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Transcript:
Last year, when we lost primatologist Jane Goodall, I talked a bit about how she inspired a lot of people to care more about the planet, and particularly how she worked with local conservationists in Tanzania, but in part thanks to colonialism and white supremacy, we don’t really know their names or their stories the way we know Goodall’s. Well, today I’d like to talk about a hero of conservation who didn’t have the advantages Goodall had, but who had a tremendous impact on the ecosystem in her own ancestral land, and who unfortunately recently died in a truly horrible way. Her name was Mona Khalil, she created a conservation movement along the coast of Southern Lebanon where she spent her life protecting endangered turtles, and last week she was murdered in her home by Israeli forces.
And, with that, a content warning: I’m going to be discussing some upsetting topics, including the Israel’s (and the US’s) ongoing genocide.
Mona Khalil was born in 1949 to a Lebanese family that had fled to Nigeria, and as a child she spent time there, in Beirut, and in Southern Lebanon where her grandparents had a house on the coast. As an adult, she spent a decade in the Netherlands, but would visit her family in Lebanon when it was safe to do so–Lebanon has been under attack and often occupation by Israel ever since Palestinian refugees fled there to escape persecution following the establishment of Israel in 1948, and Israeli forces still occupied parts of Southern Lebanon until the year 2000. That’s the year that Israel was forced to withdraw from that area, and the year that Khalil decided to move back to her now-abandoned and dilapidated family home and turn it into something truly special.
Because at that point, Khalil had become fascinated by the sea turtles she saw crawling up the beach to lay their eggs, and she learned that they were critically endangered. She decided that she was going to help protect them, and so she and her partner, Habiba Fayed, spent years fixing up the house on the seaside while getting training from scientists at the nonprofit Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles. They learned how to collect crucial data, as well as how to protect the turtles’ nests and help them get into the sea after hatching.
When their training was complete and the refurbishment done, they painted the house bright orange to honor their time in the Netherlands and invited tourists to come stay with them and help them care for the turtles.
They also worked hard to connect with the locals, finding that after Israel withdrew from the territory, people flooded the beach and disturbed the nests, left trash, and engaged in dangerous fishing practices like using dynamite. Khalil began an educational campaign to encourage locals to respect the ecosystem, at first facing down anger and violence from people who didn’t get why they shouldn’t do what they wanted now that they finally had their land back.
I want to pause here to point out how incredible this all was: Khalil had seen a lifetime of war and displacement and strife. By the age of 50 she had every right to stay comfortable in the Netherlands with her partner, maybe supporting some NGOs here and there. But not only did she travel back to Lebanon, which remained a dangerous place even after that 2000 Israeli withdrawal, and not only did she devote herself to making things there better, but she focused on turtles. Turtles! It’s easy to look at the situation and say, “Well, why not help the orphans? The refugees? The people who are starving or unable to access healthcare or education?” But we each can improve the world in our own way, and it turns out that by focusing on this unexpected population of tiny, struggling reptiles, Khalil made things demonstrably better for Lebanon, for the world, and yeah, even and perhaps especially for those orphans and refugees and people who are hungry and sick and uneducated.
The Orange House attracted international attention, allowing the world to see Lebanon as more than just a miserable battleground. It was a crucial area for endangered species, and here were these two charismatic middle aged women running a welcoming bed and breakfast to protect them.
There were times that Khalil and Fayed had to flee the house because of escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, like in 2006 when they spent two weeks in Beirut and came back to their home partially wrecked by an Israeli shell, which led Hezbollah to declare the house a protected nature preserve that they would avoid to keep the house safe from counterattacks.
In this New York Times profile from later that year, Khalil laments that at that point most of the people who visited the Orange House were foreigners:
“The few Lebanese are often married to Westerners. The rest ignore us.”
“Khalil and Fayed would like to see this change, hoping that environmentally conscious Lebanese youth will maintain their legacy by protecting the turtles. But how likely is that?
“Khalil smiled. “I’m optimistic.””
It turns out, that optimism was warranted. Khalil, who lost her son in a snorkeling accident when he was 8, loved children and focused on stoking their curiosity. Over the years that followed, the Orange House became a safe space for local kids, where they could learn and gather the courage to see beyond a seemingly hopeless situation.
Here’s Rami Khashab, who met Khalil on the beach when he was just a local teen, talking about the effect she had on him and others.
I think Khalil’s story really emphasises how scientific inquiry, and the knowledge about the part we all play in an entire ecosystem, can have ripple effects that make everything better. Unfortunately, the end of Khalil’s own story shows us the lesson from the other side. As Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people restarted in earnest in 2023, they also restarted bombing campaigns in Lebanon. On June 4th of this year, Israeli forces dropped a bomb on Khalil and Fayed’s home. Despite its “protected status.” Despite its bright orange paint you could see from space. Despite the fact that Hezbollah was nowhere near the house. The IDF claimed she wasn’t a target, and they weren’t aware of a bomb hitting her house, but admitted that yes, they did drop some bombs there.
And after two weeks of fighting, Khalil lost her life because of that strike.
Oops? Doubtful. Thanks to the United States, Israel has the best military tools money can buy. There’s only one famous bright orange house by the sea in Southern Lebanon. They knew about it not just because it was famous internationally. They knew it because they bombed it once and were told that it was a marine sanctuary run by peaceful researchers trying to save turtles. In my opinion, Israel destroyed the Orange House, and Khalil, because they want to destroy what it and what she stood for: hope. A better life. A life where even poor refugees can care about helpless little turtles.
They killed her for the same reason they murder babies. Not accidentally, in the fog of war, but with a sniper’s precision. Doctors have been calling this out for more than two years now, but this week yet another report dropped confirming that even throughout a supposed “truce,” Israeli forces continue to purposely murder Palestinian children at a rate of one per day. Since 2023, the IDF has murdered more than 21,000 Palestinian children, at least 5,000 of whom were under the age of 5, and more than 400 who were newborns. And I’m not talking about kids dying of starvation and all the indirect ways Israel is killing children: this report is specifically about kids being shot in the head by snipers, sometimes in the chest as well just to make sure they’re dead, and also by purposely dropping bombs on schools and homes and camps “crowded with children.” “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and to determine their future.”
So yeah, they absolutely targeted Khalil for the same purpose. She built a sanctuary not just for sea turtles, but for Lebanon’s children. For Lebanon’s future.
But again I come back to thinking about those ripples that Khalil sent out in the world. Her children, like Rami Khashab, carry her work onward. They’re off at universities building more skills, or they’re coming back to Lebanon to fight for their people and their land and their sea. They won’t let Mona Khalil’s name be forgotten, and I hope you won’t, either.
