Summary
The Lebanese Christian militia founded by Pierre Gemayel in the 1930s, which Rose describes as a fanatically right-wing armed militia self-consciously modelled on the fascists, armed by Israel, and the force that carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacre in September 1982 under Israeli observation (Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, lines 463-469, lines 620-636).
Details
- Pierre Gemayel founded the Phalange in the 1930s; Gemayel visited Berlin in 1936 and met Hitler, and Rose glosses the name itself as meaning fascist (lines 463-465).
- Gemayel’s son Bashir rose to prominence in the Phalange in the 1970s and then in the wider Christian movement in Lebanon, and came to dominate Christian forces in Lebanon by murdering all his opponents (lines 465-467).
- Bashir Gemayel’s faction was enthusiastically, if secretly at first, welcomed in Haifa in 1976 by the then Israeli Labour government; the contacts were cultivated and Israel began arming Gemayel (lines 467-469).
- In August 1982 Bashir Gemayel was elected Lebanon’s president as Israeli guns and tanks stood by, in the month hundreds of Palestinian refugees were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila camps (lines 467-469).
- On Thursday 16 September 1982 truckloads of Christian Lebanese Phalange and Haddad troops entered the Sabra and Shatila camps, which the Israeli Defence Forces had sealed off under direct observation; the massacre that followed is treated at Sabra and Shatila massacre (lines 620-636).
Related pages
Israel: The Hijack State — America’s Watchdog in the Middle East, Sabra and Shatila massacre, Lebanon invasion 1982, Israel