Israel’s War on the Foreign Press (w/ Jeremy Loffredo) | The Chris Hedges Report

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Reporting from Israel in the aftermath of October 7th demands guts and courage. Censorship, rouge military personnel and an entire state hellbent on their goals of national security and ethnic cleansing spells a nightmare for journalists seeking to expose the truth. This nightmare became a reality for Grayzone reporter Jeremy Loffredo, who was detained in Israel in solitary confinement for three days after reporting on the Iranian missile attacks on October 1.

Loffredo joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to review his reporting covering Israel in the U.S., the Occupied Territories and Israel itself—as well as his frightening detainment by the occupying forces.

From covering Israeli counter protests in New York City to witnessing Israeli settlers obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza, Loffredo was consistently shocked by the attitude and drive of Israelis. The widespread nature of extreme rhetoric isn’t just isolated to a handful of individuals, Loffredo learned. “It was the first time I heard anyone be so candidly racist and genocidal, and truly, I didn't know the face of fanatical Zionism,” he tells Hedges.

During his time in Israel, Loffredo documented not only more of the genocidal rhetoric and actions from Israelis but also the suffering and bravery of Palestinians. One particular instance involved a woman who, out of a list of 50 previously detained people, was the only one willing to speak to him on record. The others were too frightened of the consequences that telling the truth might bring them.

Beyond revealing the utterly authoritarian and censorious climate of Israel, Loffredo’s detention and treatment by the IDF and Israeli police also expose the U.S. government’s corrupt devotion to the Jewish State, and how it abandons its purported democratic values when they interfere with the goals of their most “reliable partner” in the Middle East. When an Israeli social worker was sent by the American embassy to do a “wellness check” on Loffredo while he was in solitary confinement, the journalist hoped she would get him food and water, which he had been deprived of for days. Instead, she berated Loffredo because he “hurt Israel” and told him that he’d likely remain in prison for a long time. “That is the only help that the American Embassy afforded me… was giving me this Zionist social worker to berate me because of my reporting and give me no help at all,” Loffredo recounts.

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Host:

Chris Hedges

Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

Chris Hedges

Jeremy Loffredo, a reporter for The Grayzone, did some of the best reporting from inside Israel and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, on what is happening in Israel since the attacks by Hamas and other resistant groups on October 7, 2024. His reporting saw him detained in Israel on October 8, 2024, at a checkpoint in the West Bank. The allegations against him stemmed from a report about exposing the locations of strikes launched at military targets inside Israel by Iran. He was blindfolded, shackled in a military truck and placed in solitary confinement for three days with little food or water. He was eventually deported. His detention and deportation highlight the cases of Palestinian journalists, over 130 of whom have been killed in Gaza, many after being targeted by Israel. Israel has also arrested dozens of Palestinian journalists since October 7, 2023. At least 43 Palestinian journalists remain imprisoned by Israel, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Many are held under Israel’s “administrative detention” law, which allows for indefinite detention without charge or trial. Even a detainee’s location is often unknown. Human rights organizations have reported evidence of Palestinian journalists being tortured in Israeli prisons. Today we are going to look at several of Loffredo’s reports for the Grayzone, examine the heavy censorship in Israel, the suppression of all speech that raises concerns about the genocide in Gaza by Palestinians and Israelis, the heavy-handed repression against Palestinians that has been turbo charged since Oct. 7 and how this internal repression is reconfiguring the Israeli state into despotism. Joining me to discuss his reporting and detention is the journalist, Jeremy Loffredo.

I want to look at several of your reports before we go into detail about your arrest and what happened, so people can get a look at the kind of reporting you did. One of your earliest reports, before you even go to Israel and the occupied territories, is a story about Zionists at protests in New York City from last year. Just set that up for us and tell us what it is we're going to see.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure, so this was a few days after October 7, [2023], and this wasn't a protest, this was a counter protest. So, a few days later, Israel was well into launching their attack into Gaza, and there was an anti-war rally, a pro-Palestine rally in New York City outside of the Israeli embassy. And there was these counter protesters, these counter, Zionist protesters, pro-Israel protesters, cheering in opposition to the pro-Palestine people. And I, instead of covering the Palestinian protesters, which I was very familiar with their language and what they were saying, what they were arguing, free Palestine, end the occupation. And then I thought it would be more interesting instead to speak to the other side. And I interviewed them and allowed them to be extremely candid with me. And I interviewed many of them. They called for genocide. They called for a second Nakba. You'll see it right here.

Pro-Israel Protestor 1

Fuck Palestine. Palestine to my dick.

Jeremy Loffredo

What do you think the response should be from Netanyahu and the military to Gaza?

Pro-Israel Protestor 1

Kill all Palestinians! All of them! Not one left from the river to the sea, Palestine will be deceased.

Pro-Israel Protestor 2

Israel need to do like this. You see now, Gaza like this. Gaza need to do like this or like this, but all this, Jewish. Two options.

Jeremy Loffredo

What do you think the response should be?

Pro-Israel Protestor 3

We gotta wipe them off the fucking map. Flatten them like a parking lot.

Pro-Israel Protestor 4

There's nothing else you can do. They proved to us, there's nothing else you can do. We tried...

