What lives lost haunt Israeli and American minds, reminding them of the innocent who died 28 years ago at Shatila, asks William A. Cook* O, that it were possible, We might but hold some two days' conference With the dead! -- John Webster The voice of the dead was a living voice to me -- Tennyson Twenty-eight years ago, a scene of unspeakable horror rocked the rubble-strewn alleys of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut as vengeance vied with naked lust in a massive display of human malice. The scene was illuminated for the massacres' Israeli Defence Force (IDF) overseers with flares that provided "an unobstructed and panoramic view" for Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon and his chief of staff Rafael Eitan. They watched from the seven- storey Kuwaiti embassy and provided logistical support for their Lebanese Phalangist allies as they "massacred for 36 to 48 hours" the hapless Palestinians imprisoned in the camps. "We were breathing death, inhaling the very putrescence of the bloated corpses around us," writes British journalist Robert Fisk in his account of the killings in Pity the Nation. "[We] immediately realised that the Israeli defence minister would have to bear some responsibility for this horror. "Sharon!... This is Deir Yassin all over again.'" Yet, outside of the Shatila Camp, who now remembers? What American knows of the massacre? What US government agency has investigated American involvement in it? What lives lost haunt the Israeli or American mind for the evil Israelis or Americans have done against the innocent who died such ignominious deaths 28 years ago? Would that we could hold conference with the dead, in order to sense the absolute black fear that grabbed the mother's heart as her executioner grabbed her skirt to shred it before unleashing his uncontrollable lust into her trembling body. Would that we could feel the depth of anguish that spread throughout her being in those last moments of her life, to fear with her the absolute despair she felt as her murderer laughed and mocked her before thrusting his knife into the child yet unborn in her womb. Would that we could share with those slaughtered during those days of anguish the pain and suffering they endured, hapless innocents offered by Sharon and his forces to their paid mercenaries as compensation for their loyalty to the invading armies of Israel. Would that we could comprehend from their recounting how a man might find it in his being, in the cellar of his soul, to inflict such wanton barbarity on a fellow being. Would that we could understand how such hate could be inflicted on another people, that this savage massacre of brothers and sisters could be allowed to continue for three days, and yet see the perpetrators proclaim to the world their innocence. Would that there might be some civilised, rational means of grasping how such pathological destruction of fellow humans could be justified, or that America's support for a nation capable of such barbarity could be justified. Journalist Chris Hedges claims that "only the vanquished know war." But this was not a war: this was a massacre. Even so, those vanquished souls could tell us what vengeance is, what hate is, what sick minds are capable of inflicting on others if we only had time with them to learn. It is the destroyed that know, and it is the destroyed we fear. To forget is our means to mental salvation, since otherwise we are doomed to live in the hell of our memory that must see and know injustice exists and rules in this world and is inflicted by those who claim to be civilised but know in their souls that they are brutish beasts. What can be said of Shatila 28 years later? It is, after all, but one incident in the horrors of 60 years stretching from the middle of the 20th century into the second decade of the 21st. It is an icon of American and Israeli horror, the burial of thousands destroyed savagely and forgotten while a symphony of hypocrisy extolling US and Israeli virtues buries the reality. Those who died never existed, their sons and daughters never existed, their dreams and aspirations never existed, the fruit of their loins never blossomed to feel the heat of the sun, the coolness of the water, the fruit of the tree of life. We, the indifferent, cannot accept their existence nor recognise it lest we accept our guilt for their deaths. To return to Shatila is an act of retribution, an act that gives voice to the dead that suffered there, it is to accept responsibility for the horrors allowed to happen there, to seek forgiveness of those who lost their lives there and cannot ever live those lives again nor see the sun rise or hear the baby's cry or know the laughter of their children or weep at the loss of a mother or father Their voices have been silenced forever, yet they echo throughout the ages. How vicious is the soul of humankind to remain silent and indifferent to their brothers and sisters in death. * The writer is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California.
