An article in IDF military pulication, Bamachaneh, profiling Tsurkov (pictured)
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a former Israeli human rights worker, was kidnapped in March by a Shia militia in Bahgdad. She had entered the country to pursue research for her graduate degree at Princeton University. Her research seems to have centered around the militia group, Kataib Hezbollah, which is an affiliate of the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah. Both have close ties to Iran.
Watching the exchange and learning, but for those claiming she was an “ally” , heres her tweet from less than 2yrs ago
The layers of zionist propaganda here is rich, the erasure of Palestinians, historic revision, mockery, with a sleight of hand too…. pic.twitter.com/V6eDJ39O0s
— Lamis Deek لميس ديك (@Lamis_Deek) July 6, 2023
Tsurkov’s research also centered on Syria. She tweeted highly inflammatory comments about Kataib’s role there, including denunciations of Iran, stating that one of their soldiers killed in a retaliatory US raid “died doing what he loved: occupying Syrian land in the name of spreading the doctrine of Shia clerical rule.”
She also criticized Palestinian Muslims (above tweet) accusing them of “appropriating” an “Aramaic-speaking Jew” and native of Roman Judea. She seems to suggest that because Jesus was a Jew who spoke Aramaic, rather than the Arabic language of Palestinian Muslims, it indicated some sort of hypocrisy on their part.
Dear Elizabeth , I hope that you are safe and come back to fight the occupation and apartheid with us.
You volunteered many times in Hebron to expose the occupation.
Kidnapping her is very wrong and will not help any cause. pic.twitter.com/BCf9hcd7d0— Issa Amro عيسى عمرو 🇵🇸 (@Issaamro) July 6, 2023
Yet, adding to the complexity, she also was praised (above) by Palestinian activist, Issa Amro, as a champion of Palestinian rights. At one time, Tsurkov worked for the Israeli human rights NGO, Hamoked.
Tsurkov’s military intelligence background
An Israeli security source told me that Tsurkov did her military service in an OSINT (open-source intelligence) unit called, Chatzav. It is a sub-grouping of Israel’s SIGINT Unit 8200. He said that when she first entered the army, IDF intelligence recruited her for Unit 8200 itself. Her knowledge of Russian and Arabic made her a valuable asset for its intelligence work. But the Shin Bet, which grants high-level security clearances, refused her because of her Russian nationality. Russian spies and assets have infiltrated some of the highest level military and political bodies over many decades.
She joined Chatzav, which had a lower level security clearance. It does open-source research on countries targeted by Israeli intelligence including the Arab states, Iran, Russia, China, etc. This includes reading academic and think tank publications, monitoring news media and social media content. Another role, according to a military publication, was to serve as a “social media warrior” adding pro-Israel content to social media platforms and sites like Wikipedia. Chatzav was disbanded in 2021 and its personnel were integrated into Unit 8200 itself.
The source told me that she was not working for the Mossad, a suspicion widely suggested on social media platforms. But whether she was or not, this is how she was likely how she was perceived by those who kidnapped her.
Also, there are many casses in which Israeli intelligence has exploited journalist and academics who have reported in countries where it has no official presence. They are not employed by Mossad as agents, but they serve as intelligence “assets.” I’m not saying Tsurkov was such a figure. But certainly the Mossad would be extremely interested in her research in Syria and Iraq.
Why did Israel delay revealing her kidnapping?
The NY Times reports that Tsurkov entered Iraq in January. She was kidnapped in March. But Israel waited until this month to publicly acknowledge her detention. Haaretz claims it did so now because “social media” accounts had begun to report on it. However, I have learned from a knowledgeable source that this is incorrect. Israel went public after the government was contacted by Israeli journalist, Ronen Bergman, who reports for the New York Times. He had the story (he has a close relationship with Mossad officials) and notified the PM’s office that the Times planned to report it. It did on July 5th here.
Then Bibi Netanyahu, a hound for publicity that will burnish his image (or in this case distract from his current political predicament), made the news public. He decided to pre-empt the Times report in order to better control the narrative and ensure that he was front and center in any reporting (though much of it doesn’t mention Netanyahu explicitly).
The decision by an Israeli to enter a hostile country using a foreign passport while seeking to conceal Israeli nationality, also seems troubling. Deceiving officials of a country–let alone the local subjects with whom you come into contact–in which you seek to do academic research, seems like an ethical breach.
Princeton also has to answer for its role in this affair. In 2015, a University doctoral student was taken hostage while doing research in Iran. He spent three years in prison there. In 2021, he sued Princeton for negligence. This account is eerily similar to Tsurkov’s predicament:
Wang and Qu [the kidnap victim and his spouse] allege that at various points, the actions of Princeton officials put Wang at greater risk. The complaint cites, for example, faculty who encouraged Wang to study in Iran, despite the country’s “history of kidnapping and holding hostage American citizens,” and alleges that an official in the provost’s office advised against seeking the aid of the Swiss Embassy in Iran before his arrest.
Did Tsurkov’s academic advisor approve of her trip and its research purpose? If so, it strikes me that Princeton has not learned its lesson, at a dear price to the victims of its negligence.
Iran is known to hold academic researchers in deep suspicion, believing that they disguise intelligence missions with academic credentials. Other scholars such as Nazanin Zaghair-Ratcliffe, were also arrested by Iranian intelligence and imprisoned for years. Even Iranian scholars face such persecution.
Because of her Israeli intelligence background, not only would Iraqi Shia be suspicious of her intentions, they would find her an important asset in learning about Israeli intelligence- gathering methods and the content of the information it collected. Israel’s military intelligence division, AMAN, would also have to review everything she touched as an intelligence analyst, to determine whether she could expose any secrets to her interrogators.
Israeli law prohibits its citizens from entering hostile Arab countries, including Iraq (though many Israelis have ignored the regulation and traveled to such places). Tsurkov entered using her Russian passport. Since she presumably used her real name, it would have been easy for anyone to discover she was Israeli by doing a rudimentary online search. Knowing this, and knowing that Iraq’s poulation is 80% Shia, it seems like poor judgment to undertake such a trip. In doing so, she not only put herself in danger, she endangered any Iraqi with whom she came into contact.
Israelis on social media have reacted with fury to claims by their country’s critics who have accused her of being a settler (her parents live in Gush Etzion, one of Israel’s earliest settlements), a military veteran, and deeply hostile to Shia Muslims. They are angry that the world does not see her exclusively as a victim and they ranted against any suggestions of criticism against her.
I’ve got to say that the anti-Shia/Iran tweets & even anti Palestinian Muslim tweets from her I’ve read make me feel disquiet. She claims to support Palestine (w Issa Amro even vouching for her). She seems to be a cipher. She also blocked me yrs ago, which mystified me. https://t.co/83i0T0Qf1P pic.twitter.com/JO9jV9xRu9
— Tikun Olam (@richards1052) July 7, 2023
Roy Yellin, the director of public outreach for B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights NGO, attacked me (tweet above) with similar harshness, calling my tweets about Tsurkov “disgusting.” He also falsely accused me of opposing women performing academic research. His defensiveness is representative of the attitude I described above. It’s all the more disappointing considering that I have always respected B’Tselem’s work and highlighted it here frequently. For someone tasked with engaging the public and promoting the group’s human rights work to attack a journalist-activists with the same goals, is counter-productive at best, destructive at worst.
He and other Israelis who defend Tsurkov because of her work for Palestinian rights, miss the point: her research on Kataib Hezbollah had nothing to do with Palestinians or their rights. Whatever good she may have done in this sphere, is hardly relevant in the present case.
People are losing their minds over this on either side. There must be a clear, yet criticial middle ground based on facts and evidence, as we know them. And no, we don’t need to wait until Tsurkov is free to discuss this. There are lessons that should be learned now, not a month or year from now after she is freed.
NOTE: After publication, Scott Long clarified that his criticism was not directed at me, but at others on Twitter who hold the views he was attacking. Obviously that wasn’t clear to me.
There is far too much outrageous rhetoric flying around. Let it fly. But not here.
Israel has no leverage
Further complicating matters for Tsurkov, Israel has had deeply hostile relations with Iran for decades. The latter also exerts considerable influence among Shia Iraqis.
Though it discovered she’d been kidnapped only a few days after it happened, Israel did not make the news public. Clearly, telling her kidnappers that she was an Israeli citizen would have made her situation much worse, even if they had already discovered this. Thus, Israel not only had no leverage to regain her freedom, it had negative leverage. This left her with no means of diplomatic support and few resources to gain her release.
Israel asked the US to intervene on her behalf. But we have our own prisoner issues with Iran, so it’s doubtful the Biden administration could do much even if it wished to. Not to mention, the militia which kidnapped her has attacked US troops in Syria, following which we attacked and killed several of their soldiers.
In closing, I do not condone her kidnapping. On the contrary, I wish she could be freed today. But she can’t. And that deepens the tragedy.
I’ve written about Siamak Namazi, kidnapped by Iran and still imprisoned there. I understand the suffering such victims endure. Kidnapping is a vile act. But, on the other hand, it is my duty as a journalist to analyze events candidly and acutely, letting the chips fall where they may.
