Women in Iran; Imprisonment, release, case against American journalist in Israel; Bangladesh Update
Art & Revolution Weekly: Vol. 1/No. 1
Welcome to the first edition of my weekly, which will be the default from here-on-out, every Sunday, in the style of a traditional sheet. Enjoy it by becoming a paid subscriber down below. Thanks for your continued support of the free, independent press.
In this edition, I discuss the struggle of women in Iran, how their resistance to state and gang repression has inspired millions of both sexes to rise up and demand freedom.
Title: “The Two Most Beautiful Words: A refutation of Hijabi Feminism, in memory of a young Kurdish woman, killed for daring to be herself.”
I also discuss the recent arrest of an American journalist while he was reporting in Israel, as well as his rather quick release and pending trial in the Israeli courts.
What does this episode say about the nature of the Israeli government?
What’s the political significance—especially for those (like me) who support Israel’s right to exist as a nation and therefore defend itself from those who seek to destroy it—of this event?
Title: “The Free Press In Israel: Administrative detention, access to international news coverage, implications in the fight against jihadists.”
I end with an update on the revolutionary situation in Bangladesh that I reported on back in August. What’s happened since the overthrow of Hasina? Have the hopes and prospects I suggested and predicted actualized? What comes next for this immensely important—economically, culturally and politically-speaking—country?
Title: “Hasina’s House of Mirrors and The Reappeared: Bangladesh’s interim government confronts deposed leader’s private prisons, where hundreds were tortured, “disappeared” for several years.
The Two Most Beautiful Words
A refutation of Hijabi Feminism,1 in memory of a young Kurdish woman, killed for daring to be herself.
Zhina Amini was born 21 September 1999, in a Kurdish village, in northwestern Iran. The Kurds are the largest people in the world without a state, between thirty to fifty million living worldwide. The geographic area known as Kurdistan encompasses north-eastern Iraq, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, southern Armenia and north-western Iran. Zhina was born in the Iranian part of Kurdistan.
Throughout the years following the first imperialist war in the capitalist epoch (1917-present), Kurdish autonomy has undergone uneven development and social/political evolution, varying in every region.
In northern Iraq for instance, Kurds have more or less solidified their autonomy under the federation of the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, with several Kurds being elected to the presidency since 2005. The presidency in Iraq has, more or less, been occupied exclusively by Kurds, not so much as a resemblance to Lebanon’s sectarian system, though that is troubling, but I’d argue it’s rather a sign of the progressive potential within Iraqi society that’s always been present but often repressed, ignored, and underestimated.
In post-Arab Spring Syria, the Kurds (with U.S. military help) have held a militarized U.S. protectorate in the eastern Kurdish regions against the Ba’athist regime in Damascus for more than ten years.
In Turkey, where there is a semblance of a democratic republic in a much more economically developed country with completely different political dynamics from Iraq and Syria, Kurdish resistance has taken more of a political and insurgent form, not dissimilar to the Algerian resistance under French colonial occupation in the 1950s.
Kurdish resistance in Iran has also taken more of a political/insurgent expression.
“Revolution, counterrevolution and war in Iran: Social and political roots of workers’ protests that swept 90 cities and small towns.” Militant Supplement on Iran Vol. 82/No. 20
In 1979 the Iranian people rose up and overthrew the tyrannical dictatorship of Shah Pahlavi, an absolutist monarch adored by western imperialist governments for his compliance with “foreign investment.” Iran had hitherto been a British colonial protectorate, inheriting it from the deceased Ottoman Empire.
Anticipating the eventual fall of the current clerical government in Iran, U.S. anchors and broadcasters have actually been boosting the son of the deposed Shah, who they address as “your excellency.” They hope his son, Reza Pahlavi, re-assumes the lost throne upon Khomeini’s inevitable exit. This, before we go further, must be vehemently opposed when the time comes; and it will.
It would be a tremendous waste, and disaster, to reinstall the Pahlavi dynasty in the event that the Iranian people overthrow Khomeini through popular uprisings, with or without Israeli support, though at this stage it’d probably have to play a role. Above all, the Iranian people wouldn’t tolerate it. They remember how the Shah tortured their family members and sold-out their country to foreign capitalism and imperialism.
The Shah would have to be imposed on Iranians, which would be as unjust if not more unjust than being oppressed under an Islamist theocracy.
The movement that deposed the Shah was a broad, and thoroughgoing, social revolution that spread across the country side and into the factories, achieving gains for women, and minorities, in the multi-religious/cultural civilization of ancient Persia. However, this transformation was hijacked by clerical elements who initiated a counter-revolution, led by “Ayatollah” Ruhollah Khomeini, using gang rule and brutal repression against the truly progressive elements, ushering in the strict “morality” codes that are today so abhorred by millions worldwide.
Because of this counter-revolution, it’s “illegal” to speak and use the Kurdish language in the cleric-run Iran of today. Zhina’s (also spelled ‘Jina’) Iranian documents carried the name, “Mahsa,” which none of her friends or family ever called her, according to an exclusive interview2 given by her family to the German press. It was her “Iranian name” necessary for official documents. It was technical and meant nothing, except in the respect that it symbolized oppression.
