From “Veil – The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981 – 1987” Bob Woodward

Page 217

“On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, declaring its intention to drive the PLO terrorists out of southern Lebanon. It cited as justification the attempted assassination of its ambassador to London three days earlier and called its invasion “Operation Peace for Galilee.”

“Israeli intelligence, the CIA and soon the British knew that this stated reason was bogus. The Israeli ambassador’s assailants were part of the Abu Nidal faction that had split off from the PLO and was at war with the mainline PLO, harbored in Lebanon. The Israelis were striking the wrong Palestinians, but in Sharon’s view that made little difference.”

Page 219
“The assassination (of Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon) was the first in a chain of calamitous events. Within two days, Israeli forces allowed Phalangist units to enter Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut on a mission of revenge. (The Israelis were guarding these camps.) The names of two of those camps, Sabra and Shatilla, would become a part of the history of massacre. Israeli intelligence calculated that there were 700 to 800 Palestinian victims, many of them women and children. The accounts of the slaughter stunned the civilized world – bodies of diapered babies, the elderly, corpses in stacks. Even horses, dogs and cats were butchered. Breasts and penises had been cut off; a Christian cross was carved into the flesh of some victims. Pregnant women had their wombs torn open.”

Those people were in the care of Sharon, and it was his direct order which opened the camps to that slaughter.

Sharon, and the Israelis, don’t really have a toe-hold on the moral high ground. And the Palestinians know the guy. Tragically, the history goes way, way back.

Arf