Pro-Israel Protestor 3

We tried everything, it doesn't work. We have to wipe them flat off the fucking map, like a fucking parking lot.

Pro-Israel Protestor 1

I'm not stopping till all Arabs are wiped out.

Pro-Israel Protestor 5

I think now it's the time that we need to erase Gaza. There is people inside, our people inside that [are] kidnapped and now we need to kill all of them and free Israel. All of the Arab belief[s] is killing Jewish [people] and killing and murder[ing] our people.

Pro-Israel Protestor 6

Flatten it. Flatten Gaza.

Pro-Israel Protestor 3

That will be the last war in Gaza.

Jeremy Loffredo

This will be?

Pro-Israel Protestor 3

Yes. It will be.

Chris Hedges

So Jeremy, how reflective were those statements to the kinds of statements you heard from Israelis once you got to Israel?

Jeremy Loffredo

Well, when I interviewed those people, I had never been to Israel before. I interviewed them and it was the first time I heard anyone be so candidly racist and genocidal, and truly, I didn't know the face of fanatical Zionism. I didn't know that people spoke like that. So I was surprised, and I was surprised that it wasn't just one person [that] says something crazy. It was a group of 100 people all saying the same thing, all saying things like that. And obviously this is everyone... I went to Israel a few weeks after that. Everyone has war fever. There's flags everywhere that weren't there a few weeks before. "Together, we will win" signs, "bring them home" signs. It's like post 9/11, almost, the war propaganda is everywhere. And it was also reflective, like in what people were saying. Maybe I was at a pub talking to someone who went to a liberal arts school, likes to paint, everything you hear them say, they're left leaning they want free health care, they want affordable housing. And then they speak about the Palestinian question and then they [say] the Arabs are smelly, we need to take over Gaza. And so even the people that I would expect to hear more progressive language from sounded exactly like the far-right, fanatical Zionists that I interviewed weeks before New York City. So it was kind of a shock to me.

Chris Hedges

Yeah, we had the same thing during the war in Yugoslavia. We used to interview Serbs, who were artists and well educated. And we called it the Linda Blair effect, because as soon as they started talking about Muslims, their heads started to spin around and around and around like, of course, fanatical Zionists. Let's talk about the West Bank. I was in the West Bank this summer. The genocidal tactics that are commonplace in Gaza are increasingly being used in the West Bank, and you have a very good report called "On the Silent War in the West Bank," and perhaps you can, because we're not showing the whole clip, just explain what it is we're going to see.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure. So surely, after October 7, no journalists are allowed in Gaza. And so I went to the West Bank. I wanted to be with the Palestinians after this war began, see what they were dealing with in the occupied West Bank. See what life was like. And after the war began, the hundreds of thousands of settlers in the West Bank, who are illegally there, they were all turned into military reservists, all of them, all of the military aged ones.

Chris Hedges

So just to be clear, Jeremy, there are 700,000 colonists in the West Bank. We're talking about a pretty large number.

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, a giant number. They were all given military uniforms. Some settlements were given Humvees, they were given guns. Even though they already had guns, they were given guns. And they were kind of given carte blanche to do what they already wanted to do, and were already doing in a smaller frequency. They wanted to cleanse the Palestinians of the West Bank. They wanted to get rid of them. They wanted to get rid of villages and then put in paperwork and build more Jewish settlements, more apartment buildings. And so no one was there. No one's there post-October 7. The military, the police, were not there to break up the fighting, or stop the sellers from doing things that are illegal. I mean, their entire existence there is illegal, but from being extra violent. So the military and the settlers were working together after October 7 to get rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank while all eyes were in Gaza.

Chris Hedges

Yeah, they created rogue militias. It's been the largest land seizure in the West Bank since the Israeli occupation, I think 30% of the Jordan Valley if I have that right. And they have created reins of terror by going into these Palestinian villages, and you're in one of these villages.

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, of course. The thousands of Palestinians from villages that have already been cleansed and displaced from their rural lands have had to find land away from settlers and pitch tents. Residents of this village were told by settlers accompanied by the Israeli military that if they did not vacate their land in 24 hours, they would all be killed. Entire bedrooms remain. Children's toys, school books, food, dresses, and clothing. Before fleeing, the Palestinians spray painted one of their shacks. "We will return one day," it says. The settlers have destroyed many of these structures in order to ensure that no one returns before they begin building a new illegal Jewish development. This Palestinian, along with his children, lived in this village. They are now living on a small plot of land alongside other displaced residents. I spoke to him in a gas station parking lot because he was terrified of what sellers would do if they spotted him being interviewed by a foreign journalist. Another West Bank Palestinian displaced from his village is Mohammed. He now lives with his entire extended family in a tent on someone else's property.

