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Life Projections: On Swamp Creatures and Pedo Besties
Kudos to VJayBombs, ingenious street artists who once emblazoned L.A. with projections of ICE hauling off Jesus, and who just hit D.C. to plaster “Guardians of Pedophiles" on the Kennedy Center's "literal cover-up" and murky regime minions - bats, worms, turtles - on the besieged Reflecting Pool. Growing more ideological as the fascist stakes rise, they use peaceful but splashy projection bombing to "make our voices heard," sensibly arguing, "If you're gonna say something, say something."
It seems only apt an anonymous collective of renegades chooses as weapons the visual tools of their oppressors, slathering multiple regime cover-ups - like the attempted removal from National Parks of information on slavery and other historical facts that “disparage Americans past or living” - with their own rowdy retorts. Large-scale, dissident projections are part of a relatively new protest tradition, "accessible, disruptive, but not violent," that evidently grew from the Occupy movement. In 2013, using an Illuminator- like projector that came out of a car roof like a turret, one Charles Lechner projected an image of a ballot box stuffed with dollar bills onto Michael Bloomberg’s New York apartment; the Mayor, unamused, had him arrested.
VJayBombs began about ten years ago when three filmmakers and neighbors in a Koreatown apartment complex startedprojecting abstract visuals onto nearby buildings during house parties. That pastime evolved during the lead-up to the 2024 election into "Life's Projections," peaceful guerrilla protest that "sits right in the sweet spot of all our skill sets"; they now have over 300,000 online followers and merch - ICE guy with gun: "Our humanity" - to help raise funds. Moving through group chats, location-scouting, brainstorming - what will resonate, how to highlight absurdity and communicate clearly in seconds - they've progressed from "total novices" who blew a fuse by trying to run power through a car lighter to a large-venue projector.
Their goal is to effectively merge message with architecture in a story that unfolds like a digital billboard or comic strip and gets "the longest legs online - as many eyes as possible." Their projections across L.A. have ranged from No Kings messages to Matt Gaetz as Butt-Head to a spoof of Trump's endless, babbling State of the Union speech, with Trump holding the Statue of Liberty hostage amidst flashing messages of "Immigrant Bad!" and “Forget the Files!” A Super Bowl parody, "Redacted Bowl," featured Trump and cronies as football players with their stats matching their references in the Epstein files. Last week's UFC cage match became Donald Trump vs. the Epstein Files celebrating "the pound-for-pound best cover-up in history."
D.C.'s besieged Kennedy Center and besmirched Reflecting Pool were logical, tempting next stops. A week after a court ruling forced the removal of the vile Trump name from the Center, the tarp hung in the dark to hide a snowflake narcissist's shame and fury from a gleeful crowd is still there, obscuring not just the spot where the name allegedly came down but the entire facade. In a June 19 court filing, Center lackeys say it's to do maintenance on the marble. Lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty, who filed the lawsuit behind the ruling, say it's merely a lame move to soothe "broken egos,” one that both conceals whether officials have in fact complied with the court and that reduces a once-vaunted arts venue into a "lifeless husk."
Frustrated visitors to the site have their own ideas: One suggested Trump is focused on "trying to deface America’s symbols before he finishes defacing the country," and another proposed using the tarp to cover the brackish debacle that is now the Reflecting Pool. Others have simply moved on to pay tribute to VJayBombs artists for giving Trump "a lesson in the law of unintended consequences" and projecting "what we all wanted" on the Kennedy Center: A "Guardians of Pedophiles" montage of Trump, Epstein, regime toadies - Bondi, Johnson, Patel - with, "No one bends the knee like the GOP,” and a guy climbing a ladder towards the name "Donald," its letters slowly cascading down to form the word "pedo."
In their weekend art spree, VJayBombs also took to other D.C. landmarks. At the Lincoln Pool, they placed in that now-sorry site a fitting array of swamp creatures: McConnell as turtle, Hegseth as crocodile, Vance as worm, Rubio as fish, Stephen Goebbels Miller a bat hanging upside-down, bald head glinting. At the DOJ, Ted Cruz popped up as a grotesque sex worker in Trump underwear. Hard to unsee, but VJayBombs argue, these dark days, it's "more important than ever to use whatever skills we have to push back." Their art "gives people a new way to engage," they say. "We all have more power than we think...Real change doesn’t come from one big event - it comes from countless small acts that, together, move the needle."
Canadian Youth, Groups Sue Over Carney 'Failure' on Climate Crisis
"You cannot abandon the map and still expect to reach your destination. Yet that's exactly what the federal government has done with its 2030 climate plan."
