Post by Fr David Neuhaus SJ | 18 September 2026
Surrender is not an option
From September 16 to 18, 1982, a right-wing Lebanese militia, carried out a massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. The killings were carried out under the eye of the Israeli army which occupied Beirut at the time and the Israeli forces sealed off the camps and lit up the area to facilitate the killing. The number of dead, men, women and children, is still disputed but most estimates say that about 1500 people lost their lives. In commemoration of this massacre, we publish a blog on the situation in Lebanon today and the ongoing carnage there.
Makdisi Street is a podcast hosted by Saree, Karim and Ussama Makdisi that been broadcasting since November 2023. Saree Makdisi is professor of English and comparative literature at University of California, Los Angeles; Ussama Makdisi is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley; and Karim Makdisi is professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut. The three brothers are the children of Samir Makdisi, prominent Lebanese economist, and Jean Said Makdissi, Palestinian writer and sister of Palestinian thinker Edward Said.
The two episodes here focus on what is going on in Lebanon, particularly south Lebanon, in the wake of the most recent Israeli continuing attacks. The brothers analyse the events in the contemporary Middle East as they describe the devastation in Lebanon, in Gaza and in the West Bank. The first podcast introduces the situation in Lebanon. The brothers discuss the latest developments in the regional war, and the nature of Israeli bombardment of civilian homes, which is tied to the destruction of homes on different scales across historical Palestine since 1948. The brothers also discuss co-existence in the region and the Zionist challenge to that.
Watch here:
At the beginning of the second podcast, Tacitus, the Roman historian is quoted. “They make a wasteland and call it peace (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant)”. The phrase is attributed to Calgacus, a Caledonian, criticizing the conquest by the Roman Empire. The fifty-minute conversation, filmed in the family home in the Lebanese heartland, is heart wrenching and incisive with regard to what is happening in the Middle East.
Watch here: