Maryam Younnes

Though the escalating tension on Israel’s northern border has been part of the war from the very start, our collective attention was – for months – focused on Gaza. Recently, however, that has begun to shift, and speculations regarding Hezbollah’s intentions have taken center stage.

The tragic deaths of 12 kids in Majdal Shams ten days ago, followed by the retaliatory assassination of Fuad Shukr, one of Hezbollah’s chief military leaders, only raised the already-high levels of anxiety and uncertainty. Does Nasrallah want an all-out war? Are we about to be bombarded by thousands of rockets raining down from Lebanon? And when will the sixty-plus-thousand evacuated residents of the north finally be able to return home?

Everyone seems to have an opinion on these matters. But with all the experts and pundits out there, the truth is that few know Hezbollah as well as the members of a small, and often forgotten, community living in Israel. These are the former fighters of the SLA – the South Lebanon Army – a primarily Christian militia that for years fought alongside Israel against the PLO and Hezbollah. When Israel withdrew its forces from south Lebanon in 2000, many SLA members fled their home country – where they were largely considered to be traitors and collaborators – and relocated to Israel. While some later returned to Lebanon and others moved to third countries, roughly three to four thousand former SLA militiamen and their family members live in Israel today, and have been granted Israeli citizenship. But in the countless rounds of violence on the northern front in the last 24 years, the SLA community has found itself in an impossible position: Their adoptive country (Israel) is at war with their sworn enemy (Hezbollah), but is also – as a by-product – bombing their hometowns and villages in Southern Lebanon, where many of their friends and family members still reside.

Welcome to the Middle East. As always, it’s complicated.

In today’s episode, we hear from Maryam Younnes, whose father was an SLA commander who relocated to Israel back in May 2000.