Today marks the midway point of the Sabra and Shatila massacre where nearly 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese Shia refugees were massacred by an Israeli supported Lebanese militia. On September 16 1982 the Israeli army sealed off two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, and gave the Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangist militia the green light to enter the refugee camps. For the next 40 hours the Phalangist militia raped, killed, and injured a large number of unarmed civilians, mostly children, women, and elderly people inside the "sealed” Sabra and Shatila camps. During the massacre, the Israeli army prevented civilians from escaping the camps and arranged for the camps to be illuminated throughout the night by flares launched into the sky from helicopters and mortars. ⠀
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The Palestinian Liberation Organization, the main Palestinian armed group in Lebanon, had withdrawn from the area only two weeks earlier under a UN brokered ceasefire. In typical Israeli fashion, the terms of the ceasefire were broken and the predominantly Muslim West Beirut neighborhoods were invaded by the Israeli forces. The massacre was condemned as a "genocide" by the UN and held Ariel Sharon, the Israel defense minister, personally responsible. In a show of how much the Israeli public cares about genocide, Ariel Sharon was later elected as Israeli Prime Minister.