RE: "Sharon is not to blame," Simon Rosenblum, Letters, Kitchener-Waterloo Record, August 31, 2001

Canadian Jewish Congress spokesman Simon Rosenblum insists Ariel Sharon was not to blame for the massacres that claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinian refugees, mostly women, children and the elderly, at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camp in September 1982. But it was the Israelis who asked the Christian Phalange -- armed and uniformed by Israel, and allied to Israel since 1976 -- to enter the Israeli-surrounded refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila to "liquidate" the alleged "terrorists" there.

Which is why, on Thursday, September 16, 1982, guided by signposts which the Israelis had laid across a Beirut airport runway, the Christian gunmen walked through the southern entrance of Chatila, and embarked on a war crime. The orgy of murder lasted some 36 hours and, in order to enable the massacre to continue unabated, the Israelis forces provided their proxies with night-time aerial lighting.

Ariel Sharon and the Israeli army were -- to borrow a term Canadian Jewish Congress director Bernie Farber has used to refer to Helmut Oberlander and Wasyl Odynsky -- the "enablers" in a war crime. In fact, a Belgium court is currently reviewing evidence to determine whether to indict Sharon as a war criminal for the atrocities committed at Sabra and Chatila .

Sincerely yours,
Orest Slepokura
Strathmore AB

c. Simon Rosenblum