From My Lai to Sabra-Chatilla

Baltimore Sun

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“Like the United States, Israel is held by its own people and by the rest of the world to exacting standards of honest and humane conduct even in the emotional circumstances of war. It is a heavy burden, yet one neither nation could put aside without losing its character and sense of mission.

We Americans felt the anguish of blood on our hands during the dark days of Vietnam, most particularly when details of the terrible massacre at My Lai came to light. Out of this came a willingness to face the full consequences of a misguided policy, a readiness to set our priorities aright, a determination to recapture our sanity.

Now Israel must take this same hard road or find itself isolated among nations, its security undermined. Whatever excuses or equivocations may be heard from the Begin-Sharon government, the tragedy that befell Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla camps outside Beirut must be confronted by the Israeli people.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin misleads himself if he believes a full state inquiry into the massacre near Beirut would be an admission of Israel’s complicity. On the contrary, the denial of an inquiry would be taken by the rest of the world as an admission of guilt. Nobody is accusing Israeli soldiers of gunning down unarmed men, women and children.

What needs to be established clearly is precisely which Israeli leaders knew what and when. Americans know all too well that the search for justice after a vast crime against humanity is painful and far from conclusive or satisfying. In the case of My Lai, Lt.

William Calley was the sole person prosecuted while higher-ups in positions of responsibility were never really called to public account. But there was a public trial and an airing of the facts. Surely a raucous, instinctive democracy like Israel can and must do the same if the damage to its name is to be repaired.

It is not our purpose to join in the clamor for the resignation of the Begin-Sharon government. That is a matter for the Israeli people to decide, preferably after a full but prompt state inquiry.

That the president of Israel has demanded such an inquiry, that two prominent members of the Begin Cabinet have resigned and Israeli newspapers are demanding the truth is testament to Israel’s strength, not its weakness. Perhaps out of the Sabra-Chatilla tragedy will come a return to reason and proportion in Israel’s relations with its neighbors.

Israel could do worse than learn from the American experience.”

Context added by this archive

An American editorial reaching for My Lai as the comparison, and naming what it thinks the comparison shows: one lieutenant prosecuted and the higher-ups never called to account.

Cite this clipping

"From My Lai to Sabra-Chatilla," Stamford Advocate, 25 September 1982, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1982-017. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1982-017