In a short new book, special correspondent Jean-Marie Bourget and photographer Marc Simon revisit the “near genocide” (in the words of the UN) of two Palestinian camps in Beirut Lebanon in September, 1982, the aftermath of which they witnessed while reporting for the French weekly VSD.

“When we arrived, we were prepared to discover corpses. The journalist is in some ways Death’s accountant. We were expecting to record the number of bodies killed ‘in action’ (to use military lingo), but we weren’t expecting to find victims of torture.”

They were again in Shatila on September 22, 1982, when those responsible for the massacre, Bashir Gemayel’s Phalangists, carted off a group of Palestinians who were never seen again— while French soldiers stood by watching.

Last spring, Marc Simon now director of photography for a magazine was asked if the photographs he took at Sabra and Shatila still haunted him. No, he said, adding that he had been more disturbed by other pictures. But he cannot forget what happened at Sabra and Shatila. No journalist who was in Beirut at the time will ever forget.

But the real question is: who is there to speak of it today? Who will bear witness to these events so that future generations may learn of them? The answer is in this honest and powerful testimony by two journalists.

Michel Puech

Sabra et Chatila, au cœur du massacre
Jacques-Marie Bourget, photographs of Marc Simon
Text by Alain Louyot
Editions Encre d’Orient – 20 Euros
148 pages
ISBN-10: 2367600015