Sabra and Shatila

First composed on Sept 19, 1982

by Thomas C. Mountain

( September 19, 2012, Asmara- Eritrea,Sri Lanka Guardian)

I woke up that morning

Where far across the earth

In Beirut, in Sabra and Chatila camps Zionist butchers were hard at work

That day was to have been special

It marked the anniversary of my birth

Instead came the news of the massacres

Sending shock waves around the earth

We had watched Israel invade Lebanon

The summer of 1982

The seige and bombing of Beirut

Until the PLO withdrew

The PLO left the city

With the salute of the people in their eyes

Trusting the word of the Americans

It would be their wives and children who would die

The Israelis surrounded Sabra and Chatila camps

Trapping the old men, women and children within

Then their trucks brought the Phalange through their lines

And they ordered the massacre to begin

They killed all day until night fall

But the mercy of darkness brought no relief

For Israeli flares soon lit up the sky

So the rest from bloodshed would be brief

The killers went house to house

Even killing the dogs it was said

Planting booby traps beneath the bodies

To kill those who had come to bury their dead

So why?

Why?

Why must I ask why?

That these killers and their masters

Have not been arrested, tried and sentenced to die?

Thomas C. Mountain was a founding member in the summer of 1982 of the Hawaii Alliance for Peace and Justice in the Middle East and in 1985 helped present for the first time in the USA Ryuichi  Hirokawa who was the first photojournalist inside Sabra and Chatila camp on Sept. 18, 1982. and won the International Organization of Journalists and Yomiuri Shimbun Grand Prix for Photojournalism for his photos of the massacre. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com.