Profiles in Cowardice

Last week, the BBC broadcast a mockumentary entitled “The Accused,” in which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is called to account before a journalistic kangaroo court for “war crimes” allegedly committed 19 years ago.

Here is what actually happened: On September 14, 1982, an explosion ripped through the central office of the Kataeb (Phalangist) party in the Ashrafieh district of Beirut, Lebanon, killing the President-elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, and 26 other members of the moderate Lebanese Christian party.

The next day, Christian Phalangist militia entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and systematically slaughtered 800 people, most of them Muslim Palestinians.

Ariel Sharon, who was then Israel’s Defense Minister and the General in charge of “Operation Peace For Galil,” has been the “Fall Guy” for the massacre ever since.

Before the blood of the victims was even mopped up, the Israeli government formed the Kahan Commission to launch an investigation into the massacre. Its purpose was to determine the extent to which Ariel Sharon bore the responsibility. Not to determine who the actual killers really were. Not to determine who gave the direct orders to kill. Not to bring the actual killers or their commanders to justice. No, the only purpose of the Kahan Commission was to find out what Sharon’s role was in all this, and to perform some kind of “damage control.”

The Commission concluded, on the flimsiest and most tenuous grounds, that General Sharon bore “indirect responsibility” for the massacre. This “indirect responsibility” is based on the assumption that, as commander of the Israeli troops in Lebanon, Sharon should have anticipated the revenge code of honor that is so strongly engrained into the Arab mentality, and somehow acted to prevent the atrocity (by sacrificing the lives of Israeli soldiers). Of course, if he had done so, he would then have been condemned as a “racist” for such a stereotypical assessment of Arab behavior. As Menachem Begin (then Israel’s Prime Minister) is alleged to have muttered in Yiddish, “Goyim shechten goyim un zay vellen deroif hengen di Yidden.” (“Gentiles slaughter other gentiles and they want to blame it on the Jews.”)

In 1985, Ariel Sharon sued Time Magazine for publishing that he had recommended the revenge killings to his Lebanese allies. Although it was proven that Time lied by attributing to Sharon words he never uttered, the libel suit fell through because Sharon’s lawyers were unable to prove “malicious intent.”

Now, 19 years later, the BBC not only repeats the lie, and in become judge, jury and lynch mob displays indeniable malicious intent.

Meanwhile, nobody ever gets around to asking the most important questions in this whole sordid affair.

Who really committed the atrocities? Who actually gave the orders to kill?

Bashir Gemayel was a handsome, youthful, idealistic leader from a prominent Christian political family—a Lebanese John F. Kennedy, if you will. His “dream” for Lebanon included a repudiation of terrorism and peaceful relations with all its neighbors, including Israel, in which Gemayel saw a model of the modern, democratic, Westernized society he envisioned for Lebanon. The assassination of Gemayel, ten days before he was scheduled to be sworn in as President of Lebanon, was devastating not only to the Lebanese people who elected him, but to the Israelis to whom he was an ally and a friend.

The assassination of Bashir Gemayel was planned and executed by the Syrians, specifically by a Syrian fascist group called the Syrian National Socialist Party (the Nazi’s alive and well in Syria!). The assassination peeled away the thin veneer of moderation that Bashir Gemayel had worked so hard to instill in his people, and his supporters now lusted for raw revenge in the classic Arab tradition.

Sharon, together with his generals Raphael Eitan and Amir Drori, met with Gemayel’s people the day after the assassination. The Israelis informed them that there were over 2000 Palestinian terrorists hiding out at the Sabra and Shatila camps, and they planned an operation to separate the armed terrorists from the civilian population and turn them over to the Israeli forces. Robert Hatem, a member of the Phalangist militia, relates in his 1999 memoir From Israel To Damascus what then took place:

“Sharon had given strict orders to Elie Hobeika to guard against any desperate move, should his men run amuck. They were to behave like a real dignified, regular army not like «chocolate soldiers» and coordinate with the Israeli command. Their mission was to exert pressure an the Palestinians to drive them all out of the camp, and pick out the PLO agents left behind after the evacuation of the Palestinians in August, 1982. They were rallied at the Cite Sportive and held prisoners. After inspection the civilians would be sent back to their homes. However, Hobeika gave his own instructions to his men: «Total extermination ... camps wiped out.»

“It was Maroun Mashaalani’s men, undaunted by their regular and immoderate use of heroine and cocaine who perpetrated the most ghastly slaughters in the camp bordering Ghaza Hospital at the entrance of Sabra. That is where foreign nurses and doctors were shot down in cold blood. The minute General Ariel Sharon had been informed that something odd and unwanted was going on, he summoned his commanding officers and Hobeika.

“General Sharon, being too fat to climb up the flight of stairs, waited on the second floor to see Hobeika and have it out with him personally. The minute he saw him he roared out: «You were not supposed to do this. I didn’t ask you to commit massacres. If I wanted, I would have done so with my tanks. You’ll pay dearly for this blunder!»

Hatem then goes on to declare:

“I was Hobeika’s field man always present on the premises with my chief wherever he went. I can state under oath, that General Sharon would never have lit up the area the way he did had he planned for any butchery. He would not have cleaned up the Cite Sportive to house all the Palestinians pending their return to their homes after verification. He would not have placed his tanks and armored cars all around the camps to capture the remaining armed Palestinian agents. One thing was certain, the Syrians had their men within the ranks of Lebanese Forces leaders.”

Who is this mysterious Elie Houbeika, identified as the mastermind of the Sabra and Shatila horror, the true war criminal? His name is hardly a household word. According to Hatem, Houbeika is a gangster, a Syrian double agent, an extortionist, and a professional assassin with hundreds of notches in his gunbelt. He has never been the subject of a BBC documentary or even a character in a Tom Clancy novel. His last known whereabouts were in the sheltering arms of his Syrian sponsors.

The question the BBC (and everyone else for the last 19 years) should have been asking, where is Elie Houbeika, is silent on the lips of all. And why? Why has nothing been mentioned of the real perpetrator, while all the blame is heaped on the head of an incidental bystander?

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, offered this explanation:

Lack of Jewish Self-Esteem

It should be clearly understood and stated that Jews had absolutely no hand in the affair, and that it was solely an internal struggle between Christian and Moslem. It was not an isolated incident that just happened, but orders were given well in advance by the Lebanese President to his soldiers to ferret out those with whom they had accounts to settle — "an eye for an eye," the traditional Arab custom of revenge.

Only after all this has been recorded and publicized, together with the names of those responsible — would it be appropriate to investigate if Israeli soldiers could or should have intervened. It must be recorded and taken into account that Israel would have had to quarrel with the Lebanese President, and that international law forbids them to intervene into purely internal matters. With all these facts in mind, one could then consider if Jews should have laid their lives on the line to prevent what happened.

Non-Jews are amazed at how low Jewish self-esteem is. After everyone knows who the murderers are, Jews establish a commission with the sole purpose of investigating Jews to see if they could have prevented the killings — knowing that other nations not only have no intention of punishing or condemning the real murderers, but rather accord them respect!

And so we find newspaper after newspaper displaying headlines reporting the latest events in the "trial" of the Jews in the Sabra and Shatilah massacres — and not a word about who is really guilty. If Jews themselves are keeping quiet about the real perpetrators; if Jews themselves are inquiring about the "guilt" of other Jews; if Jews themselves are indicating that they consider themselves responsible — then why should the media not follow suit?