In Occupied Palestine
Zionism in practice
Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Land
08:00, 16 September until 08:00, 17 September 2024
[Source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Gaza Strip
Attacks: There are no safe places for the militarily-dominated population in Gaza, who find themselves subjected to airstrikes and other missile attacks on buildings, homes and many essentialfacilities, as well as constant gunfire and invasions by Israeli forces. The Israeli Navy continues to fire missiles, targeting facilities and buildings along the entire Gaza shoreline.
Victims: 26 more people killed in Gaza now bring the total number of deaths, since 7 October, to at least 41,252. With another 84 wounded, that figure has now risen to over 95,497. The daily average number of men, women and children killed in Gaza is at least 119 and, of those injured, more than 276.
Never Forget
The Sabra and Shatila Massacre
16 September 1982
Ali Kazak | akazak@bigpond.net.au
“The killers were often not satisfied with killing; in many cases, the attackers cut off the limbs of their victims before finishing them off. They smash the heads of children and infants on the walls. Women and girls were raped before being killed with axes. Men are sometimes taken out of their homes in groups to be killed in masse in the street with axes and knives. Militias spread terror and killed men, women, children and the elderly without discrimination. They would not distinguish between Christians and Muslims, Lebanese and Palestinians. Some have been hanged, and others have had their stomachs cut out.”
At four o’clock on Thursday, 16 September, trucks carrying hundreds of Lebanese Phalange militias, which Israel had helped to establish, train, arm, and supply with military experts and advisers, arrived at the entrances of Israeli-controlled Sabra and Shatila camps. The troops opened the way for them to begin killings, raping, and indiscriminately slaughtering civilians in their homes in cold blood for three days. The families in their homes didn’t know what was happening, and some of them were killed as they sat around the dining table. Even hospitals were not spared from the killers. The Palestinian fighters left their families behind in the trust of the United States, which promised to protect them but betrayed its pledge.
In three consecutive days of slaughtering, 3,500 victims were counted, most of them children, women and the elderly, from among the 20,000 who were in the camps on the eve of the massacre, along with hundreds of other individuals and families killed whose bodies were collected by Phalangist forces in trucks and thrown into the sea. Other victims were buried in unknown locations in mass graves and couldn’t be identified.
In his booklet, La fin des mythes, Sabra et Chatila: Enquête sur un massacre, Seuil, Paris, 1982 (“The End of Myths, Sabra and Chatila: Investigation into a Massacre,”), the Israeli investigative journalist Amnon Kapeliouk of Le Monde Diplomatique recounts those who survived the massacre saying,
“The militia were shooting at anyone who moved in the alleys. They broke down the doors of homes, shooting entire families at dinner, and killing some residents in pajamas in their beds. In several apartments, children between the ages of 3 and 4 were found wrapped in blankets covered in blood. The killers were often not satisfied with killing; in many cases, the attackers cut off the limbs of their victims before finishing them off. They smash the heads of children and infants on the walls. Women and girls were raped before being killed with axes. Men are sometimes taken out of their homes in groups to be killed en masse in the street with axes and knives. Militias spread terror and killed men, women, children and the elderly without discrimination. They would not distinguish between Christians and Muslims, Lebanese and Palestinians. Some have been hanged, and others have had their stomachs cut out. Among them is a 29-year-old woman named Zainat, who was eight months pregnant; they had cut open her stomach and placed the fetus on his mother’s arm, and her seven children were also killed. One of her relatives, Wafaa Hammoud, 26, seven months pregnant, was killed along with her four children. In this neighbourhood, several other women were raped before killing them, then their bodies were placed in the form of a cross, and one of the girls who were raped, from the Meqdad family, is seven years old…
“…other eyewitnesses spoke of trucks full of civilians going to unknown destinations… Residents of the villages of Choueifat and Hadath, south of Beirut, say three large trucks and two smaller vehicles, all full of civilians, passed through their village, and no trace of these people was shown.
“…Armed men appeared inside Acre Hospital, south of Shatila, where they killed some patients and finished off the wounded in their beds before killing several people from the medical staff and employees, as well as residents who had taken refuge in the hospital. Intisar Ismail, a 19-year-old Palestinian nurse, was raped ten times in a row. It was difficult to identify her body, which was completely disfigured, to the extent that only her ring enabled her to be identified. The authenticity of the event was confirmed by a Lebanese nurse who was a colleague of the victim…”
Dr Swee Chai Ang, a British Singaporean orthopaedic surgeon, was a volunteer with the British Christian Aid. She worked with the Palestine Red Crescent Society in its Gaza Hospital in Sabra and Shatila camps. She recounted in an article:
“With guns pointing at us we walked along the main road of the camp. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of unarmed camp people—women, old men and children—were rounded up by militia. I remember the terror in their eyes. A desperate young mother passed me, her baby so warm and cuddly. At gunpoint she was forced to take him back. Both were killed, together with those rounded up after we were taken away. Homes were bulldozed by large military bulldozers.”
