The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #149360   Message #3487599
Posted By: Jim Carroll
07-Mar-13 - 01:06 PM
Thread Name: BS: Israel condemned by UN
Subject: RE: BS: Israel condemned by UN
Another eye witness account of the massacre for you to ignore but for others to read.
Jim Carroll

FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM
EYE-WITNESS TO SABRA-SHATILA MASSACRE
Dr.Ang Swee Chai
"The slaughter of unarmed children, women, the aged and the infirm was shocking. For me, I was doubly outraged that I had to discover the truth about a brave and generous people only through their deaths. Until then, I never knew Palestinian refugees existed. As a fundamentalist Christian, I had been a supporter of Israel, hated Arabs and saw the Palestinian Liberation Organisation as terrorists to be loathed and feared."
Extract from the back cover of her book "From Beirut To Jerusalem"

Dr Ang Swee Chai grew up supporting Israel. Arabs, she was told, were terrorists. But in 1982, on the television she saw the relentless bombing of Beirut by Israeli planes. Shocked, her view of Israel began to change. It was then that she heard of an international appeal for an orthopaedic surgeon to treat war victims in Beirut. The petit woman - she was just under 1.5 meters - resigned her job in London, bade her husband farewell and set out on a journey to civil war Beirut, there she was to eye-witness the Sabra-Shatila massacres*.
With her husband Francis Khoo, and some friends, Dr Ang Swee Chai helped to form the British charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), following the 1982 Sabra-Shatila massacres. In 1987, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat awarded Dr Ang Swee Chai the "Star of Palestine" the highest award for service to the Palestinian people.
The Massacre
The phalange militia were Israel's proxy in Lebanon, their members were recruited from the Maronite Christian community. They were payed for, trained and armed by Israel. They were effectively an extension of the IDF, and were usually sent in to do the dirty work.
After Sharon's army had taken West Beirut and sealed off all escapes routes from the Palestinian refugee camps, Sharon ordered the phalange in. The official order from Sharon read "for the operation in the camps the phalange should be sent in"*. Knowing that the camps were full of unarmed civilians - mainly women and children, only around 150 phalange were deployed. The testimonies of the survivors suggest that both Israeli soldiers and their mercenaries the Phalange entered the camps and participated in the massacre**.
The Israelis supervised the operation from their forward command post, a six story building overlooking the camps. From there they gave logistic support and relayed orders to the soldiers on the ground. Concerned that reports of the on-going slaughter would leak out, the soldiers were ordered to continue the killing through out the night - to facilitate this the Israelis lit up the sky with flares all night long. The idea was to kill as many Palestinians as quickly as possible, before international pressure would put a stop to the operation. Over 3000 elderly men, women and children were murdered. Next the evidence had to be buried quickly - so the Israelis send in bulldozers. Houses were packed with bodies and demolished to form mass graves. One such mass grave contained a thousand bodies.
*see BBC Panorama "The Accused" 2001.
** Survivors interviewd on 22 Sep reported that many of the soldiers who did the killing did not speak Arabic and Israeli newspapers (in Hebrew) and Israeli food rations were found left behind. A young boy, Munir, who was left for dead under a heap of 27 bodies confirmed that he has seen both Israelis and Phalange murdering people, when he was brought to Gaza Hospital on 17 Sept. (Src: 'From Beirut To Jerusalem' pgs 61, 69 & 71)
http://inminds.co.uk/from-beirut-to-jerusalem.html