On this day: Palestinians protecting a synagogue during fighting in Lebanon, 1975
On this day, 12 August 1982, the Maghen Abraham Synagogue in Beirut was badly damaged by shelling by the Israeli military.
The only synagogue in the city, it had been housing Jewish and Muslim refugees during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during which Israel was attempting to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The building had been damaged by Israeli shelling the week prior as well, after which the building was evacuated and the doors locked. The second attack rendered the synagogue building as unusable.
Around 100 Jewish families had lived in the vicinity of the synagogue, and despite the invasion, Jewish residents reported that there had been no harassment of them by Muslim of Palestinian neighbors.
One Jewish resident, Khuder Namoud, told the New York Times: ''We are sick of this war… All the money is gone. We can't work. The electricity is gone, the water too. We have just stayed here in the house for two months.'' Meanwhile, another elderly Jewish woman muttered “'My house is broken, my house is broken”.
The destruction of the neighborhood forced nearly all of the Jewish residents to flee. The Israeli government claimed that several families emigrated to Israel.
In 2009, the Lebanese government, Hezbollah, and Jewish Lebanese residents approved a plan to rebuild and reopen the synagogue, which it did some years later.