BEIRUT (Reuters) – Abu Jamal still remembers when Lebanese militiamen allied to Israel woke him and his family early one September morning more than three decades ago and dragged them out into the street.
The gunmen forced him and other Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps to line up, separated the men and women, and dragged young men from the line to be killed. Abu Jamal’s son, 19 at the time, was among those they chose.
“He was in his last year of school,” said Abu Jamal, who wears a button with his son’s picture on his sweater and asked that his full name not be used. “He never saw his diploma.”
Israeli troops did not intervene during the bloodshed, which went down as one of the worst atrocities of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. Ariel Sharon, who died yesterday, was defence minister at the time and many Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila still blame him for the hundreds of killings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, survivors showed little sympathy when they heard of the Israeli commander-cum-politician’s passing after eight years in a coma.