West Bank Resident

[In Arabic] We left our town because of the settlers. The settlers and the military stormed our village back in October. In the middle of the afternoon. We were taken by surprise. It was a coordinated attack between the Israeli army and armed settlers both in plain clothes and uniform. Some 30 vehicles, 70 armed personnel with rifles and batons. Some of the settlers were even carrying big knives. They started to beat us. They threw us to the ground and kicked us. They took all of our phones so nothing could be documented. For more than half an hour everyone in the village remained tied up. Tied up with steel wire and plastic handcuffs. After about half an hour of torture, beating, kicking and shooting, they said you have to take your cattle, children and women and evacuate your land. Leave everything. You can't take your tents and shacks. That's what the militants told our people. "In an hour, who stays here will be shot dead," he said. They fired guns at people and sheep. Just to scare everyone. Since the war, they began taking our homes, beating our people and blocking our roads. Once the war began, they didn't allow us to go out to get any food for our families or fodder for our sheep. They imposed a siege on us. I wish I can go back because my life is very tough now without a home or anything for my family. I have no adequate bathroom. No adequate food to eat. No adequate water. Even my sheep... have no shelter from rain, and no food. I can't return out of fear for my life and my children's lives.

Mohammed

[In Arabic] I am starving and some of my sheep have died due to lack of fodder. We are all suffering from a deadly lack of water and food. It's the same as Gaza, they cut off water and food and also the electricity. And here they also cut me off from water and electricity. What am I supposed to do? Being a Palestinian and driving a Palestinian plated car is now enough reason for them to kill me. They are stealing the lands and removing all Palestinians from areas classified as "C" according to Oslo Accords. Life has been hard in Gaza. They have been compressed and compressed and squeezed until they went off like atomic explosion. The settlers here in the West Bank are squeezing the Palestinians as in Gaza and the Palestinians will explode against the settlers just like Gaza did if this compression situation continues. It's the Palestinian people who suffered most severely in this war. 10,000 people have died so far. All victims [on both sides] died as a result of the terrorist policy of the [Israeli] government. Yes, it's a terrorist policy. It's a policy of pressure and blockade against people. There are, for instance, Arab Muslims from Syria living in Europe, have there been violent troubles? Why here can't there be coexistence on an equal basis? If there is coexistence among citizens like in America or Europe, nothing like this would ever happen. It wouldn't exist.

Chris Hedges

Let's talk about Palestinians who are arrested for their activism. You interview a woman who was detained in an Israeli prison, and then she's released as part of the November hostage exchange. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that report.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure, so this is now, I guess, two years ago. Her house was raided, just like her neighbor's houses have been dozens of times, just like her house has been dozens of times, and they made some vague accusations against her, as they do all Palestinians living in the West Bank, saying that, you said something wrong, you talked to someone wrong, you posted something on social media that we didn't like. I don't know exactly what they told her. And they took her away, and they put her in prison. And she was in prison under this administrative detention, and so she is not charged. She's a woman. She's not charged. She's in prison for however long the Israelis say, and she can be kept wherever the Israelis say. She's in a prison where her family doesn't know where she is. She has no rights. And this is a woman probably the age of my mother. And this is outside of Bethlehem, in a refugee camp. And after interviewing her, I will say, she reached back out to me, explaining that they just came and took her neighbor. This is just like they took her. So this is not happening to one person. This is, I didn't find the one person who this has happened to, this happens to all Palestinians. They get put into administrative detention for things, for political speech. And this is just one of the women.

Palestinian Woman

[In Arabic] The army detained me on April 4 last year at around 6:10 in the morning. The reason for my detention as always and with everyone was the same pretext which is "a danger to the security of Israel."

Jeremy Loffredo

While over 100 Israelis are being held captive in Gaza, Israel is holding over 10,000 Palestinians in its own jails. More than 3,000 of these Palestinians were arrested and detained without charge, trial or the ability to appeal. The State of Israel calls this type of procedure administrative detention. It's reserved for Palestinians who engage in any type of political activity or speech against Israeli occupation and their family members. What it amounts to is official kidnapping. Rawda Abu Ajamieh is a 47 year old Palestinian woman who's lived her entire life in the Dheisheh refugee camp outside Bethlehem in the West Bank. She was taken from her home by military police last year and kept in one of the Israeli prisons. In November, Hamas used 50 Israelis they took prisoner on October 7 as political leverage to free 150 Palestinians from Israeli jails. Rawda is one of the Palestinian prisoners who was released. She served seven months in Ofer prison and Damon prison. I traveled through dozens of military checkpoints in order to sit down with Rawda in her living room as she recounted her arrest, Israeli prison and coming home.

Palestinian Woman

[In Arabic] They stormed a number of our family houses including my sisters' place here where I was staying during Ramadan. They also stormed my house and my brothers' houses in the central neighborhood. They blew up the front and back doors. After less than ten minutes, they detained my young nephew. A couch in my brother's house caught fire because of the stun grenades. Out of all the soldiers there wasn't a female soldier among them to handcuff my hands and put the blindfold over my eyes. So once they put me into the back of the army truck, the male soldiers did all of that to me. I was taken to Etzion detention center, then to another called Panorama, I never heard of before. Then the soldiers transferred me to Ofer prison. It was during the Jewish holiday. After that, they told me I'd be in administrative detention.

Jeremy Loffredo

Without any hearing, without any trial and no ability to appeal, Rawda was sent to prison. They also arrested her teenage nephew.

Chris Hedges

Let's move on to the Israeli settlers.

Jeremy Loffredo

Can I just say one thing about that video real quick?

Chris Hedges

Yeah.

