"Members of the Lebanese Kataeb Militia (Phalange) in Beirut during the 1980s."

🔴Forty Years On, the Sabra and Shatila Massacre Still Echoes: An Old Impunity Repeated Before the World’s Eyes

This month marks the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre—a painful reminder that should not be treated merely as a date of “remembrance” or “history,” but as a bleeding wound and stark testimony to the system of impunity that enables war crimes again and again. Four decades ago, between September 16 and 18, 1982, Lebanese Forces militiamen (the Kataeb) entered the Palestinian camps in Beirut, which were surrounded by the Israeli army under the command of Ariel Sharon.

These militias were not entering to confront fighters; they entered to find defenseless civilians: men, women, children, and the elderly. Over 48 hours, they carried out a systematic slaughter, stabbing and hacking with axes and bladed weapons, while Israeli forces lit up the sky with flares to facilitate the killers’ work and sealed the camps to prevent anyone from escaping. The result was the killing of between 1300 and 3,500 Palestinians and Lebanese, according to various estimates, in one of the most brutal massacres of modern history.

The Causes: Revenge Away from the Media’s Eyes

The reasons for the massacre were direct and dirty: revenge for the assassination of the elected President Bashir Gemayel, the Kataeb leader and Israel’s favored ally. Any notion of “justice” or “accountability” was crushed under the feet of a racist ideology that sought to spill civilian blood as collective punishment. Israel and its allied militias saw the Palestinian refugees not as human beings, but as a problem to be solved, a political and military asset of the enemy that had to be crushed.

The Consequences: A Killing Silence and Impunity

The consequences were shocking in their vile triviality. An Israeli commission of inquiry (the Kahan Commission) was formed and found that “Israel is indirectly responsible,” describing Ariel Sharon as “negligent.” He consequently resigned as Defense Minister, only to later return and become Prime Minister. As for the direct killers on the ground, not one was meaningfully held to account. The message was clear: you can slaughter hundreds of defenseless civilians, and if you have powerful allies and geopolitical immunity, you will get, at worst, a slap on the wrist.

From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza: The Same Blood, the Same Impunity

Today, forty years later, we do not need to search the archives for evidence of impunity; it is broadcast live from Gaza. The same machine, the same colonialist ideology, the same mechanism of justification. The bombing of residential neighborhoods, the targeting of hospitals and schools, the cutting off of water, food, and electricity, and the systematic killing of entire families under the pretext of the “right to self-defense.”

The only difference between Sabra and Shatila and Gaza today is the technology of killing. There is no longer a need for militias to enter with swords; smart bombs and drone aircraft do the job more efficiently, sparing the killers the trouble of looking into their victims’ eyes. But the end result is the same: mutilated children’s bodies, families wiped out, camps erased from the face of the earth.

Even more nauseating is the repetition of the same farcical “accountability” play. The United Nations issues reports condemning “both sides” equally, equating the executioner and the victim. The United States expresses “concern” and calls for “restraint” while continuing to fund and arm the party carrying out the extermination. The International Criminal Court opens investigations that are laughably slow while crimes continue before its very cameras.