Yes I agree. On a human level one must have sympathy for Elizabeth Tsurkov. It is unfortunate in the extre me that Israel has behaved with murderous hostility and duplicity to Arabs and Muslims throughout the region. One cannot forget how 10 or so Israelis entered Dubai years ago in order to murder a member of Hamas Those with blood on their hands, to use a frequent Israeli meme, would do well not to lecture others.
If Israel had not demonised all Shi’ite Muslims and Arabs it might have some friends in the Middle East other than the most repressive collaborators and regimes. Those who murder children in Jenin do not come with clean hands.
@ TOny: Just as a sidebar: Mossad sent 27 assassins to Dubai to kill one poor shlub. What a bollocks that affair was!
Iraqi Shia resistance fighters against illegal occupation by US and allied forces. Completely irresponsible to do “academic” work inside a state that is not a democracy and hostile to the West.
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Qods Force, were assassinated by a cowardly attack in Baghdad by a US strike on January 2, 2020. Alleged involvement of British and Israeli intelligence to make the killing possible.
As a dual Israeli-Russian citizen I would send a request to Moscow for intervention on grounds of humanity.
US Ally Soleimani’s Global Fight Against Terror
• He fought the Iraqi invasion of Islamic Republic of Iran by Saddam Hussein
• He fought the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan in the 80s
• He fought the Taliban in the 90s
• He fought the invaders of Iraq post March 2003
• He fought Al Qaeda and Islamic State foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq alongside the US coalition
There used to be a number of Shiite villages in the Galilee. When Zionist colonial settlers put the long prepared genocide against Palestinians into operation in Dec 1947, the Zionist death squads and murder gangs made sure to destroy the entire Shiite community of the Galilee. Outside of Lebanon, this particular act of Zionist genocide against a Palestinian community has been forgotten.
I apologize because this comment is somewhat tangential to the topic of Richard’s article.
Tsurkov seems to be an extreme Zionist that tried to create some Palestinian-sympathetic credentials for some future use.
I am always amazed at the ignorance of claiming that Jesus was a Jew.
Palestinian Biblical Temple Judaism, whose primary scripture was the Hebrew Bible, was a religion that had little similarity to Rabbinic Judaism, which is a Mesopotamian religion, whose primary scripture is the Babylonian (Mesopotamian) Talmud.
Jesus was not a Jew in any modern sense. He never heard of the Oral Law, which is a complete fabrication from a period after Jesus’ death. Neither Philo of Alexandria nor Josephus nor the New Testament ever heard of the Oral Law. Jesus never read the Mishnah. He never saw a Talmud or any of the Judaic literature written after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus did not regulate his life by a halakhic code (Code of Rabbinic Jewish Law). Modern observant Rabbinic Jews live according to one of three such codes:
a. that (מִשְׁנֵה תּוֹרָה) of the RAMBAM (רמב״ם),
b. that (שולחן ערוך) of the HaMehaber (הַמְחַבֵּר), or
c. that (השולחן הערוך עם המפה) of the REMA (רמ״א).
Each of these codes was created more than a millennium after the death of Jesus.
Jesus was a Galilean subject of Herod Antipas, who was a Judaic king. Herod Antipas was not a Judean king because his ancestry was Arabized Idumean, Samarian, and Nabatean Arab. Herod Antipas had no Judean ancestry whatsoever.
If Jesus were to return today, he would have to convert to Rabbinic Judaism to become Jewish. Because Jesus is Palestinian, the Israeli Rabbinate would not accept him for conversion because Zionists consider Palestinians to be subhuman vermin incapable of becoming true humans by conversion to Judaism.
It is important to understand how Nazi the mentality of a Zionist is. Calling Jesus a Jew differs in no way from calling Jesus an Aryan. Just as Nazi fake Christians used to fly the Nazi flag inside and outside their churches, Zionist fake Jews fly the Zionist flag inside and outside their synagogues.
When a fake scholar Zionist propagandist like Joseph Klausner claims Jesus was a Jew, he hardly differs from the Nazi poet Dietrich Eckart, who used to spin fantasies of German Aryan descent from Atlanteans.
@Martillo
“Jesus was not a Jew in any modern sense. He never heard of the Oral Law, which is a complete fabrication from a period after Jesus’ death. ”
The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem written around 1200 AD that is based on an oral tradition of Germanic heroic legend that has some of its origin in historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries and that spread throughout almost all of Germanic-speaking lands.
Similarly, In France, the epic Chanson de Roland, France’s first written literary work, composed in 1040 AD, was based on older oral traditions too.
So why, Mr. Joachim, couldn’t there have been an Oral Law that proceeded the Written Law, which you mistakenly call Talmud.