Most news articles and encyclopedia entries use her Persian identity, so beware when searching for her name online, as I prefer her Kurdish birth name. There’s a kind of ring to it that almost suggests it derives from the language of an oppressed, but determined, people. Zhina (Jina) means one who gives life. Zhina not only gave live to those who loved her; Zhina loved life.
Her social media accounts displayed her dancing in traditional Kurdish attire and outfits featuring vibrant makeup. She dressed colorfully and only half-heartedly “observed” the “modesty” law requiring all women in Iran to wear a hijab that fully covers their hair, which her female elders like her mother and aunts often warned her about, knowing how free-spirited, and innocent of the police’s brutality, she was.
Current research suggests a majority of Iranians, some say about 60%, are non-Muslim. I can’t be certain this is correct, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. And if it is correct, that’s an enormous conclusion. Because the regime cannot possibly enforce morality laws one-hundred percent of the time, most women wear their veils loosely, or not at all, using it more like a scarf. Zhina was one of those millions of women yearning to breathe free from an extreme form of patriarchy, which legally bonds them to the dictates of their husbands and fathers.
One of Zhina’s dreams was owning a shop, which her father helped her open and launch months before her eventual death. It was called the “Best Boutique”. Becoming a doctor was another dream. She was about to begin study at a university in Urmia later that fall, where she would major in microbiology. Just short of the semester beginning, her family took a trip to Tehran, Iran’s capital, where a crackdown on modesty infractions were stepping up in response to recent protests. Getting off a tram, with one of her brothers and two cousins, Zhina was detained by the “morality police,” for not properly wearing hijab.
Her brother and cousins resisted her arrest, as did Zhina, as the “police” lied and said she would only be taken down to the station to receive a course on how to properly wear the rag.3 News reports quoting Amini’s family said she was beaten in the police vehicle while on the way to the station, where she later collapsed and slipped into a comma. Amini’s relatives followed the cops to the station. Seeing an ambulance leave, not long after they arrived, they inquired who was inside, being deceptively told it was a male prisoner. But women ran out of the station not long after, yelling, “They killed her! They killed her!”
Zhina died three days later, 16 September 2022, just days before her twenty-third birthday, weeks before starting school. The conditions of her detainment became a scandal in Iran, as well as around the world. The regime of course denied any wrongdoing, asserting that Zhina had “prior health conditions.” Her family maintained she was healthy, had no health issues, and was doing just fine before they arrested her. The regime released a video of her in jail, conversing with an officer, just moments before collapsing, while receiving religious instruction on how to wear the veil. They’re not accountable to public records requests, nor any oversight, either to its people or—let alone—the international press. But what’s nearly certain is that if Zhina was never detained, she’d still be alive today.
Commemorations have happened the last two years since her passing, with this year seeing her uncle arrested in the leadup to the anniversary. The regime’s foot soldiers also surrounded her grave site, flooding it with water from a nearby river, warning people away.4 Not even in death have they ceased oppressing Zhina. One of Amini’s brothers has been self-exiled in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan for some time, even prior to her death, as he went to join the honorable Peshmerga fighting forces who in the late 2010s has acted as a spear-head in the struggle against ISIS. It’s possible, therefore, Amini could’ve been targeted because of this, as we see how her family remains targeted after her death, although the regime has been cracking down on the little freedoms Iranians had, following mass uprisings in 2018 against the “government.”
Zhina Amini’s story is full of tragedy not just because her most admirable qualities—that is, her beauty, and zest for life—was cited by the goon squad as the reason for detaining her, but also because it’s too fitting and unsurprising that such a soul would inspire millions to rise up against this dictatorial system. What followed were months of protests across Iran and around the globe, consisting of millions around the country, gathering the support of trade unions and civil organizations, not to mention millions worldwide who sympathized.
Women cut their hair, tore off hijabs, and stormed the streets in cities across Iran. The regime responded with brute force, detaining tens-of-thousands, killing hundreds, and executing between 6-7.5 In general, hundreds more have been executed with capital punishment for other offenses, like drug-related charges. A 2023 report by Amnesty International said 75% of the world’s executions, outside “the people’s republic” of China, occurred in the death-row republic of Iran.
With a rising and strengthening working class in Iran, as mentioned, the protests have also assumed a class content, with slogans like, “Death, corruption, inflation: We want a revolution!” “This is the year of blood,” another chant said. “Seyyed Ali [the current “Khomeini”] will be overthrown!” was another.
Throughout its decades in reign, and its various interventions in the affairs of neighboring countries in order to solidify its interests in the region, the Iranian people have risen up. In 2009 mass uprisings known as ‘the Green Movement’ occurred, after elections took place that saw the regime’s chosen candidates lose, using repression to stop the elected officials from taking office. Mass uprisings in Iran these days are as common as the seasons, with ebbs and flows.
So, what has been the response of the feminist movement in the United States and in the imperialist countries? Well, there seems to be a split. Many recognize the patriarchal underpinnings of all rationalizations for the hijab, regardless of skin color, national origin, or religious background, while others try to get away with arguing that actually the hijab and burqa, if you think about it, are expressions of female empowerment. The latter, nice try as it is, is but a cynical inversion of the language of authentic civic resistance and struggle.
