The Loss of Ariel Sharon

as Ward Churchill is an Indian.

Good riddance to the Butcher of Palestine, Ariel Sharon, a proud Jewish fascist. Yes, Jews can be fascists. He sang the company tune of US imperialism. Israel is best described as a US military base to protect US oil profits in the Middle East. The workingclass of Israel, as well as the rest of the Middle East, were the victims of his fascist policies.

As to religion, it is superstition. Its promoters, known as rabbis, priests, preachers, imams, etc., are parasites selling lies to receive money for their existence instead of working for a living. Israel is a theocratic, racist and anti-women little hellhole of 6 million people (about the size of the Bay Area), of whom 20% are Arab.

The problem is not Israel; the problem is right here in the belly of the beast, the USA, which pays for Israel's existence to the tune of about $5 billion a year to protect US oil profits in the Middle East. It is the American workingclass that holds the key to the end of all the heinous crimes of US imperialism, which can only be done by labor organizing for a general strike to put an end to the private profit system.

<which pays for Israel's existence to the tune of about $5 billion a year to protect US oil profits in the Middle East.>



*Everytime a figure is quoted on this site, it goes up a billion or two. Are you using a legitimate source, quoting from a random website, or making this up?

*How does helping Israel protect oil profits? Seems quite the opposite. Israel is a thorn in the side of the Arab world. They have never accepted the existence of a non Muslim country in their midst. Cutting off Israel would immediately ingratiate the Arab world to us. Gotta be some kind of alternate motivation here, doncha think?

http://www.wrmea.com/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm
and here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.html
and:
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/cost_of_israel.html
No matter hwo you break it down, it's massive welfare/excessive. I don't want my tax dollars supporting it, just like I don't want my tax dollars supporting the bottomless, gluttonous pit of 'defense' spending that is unaccoutable to the people.

Lerner and Tikkun are coming around. They used to stand with Israel's enemies at various protests- now they stand with Israel's supporters. Loved the ward churchill analogy, BTW. Very true.

The military portion of the budget is far larger than social programs, unless you count retirement programs. And the social security program was instituted as a means of pacifying the public so that socialism would *not* gain in popularity - as it has in other areas where the ruling class pushed too far. The deficit right now is so large ($2 trillion added in Bush's first term) that cutting all social assistance programs such as HUD, veteran's affairs, pills for the mentally ill and so forth would still leave a deficit. So anytime a libertarian who says that the government should only consist of military, police and courts repeats the falsehood that welfare (ended under Clinton) is using up his taxes, you should demand your wasted military tax back from him so you can give it to some orphans.

The stroke suffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could prove to be one of the great disasters in the country's nearly 60-year history. As I write this, Sharon's condition remains uncertain, but the severity of his stroke makes it unlikely that he will survive, let alone return to power. That could be disastrous because Sharon represented, indeed embodied, the emergence of a rational, farsighted national idea that seemed poised in the coming elections to create a stable governing political center for the first time in decades.

For a generation, Israeli politics have offered two alternatives. The left said: We have to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. The right said: There's no one to talk to because they don't want to make peace; they want to destroy us, so we stay in the occupied territories and try to integrate them into Israel.


A Calamity for Israel
» CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | Ariel Sharon put Israel on the only path out of the post-Oslo wreckage.

* E.J. Dionne Jr.: Abramoff's GOP Pals
* David Ignatius: Cheney's Cheney
* Early Warning: More Spy Oversight?

OPINIONS SECTION: Sharon's Mistake, Toles
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The left was given its chance with the 1993 Oslo peace accords. They proved a fraud and a deception. The PLO used Israeli concessions to create an armed and militant Palestinian terrorist apparatus right in the heart of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel's offer of an extremely generous peace at Camp David in the summer of 2000 was met with a savage terrorism campaign, the second intifada, that killed a thousand Jews. (Given Israel's tiny size, the American equivalent would be 50,000 dead.)

