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information visit dignity memorial.com. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross.

As the war between Israel and Hamas continues, the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is escalating.

Hamas is based in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, both groups want to create an Islamist state. Both groups are backed by Iran and both want to eliminate Israel.

My guest Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at the New Yorker.

Earlier this summer he went on a reporting trip to the south of Lebanon which has largely been taken over by Hezbollah fighters.

It's the area targeted by Israeli rockets and it's the most dangerous part of Lebanon.

Filkins is used to danger.

He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

for the New York Times and wrote the book The Forever War.

In Lebanon, he spoke with a Hezbollah commander and to its deputy secretary general.

He also talked with a Maronite Christian priest whose village was not targeted by Israelis

but it was surrounded by villages that were in ruins.

Filkins crossed over the border into Israel and visited a kibbutz near the border, which had largely

been abandoned because of the danger from Hezbollah rockets.

His article in this week's New Yorker is titled,

Will Hezbollah and Israel go to war?

He says, if they do, it will be a war that could draw in Iran and the U.S.

We recorded our interview yesterday morning

before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress.

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