Remembering Mona Khalil, the Tortoise Queen

The beloved "guardian of the turtles" was murdered by an Israeli air strike on her family home in southern Lebanon.

Mona Khalil loved sea turtles. She loved them so much that she worked for over 25 years to protect a critical nesting site for endangered loggerhead and green sea turtles on a stretch of coastline in southern Lebanon. Israel bombed her house this month. She and her assistant were severely burned and wounded. They were taken to Beirut for treatment. But she succumbed to her injuries after a week in hospital. She was 76.

Mona was a refugee from the Lebanese civil war whose parents fled to Nigeria and then to the Netherlands. Following the tragic death of her 8-year-old son, she returned to her homeland where she channeled her grief into protecting nature. There, she helped to initiate a conservation plan called The Orange House Project out of her family home on Mansouri Beach.

For decades, she battled municipal leaders and illegal developers, monitored nesting sites, provided visitors education regarding the turtles and other marine wildlife, and campaigned against the use of dynamite in fishing. After many years, she was finally able to have the beach where she lived near Tyre designated a “hima” or traditional protected refuge.

Her home was a refuge, not only for those who sought to protect wildlife, but for anyone who needed a sanctuary. It was often full of stray cats and dogs. And Mona was looked to as a kind of mother to the motherless. She welcomed everyone to her refuge, where she intentionally fostered a well-known safe space for the queer community. She said: "People come because here it's a very private place. It's a place that nobody is going to judge them, so long as they respect the nature. Homosexuals, lesbians, whatever, nobody will judge them here.”

Khalil's niece, Sarah Beydoun, told The New Arab that she fears for the refuge following the Israeli air strike. She said: “Our fear is that the beach dies with her; our hope is that it does not." Mansouri beach is a critical sea turtle nesting site on the eastern Mediterranean coast for the endangered species. She continued: "Mona was a force of nature. She lost her only son and chose, out of that grief, to devote the rest of her life to protecting the most defenceless creatures she could find.”

Neither Khalil or her assistant were militants. They had no weapons. They lived in peace in a sanctuary for both nature and those marginalized in society. Israel claims to protect queer people. That it is the “only refuge” for the LGBTQ+ community in the Middle East. Yet, it targeted her home deliberately, nonetheless. So far, Israel has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians, destroyed scores of villages, historical sites and farmland, and displaced over a million people in the country.

Mona Khalil was affectionately referred to as “the tortoise queen” by other conservationists and volunteers. After her senseless killing, they said, “we are all children of Mona,” as a solemn rebuke of Israeli barbarism.

Mona was asked why she did what she did. She replied: “My love for life and nature. For what I am doing, I am living my dream.”

Kenn Maurice Orfanos, June 2026

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