{"id":3826,"date":"2015-09-18T20:47:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T17:47:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2025-01-08T19:58:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T17:58:20","slug":"epalestine-sabra-and-shatila-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/2015\/09\/epalestine-sabra-and-shatila-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sabra and Shatila massacre is personal"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Sabra and Shatila
\nmassacre is personal<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Sam Bahour<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

These last few days, as they do every year, weigh heavy on every
\nPalestinian\u2019s heart. For me, and my family, the heaviness is also personal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every Palestinian carries around two hearts. One is similar
\nto that which all others carry; it keeps us alive, active, working, loving,
\nmoving, singing, playing, and hopeful that tomorrow will bring a better day.
\nThe second is very difficult to explain; it is the one that carries within it
\ndark and heavy memories of our existence. Every Palestinian carries this dark
\nheart, albeit the number of chambers in each varies; for far too many, new chambers
\nare added daily, yet others are calcified but fully preserved.<\/span><\/p>\n

These days bring to the forefront one of those chambers
\npresent in all of our black hearts. This week, 33 years ago, in full
\ncoordination with the Israeli military which had invaded South Lebanon a few months
\nprior, a group of \u201cChristian\u201d Phalangist fundamentalists, entered two
\nPalestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, and slaughtered over 3000 Palestinian
\ncivilians. Most were murdered assassination style, using hatchets, striking mostly
\nto the head. Several victims were beheaded. Children, women, men, young and old,
\nno one was safe. September 16 and 17 were the days when the bulk of the cold-blooded
\nrampage took place. On September 18th journalists finally made their way into the
\ncamp and the horrific scenes became known to all. Later, in 1983, the Israeli government
\nappointed the Kahan Commission to investigate the incident. The Commission
\ndeemed Israel indirectly responsible, and Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s Defense
\nMinister, personally responsible, forcing him to resign, deeming him unfit to
\nserve as Defense Minister. Sharon later went on to become a popular Israeli
\nPrime Minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the massacre, I was in Youngstown, Ohio. Like
\nPalestinian communities worldwide, we were glued to the TV screens in total
\nshock. It was too painful to just sit and endlessly watch the unfolding event
\nany longer. The news footage of the humanitarian organization workers, wearing
\nmasks to protect themselves from the overwhelming stench of death, picked the
\nbodies, one by one, off the piles on which they lie dead. As the bodies were
\nlowered into the hastily dug mass graves, it felt that we too were being
\nlowered in this resting place, with every descending body, over and over.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/p>\n

The mock funeral procession
\ndeparting from the <\/span><\/p>\n

Arab-American Community Center of Youngstown, Ohio.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Watching all this
\nfrom the Arab-American Community Center in Youngstown, we decided to act. We
\nstarted to plan an emergency mock funeral that would place empty symbolic coffins
\non car rooftops and drive through the city in procession, ending symbolically
\nat one of the local cemeteries. We were determined that our city must be aware
\nof the war crime that had just took place against the Palestinian people thousands
\nof miles away. The Palestinian Americans in our community felt an obligation to
\nnot only denounce the killings but to explain that the dead are Palestinian
\nrefugees, kicked out of their homes in what today is Israel, and refused their
\nright to return home by Israel, the US\u2019s strategic ally. Several in our
\ncommunity were born and raised in Lebanon\u2019s refugee camps; some of the murdered
\nwere personally known to them. This made the event even more traumatic, because
\nif they were not in Youngstown they could have been a victim of this crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

The mock funeral procession was a huge success. My grandmother
\nwanted to attend, but my father asked her to stay home because she was not
\nfeeling well. The entire community participated. Dozens of Americans joined in
\nsolidarity. The clergy of the city spoke out. We felt we did our part. The mock
\nfuneral was over. We all went home. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
My father, Sami Bahour, with
\nhis mother Badia in Al-Bireh, Palestine before he immigrated to the United
\nStates in 1957.<\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

As I reached our
\nhouse on Roosevelt Drive, my sister and I were frantically called to immediately
\ngo to my grandmother Badia\u2019s house, three houses away, on Northview Blvd. We
\nhad no idea why the rush. We ran to her house. She was laying on the carpet,
\nimmobile, quiet, but awake. She had third degree burns on her entire body. An
\nambulance was called. My dad was called to come and arrived before the
\nambulance. He went into shock and has never been the same person since that
\nday. Grandma was rushed to St. Elizabeth Hospital less than two miles away, which
\nis the best medical center in the region. She was then to be air lifted to the
\nnationally renowned Akron Hospital Burn Unit, a specialized facility. Bad
\nweather did not permit the ambulance helicopter to be used, so in an Intensive
\nCare Ambulance, she was transported to Akron, 45 minutes away. She fought for
\nher life for a little more than a week before succumbing to her wounds on
\nSeptember 29, 1982. We buried her two days later, it was her 60th<\/sup>
\nbirthday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The funeral wake was difficult. The casket remained closed. As
\ntradition calls for, a Koran reading was playing in the background as friends
\nand family paid their last respects. Then, half way through the evening, in a
\nstanding room only hall, my heartbroken father walked to the tape recorder. He
\npressed stop and removed the Koran cassette and replaced it with one he had
\nbrought with him; we had prepared it together the night before. When he pressed
\nplay, Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s poem, \u201cMy Mother<\/a>\u201d
\n(English lyrics here<\/a>),
\nperformed by Lebanese musician Marcel Khalife, rang out in the utter silence.
\nSeveral of the elders in the room leaped up toward the tape recorder, thinking
\nmy father had made a mistake. He asked them to sit back down. He wanted this song
\nplayed. The tears which fell at that moment washed my grandmother\u2019s soul, yet
\nagain, along with each and every soul of the victims of Sabra and Shatila.<\/span><\/p>\n

