For the Southern Lebanese Army’s second generation, Nasrallah’s death is a ‘breakthrough’

A week after Hassan Nasrallah was killed, Maryam Younnes, 29, the Maronite Christian daughter of a former Southern Lebanese Army commander, said that the Hezbollah leader’s assassination “created an opportunity that we always dreamed about but never thought would be possible.”

While the younger generation who grew up in Israel are willing to talk publicly about Nasrallah’s assassination, their elders – the men who fought for the SLA or those with close family in Lebanon — are reluctant to speak out.

Some fear for the safety of their families in Southern Lebanon; others are focused on trying to get supplies delivered to isolated Christian villages, such as Rmeish, that are close to the border with Israel and caught up in the crossfire.

“One day, I’ll talk,” said a former SLA officer in northern Israel who asked that his name not be used. “But now, it’s too dangerous.”

Still another man once connected to the SLA said that Israel “should finish Hezbollah once and for all.”

Younnes, who grew up in a small northern Israeli town, said she is uniquely positioned to speak about what is happening now in Lebanon and Israel. She is fiercely proud of her adopted country that “loved her immediately” after she and her family arrived as refugees in 2000. But she longs to visit her homeland Lebanon again.

“Most Lebanese see Hezbollah as a foreign entity that works for Iran and not for the Lebanese people,” she told The Times of Israel during a recent teleconference chat.

Now pursuing a master’s degree at Bar Ilan University in political communication, Younnes is a member of Sharaka, an NGO whose name means “partnership” in Arabic, which was started after the Abraham Accords in 2020. In her English-language videos, she is articulate, smart and on point; in Arabic, her emphasis is on Israeli culture and her style is persuasive — and fun.

Her upbeat social media posts — spoken in Arabic with a Lebanese accent — have attracted hundreds of thousands of views worldwide, including in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. She favors cultural videos of holidays and special places in Israel, including the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and sidewalk restaurants in Tel Aviv. She wants Arabic-speaking people to understand Israel. She wants everyone to understand the Lebanese view of Hezbollah.

“Of course, I get hate messages,” she said. Some of them curse her, but many, in private messages, secretly support her work. She is not afraid for her safety but worries about her family still in Lebanon.

While the Lebanese people are relieved that Hezbollah has suffered losses, it is still “a terror group that might seek revenge.”

‘Almost no one knows about us’

Younnes was five when her father fled south Lebanon with thousands of other SLA soldiers and their families immediately after the IDF pulled out of the security zone in May 2000.

The security zone was some 15 miles (24 kilometers) wide, where the IDF and its proxy south Lebanon Army attempted to keep Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists away from the Israeli border.

“Unfortunately, Israel withdrew without any agreement,” Younnes said. “We had to run away because Hezbollah said, ‘We will slaughter you in your bed.’”

In Israel, Younnes grew up watching Lebanese TV shows and Lebanese news,” she said, with parents who “yearned to go back to Lebanon.”

However, she and other SLA children were “very much integrated into Israeli society, speaking Hebrew perfectly, celebrating Jewish holidays with friends.”

The Knesset passed a law granting citizenship to all SLA members and their families in 2004, four years after the IDF’s pullout.

“We are considered brothers in blood and that’s why Israel gave us citizenship,” Younnes said.

She went to school with Jewish students where teachers always asked her “to tell our story,” something her parents also encouraged.

Younnes said she now feels she is a “voice” for Maronite Christians, “indigenous people in Lebanon.” She also wants to speak about the SLA because “almost no one knows about us.”

An irony of history

Since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 26 civilian deaths on the Israeli side and the deaths of 24 IDF soldiers and reservists.

Younnes said it is ironic that Hezbollah claims it is fighting the war against Israel in support of Hamas when, from 1984 to 1990, the Palestinians, who are Sunni Muslims, fought against some Hezbollah followers, who are Shiite Muslims.

At about the same time, Christians in the South Lebanese Army also fought against various Muslim factions. The civil war erupted in 1975, expanding to encompass whole segments of Lebanese society, and lasted until 1990.

Today, it is estimated that Lebanon consists of about 60 percent Muslims – split almost equally between Shiites and Sunnis; 30 percent Christians – mostly Maronites and Greek Orthodox; and the remaining 10 percent Druze and other minorities. It is a fragile democracy.

Younnes stressed that she wanted to make it clear that Israel is fighting wars against Hezbollah, and not Lebanon, saying that these conflicts should be called the “Israel-Hezbollah Wars” and not the Second and now Third Lebanon War, as some have already dubbed it.