“White, American” feminist—as she often describes women with whom she disagrees—Helen Lerner, wrote an article in the New Tier Political Journal in April 2022, titled, “Western Feminism, the Hijab, and Covert Bigotry”. Lerner informed us that, while “white, European” feminists and other non-Muslim women of various ethnic backgrounds may be a part of the women’s rights movement, “participation in [the women’s rights movement] does not exempt one from exhibiting other forms of bigotry (Cetinkaya).”
This was merely a preface for Lerner to conclude that feminists can be “Islamophobic” if they criticize the hijab and its patriarchal foundations and justifications. She adds, “Feminism has historically been a movement based on the right to choose. The movement for a woman’s right to an abortion,” she offers as an example, “has been deemed ‘pro-choice’ rather than ‘pro-abortion,’ as a lack of force for one decision or another is a benchmark of pro-women ideology.”
For one look at the current state of liberal, ‘democratic’ feminism will demonstrate that actually “pro-abortion” is their current default position, which is self-evident in this 2024 presidential election.
Lerner goes on to argue that just because women may wear a hijab, that that alone doesn’t mean they were “forced” to. However, she doesn’t acknowledge why it is that people believe they’re being coerced in the first place, namely the patriarchal regimes who wound and kill women like Zhina for not following their dress code. Do women in Iran, and other Muslim dictatorships, have a “choice” to wear hijab?
The argument of “choice,” interestingly, is also deployed by women who speak for such governments and lead such morality courses, as in the Amini case. When Vice News entered Iran a year after her death, for instance, a regime ghoul giving a lesson to three young people was interviewed, and asked if she wanted to “change” the youth’s behavior, to adopt her (the instructor’s) religious views. She replied, “I don’t want to change her behavior; I want her to change.” (What drivel and casuistry.) In other words, the clerical regime in Iran doesn’t want to “force” Iranian women to follow their religious dress code; they want them to make the “right choice” on “their own.” After a certain amount of beatings, some do make “the right choice,” although many more would rather fight and die on their feet.
But it isn’t just non-Muslims, or secularists like me, who are critical of compulsory hijab-wearing, it’s also Muslims themselves, men and women. In a 20 March 2015 Guardian article, titled, “As a Muslim woman, I see the veil as a rejection of progressive values”, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote: “When even young girls are being dressed in hijabs, we need to ask what the female cover-up symbolizes.” Alibhai-Brown takes us through the high-points of Islamic culture in its early days, when Muslim leaders promoted learning and study of other cultures, and ways of thinking, in order to broaden one’s intellectual horizons, as the contemporary veiling of women is a rather recent development, with respect to the long history of ancient Islamic culture and scholarship:
“From the eighth to the early 20th century, Muslims strove for a broad education (as commanded in the Qur’an), questioned doctrines, and were passionate about scientific advancements, political and social ideals and art. Not even humiliating colonial rule deterred them from the march forward. Now the marchers are walking backwards. The hijab, jilbab, burqa and niqab are visible signs of this retreat from progressive values.”
Alibhai-Brown also discusses progressive Muslim feminist scholars, particularly during the early democratic era (16-1800s), as well as early twentieth century Muslim women in Iran who demanded rights for all women along the same time as the second-wave feminist movement was brewing in “the West” and, most especially, as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia brewed in the East.
“Muslim feminists of the past critiqued and repudiated the veil,” Brown writes. “One of them was a man, Qasim Amin, an Egyptian judge and philosopher, who in 1899 wrote The Liberation of Women. He was the John Stuart Mill of the Arab world. Huda Shaarawi set up the Egyptian women’s union in the early 1920s. One day in 1923, as she disembarked from a train in Cairo, she threw off her veil and claimed her right to be visible. Educated Iranian women started feminist magazines and campaigned against the veil around the same time. These pioneers have been written out of history or are dismissed as western stooges by some contemporary Muslim intellectuals.”
An American University op-ed published February 2023 by a student in the School of Public Affairs and Communication, Meliha Ural, argued that the problem with the coverage of Amini’s death—and similar stories—was that they were unfairly described as “anti-Hijab,” focusing on the implicit religious critique of Islam. Ural wrote:
““Women, life, freedom,” chanted Iranian women after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was murdered by the Iranian morality police for wearing her hijab “improperly.” For decades, Iranian women have been fighting against the Iranian government to reclaim their bodily autonomy. The Western media, however, simply chose to narrate it as “anti-hijab protests.” The clips of Iranian women burning their hijabs and cutting their hair solidified it for Western feminists: the hijab was a dangerous obstacle standing in the way of empowerment. How are Muslim hijabi women all around the world supposed to feel when the protests are depicted as a rage against Islam?”
Ural repeated conspiracy theories peddled by film-maker Michael Moore, regarding a ‘secret’ plan between U.S. oil companies and Afghan capitalists to build a pipeline in Afghanistan, which I think Afghanistan could’ve certainly used, but was actually abandoned long before 2001, something she or Moore don’t mention.6 The communications student also went on to rehearse tired, pseudo-anti-imperialist grievances about the U.S. army invading Afghanistan to combat the Taliban, arguing that those who say the hijab is a symbol of patriarchy are part of what she dubs, “colonial feminism,” a term now being used to attack feminists for opposing the hijab, much like how women who reject transgenderist ideology are abusively called, “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or “TERFS”.
