JERUSALEM—Photos of Syrians celebrating the assassination of Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah last week put the spotlight on the brutal activities of the terror group’s role in sex slavery, mass starvation and kidnappings in the Syrian civil war which led to the deaths of over half a million Syrians.
Walid Phares, a leading expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital that Hezbollah has “committed ethnic cleansing” in Syria. He said Hezbollah “was behind the uprooting of millions of Syrians, of all communities, mainly Sunni. They have perpetrated rape. They have perpetrated mass sexual abuse, including keeping sexual slaves.”
Israel’s targeted assassination of Nasrallah last weekend has prompted greater interest in the inner workings of the Shiite terrorist organization that is widely considered the de facto ruler over Lebanon.
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The Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist entity is mainly known in America for bombing the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people in 1983, and the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut also in 1983, resulting in the murders of 241 U.S. military personnel.
A new investigative video series by the Center for Peace Communications (CPC) shines a rare light on the U.S.-designated terrorist movement Hezbollah’s role in sexual slavery, rape and mass murder. The shocking expose about Hezbollah’s enslavement of a Syrian woman aired days after Israel reportedly launched devastating explosions of pagers held by thousands of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon in September.
CPC President Joseph Braude told Fox News Digital “Hezbollah’s war on Israel obscures its larger war to subjugate much of the region — as a tyrant in Lebanon, an occupier in Syria, a mafia of sex and drug trafficking, and the nerve center of Iran’s Arab empire. Millions of Arabs whose lives have been shattered by the militia want a different future. Hezbollah does not want the world to hear their voices.”
CPC’s previous series, called “Whispered in Gaza,” which was viewed over 20 million times, led to a Fatwa being issued against Hamas by Iraqi and Pakistani clerics. It was used by Gaza anti-Hamas activists during the July 2023 street protests against the terror organization’s rule.
He added “‘Hezbollah’s Hostages,’ an eight-part series produced by the Center for Peace Communications and presented by The Free Press, features the actual recorded testimony of Lebanese and Syrian civilians in Hezbollah’s grip. To protect their identities and honor their lives, each recorded interview is accompanied visually by creative images and animation.”
One video depicts the kidnapping and sexual enslavement of Alya, a married 20-year-old woman from the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. She reveals how Yusuf, a member of Hezbollah, “stalked” her for months and eventually took her hostage.
Hezbollah took the side of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after civilians launched a protest movement in 2011 to secure democracy in the highly repressive nation.
Hezbollah terrorists aided Assad in his scorched-earth campaign to wipe out opposition to his regime, resulting in the killing of over 500,000 people. Syria is now a fragmented and war-ravaged country.
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Hezbollah’s ally, the Sunni terrorist movement Hamas, engaged in rapes and sustained sexual assaults of Israeli women and men after the jihadi terrorist organization invaded Israel on Oct. 7.
Hezbollah joined Hamas’ war against Israel on Oct. 8 when it launched rockets into northern Israel. Hamas slaughtered nearly 1,200 people on Oct. 7, including over 30 Americans.
The fundamental corruption and mafia-style criminality of Hezbollah’s global organization has been examined by Matthew Levitt, the director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute.
He published a 2018 report on “Hezbollah’s Corruption Crisis Runs Deep.” Levitt noted that “some prominent figures in Hezbollah are involved in horrific criminal enterprises, including trafficking in sex and human beings.” He cited the example of Hezbollah official Ali Hussein Zeaiter, who according to media reports, was linked to “a large prostitution network, mainly employing Syrian women.”
Hezbollah’s criminal enterprise and terrorism continue to impact Americans.
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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 their hands. The death of Hassan Nasrallah is a significant step towards accountability for many individuals but particularly for my family. My father, Amer Fakhoury, was a former U.S. hostage unlawfully detained under direct orders from Hassan Nasrallah.”
She continued, “He was used a political pawn by Hezbollah and died because of the torture he faced in Lebanon. We hope to see the Lebanese government take this opportunity of the dismantling of Hezbollah to free Lebanon from the occupation of the Islamic Republic and work towards a path of peace.”
In August, Fox News Digital reported the new book by Fakhoury’s four daughters covering a first-hand account of his detainment and the harrowing rescue operation to bring him back home to the United States in their book, “Silenced in Beirut: American Businessman Amer Fakhour’s Six-Month Ordeal as a Hostage In Lebanon.”
Walid Phares, a leading expert on Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital that Hezbollah has “committed ethnic cleansing” in Syria. He said Hezbollah “was behind the uprooting of millions of Syrians, of all communities, mainly Sunni. They have perpetrated rape. They have perpetrated mass sexual abuse, including keeping sexual slaves.”
Phares, who has advised U.S. presidential candidates on Mideast foreign policy, said the Hezbollah jihadis defend their hostage taking of women as under Islamist Sharia law that they can take women from the “enemy camp.”
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He said there is no doubt that if Hezbollah captured Israeli women, they would treat them the same way as the enslaved Syrian women. Phares added that if Hezbollah captured a kibbutz, village or town in Israel, one “can expect that they will kill the males and the capture the women. Some would be raped and killed and other Israeli women would be kept by Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah is not different from the Islamic state in applying jihadi ideology, said Phares. Hezbollah “is a global threat. Look at how they treat their own women and how they separate them and organize them in the service of jihadists.”
Braude said that “‘Hezbollah’s Hostages’ debuted on Sept. 16, one day before pagers exploded across Lebanon. A new episode debuts every Monday through Nov. 4. In forthcoming episodes, we will probe the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh, just outside Beirut, with help from Shi’ite civilians who live there.”
He added “Dahiyeh is the shadow capital of Lebanon — home of Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus, politburo, and prisons — as well as the central node to all Iran’s proxies in the region, from the Houthis of Yemen to Iraq’s militias to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Yet the same landscape is also home to some of Hezbollah’s many opponents – and in later episodes, we meet them too: Shiite veterans of the countrywide 2019 street protests, who dared to demand a different future; civic activists striving to end the war on Israel, liberate young minds, and restore the rule of law in Lebanon.”
Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.