That's according to Charlie Hatt, climate director at Ecojustice, Canada's largest environmental law charity and one of the groups that partnered with a trio of young citizens this week to challenge Prime Minister Mark Carney's "failure" to bring the country's 2030 emissions reduction plan into compliance with a key federal law.
"Right now, its only climate plan is a plan to fail—and that's not just irresponsible, it's unlawful under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act," said Hatt. "Neither the climate nor the law can tolerate rollbacks today in exchange for promises of action many years from now."
The act requires the federal government to set science-based climate goals, create a plan to achieve them, and report on its progress. However, Carney has recently pursued various rollbacks and boosted fossil fuel development, putting his nation's 2030 emissions reduction target out of reach—which the groups and young people argued violates the law.
"Everyone in Canada deserves to be safe and healthy," said Dr. Samantha Green, president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. "Instead, our government is putting people at risk by dismantling key climate policies without a credible plan to reduce emissions. Climate change is not an abstract future threat: It is a public health emergency that is already harming patients and communities across Canada. That's why CAPE is joining this lawsuit."
The fossil fuel-driven climate emergency isn't just a danger to public health. As Environmental Defence's Julia Levin noted, Canadians "are paying the price through wildfires, heat domes, rising food insecurity, and high costs of living."
"PM Carney is betraying Canadians by taking a wrecking ball to our hard-fought climate progress," Levin declared, accusing the Liberal Party leader of following in the footsteps of Big Oil-backed Republican US President Donald Trump.
"The rest of the world is rapidly adopting clean energy systems that are already more reliable, affordable, and secure than fossil fuels," she said. "Meanwhile, our prime minister is copying President Trump's playbook, ensuring that Canada will be left behind."
Carney's climate policies as prime minister—especially compared with how he talked about the crisis before rising to his current position last year—have frustrated many citizens and left "climate-anxious voters... feeling a major case of buyer's remorse, disoriented by the dissonance between who they thought they were supporting and a climate plan that is now a complete shambles," as Canadian climate writer and activist Seth Klein wrote for The Guardian last month.
Youth applicants in the new legal fight made that frustration clear on Tuesday. Montréal, Quebec-based climate organizer Shirley Barnea said that "the Carney government's gutting of climate policy is a massive insult. After presenting himself as a climate leader, our prime minister is now abdicating responsibility—to Canadians, to future generations, to the law. As long as governments continue ignoring climate science and rolling back protections for our futures, young people will continue taking them to court."
Marie Maltais, who is from Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier, Québec, and has advocated for the climate since her early teens, said that "my generation has grown up surrounded by climate disasters and broken political promises to address them. We're told to trust the government's climate commitments—but commitments mean nothing without a real plan behind them."
Sudbury, Ontario-based Sophia Mathur, an early participant in Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future movement who recently met with Carney and urged him to keep his climate promises, added that "young people are being handed the consequences of decisions we didn't make. We are going to live with the impacts of unchecked climate change for the rest of our lives—so we're standing up for our futures, now."
The young citizens and advocacy groups are seeking a court order that would compel Carney to comply with the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, stressing that "climate change is an existential threat to all Canadians."
110 Days of Trump's Iran War Cost US Consumers $53 Billion Extra in Raised Gas Prices
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that if his war in Iran continued much longer, the US could have faced "economic catastrophe" with gas prices expected to soar as emergency oil reserves were exhausted.
But new reports suggest that although the war appears to be coming to an end and the Strait of Hormuz is reopening, extraordinary irreversible damage has been done, and the economic consequences will be felt well into the future.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimates that as a result of the war, Americans have paid nearly $54 billion extra for gas and fuel, amounting to more than $400 per household, than if the war had never started.
Trump on the Iran War MOU: "I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened."
It's honestly a surreal minute to watch:pic.twitter.com/K7ZRPYklV5
— Rory Johnston (@Rory_Johnston) June 17, 2026
In the wake of the memorandum of understanding signed between the US and Iran, Trump has tried to claim credit as average gas prices have fallen below $4 for the first time since the early days of the war in March. However, gas still costs 25% more than it did last year.
This state of affairs can be expected to continue into the future. As The Associated Press reported Thursday morning:
Even as gas prices start to decline, it is anticipated to take weeks or months for oil to start flowing through the Strait of Hormuz again...
And Gulf oil producers that throttled back production will need time to get the oil moving again. Analysts also say ship captains may take their time to decide if passage is safe and that the threat of attack from Iran has truly receded.