During the days of the massacre, the Israeli army used binoculars to monitor the killings from the rooftops of the buildings overlooking the camps. At night they fired flares to illuminate the murderers’ crime scenes. They could hear the gunshots and bombs fired by the Phalange terrorists. The Israeli forces stationed at the camp’s gates did not allow hundreds of escapees to leave the camps and forced them to go back to meet their fate at the hands of the terrorists.
The victims’ nationalities were categorised as follows: 75% Palestinian, 20% Lebanese, 5% Syrians, Iranians, Bengalis, Turks, Kurds, Egyptians, Algerians, Pakistanis, and others whose nationalities were not determined.
The New York Times uncovered new classified documents likely to involve US actors in the Sabra and Shatila massacres. In an article titled “The Preventable Massacre” Seth Anziska, an American researcher at Columbia University, found Israeli historical documents dated 17 September 1982 documenting a meeting between then-Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon and the American envoy to the Middle East, Morris Draper. According to the document, Sharon reassured Draper that Israel would not implicate the United States in the crime, saying: ‘Are you afraid that somebody will think that you were in collusion with us? Deny it. We denied it.’ The meeting transcript reveals that the Americans were browbeaten by Sharon’s false insistence that ‘terrorists’ needed ‘mopping up.’
Israel tried first to delay and evade its responsibility; then it tried to appear as an innocent victim, as expressed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin saying, “Goyim kill Goyim [non-Jews], and they come to hang the Jews.” Israel was unable to wash the blood off its hands, and eventually, it was forced to comply with international pressure. A commission of inquiry formally accused General Ariel Sharon of responsibility for the massacre, pushing him to resign as Defence Minister, but he returned a few years later as Prime Minister. The Sabra and Shatila massacre is one of over a hundred massacres committed by Zionists since their invasion of Palestine and the Arab world.
Now, forty-two years later, Israel is still carrying out daily massacres against the Palestinians with American, Australian and Western weapons and complicity.
Ali Kazak is a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region. He is an expert in Australian-Arab relations and affairs, and author of “Australia and the Arabs”. (In Arabic).
West Bank
[Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Israeli Army attack – 3 taken prisoner: Nablus – 03:00–06:05, Israeli Occupation forces stormed the Balata refugee camp, taking prisoner three people.
Israeli Army attack – 1 wounded – 3 taken prisoner: Bethlehem – 11:05–13:00, Israeli forces stormed the Deheishe refugee camp in Bethlehem as well as the town of Doha, wounding one person and taking prisoner three people.
Israeli settler attack: Hebron – 13:50-15:10, armed Israeli Occupation settlers opened fire on vehicles and pedestrians travelling between the villages of Deir Samit and Tabqa.
Death: Jenin – 12:00, Ahmed Omar Mahmoud Azqili, has now died (aged 43) from wounds sustained during an Israeli Army storming of Jenin on 6 August.
Home invasion: Jerusalem – 08:20-09:50, Israeli Occupation forces fired stun grenades towards people, near the bridge area in Hizma, and searched a home.
Home invasion and forced personal demolition: Jerusalem – 08:30, the Israeli Occupation forced a resident, Rami Musa Hijazi, to destroy his home in Jabal al-Mukabir – or otherwise have to pay an extortionate sum to the Israeli Occupation demolition squads, who would be sent in to do it.
Settler invasion and seizure of home: Jerusalem – 05:00, a gang of Israeli settlers, in the al-Tur neighbourhood of Jerusalem, seized a residential apartment, placed barbed–wire around it and installed surveillance–cameras.
Home invasions: Jenin – 18:40, Israeli forces raided Ya’bad and searched two houses.
Home invasions – 2 taken prisoner: Jenin – 03:45–06:15, Israeli troops again raided Ya’bad and invaded a number of homes, taking prisoner two residents.
Home invasion: Jericho – 18:10-20:45, the Israeli Army raided the village of al-Auja and invaded a house.
Home invasion: Hebron – 17:40, Israeli troops raided Bani Naim and invaded a home.
Home invasion – 3 taken prisoner: Hebron – 02:45-05:40, Israeli troops again raided Bani Naim, invaded a house and took prisoner three residents.
Israeli police and settlers’ mosque violation: Jerusalem – 08:00, settler militants, escorted by Israeli police, invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and molested worshippers.
