The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: the discomfort of assembling the Lebanese civil war narrative

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Black Saturday massacre that took place on 6 December 1975 in Beirut, Lebanon, marked the first large-scale targeting of Lebanese civilians during the Lebanese civil war. The magnitude of the violence committed on that day set the precedent to outbursts of violence between December 1975 and June 1976, namely the Battle of the Hotels, and the Karantina and Damour massacres which were retaliatory in nature. The circumstances surrounding the massacre remain tied to one individual in particular, Joseph Sa`adeh, who initiated the massacre upon learning of the death of his son. Considering that the construction of the Lebanese civil war narrative remains one of the most politically contested and sensitive processes in Lebanon to date, this article examines where personal motivations, grievances and convictions fit in historiographical practices, which are often centred on actions themselves, and are dismissive of the vast personal negotiations that build up to them. The article therefore offers a deeper examination of Lebanese civil war historiography, by stitching together the voices of both fighters and civilians. In doing so, the article also challenges the linear trajectories of war narratives in Lebanon that lend themselves easily to epistemological labels of sectarianism, and often ignore the arbitrariness of people's behaviour in times of extreme stress.