Jeremy Loffredo

Just how I found that woman. We had a list given to us by Addameer, which is a prisoner rights NGO in Ramallah. And it was a list of 50 people who were recently released from administrative attention, and out of the 50 people, only one, that woman, she's so courageous, only one was willing to speak to us. Everyone was so afraid that if they spoke to a journalist, they would get thrown right back in prison. So that's how arbitrary, that's how strict, that's how scared these people are. Out of 50 people, almost everyone is too scared to just speak about their experience to a journalist except her.

Chris Hedges

Well they're told when they're released, not to speak out.

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, truly, it makes it even more brave.

Chris Hedges

So you go down to one of the crossings. This is a great report. And you spend time with the Israeli settlers, I think you're there for a week, who are—with the collaboration of the Army, of course, and the police—blocking the aid trucks coming from Egypt into Gaza. So talk about this first, and then we'll watch the clip from that report.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure. So I was there. I was in Jerusalem at the time, and I knew this was happening, and I didn't really know how exactly to ingratiate myself or kind of embed myself with these people. I, at first, drove down to these aid blocks, these Direct Action Aid blocks with a fellow journalist, like an anti-Zionist, like leftist journalist inside of Israel. And we walked around, I was interviewing people, and I noticed that this person was almost getting a little too emotional. This person was kind of arguing with the settlers, and like you're not going to change these people's minds, arguing about how many women and children in Gaza, et cetera, et cetera. And they were looking at me as if to say, like, we're not going to speak to these people. So I changed my strategy, and instead, I began taking a bus that left from Jerusalem with them through the occupied West Bank. It would stop at settlements, pick up fathers and young children and mothers, and go through the West Bank all the way down south to the Kerem Shalom, or the [inaudible] border crossings. And they would take these busses through the West Bank, pick up the protesters and bring them to the crossing. And once they would get to the crossing... I mean, this is a closed military zone, so, like no one is supposed to be allowed here, but as soon as these settlers show up, the military uses their presence as justification to shut down the aid crossing. So the military knows, the State of Israel knows that if they actually shut down the aid crossing, there will be international political outcry. So the settlers do it instead. And they use the settlers to justify shutting down aid to Gaza. So they work hand in hand, the settlers kind of rid the Israeli government of actual political responsibility for not allowing aid into Gaza. And they were sharing sandwiches. And listen, they're not supposed to, it's illegal that they're there, but the military is giving them sandwiches, watermelon, ice pops, they're paling around. They're hanging out. And day after day, as soon as the settlers show up and I'm with them, the blocking gets closed. No aid gets into Gaza day after day after day, and they consider that a giant, giant success. And after I filed this report, I was told these are fanatics, this isn't really the government line. These people are fringe, even though the military is working with them, like you could see that it's the government line. But now you have people in the Knesset, people in the Likud party, arguing that they should stop aid, that they shouldn't send aid, something that just a few months ago, we were told is fringe, and no one was saying that. So it very quickly became reality and so that's a good intro. We could watch the video.

Israeli Settler 1

The police man, the head commander, came to us and said, "Okay, you guys came and blocked. We don't want to fight." And he said to us, "I'll just lock the gate. You guys don't need to stand in the sun." We got lollipops. We got watermelon from the police.

Jeremy Loffredo

The police gave you lollipops and watermelon?

Israeli Settler 1

Yeah, watermelons and it was great with them.

Jeremy Loffredo

So no food, no nothing?

Israeli Settler 2

No, they don't deserve it [aid]. What I care? Kill them. I don't care.

Jeremy Loffredo

Do you trust Palestinians?

Israeli Settler 2

No, I know all about them. I don't trust them. I want them out of here.

Jeremy Loffredo

What do you think should happen to Gaza?

Israeli Settler 2

I want it to be civilized with Jews from Israel.

Israeli Settler 3

My unit was in charge of explosions. We blew up houses of terrorists, mosques, UN offices. I remember we got into some UN office that was in charge of helping families in Gaza that was affected by the war and we destroyed it.

Israeli Settler 4

We give pastries for the people, for the soldiers, for the cops, for everybody. This what we give to our people. This is real humanitarian aid, okay? We need to block the aid to Gaza. We need to block the gas to Gaza. Everything to block. And this what we do every week. Two, three, four times a week.

Israeli Settler 1

And as the Bible says, this place is for us. It's promised for us so they can starve to death to pay on the things that they've done to us on the seventh of October.

Israeli Settler 5

[In Hebrew] I think what we need, I don't know. We need to be united and kill all of them. We all need to go back into Gaza and control all of it, make it part of our country.

Israeli Settler 1

Bibi [Netanyahu] is a puppet of Biden because we cleaned all Gaza except in Rafah. Why aren't we going in there? Because Biden asked us not to. That's the only reason. There's no reason not to.

Chris Hedges

By that last segment, Jeremy, we actually see settlers walking towards Gaza.

