After 36 Years, «Israel» Admits It Sank Lebanese Refugee Boat in 1982 War, Murdering 25

Local Editor

After 36 years, the “Israeli” entity finally admits an “Israel” Occupation Forces [IOF] submarine struck and drowned a boat carrying refugees off the Lebanese coast in 1982, leading to the martyrdom of 25 people, according to a TV report aired on Thursday, after the military lifted the gag order on the decades-old incident.

The 36-year-old incident occurred at a time when the “Israeli” entity was enforcing a naval blockade of Lebanon, following a ground invasion weeks earlier; the officer who ordered to sink the boat believed that it carried Palestinian revolutionaries, the entity’s Channel 10 News said in the report.

The Gal-type submarine was taking part in “Operation Dreyfus,” namely the navy attempt to prevent Syrian naval forces from intervening in the fighting.

To this day, many accuse the entity’s former prime minister Ariel Sharon of responsibility for the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians by “Israel's” Lebanese Christian Phalangist allies in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila camps.

According to the report, the boat carrying refugees and foreign workers sought to use a brief respite in the fighting to flee to safety.

The report features the submarine's captain, a retired IOF major identified by the initial “Maj A.”, saying he believed the boat carried revolutionaries from the Palestine Liberation Organization, and waited for two hours before ordering to sink the boat.

The captain of the Lebanese boat and 24 others died in the “Israeli” strike. Channel 10 said later Thursday there had been 54 people on board in all, and that the boat had been trying to reach Cyprus. It noted that the sea in the area at that time was filled with vessels, some carrying revolutionaries, and some civilians seeking to escape the war.

Channel 10 said that it appeared that amid the chaos of the war, the Palestinians and the Lebanese never realized that the boat was sunk by an “Israeli” submarine.

The report featured no footage of the incident; it was accompanied, rather, by illustrative and simulated footage.

The vessel and its occupants were not identified in Thursday night’s TV report.

The IOF only investigated the incident 10 years after it occurred, after the head of the submarine unit demanded a probe to glean operational lessons from the event, the report said.

The IOF investigation into the incident determined that it did not amount to a war crime and the captain was not prosecuted.

However, a former senior IOF officer who has been investigating the incident told Channel 10 he disagreed.

Col. (Ret) Mike Eldar, who commanded the 11^th flotilla during the war, said the captain acted improperly and accused the “Israeli” entity of trying to cover up the incident.

“We have rules of engagement even on submarines, you don’t just shoot a boat because you suspect maybe there was something,” he told Channel 10, adding that the submarine should have summoned a navy patrol boat to investigate.

Eldar said he sought to have the entity acknowledge the incident for decades.

“I turned to the police, the army, the justice department and they all ignored me,” he said. “It’s insulting, personally and nationally.”

He also pointed to the testimony of the second in command of the submarine, Capt. B. He had testified that following previous incidents in which the “Israeli” submarine had refrained from firing on suspicious ships, the mood shifted to “an atmosphere of a desire to attack and fire at any cost. I believed we should not fire because the identification was not definite.”

According to Eldar, there were several other officers who wanted to testify at an inquiry but were not allowed to.

Channel 10 said it believed the IOF had sought to avoid the incident becoming public partly because of shame over what occurred. It said several senior navy officers from that period were still refusing to be interviewed about it.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team