During WWI, Between 1914 and 1915, Lebanon witnessed a genocide, rarely ever spoken of.

Unfortunately, our schools always taught that the famine that decimated about half of the Lebanese population, was due to an “unfortunate coincidence of disparate factors”. According to official history, it’s about the maritime blockade of the allies, the land blockade of the Ottomans and the locusts’ invasion.

The French have rejected any responsibility by claiming that the majority of cereals and other food usually came from the Bekaa side and Hauran, and that imports on the maritime side were very secondary. However, the land blockade on Lebanon remains strategically inexplicable and with no convincing reason.

All data proves that the famine of Mount Lebanon was planned, organized, instigated and well-desired by the Ottomans. It all began in 1914, with the abolition of the signed agreements between the Christian powers and the Ottoman Porte which guaranteed the security of Christians in the Ottoman empire. Followed by the elimination of Mount Lebanon’s autonomy, a series of excessively harsh measures began to take place.

Enver Pasha delegated Jamal Pasha with the task of exterminating the Ottoman Empire’s Christians. Since then he had the nickname of “Jamal Pasha Al-Safah” (Safah, an Arabic word, meaning butcher). It was no question for Jamal Pasha to recommit the error of 1860, the “sword” used in the Armenian, Syriac/Assyro-Chaldean regions, could not be used in Lebanon without risking a new French landing. Lesson was learned in 1860, Lebanon was too close to Europe, the massacres of 1860 led to the military intervention of Napoleon III and the recovery of the Lebanese autonomy. Getting to Mount Lebanon’s population now necessitated ways differing from those used against other Christian areas of the empire.

Jamal Pasha began by preparing the frame of his mission. Contrary to Armenia and Upper-Mesopotamia, Lebanon was very connected to Europe. It was necessary to isolate it from the media and also diplomatically, before imposing any physical isolation, like the food blockade. For this reason, Jamal Pasha established general censorship on the press. However, “a window always open to Europe” was a character of Lebanon. That window was formed by the Church and especially by the Catholic Missionaries, their monasteries and their schools. Many of these places were transformed into barracks or military deposits. The missionaries could no longer serve as witness after getting exiled. There were some Maronite Bishops left, as well as some Greek Orthodox and Melkite ones, the most active ones would get exiled. Some Maronite bishops were even taken to court, and hanged to death.

Now that all communications with the outside world were eliminated, the genocide could successfully take its course.

Despite the Locusts’ invasion in 1916, a considerable amount of wheat was still available but it was burned by the order of Jamal Pasha. Jamal seized all the wheat, kerosene, workhorses, poultry and livestock claiming it was for military needs, yet, every time the Ottomans couldn’t take away all the available quantities, they would set it on fire. German soldiers also threw the wheat in the sea before escaping. Pharmacies and medicine of any kind were confiscated, *always for the needs of the Ottoman troops*. In 1916, Ottomans even attacked plantations, orchards and forests, while even seizing construction material and wood. The Hills of Lebanon were fully stripped under the excuse of “refueling for coal trains”. The old Sepia photos of Lebanon still show these once desolate regions, that are covered with forests today.

How can we still teach in Lebanese schools that the Mount Lebanon famine was due to an exceptional invasion of Locusts?

Mount Lebanon’s dominantly Christian inhabitants were dying of hunger, they sold their furniture, their clothes, the families found themselves in the streets without even anything on their body. Skeletons roamed here and there in the mud and in the snow. We were barely able to distinguish the living from the dead. From all the dead bodies around, and from the cold, malnutrition and lack of hygiene, devastating diseases came to add to the disastrous situation of the Lebanese, such as Typhus, Cholera, plague and others.