For thirty years S. continued his life with this story and did not talk about it to anyone. Even when was contacted a few years ago by researchers for the film "Waltz with Bashir", who found him in his current country of residence and said that his friends had given their version and mentioned his name, he refused to cooperate and said that he did not remember anything. He did not want to talk about it, he felt that he had no powers to deal with the memory and did not even see the movie.

Sabra & Shatila massacre - new testimony

The Hebrew original is linked here: http://cafe.themarker.com/post/2729905/

A rough translation of the first part is:

For thirty years S. continued his life with this story and did not talk about it to anyone. Even when was contacted a few years ago by researchers for the film "Waltz with Bashir", who found him in his current country of residence and said that his friends had given their version and mentioned his name, he refused to cooperate and said that he did not remember anything. He did not want to talk about it, he felt that he had no powers to deal with the memory and did not even see the movie.

Last Rosh Hashanah [Jewish new year] in a conversation with his wife about holiday customs, the mention of apple and honey stirred the memory and the dam broke and he told her everything. After that he found the courage to restore it and share it with some friends, including me. He wanted to publish it anonymously, "Maybe virtual anonymity will cover that stain on my soul...".

S. was in the armed forces. He was 19, a former yeshiva [religious high school/seminary] student who had dropped out and abandoned religion a few months before the draft. The Sabra and Shatila massacre "caused me to fight with trauma/battle shock. As a result of that the army threw me out of its ranks and unlisted me," he says today.

"It was a Friday afternoon. My company's tanks, part of a Merkava tank battalion whose base was located not far from Jericho, was located on a dirt road which passes around the airport of Beirut. An army truck brought us equipment and supplies for the Holy Day, including honey, eggs and all kinds of things, we used to swap them with the local inhabitants for high quality hash [cannabis resin]. With Israeli money we bought at the local supermarket 7-Up, which was not available in Israel, candy and Kent cigarettes which were much cheaper than in Israel.

Bachir Gemayel was assassinated two days earlier and we were told we were moving to another sector. We had to go with tanks because there was no time to bring loading lorries and also because there were Palestinians sitting in the porches of nearby towers, who fired at military vehicles traveling on the road.

On the dirt road next to the field our tank bumped onto road mound and all the ingredients we had put in the basket of the tank turret crashed into the tank. The egg trays and jars of honey stained our clothes and we had no time to change uniforms because we were moving. After about two hours we reached the fence [surrounding the camp], which was a kind of stone wall three metres high. The more senior commanders were several hundred yards away on the fifth floor of an abandoned building. All the officers were there and were looking into camp.

Two hours later there arrived a Phalangist unit of seventy with fancy uniforms and shiny shoes. They had Israeli Galil rifles and new protective vests, arousing our envy. We had only shortened rifles and shriveled vests. They stood in three lines, stamping their feet on the ground in a type of drill while their commander was talking with a brigadier or division commander who was on the fifth floor in a viewing point.

It was getting dark and we waited for instructions to know what to do. Those who needed to pee were forced to exit out the back door of the tank. All the shelves were closed in case some Palestinian sniper fired over the fence. Half an hour later an Israeli bulldozer tractor [shoveldozer] came from somewhere. Our tanks were adjacent to the wall and we had to move them to enable access for the bulldozer. There were two Merkava tanks and a halftrack one for the paratroopers, who sat next to us.

The Phalangists continued to do their drills in threes while the bulldozer opened a gaping hole in the wall. We could only see them through the tank's periscope, we did not hear them. We left the back of the tank open as the air in the tank was stifling with all the spilled eggs and honey and bread. Each step in the tank seemed as though we are stuck in mud, and another egg shell crushed.

After the bulldozer took off, all the phalangistim lined up in rows of three for another series of drills. Then they entered the camp. We stayed in the tanks. Their commander asked our commander to fire flares over the camp because it was getting dark. Through the back door we started hearing gunshots and lots of screams, especially from women, the crying of children and a lot of shouting.

Throughout the night, about every fifteen minutes the troop carrier next to us fired flares over the camp. Both fell slowly in blinding light, with a small parachute and made a lot of light. While one was going out, they would shoot another one.

Not much happened on our side between one light bomb and another; we fell asleep with our clothes still full of honey and eggs. The tank driver was asleep on his chair, the canon loader slept under the barrel, the commander crawled down the back door and fell asleep on the floor of the tank. I was a gunner and I slept on my chair with my head resting on the sights. My glasses were bent and sat on me in a weird way.

In the morning we woke up and went outside. Screaming and crying everywhere. We climbed onto the tank and looked beyond the wall. In the entrances to houses bodies were lying at all kinds of odd angles. The other soldiers began to shout/call us and we were saying to each other that there had been a killing of everyone there and what could we do...

Our squad commander who had dropped out of his pilot course was completely overwhelmed and did not know what was around him. He went to speak with high-ranking commander sitting on the fifth floor. He returned and said that they had seen it all and we were not to interfere. "It is a local conflict between the Phalangists and the Palestinians. And in any case, they had reported all of what had happened there to the senior officers and there were currently no instructions to do anything, so we should sit there until we got an order.

It was noon and we started to clean and rinse the tank. Some T-shirts we had washed were hanging on our makeshift rope between two tanks. We had quite a lot of water in containers. Shouting and screaming over the wall went on, with us not knowing what to do.

Waiting for orders...

At lunchtime I heard my friend Oren. He stood on his tank and was peering over the fence and yelling at the fifth floor: "A massacre. They've killed everyone there".

Still we received no instruction.