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, they went into Gaza. These are the same people that were blocking the aid. Sometimes they would go to the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the Erez Crossing, and they would have a caravan of people, and they would get you as close as they could to the Erez border crossing, and they would bring vinyl and plywood and drills and hammers, and the military would allow them into Gaza. Again, this is a closed military zone. There's not supposed to be any civilians here, let alone civilians crossing into Gaza. And they were building what they called symbolic outposts. And these are little sheds or houses that they would build on the Gaza side of the Erez border crossing in a way to tell the government like we are ready to move to Gaza when you tell us that we're allowed to, and a lot of them are from Gush Katif, the last settlement that was in Gaza before the disengagement. And they're calling for the resettlement and the Judaization of Gaza. And they say settlements equal security. So they believe if they were to settle in Gaza, then the military would have to protect them, and that means the military would be permanently occupying Gaza. And a permanent occupation of Gaza would lead to no more October 7's, as they would argue.

Chris Hedges

If you speak out, even if you're Israeli, of course, against the genocide in Gaza, you are targeted, and you have a report speaking to Israelis protesting the war. We're going to see just three clips from it. I'll let you set it up. One is from a Yom Kippur veteran. One is from a high school teacher, Meir Baruchin, and the other is from the principal of a school, [inaudible]. Just explain that report, and then we'll watch those clips.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure, so shortly after October 7, there is a high school teacher named Meir Baruchin and he would post things on Facebook to the effect of "Muhammad was 13 years old, Muhammad wanted to be a professional soccer player, but Muhammad will never be a professional soccer player because he was killed by our wonderful men and women in the Gaza Strip." And so he was trying to humanize children in Gaza through these Facebook posts, and his house was raided, his computers and his cell phones were seized, and he was put in solitary confinement for eight or nine days, and they tried to charge him with incitement, which carries 25 years to 50 years in prison. And eventually he was let out of prison. But I was there when he was originally getting arrested. And at the courthouse, there was maybe 10 or 15 [people], older Israeli Jews there showing their support for Meir Baruchin, and they were brutally beaten by a special police force inside of Jerusalem. And so the first interview that we're going to see right now is one of the older men who was there voicing his support for Meir Baruchin who was getting charged with incitement for simple Facebook posts and he was beaten by the police.

Israeli Dissenter 1

To say it in one sentence, they came in order to beat us. I didn't see such cruelty, such violence from the side of Jerusalem police in terms of chasing, beating, not hesitating to beat adults. I would say even old ladies. And people were cursed. I mean, the policemen didn't hesitate to curse people in sentences like "go to Gaza, go to East Jerusalem, go to Sheik Jarrah, we don't want you. You are lousy leftists," this kind of stuff. They didn't hesitate, as people of the law to curse citizens, and we did nothing. For me, it was a fascist event, really. Coming and doing these horrible things to the people who respect the law, who did nothing. I was attacked in Jerusalem, and my son, Nadav, serves in the army very near the northern border. I mean to treat me, as a Yom Kippur War veteran and first Lebanese war veteran, as a traitor, as a person whom you have to attack, whom you have to curse or mock, is impossible by shouting or saying different things that are not in the national consensus, you reveal yourself as a traitor.

Chris Hedges

And we should be clear that that older man that you interviewed, he is a veteran from the Yom Kippur War, and his son is in the military.

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, he's not an anti-Zionist by any means. He lives in Israel. He's Jewish. He served in the Army. His son is in the army. He just didn't believe that this high school teacher, Meir Baruchin, should be in prison for 50 years for trying to humanize Gazan children on his Facebook. And that's the level where they're at in terms of repressing freedom of speech inside of Israel against Israeli Jews, not even Palestinians.

Chris Hedges

So this last clip we're going to look at is probably the one that got you in really serious trouble, and this is your reporting on the Iranian air strikes in Israel. Though, I want to, before we talk about it, be clear that you weren't the only one who showed footage from strikes. They came very close to hitting the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, but you weren't the only one who did it. But of course, they went after you, and I think, having shown clips from all of these reports, we can understand why. So talk about this last report, and then after that, we're going to talk about what happened to you.

Jeremy Loffredo

Sure. So my original plan was to go to the northern West Bank on this most recent trip, to spend time in the refugee camps in Jenin, around Nablus, Tulkarm, where there's been regular raids and seizures. And they shut off the water. It's one of the few places in the West Bank where there's resistance. And so, like these people don't want them entering the refugee camp. The Palestinians don't want the military to come in. And so I wanted to go there and document the destruction caused by these raids, and speak to people who have to deal with these raids. And for the first time in a long time, there's been a handful of air strikes in the northern West Bank. People are saying it's another front opening up in this war. So that was my plan. But the day I got to Israel, we had, it was October 1, and that was the day of the Iranian ballistic missile retaliatory attack. And I spoke to my editor and friend, Max Blumenthal. He said, you are there, maybe you should file a report about this missile strike. I thought, I don't really know what to say about it, everyone's talking about it. How about if I just try to find where the missiles landed? Maybe that could be the report. I do that. I go to the Nevatim Air Base in the South. I don't really see much. I go to the Mossad headquarters around there. There's a filled-in crater, I document it. I look at the news. And because I'm only one person, I'm not a news crew, my turnaround was a few days. So my report came out after the mainstream media. PBS NewsHour, Ynet, mainstream Israeli media and American media situated inside of Israel published very similar information that I did, and only I was acted on and arrested. So we could watch a part of that video and talk about it. I'm Jeremy Loffredo for The Grayzone in Israel, where last night, Iran fired over 200 ballistic missiles in retaliation for the assassinations of Lebanese and Iranian political and military leadership. Since the missile strikes, Israeli authorities have attempted to downplay the significance of the attacks, censor the locations of missile impacts from media publications and claim that Iran was targeting Israeli civilians. What I saw today, here in Israel, is clear evidence that Iran was targeting the same Israeli intelligence and military infrastructure that's been used over the past year to carry out brutal assassinations and attacks. The military took away most of the missile, but there was still a piece left. The missile fell a quarter mile west of Nevatim Air Base and about a quarter mile from the Bedouin village, which is unrecognized by Israel, so it isn't supplied with any type of state of the art bomb shelters, like Jewish communities. Where were people in the communities around here hiding yesterday during the [missile] sounds?

