In 1982 Israeli invaded Lebanon. It wanted to crush Palestinian armed resistance and wanted to reshape Lebanon’s political make-up in its favor, something that four decades later they are still trying to do. Just as its forces have a rough time fighting Hezbollah today, in 1982 it struggled to defeat the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance.

Israel used so much force Ronald Reagan called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to say the Israelis were creating a ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon. This displeased Begin enormously, since for some Israelis only one crime against humanity can be labeled as such. There is plenty of cruelty to go around in the world, but as we know now with even more certainty, only the Nazi Holocaust somehow trumps all other evil ever done in human history.

Eventually Arafat and the PLO agreed to move their fighters out of Lebanon and to relocate to Tunisia. Important to note here: They agreed to relocate only under international guarantees. It didn’t do them much good though.

Lots of defenseless Palestinian women, children and old folks were left behind. Defense minister Ariel Sharon smelled an opportunity to what in his mind would be just Arabs killing Arabs. If Lebanese Christian militia desired to have their way with those refugees the Israeli army would happily light up the night’s sky so they could see whom they were butchering.

For roughly forty hours, the phalangist militia cut up civilians in homes, alleys, shelters. Panic broke out. There was screaming, there was dying and there was no escape. Entire families wiped out. Israeli forces had surrounded the area. They watched, but did not intervene as the Palestinians were massacred. Unimaginable now, but back then the conniving, duplicitous role Israeli forces had played detonated inside Israel. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets with demand for answers. The Kahan Commission was formed (no relation to Kahanism whatsoever, the commission was simply named after the chairman). It found Israel indirectly responsible for failing to prevent the massacre. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was forced to resign.

Now fastforward to October 7th. We all remember the shocking, almost grotesque horror stories that immediately started circulating. Though some of it turned out to be true, a lot was fabricated. No baby was put in an oven. We were all lashed with images of empty baby cots on the news, but there were no 40 beheaded babies.

An Israeli radical, Yossi Landau, described how he saw a dead pregnant woman whose baby was cut out of her womb and stabbed to death. No proof has ever surfaced. This never happened. At least not on October 7th.

When did an event exactly like this one happen though? During the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in 1982. These bestialities were perpetrated by phalangist militia allied with Israel.

Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk says this about those massacres of Palestinians in his book Sabra and Shatila: Inquiry into a Massacre:

“The massacre began immediately, and lasted for forty hours without stop … In the first hour, the gunmen killed hundreds of people; they were shooting at anything that moved in the alleys. They broke down front doors and wiped out entire families eating dinner. Some families were murdered in bed, still wearing their pajamas. In many homes, children, three or four years old, were found in their pajamas, and blood-soaked blankets … In many cases, the attackers dismembered their victims before killing them. They crushed the heads of children and babies against walls. Women and girls were raped before they were slaughtered with hatchets. Often, men were dragged out of their homes to be quickly and collectively executed in the street with hatchets and knives. The militants spread terror as they indiscriminately slaughtered men, women, children and the elderly … A woman’s arm was found chopped off at the wrist so that her jewelry could be stolen.”

It’s almost as if some of the most radicalized elements inside Israel read about those events and used them as inspiration to make the atrocities of October 7th sound even worse than they were.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a shockingly heinous crime inflicted upon the Palestinian in 1982 later resurfaced and was repackaged as something that the Palestinians did to an Israeli civilians.

It’s become clear over the past 2+ years at the time of writing months that the Israelis suspect the Palestinians of doing certain things, because they, the Israelis have in fact done them in similar situations. You know the word for that. Projection. Or as you have surely heard before: ‘Every Israeli accusation is a confession.’

If you know from experience that breaking off the fight with Israel leads to the slaughter of thousands, would you be eager to lay down your arms?

And where are those protesters now? How many times worse is what has happened to Gaza since 2023? Not that Israelis didn’t regularly show great contempt for Palestinian life long before 2023, but yes, since October the Israeli killing spree is running on steroids.

So why are there no hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting now?

Surely not everyone inside Israel can be ok with this? Or is that for four decades after 1982 killing Palestinians is almost a daily occurrence and has become something like background noise even to that older, thinning generation which used to care?

It’s hard not to conclude that even the moderates inside Israel have become numb to Palestinian suffering and many Israelis crave, openly or secretly, a final solution.

(This is a clipping from The New York Times, dated June 18, 1982, reporting on Ronald Reagan’s phone call to Menachem Begin during the 1982 Lebanon War.)