Belgium and Human Rights Watch are way out ahead of Hitchens:
"Sharon himself has not been able to overcome his bloody past. A June 17 BBC Panorama documentary on his role in and responsibility for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut, in which 1,000-3,000 Palestinian civilians were butchered by Israel's Phalangist allies while under close Israeli army supervision, has caused an uproar in Europe" -what, only now? - "(Nation contributor and editorial board member Richard Falk, who was interviewed for the show as an expert on international human rights law and gave credence to the war crimes allegations against Sharon, has received anonymous death threats as a result and is now under police protection)" - more Zionist terrorism. - "Sharon, the architect of the Lebanon war and Israel's defense minister at the time, was condemned by an Israeli commission of inquiry in 1983, which asserted that he "bears personal responsibility" for the massacre." Certified by the very state whose voters put him in power - so they had to know!
"The day after the BBC documentary aired, a Belgian court, responding to a complaint filed on behalf of twenty-eight plaintiffs and witnesses charging Sharon and others with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, opened an official judicial investigation. (Recent Belgian legislation allows for criminal investigations even of heads of state for war crimes, without limitation on time, citizenship or status.) And Human Rights Watch, in a statement released on June 23, also urged a criminal investigation into Sharon's role in the killings. The organization said that "as Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon had overall responsibility over the Israeli Defense Forces and allowed Phalangist militias to enter the camps and terrorize the residents for three days."
-Brad Mayer