Georgetown student groups held a candlelight vigil in Red Square Wednesday evening to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Members of the uslim Students Association and the Young Arab Leadership Alliance stood in silence around a circular-chalked message reading “We will not forget Sabra and Shatila. Sept. 16-19, 1982,” surrounded by the words “Indict Ariel Sharon.” Pieces of paper were attached to each of the candles. Those who attended the vigil wrote special messages on the leaflets and left them in a circle.
This massacre “left hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent civilians dead in what is considered the bloodiest single incident of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” BBC reporters said shortly after the incident.
The vigil was meant not only to remember the civilians killed in the massacre, but to also condemn and demand the indictment of Israeli President Ariel Sharon, members of the group said. Under Sharon’s direction as defense minister in 1982, Lebanese Christian Phalangist soldiers went into the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, just outside of Beiruit and killed civilians. The massacre lasted four days.
Even today there is still not an official count of how many people died that day. The Israeli army’s records indicate that 800 bystanders were killed during the course of the massacre, according to Nabeel Yousef (SFS ’05), MSA treasurer and head coordinator of the event. Other countries estimate the civilian deaths were closer to 3,500, he said. “No soldiers fought and died. Civilians were executed in their homes or dragged out into the street to be killed,” he said. “The reason they don’t know the exact number is because the bodies were disposed of, and the houses were bulldozed.”
Many members of MSA and YALA went to see a presentation by British journalist Robert Fisk, who writes for The Guardian, a few weeks ago at George Mason University. Fisk addressed several issues relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the anniversary of the massacre in Southern Lebanon. His message was that Americans and people around the world still take the time to honor Sept. 11, but no one has ever honored the events that occurred in southern Lebanon 20 years ago. Georgetown MSA and YALA members also went to a candlelight vigil at The George Washington University on Monday night to honor the first day of the massacre.
MSA and YALA members said that they felt that a community that held a candle for Sept. 11 cannot fairly do so without remembering this tragic event as well. “We must remember that there are more tragedies in September,” Yousef said. He said that the goal of this event was to remember the atrocities of the past and to spread awareness about what could still be going on in different places around the world.
“We’re [MSA], not a political organization, but we do stand for human rights, so we figured this would be a nice activity for the Georgetown community . we’re planning our human rights week for Oct. 21-25 where we’ll cover a variety of similar issues,” MSA Secretary Rehenuma Asmi (COL ’03) said.