With the left then discredited, Israel turned to the right, electing Sharon in 2001. But the right's idea of hanging on to the territories indefinitely was untenable. Ruling a young, radicalized, growing Arab population committed to Palestinian independence was not only too costly but ultimately futile.

Sharon's genius was to seize upon and begin implementing a third way. With a negotiated peace illusory and a Greater Israel untenable, he argued that the only way to security was a unilateral redrawing of Israel's boundaries by building a fence around a new Israel and withdrawing Israeli soldiers and settlers from the other side. The other side would become independent Palestine.

Accordingly, Sharon withdrew Israel entirely from Gaza. On the other front, the West Bank, the separation fence under construction will give the new Palestine about 93 percent of the West Bank. Israel's 7 percent share will encompass a sizable majority of Israelis who live on the West Bank. The rest, everyone understands, will have to evacuate back to Israel.

The success of this fence-plus-unilateral-withdrawal strategy is easily seen in the collapse of the intifada. Palestinian terrorist attacks are down 90 percent. Israel's economy has revived. In 2005, it grew at the fastest rate of the developed countries. Tourists are back, and the country has regained its confidence. The Sharon idea of a smaller but secure and demographically Jewish Israel garnered broad public support, marginalized the old parties of the left and right, and was on the verge of electoral success that would establish a new political center to carry on this strategy.

The problem is that the vehicle for this Sharonist centrism, his new Kadima Party, is only a few weeks old, has no institutional structure and is hugely dependent on the charisma of and public trust in Sharon.

To be sure, Kadima is not a one-man party. It immediately drew large numbers of defectors from the old left and right parties (Labor and Likud), including cabinet members and members of parliament. It will not collapse overnight. But Sharon's passing from the scene will weaken it in the coming March elections and will jeopardize its future. Sharon needed time, perhaps just a year or two, to rule the country as Kadima leader, lay down its institutional roots and groom a new generation of party leaders to take over after him.

This will not happen. There is no one in the country, let alone in his party, with his prestige and standing. Ehud Olmert, his deputy and now acting prime minister, is far less likely to score the kind of electoral victory that would allow a stable governing majority.

Kadima represents an idea whose time has come. But not all ideas whose time has come realize themselves. They need real historical actors to carry them through. Sharon was a historical actor of enormous proportion, having served in every one of Israel's wars since its founding in 1948, having almost single-handedly saved Israel with his daring crossing of the Suez Canal in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and now having broken Israel's left-right political duopoly that had left the country bereft of any strategic ideas to navigate the post-Oslo world. Sharon put Israel on the only rational strategic path out of that wreckage. But, alas, he had taken his country only halfway there when he himself was taken away. And he left no Joshua.

This lerner guy is moping around because the butcher is giong to die soon - the only peaceniks who are going to be shedding tears are zionist idiots like lerner and his cult followers.

No one in the mid-east (other than "Israel" and colloborators) is going to be shedding any tears - infact watch as huge celeberations break out all over once the motherfucker is dead.

Lerner is one of those who will stab you in the back. With "friends" liker Lerner, no wonder the people of mid-east have learned their lesson, and are voting in people like Ahmedinejad. When Lerner begins to sob about for the death of the butcher of shabra and shatila, Muslims and Arabs know - he is not a friend of Palestine. Infact, with "friends" like Lerner, we do not need any enemies.

Lerner needs to get a real life, a different job, or just become a plain old zionist instead of pretending to be for "peace" (which he obviously is not for).

