St. Louis Post-Dispatch · St. Louis, Missouri · 2 November 1982
CP-1982-022
U.S. Nurse Tells Israelis Of Sabra Camp Massacre
United Press International, Jerusalem
Transcribed from the clipping
“JERUSALEM (UPI) — An American Jewish nurse who struggled to save Palestinians shot in the refugee camp massacres says she testified before an Israeli commission investigating the massacres because she ‘can’t sleep at night.’ Testifying Monday was Ellen Segal, a nurse from Washington, along with Dr. Paul Morris, a Briton, and surgeon Suee Chai-ang of Singapore.
All were volunteers at the Gaza Hospital in the Sabra refugee camp. The medical workers were the first non-Israeli witnesses to testify before the commission… ‘I feel it was my duty to say what I heard and what I saw,’ Miss Segal said after the hearing.
‘I can’t sleep at night unless I tell people what happened there and what perhaps Israel’s involvement was, or was not, in this.’… Miss Segal testified that Israeli soldiers had been perched on a tall building overlooking the Chatilla camp and must have known about the slaughter. They could have stopped it, she said.
‘I feel that it is impossible the Israelis could not have seen from the top of that building what was going on and had to hear what was going on,’ she said. But in testimony Sunday, Maj. Gen. Amir Drory, Israel’s top army commander in Lebanon, said that he had been unable to see anything amiss from an observation post at midday Sept.
17, when he first had received reports that the militiamen might be killing civilians.”
Context added by this archive
An American Jewish nurse volunteering testimony to Israel’s own commission of inquiry, and the Israeli general’s answer from the day before, printed under it.
Cite this clipping
"U.S. Nurse Tells Israelis Of Sabra Camp Massacre," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2 November 1982, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1982-022. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1982-022
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1982-022.
Read in: Sabra and Shatila: from who fired to who knew
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