The Oral Law did exist at the time of Jesus, but Jesus might well have rejected it out of hand, say, had he been an Essene or Sadducee Jew?
Or Jesus may have been an ignorant, too poor to go to a rabbi who’d teach him, by memory, the Oral Law.
I am not sure this discussion belongs on Richard’s blog.
I am uncertain what is being asked.
Rabbinic Judaism has a specific doctrine about Oral Law (תּוֹרָה שֶׁבְּעַל־פֶּה). Without the Oral Law, there is no Rabbinic Judaism. There is no trace of this doctrine until Judah the Prince and Nathan the Babylonian redacted the Mishnah in the third century CE. Before the Mishnah there is no reference in the literature of Judaism to an Oral Law.
I can speculate that the redactors were trying to create a codex version of Judaism to compete with Christianity, which was the codex religion par excellence of antiquity. I can justify a hypothesis that in the face of the shattering of Palestinian Biblical Temple Judaism, the two redactors were trying to introduce a version of Judaism that was practiced in Mesopotamia/Babylonia, where a Temple to El-Yahweh still functioned at Ctesiphon/Casifia. According to texts in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Syriac, this version of Mesopotamian Judaism never obtained much traction among the Palestinian peasantry, which almost entirely became Christians of some sort.
The full apparatus of Rabbinic Judaism does not really exist until the time of RASAG in the 10th century. There are are arguments that can put the crystallization of Rabbinic Judaism even later in time.
For the most part Rafe’s comment shows so little understanding of Rabbinic Judaism that it cannot be addressed in any reasonable fashion.
Jonathan/Joachim: While in some cases I value your knowledge on some subjects, I find your comments way over-long. In others, I object to your views. Not to mention venturing far afield from the post topic. I urge you to not try to offer us the sum of all your knowledge, but to confine youself to the post subject. And keep it short and succinct. Also, confine yourself to one comment per post.
Also, I banned you as Joachim Martillo. I frown upon commenters adopting new identities in order to circumvent a ban. I have in the past restored comment privileges, but only after asking me directly to do so. You didn’t.
I am glad to learn that Richard is like me an anti-Zionist Jew that is skeptical of B’Tselem, which cannot possibly a human rights group until it demands (a) the abolition of the Zionist state and (b) the return of Palestinians to their homes, property, villages, and country.
By means on unanimous vote on UN General Assembly A/RES/96, The Crime of Genocide, the international community banned genocide on Dec 11, 1946 and made this ban jus cogens. The issue is simple.
What is jus cogens? From the UN:
A peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens) is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law (jus cogens) having the same character.
The white racist states, which consists of the N. American and European states as well as Australia, insist on giving the Zionist state a license to violate jus cogens even though the mere existence of the Zionist state negates the international anti-genocide legal regime and undermines international law.
Please note that genocide is a crime against a group while murder is a crime against an individual.
From Jan 30, 1933 until the start of the Holocaust, the Nazi regime’s main crime against the European Jewish group (or community) was genocide. After the start of the Holocaust, the Nazi regime’s main crime against European Jews consisted of mass murder, which is localized murder against at least 3 or more individuals within a short time period. The Nazi regime continued to commit genocide against the European Jewish group, but with respect to Holocaust-related crimes, prosecutors tended to focus on the charge of mass murder because this charge is much easier to prove.
One week ago …
Russia may be involved in negotiations for a swap deal …
Persian edition
The Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat claims that Iran and Israel are negotiating a prisoner exchange through Russia
Hostage swap expanded …
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/middle-east/palestinian-territories/1689622368-activists-demand-tsurkov-be-exchanged-for-5-000-palestinians
Activists demand Elizabeth Tsurkov be ’exchanged’ for 5,000 Palestinians | i24 |
U.S. President Joe Biden’s former special envoy for Iran, Rob Malley, was placed on leave and now under investigation by the FBI for alleged manipulation of classified information. JCPOA talks and prisoner swap negotiations.
Prisoners released from Evin prison into house arrest … exchange imminent | NYT |
Iran has no pre-conditions for prisoner exchange: FM Amir-Abdollahian | PressTV.ir – Aug. 8, 2023 |
No mention of Elizabeth Tsurkov?
Deal Done
@ Oui: It was a mistake for Amnesty to categorize Elizabeth Tsurkov in the same way as it does political prisoners of conscience. Her background, views and deceit make her a questionable figure. While I decry her kidnapping and believe she should be released, her IDF intelligence background, her vicious hatred of Iran, along with the dubious decisions she made before her kidnapping make her motives complex and ambiguous at best.
As for New Lines, it’s noteworthy that several of its editors, including Michael Weiss who I profiled here, are ardent foes of Iran and Shia Islam.