In case you missed this account of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila (yesterday was the 30th anniversary), it throws light on our "closest ally" and their regard for us."While Israels role in the massacre has been closely examined, Americas actions have never been fully understood. This summer, at the Israel State Archives, I found recently declassified documents that chronicle key conversations between American and Israeli officials before and during the 1982 massacre. The verbatim transcripts reveal that the Israelis misled American diplomats about events in Beirut and bullied them into accepting the spurious claim that thousands of terrorists were in the camps. Most troubling, when the United States was in a position to exert strong diplomatic pressure on Israel that could have ended the atrocities, it failed to do so. As a result, Phalange militiamen were able to murder Palestinian civilians, whom America had pledged to protect just weeks earlier."The whole piece here NYTimes.