Beloved Lebanese Sea Turtle Conservationist Killed in Israeli Airstrike

Acclaimed conservationist Mona Khalil was killed by an Israeli strike on her beachside home in the village of al-Mansouri in southern Lebanon. The 76-year-old spent more than 25 years working to protect endangered sea turtles, and her work helped turn a stretch of southern Lebanon’s coastline into one of the most important nesting sites for endangered sea turtles in the eastern Mediterranean.

Khalil lived in “the Orange House” — her grandmother’s home, which she helped transform into a refuge for endangered sea turtles, an ecotourism site and a training ground in ecological conservation for a generation of volunteers. “This is not a project that belongs to me,” she once said. “It belongs to Lebanon. It belongs to the whole world.”

A refugee of the Lebanese civil war, Khalil returned to Lebanon from the Netherlands in 1999 and began her conservation work after seeing a turtle laying eggs on the beach near her family’s seaside home. Since then, Mona rarely left her home and the beach she had spent years protecting.

“Mona was like a symbol of hope, of life and of resistance in south Lebanon, and probably that’s one of the reasons she was killed,” says Rami Khashab, a Lebanese herpetologist who worked alongside Khalil. “They are trying to kill the hope of the Lebanese people.”

TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn now to Lebanon, where the acclaimed conservationist Mona Khalil has died after being wounded in an Israeli strike on her beachside home in the village of Mansouri two weeks ago. The 76-year-old environmentalist spent more than 25 years trying to protect endangered sea turtles. Her work helped turn a stretch of southern Lebanon’s coastline into one of the most important nesting sites for endangered sea turtles in the eastern Mediterranean.

Mona Khalil lived in what came to be known as the Orange House — her grandmother’s home, which she helped transform into a refuge for endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles, and a small ecotourism site. She trained a generation of volunteers in ecological conservation and in documenting sea turtle nesting activity along the coast.

An Israeli strike hit her home June 4th, and Khalil and her housekeeper, who reportedly sustained less severe injuries, were rushed to the hospital. After two weeks in the hospital, Mona Khalil died Friday. The Israeli military said in a statement Khalil, quote, “was not a target of the IDF” and that “there is no known IDF strike in which she was injured,” unquote.

This is a clip of Mona Khalil talking about why people should support the sea turtles, from the 2012 documentary film directed by Ramin Francis Assadi called The Orange House.

MONA KHALIL: And the truth is, you don’t need much money for this project, not really. You need a few things to buy, OK, and to maintain and keep the work going on. But the rest, people should help. This is — this is not a project that belongs to me. It belongs to Lebanon. It belongs to the whole world. The turtles are not mine.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on the life and legacy of Mona Khalil, we’re joined now from Beirut by Rami Khashab. He’s a herpetologist. That’s an expert on reptiles and amphibians. He grew up in al-Mansouri village, where he met Mona Khalil as a young person and started volunteering with her. He calls her his second family.

Rami, our deepest condolences on the death of Mona. If you can talk about who Mona Khalil was? It’s hard to refer to her in the past tense.

RAMI KHASHAB: Sure, yeah. Mona was — thank you for hosting me and for shedding the light on Mona’s story and her murder case.

Mona was a very — like, she was reincarnated, like the embodiment of passion, of — she is the first person who brought the idea of conservation into a country that were not aware that they have sea turtles whatsoever. She’s a change maker. And she’s a mother at the same time. She’s a mother to everyone she loved and to the turtles she was taking care of. She was that passionate about all this.

Mona was — like, when she came, she didn’t know anything about the turtles. She just loved Lebanon, and she wanted to come back to Lebanon and to spend her days at the Orange House, at the beach house she spent her childhood at. And by pure coincidence, she actually stumbled upon her first sea turtle on al-Mansouri beach. And that turtle started the whole project, the whole initiative. She discovered her passion in 1999. And in the year 2000, she started protecting, conserving, training to be the first and probably the most important conservation person in Lebanon on the Middle East.

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And since then, she probably took care of more than hundreds, thousands of sea turtles. She made sure the next generation see her legacy, that the beach remained virgin, remained protected for all the kids to see. She founded something called the OCTC, or Orange House Project Children’s Turtle Club, which was focused, actually, on children, for children to learn, to get excited about sea turtles, because they don’t get such opportunity elsewhere in Lebanon, especially back then, or a decade ago.

