The wedding ceremony of Ahab and Jezebel is recorded, according to Near Eastern scholar Charles R. Krahmalkov, in Psalm 45. This marriage was the culmination of the friendly relations existing between Israel and Phoenicia during Omri's reign, and possibly cemented important political designs of Ahab. Jezebel, like the foreign wives of Solomon, required facilities for carrying on her form of worship, so Ahab made a Baalist altar in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. Geoffrey Bromiley points out that it was Phoenician practice to install a royal woman as a priestess of Astarte, so thus she would have a more active role in temple and palace relations than was customary in the Hebrew monarchy The Phoenician, Ethbaal of Sidon's close cooperation with King Omri of Israel (887-876 BCE) The Jewish population there was ancient. Back then there were no borders and people were migratory, moving from Lebanon to Syria to Israel's lands. The Torah recorded the mountains of Lebanon, famed for their cedar trees which was the western part of these mountains being known as Lebanon, the eastern as Anti-Lebanon of which Mt. Hermon marks the southern extremity.
What Jewish population there was by 1992 congregated mainly in Beirut, but had had communities in Tripoli, Tyre, and Sidon. Most of them engaged in commerce.
During the Israel War of Independence from 1947-1949, when Lebanese forces invaded Israel, some discriminatory regulations were imposed on the Jews but removed after the fighting ceased. Lebanon had the reputation of being the Paris of the Middle East. Arabs went there on holiday. By 1944 there were 6,261 Jews living in Lebanon. their numbers were augmented after 1948 by Jews from Syria, and the community in 1964 was estimated at 5,,00 to 7,000 population.
Many Palestinians fled to Lebanon because of the war of 1948. As of 2017 between 174,000 and 450,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon with about half in refugee camps (although these are often decades old and resemble neighborhoods). Palestinians often cannot obtain Lebanese citizenship or even Lebanese identity cards and are legally barred from owning property or performing certain occupations (including law, medicine, and engineering). According to Human Rights Watch, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in "appalling social and economic conditions."
After 1967's Six Day War when Israel won over an attack of many Arab countries, the Jewish community in Lebanon diminished. Israel was attacked again on October 6, 1973, on the most holy day of the year for Jews, Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and praying in the synagogues. Most of the 1,000 who remained by 1975 left during the Civil War and by 1990, less than 100 remained.
Lebanon is a parliamentary democracy that includes confessionalism, in which high-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups. The President, for example, has to be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shi’a Muslim, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Eastern Orthodox. This system is intended to deter sectarian conflict and to represent fairly the demographic distribution of the 18 recognized religious groups in government. It's a mess now. Since the assassination of the Christian president, things have deteriorated.
The Lebanese Civil War (13 April 1975 – 13 October 1990, Arabic: الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية, romanized: Al-Ḥarb al-Ahliyyah al-Libnāniyyah) was a multifaceted civil war in Lebanon resulting in an estimated 120,000 fatalities. There was also an exodus of almost one million people from Lebanon as a result of the war.
Elected president on 23 August 1982, assassinated 14 September, 1982Bachir Pierre Gemayel 10 November 1947 – 14 September 1982) was a Lebanese militia commander who led the Lebanese Forces, the military wing of the Kataeb Party in the Lebanese Civil War and was elected President of Lebanon in 1982.
In 1982, the PLO attacks from Lebanon on Israel led to an Israeli invasion, aiming to support Lebanese forces in driving out the PLO. A multinational force of American, French and Italian contingents (joined in 1983 by a British contingent) were deployed in Beirut after the Israeli siege of the city, to supervise the evacuation of the PLO. The civil war re-emerged in September 1982 after the assassination of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, an Israeli ally, and subsequent fighting continued. During this time a number of sectarian massacres occurred, such as in Sabra and Shatila, and in several refugee camps. The multinational force was withdrawn in the spring of 1984, following a devastating bombing attack during the previous year. Gemayel had planned to use the IDF to push the Syrian Army out of Lebanon and then use his relations with the Americans to pressure the Israelis into withdrawing from Lebanese territory. On 14 September 1982, Gemayel was addressing fellow Phalangists at their headquarters in Achrafieh for the last time as their leader and for the last time as commander of the Lebanese Forces. At 4:10 PM, a bomb was detonated, killing Gemayel and 26 other Phalange politicians. The PLO had killed them.
I was living in Tzfat (Safed) at this time, northern Israel. The Maronite Major, Saad Hadad and his men, would patrol the borders between Lebanon and Israel and when he needed it, came to Israel for his R&R, and especially to the Army hospital in Haifa. He had an arrangement with Israel for aid of his family members if needed.
On August 5, 2021, Israel had its first air strike of Lebanon after 15 years. It happened after Lebanon hit Israel with a rocket attack. Lebanon has lost all control of its government which is infiltrated with Russians and Iranians these days. "Israeli jets struck “terrorist targets’ in the Marjayoun region of South Lebanon early Thursday, Aug. 5, in retaliation for a three-rocket salvo against the Israeli Galilee town of Kiryat Shemona a day earlier. "I had been in Kiryat Shemona several times from 1980-1985. That had a wonderful department store that Safed did not have.
Michel Naim Aoun is a Lebanese politician who serves as the President of Lebanon since 31 October 2016. Born in Haret Hreik to a Maronite Christian family, Aoun joined the Military Academy in 1955 and graduated as an artillery officer in the Lebanese Army.
The population of Lebanon in 2011 was 4,196,453 and was 60% Muslim. 59 percent of Lebanese are Muslims, evenly divided between Sunni and Shiite. 33 percent are Christians, including 1 percent evangelicals. Members of the country’s small Druze minority, a secretive monotheistic faith, sometimes persecute Christians.
Various Islamic extremist groups, including Hezbollah in the south and other Shiite-majority regions, actively persecute Christians. Sunni extremist cells affiliated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaida and other groups are active near the Syrian border. Christians are also persecuted by their tribes and families.
They were the 35th state in size of Muslim -majority countries. By 2019 the population was 6.856 million. Up-to-date on Corona Virus: Lebanon has had 7,926 deaths so far.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoli,_Lebanon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqoura
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithobaal_I
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/jezebel-revealing-slander-virgin-baal-princess-tyre-and-queen-israel-008762
https://www.coniferousforest.com/cedar-tree-lebanon.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saad_Haddad
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezebel
