James M. Dorsey
Appalled by Israel’s carpet bombing of Beirut during the 1982 Lebanon war, United States President Ronald Reagan didn’t mince words with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin.
“I was angry. I told him it had to stop, or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off,” Reagan noted in his diary.
The August 1982 phone call between Reagan and Begin provides a template for the US’s ability to twist Israel’s arm and the limits of the Western giant’s influence.
Begin wasted no time in halting his saturation bombing of the Lebanese capital in response to Reagan’s threat. Yet, he rejected the president’s demand that he allow an international force to enter Beirut to protect the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the Israeli-besieged city. His refusal had dire consequences.
A month later, at least 800 Palestinians, many of them women and children, were massacred in their homes in Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut by Lebanese Christian gunmen under the watchful eyes of the Israeli military. Public outrage in Israel forced Begin to resign, ending his career.
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