In addition, refineries typically pay for crude oil a month or more in advance, so even after oil prices drop, they won’t immediately be processing cheaper products.
Fighting over the Strait of Hormuz disrupted not only supplies of crude and refined fuel but also the supply chains for fertilizer, food, and even footwear. Businesses expect higher costs to linger, which means their customers might need to prepare for that too.
Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told CBS News it will be “a very long, multi-month to multi-year process for things to fully normalize,” and that it could take “until potentially mid-to-late 2027” for gas prices to return to pre-war levels.
Even as Americans, and indeed consumers around the world, continue to see their pocketbooks drained in the coming months, there is one big winner here: the fossil fuel industry.
An analysis released on Thursday by the environmental group 350.org shows that over the course of the war, households and businesses have paid the oil and gas industry an additional $374 billion in profits due to higher prices driven by the war.
Based on pricing scenarios from the International Monetary Fund, the group projected that even with the Strait of Hormuz open, the amount siphoned off could balloon to over $700 billion by the end of the year.
"Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens tomorrow, we should expect prices to remain above pre-crisis levels," said Andreas Sieber, 350.org's head of political strategy. "We witness not only a massive fossil fuel crisis but a vast upward transfer of wealth built on instability of fossil fuel markets and pain."
Failing 'Moral Test,' Newsom Rejects Compromise 2% Wealth Tax on California Billionaires
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday refused to budge from his opposition to a proposed wealth tax on the Golden State's billionaires, swiftly dismissing a union-led coalition's effort to compromise by reducing its desired 5% rate by more than half.
In a letter to Newsom on Thursday, the Billionaire Tax Now coalition urged the governor and likely 2028 presidential candidate to support a "2% wealth tax on the state’s richest 200 billionaires." The coalition's demand came hours after organizers announced that they had collected enough signatures to get their proposed one-time, 5% tax on billionaire wealth on California's ballot in November.
Newsom's office made clear that the governor, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the proposed 5% wealth tax, would not support the compromise offer.
"The governor has been clear that he is strongly opposed to a California-only wealth tax," Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. "Changing the tax rate doesn’t change this measure’s fundamental flaws that harm working Californians.”
The Billionaire Tax Now coalition on Thursday offered to withdraw its popular ballot initiative calling for a one-time 5% levy on California billionaires' wealth if Newsom agreed to throw his weight behind legislation enacting a 2% wealth tax instead. Organizers and supporters say a tax on the vast fortunes of the state's wealthiest residents would help avert a looming healthcare disaster spurred by federal Medicaid cuts that President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans passed last summer.
"California is home to more billionaires than any state in the nation," the coalition wrote in its letter to Newsom on Thursday. "Their wealth has grown a staggering 212% in the last six years alone to more than $2.2 trillion dollars. A 2% one-time tax on that accumulated wealth is modest by any objective measure, especially if it means keeping emergency rooms open and saving patient lives. It’s more than appropriate at a moment when every other Californian is being asked by Sacramento to sacrifice."
"We need you to stand up against one of Trump’s worst and deadliest domestic policy blunders yet—the cuts to California healthcare contained in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill,'" the coalition added. "Let’s save patient lives together."
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a Silicon Valley representative who has supported the proposed wealth tax in the face of angry billionaire backlash, expressed support for the 2% compromise offer in a social media post on Thursday, noting that "250 billionaires own half of California GDP."
"Taxing them at 2% would save healthcare for millions. Healthcare workers have already compromised from 5%," Khanna wrote. "I want a Democratic party that will stand for the working class. This is a moral test for our party. Whose side are you on?"
Family Seeks Answers, Justice After Mississippi Cop Kills Toddler Kohen Wiley in Walmart Lot
Relatives of a toddler shot dead on Sunday by police in rural Mississippi are demanding answers and accountability.
"I don’t know anything right now," Carlos Haynes told Memphis channel WMC. "My grandson gone. I just want justice."
Carolyn Sokes, the slain toddler's great-grandmother, said: "The police department not telling us anything. They removed the baby's body without anybody seeing it. All we know is that a car was shot up and a 1-year-old baby was killed, and then nobody tells us anything, like we're not anybody."
One-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was being held by his mother in the front passenger seat while his aunt was behind the wheel, was shot and killed by police in Senatobia, 40 miles south of Memphis, during an incident in a Walmart parking lot. The baby's aunt was also shot and critically injured.
