Ain Ebel Massacre of 1920: History and Memory
Zusammenfassung
r/Lebanon shares an account of the May 1920 attack on Ain Ebel, in which more than 50 people were killed and the town was devastated. The announcement also describes attacks on Debel and Rmaich, the displacement of survivors, and the event’s significance in Lebanon’s history and community memory.
On 5 may 1920, after the creation of Lebanon a group of "shia conference of El-Hujair" supporters which pledged allegiance to syria and faisal answered a call for jihad and proceeded to massacre the people of Ain Ebel. Women were raped and children kill...
While delegates from the Shia Conference of El-Hujair were in Damascus swearing allegiance to King Faisal, an act the Maronites of Jabal Amel considered threatening, a Shia gang led by Mahmoud Bazzi, which "proceeded from brigandage to confronting France and its Christian friends in the south",[48] attacked Ain Ebel on 5 May 1920, pillaging and killing more than 50 people.[49][50] It appears that the gangs responded to a call for jihad.[51] The people of Ain Ebel defended the town from sunrise to sunset until they ran out of ammunition.[52]
A contemporary Franciscan document chronicling the event states that attackers abandoned themselves in the violence, massacring children in the arms of their parents before killing them, raping young women and then killing them, and burning people who were still alive.[53] The survivors fled south to Haifa until French ships took them back to Tyre where General Gouraud promised the Maronite Patriarch to punish those who had caused the massacres and destruction.[54] The town was completely destroyed, and the damage done to the two churches, school and convent, were evidence of sectarian malice.[47][55] The neighboring villages of Debel and Rmaich were also attacked so after 12 days of plundering and massacres,[56] the French arrived and suppressed all activities in Jabal Amil region.[57]
While awaiting to return to their village, it was reported that a soldier, in the service of the English, offered the villagers to sell their properties to the Zionists because they were not guaranteed a return to Ain Ebel, but they all refused. This was yet another example of how the Christians of the Tyre district were under a lot of pressure to abandon their land and emigrate out of the area.[58] The massacres hardened Maronite opinion in favor of Jabal Amil being part of Greater Lebanon, which borders were cemented at the San Remo conference in 1920.[48]
By 1921, although the village’s homes and churches had been repaired and rebuilt, the massacre had trigger...
Post Author: /u/Aggressive_Mousse_55
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