There are too many examples of so-called feminist writers, increasingly including upper-middle-class Muslim women who hail from the ruling classes of Muslim dictatorships, off studying at “Western” universities, who try to slap the progressive sticker onto the hijab and other oppressive clothing. One could mention the late, Hannah Yusef, who once wrote, “My personal decision to wear the hijab has nothing to do with me being oppressed,” arguing against supposed “Islamophobia”—a non-word used to silence critics of Islam.
Yusef actually committed suicide a few years later, from depression, in London, as I only found out after reading the referenced article, and looking her up. While her decision to wear a hijab might not have had anything to do with her being “oppressed”—as she lived in Europe all her life, which is no doubt a form of privilege—it may’ve actually, almost certainly, had everything to do with her being mentally ill.
Any account one reads by supposed feminists who defend or make apologies for the hijab, be they Muslim or non-Muslim, I repeat, invariably invert the language of liberation and struggle to suit their purposes. “Freedom,” for example, is weaponized to say women “choose” to not be “sex objects” in covering up, disregarding the implicit assumption that women must be draped, lest they lead men astray, right? In other words, consigning women to cover themselves is the reification of rendering them to be nothing more than “objects” that have to be hidden away from potential thieves and adulterers. (Hide your women!) What could be more objectifying than that? Not to mention the absurd, and inverse implication that men must also necessarily, by their ‘logic,’ be objectified as well, since men themselves are uncovered, right? It’s okay to objectify men? I can certainly confirm from experience that women can “objectify” men, as well.
Abram Leon, Marxist revolutionary and member of the Belgian resistance in the 1940s, reminds us, in his masterpiece of a book he left behind, that fascism co-opts the language of revolutionary struggle, including anti-capitalist demagogy. The Nazis and the Italian fascist party, for instance, utilized anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist phrases to rile against the Jews and others, as well, riling against the British empire and the “Zionist conspiracy,” which is being recycled today.
Political Islam, with its virulent hatred of Israel and Jewish people, is replicating this Nazi script, utilizing the honorable language of resistance, to oppress women, among several other “communities,” as some might say, in order to prevent us who live outside its dominion to not express our solidarity with women like Zhina Amini, and her family and supporters, who, as we shall soon see, are Sayyed Khomeini’s gravediggers and eulogists. Women, life, freedom.
jonathansalinas@substack.com
The Free Press In Israel
Administrative detention, access to international news coverage, implications in the fight against jihadism.
Earlier this month, I wrote an article about freedom of the press versus various forms of “official secrets” statutes in multiple countries, focusing on the case of Australian publisher, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who was prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department under the 1917 Espionage Act. I criticized these laws and its philosophical underpinnings, pointing to examples demonstrative of its inherent absurdity. The country of Israel also has an official secrets law which disallows reporters from publishing certain military information, even if such information has already been published in the outlets of other countries, which Israelis can read. (Ability to read the news outlets of other nations, by the way, is notable, as citizens and residents living in Muslim dictatorships, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, are officially disallowed from reading outside news sources, although the Iranians are savvy enough to bypass government censorship.) Israel, to its discredit, maintains such draconian laws, as all capitalist governments must.7
On 5 October, The Grayzone published a video report by U.S. citizen and journalist, Jeremy Loffredo, to their YouTube account, titled, “On the ground investigating Iran's strikes on Israel”.8 Loffredo’s report looked into the then-more recent missile attacks on Israel by Iran, seeking to discredit Israeli government statements and claims, as well as to criticize Israel for allegedly doing what it alleges Hamas of doing, namely employing the use of “human shields,” by virtue of Israeli intelligence buildings being located within residential and business/commercial areas.
Loffredo was in Israel, shortly after Iran had fired over 200 ballistic missiles, in what he described as, “retaliation for the assassinations of Lebanese and Iranian political and military leadership.” Loffredo said, “Israeli authorities have attempted to downplay the significance of the attacks, censor the locations of missile impacts from media publication, and claimed that Iran was targeting military civilians.” Yet, he claims what he saw 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 morning after the missile strikes, news reports indicated that one of the principal targets was the Nevatim Air Base located deep in the Negev Desert, as one of the largest and most critical air force bases in Israel. Loffredo said it’s home to “three squadrons of U.S.-supplied Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter jets, which have played a pivotal role in Israel’s year-long air assault on the besieged Gaza strip,” adding that, “as of two weeks ago, these F-35s have also spear-headed relentless and devastating strikes in southern Lebanon, so far resulting in the deaths of 2,000 civilians.”
The base, Loffredo reported, is “also home to Wings of Zion, the Israeli equivalent of Air Force 1.” He pointed to video footage taken around 8 a.m. by Israeli and Palestinian Bedouins who live around the area, showing Nevatim Air Base being hit by ballistic missiles. Loffredo says he drove seventy miles south to “the highly sensitive air force installation, aiming to document the under-reported and potentially embarrassing devastation.”
As Loffredo approached the base, F-35 fighter jets were “vertically landing, in all likelihood on their way back from killing 30 miles away in Gaza or 100 miles away in Lebanon.” He noted the road was “separated from the base by more than a mile of desert and miles of steal fencing. So, seeing any destruction was impossible.”
