Michel Chiha was born in 1891 in a Christian family of Bmakine, in the Aley District, in the Mount Lebanon Governorate.
After completing his studies in the Université Saint-Joseph, he joined in 1907 the family business, the Banque Pharaon & Chiha in Beirut.
With the outbreak of the First World War and the Ottoman occupation of the autonomous Mount Lebanon, Chiha left Beirut to settle in Cairo, Egypt, in 1915.
Until his death in 1954, Michel Chiha delivered daily his editorial du Jour, exposing his political views and vision.
In our backyard, is currently developing one of the most anguishing questions of this world.” For him this problem represents a direct menace for Lebanon, Michel Chiha writes in December 1947: “(…) The decision to partition Palestine by creating the Jewish State, is one of the most serious mistakes of world politics.
Nor is it offensive to reason to state that this small thing will have its part to play in shaking the world to its foundations.” In his editorials, the question of Palestine would recur often.
It’s a pity that the people of the United States, today the most powerful in the world, would cover-up from their vantage point such an adventure; they are putting themselves in a definitive contradiction with their most sacred moral and political principles.”