Sparse records point towards the Lebanese National Resistance Front, or JAMOUL, that played a crucial role in initiating resistance to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in parallel to the significant role of Islamic organizations. To approach JAMMOUL’s history behooves social and discursive contextualization. A re-telling of this story from the present moment is embroiled in competition over resistance narratives, disagreements over the transformation of the Lebanese left, and disparagement of contemporary resistance agents. These political positions created highly polemical representations of the past that call for a re-representation in a way that expresses the nuances and richness of this historical moment, and might speak to a larger debate regarding the transformation and demise of the Lebanese left. My task is neither to demonize nor romanticize the Left's resistance against the Zionist enemy, but an attempt to provide a critical history of the rise of the armed resistance movement that was part of a larger project of secular revolutionary thought and the ways in which this particular history has refracted onto the present political landscape. I do so by gathering varying historical descriptions and political discussions from current and former leftists on how they understand this particular historical conjuncture from the present moment. Weaving in newly conducted interviews from both JAMMOUL participants and onlookers, I identify both discursive tropes orienting scholarship and sociological-political factors shaping participants’ understanding at the time. I do so by contextualizing the organization’s formation within a field of struggle, and examining the material that has accumulated, particularly from Leftist sources, to recuperate JAMMOUL’s experience.