However, in the Negev, there are “46 Palestinian Bedouin villages,” eighty percent of which, Loffredo said, “are ‘unrecognized’ by Israel and face constant demolition orders on any permanent or semi-permanent structure resulting in the homes and buildings being built with light material like plywood or sheet metal.”
Loffredo says he went village-to-village, asking about the strikes. Most Bedouins, he said, were suspicious. “But, two young men who told me the explosions scared their wives and children claimed they knew where a missile had fallen,” Loffredo reported. “They led me there but they were unwilling to appear on camera, do to concerns for their safety.”
As he approached the site, Loffredo noted, “The military took away most of the missile, but there was still a piece left.” The missile, he said, fell “a quarter mile west of Nevatim Air Base about a quarter mile from the Bedouin Village, which is unrecognized by Israel, so it isn’t supplied with any state of the art bomb shelters, like Jewish communities.”
Loffredo: “Where were people hiding yesterday during the [missile] sounds?”
Anonymous Bedouin man: “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 the sounds of the rocket we came to hide here.”
As night fell, Loffredo headed to “the heart of Israel’s military and intelligence operations, Tel Aviv.” The city, as described by Loffredo, “is home to the nucleus of the state’s defense apparatus, and (by Israel’s own logic) the civilians here could be considered “human shields.” At the center of “this high-density urban area,” Loffredo said, “lies the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, where covert operations, assassinations, espionage and blackmail plots are devised against state enemies.”
“It’s not just that schools and hospitals are nearby,” Loffredo said, “Mossad’s headquarters is strategically nestled among them, with apartment complexes, tourists hubs, and public facilities all around.” He referenced “rumors” that “had been circulating online with unverified videos suggesting that the Iranian missile barrage targeted this very headquarters.” However, he added, “finding the exact impact site was difficult,” as Israel’s military censor has “barred the media from reporting the location’s of the missile strikes,” at least until then.
Using visual clues from footage, Loffredo “set out” to locate where the missiles landed. “Driving down the street,” he said, “I believed 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, turned up asphalt, and a massive crater, roughly thirty feet wide, recently filled in with dirt. The missile had hit within one-thousand feet of Mossad Headquarters.”
Loffredo noted that “this information is missing from all Israeli media reports, due to the fact it’s been officially censored.” He then offered the “censored coordinates.” Given the proximity to what is considered one of the world’s most advanced intelligence agencies, he went on to say, “it seemed clear that Israel was taking extra precautions to conceal the exact impact locations.”
As Loffredo and his reporting team left the area, “an unsettling incident occurred.” The video footage showed how their cell phones “lost GPS functionality, maps went blank, and then both devices, mine and our taxi drivers’, suddenly showed that we were at Amman’s airport, in Jordan, over 120 miles west.” Then, came the arrest, a few days later at an Israeli checkpoint.
A Twitter account, by the moniker of, “@the_andrey_x”, posted a detailed thread about an incident involving Loffredo’s arrest. The Twitter account wrote that he himself was involved in the detainment, describing a brutal scene, getting “roughed up” by Israeli police, which included being stripped of digital devices:
I was illegally detained by the Israeli Army with four other journalists. Here's what happened:
On October 8th 2024, at approximately 01:00 PM, a car with five journalists (an American journalist, a Palestinian journalist, a Russian-Israeli journalist, a Canadian-Israeli videographer, and an Israeli photographer) was stopped at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank. The checkpoint separates Areas C and B, all the journalists are allowed to be on both sides by Israeli occupation law.
They were held for an hour and a half in their car, while the IOF collected their documents. The IOF searched the car, going through personal items. The photographer later discovered that her underwear was removed from her bag, placed on top of their belongings.
The soldiers then illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items.
The journalists were told to sit in the sun, in 35°C heat on the side of the road. After an hour, the Palestinian journalist began to feel faint and requested an ambulance be ordered. The soldiers refused and didn’t let anyone move to the shade, shouting insults and Israeli nationalist slogans. After two hours, the soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded the journalists. The Israeli photographer had a panic attack and started throwing up, and after stating she was Israeli, was allowed to remain without a blindfold.
The Palestinian journalist was left in the sun for two more hours, then he was released. In the meantime, the other four journalists were stacked on top of each other into a military jeep, and taken to a military base. There they were held blindfolded and handcuffed on the floor for two hours, while being insulted and interrogated by the soldiers. The soldiers told the female Israeli photographer that she should have been raped by Hamas.
At approximately 04.00 PM the IOF passed the illegally detained journalists to the police, who took them to the police station. The two male journalists remained blindfolded until arriving at the Maale Adumim Shai Police Station in an illegal Israeli settlement 1 hour later. At the station, the journalists were forced to be photographed in front of an Israeli flag with a nationalist slogan on it, while the officers were insulting them. A journalist was threatened with physical violence for smiling.
