Reply #13: The findings of Israel's Kahan Commission found that Sharon [View All]

[PA Democrat]

did indeed bear a share of the responsibility for the massacres conducted by the Phalangists.

Findings of the Kahan Commission:

In February 1983, the three-member Israeli official independent commission of inquiry charged with investigating the events known as the Kahan Commission named former Defense Minister Sharon as one of the individuals who "bears personal responsibility" for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre.

Former Defense Minister Sharon´s decision to allow the Phalange into the camps: The Kahan Commission report detailed the direct role of former Defense Minister Sharon in allowing the Phalangists into the Sabra and Shatilla camps. For instance, then-Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan testified that the entry of the Phalangists into the refugee camps was agreed upon between former Defense Minister Sharon and himself. Thereafter, former Defense Minister Sharon went to Phalangist headquarters and met with, among others, a number of Phalangist commanders. A document issued by former Defense Minister Sharon´s office containing “The Defense Minister´s Summary of 15 September 1982” states: “For the operation in the camps the Phalangists should be sent in.” That document also stated that “the I.D.F. shall command the forces in the area.”

Former Defense Minister Sharon´s disregard of the consequences of that decision: As to former Defense Minister Sharon´s testimony that “no one had imagined the Phalangists would carry out a massacre in the camps,” the Kahan Commission concluded that “it is impossible to justify disregard of the danger of a massacre” because “no prophetic powers were required to know that a concrete danger of acts of slaughter existed when the Phalangists were moved into the camps without the I.D.F.´s being with them.” In fact, the Commission found: “In our view, everyone who had anything to do with events in Lebanon should have felt apprehension about a massacre in the camps, if armed Phalangist forces were to be moved into them without the I.D.F. exercising concrete and effective supervision and scrutiny of them…. To this backdrop of the Phalangists´ toward the Palestinians were added the profound shock ….”

If in fact the Defense Minister, when he decided that the Phalangists would enter the camps without the I.D.F. taking part in the operation, did not think that that decision could bring about the very disaster that in fact occurred, the only possible explanation for this is that he disregarded any apprehensions about what was to be expected because the advantages . . . to be gained from the Phalangists´ entry into the camps distracted him from the proper consideration in this instance.

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2001/06/23/isrlpa97.htm