The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia was responsible for the massacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on September 16­17, 1982. Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.
When Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians. Israel had allowed the Phalange to enter the camps as part of a plan to transfer authority to the Lebanese, and accepted responsibility for that decision. The Kahan Commission of Inquiry , formed by the Israeli government in response to public outrage and grief, found that Israel was indirectly responsible for not anticipating the possibility of Phalangist violence. Israel instituted the panel's recommendations, including the dismissal of Gen. Raful Eitan the Army Chief of Staff. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned.
The Kahan Commission, declared former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was "a great tribute to Israeli democracy....There are very few governments in the world that one can imagine making such a public investigation of such a difficult and shameful episode."
Ironically, while 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in Israel to protest the killings, little or no reaction occurred in the Arab world

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/06/1451234

The green line isn't a border- its a cease fire line. Its an important distinction that is not acknowledged here. Resolution 242 assumed some modification would be made to the green line when the situation was resolved.

Khartoum Resolution
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The Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967 was issued at the conclusion of a meeting between the leaders of eight Arab countries in the wake of the Six-Day War. The resolution, which formed a basis of the policies of these governments till the Yom Kippur War of 1973, called for the

1. Continued struggle against Israel
2. Ending the Arab oil boycott declared during the Six-Day War
3. An end to the war in Yemen
4. Economic assistance for Egypt and Jordan

The resolution contains in paragraph 3. what became known as "the three nos" of Arab-Israel relations at that time.

1. No peace with Israel
2. No recognition of Israel
3. No negotiations with Israel

"Resolution 242 assumed some modification would be made to the green line when the situation was resolved."

And so the Israelis have made goddamn sure it's never been resolved, yup. Just like their conflict with the Palestinians is "a war" when they're defending their own actions, but it's not when they want to smear the Palestinians. Or the way they constantly flop back and forth on whether Palestine is a sovereign state, depending on which position works better for smearing it at any given moment. They're the masters of ambiguity. And what's to worry?? It's not like a troglodyte/moron/monkey like YOU will ever notice!

Do you read what you post? Did you read and understand the three no's of Khartoum and understand the rejectionist nature?

Just so blinded with prejudice!

And so the "rejectionist nature" justifies ripping off Palestinian territory? Or is this just another of your sleazy red herrings?

Isn't it true that Palestinians never had either a state, nor any distinct culture or language of their own? eMail to a friend



Posted on AUGUST-2-2001

For the moment, let's assume that the Palestinian people should not have a country of their own because they have never had a state, then why should the peoples of Salvador, Guatemala, Congo, Algeria, ... etc. have the right of self determination?

It should be noted that none of these countries had a state prior to gaining independence, nor a distinct language or culture that set them apart from their neighboring states. In other words, even if it's true that the Palestinian people had neither a state, nor a distinct culture or language:

Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and businesses?
Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country in which they were born?
According to historical facts, Zionism, as an ideology, evolved in response to the rise of Europe's nationalism and anti-Semitism in the late 19th century, especially in Tsarist Russia (Pale States), France during the Dreyfus affair, and Germany after WW I.

Similarly, Palestinian nationalism evolved in response to the presence of Zionism in Palestine, and most importantly because of the British intention to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home," see the Balfour Declaration for further details. These central facts were well articulated by David Ben-Gurion (Israel's 1st Prime Minister) and Moshe Sharett (Israel's 1st Foreign Minister) on many occasions. For example:

A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in early 1919, Ben-Gurion expressed his opinion of future Jewish and Arab relations:
"Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours---even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew. . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs." (One Palestine Complete, p. 116)


On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the "Arab question" is a

"tragic question of fate" that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a "question of Zionist fulfillment in the light of Arab reality." In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface)


As the number of Jews in Palestine (Yishuv) doubled between 1931-1935, the Palestinian people became threatened with being dispossessed and for Jews becoming their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a "turning point" important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades:

". . . they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke the respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)


But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian people were incapable by themselves of developing Palestine, and they had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. He argued in 1918, that Jews' rights sprang not only from the past, but also from the future. In 1924 he declared:

"We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38)

In other words, the Palestinian people are entitled to no political rights whatsoever, and if they have any rights to begin with, these rights are confined to their places of residence. Ironically, this statement was written when the Palestinian people constituted 85% of Palestine's population, and owned and operated over 97% of its lands!


