Fifty years ago, on January 20, 1976, a horrific massacre took place in the Lebanese town of Damour. PLO operatives murdered hundreds of Christians, the vast majority of them unarmed civilians. Thousands of rioters raped and slaughtered residents, shot children in the head at point-blank range and killed every Christian they encountered, all to cries of "Allahu Akbar." The Damour massacre is widely regarded as the first act of ethnic cleansing in the Lebanese civil war, and its memory has never faded.
Historical accuracy requires noting that Lebanese Christians also carried out atrocities against other Lebanese communities, both before and after Damour. Still, the passage of half a century since the bloodshed in Damour makes it imperative to examine what has changed in our region and what has not.
In 2026, as in the past, survival in the Middle East depends on power and on the willingness to use it. Soft talk about peace in exchange for concessions did not work then, and does not work now. Nor has the barbarity of our surroundings disappeared. If anything, it has intensified. The October 7 massacre demonstrated that the cruelty seen in Damour was passed from generation to generation and remains, in effect, the sole legacy of those known as Palestinians.
The power of Lebanon's Christians has declined sharply over the past 50 years, and with it their political standing. Their future now depends on alliances with other forces even more than it did in 1976. The Damour massacre pushed Christians toward Israel and led them to explore a possible alliance. At first, that move promised great things, but ultimately it collapsed. Israel's ambition to back the Christians and install them as the dominant force in Lebanon, thereby removing the Land of the Cedars from the circle of hostility, did not succeed.
Half a century later, and especially over the past two years, the balance of power on both sides of the border has changed beyond recognition. Israel's strength 50 years ago was insufficient to dictate events in its northern neighbor. Today, Israel is far stronger and, in the past two years, far more determined.
The blows Israel has dealt Hezbollah and its patrons in Syria and Iran have had dramatic effects, both practically and conceptually. The Shiite terrorist organization has been weakened dramatically and, no less importantly, all the factions in Lebanon's volatile mix have seen its vulnerability and understood that the pro-Iranian demon is no longer so terrifying. They have also grasped who can truly be the dominant power in the Middle East, provided it maintains the resolve it has shown over the past two years.
These shifts open the door to the emergence of a renewed alliance between Lebanon's Christians and the Jewish state. The Christians need Israeli protection more than ever, but Israel also has much to gain, all the more so if the Christians can bring moderate Sunni and Shiite factions to the table. Such a Lebanon could reinforce the two other Christian countries in the region, Greece and Cyprus, which have found common ground with Israel through the Eastern Mediterranean alliance.
A regional alliance of this kind, built on Israel's strength and its ability to project power outward, would fit well into the global landscape, in which Christian believers are increasingly becoming the solid and consistent base of support for Zionism in the US and beyond.
