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September 16, 2015
33 years after Sabra-Shatila, Takfiri plans for "Intifada!" waft in Lebanon's camps
By Franklin P. Lamb
Lebanon's politicians generally do not want this and neither does Da'ish (ISIS). Both groups seek to keep the Palestinian's in Lebanon oppressed for their own political advantage. Eschewing justice and elementary civil rights is subverting peace in this region and one may be sure that the "terrorist-takfiri" are today manipulating this reality in Lebanon's camps.
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33 years after Sabra-Shatila, Takfiri plans for "Intifada!" waft in Lebanon's camps
Franklin Lamb
Ein al Helwe Palestinian camp, Lebanon
"Palestinians have no reliable friends Abu Ammar! This summer proved it! Where are the worthless Arabs? Only some foreign implanted "Resistance" elements that for their own hegemonic political purposes want to play the Palestinian card and wear your keffiyeh and pose for photos making the V for Victory sign! This disgusts me Abu Ammar! Palestinians must rely only on themselves. The PLO must return to "Revolution until Victory!" You should postpone your exit from Lebanon and you must protect the camps. Without the gun to protect them what does Reagan's 'olive branch' of "we will give you back most of Palestine if you leave Beirut" convey? Nothing worth anything in my opinion"!
Thus was the plea to PLO leader Yassir Arafat, made 33 years ago by a distraught and prescient American journalist and Palestinian advocate from Atlanta, Georgia named Janet Lee Stevens. At the time she was four floors underground in Arafat's Fakhani South Beirut bunker across from Arab University. She and her colleagues were secure from American bombs that rained down 12 hours that day from Zionist aggressors as she made her case.
The Palestinian leadership was preparing to "flee" Lebanon, (Janet's word for the planned PLO "evacuation with dignity") Janet emphatically opposed the PLO departure from Lebanon in the summer of 1982 insisting that it would allow a reign of terror against the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had no option but to remain behind, deeply mired in the camps.
Janet's appeal was made in the presence of this observer and the late Imad Mughniyeh, 19 years old at the time, and a few others who likely agreed with her analysis. Mughniyeh had joined the Palestine revolution at the age of 14, and according to author Kai Bird may had received military training from the CIA as part of a US initiative to "Professionalize" Arafat's security unit. He had been given a job two years earlier with the PLO Force 17 whose mandate included a unit of Arafat bodyguards. After 1982, and disillusioned with the PLO Imad affiliated with the pre-Hezbollah Islamic Amal.
Like dozens of others, Mughniyeh owed his job to his friend and mentor, the PLO's ""Red Prince" Ali Hassan Salameh who was assassinated on his way to his nieces' birthday party at 4 p.m. on January 24, 1979 on Beka Street in the Verdun neighborhood of Beirut.
A German woman, Erika Chambers, posing as an artist and pro-Palestinian activist, but in reality a Mossad agent now living in Israel on a handsome US funded Mossad pension, watched Salameh's car as it passed under her 8th floor balcony, pushed a button and detonated a parked explosive-rigged Volkswagen Beetle.
Janet's words to PLO Chairman Arafat were prophetic and are as true today as when she spoke them eight months before her death on April 18, 1983.
It's not a pretty picture in Lebanon's Palestinian camps this week as foreigners arrive in solidarity, as many do annually; to pay tribute to the more than 3000 victims of the September 1982 Israeli facilitated Sabra-Shatila Massacre.
This past year the Syrian crisis has exported to Lebanon enormous unforeseen demographic and economic pressures on Lebanon and on each of the dozen Palestinian camps and nearly two dozen "gatherings." Recent UN and EU studies document what virtually all quality-of-life social-economic indexes make plain which is that the approximate quarter million Palestinians actually living in Lebanon are continuing to sink ever deeper into a dark abyss.
The Palestinian camp populations here are not exempt from the politics and violence arriving from Syria. Some of the militia and Islamist movements warring next door are enticing and pressuring camp residents to take up arms and join various religious and secular militias.
It is true that some foreign powers are seeking to influence events in Syria and Lebanon with cash, weapons, and ideology. But as increasingly is being heard in Syria and elsewhere, "Da'sih (ISIS) has many mothers." Meaning that it is a gross oversimplification and a bit inane to insist that the creation and appeal of Islamist groups and the "terrorist-takfires" is yet another conspiracy by the Saudi's, Iranians, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)Turks, and/or Americans, EU, NATO or others. It is far more complicated than what the bewildering assortment of water carriers for various paymasters asserts. Indeed, as Iran's President Rohani repeated last week, some of the funders, too clever by half, are experiencing shock to learn that the evil being spread by groups they may have aided-hoping for sundry positive results--are now targeting and planning to destroy them.