In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the brink of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated:

"The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170)



In 1936 (soon after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada), Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary:

"The Arabs fear of our power is intensifying, [Arabs] see exactly the opposite of what we see. It doesn't matter whether or not their view is correct.... They see [Jewish] immigration on a giant scale .... they see the Jews fortify themselves economically .. They see the best lands passing into our hands. They see England identify with Zionism. ..... [Arabs are] fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing the land, but of losing homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn it into the homeland of the Jewish people. There is a fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine ..... By our very presence and progress here, [we] have matured the [Arab] movement." (Righteous Victims, p.136)

In 1938, Ben-Gurion also stated against the backdrop of the First Palestinian Intifada:

"When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves ---- that is ONLY half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves. . . . But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict, which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves." (Righteous Victims, p. 652)

In 1936, Moshe Sharett spoke in a similar vein:

"Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics. . . . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine." (Righteous Victims, p.136)

So if the causes of Zionism had not risen, meaning European anti-Semitism, then Palestinian nationalism might not have evolved into what it is today. It's worth noting that the Palestinian people, prior to WW I, always identified themselves as being part of "The Great Syria" (Suriyya al-Kubra), however, that drastically changed when Britain intended to turn Palestine into a "Jewish National Home", see the Balfour Declaration for more details.

This declaration, which was made to the Zionist Movement in 1917, signaled the future dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people because it did not address their political rights. On the other hand, the declaration recognized the political rights of the "Jewish people" around the world, despite the fact that the Jews in Palestine were under 8% of the total population as of 1914 (Righteous Victims, p. 83). In that respect, Lord Balfour, who was the British Foreign Secretary and a self-professed Christian Zionist, stated in 1919:

"Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder importance than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land." (Righteous Victims, p. 75)

In response to this declaration, the Palestinian people started to collectively oppose the British Mandate, Jewish immigration, and land sales to the Zionist movement.

Rather than dealing directly with the issues, sadly many Israelis and Zionists have chosen to ignore the existence of the Palestinians as a people. It should be emphasized that the hawk of all Israeli hawks, Ariel Sharon, has accepted the existence of a Palestinian state, in principle, in a portion of historic Palestine. Whether Israelis and Zionists like it or not, Palestine now exists as a postal code, international calling code, internet domain name, ...etc. in the heart of "Eretz Yisrael". The 8.5 million Palestinians are not going away, and the sooner Israelis and Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they shall start dealing with core issues of the conflict in a pragmatic way.

Finally, applying such logic is very dangerous since it would eliminate half United Nations' members overnight. It is simply not just to suppress the political, economic, and civil rights of the Palestinian people by claiming that they never previously had a state, distinct language, and distinct culture. Ironically, the Zionist movement has been encouraging Jews from all corners of the world to emigrate to "Eretz Yisrael", so that there is no real common denominator between all of these immigrants such as a common language, culture, country of origin, or even a unified interpretation of "who is a Jew".

Now watch them pull this shit

http://www.indybay.org/comment.php?top_id=1794105

I meant this shit:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/01/1793971_comment.php#1794223

Israel functions as a US cop in the Middle East by having Arabs fighting Jews instead of the workingclass Arabs and workingclass Jews uniting to get rid of the capitalist Arabs and capitalist Jews, taking over the oil fields, nationalizing them and selling the oil for the benefit of the needs and interests of the entire workingclass of the Middle East. This is an old game of imperialism: Using religion, ethnic differences or as in the US, color, to keep the workingclass divided and fighting each other, thereby keeping both of their wages down and thus maximizing profits, the primary goal of capitalism. If one ethnic group threatens to go on strike, the other is brought in as scabs, thus dragging down the wages. If they unite, the employer has no choice but to meet labor's demands for all.

The Israeli workingclass, both Jewish and Arab, loose their social services and their lives with the war economy that is the Israeli economy, just as American workers lose social services because of the American war economy, which has existed since 1941.

