The Lebanese Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam, and the Minister of the Interior, Ahmad Hajjar, shaking hands with gendarmes and local officials at the Kfar Joz gendarmerie in south Lebanon, during a tour of the Nabatieh region on Oct. 2, 2026. (Credit: Photo sent to our correspondent Mountasser Abdallah)
Abir Mroueh, a Shiite activist from the village of Ain Qana in the Nabatieh district, has been the target of an online smear campaign by Hezbollah supporters for the past several days, after she expressed support for Prime Minister Nawaf Salam during his visit on Oct. 2 to the city of Nabatieh, which has been heavily hit by Israeli bombings.
"We are with you till the end, we want the state. We want the [Israeli] withdrawal and reconstruction through negotiations," the activist told Salam in a video that was widely shared on social media and which drew backlash from Hezbollah supporters. The party itself sought to distance itself from the matter: "Hezbollah is not concerned with the controversy that swept social networks following Mroueh's remarks," a source within the party told L'Orient-Le Jour.
'She represents neither Ain Qana nor the Mroueh family'
Salam, who was accompanied by several members of his government, traveled last week to Nabatieh, a few kilometers from the area occupied by the Israeli army and from villages that Israel continues to bombard nearly every day. It was the prime minister's second visit to this part of southern Lebanon which Israeli strikes have heavily targeted since the last June's cease-fire, and his third visit to the South since taking office in February 2025.
Criticism from Hezbollah supporters quickly poured in following Mroueh’s comments. “This woman is not from the city of Nabatieh and does not represent the region. She represents neither Ain Qana nor the Mroueh family, which has given martyrs to the nation,” one online user commented.
"Abir is part of the NGO and Oct. 17 revolutionaries" — referring to the date the popular uprising began in 2019 — “She had her daughter baptized in a church. She went early in the morning to Nabatieh to welcome Nawaf Salam and is calling for peace with Israel,” another user wrote on X, targeting the activist’s private life. She is married to a Christian.
A photo of Mroueh’s daughter’s baptism was even shared and mocked online by Hezbollah supporters. A statement attributed to members of the Mroueh family as well as residents of Ain Qana emphasized that the activist’s positions do not represent either her family or her village.
'Two or three death threats'
Contacted by L’OLJ, Mroueh confirmed she had received "two or three death threats, one from Brazil telling me to keep quiet," as well as a threat directed at her young daughter. "I am swimming against the current. They want to silence me because my voice carries," the activist said. She nevertheless recounted being greeted by “women from the South exhausted by the war and its repercussions. At the supermarket in Deir Zahrani where I live, they approach me and express their support. The people are tired of war and precarious living conditions. They are demanding the presence of the state in the South.”
On Friday, Mroueh had already defended herself in a Facebook post. “If my patriotism and my demand for a state are deemed a crime today, then let my sentence be life imprisonment,” she wrote, denouncing Hezbollah’s “senseless adventures.”
“If you had the slightest bit of logic, conscience, morality or patriotism, you would have pity on your country, your people and yourselves; you would think of the tears of the mothers of martyrs, of the pain that breaks their hearts, and the fate of orphans,” she added.
Mroueh also revealed that her own brother had previously fought in the Radwan force, Hezbollah’s elite unit, “when he was only 14.” “You live in collective denial. Didn’t Syria teach you a lesson?! All those thousands of martyrs, victims of Iran and its ‘axis’: where are they today?!” she asked in her message.
In response to the campaign targeting her, Mroueh has received numerous messages of support from online users and political and media figures, including MP Paula Yaacoubian and journalist Diana Moukalled. “Don’t let yourself be influenced by Hezbollah’s trolls. What you said is true. You have my full support against the campaign by those who let the Israelis into the homes and lands” of south Lebanon, Yaacoubian wrote. “All my support to Abir Mroueh,” wrote Diana Moukalled, co-founder of the Daraj platform, accompanying her message with a photo of herself and the activist. “I said out loud what people only say in whispers. I broke the stereotypical image of southern Lebanese women,” Mroueh said in an interview with Daraj on Monday.
Hezbollah, widely criticized in Lebanon for dragging the country into a new war with Israel after launching attacks against Israel on March 2 in support of Iran, has repeatedly called for a suspension of direct negotiations with Tel Aviv and makes any withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon conditional on retaining its arms.