Or the Famine of Mount Lebanon. "'The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.' – Enver Pasha, May 1916 In World War I, aside from the casualties brought by the military operations, Lebanon lost over 200,000 souls to a terrible episode of famine. But unlike what Lebanese history books teach, the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon was not simply an innocent coincidence of unfortunate events. True, Lebanon was an unintended victim of the Allies’ blockade of the Eastern Mediterranean, which aimed to bring down the Ottoman economy. However, the bundles of information omitted in Lebanese history books show that the maritime blockade and the coinciding locust invasion were not really what caused the mass starvation. As the French, who were the main force holding the Eastern Mediterranean, have stated, Lebanon’s main food imports usually came from the Bekaa and Hauran area, not the open sea, from which only secondary imports arrived. With that assertion, the French have resoundingly rejected responsibility for Lebanon’s three-year famine. The truth is, while the Allies tightened their grip on the maritime borders of the Levant, Ottoman ruler Jamal Pasha, adequately nicknamed As-Saffah (the bloodthirsty), was orchestrating the mass murder that would decimate half the Lebanese population." www.the961.com/ottomans-forced-half-the-lebanese-to-starve/
Decimate half the population...does that mean reduce half the population by a tenth? Another annoying misuse of a word. Sorry Gordon...And I don't trust the French as far as I can throw them...If they say they had nothing to do with it, there s a good chance they did, either directly or behind the scenes.