Bedouin Villager

Some of our people ran to the school. Lots of us went to the bridge underpass. We aren't safe because our people have not been given any shelters or safe places to hide.

Palestinian Cab Driver

Many people sheltered here last night. With sounds of the rockets we came to hide here.

Jeremy Loffredo

Using visual clues from footage circulating online, I set out to locate where the missile may have landed. Driving down a street I believe to be in one of the missile videos, I saw a heavily damaged SUV, its windshield shattered debris and concrete caked into the vehicle. Further down, the scene unfolded, destroyed vehicles, torn up asphalt and a massive crater roughly 30 feet wide, recently filled in with dirt.

Palestinian Cab Driver

That's the Mossad headquarters.

Jeremy Loffredo

The missile had hit less than 1,000 feet from Mossad headquarters. This information is missing from all Israeli media reports due to the fact it's been officially censored. Right here are the censored coordinates. Given the proximity to what is considered one of the world's most advanced intelligence agencies, it seemed clear that Israel was taking extra precautions to conceal the exact impact location. As we left the area, an unsettling incident occurred. Our cell phones lost GPS functionality. Maps went blank, and then both devices, mine and my taxi driver's, suddenly showed we were at Amman Airport in Jordan, over 120 miles west.

Chris Hedges

So now explain what happened. I think you were at a checkpoint, were you in Qalandia? In Ramallah? But explain what happened.