The Orange House became more than just her house. It became a meeting point for all the people passionate about this kind of project. Some people spent one day with her. Some people spent — some people, like myself, spent more than a decade with Mona. And she inspired all of us. Many of people, the kids who’ve been through Mona, they went — later, they went into conservation work. They went into environmental work.

And until today, Mona is — as you could see, as everyone could see, Mona was like a symbol of hope, of life and of resistance in south Lebanon, and probably that’s one of the reasons she was killed, because they are trying to make the area uninhabitable. They are trying to kill the hope of the Lebanese people and make them think they don’t want to return. Mona insisted on staying in the south of Lebanon. She was sure, because she’s not associated — she’s just a person who loves the beach, who loves her garden, who wants to stay in peace. She was sure she is not a target, but that was not the case, unfortunately.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rami, could you talk about how you first met her and your relationship, and also the last time you spoke to her?

RAMI KHASHAB: So, I met Mona when I was still in school. I was — in the early 2010, 2011. I met her first by mistake. I was a kid from the al-Mansouri town. I was on the beach, swimming like everyone else. And I already loved animals and snakes and stuff like that. By pure coincidence, we were at the same place at the same time. I saw Mona opening a nest, and baby sea turtles started pouring out of the sand. I went crazy. I was so excited about it. I asked Mona if I can come and help. She was happy to hear that, as well, because no one offered her help from around. She told me to come to her the next season to volunteer with them the next season, so I did that. I thought she was just trying to get rid of me at that moment, but I did that anyway.

And ever since then, we were inseparable. We were doing 5 a.m. beach monitoring for sea turtles every single day since then. Mona taught me a lot about — not only about sea turtle conservation, but that the beach is a full ecosystem. We have to protect the whole thing. We had daily cleanups. We had people who spread awareness to people, as well, about what we do and all the sea turtles. It started as volunteer work. It became my first paid job, actually, as a kid. I was still in high school, at the high school. I didn’t know any of that until Mona showed me the way. She was the person who told me to pursue my passion, my dream, no matter what, like she did.

She also — she also put me in the right direction when it comes to all the aspects of conservation work, actually. And she was never fully scientific. She was never fully, like — she was never too scientific, but she was always so passionate, that it was infectious to everyone around her, even if the people are not really environmental type. She was resisted a lot by the locals, by the people around, because they didn’t understand what she did, because she was a black sheep to them. After a while, they ended up respecting her, because, thanks to her, the beach remained virgin, remained clean, remained protected for their children and for their grandchildren, especially for the people in the area and from al-Mansouri village.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to — I want to go to a clip from 2017 of Mona Khalil conducted by the School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia.

MONA KHALIL: I love children. And when I first started and families started coming with their kids, I realized that the kids are the ones that are listening to me, not the parents. The parents, they come here to have fun, drink and celebrate. But when I sit with them on the table we’re having and talk to them, it is the kids. So I shifted from talking to adults to kids. So, for the last 16 years, I’ve been talking to kids. Now my kids are university people, young people. Some of them graduated, and they’re working. But anyway, I built a small little army. If I need anything, I call them. They run here.

AMY GOODMAN: 2017 interview with Mona Khalil, conducted by the School of Global Development at the University of East Anglia, known for its work on climate change. Rami, in this last 30 seconds, your final thoughts as she talks about mentoring young people, and your attendance at her funeral?

RAMI KHASHAB: So, her funeral didn’t happen yet. She made sure that she get buried near the beach in the south. That was not possible yet, so we just attended the condolences with her family, but the funeral should happen in the — hopefully, it can happen in the coming week, if the ceasefire persists, and nothing — that we get no other surprises. We’ll make sure Mona is buried near the beach that she protected, to overlook and to be the guardian angel there.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khashab, we want to thank you so much for being with us, herpetologist, who studies amphibians and turtles, and environmental consultant from al-Mansouri village in southern Lebanon, where he met and worked with Mona Khalil as a young person.

Coming up, it’s Primary Day today in Maryland, in Utah and here in New York. We’ll talk about the DSA here in the city. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Souty” by Emel Mathlouthi, here in our Democracy Now! studio.