The journalists were interrogated in regards to their political affiliation and work, refused the right to see a lawyer, denied food and water until many repeated requests (the two male journalists were denied food completely). The two female journalists were released without charges at 11:00 PM. The Russian-Israeli journalist was released at midnight. The American journalist was held for three days and was released Friday, October 11th. The army confiscated two phones and one camera that they have yet to return. …
Also on the eleventh, the Grayzone released an article, offering updates on Loffredo’s status, having published a statement on the tenth. The Grayzone’s statement, published to X, stated police were holding Loffredo, "on suspicion of serious security offenses for publicly publishing... the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy and thereby assisting them in their future attacks." The Grayzone noted, “the same exact locations which were openly featured in reports broadcast on ABC News and PBS, neither of which currently face such charges.”
They write that originally, the judge overseeing Loffredo’s case ordered him released, saying that since Israeli military censors agreed to allow Israeli media to publish both "word of [Loffredo’s] arrest and the publications that led to his arrest," Israel could "no longer justify his continued detention." But Israeli police appealed the decision, which was scheduled for the next day. In their condemnation, the Grayzone wrote, “The claim that Loffredo and The Grayzone represent Israel’s enemy in wartime merely suggests that the Israeli government views the American people and free press as a legitimate target.”
In a follow-up Grayzone report by Wyatt Reed, the D.C.-based publication wrote that, “police also complained that Loffredo had refused to unlock his phone for them, insisting they needed more time to crack the device. ‘We believe that we will find things on the phone and we will be able to link him [to the alleged crime],’ a police representative stated.” But Jerusalem District Court Judge, Hana Miriam Lomp, didn’t buy it. “The Court of First Instance did not err when it ordered the release of the respondent,” Judge Lomp stated during the October 11 appeal. “From the detailed investigative actions there is no fear of disruption, and in light of the reasons stated above, the cause of the danger is also not clear.”
While Loffredo was allowed to be released, Judge Lomp gave police until October 20 to come up with evidence to justify a prosecution, withholding his passport until then. “Just what Israeli officials hope to uncover in their search of Loffredo’s cell phone,” Reed writes, “remains a mystery.” Also unclear, he goes on, “is why the investigation focuses exclusively on Loffredo, and not on any of the numerous other reporters who reported the locations of the Iranian strikes.” Reed points to how, after Iran launched its ballistic missiles at Israeli military targets on October 1, “several international journalists broadcast reports from the scene of blasts, including ABC News’ Matt Gutman and PBS Newshour’s Nick Schifrin.”
On the seventeenth, the Grayzone’s editor in chief, Max Blumenthal, posted to Twitter a statement by New York State Assembly Member, Harvey Epstein, calling on Israel to release Loffredo, his constituent.
As typically happens whenever journalists are detained, various free speech, civil liberties, and human rights groups have joined calls for Israeli police to drop the charges against Loffredo, the sole target of the investigation. I join the calls for the Israeli police to drop their charges against Loffredo.
*As of Saturday evening in the U.S., he remains in Israel, though this article will be updated with any breaking news Sunday, 20 October 2024.
The case of Jeremy Loffredo, who I predict will be let go thanks to the just pressure for his release, is quite interesting for at least a few reasons.
As with certain questions, like democratic rights and freedom of the press, political preferences, at this stage in history, are irrelevant regarding who may or may not be censored, as the capitalist state can and will utilize next whatever the repression is against the working-class. The case against Loffredo is grounded in the notion that his reportage somehow constitutes a threat to Israel during wartime. Anyone can see how such a rationale begs for corruption and abuse, given that the Israeli government could claim things like strikes, inconvenient protests, or future reportage, “aid the enemy during a time of war.” Any government could and would fit anything they want under such a definition.
This goes beyond political differences as I’ve nothing in common with the Grayzone. They expresses Stalinist politics, with reverence for Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Maduro, and Daniel Ortega, but contempt and scorn for Ukrainians, praise for Hamas and Hezbollah, nothing but criticism and insults for Israel and its society, applause for the Chinese Communist Party, suspicion of Chinese Muslim Uyghurs. Regarding the current conflict, they’ve focused on discrediting accusations of rape against Hamas, which the Grayzone argues is simply an excuse weaponized to justify committing genocide against the Palestinians, pointing to a lack of traditional forensic evidence, like rape kits.
As someone who saw a female soldier getting dragged in and out of a Jeep the day of pogrom, with blood on the back of her sweat pants, I don’t need a rape kit to tell me what happened to her.
When the Grayzone isn’t delegitimizing Israel, as many of the writers describe themselves as “anti-Zionist Jews,” they’re delegitimizing any popular uprising against repressive governments, like the Maidan uprisings in Ukraine, or the popular uprisings in Bangladesh, as the product of “foreign influence” and “interference.” (Don’t even get them started on Tiananmen Square.)
The other reason this case stuck out to me, other than the basic principles of freedom of the press involved, is just how fast Loffredo was released, which was only a few days. Yes, the police likely treated them harshly and reprehensively. Yes, they took their phones, insulted them, denied them attorneys. But notice how a judge demanded Loffredo’s release, how another judge rejected the police’s appeal, and imposed a deadline of the police, upholding Loffredo’s bail.
Could this have happened in Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen? Can you imagine a journalist, being captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then getting an Afghan judge (if there is even such a thing) to order the Taliban’s police to release him, let alone “her”? To even pose this question is, at once, to mock it.