Cellphone video footage obtained by Fox 13 Memphis shows a vehicle driving away from officers, but does not appear to capture the moment of the shooting. A photo of the car shows bullet holes in the windshield.
An eyewitness told WREG that “I seen the officers take off running, not in the car, I’m talking about on feet."
“They’re running through the parking lot and I see the car take off, you know, so in my head, I’m like, I know they’re not chasing the car, they don’t think they’re going to catch the car. Then I hear gunshots, and I’m like, I know they’re not shooting at a car that’s leaving in public; this is Walmart."
Another witness said that he heard two gunshots fired by officers who were already waiting in the Walmart parking lot as the two women left the store holding a box of diapers and the baby.
According to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS):
Law enforcement officers responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart on US 51. Upon arrival, officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene. The subjects arrived at a local hospital where one juvenile child in the vehicle was pronounced deceased, and another subject had critical injuries. No law enforcement officers received any serious physical injury.
The responding law enforcement agencies—the Senatobia Police Department (SPD) and Tate County Sheriff's Office (TCSO)—have yet to release the names of the involved officers or any video footage of the incident.
TCSO said deputies were in the area investigating an unrelated matter when their assistance was requested. On Monday, Tate County Sheriff Luke Shepherd declined to comment about the shooting, including whether anyone had been charged, citing pending investigations, according to Mississippi Today.
SPD issued a statement saying it is "committed to full transparency" and "will share as much information as possible" with the public.
Walmart said in a written statement, “We’re saddened by what took place at our Senatobia, MS store."
Relatives of the slain toddler said his mother and aunt were not shoplifting and expressed wariness about local police, who have been embroiled in multiple brutality scandals involving Black victims in recent years.
“Senatobia Police Department get away with too much stuff,” Stokes, the great-grandmother, told WREG. “I hear about it all the time, it’s in the news all the time."
Licole Wiley, the child’s grandmother and the sister of the critically injured woman, lamented that the toddler died "allegedly over some Pampers."
"Whatever the incident may have come to, it still didn’t need for you to shoot two adults and a baby that was not even a threat to you," she added.
Another one of the child's grandmothers, Lasandra Williams, said that “everybody that was involved needs to be held accountable."
"I’m not giving up until I get justice,” she added. “Justice will be served. If it has anything to do with me, it will be served.”
Mississippi Today reported Tuesday that Wiley's relatives have hired national civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
"A 1-year-old child is dead because police officers in Mississippi opened fire on a car in a crowded Walmart parking lot," Crump said in a statement. "Kohen Wiley was a baby. His mother, who has not been charged with any crime, says she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car. They fired anyway, leading to the death of an innocent 1-year-old. We intend to seek justice for baby Kohen and the life that was stolen from him.”
'Psychopath' Ben-Gvir Slammed for Demand That 'All Lebanon Must Burn'
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir drew widespread condemnation on Friday when he declared that "all Lebanon must burn" shortly after four Israeli soldiers were killed in a fight with Hezbollah.
In a social media post, Ben-Gvir said that Israel should retaliate for the deaths of the soldiers with a scorched-earth military campaign aimed at killing large numbers of Lebanese people.
"For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep," the far-right Israeli Cabinet member wrote. "Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror."
Ben-Gvir also took a subtle shot at the Trump administration, which has called for Israel to cease its military operations in Lebanon so that the US and Iran can negotiate an end to the illegal war of choice President Donald Trump launched earlier this year.
"With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit," he wrote. "All of Lebanon must burn."
Ben-Gvir's demands for mass slaughter were widely condemned as the ravings of a genocidal maniac.
"You are a psychopath and one of the greatest threats to the security of Israel and of Jewish people around the world," journalist Yashar Ali wrote in response to Ben-Gvir. "You belong in a psychiatric institution, not in a government role."
Humza Yousaf, former first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, argued that Ben-Gvir's ravings should end any question about the nature of Israel's current government.
"For those who continue to deny Israel has any intention of committing genocide then read this tweet from a minister at the heart of the Israeli government," Yousaf wrote. "He belongs in the Hague, convicted and in a jail cell."
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that Ben-Gvir's post should make Western nations reconsider which nation is the largest obstacle to achieving peace in the Middle East.
"While regional states are intrinsically involved in efforts to bring about peace in the region," Parsi noted, "this Israeli cabinet minister tweets that 'All of Lebanon must burn!' And he repeats that call twice in the post. When will the West ask the question that never gets asked: How is the rest of the region supposed to live in peace and security next to a state that behaves like this?"
