Jerusalem—Photos of Syrians celebrating the killing of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah Last week the brutal acts of sexual slavery, mass starvation and kidnapping highlighted the terrorist group’s role in the Syrian civil war, which has led to the deaths of more than half a million Syrians.
Walid Fares, a leading expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital that Hezbollah has carried out “ethnic cleansing” in Syria. He said Hezbollah was “behind the uprooting of millions of Syrians of all communities, primarily Sunni. They have committed rape. They have committed sexual exploitation on a large scale, including sexual slavery.”
Israel’s targeted killing Nasrallah This past weekend has sparked greater interest in the inner workings of the Shia militant organization that is widely considered the de facto ruler over Lebanon.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist entity is primarily known in the US for the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people in 1983, and Marine barracks bombed in Beirut Also in 1983, resulting in the killing of 241 US military personnel.
Hezbollah Radwan forces train in southern Lebanon, close to the Israeli border. (AP/Hassan Ammar)
A new investigative video series from the Center for Peace Communications (CPC) sheds a rare light on the role of US-designated terrorist movement Hezbollah in sexual slavery, rape and mass murder. Shocking revelations about a Syrian woman being enslaved by Hezbollah aired after Israel in September reportedly carried out devastating blasts on pagers possessed by thousands of Hezbollah militants across Lebanon.
“Hezbollah’s war against Israel obscures its larger war to subjugate much of the region — as a dictator in Lebanon, an occupation in Syria,” CPC Chairman Joseph Brood told Fox News Digital. “Hezbollah, the sex and drug mafia and the center of Iran’s Arab empire, wants a different future.”
The previous series of CPC, named “Whispered in Gaza,” which received over 20 million views, resulting in the issuance of a fatwa against Hamas by Iraqi and Pakistani clerics. It was used by anti-Hamas activists in Gaza during street protests against the terrorist organization’s rule in July 2023.
Syrians gather in the lobby of a damaged apartment block, with a poster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s Shia movement Hezbollah, to the right, a car bomb near the revered Shia shrine of Sayyida Zaynab to the south Happens after the explosion. Syria’s capital, Damascus, on April 25, 2016. (Louis Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)
He added, “The eight-part series ‘Hezbollah Hostages,’ produced by the Center for Peace Communications and presented by The Free Press, presents the actual recorded testimony of Lebanese and Syrian civilians in Hezbollah’s custody to protect their identities. And to honor his life, each recorded interview is visually interlaced with creative images and animation.”
A video depicts the abduction and sexual enslavement of Aaliya, a married 20-year-old woman from the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. She describes how Youssef, a member of Hezbollah, followed her for months and eventually took her hostage.
Hezbollah sided with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after citizens launched a protest movement in 2011 to secure democracy in the deeply repressive nation.
Hezbollah militants aided Assad in his scorched-earth campaign to eliminate opposition to his rule, resulting in the deaths of more than 500,000 people. Syria is now a fragmented and war-torn country.
“They have committed rape. They have committed sexual exploitation on a large scale, including keeping sex slaves.”
Hezbollah’s ally, the Sunni militant movement Hamas, followed by the jihadist terrorist organization, has engaged in rape and frequent sexual assaults against Israeli women and men. Attacked Israel on October 7,
Hezbollah joined Hamas’s war against Israel on October 8 when it launched rockets into northern Israel. Hamas killed approximately 1,200 people on October 7, including more than 30 Americans.
The fundamental corruption and mafia-style criminality of Hezbollah’s global organization is examined by Matthew Levitt, director of the Reinhardt Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute.
28 September 2024, Syria, Idlib: Syrians celebrate in Idlib city after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader in an Israeli airstrike. (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
He published a 2018 report on “Hezbollah’s corruption crisis deepens”. Levitt said that “some prominent individuals in Hezbollah are involved in horrific criminal enterprises, including sex and human trafficking.” He cited the example of Hezbollah official Ali Hussein Zeiter, who, according to media reports, was linked to “A large prostitution network, employing mainly Syrian women.”
Hezbollah’s criminal enterprise and terrorism continues to impact Americans.
How Lebanon’s Hezbollah group became a key player in the Israel-Hamas war
Zoya Fakhoury, executive director of the Amer Foundation, told Fox News Digital that “Hezbollah is a proxy group of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that has the blood of thousands of innocent individuals, including American citizens, on its hands. The death of Hassan Nasrallah calls for accountability for multiple individuals.” “An important step in that direction, but especially for my family, my father, Amer Fakhoury, was a former American hostage who was unlawfully detained under the direct orders of Hassan Nasrallah.”
Syrians celebrate in the city of Idlib following news claiming the killing of Hezbollah militant leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Israeli military said it attacked the headquarters of the Hezbollah militia in a Beirut suburb on Friday, September 27, 2024. (Photo by Anas Alkharboutli/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
He added, “He was made a political pawn by Hezbollah and died because of the torture he suffered in Lebanon. We hope that the Lebanese government will take this opportunity to eliminate Hezbollah and return Lebanon to the Islamic Republic.” Will free you from occupation and will work.” Towards the path of peace.”
Several hundred Syrian refugees wait to enter Turkey at the border in Suruc, Turkey, Sunday, September 21, 2014. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilisi)
in August, Fox News Digital reported New book by Fakhoury’s four daughters includes first-hand accounts of his detention and its events harrowing rescue operation to bring them back to the United States in his book “Silenced in Beirut: American Businessman Amer Fakhhour’s Six-Month Ordeal as a Hostage in Lebanon”.
Walid Fares, a leading expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital that Hezbollah has carried out “ethnic cleansing” in Syria. He said that Hezbollah was “behind the uprooting of millions of Syrians of all communities, primarily Sunni. They have committed rape. They have committed sexual exploitation on a large scale, including sexual slavery.”
Fares, who advises U.S. presidential candidates on Middle East foreign policy, said Hezbollah defends the taking of jihadist women as hostages because under Islamist Sharia law they can take women from “enemy camps.”
Israel destroys Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in spectacular pager blast operation: Expert
Pictures of Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut days earlier, hang above a stall as people shop in the Sayyida Zainab district of Damascus, September 29, 2024 Were. (Photo –/AFP via Getty Images)
He said there was no doubt that if Hezbollah captured Israeli women, they would treat them the same as enslaved Syrian women. Faiers said that if Hezbollah took over a kibbutz, village or town in Israel, one “could expect that they would kill the men and capture the women. Some would be raped and killed. And other Israeli women will be held by Hezbollah.”
Fares said Hezbollah is no different from the Islamic State in implementing jihadist ideology. Hezbollah “is a global threat. Look at how they treat their own women and how they separate them and organize them into the service of jihadists.”
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Brood said that “‘Hostages of Hezbollah’ debuted on September 16, the day before pagers blasted across Lebanon. A new episode begins every Monday through November 4. In the upcoming episode, we’ll be right in Beirut. “Outside, we will investigate the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh. With the help of Shia civilians living there.”
He said, “Dahiyah is Lebanon’s shadow capital – home to Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus, politburo and prisons – as well as the central node for all of Iran’s proxies in the region, from Yemen’s Houthis to Iraq’s militias to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Yet that same landscape is also home to many of Hezbollah’s opponents—and in later episodes, we meet them, too: Shia veterans of the nationwide 2019 street protests, who sought to end the war by demanding a different future. Take courage; Israel, liberate young minds and restore the rule of law in Lebanon.”
Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.
