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Al Jazeera
13-04-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Lebanese Civil War began 50 years ago. Here's how one photographer saw it
On this day in 1975, Claude Salhani was a 23-year-old Lebanese photojournalist working for the Annahar newspaper. At the time, he dreamed of going to Vietnam and taking the kind of powerful war images he had seen and admired. However, he wouldn't have to leave his country to cover war. On April 13, 1975, the Phalangist militia attacked a bus in Beirut's Ain el-Remmaneh neighbourhood. The bus was carrying Palestinians and Lebanese home from a political rally by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). The Phalangists were responding to a drive-by assassination attempt on their leader, Pierre Gemayel, outside a church. Gemayel was unscathed, but others were killed, including Gemayel's bodyguard and a Phalangist whose child was being baptised that day. The lead-up to the Lebanese Civil War was not devoid of other incidents, but Salhani said it was clear something was different after that day. Over the next nine years, Salhani would capture the brutal reality of the war – Christian and pro-Palestinian militias, the warlords pulling their strings and, most importantly, their victims. He was threatened by right-wing Christian militias, kidnapped by a Palestinian faction, and wounded by Israeli shelling that broke his ankle and a car crash that left his two front teeth hanging by their roots. Salhani covered the war for Annahar, the French photo agency Sygma, and the United Press International and Reuters news agencies. His images were featured on the cover of news magazines like Time and Newsweek. In 1983, he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a photo of a young man dressed in US military fatigues, wiping away a tear after two suicide trucks rammed a barracks and killed more than 240 US military members. He left Beirut in 1984, hurt by what his home had become. He promised never to return but came back for a visit in 2000 and then returned infrequently until his death. Salhani died in 2022 in Paris at the age of 70. He spoke of returning to Lebanon until his final days.
Ya Libnan
12-04-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Lebanon's civil war anniversary poll: about 50% of respondents fear conflict could return
The 1975 Beirut bus massacre , also known as the Ain el-Rammaneh incident and the Black Sunday, was the collective name given to a short series of armed clashes involving Phalangist and Palestinian elements in the streets of central Beirut , which is commonly presented as the spark that set off the 1975 Lebanese Civil War As Lebanon marks 50 years since the outbreak of its civil war on April 13, a new poll has revealed half of the Lebanese people questioned are worried the conflict could return amid a fragile ceasefire. The survey, conducted jointly by Annahar newspaper and International Information, sampled 1,200 Lebanese citizens across all regions between March 25 and April 2. It showed that 51.7 percent expressed varying degrees of concern about the war's return, while 63.3 percent believed establishing a secular civil state by abolishing the sectarian political system represented the best path forward for the country. A total of 42.5 percent of respondents reported direct harm to themselves or family members, including deaths or injuries (23.7 percent), property damage (19.9 percent), and forced displacement (19.5 percent). In assessing Lebanese attitudes toward Iran's role in Lebanon, 78.6 percent of respondents evaluated this role as negative, and 75.3 percent identified Israel as Lebanon's primary adversary. The survey came as Israel resumed attacks on Lebanon, claiming it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure. In a statement, Annahar's management described the poll as an essential tool to understand present realities by examining present and past questions, noting the significant timing on the half-century mark of a conflict whose full lessons remain unlearned. Public opinion remains deeply divided on how to characterize the war that erupted on April 13, 1975, with 40.7 percent describing it as a Lebanese civil war while 38.5 percent view it as a war for others 'fought on our soil.' A smaller segment (8.8 percent) consider it primarily a war related to Palestinian settlement issues. Information about the war continued to be transmitted largely through personal channels, with 81.9 percent citing family and friends as their primary source of knowledge, followed by media (44.8 percent), personal experience (28.3 percent), and academic sources (13.4 percent), according to the poll. (Arab News)