The first Lebanon war in 1982 was “much more complicated,” Younnes said, and can’t be called a war against Hezbollah since the terror group gained power only in the 1990s.

The current war might be the chance needed to force Hezbollah to give up its arms, she said, allowing the Lebanese authority to be the only authority in Lebanon.

Lebanon and Israel are similar, Younnes added, “and both want peace.”

A minority advocate

Jonathan Elkhoury, 32, escaped Lebanon as a refugee with his family, former SLA members, when he was nine and grew up in Haifa. He’s a public speaker who advocates for Israel as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Elkhoury told The Times of Israel that he’s been “so out for the last decade” that he is not frightened. Yet many Lebanese are “afraid of retaliation from the Hezbollah terrorists that are still located in the south of Lebanon.”

“We are talking about thousands of Hezbollah soldiers,” he said. “I’m not calling them ‘just’ terrorists because they are operating as an army, more capable than the Lebanese Army.”

Although they won’t speak publicly, Elkhoury said, “A lot of Lebanese know that Hezbollah caused the downfall of Lebanon’s economy and lifestyle.”

“Everything is stuck, politically, economically, strategically, because of Hezbollah,” he said. “Nasrallah and Hezbollah have terrorized the Lebanese people since the 1980s.”

When people opposed Hezbollah, Nasrallah had them assassinated, Elkhoury said. Now, he hopes, the tables have turned.

The start of a quiet groundswell of opposition against Hezbollah began after the 2020 explosion of ammonium nitrate that the terrorist organization stored in Beirut’s port. The explosion killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands, and left 300,000 people homeless.

After that, when Lebanese Hezbollah fighters started getting killed in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, Elkhoury said that people became more aware that the terrorist group was the “Islamic resistance ‘in’ Lebanon, not ‘for’ Lebanon.”

Hezbollah has always been a part of “Iran’s imperialist vision to take over the Middle East,” Elkhoury said.

But Nasrallah’s assassination is a “breakthrough,” he said. The war now provides an opportunity for Lebanon to create a coalition between Lebanese and Israelis that can “restore sovereignty to Lebanon and create lasting peace.”

A prophetic message for Nasrallah

More than 40,000 people on various social media platforms, including those in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, watched 28-year-old Stephani Haleli Elias give a public message in Arabic addressed to Nasrallah in June.

“Those who were more frightening than you are gone,” Elias said to the camera. “Even you, you will eventually go, and you will not be able to scare us.”

Elias, who also fled Lebanon with her SLA family when she was four, told the Times of Israel that back in June when she made the video, she had “a strong feeling about Nasrallah.”

She believed that the IDF would “get him in this war, and this time he wouldn’t survive.”

While Younnes takes viewers around Israel, Elias posts up-close videos from her home. Filming her message for Nasrallah, she wore a casual yet stylish black-and-white striped T-shirt and appeared unintimidated as she spoke, as if in an intimate tête-à-tête with one of the world’s most infamous terrorist leaders.

She said that her family, as well as “everyone who was in the former South Lebanese Army, are happy” Nasrallah is gone. His death has given her more hope, but she said that her parents have stressed that the war with Hezbollah did not – and should not — end with Nasrallah’s death.

“We stopped fighting in 2000 and then in 2006,” she said. “This is the third war, and we have to see it until the end.”

On October 7, 2023, 3,000 heavily armed Hamas-led fighters invaded communities from Gaza in an unparalleled outbreak of violence. Some 1,200 people were killed. Aside from the murders, terrorists carried out brutal atrocities such as torture and rape and abducted 251 people. Israel says 97 of them remain captive, along with four others held in Gaza for around a decade.

Soon afterward, Elias posted an Arabic-speaking video to explain how she felt about Hamas’s massacre. That post garnered more than one million views and gave the receptionist at HaShef College, a culinary school in Haifa, some appearances on Israeli TV.

While some Arabic-speaking people attacked her “because the truth annoyed them,” others still send her messages saying they secretly agree with her.

Growing up, Elias attended a Hebrew-speaking school and was often subjected to racism. “Some kids called me a terrorist,” she said, but she had Jewish friends and lived among Jews. Along the way, she fell in love with Judaism and realized she wanted her future children to grow up as Jews in Israel.

In February, Elias posted the video of her tear-filled conversion on social media.

“We have to understand that we are a special nation,” she said. “And neither the Knesset, the government, nor the war will change that.”

Meanwhile, pondering the future in Lebanon across the border, Younnes said that Nasrallah’s elimination “created a huge vacuum.”

“Who can step into his shoes?” Younnes pondered. “I hope it’s a door to eliminate Hezbollah and allow the Lebanese forces to take over Lebanon again.”