Israel is one of the leading military societies, thanks to the US taxpayer, armed with all kinds of weapons, including nuclear weapons. It is a training base for the American military currently making illegal war in Iraq so as to steal Iraqi oil. It is also a source of arms and armed thugs as agents for US imperialism around the world, including in Central America in the 1980s, when the US was fighting people's liberation struggles in Nicaragua and El Salvador. It was also an ally of the apartheid government of South Africa.

As to the source of any figures on the billions of dollars we give to Israel, you can go to the library and research the Congressional Record. You can also see the website of the Washington Report at
http://www.washington-report.org/us_aid_to_israel/index.htm

The fact remains, it is not Israel that should be the primary focus of anyone concerned about permanent change that will benefit the workingclass and put an end to the private profit system that threatens all our lives and the planet.

It is the USA, the belly of the beast, that must be our concern, both because it is the center of world imperialism and because we live here and can do the most right here at home. The primary task is labor organizing to put an end to the private profit system. The three-day NYC Transit Strike won tremendous benefits. We can only imagine how much more they could have won if all of New York City labor stayed home until all the demands of the NYC Transit workers were met, which would have taken 24 hours with such a general strike. Multiply that by the millions of workers in this country, organized and ready to go on nationwide general strikes both for economic and political reasons. This is what will put an end to miserable little hellholes like Israel and much more.

Israel functions as a US cop in the Middle East by having Arabs fighting Jews instead of the workingclass Arabs and workingclass Jews uniting to get rid of the capitalist Arabs and capitalist Jews, taking over the oil fields, nationalizing them and selling the oil for the benefit of the needs and interests of the entire workingclass of the Middle East.

The Arabs use Israel as a scapegoat to hide the fact that only 7,000 members of the Royal family get the profits from the Saudi Oil reserves. Israel is the pawn, the distraction and the scapegoat.

Ward Churchill is an Indian.

What "Loss". It is a gain to the world that he is now a turnip.

....then you are a victim of Big Oil fuded Arab propaganda. Educate yourself. Don't fall for it again.

The Massacre and Destruction of Damour

Damour lay across the Sidon - Beirut highway about 20 km south of Beirut on the slopes of a foothill of the Lebanon range. On the other side of the road, beyond a flat stretch of coast, is the sea. It was a town of some 25,000 people, containing five churches, three chapels, seven schools, private and public, and one public hospital where Muslims from near by villages were treated along with the Christians, at the expense of the town.

On 9 January 1976, three days after Epiphany, the priest of Damour Father Mansour Labaky, was carrying out a Maronite custom of blessing the houses with holy water. As he stood in front of a house on the side of the town next to the Muslim village of Harat Na’ami, a bullet whistled past his ear and hit the house. Then he heard the rattle of machine-guns. He went inside the house, and soon learned that the town was surrounded. Later he found out by whom and how many — the forces of Sa’iqa, consisting of 16,000 Palestinians and Syrians, and units of the Mourabitoun and some fifteen other militias, reinforced by mercenaries from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a contingent of Libyans.

Father Labaky telephoned the Muslim sheikh of the district and asked him, as a fellow religious leader, what he could do to help the people of the town. ‘I can do nothing,’ he was told ‘They want to harm you. It is the Palestinians. I cannot stop them.'

While the shooting and some shelling went on all day, Father Labaky telephoned a long list of people, politicians of both the Left and the Right, asking for help. They all said with apologies and commiserations that they could do nothing. Then he telephoned Kamal Jumblatt, in whose parliamentary constituency Damour lay. ‘Father,’ Jumblatt said, ‘I can do nothing for you, because it depends on Yasser Arafat.’ He gave Arafat’s phone number to the priest.

