On episode 65, we speak with Donald Wagner, a long-time Chicago-based activist for Palestinian rights, a Presbyterian clergyperson and the author of a new memoir, Glory to God in the Lowest: Journeys to an Unholy Land.
Forty years ago this month, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Israel’s then defense minister Ariel Sharon sent Lebanese militia forces, the Phalangists, into the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut on false claims of so-called terrorism.
Thousands were slaughtered in a three-day massacre and no one was ever tried for war crimes.
Ariel Sharon had to resign as a government minister after an Israeli inquiry concluded that he bore “indirect responsibility” for the massacre.
Yet that was certainly not the end of his political career. Sharon would become Israel’s prime minister in 2001.
In his memoir, Wagner details his experience in the camps the day after the massacre ended, in mid-September 1982, and how that led to his commitment to fighting for Palestinian rights for the rest of his life.
“When I went in on Monday morning, after the massacre ended, a bigger wave of survivors and relatives were coming in,” Wagner tells us.
“And it was so gut-wrenching; while we walked by the Israeli-controlled apartment building - they were still there, of course - you could see how they could monitor everything from that vantage point with their telescopic lenses.”
As he moved closer to the camps, he says, “we were handed a handkerchief soaked in cheap cologne because the stench of death was overpowering. You would get sick if you didn’t have that. And immediately we walked over and were just taken aback because pieces of bodies were being pulled out.”
Wagner adds that he had a brief conversation with an imam in the camp that day, who said he had seen “hundreds lined up on Friday night against a couple of buildings and machine-gunned to death. And then trucks came and trucked them out, and we will never find the bodies. I asked him to estimate what he thought was the number of deaths, and he said, ‘we’ll never know.’”
The imam told Wagner to “just go home and tell the truth. Just go home and tell what you’ve seen.”
“That has stuck with me my whole life,” he says.
“I’ll never forget it. That’s the least I can do with the suffering and to carry that responsibility to tell what I’ve seen,” Wagner adds.
Wagner points out that Israel has faced no consequences for numerous other crimes. He cites the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the activist Rachel Corrie as examples.
“And as that massacre was covered up, we see the continuation that Israel’s got carte blanche, this murder of Shireen, Rachel Corrie, it just goes on and on. So until these are rectified and there’s accountability, it’s going to continue."
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐚𝐝𝐚
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