American Journalist Jailed In Israel Speaks! - Jeffrey Loffredo
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Medium speeds and jumps to medium and hits them head on. It's the Jimmy Dore Show. Jeremy Lafredo is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who's worked on various independent documentaries and formerly produced news programs at RT America. His work has appeared in The Gray Zone, The Defender, Rebel News, and Unlimited Hangout.

More recently, Lofredo was one of five journalists detained in Israel for reporting on the Gaza-Israel conflict and charged with endangering national security and aiding and sharing information with the enemy. Now, other than that, how was your trip? Other than that, other than the detainment, I hear the weather is beautiful. Yeah. So how are you, Jeremy? I'm doing very well now that I'm home. Thanks for asking.

Of course, of course. So this was, these charges were built around this particular report that you did, which other outlets without any consequence had also reported on. So why don't you tell people about what exactly their premise for detaining you was? Their premise for detaining me was, they told me that there was,

secret and sensitive information in that report and that the putting the locations of the the missile strikes and the missile contact that could have been used by the enemies or Iran to recalibrate their future strikes and hit more precisely and accurately so they

They were asking me every few questions and interrogations, they would ask me if I have any connections to the Iranian military or the Iranian state, which I don't. Both of those questions I would say no to. And so on one hand, they were saying I'm a journalist who broke military censorship orders. And on the other hand, they were saying I did it deliberately on behalf of Iran.

Now you were detained with four other journalists originally. Why did they only hold you? Because they let the rest of them go, yes?

Yeah, that's correct. I mean, so I published this video report on October 4th, I believe it was, and on October 8th. So my entire plan was to go to Israel and the West Bank and report on violence happening in the northern West Bank, the raids and the sieges happening in Nablus and Tulkarm and Jenin, these refugee camps. That was my plan. And I got there on October 1st, the day of the Iranian missile strike.

So I spoke to Max Blumenthal and he said, you know, you're there. It's really newsworthy. It's really important. Might as well file a report about this Iranian missile strike. So I thought, OK, let's make a video that tries to find these where the missiles fall. You know, I go around with my taxi driver. I try to find the locations. Right.

So four days later, I'm finally beginning my trip to the Northern West Bank. I'm just planning on spending a few weeks up there. And we get stopped at one of the military checkpoints, which, you know, there's hundreds of them in the West Bank. And they ask us for our passports, which is, you know, pretty expensive.

regular requests for the army and these checkpoints. We hand over our passports, they come back and they ask us, "We're actually going to need to see all of your cell phones."

And my cell phone's locked and I'm a journalist and there's nothing in my cell phone that isn't, you know, a valid journalistic inquiry. You know, I am messaging people who live in these places where Israel will consider, you know, all these people terrorists because of their political beliefs. But I'm

I wouldn't be the first journalist to go to Janine refugee camp and interview people. That's not like, so that's, I know that's not illegal. I don't know, of course, I don't know what they would consider illegal, but I know, I mean, I'm an American, I'm allowed to be in the West Bank and I'm talking in the capacity of a journalist to a lot of people who are also in the West Bank. So I hand over my cell phone, it's locked anyway. One of the journalists who I was with refused to hand over his cell phone.

He was dragged out of the car. Um, uh, the rifle, the army rifle was pointed in his face. He was hit a few times and then they took his cell phone and they told everyone to get out of the car and to, to sit on, on the dirt beside the military checkpoint. And they walked away with all of our cell phones and all of our, um, passports. And so maybe after an hour, they say, Mr. Lafreda, and they call me over across the street. And, um,

I say, what's going on? And they say, you're under arrest. And they immediately take about 20, 30 feet of kind of cloth and they tightly wrap it around my head. You know, this is a...

This is around my eyes, my ears, even my nose a little bit. So they blindfold me, they shackle my legs and they handcuff me and they put me aside and they actually do this to all of the journalists I was with. And we get loaded up into a military Humvee.

And they drive around. It seems arbitrary. It doesn't seem like they're going anywhere. There's a few soldiers in the back of the truck with us. They're speaking Hebrew. They're joking with us. They're asking if we love Israel. They're taunting us. They're asking us questions and then telling us not to talk.

And then we stop. We all get moved from the military Humvee to a police vehicle, still blindfolded, still handcuffed, still shackled. And it takes us to a West Bank military checkpoint.

which is right next to one of the largest police stations, army stations in the West Bank. It's about seven miles east of Jerusalem. And we're all loaded into kind of holding cells. And then everyone's let go except me. And I stand in the holding cell for another maybe hour or so. And then one of the officers comes in and says, there's a lawyer on the phone for you.