Al Qaeda affiliated groups have been analogized to opportunistic bacteria or virus. They may be dormant and unnoticed for long periods. But if they receive a certain amount of light, some oxygen, and warm temperature, something to feed on and perhaps attach themselves to they may quickly grow and metastasize as they acquire and with time perfect their deadly capabilities.
Causative of some of these groups that are attracting youngsters and others in Lebanon's camps are the same factors suffered for decades in this region, and recently they have intensified. Some examples, among others, are lack of jobs, widespread and deepening poverty, feelings of hopelessness and lack of control over one's life and future, corrupt politicians who do not deliver public services while enriching themselves, abuse by security services and heavy-handed police and armed forces widely believed to be selectively deployed for political purposes.
Particularly deadly in Lebanon's camps is the growing poisonous Sunni-Shia and ethno-nationalist sectarianism.
Adding to these problems, Lebanon's Palestinian camp inmates often have tap water that is dirty and or salty, surface sewage, and electricity cuts on the average of ten times a day. There are generally no street lights, only a few paved roads with many of the dwellings increasingly showing signs of crumbling. Crime, drug-use, infectious and communicable diseases, skyrocketing child respiratory diseases, domestic violence, school dropouts and teenage pregnancies are all increasing.
The current and long overdue upswing in civil activism across Lebanon, seen in the camps as a breadth of fresh air, with its calls for deep change and intifada are in tandem with the spreading rejection of what are considered the Lebanon's unsalvageably corrupt politicians. Many of these former warlords, now political lords thanks to their self-granted amnesty without which many could be in prison for life, appear daily on the TV "news" bulletins and regurgitate rubbish. This as they work to deepen sectarian divides to keep their particular "wasta sects" docile.
This includes the intensifying Sunni-Shia religious war that is beginning to spread inside the camps. A recent survey by the "You Stink" activist group which seeks to oust corrupt politicians found that approximately 90% of Lebanon's population surveyed want all the current leaders replaced and believe that massive civil disobedience may be required to get rid of them. Many refugees in the camps want to capitalize on the recently revealed civic activist energy of the new groups to realize their own political rights.
The danger to the Palestinian camps such as Ein el-Helwe is the rising violence. Two days ago (9/11/2015) eight grenades were thrown in different neighborhoods of the camps. Several gunmen also opened fire, seemingly out of nowhere according to eye-witnesses. Several people were killed last month during Fatah Movement, Jund al Sham and Fatah el Islam gunmen fought. Situated near the city of Sidon, Ein al-Helweh is home to approximately 80,000 Palestinian refugees, including an estimated 10,000 who fled the seemingly endless civil war in Syria, according to camp officials. The Joint Palestinian Security Force (JPSF) set up in 2014 to police Ein al_Helweh is anemic and so far largely ineffective.
AD79 and killed thousands of people in the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Cynically playing the Palestinian card while conspiring to grind down, humiliate, disparage, provoke, marginalize, and deprive Palestinians in Lebanon of their anchored-in-international humanitarian law most elementary civil rights to work and purchase a home is the equivalent of Lebanon's "leaders" picnicking on Mt. Vesuvius back in AD 79 and what happened to Pompeii and Herculaneum may well happen here as the Takfiris slip into the camps. An overdue reckoning may explode and any time.
The political "leaders" in Lebanon who are wringing their hands and lamenting the growing number of "Terrorist-Takfiris" working to convince Palestinian refugees to join the "sacred Islamic cause of liberating Palestine" are well advised to reflect on the past five years in this region as well as the past nearly 67 years of repression of Palestinians in Lebanon.
The pressure inside the sealed cooker of Lebanon's camps is building as the political temperature here rises daily. Those who bleat that Palestine is their bloodstream issue and who circulate selfies of themselves, wearing the keffiyeh as some politicians here do, can help avoid a fast approaching catastrophe on the order of what largely destroyed Syria.
One way is to stop blocking the election of a President and convening Parliament. And when they assemble to cut up the pies on the legislative agenda, put its members to work earning a part of their hefty salaries. In just 90 minutes the Parliament of Lebanon can repeal the racist 2001 law that outlaws home ownership for Palestinians and after nearly seven decades, grant the third generation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon he same right to work and home ownership that every reader of these words is granted the moment her or his foot touches Lebanese soil or the tarmac at Beirut airport.
