This week, we mark the anniversary of Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and with it, brought thousands of Lebanese Christians to Israel. This is the story of a young man who was a child then.

This week, we mark the anniversary of Israel’s hasty withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and with it, brought thousands of Lebanese Christians to Israel. This is the story of a young man who was a child then.

“G” was born into a Maronite Christian family in South Lebanon, part of a community that traces its roots to the ancient Phoenicians. His early childhood unfolded in a quiet Christian village just 15 kilometers from the Israeli border, surrounded by rolling hills, farmland, and deeply rooted family traditions. Like many Lebanese Christians in southern Lebanon, his family lived modestly, valuing faith, community, and inner peace in a region increasingly consumed by conflict.

While Lebanon was embroiled in a civil war from 1975 to 1990, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the PLO had left its scars, “G” remembers a childhood centered around family. There were visits to grandparents, swimming in the Litani River, and helping his grandfather work the land. His memories are not political at first; they are human. Lebanon, in his mind, was once a place of warmth and beauty — a country his family deeply loved and considered worth fighting for.

But South Lebanon during “G’s” childhood was also shaped by external forces far beyond village life from before he was born. Lebanon’s descent into chaos began after the arrival of Palestinian Arab terrorists expelled from Jordan following Black September in 1970. The country, once celebrated as the “Paris of the Middle East,” increasingly became a battleground. Militias formed, sectarian tensions exploded, and civil war engulfed Lebanon from 1975 onward.

For many Christians in South Lebanon, the war was not ideological but existential. Their villages became trapped between PLO terrorists, regional........

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