How was she burned? Grandma Badia, we learned afterwards,
\nwas in the initial stages, or so we thought, of Parkinson\u2019s disease. It turns
\nout the disease was more advanced than doctors could diagnose. She needed
\nconstant care. The massacre taking place in Sabra and Shatila was too much for
\nus all. In the heat of the moment everyone left to the mock funeral procession,
\nleaving grandma home alone in the hope that she would get some rest. The
\naccident was caused by an oven fire while she was cooking dinner for all of us
\nwho were out demonstrating, at least this is what the fire department
\ninvestigation revealed. I\u2019ll never accept that. My grandmother was one more
\nvictim of Israel\u2019s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent massacre in the Sabra
\nand Shatila refugee camps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two events in my younger years transfixed me on dedicating
\nmy entire life to the Palestinians\u2019 struggle for freedom, this event and the
\nFirst Intifada. I want to mourn but I can\u2019t anymore because all the other
\nchambers in my dark heart fiercely compete. Do I mourn my grandmother or the
\nnearly 3,500 murdered in Sabra and Shatila? Or do I mourn all 20,000 Palestinians
\nand Lebanese killed in that war? Or do I recall Qana, and if so, which massacre
\nthere, the first or second? While Qana beats on the walls of its chamber, Deir
\nYassin and Kufr Qassem can be heard screaming in the background. In between the
\nscreaming there are the smaller \u201cevents,\u201d the bombing of buildings, the assassinations,
\nthe unreported natural deaths of refugees in exile and internally displaced
\nPalestinians in Israel, and political prisoners languishing in detention. Then,
\nmore recent memory yells out — Gaza 2000, Gaza 2002, Gaza 2006, Gaza 2008\/9, Gaza
\n2012, and then Gaza 2014 deafens me. When my senses return, the one-and-a-half
\nyear-old Palestinian infant, Ali Saad Dawabsheh, who was burned to death last
\nmonth in the West Bank village of Duma, near Nablus, by Israeli settlers who
\nfirebombed his home while the family was asleep haunts me. Ali\u2019s father died a
\nfew days later from his burn wounds and his mother died a few weeks after her
\nhusband from hers. Ali\u2019s now orphan brother will survive, like so many before
\nhim, damaged for life, but alive. The list is never-ending!<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, there are days when the heavy heart crams the other
\nheart into a corner of our chest, making it difficult to take a deep breath, at
\ntimes bringing painful thumps to the forefront. But I refuse to despair. I
\nrefuse to be defined by this conflict. I do not want to mold my existence into
\ndays of commemorations of exile, massacres, death and destruction. I refuse to
\nlive in the past, but I also refuse to forget the past. I remember in order to
\nrespect, to learn, to understand my present, and to define how I will chart my
\nfuture. For those looking in from the outside it will be hard to comprehend;
\nhow a person can live a schizophrenic life but not be infected with the disorder
\nitself. How, in the same day, a conscious mind and beating heart can make the
\ncase that a policy of slow ethnic cleansing is being undertaken against them,
\nwhile the same mind and heart, the normal one, can live a life of hope that is
\ntotally convinced that tomorrow will witness better times.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is our predicament as Palestinians, we have no
\nalternative but to struggle with our internal turmoil as we attempt to maintain
\nour sanity and raise the next generation to understand that both of their
\nhearts will compete for their chest space too, regrettably. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

~ Sam Bahour is a Palestinian American living in his
\nancestral home in Al-Bireh, Palestine, eating from the same fig, almond and
\nolive trees that his father and Grandmother Badia ate from before leaving
\nPalestine. He blogs at <\/em>www.epalestine.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

URL: http:\/\/bit.ly\/sabra-shatila-personal<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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The Sabra and Shatila massacre is personal By Sam Bahour These last few days, as they do every year, weigh heavy on every Palestinian\u2019s heart. For me, and my family, the heaviness is also personal. Every Palestinian carries around two hearts. One is similar to that which all others carry; it keeps us alive, active, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":10,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[942],"tags":[525,295,526,527,528,18,242],"ppma_author":[936],"class_list":["post-3826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sams-writings","tag-ariel-sharon","tag-lebanon","tag-massacre","tag-ohio","tag-refugee-camps","tag-sabra-and-shatila","tag-youngstown"],"authors":[{"term_id":936,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sambahour","display_name":"Sam Bahour","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bca109c333bf6d8ae807746dd512adde46265d37c923f6cd0fc4aab437f8e9aa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6109,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826\/revisions\/6109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3826"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=3826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}