And so it continues: 26 years after the massacre

fuckfuck Posts: 4,069
edited September 2008 in A Moving Train
"This week marks the 26th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, one of the bloodiest events of the second half of the twentieth century. A Google search for recent news reports on this year's commemoration of the atrocity, however, brought up very little. Yes, there were some emotional blog posts, as well as a link to the BBC's "On this Day" page, featuring quick facts and figures about the massacre, alongside an archival, and iconic, photograph of twisted corpses lying in a heap next to a cinderblock wall, the victims of an execution-style killing.

It has been more than a quarter of a century since more than 1,000 unarmed men, women, and children were raped, maimed and slaughtered. The massacre occurred at the dividing point of the 1975-1990 Lebanese war. Some might say that the killings were the marker or the catalyst of the war's horrible turning point. Before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, the Lebanese civil war had taken many lives and introduced new images and phrases into the Arabic and English languages. The Lebanese war involved many players and funders, not all of them local. But with the entry of the Israeli army and air force, Lebanon witnessed more death and destruction in three months than it had suffered during the previous seven years. Sabra and Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, marked the site of the Israeli-Palestinian and the internal Lebanese conflicts' intersection. The front lines of these conflicts slashed through the refugee camps for three dark days and three eerily bright nights illuminated by flares that the surrounding Israeli army fired over the camps to assist their Lebanese client militia, the Phalange, in their gruesome tasks."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9837.shtml
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    _outlaw wrote:
    one of the bloodiest events of the second half of the twentieth century.

    1000 people? pffft. That's nothing.

    How about 10,000-40,000 people?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_massacre
  • fuckfuck Posts: 4,069
    sponger wrote:
    1000 people? pffft. That's nothing.

    How about 10,000-40,000 people?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_massacre
    1. I wouldn't necessarily say this is relevant.
    2. To disregard the deaths of 1000 innocent people is pretty low.
    3. This 10,000 death count was after 3 weeks, whereas the 1000+ death count was after 3 days. Oh, and not to mention the fact that most people estimate the death count was 2000-3500 people
    4. In Sabra and Shatila, there was pretty much NO resistance, whereas in Hama there was resistance.
  • spongersponger Posts: 3,159
    _outlaw wrote:
    count was after 3 days. Oh, and not to mention the fact that most people estimate the death count was 2000-3500 people


    The entire city of Hama was surrounded and leveled, and you think that means only 2000-3500 people?

    And who are these "most people"? Anyway, you're wrong. Most people do not think it was 2500-3000 people.

    Ethnic cleansing in Serbia/Bosnia took several years. Does that mean it's not a "bloody event?"

    Lastly, what's "low" is using an expression like "one of the bloodiest events..." not because it actually is, but because of a political agenda. It's as though you're glad it happened just so you could have the opportunity to slag Israel. Now that's what I would call "low." Sad more than anything.
  • fuckfuck Posts: 4,069
    sponger wrote:
    The entire city of Hama was surrounded and leveled, and you think that means only 2000-3500 people?
    I was talking about Sabra and Shatila.
    And who are these "most people"? Anyway, you're wrong. Most people do not think it was 2500-3000 people.
    Considering you don't even know what I'm talking about, I'd say you are incorrect.
    Ethnic cleansing in Serbia/Bosnia took several years. Does that mean it's not a "bloody event?"
    what does this have to do with anything?
    Lastly, what's "low" is using an expression like "one of the bloodiest events..." not because it actually is, but because of a political agenda.
    No, it's more because it actually is.
    It's as though you're glad it happened just so you could have the opportunity to slag Israel.
    This is probably what I would define as the most sick, twisted, far-fetched argument anyone has ever thrown my way. To even suggest such a disgusting notion is not only pure insanity, it shows nothing but you trying to demonize people who criticize Israel. I imagine anyone who mentions the death of innocents in Iraq just want to "slag" America? Anyone who mentions the Holocaust just wants to "slag" Eastern Europe during the early-mid 1940s? To think you would even say such an absurd thing is unbelievable.
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