Articles

The current conflict unfolding before our eyes in Lebanon is indeed a confrontation between Israel and Iran, and more specifically between Israel and Hezbollah. Setting aside any desire to demonise Hezbollah — and yet there is no shortage of valid reasons to do so, from political assassinations, kidnappings, extrajudicial executions, militia coups de force, humiliations of the army, the transformation of Lebanon into a regional hub for money laundering and drug trafficking, to massive contribution to corruption, and the list goes on — Hezbollah is, by its very nature, a branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards grafted, since 1982, onto a marginalised Shia community abandoned by the Lebanese state.

Lebanon lives under pressure, caught between what strikes it from without and what holds it back from within, and with time, what was once exceptional has become almost normal. The real problem is no longer merely what comes from elsewhere; it lies in this incapacity to cut through, in this suspended moment where the State sees perfectly clearly what must be done and yet cannot bring itself to take the step. It is not a failure of understanding. It is a fear that has settled in slowly, fed by a history in which every internal confrontation has left scars too deep to be ignored. When a country has known war, it develops not only reflexes but carries traumas, deep-rooted fears, survival mechanisms that push it to avoid, to circumvent, to defer, even when that very flight becomes a danger in itself.

The feast of Saint Joseph (March 19), patron of the university that bears his name, brought to the mind of its new rector, Father François Boëdec, SJ, the memory of Alban de Jerphanion, the first Jesuit martyr of the seemingly endless war that erupted in Lebanon in 1975 – whose latest chapter, hoped to be the last, began unfolding in early March. Five other martyrs of that conflict fell after Father de Jerphanion. In tribute to their sacrifice, and with the publication of a new biography devoted to one of their holiest figures – the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose cause for beatification is under way – this work is presented here, revealing previously unpublished details about the motivations of those who killed Father Nicolas. At the same time, it sheds light on the broader meaning of the gift he made to Lebanon, so that the country might endure as a model of “freedom and pluralism” for both East and West, at a moment when a heavily militarized nation threatens to strip it of a vital part of its territory, marked by the memory of Christ’s passage.

We are witnessing a new kind of war, one that has pitted the American and Israeli armies against the Islamic Republic of Iran since February 28. To reduce it to its barest outline, we might say that what confronts us is a conflict that blends, in the popular idiom, “the stick and the carrot” in so entangled a fashion that it becomes difficult to read between the lines and discern the share and degree of truth, of manoeuvre, of outright falsehood, or of deliberate concealment on the part of each belligerent. Monday, March 30, 2026, illustrated this complexity in all its dimensions. President Donald Trump returned to the subject in an interview with the New York Post , noting the presence in Tehran of a “new regime that is proving Cartesian and rational” in its conduct, one that is “more flexible than the leaders who were eliminated” at the outset of the war.

The feast of Saint Joseph (March 19), patron of the University that bears his name, brought back to the memory of its new rector, François Boëdec s.j., the recollection of Alban de Jerphanion, the first Jesuit martyr of the interminable war that broke out in 1975 in Lebanon, and a new episode of which, hopefully the last, opened in early March. Five other martyrs of this war fell after Father de Jerphanion. As a sign of homage, and with the publication of a new biography dedicated to one of their holiest figures, that of the Dutch priest Nicolas Kluiters, whose beatification process has begun, we present here this work, which includes unpublished details on the motivations of those who killed Father Nicolas. We also take this opportunity to highlight the general meaning of the gift he made to Lebanon, so that our homeland remains a model of "liberty and pluralism" for the East and the West, at the very moment when a militarized nation threatens to amputate an essential part of its territory bearing the memory of Christ's passage.

My grandmother Aïcha came into the world in the last decade of the nineteenth century, at the very moment the global Zionist movement was taking shape. Her first two sons were born before the Great War and during it; after the armistice came her daughter and her youngest boy. A year before the defeat of June 1967, she could be found every morning at the saraya of Sidon, happy to have obtained from the International Red Cross authorisation to visit her eldest son Tawfiq, who had become Israeli without ever having left Acre. That authorisation was not enough on its own. For that exceptional event in a life like hers to become possible, she also needed to produce an invitation letter from her daughter Maryam the Jordanian, settled in Nablus in the West Bank under Hashemite sovereignty. But that family visit request was worthless to the Lebanese General Security without a special transit permit she had obtained from her son, a refugee in Damascus, where he had found work and shelter and finally settled.