Israeli Army vandalism: Tubas – 12:00, Israeli Occupation forces dug a trench, along the main road near the entrance to Atouf village.
Israeli Army armed robbery and interference: Tubas – 14:50, Israeli forces seized a working bulldozer, in the village of Atouf.
Israeli Army population–control: Qalqiliya – 10:25–10:45, the Israeli Army closed the road between Jayus and Azzun.
Israeli Army population–control: Salfit – 12:55, Israeli troops closed, for a time, the entrance to the town of Kifl Haris.
Israeli Army assault with stun grenades and tear gas canisters: Bethlehem – 15:55, the Israeli military fired stun grenades at people in the Umm Rukba area of al-Khadr.
Occupation settler violence: Tubas – 14:50, Israeli settlers drove a tractor through Atouf village, behaving aggressively towards villagers.
Occupation settler agricultural sabotage: Nablus – 20:45, Israelis, from the Yitzhar Occupation settlement, cut off the branches from a number of olive trees on nearby Burin village land.
Occupation settler violence and Israeli Army complicity: Jericho – 09:50, Israeli settlers invaded a Kaabneh Bedouin community school and assaulted three women (teachers) and three other people. The Israeli Army intervened on behalf of the settlers, detaining the school Principal, Rami Al-Damanhouri, and one other person. The military also seized the school’s surveillance–camera recordings.
Occupation settler land–seizure: Bethlehem – 14:15–17:20, Occupation settlers seized and began ploughing Teqoa village agricultural land.
Occupation settler violence – woman hospitalised: Hebron – 16:25, Israeli settlers invaded the Jourat al-Jamal area in the town of Yatta, assaulting and hospitalising a woman.
Raid: Jerusalem – 18:00, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled al-Ram.
Raid: Jerusalem – 23:00, Israeli forces raided and patrolled the town of al-Sawahra al-Sharqiya.
Raid – population–control: Jerusalem – 00:50, the Israeli Army raided the town of Biddu and took measurements of a prisoner’s family house, in preparation for demolition.
Raid: Ramallah – 19:10, Israeli troops raided and patrolled the village of Safa.
Raid – stun grenades fired: Ramallah – 22:50, the Israeli military, firing stun grenades, stormed into Silwad, taking prisoner three people.
Raid – abduction: Ramallah – 01:55, Israeli soldiers raided the village of Kafr Ni’ma and abducted a a 17-year-old youth: Rami Fayeq Fahmi Ishtiya.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Ramallah – 02:20, Israeli Occupation forces raided al-Bireh and Beitunya, taking prisoner three women and one man.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Ramallah – dawn, Israeli forces raided Beitin village, taking prisoner one person.
Raid: Jenin – 00:25, the Israeli Army raided and patrolled the village of Jalboun.
Raid: Tubas – 08:40-11:15, Israeli troops raided Atouf village.
Raid: Tubas – 11:35, the Israeli military raided and patrolled the city.
Raid: Tulkarem – 06:20-09:30, Israeli soldiers raided and patrolled the village of Ramin.
Raid: Tulkarem – 21:10, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled the village of Far’un.
Raid: Qalqiliya – 10:15-12:00, Israeli forces raided and patrolled Azzun.
Raid: Qalqiliya – 11:05, the Israeli Army raided and patrolled the village of Kafr Laqif.
Raid: Nablus – 17:50, Israeli troops, firing stun grenades, raided and patrolled Tal village.
Raid: Nablus – 18:35, the Israeli military, firing stun grenades, raided the village of Burin.
Raid: Nablus – 18:45, Israeli soldiers, firing stun grenades, raided Jit village.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Nablus – 02:05–04:30, Israeli Occupation forces raided the village of Madama, taking prisoner one person.
Raid: Salfit – 09:20-12:00, Israeli forces raided and patrolled Deir Ballut.
Raid – 3 taken prisoner: Salfit – 02:15–05:00, the Israeli Army raided the village of Haris, taking prisoner three people.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Bethlehem – 01:45–04:35, Israeli troops raided al-Ubeidiya, taking prisoner one person.
Raid: Hebron – 11:10, the Israeli military raided and patrolled the city.
Raid: Hebron – 15:20, Israeli soldiers raided the town of Dura, detaining and later releasing one person.
Raid: Hebron – 15:40, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled the village of Deir Samit.
Raid: Hebron – 17:20, Israeli forces raided and patrolled Beit Awa.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Hebron – 21:30–05:40, Israeli soldiers again raided Dura, taking prisoner one person.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Hebron – 00:50, Israeli Occupation forces raided al-Samou, taking prisoner two people.
YAWN!!!