An aide answered, and when he would not call Arafat himself, Father Labaky told him, ‘The Palestinians are shelling and shooting at my town. I can assure you as a religious leader, we do not want the war, we do not believe in violence.’ He added that nearly half the people of Damour had voted for Kamal Jumblatt, ‘who is backing you,’ he reminded the PLO man. The reply was, ‘Father, don’t worry. We don’t want to harm you. If we are destroying you it is for strategical reasons.’
Father Labaky did not feel that there was any less cause for worry because the destruction was for strategical reasons, and he persisted in asking for Arafat to call off his fighters. In the end the aide said that they, PLO headquarters, would ‘tell them to stop shooting’.

By then it was eleven o’clock in the evening. As the minutes passed and the shooting still went on, Father Labaky called Jumblatt again on the telephone and told him what Arafat’s aide had said. Jumblatt’s advice was that the priest should keep trying to make contact with Arafat, and call other friends of his, ‘because’, he said, ‘I do not trust him’.

At about half-past eleven the telephone, water and electricity were all cut off. The first invasion of the town came in the hour after midnight, from the side where the priest had been shot at earlier in the day. The Sa’iqa men stormed into the houses. They massacred some fifty people in the one night. Father Labaky heard screaming and went out into the street. Women came running to him in their nightdresses, ‘tearing their hair, and shouting “They are slaughtering us!” The survivors, deserting that end of the town, moved into the area round the next church. The invaders then occupied the part of the town they had taken. Father Labaky describes the scene:

'In the morning I managed to get to the one house despite the shelling to bring out some of the corpses. And I remember something which still frightens me. An entire family had been killed, the Can’an family, four children all dead, and the mother, the father, and the grandfather. The mother was still hugging one of the children. And she was pregnant. The eyes of the children were gone and their limbs were cut off. No legs and no arms. It was awful. We took them away in a banana truck. And who carried the corpses with me? The only survivor, the brother ofthe man. His name is Samir Can’an. He carried with me the remains of his brother, his father, his sister-in-law and the poor children. We buried them in the cemetery, under the shells of the PLO. And while I was burying them, more corpses were found in the street.'

The town tried to defend itself. Two hundred and twenty-five young men, most of them about sixteen years old, armed with hunting guns and none with military training, held out for twelve days. The citizens huddled in basements, with sandbags piled in front of their doors and ground-floor windows. Father Labaky moved from shelter to shelter to visit the families and take them bread and milk. He went often ‘to encourage the young men defending the town’. The relentless pounding the town received resulted in massive damage. In the siege that had been established on 9 January the Palestinians cut off food and water supplies and refused to allow the Red Cross to take out the wounded. Infants and children died of dehydration. Only three more townspeople were killed as a result of PLO fire between the first night and the last day, 23 January. But on that day, when the final onslaught came, hundreds of the Christians were killed. Father Labaky goes on:

'The attack took place from the mountain behind. It was an apocalypse. They were coming, thousands and thousands, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar! God is great! Let us attack them for the Arabs, let us offer a holocaust to Mohammad ‘And they were slaughtering everyone in their path, men, women and children.'

Whole families were killed in their homes. Many women were gang-raped, and few of them left alive afterwards. One woman saved her adolescent daughter from rape by smearing her face with washing blue to make her look repulsive. As the atrocities were perpetrated, the invaders themselves took photographs and later offered the pictures for sale to European newspapers. Survivors testify to what happened. A young girl of sixteen, Soumavya Ghanimeh, witnessed the shooting of her father and brother by two of the invaders, and watched her own home and the other houses in her street being looted and burned. She explained:

'As they were bringing me through the street the houses were burning all about me. They had about ten trucks standing in front of the houses and were piling things into them. I remember how frightened I was of the fire. I was screaming. And for months afterwards I couldn’t bear anyone to strike a match near me. I couldn’t bear the smell of it'.