I say, "Okay." And I go. And before I answer the phone, they tell me to stop and they pull out a big flag that's kind of like their nationalistic wartime slogan. It says, "Together we will win," in Hebrew. And they take photos of me in front of it on their iPhones for their group chats. It's nothing official. They're just laughing at me and taking photos of me in front of this flag. And then after that, they let me go into the room and talk to a lawyer. And I answer the phone. And I still, at this point, I have no idea what's happening.

They were all let go because they're Israeli. And yes, maybe they were in a part of the West Bank that they weren't supposed to be in. But like, they just get a slap on the wrist. They're told not to go into the West Bank for another 15 days. And that's it. But I'm still there. And I'm the only one who was American. So I'm the only one who technically wasn't breaking the law. Americans are allowed in these parts of the West Bank.

West Bank. So I don't know what's happening. My answer to the phone- The others were not allowed in the West Bank? They're allowed in the West Bank, but they're not allowed in Area A, which is Nablus. Area A is a part of the West Bank that Israelis are not allowed in. I see. I see. And was this lawyer assigned by the court or this was your personal lawyer? Who was this? This lawyer was...

Other people who were let go, as soon as they left, they called this human rights NGO. And they were told not to speak to me on their way out. So they thought he seems to be in more trouble than us. So they left and they called this human rights NGO who then gave me a lawyer. I see. I see. So what happened from there? So I answered the phone and she says, Mr. Lofredo, I want you to think very hard.

What do you what did you do? How could you be in this much trouble? I said, what do you mean? She said, you're being charged with giving information to the enemy during wartime. And I was I was dumbfounded. I had no idea what I had done. I was really frightened. I said, you know, I did make this video. Perhaps they're talking about the video. The lawyer speaks English.

like very little English. So I'm trying to communicate to her with what I might have done. She's not really understanding me. I'm barely understanding her. The phone call lasts maybe 40 seconds. At this point, there's already an intelligence officer, like kind of rushing me off the phone. And she says, listen, they're going to interrogate you. They're probably going to bring you to the prison. And then I'll see you in court probably tomorrow. And then the phone call ended. And that was, that was it.

They kept you locked up for a few days, and then you were eventually released, and now you're obviously, thank God, back home. Do you want to describe what those days were like?

In custody and how you were eventually set free? It's called the Russian compound. It's in Jerusalem. There's a prison at the Russian compound. I was kept in solitary confinement for three and a half days. I was given very little food or water. I was given one chocolate cup of pudding over the course of three and a half days and a few Dixie cups of water. The prison guards treated me like...

Like a terrorist, they saw my, you know, my slip in front of my solitary confinement cell and say, giving information to the enemy during wartime. And they all thought like, oh, so we're dealing, you know, we have, we have an enemy of the state here. He looks American. He looks white. There's a hundred Palestinian prisoners here and this one white guy, but this one white guy happens to have a more serious charge than anyone in this prison. I would ask what time it was. Cause like,

learning what time it is in solitary confinement. It was pretty important. They wouldn't tell me what time it was. It was truly a nightmare. It was this tiny little concrete cell. There's four bunks in there. They gave me my own cell and it was dark and there was a little blanket on top of one of the slabs of concrete, which is, you know, that's a bed. So I was there. I was there the first night. I

was taken out of my cell the following afternoon and brought to court and I was able to speak to my lawyer for like 30 seconds before the hearing and I couldn't even really understand her so that's that just goes how the justice system works for people who are accused of you know high crime maybe it's the same here I just never experienced it but

I go in front of the lawyer. The police say we need him to stay in detention for seven days. We need to go through his phone. We want to interrogate him more. We need to go through his laptop. And the judge says, well, why can't you do all those things while he's not in detention? And they said, we think he's a threat to the state of Israel. He's dangerous if he's not in jail. And the judge said, why do you say that? And they said, it's top secret.

And the judge, it didn't seem like the judge truly didn't like that answer. She didn't seem like she believed it. So instead of seven days, the judge said, you can have one day. You can interrogate him more. You can go through all of this stuff. You have one day and then we'll be in court again tomorrow. So I was brought back to solitary confinement for court the next day. And at this point, still, they hadn't given me any food.

I'm let out of solitary confinement, brought to court the next day. And my lawyer says, this is a journalist. He's here to testify on behalf of you. And as a journalist from Ynet, you know, a giant Israeli publication. And he says, you know, he's a Zionist. He doesn't agree with my reporting at all. He doesn't agree with the gray zone, but he said, you know,

I published the same information that this journalist published and then I reported on the fact that he was detained and the military censor allowed me to embed his report in my

in my article. So not only did I in the beginning publish just what he published, then I published exactly what he published by putting his video in my article. And he has a GPO card, a government press office card. And everyone who has a government press office card in Israel is mandated to WhatsApp the military censor office, no matter what they report, no matter what they tweet, everything. And so he had a conversation between himself and the military censor office with them okaying my video and his reporting saying that there's nothing secret here.

