since grown to 5 million. Palestine was erased from the map of the world and is now called Israel.

Soon after my arrival, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) evacuated. It was the price demanded by Israel to stop the further relentless bombardment of Lebanon and to lift the ten-week military blockade. Fourteen thousand able-bodied men and women from the PLO evacuated with the guarantee by Western powers that their families left behind would be protected by a multinational peacekeeping force.

Those leaving were soldiers, civil servants, doctors, nurses, lecturers, unionists, journalists, engineers, and technicians. The PLO was the Palestinians’ government in exile and the largest employer. Through evacuation, fourteen thousand Palestinian families lost their breadwinner, often the father or the eldest brother, in addition to those killed by the bombs.

That ceasefire lasted only three weeks. The multinational peacekeeping force, entrusted by the ceasefire agreement to protect the civilians left behind, abruptly withdrew. On September 15, several hundred Israeli tanks drove into West Beirut. Some of them ringed and sealed off Sabra-Shatila to prevent the inhabitants from fleeing. The Israelis sent their allies; a group of Christian militiamen trained and armed by them, into the camp. When the tanks withdrew from the perimeter of the camp on the 18 September, they left behind 3,000 dead civilians. Another seventeen thousand were abducted and disappeared.

Our hospital team, who had worked non-stop for 72 hours, was ordered to leave our patients at machine-gun point and marched out of the camp. As I emerged from the basement operating theatre, I learned the painful truth. While we were struggling to save a few dozen lives, people were being butchered by the thousands. Some of the bodies were already rotting in the hot Beirut sun. The images of the massacre are deeply seared into my memory: dead and mutilated bodies lining the camp alleys.

Only a few days before, they were human beings full of hope and life, rebuilding their homes, talking to me, trusting that they would be left in peace to raise their young ones after the evacuation of the PLO. These were people who welcomed me into their broken homes. They served me Arabic coffee and whatever food they found; simple fare but given with warmth and generosity. They shared their lives with me. They showed me faded photographs of their homes and families in Palestine before 1948 and the large house keys they still kept with them. The women showed me their beautiful embroidery, each with motifs of the villages they left behind. Many of these villages were destroyed after they left.

Some of these people became patients we failed to save. Others died on arrival. They left behind orphans and widows. A wounded mother begged us to take down the hospital’s last unit of blood from her to give to her child. She died shortly afterward. Children witnessed their mothers and sisters being raped and killed.

The terrified faces of families rounded up by gunmen while awaiting death; the desperate young mother who tried to give me her baby to take to safety; the stench of decaying bodies as mass graves continued to be uncovered will never leave me. The piercing cries of women who discovered the remains of their loved ones from bits of clothes, refugee identity cards, as more bodies were found continue to haunt me.

The people of Sabra-Shatila returned to live in those very homes where their families and neighbors were massacred. They are a courageous people and there was nowhere else to go. Afterwards, other refugee camps were also blockaded, attacked and more people were killed. Today, Palestinian refugees are denied work permits in 30 professions and 40 artisan trades outside their camps. They have no passports. They are prohibited from owning and inheriting property. Denied the right of return to their homes in Palestine, they are not only born refugees, they will also die refugees and so will their children.

But for me, painful questions need to be answered. Not why they died, but why were they massacred as refugees? After 69 years, has the world already forgotten? How can we allow a situation where a person’s only claim to humanity is a refugee identity card? These questions have haunted me and they have yet to receive answers.