Egyptian Media Derides Israel’s Inquiry into the Beirut Massacres

The formation of a commission of inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres last month has done little to dampen the reverberations of the killings in Egypt’s press.

Since the Begin government yielded to demands within Israel and abroad that a full investigation be undertaken, commentators and editors here have continued to call for an international inquiry and have greeted the hearings now underway in Israel with derision.

“The farcical thing about the inquiry,” said one commentator, writing in the semi-official news daily Al-Ahram, “is that the accused is cross-examining himself.”

The editorial sentiment here can be summed up in a cartoon that appeared in the same paper last week. In it Prime Minister Menachem Begin is shown carrying a poster that reads, “Down with Begin.” Speaking to the world, the Israeli leader asks “Are you pleased?”

SCATHING ARTICLES ABOUT SHARON

The testimony of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon before the commission last week triggered a number of particularly scathing articles, even against the background of the bad press Israel has been getting here all along since relations between the two countries soured following the war in Lebanon.

An editorial in Al-Ahram suggested that the Begin government should step down while the massacre is under investigation.

Another editorial, in the news daily Al Akhbar, charged that in light of Sharon’s account before the commission, the massacre “has proven a fact already known to all the Arabs: that Israel is nothing but a fascist and terrorist military establishment … and that it has challenged all laws and conventions like any terrorist gang which meets and plans in the dark.”