British journalist Owen Jones remarked that, in calling for mass killing in Lebanon, Ben-Gvir "sounds like a Nazi."
"If this wasn't Israel," Jones added, "everybody would say he sounds like a Nazi."
'Humiliating String of Defeats' Threatens Trump's Plot to Rig 2026 Midterms: Election Expert
"As Republican electoral prospects wane, Trump will grow more desperate, and that desperation will lead to even more extreme actions by the administration."
President Donald Trump's unprecedented efforts to rig the 2026 midterm elections are on thin ice after having been repeatedly thwarted by courts, according to election law attorney Marc Elias.
In a Monday analysis published by Democracy Docket, Elias noted that the US Department of Justice has seen its attempts to obtain states' voter files shot down in court nine different times, most recently by a federal judge in Maryland who ruled the state was under no obligation to hand its voter file to the federal government.
Elias wrote that Trump needs states' voter files to build a national voter database, which would allow his administration to pick and choose which voters are eligible to participate in future elections and which should be purged.
"The problem for Trump is that his Department of Justice keeps losing cases that it needs to access this critical data," Elias explained. "This humiliating string of defeats threatens to derail Trump’s signature plan to subvert the 2026 midterm elections."
Trump will also have difficulty blaming these court losses on left-wing judges, Elias added, because Trump-appointed judges have been responsible for more than half of the defeats the DOJ has suffered, which he described as "nothing short of a debacle."
Elias, whose law firm has been involved in trying to block the DOJ from accessing voter files, said it was worth celebrating the latest victory over the Trump administration, but he warned that more fights are coming.
"As Republican electoral prospects wane, Trump will grow more desperate," he wrote, "and that desperation will lead to even more extreme actions by the administration. It will also require much more litigation."
Trump earlier this year signed an executive order instructing the United States Postal Service to not deliver ballots in any states that have not given the federal government access to its voter lists.
The order, currently being challenged in court by congressional Democrats and all 23 Democratic state attorneys general, could essentially eliminate mail-in voting in the US, opponents have warned.
CNN on Monday reported that the administration is also trying to squeeze states into changing their election laws by withholding "tens of millions of dollars in federal homeland security funds" from states unless they phase out specified electronic voting systems and move back to relying on paper ballots.
States wanting to receive funding must also "run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database," CNN reported.
Judge Finds Trump DOJ Abused Subpoenas in Attempt to ‘Coerce’ Minnesota Leaders
"I will never stop exercising my constitutional rights to stand up for Minnesotans and the American freedoms we hold dear," Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said after the ruling.
A federal judge on Monday quashed multiple grand jury subpoenas issued by the US Department of Justice aimed at political leaders in Minnesota, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
In his ruling, Judge Patrick Schiltz of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota found there was "no doubt" that the DOJ had initiated "a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action," which he described as "a blatantly unlawful and unethical use of the grand-jury process."
Finding that "the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming," Schiltz, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, cited multiple instances of Trump administration officials "threatening and attempting to punish states and localities that have adopted 'sanctuary' policies."
The judge then quoted several social media posts by President Donald Trump in which he warned that "retribution" was coming for Minnesota officials, as well as statements from Trump DOJ officials linking grand jury subpoenas to the state's lack of cooperation with federal immigration enforcement operations.
Schiltz also said it was "risible" for the DOJ to justify the subpoenas on the grounds that it is investigating officials' refusal to devote state and local resources to assisting federal law enforcement, which he described as "constitutionally protected conduct."
"A grand-jury subpoena cannot be issued for an improper purpose," Schiltz emphasized. "The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate."
In a statement released after Schiltz's ruling, Walz hailed the decision as "a victory for the rule of law and our democracy," depicting the DOJ probe as yet another example of the department "pursuing criminal investigations into the president's political opponents."
"I will never stop exercising my constitutional rights to stand up for Minnesotans and the American freedoms we hold dear," Walz added.
Frey also released a statement after the ruling, accusing the DOJ of "subpoenaing political opponents because they spoke out on behalf of their constituents."
"My job is not to stay silent when Minneapolis residents are killed, families are torn apart, and businesses are closed," Frey said. "My job is to stand up for the people I represent, the families who call our city home, and the thousands of people who showed up and spoke out."
Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) celebrated the ruling, which she said "confirms what we knew all along—that this was nothing but a baseless political attack on Minnesota’s leaders."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted in a social media post just how far off the rails the Trump DOJ has gone.
