The Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982
by John Rose
1986
In my childhood I have suffered fear, hunger and humiliation when I passed from the Warsaw Ghetto, through labour camps, to Buchenwald. Today, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns and refugee camps. I cannot accept the technocratic cruelty of the bombing, destroying and killing of human beings.
I hear too many familiar sounds today, sounds which are being amplified by the war. I hear “dirty Arabs” and I remember “dirty Jews”. I hear about “closed areas” and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear “two-legged beasts” and I remember “Untermenschen” (subhumans). I hear about tightening the siege, clearing the area, pounding the city into submission and I remember suffering, destruction, death, blood and murder ... Too many things in Israel remind me of too many things from my childhood.
These words are from a letter written by Dr Shlomo Shmelzman, a survivor of the Holocaust, to the press in Israel announcing his courageous hunger strike at the height of the bombing of West Beirut in Lebanon in August 1982. [1] The bombing of unarmed civilians and killing and maiming of children in response to alleged acts of “terrorism” has deep roots in the history of the Israeli state. Here is an entry dated 1 January 1948 from the Independence War Diary of David Ben-Gurion, one of the most famous of the founding-fathers of Zionism and a one-time prime minister of Israel:
There is no question as to whether a reaction is necessary or not ... Blowing up a house is not enough. What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place and casualties. If we know the family, strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent. Where there was no attack – we should not strike. [2]
“Cruel and strong reaction” reached new and ever more bloody heights in the summer of 1982. Israel bombed the living daylights out of West Beirut after launching a full-scale military invasion of Lebanon, slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese. The climax to this came in the chilling and systematic murder, one by one, of unarmed Palestinian men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. This “cruel and strong reaction” was in response to the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to London.
In fact this invasion had long been anticipated in Israel. Three months earlier, in March 1982, the Israeli paper Ha’aretz had written:
Behind the official excuse of we shall not tolerate shelling or terrorist reactions’ lies a strategic view which holds that the physical annihilation of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organisation] has to be achieved. That is, not only must its fingers and hands in the West Bank be amputated (as is now being done with an iron fist), but its heart and head in Beirut must be dealt with. As Israel does not want the PLO as a partner for talks or as an interlocutor for any solution in the West Bank, the supporters of confrontation with the PLO hold that the logical continuation of the struggle with the PLO in the territories is in Lebanon. With the loss of its physical strength, in their opinion, the PLO will lose not only its hold over the territories but also its growing international status. [3]
The US government backed Israel to the hilt. Immediately before the invasion, General Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Defence Minister and the man most responsible for the prosecution of the war in Lebanon, visited Washington where he informed US Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger that Israel must act in Lebanon. Pentagon figures reveal a massive surges of military supplies from the United States to Israel in the first three months of 1982. Delivery of military goods was almost 50 per cent greater than in the preceding year.
These deliveries continued through June, and included “smart bombs” which were used with devastating effect in Beirut. One such bomb caused the instant destruction of an entire building, killing 100 people in an apparent effort to kill PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who was thought to be there.
(This has an uncanny similarity with the futile but nevertheless bloody US attempt in 1986 to bomb the building in Tripoli where allegedly Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi was sheltering. The bomb succeeded only in killing one of his children and maiming others.)
The invasion of Lebanon had one other very useful side-effect for Israel too. While the bombing of Beirut was at its height, the Israeli military industries (Ta’as) came out with an extensive publicity campaign in the international press (Aviation Week etc) to extend the scope of sales of its bombs. The main feature was a display showing a jetplane dropping bombs with the heading: “Bombs you can count on to do what they’re supposed to do.” [4]
The first target of the invasion was the Palestinian camp of Rashidiyeh, south of Tyre, much of which was in rubble by the second day of the invasion. There was ineffectual resistance, but as an officer of the United Nations peacekeeping force, which was swept aside in the Israeli invasion, later remarked: “It was like shooting sparrows with cannon.” The nine thousand people of the camp either fled or were herded to the beach by the Israeli forces, where they could watch the destruction of much of what remained. All the teenage and adult males were blindfolded and bound, and taken to internment camps. [5]
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