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Israel says Elizabeth Tsurkov, Russian-Israeli Middle East analyst, is being held by Shiite militia in Iraq
(JTA) — Elizabeth Tsurkov, an expert on refugees and a Middle East analyst who has Russian and Israeli citizenship, has been held for months by a Shiite militia in Iraq, according to the Israeli government.
“Elizabeth Tsurkov is an Israeli-Russian dual citizen who has been missing in Iraq for several months and is being held by the Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday in a statement. “Elizabeth Tsurkov is still alive and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being.”
Tsurkov, 36, is currently a non-resident fellow at the Washington D.C.-based New Lines Institute, a foreign policy think tank. She is also a doctoral student at Princeton. The statement from Netanyahu’s office describes her as “an academic who visited Iraq on her Russian passport, at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the U.S.”
The statement added, “The matter is being handled by the relevant parties in the State of Israel out of concern for Elizabeth Tsurkov’s security and well-being.”
The New York Times reported that she was kidnapped in late March shortly after leaving a cafe in a middle class Baghdad neighborhood.
“She was kidnapped in the middle of Baghdad, and we see the Iraqi government as directly responsible for her safety,” a statement from her family said. “We ask for her immediate release from this unlawful detention.”
Kataib Hezbollah, the group that has allegedly kidnapped Tsurkov, is separate from the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, though both are connected to Iran, according to The New York Times. Kataib Hezbollah led a 2019 attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Tsurkov’s capture has been known by those close to her for months. Israel’s government went public after a publication called The Cradle broke the news of her kidnapping earlier Wednesday.It is not clear where The Cradle, which is sharply critical of U.S. and Israeli policy, is based or who funds it.
Tsurkov, the daughter of Soviet Jewish refugees, became known in Israel for her advocacy on behalf of African refugees who came into the country in the last decade-plus. She also was an outspoken critic of Netanyahu’s previous governments and their treatment of Palestinians. The New York Times reported that she had visited Iraq 10 times, according to figures provided by the Iraqi government, which did not comment on her kidnapping.
“My research is informed by the desire to understand and convey the points of view and experiences of people in the Middle East, and highlight abuses by powerful actors, whether they are dictatorial regimes, armed groups or foreign countries intervening in the region,” she says on her personal website.
In February she denounced a retaliatory raid by Jewish settlers on a West Bank village as a “pogrom”. On March 18, she reported on Twitter that she was recovering from surgery for herniated discs. On March 21, she used the platform to report Kurdish protests of repression by a Turkish-backed militia in northwest Syria. Those were her latest tweets.
In 2014, Tsurkov engaged with Hamas on Twitter during Israel’s war with the Gaza-based terrorist group, chiding its social media team for ungrammatical Hebrew.
In 2021, commenting on an Israeli woman who was taken prisoner in Syria and then freed, Tsurkov foresaw the possibility that she, too, could be taken captive. “I am generally against prisoner exchanges (even if I get into trouble on my next visit to Syria/Iraq),” she wrote. “But given that it’s the policy of the state of Israel, quick action was the correct course.”
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The post Israel says Elizabeth Tsurkov, Russian-Israeli Middle East analyst, is being held by Shiite militia in Iraq appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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