"The Trump administration’s efforts to use the criminal grand jury process to retaliate against Minnesota and Minneapolis has floundered badly," he wrote. "It's a sign of how they are willing to toss aside basic rules to get at their enemies, and how the courts have largely smacked them down when they tried."
'They Knew Exactly Who Mona Khalil Was': Israel Kills Lebanese Turtle Conservationist
"The murder of Mona Khalil sends a chilling message: Even those whose only weapon is compassion, whose only mission is preservation, are not spared," said one observer.
For more than 25 years, she protected the endangered sea turtles that laid their eggs near her beachside home in southern Lebanon. But Mona Khalil could not protect herself from Israeli invaders who spared neither her sanctuary nor its steward.
Khalil, 76, was mortally wounded when Israeli forces bombed her brightly painted conservation hub and ecotourism site, called the Orange House, in al-Mansouri, Tyre province, on June 4. She suffered injuries including severe burns during the attack, which also wounded her Ethiopian assistant, and was transported to a hospital in Beirut for treatment.
"They knew exactly who Mona Khalil was," Lebanese journalist and professor Marwa Osman said on social media following Khalil's death. "They knew the bright orange house... They knew it was not a military site, not a command center, not a battlefield position. It was one of the most recognizable symbols of environmental conservation on Lebanon's southern coast; a sanctuary dedicated to protecting endangered sea turtles and preserving life."
The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that Khalil "was not a target."
"There is no known IDF strike in which she was injured,” the military said. “However, strikes were conducted in the area after the IDF issued evacuation warnings.”
Khalil—who was born in Nigeria in 1949 and held Dutch and Lebanese citizenship—co-founded the Orange House Project in 1999 in what had once been her grandmother's home. Khalil and volunteers gathered there each nesting season to protect sea turtles, their eggs, and hatchlings from both predators and people. She also fought against the privatization of beaches, habitat destruction, dynamite fishing, and other threats.
"For decades, Mona dedicated her life to protecting endangered sea turtles and their nesting habitats," the Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners said on Instagram. "Through the Orange House, she inspired generations of Lebanese to value and protect their natural heritage and coastal ecosystems. Her work made her one of Lebanon’s most respected voices for marine conservation and biodiversity protection."
Green Southerners co-founder Hisham Younes told the BBC on Saturday that Khalil "used to talk about the beach like it was a person."
"Her bond to the sunset, her bond to the water and the turtles... she was really into conservation, and into the soul, the spirit of conservation," Younes added.
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, Israeli attacks have killed at least 4,106 people—including 383 women, 251 children, and 135 medical workers—and wounded 12,153 others since March 2. Over 1 million Lebanese have also been forcibly displaced.
Over the weekend, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said his country's forces "need to go berserk" and "obliterate" Lebanon, all of which, he said, "must burn."
Ben-Gvir's comments were widely viewed as part of Israel's efforts to sabotage an elusive peace agreement between the United States and Iran, which has endured 114 days of an illegal US-Israeli war of choice.
Israel's Lebanon onslaught, occurring amid a backdrop of its ongoing genocide in Gaza, did not deter Khalil.
"When the war broke out, she said, 'No one should tell me to leave. I don't want to leave,'" Lebanese journalist and environmentalist Fadia Joumaa told Al Jazeera on Monday. "She made the decision to stay. What she said was, 'I'm a civilian. I don't have a weapon. I'll lock myself inside my home. This is my life.' She made that choice and remained in her house."
The Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners decried the Israeli strike, which "targeted a site that had long been known for environmental conservation, biodiversity protection, and public awareness."
"[Khalil's] death stands as a stark reminder of the devastating toll that Israeli attacks continue to exact on civilians, environmental defenders, and the natural heritage they sought to protect," the group said on Instagram. "We condemn the killing of Mona Khalil and reaffirm that those responsible for attacks on civilians and environmental defenders must be held accountable."
Recalling Khalil's successful campaign to ban dynamite fishing and the violent backlash it sparked from opponents, Joumaa told NPR: "Mona was a fighter. She did not like diplomacy. There were times when they shot at her house."
"She always told me: Defend the beach, defend the turtles, defend your country," she added.
Osman called the Israeli strike that killed Khalil "an assault on a woman whose life's work was devoted to safeguarding life itself, a woman known internationally for her environmental activism, whose name had become synonymous with the protection of Lebanon's coastline and its endangered sea turtles."
"The murder of Mona Khalil sends a chilling message: Even those whose only weapon is compassion, whose only mission is preservation, are not spared," Osman added.