And lastly, in relation to the last point, we see how the capitalist Israeli state is amenable to democratic pressure, from lawmakers, press freedom organizations, and so on. Has Hamas been amenable to the demands by the families of victims to release their family members being held in Gaza? Are they not instead weaponizing the dread and sorrow of the victims’ families, in order to try to sabotage the Israeli government’s war policy?
The answers to these questions answer themselves and show all the difference between Israel (however imperfect it may be) and those who wish to destroy it, no matter how much their propagandists try to “expose” it as dictatorial. They only demonstrate that there really is a “separation of powers” in Israel, a key component of democracy, as well as a key point of departure from the dictatorships reporters, like Loffredo, so vehemently and passionately defend.
jonathansalinas@substack.com
Hasina’s House of Mirrors and The Reappeared
Bangladesh’s interim government faces, exposes deposed leader’s secret, underground prisons, where the military tortured and ‘disappeared’ her political opponents.
Ahmad Quasem Arman was an attorney, with a wife and two young daughters, when in 2016 he was detained and disappeared by Bangladeshi paramilitary forces. For eight years, he remained blindfolded, in an underground, windowless cell, frail, unkept. Bangladeshi journalists in exile caught wind of the secret prison, in 2022, which they learned was code-named The House of Mirrors.9
Imagine Arman’s relief to find out that the wicked witch had been toppled. Arman was one of the several long-disappeared secret prisoners who were finally released as a result of “Sheikh” Hasina Wazed’s ouster from power back in August, after family members had been told the government knew nothing about the disappeared’s whereabouts. Apolitical himself, it’s believed he was targeted for his father’s sins who was am outspoken political activist and businessman, although by 2016 Hasina was disappearing anybody she didn’t like the look of.10
“I prayed to God every time that ‘I couldn’t be with my family in this world, at least keep us together in heaven,’” Mr. Arman, 40, told the Times.
It’s believed that hundreds were forcibly disappeared during Hasina’s 15-year rule, though that’s likely an underestimate. Simply attending an opposition rally or posting an unhappy Facebook thread was enough to get you locked up. Indeed, many young Bangladeshi’s still living in the country “lock” their Facebook profiles, essentially disallowing non-friends from seeing any content.
One of the many who’ve reappeared since Hasina’s ouster in August suffered “repeated strokes” after learning his wife had remarried, believing him dead. Another learned his father died after going door to door for years seeking clues to his disappearance. But dozens more have no been so “lucky,” with families being denied closure with not even remains of their loved ones turning up.
“In a particularly gruesome case, an official in Ms. Hasina’s party paid the battalion’s members to take out an adversary, according to court documents. When they went to pick the man up in broad daylight, they also rounded up any witness to the crime. The officers sedated seven people and strangled them, according to court testimony. To prepare the bodies to be dumped into a river, their abdomens were perforated to help them sink, and sacks of bricks were tied to them,” the NYT reports.
Seeing some like Arman reappear it gave hope to countless others who’d lost it all years prior. Tasnim Shipraa, whose uncle Belal Hossain vanished in 2013, said: “It’s almost like he never existed in this world.” It’s one thing to disappear one’s corpse, but it’s another to disappear their memory and their essence.
Abdullahil Amaan Azmi was another formerly disappeared person to reappear after Hasina’s ouster from The House of Mirrors. He’s described by the NYT as, “a decorated former army general who was whisked away apparently because his father had been a senior Islamist leader.” Hasina apparently believed in generational punishment, as she definitely believed in generational reward, using her dead father’s imprimatur to justify her lavish lifestyle and rule over Bangladesh as if it was a family business.
Azmi estimated he’d been blindfolded and handcuffed 41,000 times during his eight years in captivity. “I did not see God’s sky, the sun, the grass, the moon, the trees,” he said. Azmi’s only “exposure to sunlight” in the house of mirrors was a tiny hole in a vent that was discovered by his captors and swiftly shut. The only request he made was that his corpse not be befouled, returned to his family, with whom he so desperately hoped to be reunited, if only in death.
Maroof Zaman, a former ambassador, was disappeared for 15 months. He said he and the other prisoners knew they were at a military base not just because of “the discipline and precision of the guards,” as the Times put it, but also because they could “hear morning parades. They knew that officers’ residential quarters were close by, with normal life playing out just above them.” Every Friday “you could hear the children singing,” he said. Zaman was targeted because of his criticisms about Hasina’s corrupt relations with India, where she’s now hiding from justice.
“The pain — it never goes. The scar that is inside you,” Zaman said.
Michael Chakma, a tribal rights activist, was set free in a jungle in August after being driven blindfolded for hours, according to the Times. “It was the first time I saw daylight in five years,” Mr. Chakma said. “As I was seeing this, I was trying to double-check if I was just imagining this light or if it was real.” He was abducted in 2019 while entering a bank in Dhaka. He’d been campaigning for self-governance for Bangladesh’s Indigenous hill peoples, the Times reports.
Since the popular revolution that overthrew the Awami League-led government of Hasina Wazed, the families of the disappeared also took to the streets, joining vigils of the anti-quota students who were killed in the last days of the Hasina dictatorship. With the coming to power of an interim government, led by the student movement and the 84-year-old Nobel laureate, Professor Mohammad Yunus, families have been demanding and getting answers.
