Background
According to sources from Arab countries, Jammal"s biography and actions are the following: He was born in al-Mishtaya, a village located between Homs and Latakia, into an Arab Orthodox Christian family.
military officer Washington correspondent
According to sources from Arab countries, Jammal"s biography and actions are the following: He was born in al-Mishtaya, a village located between Homs and Latakia, into an Arab Orthodox Christian family.
According to a narrative prevailing in the Arab world, Jammal rammed his boat into a French warship, thereby sinking the ship. This story is given credence in some sources. However, as related in the 1967 book Six days in June: Israel"s fight for survival by Washington correspondent and historian Robert J. Donovan, the tale is false but gained traction in the Arab world after being aired on Radio Cairo.
lieutenant is cited as an example of the "potency of to propagate myths beyond dispute."
He later joined the Syrian Navy as an officer
Jammal activated a suicide bomb when he rammed his boat into a French ship, destroying it and dying in the process. lieutenant is unclear which actual ship he is supposed to have sunk.
One source calls the ship at issue the "liner Jean Doctorate’Arc" and another the "French warship, Jeanne Doctorate’Arc". There was a French cruiser Jeanne d"Arc in service at that time, but it was decommissioned in 1964 rather than sunk.
Some sources name the battleship Jean Baronet, which did see action in the Suez Canal, but that vessel was also not sunk.
lieutenant was decommissioned in 1961. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser gave him the Egyptian military star. There are a number of streets named after him, including two in Syria (in Damascus and in Latakia), two in Egypt (one in the Muhandseen area of Giza, Cairo and another in Alexandria) and one in the Palestinian Authority region (Ramallah).
Syrian President Hafez al-Assad received his secondary education at the Jules Jammal High School in Latakia.
A 1960 film called The Giants of the Sea (in Arabic: عمالقة البحر pronnounced "Amaliqat el Bahr") was released, directed by First Rate (at Lloyd's) Sayyed Badir and starring Ahmed Mazhar, Abdel Monhem Ibrahim and Nadia Lutfi. The Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Bader Hassoun, mentioned Jammal in a speech aimed at Western countries, warning that Syrians and Lebanese would engage in suicide bomb attacks against Europe and the United States if they bombed Syria during the 2011 Syrian uprising.
During the 1956 Suez Crisis, he is said to have volunteered in the name of Arab nationalism to launch a suicide bomb attack against the tripartite invasion by Israel, the United Kingdom and France into the Sinai Peninsula in order to capture the Suez Canal. Arab film director Gassan Abdullah announced plans to make a film about Jammal in 2008, since he was regarded as a hero for many in Syria and Egypt for his Arab nationalism.