Jeremy Loffredo

It was the first day where I finally was getting to do what I went there to do, which was reporting the northern West Bank. I was at a checkpoint maybe 15 minutes outside of Nablus and the military asked everyone in the car with me, there was five of us, to hand over our passports, which isn't super strange, asking for ID at a checkpoint, hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank. I wasn't nervous at all. I give the passport to him, and then they came back, and they asked for us all to hand over our cell phones. And my phone was locked, and I knew all the information in my phone. Maybe I was communicating with people who were in the northern West Bank who maybe knew people who would be considered by them as resistance fighters as the military, as terrorists, but it's valid journalistic inquiry for me to be communicating with these people for interviews. So yeah, I handed over my cell phone. Everyone did, except one journalist. He refused to and he had a gun pointed at his face. He was dragged out of the car. He was punched a few times, and then they took his phone as well, and then told all of us to get out of the car and stand on the street, sit on the street beside the military checkpoint. And then, maybe after an hour of us sitting on the dirt, one of the army officers pointed at me and said, Mr. Loffredo, will you come here? And so I crossed the street towards the checkpoint, and I said, what's happening? And they said, You're being arrested. And they pulled out maybe 20 or 30 feet of blindfold cloth, and they wrapped it tightly around my head, you know, maybe 10 or 15 times around my ears, my eyes and part of my nose. They shackled my legs, and they zip tied my hands, and then I was put in a military Humvee and kind of arbitrarily driven around, and then it stopped. I was then transferred into a police car, or what seemed to be a police car, I was blindfolded, still. And then the police car drove about an hour south towards Jerusalem. It took me to the biggest police headquarters in the West Bank, and I was put in a holding cell. My blindfold was finally taken off my head. I was in the holding cell, and they actually arrested all of us who were in the car. So we were all here at this kind of West Bank military compound. The other journalists that I was with were allowed to go home. And that's kind of when I thought to myself maybe this is something more serious for me, because everyone's allowed to go home except me. And I heard them playing this report, my voice. I heard my own voice when I was sitting in my holding cell. I heard them listening to my report. So I knew it was something, not that I was at a checkpoint, not that I was maybe with some people that have Israeli citizenship, and they're not allowed into Nablus. But it was not about any of that. It was about my video report. Before I was able to speak to a lawyer or anything like that, they called me out of my cell and they told me to stand in front of a big flag that said, "Together We Will Win," which is like the nationalist wartime slogan for the war. And they didn't take official photos. They all took out their phones. They were yelling at me in Hebrew. They were just snapping photos for, maybe they have a group chat or something. Just kind of taunting me, telling me to stand here, telling me to smile, telling me to stop smiling, and then they would send me back to my holding cell. They were really just trying to confuse me and scare me. And then finally, after a few hours in the holding cell, they said, your lawyer's on the phone. I said, I don't know why I even need a lawyer like I still don't really know what's happening. I answer the phone and the lawyer says, "Mr. Loffredo, I want you to think very hard. What have you done? You're being charged with giving information to the enemy during wartime. It's a very grave offense. And can you think of anything?" I said, I filed a report, and I am trying to speak to this woman, and she barely speaks any English, and I have like 45 seconds to speak to my lawyer. So she doesn't really understand what I'm saying. I don't really understand what she's saying. The phone call ends. She says, "Listen, they're gonna interrogate you. You're gonna be brought to a prison, and I'll see you in court tomorrow." And so that's that was the first day, and that's how I originally got arrested. And then I was put in an unmarked... Well, first I was interrogated. They asked me if I was familiar with Israel's military censor. I said, yes. And they said, then why did you publish your video? Et cetera, et cetera. I said, I published my video, I'm familiar with your censor, of course, but because your entire mainstream media was publishing information similar to mine, I didn't know I was breaking any censorship laws. They asked me if I have any connections or friends or family in foreign militaries. I said, No. They asked me why I included the coordinates in the video. I said, because as a journalist giving as much information and context is important, and many journalists would say the same thing. And this entire interrogation, it was in Hebrew. It was only translated from a person on a cell phone who spoke Russian, very little English. So I'm trying to tell this person on the cell phone why I think what I did is right, and why I'm innocent, and she doesn't really understand me, and she's trying to tell the Hebrew guy who also doesn't understand me, we are all upset. I'm getting frustrated, and I'm scared. The intelligence officer doesn't understand what I'm saying and is upset with the person on the phone who's supposed to be translating. So it's a horrible way to hold an interrogation, to communicate with someone, and then I'm put in an unmarked police vehicle, and I'm taken to the Russian compound in Jerusalem, which is about a 15 minute drive west. And so I get to the Russian compound, they open a solitary confinement cell. It's about 10 feet by eight feet. There's a concrete slab with a bed or blanket, depending on how you want to use it. It's so thin it could be used as both. And I get put in there. They slam the door shut. I don't know at that point what time my court hearing is the next day. I'm just kind of in solitary confinement now, and eight hours before, I was in a car driving to meet someone in Nablus and do my job, and I'm being charged as an enemy of the state. And so I had my first night in prison and then the next morning—and keep in mind, at this point, they did not give me any water or any food—I had my court appearance and the intelligence, the prosecutors, they wanted to keep me in solitary confinement for seven days. And the judge said, why seven days? And they said, because he's dangerous. And they said, why do you think he's dangerous? And they said, it's top secret. And this is all being translated to me. The entire court hearing is in Hebrew. I don't understand what's happening, and the judge doesn't believe them really when they say it's top secret, thankfully. And she says, you can have him for one day. You can interrogate him for one day. You can interrogate him, you can go through his cell phone. You can go through his computer. You have one day to continue on this, with these charges. And so they bring me back to solitary confinement. They don't feed me that night either, and they also don't interrogate me. The police don't interrogate me, even though the judge told them that they were allowed to. And so the next day in court, a Ynet journalist came and testified on my behalf and said I am a journalist for Ynet, I have a GPO card, I have a Government Press Office card. I am mandated to go through the military censor whenever I publish something, and I published something very similar to Mr. Loffredo and not only that, I published information relating to why Jeremy Loffredo was detained, and the military censor allowed me to explain what was in his video, and even allowed me to embed his video in my article. And they said there's nothing secret in it. And so he showed his conversation with a military censor to the judge. The judge read all of it and said, Okay, if Mr. Loffredo can publish this, and I mean, if the Ynet journalist can publish this, why can't Mr. Loffredo? And the police said, well, it's because Mr. Loffredo doesn't like Israel. And so it's not even an opinion, this was very political, and this had very little to do with that actual video. This had much more to do with my prior reporting and maybe with what The Grayzone publishes and what I've published in the past in Israel, in the West Bank. But thankfully, that is the opinion, and that is the view, and that is how the police and the military conduct themselves. But this judge didn't really accept that and said he needs to be let out of detention. I was brought out of the prison. I was brought back to the court, brought back to prison. I was signing the paperwork to leave prison, and a few guards said something in Hebrew to me, and they grabbed me. They pulled me away from the paper. They took the pen out of my hands, and they threw me back in solitary confinement. I did not know what was happening. They didn't tell me anything. And a few hours later, this is now, this is probably 8pm. Intelligence officers, plain clothes, come to my cell and take me out. They shackle me, they handcuff me, they load me into a car, and they take me back into the West Bank. And I'm frightened. I'm wondering if I'm going to get tortured now. I really don't know what's happening. The people driving the car aren't really telling me anything, the police officers. And I just asked them, what's happening? And they said, interrogation. I said, but I was just about to leave prison, what happened? And the court allowed the police to appeal the court's decision hours after the window for appealing the decision had closed already. They were allowed to retroactively appeal it and throw me back in prison and take me to the West Bank. And so I was interrogated at night in the West Bank, at this military compound, and now, I know they have my phone, so I'm wondering, are they going to ask me now about what's on my cell phone? You know, if you have someone's cell phone, you're kind of in their brain, like these are now different questions than just why or why not is your video legal or illegal? But thankfully, the all the questions still pertained to my video, and then they brought me back to the prison. And so at that point, I was thinking a little more positively about the situation, that they really don't have anything. They're trying to charge me as an enemy of the state, as a spy and but like, they just keep going back to this video, and I keep answering why I think this video is legal, other people reporting on it, and I'm saying it very confidently. And they say if everyone committed murder, does that mean you could commit murder? Like making the analogy that everybody had reported on it, that means, can I report on it. They know very well that everyone else is reporting on it, so like they're making it clear in court transcripts to my face, in secret, they know that I already reported on it. I get brought back to prison, still have not gotten any food or water. I spent the night. In the morning, they finally give me a cup of chocolate pudding, and someone comes to my cell and they introduce themselves as a social worker, doing a wellness check on me, sent to my cell because the American Embassy told the prison to send me a social worker. I said, this is great, maybe I'll get more food, maybe I'll get some water, maybe I'm going to get some help. And she said, "Why did you hurt Israel? You know you hurt Israel. Do you love Israel?" And I was taken aback. I thought I was about to get some help. She's berating me for my reporting. She's berating me because I don't agree with her when it comes to the occupation. And she tells me that I'm probably going to spend a long time in prison. And then she closes the steel window to my solitary confinement cell. She walks away. So just to clarify, that is the only help that the American Embassy afforded me, was giving me this Zionist social worker to berate me because of my reporting and give me no help at all. But that's beside the point. I went to court a few hours later, and finally, I was allowed out, and I had to spend the next 10 days in the country without my passport, my phone or my laptop, and allow the authorities to continue to continue interrogating me.