Professor Yunus’ government signed an international treaty on enforced disappearances and formed a committee to investigate the crimes in Bangladesh, in recent days. The committee has issues an arrest warrant for Hasina who, again, is hiding in India. Meeting with mothers seeking answers about their son’s whereabouts, Professor Yunus said to them that his government was a result of their protest. “Their persistence,” the Times wrote, for all those years had helped inspire the student protesters and others to rise up and topple Ms. Hasina.” If the country’s interim leaders cannot pursue justice for them, Mr. Yunus said, “then this government has no meaning.”
I surmised in my August article that the new government, led by the people who overthrew Hasina, had to create new forms of rule, including the replacing of the army and existing police, alongside mobilizing the country’s working-class to take over industry and foreign trade. Some signs of this happening have materialized. Professor Yunus said in recent weeks in an interview with German TV, his first since coming to power, that it’s likely the constitution must be rewritten, one of the proposals I’d made.
I’m glad to report that since then, I’ve connected with some of the student organizers and am in contact with Professor Yunus’ assistants. I’ve also noticed that students and government security continue protecting Hindu temples, which became opportunistic targets for mobs, during the most unstable period of this recent revolution. A notably beautiful event that occurred recently was the successful and safe holding of a large, annual Hindu festival in Bangladesh, their largest of the year.
Bangladesh is still a young country, and lots of growing pains are ahead of it. But it’s nevertheless heartening to see, at the moment, the interim government led by Professor Yunus at once doing what he can to protect Hindus in Bangladesh (a minority) while simultaneously holding the hands, and comforting the mothers and grandmothers, of those who were disappeared by Hasina’s death squads.
Hasina’s spoiled, big-mouth brat of a son—who’s bitter he’ll never assume her throne—continues to say his mother is ready to stand trial, even though Delhi has opted to “no comment” on Bangladesh’s arrest warrant. While I’m confident she’ll eventually be extradited, if she’s really as cocky as her spawn says, then she should turn herself in and face the people she maimed, tortured and ruined.
jonathansalinas@substack.com
The term Hijabi Feminism has been used in social and political discourse for at least several years, even adopted by Muslim women who argue that being covered and veiled is a kind of “freedom,” much like how liberals today justify censorship under the guise of “freedom from disinformation.” I Am A Hijabi Feminist | HuffPost Religion
“Jina Mahsa Amini: The Face of Iran’s Protests – DW – 12/06/2022.” Dw.com, www.dw.com/en/jina-mahsa-amini-the-face-of-irans-protests/a-64007550.
The term ‘rag heads’ is colloquially used by Iranians to mock the mullahs. A viral social media trend following Amini’s killing consisted of young people knocking off clerics’ turbans, running up behind, then running away, all as their friends record the glorious moment.
“Iranian Diaspora Collective on Instagram: “the Iranian Government Is Deliberately Using the Cheragh Dam to FLOOD the Roads in Saqqez That Lead to Jina Amini’s Grave. Tomorrow Is the 2 Year Anniversary of Jina’s Murder by the Islamic Republic’s Security Forces. #Jinjiyanazadi #Jinaamini.”” Instagram, 2020, www.instagram.com/iraniandiasporacollective/reel/C_6fno4zNzo/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.
While Vice News says seven were executed, Iran Primer says six: “Report: Executions Surge in Iran | the Iran Primer.” Iranprimer.usip.org, 5 Mar. 2024, iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2024/mar/05/report-executions-surge-iran.
To understand this reference, one must travel back in time to the Iraq war years, particularly during the 2004 presidential election, when filmmaker, Michael Moore, released, “Fahrenheit 9/11”. The two best critical reviews of the film were by Christopher Hitchens and The Militant:
A) Hitchens, Christopher. “Unfairenheit 9/11: The Lies of Michael Moore.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 21 June 2004, slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/06/the-lies-of-michael-moore.html.
B) The Militant - August 31, 2004 -- ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’: a pro-imperialist screed aimed at electing Kerry
Also see: Christopher Hitchens on Michael Moore (youtube.com) and Christopher Hitchens on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 2004 (youtube.com).
Capitalist governments, because capitalist classes control the state, use it to advance capitalist rule. One of the most, if not the most, important aspect of bourgeois law and order is the maintenance of “trade secrets”, i.e. the manner in which capitalists exploit workers and price-gouge the public. Like with government “secrets,” the “classified” or “confidential” information is no secret to certain people, as the capitalists share “secrets of the trade” with one another. Thus, a crucial step towards overthrowing capitalist rule is in organized and unorganized working people exposing business secrets, i.e. “open the books!”, particularly when the bosses say they can’t afford raises.
The Grayzone. “On the Ground Investigating Iran’s Strikes on Israel.” YouTube, 5 Oct. 2024, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu0zptW49eM. Accessed 16 Oct. 2024.
News, Netra. “Secret Prisoners of Dhaka.” Netra News — নেত্র নিউজ, 14 Aug. 2022, netra.news/2022/secret-prisoners-of-dhaka/. Accessed 19 Oct. 2024.
Mashal, Mujib, et al. “Alone in the Dark: The Nightmare of Bangladesh’s Secret Underground Prison.” The New York Times, 17 Oct. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/world/asia/bangladesh-disappeared.html. Accessed 18 Oct. 2024.