Kahan Commission
The Kahan Commission (ועדת כהן official name is: commission to investigate the events in the refugee camps of Beirut ) was on 28 September 1982 by the Israeli government of Menachem Begin set up the massacres of Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon war to investigate .
The commission was chaired by Yitzchak Kahan , then President of the Supreme Court of Israel . The other two members were Aharon Barak (Supreme Court Justice) and Major-General (retired) Yona Efrat . The commission met for a period of four months. Their stated goal was:
- . To investigate all the facts and factors that contributed to the atrocity committed by a unit of the Lebanese armed forces against the civilian population in the camps of Shatilla and Sabra
After four months of investigation, on February 8, 1983, the commission presented its report, which was published to the public simultaneously in Hebrew and English. The Kahan Commission concluded that the direct responsibility for the massacre lay with the Kata'ib . Israel was absolved of any direct responsibility but was viewed as indirectly responsible for the events. The massacres were committed with the knowledge and support of the Israeli army .
- The decision to let the Phalangists into the refugee camps was taken without considering the danger. Those who made the decision would have been obliged to foresee the danger as likely. The danger was that the Phalangists would carry out massacres and pogroms against the residents of the camps.
- The course of events also shows that the reports of the actions of the Phalangists in the camps were not taken seriously. The correct conclusions were not drawn from the reports, and no energetic and immediate action was taken to hold back the Phalangists and put an end to their actions.
The then Defense Minister and later Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was seen as "personally responsible". He would have ignored the risk of revenge and bloodshed and would not have taken the appropriate measures to prevent them. Sharon originally refused to resign and Menachem Begin refused to dismiss him. Sharon later became a Minister without Portfolio. The commission issued a similar verdict against Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan , the intelligence chief of Aman Yehoshua Saguy .
Web links
- Report from the Kahan Commission on mfa.gov.il
Individual evidence
- ↑ 104. Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the events at the refugee camps in Beirut, February 8, 1983. on mfa.gov.il
- ↑ Ghada Saad-Heller: The Lebanese Civil War in the German media using the example of the weekly magazine “Der Spiegel”. on eldorado.tu-dortmund.de
- ↑ Ze'ev Schiff , Ehud Ya'ari: Israel's Lebanon War . Simon and Schuster , 1984, ISBN 0-671-47991-1 , p. 284.
- ↑ Eric Silver : Begin: The Haunted Prophet . Random House , 1984, ISBN 0-394-52826-3 , p. 239.