From my interview of Rudy List

on 8/15/2016:



Around Christmas of 1974, I visited Lebanon with my friend, Stanley Hoo. Beirut was absolutely beautiful then. We stayed with a friend of ours in Sabra, one of those places that was destroyed in one of those wars in the 80’s. Shatila Massacre, I know exactly where that is.

Once, as we were walking from central Beirut back to Sabra, Stan said to me, “We’re being followed.”

I looked back and there were these two young guys, maybe 18, 19, and they were just walking behind us. They got closer and closer, then they got right up to us and said, “Where are you going?”

We showed them the address. They said, “Follow us.”

They took us down this little street. Stan said to me, “I don’t think this is going to work out too well.”

They took us into this garage. There was a jeep with a heavy caliber machine gun on the back of it. They opened a door to this office. There was a guy sitting behind a desk, and a guy standing by the wall with a machine gun. There was just one light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

They said, “We would like to ask you some questions.”

“OK.”

“First, where are your passports?”

We showed them our passports. Stan’s Chinese. He was carrying an American passport.

“Where are you coming from?”

“England.”

They interrogated us for a while. We explained that we were visiting our friend, Mohammad. Finally, I said, “Please, call this number. Call him up, and he’ll explain.”

The guy finally did that. I said to Stan, “Should we just make a run for it?”

“We’d get killed for sure.”

They brought Mohammad to the garage. His wife was actually an assistant to Yasser Arafat and in the PLO. After everything was cleared up, the guy behind the desk said, “I’m sorry we gave you any trouble, but we have to be careful.”

These were your terrorists! That’s not true. They’re not terrorists! They were just trying to defend their land and get their property back. It’s what anybody would do.

I also visited a refugee camp in Tyre. It had been shelled by ships, probably Israeli, but using American weapons. Somewhere around here I have a piece of shrapnel, about that long, that I picked up in Tyre. It killed somebody.