She and her mother Mariam, and a younger Sister and infant brother, had been saved from being shot in their house when she ran behind one Palestinian for protection from the pointing gun of the other, and cried out ‘Don’t let him kill us!’; and the man accepted the role of protector which the girl had suddenly assigned to him. ‘If you kill them you will have to kill me too,’ he told his comrade. So the four of them were spared, herded along the streets between the burning houses to be put into a truck, and trans-ported to Sabra camp in Beirut. There they were kept in a crowded prison hut. ‘We had to sleep on the ground, and it was bitterly cold.’
When eventually Father Labaky found the charred bodies of the father and brother in the Ghanimeh house ‘you could no longer tell whether they were men or women’.

In a frenzy to destroy their enemies utterly, as if even the absolute limits ofnature could not stop them, the invaders broke open tombs and flung the bones of the dead into the streets.Those who escaped from the first attack tried to flee by any means they could, with cars, carts, cycles and motorbikes. Some went on foot to the seashore to try to get away in boats. But the sea was rough and the wait for rescue was long, while they knew their enemies might fall upon them at any moment.

Some 500 gathered in the Church of St Elias. Father Labaky went there at six in the morning when the tumult of the attack awakened him. He preached a sermon on the meaning of the slaughter of innocents. And he told them candidly that he did not know what to tell them to do. ‘If I say flee to the sea, you may be killed. If I say stay here, you may be killed.’

An old man suggested that they raise a white flag. ‘Perhaps if we surrender they may spare us.' Father Labaky gave him his surplice. He put it on the processional cross and stood it in front of the church. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door, three quick raps, then three lots of three. They were petrified. Father Labaky said that he would go and see who was there. If it was the enemy, they might spare them. ‘But if they kill us, at least we shall die all together and we’ll have a nice parish in Heaven, 500 persons, and no check points!’ They laughed, and the priest went to the door.

It was not the enemy but two men of Damour who had fled the town and had seen the white flag from the seashore. They had come back to warn them that it would not help to raise a flag. ‘We raised a flag in front of Our Lady, and they shot at us.’

Again they discussed what could be done. The priest told them that one thing they must do, although it was ‘impossible’, was to pray for the forgiveness of those who were coming to kill them. As they prayed, two of the young defenders of the town who had also seen the flag walked in and said, ‘Run to the seashore now, and we will cover you.

The two youths stood in front of the church and shot in the direction from which the fedayeen were firing. It took ten minutes for all the people in the church to leave the town. All 500 got away except one old man who said he could not walk and would prefer to die in front of his own house. He was not killed. Father Labaky found him weeks later in a PLO prison, and heard what had happened after they left.

A few minutes after they had gone, ‘the PLO came and bombed the church without entering it. They kicked open the door and threw in the grenades.’ They would all have been killed had they stayed.

The priest led his flock along the shore to the palace of Camille Chamoun. But when they got there they found it had already been sacked and partly burnt. They found shelter, however, in the palace of a Muslim, who ‘did not agree with the Palestinians’, and then got into small boats Which took them out to a bigger boat, in which they sailed to Jounieh. ‘One poor woman had to give birth to her baby in the little open boat on the rough winter sea.’

In all, 582 people were killed in the storming of Damour. Father Labaky went back with the Red Cross to bury them. Many of the bodies had been dismembered, so they had to count the heads to number the dead. Three of the men they found had had their genitals cut off and stuffed into their mouths.

The horror did not end there, the old Christian cemetery was also destroyed, coffins were dug up, the dead robbed, vaults opened, and bodies and skeletons thrown across the grave yard. Damour was then transformed into a stronghold of Fatah and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). The ruined town became one of the main PLO centres for the promotion of international terrorism. The Church of St Elias was used as a repair garage for PLO vehicles and also as a range for shooting-practice with targets painted on the eastern wall of the nave.

The commander of the combined forces which descended on Damour on 23 January 1976 was Zuhayr Muhsin, chief of al-Sa’iqa, known since then throughout Christian Lebanon as 'the Butcher of Damour'. He was assassinated on 15 July 1979 at Cannes in the South of France.