Through a hole in fence a young man escaped, about twenty - seemingly only a bit older than me - I was 19, and following him ran a Phalangist with a new rife and a new protective vest. The guy stood behind me and grabbed me by the shoulders. He was barefoot, wearing shorts and a tank top, torn and old. He smelled of acute fear - the smell really was repulsive, like vomit and sweat. He spoke to me and cried that the Phalangist wanted to kill him and asked me to help him. He shouted in English: "HELP! HELP!", and in Arabic murmured and cried that the Phalangist had killed all of them and wanted to kill him too and asked me to save him. I looked at commander, embarrassed, and asked him what to do. He smiled and winked at me and said, "Let them do the dirty work", and signaled to the Phalangist that he could drag the crying Palestinian behind me away. He grabbed his neck and dragged him for three/four steps. The boy continued to beg, looking at me and the Phalangist and begging for mercy. The Phalangist shot him in the knee. The Palestinian began to scream in pain and dropped to his knees, crying out to be rescued. The Phalangist fired another bullet to his abdomen and when he folded in front of him on the floor, his head almost touching the Phalangist's shoes, he shot him another time, in the head. Then he went quiet.

I looked at it all in shock. This was the first time I had seen death so close. Then the Phalangist went back over the wall, back into the refugee camp.

Mercedes cars with press credentials began to arrive. Our commander declared the area a closed military zone, so it was not open. I heard them arguing in Hebrew. It was a reporter from "Time" magazine. He said that they were all concentrated in the soccer field - children, the elderly and women - shot in a line, and we needed to do something.

The commander from the fifth floor went down and started yelling at him not to tell him what to do and that it was a military zone and that he should not be here. The reporter shouted back at him, saying that he had just now come from the other side of the camp and that on the other side they had let them come in, and everything was covered in blood and what was happening there was pure horror.

We began to ask uneasily what to do and what was going on and who we were waiting for. He said it was a holiday now and Raful [the army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan] was talking to Begin [the prime minister, Menachem Begin] and maybe because it was a holiday they would not want to talk to him by phone, so for now there was no decision and no orders.

Again came the Red Cross car and complained to the commander from the fifth floor that the Phalangists were shooting them all and would not let them take care of the wounded. The commander said he would pass the information on and once the decision to accept the order arrived we would move. It was an internal Lebanese conflict.

Towards the evening of the following day (!) we were told to enter the camp. Most Phalangists had already left. We were told to park the tanks in front of one of the buildings. Someone in a suit came to speak to the commander from the fifth floor. They told us that there was a Mossad [secret service] agent in the camp and that he would signal to us.

We entered, and in the entrance of every house there were bodies on the stairs, with blood dripping down all the stairs. There was a terrible stench of corpses and sour blood. We climbed to the first floor. The doors were open and in each room there were bodies on the beds, on the floor, down the hall, lying on their backs with bullet holes. Women with children and babies leaning over in front of every door. All were dead. Some of the bodies had been stabbed with a knife-like sword. The women were without clothes or had their dresses half-torn, lying on their backs with a bullet to the head.

We could not stay there and we went back to the tank. After dark we saw a flickering flashlight signal from one of the windows of the basement in the building we were parked in front of. We reported the signal. A jeep soon came. Someone left the building and got into the jeep, which then drove off.

The next morning, the whole area was full of journalists. The smell was unbearable and everywhere there were journalists and reporters speaking into microphones. They sent us to the soccer field. There were rows and rows of bodies wrapped and covered with blankets and rags. An army tractor had dug a ditch, and pushed the bodies into it and covered them with earth.

It reminded me of pictures from Yad Vashem [Holocoust museum] of the Babi Yar massacre.

And I do not remember any more. Time was just a swirl.

I was nauseous and vomited repeatedly. I wanted to go home and I cried like a child.

They did send me home. I went with another friend of mine. A jeep took us up to Rosh HaNikra. From there we caught a ride to Nahariya. I do not remember anything after that. Somehow we came to Jerusalem after a drive of more than ten hours.

I went to my mother. I thought she would be happy to see me alive and not dead in the war. I sat there in the kitchen. She sat across from me and said nothing, like asking what I wanted and what I had come for. After a few minutes of silence she asked me if I wanted a drink, and brought me a disposable cap of tap water. I sat there for a few minutes. I did not know what to tell her and she looked at me and still did not know what she was supposed to do. I really wanted her to hold me - perhaps the only time in life I really wanted to be hugged. After another fifteen minutes of silence I went out of her house and went to my sister's house. My sister gave me new clothes and washed my uniform.

I do not know how long I slept. At night I had a nightmare and I could not close my eyes without seeing bodies fall on me. If I fell asleep, I dreamt the pillow was a dead man that I was lying on, and I woke up sweating and screaming. Only during the day time could I sleep, with the window open. Shadow and darkness scared me and I was sweating and could not sleep. I threw up a lot and I lost weight.

I had a friend in basic training for recruits who, after basic training, left the armed forces and was transferred to Jerusalem. He told me every time I came to Jerusalem to call him and we could go out and talk. I called him. We met and he said he had a nice sister that he wanted me to meet, so he invited me to his home for Shabbat.

During the day, I managed to function somehow but once I put on my uniform I began to sweat and get nauseous again, and vomit.

About two weeks had passed when the commander found me at my sister's. He convinced me to go back with him and that everything would be fine. I drove his jeep from Jerusalem to Rosh HaNikra. Once we got to the border I got a bit of a shock, I got out of the car and I started to walk back. I did not want to talk to anyone - I just wanted to cry and be left alone. I shouted at everyone who came near me that I would shoot them and shoot myself and that they should just leave me alone.