Kidnapping of David S. Dodge

Date: July 19, 1982 • Location: Ra’s Bayrūt, Lebanon

In one of the first militant attacks by Hezbollah, David S. Dodge, president of the American University of Beirut, is kidnapped.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with an active paramilitary wing. Its military and security activities have been prohibited by the Lebanese government since March 2026, amid the 2026 Lebanon war. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. Its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army in 2016.