Lebanon's politicians generally do not want this and neither does Da'ish (ISIS). Both groups seek to keep the Palestinian's in Lebanon oppressed for their own political advantage. Eschewing justice and elementary civil rights is subverting peace in this region and one may be sure that the "terrorist-takfiri" are today manipulating this reality in Lebanon's camps.
This, as they organize an "Intifada" alongside various secular groups with similar goals of "Revolution until Victory" on this 33rd anniversary of the Zionist arranged massacre at Sabra-Shatila.
Since 2013, Professor Franklin P. Lamb has traveled extensively throughout Syria. His primary focus has been to document, photograph, research and hopefully help preserve the vast and irreplaceable archaeological sites and artifacts in Syria.
Like Iraq, Syria is the cradle of civilization, and as such it has been a rich source of our shared global culture and historic heritage. Already endangered from illegal excavation, looting, international trafficking and iconoclasm; the theft and destruction of these sites has greatly increased as a result of the conflict in the Middle East.
Many of the endangered archeological sites and artifacts are over 7,000 years old. The oldest remains found in Syria are from the Paleolithic era (c. 800,000 BCE). The most endangered artifacts and archaeological sites currently are in Tell Halaf, the north of Syria near the Turkish border with Syria. These archaeological sites date as far back as 5,500 BCE. They include archeological sites and artifacts of the Babylonian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Aramaic, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Ayyubid and Ottoman civilizations and empires.
Professor Franklin Lamb has also been working, sometimes under dangerous circumstances, to record and photograph the war damage done to religious icons, images, monuments, and ancient structures that span pre-Roman civilizations, and structures such as Islamic mosques, Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.
Professor Lamb is working tirelessly to record and photograph these sites and artifacts because they are in danger of complete destruction for religious, political and illegal trafficking reasons, especially due to the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
Professor Franklin Lamb's website and his latest book, "Syria's Endangered Heritage, an International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect" presents exclusive and never published before photographs, records, data, articles, and interviews from across the whole of Syria. His book can be purchased at his website http://www.syrian-heritage.com/.
In addition to Dr. Lamb's urgent archaeological work he is also deeply committed to rescuing and aiding refugee children in Syria. He is a volunteer with the Lebanon, France, and USA based "Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon (MSRCL)", which seeks to provide hot nutritional meals to Syrian and other refugee children.
Lamb says that the goal of MSRCL is to be able to provide one meal a day to 500 children. More donors are needed in order for him to reach that goal. At $2.25 per meal x 500 children per day ($1,225), the budget for a month (30 days) requires approximately $36,000. Over 95% of each donation goes directly towards the cost of each meal. The MSCRL volunteer teams give their time, energy and even their own money to help the refugee children so that they will not become part of the "lost generation" of Syria.
Lamb's books and publications include "Pollution as a Problem of International Law"; "International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra Shatila Massacre"; "Israel's 1982 War in Lebanon: Eyewitness Chronicles of the Invasion and Occupation", "The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons against Civilians in Lebanon in addition to the three volume set, "Palestine, Lebanon & Syria Palestine, Lebanon & Syria (Commentary and Analysis 2006-2016)." Due out during Fall 2016, in English and Arabic, is "The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon: Why the Resistance Sleeps."
Dr. Lamb's most recent book is "Syria's Endangered Heritage: An International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect". www.Syrian-heritage.com
Lamb's Academic Credentials include: BA, and Law Degrees from Boston University, Master of Law (LLM) Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from the London School of Economics (LSE); Diploma in International Air & Space Law from the University College of London; Post-Doctoral Studies at Harvard University Law School of East Asian Legal Studies Center, specializing in Chinese Law; International Legal Studies at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Studied Public International Law at The Hague Academy of international Law, at the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands.
Lamb's Professional and Political Activities include Assistant Professor of International Law, Northwestern College of Law, Portland, Oregon and Assistant Counsel to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, During the Administration of President Jimmy Carter, Lamb was elected for a four year term to the Democratic National Committee, representing the state of Oregon. Lamb served on the Democratic National Committee Judicial Council with California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as well as the Platform Committee on East-West Relations. Professor Lamb served on the presidential campaign staff for Presidential Candidate Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.