لا، لم يرحلوا: إنهم لبنان! الذين واللواتي استشهدوا من أهلنا في جبل لبنان، ورحلوا إلى ذاكرتنا، لنبقى ونستمِرّ، يُحدِّثوننا في هذا الفيلم الوثائقي فلنُنصِتْ إليهم
Mount Lebanon’s resistance during WWI
Dr. Walid Phares/Face Book/November 10/18
100 years ago…
Often history books ignore the participation of the people of Mount Lebanon, the so-called Mutasarrifiah, in World War II. According to Paul Noujaim, the “minister of foreign affairs” of the Petit Liban, as he wrote and as related by Fuad Afram Boustani, the autonomous Lebanese mountain was preparing to move to full independence from the Ottoman Empire, and declare Baabda as its capital. Secret talks were underway with France one of the guarantors of the autonomy. Suddenly the explosion of the Great War and Turkey’s siding with the central powers against the allies, destroyed the project. Ottoman forces invaded Mount Lebanon and a famine was organized, killing almost one third of its population. Almost one third emigrated. Moreover the Ottomans persecuted the political activists across the Petit Liban, as well as in Beirut and other districts outside the Mutasarrifiah. Lebanese have been celebrating “the martyrs” in May of each year. Though never explaining what really happened. What was not revealed also, was the existence of a “Lebanese resistance” in Mount Lebanon between 1914 and 1918, many members of were former gendarmes from the autonomous Lebanese force under Baabda’s council.
Mount Lebanon’s contribution in that Great War was through its political activists, tortured and murdered by the occupiers, tens of thousands of civilians who died because of famine and lack of medical attention, and the patriots who resisted, the memory of some of whom is visible in portraits hanging on the walls of old houses from Jezzine to Ehden.
Let the next Lebanon tell their story to this and future generations
