LETTER: We call the world not to forget the Sabra and Shatila massacre on the 16th September 1982 .
Today is the 38th year of the most horrific genocide by Christian Phalangist militia with the complicit of Israel troops.
We demand, on the commemoration of this day, that its time to end the Israeli culture of impunity that permitted the Sabra and Shatila massacre to happen.
On that day, when Israel invaded Lebanon, the right-wing Christian Phalange militia stormed the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut and began a massacre which ended in the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of mostly Palestinian civilians.
A most painful memory for most suvivors on this barbaric atrocity will not be discarded in the minds of generations to come. After much destruction, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had defended the camps since its inception, agreed to leave Lebanon.
The world must learn and should never forget the betrayal of the American assurances that civilians left behind would be protected. The Israeli army was allowed to proceed to invade and occupy West Beirut. We know that Israeli troops, until today, plan to exterminate Palestinians.
This incident displayed that Israel can never be trusted with any agreement relating to Palestinians. Israel had shown this to the world.
They surrounded the camps to prevent the refugees from leaving and allowed entry of the Phalange, a known enemy of the Palestinians.
The Israelis even facilitated the mass murder by firing flares throughout the night to light up the killing field - thus allowing the militiamen to see their way through the narrow alleys of the camps.
The massacre went on for two days. As the bloodbath concluded, Israel supplied the bulldozers to dig mass graves.
In 1983, Israel's investigative Kahan Commission found that Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli Defense Minister, bore "personal responsibility" for the slaughter.
The massacre at Sabra and Shatila was a direct consequence of Israel's violation of the American-brokered ceasefire and the impunity bestowed on Israel by the US and the international community.
This tragic anniversary is a reminder that the international community continues to fail to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law and to defend the basic human rights of the Palestinian people.
If the international community is obliged to remedy its moral responsibility to the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, by working to end Israel's occupation and other abuses of Palestinian rights, then the lives of my Palestinian families would not suffer this permanent sufferings.
We regret and are outraged by the incapacitated world agency like the UN allowing Israel to continue to abuse Palestinian rights without consequence and to enable the violence of its proxies,
Palestinian property, lands, and persons have been terrorised till this very day.
The UN seems to be numbed by Israel's braven crimes against humanity killing thousands and killed almost entire families, though Palestinian complaints filed against settlers go unindicted by Israel.
As documented by Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, "the [Israeli] military serves the settlers by allowing the attackers to simply walk away".
Rather than shielding innocent civilians the Israeli military itself continues to commit war crimes with impunity, as evidenced by Israel's repeated attacks on the tiny besieged Gaza Strip over the past decade, which have killed thousands of innocent Palestinians with disproportionate and indiscriminate force.
The dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel continues.
It was this same dehumanisation that led Israel to allow vengeful militiamen to enter the Sabra and Shatila camps and that permits Israelis to occupy another people for fifty years and inflict humiliation and injury.
It is very clear that Israel's impunity and 69 years of dispossession and half-century of military rule is supported by unconditional American military aid and diplomat ic backing.
And yet international bodies like the UN Security Council have repeatedly made note of Israel's human rights violations, but done nothing more.
A fourth generation is now growing up in the squalid refugee camps in Lebanon.
If the international community is obliged to remedy its moral responsibility to the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre by working to end Israel's occupation and other abuses of Palestinian rights, then the lives of many families and the others will remember on this 38th year will not have been lost in vain.
MOHD AZMI ABDUL HAMID
President MAPIM
DATUK SERI SYEKH AHMAD AWANG
Chair Alliance of World Mosques in Defence of Al Aqsa
DATUK WIRA ABDUL GHANI SAMSUDIN
Chair Secretariat for the Ulama Assembly of Asia
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times