Chris Hedges

And then what happened? And while you were in the prison, I believe you heard screams or cries from Palestinians. Is that correct?

Jeremy Loffredo

Yeah, I was in solitary confinement. But maybe there were 100, 150 other prisoners in there, all Palestinian. I was the only white person from what I can tell, I didn't see any Israelis. But I can't see anything for myself, but I can hear everything, and I heard really, really harsh crying and yelling only to be interrupted by quick demands and questions in Hebrew from, I would assume, obviously, is a guard or a police officer. Crying and yelling for maybe four hours straight, and I'm hearing this, and I'm sitting in my cell, and it's, for lack of a better word, torturous just to hear that. And obviously, I can't imagine what these people are going through. I mean there's torture happening in this prison, and this is prison that is notorious... for they bring Palestinians to this prison, and they torture them in order to manufacture false confessions. And this prison is also notably criticized by human rights groups because it's not in the West Bank, it's not in Palestine. So they're bringing Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel and interrogating them there. So that's where they brought me. So that's where they bring an American journalist. They're not treating me as an American, they're not treating me as a journalist. They're treating me as an enemy of the state. And clearly for them, there's no difference.

Chris Hedges

And you're allowed to leave, your lawyer calls it an informal deportation, and they've left your case open, which essentially means you can't go back, because if your case is open, then they grab you again, is that correct?

Jeremy Loffredo

Yes, my lawyer called, so I'll just back up, I'll tell you exactly what happened. So I was interrogated for probably a combined time of 15 hours during that 10 days. One interrogation was six hours long, and then other interrogations were an hour or two hours, where they're just continuously asking me the same questions in different ways trying to see if I'm lying or if I slip up on an answer, just like playing semantics. And one interesting question they asked me was, they said, you expect me to believe that you went to school for journalism. You took all these classes, you had all these professors, but you never learned about the importance of a military censor. I explained that we have the First Amendment, and that's not exactly how it works in America. And I would assume he understands this, and it was as if he was learning about America for me, you know, he couldn't wrap his head around the military not censoring journalists. And of course, that happens here, but it's much more like self-censorship. But that was one question they asked me. And they're asking me about other reports that I've seen that I knew had happened in Israel that had the same information as me. So I had to tell them these reports. And I was kept in these interrogations for hours and hours and hours without water, still shackled, still handcuffed. And then finally, after 10 days, the 20th of October came, and that was the day that the Court said I find out if I'm getting re-arrested, or if I get my passport, my phone and my laptop back. And they called my lawyer and they said, can Mr. Loffredo book a sooner flight? Because my flight was for the 23rd, two days later. And she said, of course. So I went to my lawyer's office. I used their computers. I booked a flight. We sent them the flight information, and they went entirely incommunicado. They had not answered us since. So we booked the flight, and we thought they told us to book a flight. Maybe we should try to get my passport, my phone and my laptop back. So we gave one of my friends there in Jerusalem, power of attorney. Sent him to the West Bank military compound, and they gave him all my stuff back, including my passport, and so that was the moment where I found out that, I think I am able to leave. And I got on a plane, and they interrogated me at the airport a couple times, but I did leave the country, and they left my case open still. I have a case open there right now, I spoke to my lawyer yesterday. Giving information to the enemy during wartime, it's open and they but they allowed me to leave, and if I come back, back through Ben Gurion Airport, the most securitized airport, probably in the world, and I will be immediately detained, my lawyer says, for the same charges that they were trying to get me on before. So I'm dissuaded from going back until the case is closed. I don't know if I really ever want to go back.

Chris Hedges

Great. Thank you. That was journalist Jeremy Loffredo. I want to thank Max [Jones], Diego [Ramos], Sofia [Menemenlis] and Thomas [Hedges] who produced the show. You can find me at Chris Hedges.Substack.com.

Photos

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Wednesday, 27 November 2024