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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.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

Construction Companies May Be Aiding and Abetting Israel’s War Crimes in Lebanon

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........

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