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Hezbollah, which means “Party of God”, is an Islamic party, terrorist group, organized crime syndicate, and proxy of Iran that has been spreading destruction and death across the Middle East for over four decades. It emerged from the turmoil of the Lebanese Civil War and aims to eliminate Israel and undermine the West, particularly the United States.

But Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organization by the US since 1997, does not limit itself to killing, destroying and subjugating Israel and the West.

For decades, it has harmed the millions of Arabs and Muslims it supposedly defends. Hezbollah is a tyrant in its native Lebanon, an occupier in neighboring Syria, a transnational sex and drug-trafficking mafia, and the nerve center of Iran’s empire in Arab countries—what it calls the “Axis of Resistance”—that stretches across the Levant, Yemen, and Iraq.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for a generation and committed the October 7 atrocities against Israel, is also a proxy for Iran. But Hezbollah’s size and reach far exceed those of Hamas. Hezbollah probably has more than 40,000 active and reserve fighters and an arsenal larger than that of many countries, with an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Many of them are aimed at northern Israel from Hezbollah’s position on the southern Lebanese border. The escalation in firing of these weapons has forced 100,000 Israeli civilians in the north of the country to flee their homes — and has prompted a strong Israeli response. Amid the fighting, 95,000 Lebanese civilians have been displaced from the south of that country, and the threat of a wider regional war looms.

But Hezbollah’s grip, though far-reaching, is not absolute. Hezbollah’s brutality is also its greatest weakness. Wherever it operates, it stirs a raging resentment, a sentiment shared by millions of Arabs yearning to free themselves.

Hezbollah maintains its power by using lethal force to silence dissenting voices, especially among the Lebanese Shiites it claims to represent. Yet these voices want to be heard, and the world must hear them, for the sake of a new conversation about how to end the harm Hezbollah is doing to both Arabs and Israelis.

Over the past year, the Center for Peace Communications, a New York-based nonprofit that I direct, has interviewed Shiite opponents of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Sunni victims of Hezbollah in Syria, each of whom in their own way has fought against the group’s destruction. At great personal risk, they let us record and film them as they witnessed the reality that Hezbollah conceals. To obscure the identities of these brave people, we have illustrated their stories with striking animations. But the voices you hear are theirs.

The result is Hostages of Hezbollaha production of the Center for Peace Communications, which The free press will be presented every Monday, starting today. The first episode of our series is “The Combatant.” It tells the story of a Lebanese Shiite boy fascinated by American action movies who is lured into battle by Hezbollah during Hezbollah’s entry into the Syrian civil war.

The fables he was told about the thrill of combat turn into bitter reality on the battlefield, and he undergoes a profound change of heart and mind that leads him to an unlikely new life.

In other weekly episodes, we delve into Hezbollah’s underworld through an unprecedented testimony from a drug trafficker, and the harrowing and poignant story of a young woman forced into sex slavery.

In confronting the mighty Hezbollah, we believe that the best approach is to unmask its pretensions as a movement of “resistance” by exposing its oppression of Arab peoples. Breaking the silence is crucial to mobilize the many victims of Hezbollah in the region. They must speak out and they must know that they are not alone.

Joseph Braude is president of the Center for Peace Communications. Follow his organization’s work at X @peacecomcenter and on Instagram @peacecomms.

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