Daily Alert Archives

Who Killed Musa Sadr?

(American Interest) Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira - Musa Sadr transformed the Lebanese Shi'a from an oppressed, marginal group into an influential community that gave rise to the Shi'a protest movement Harakat al-Mahroumin (Movement of the Dispossessed) and its Amal militia. Sadr mysteriously disappeared in Libya in 1978, after which the Islamic Republic of Iran, using the roots of the movement Sadr started in Lebanon, would eventually form Hizbullah. Questions remain to this day: Who killed Musa Sadr and to what end? After Israel's Litani Operation in southern Lebanon in March 1978, Sadr gave a Friday sermon in Tyre in which he implied that the reason for the Israeli attack was the presence of the Palestinians and the bases they had set up in the area. And if the Palestinians leave and therefore do not attack Israel, it will not attack southern Lebanon. Moreover, Sadr failed to recognize both Ayatollah Khomeini's supreme religious authority and the doctrine of rule of the state by clerics. This heresy aggravated the enmity between Sadr, who supported the Shah of Iran, and the radical Iranian faction. The writer, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, served as military-secretary to the Prime Minister and as chief of staff to the Foreign Minister.
2019-09-27 00:00:00
Full Article