So he showed the judge the cell phone conversation and WhatsApp. The judge said, so he's allowed to publish all this stuff. And so is he. So that's it. And the judge ordered my release. And I was signing all my papers to get out of the prison. And the police appealed the decision after the window for appeal.

appealing the decision to close. So the court let them do whatever they wanted. I'm signing the papers. They say a few things in Hebrew and they grabbed me and they put me back in solitary confinement and they don't tell me why and they tell me nothing. So I'm just sitting in my cell again, totally unaware of what happened. Um,

A few hours pass, maybe it's midnight now, and two plainclothes detectives, like intelligence officers, come to my cell. They grab me, and they put me in an unmarked police vehicle. I still have my shackles and handcuffs on. And they drive out to the West Bank military compound that I was originally in.

detained at and questioned at and um they tell me that we're going there for interrogation i'm in the back of a car i'm scared what does interrogation mean are you guys gonna you know torture me what's happening it's um we get out we go to the office no one's in this entire compound office building there's no one there um as we walk down the hallways like a movie the lights are turning on because they're motion activated like it's it's really spooky um

we go into an office and he interrogates me that never touches me um but he asks me the same questions that they asked me during the first interrogation it doesn't seem like they've

really learned anything new or thought of anything else to ask me. I was sure that this interrogation was going to involve maybe what they found on my cell phone. They were going to ask me about my political beliefs, but they didn't. They just asked me about this video. Once again, do I understand what a military sensor is? Why did I break the law? Why did I include the details of where the missiles had landed? Do I have any connections to foreign militaries? Just this kind of stuff, semantics, asking the same question over again, different ways to see if I give different answers.

And then it was over. They did a DNA swab on me after that interrogation. And they took my fingerprints of each hand, each finger. And then I was sent back to solitary confinement in the middle of the night. And they told me, they said, we appealed the decision. And we have, you have to go to court tomorrow. It'll be at a higher court because it was after an appeal, the Jerusalem district court early in the morning. So at least I had a little information of what was happening next. Right. And, and,

it was kind of like a positive development because I'm leaving there and I'm thinking like, they really didn't, um, they're asking the same questions and I'm answering them confidently and honestly. It just, it seems like it was almost like a, a last ditch effort to maybe get me to say something that I hadn't said before. But, um, that was it. So I go back to my cell, um,

I go to sleep. I wake up. They give me a chocolate pudding cup. That was the first time I was fed. I go to court. How many days is that at that point? That was day three.

I'm waking up and out the third day. Chocolate pudding. Yeah, exactly. We gave him chocolate pudding. Actually, this morning, this is the morning that a social worker did a wellness check on me. She was sent by the embassy. So the embassy called the prison and said, there's an American citizen there. Check on him. And the social worker came to my cell, opened the steel slide.

And I said, oh, this is great. Maybe I'm going to get water. Maybe I'm going to get food. It's amazing. She said, why did you hurt Israel? Do you love Israel? And so and that's all she said. She asked me. It's from the American embassy. Well, the American embassy sent me like a.

like a military age Zionist Israeli social worker to come like check on me. And they didn't even fake check on me. They just asked me and berated me and asked me why I did what I did and why I hurt Israel. And if I love Israel, did not ask me how I was doing, did not ask me if I needed anything. And that was the only form of help

that the American embassy gave me was this, this Israeli social worker who did no, no wellness check at all. They just asked me, um, essentially called me a criminal, told me I'm a bad person and then shut the, shut the steel slide. And that was, that was all the help from America. Um, but a few hours later they bring me back to court and, um, now it's a nicer court. It's a bigger court. It's a, um, district court in East Jerusalem. And, um,

um at this point i had um i had my my friends and people from the gray zone sort of make um just like a dossier not exhaustive at this point but just a short dossier of all the examples of israeli media and american media inside of israel reporting the same exact things that i did before me and sometimes with more detail so you know just names of publications screenshots names of the authors and the dates um

So we brought that to court with us. And my lawyer managed to convince the judge that I was not a threat. The police said they need me in court for another six days at this point. They need to keep interrogating me. They need to go through my phone. They just broke into it. So now they need to go through it. And the judge said, OK, well, you can keep his phone, but he doesn't need to be in detention. So at that point, this is the I think it's October 11th. I was let out.

Under the under like the the agreement that I stay in the country They keep my passport they keep my phone They keep my laptop and whenever they asked me to come to this West Bank military compound for interrogation. I do so immediately So I said I had no choice. I said, of course Sorry, um, that's okay. And then I'm staying at like some one of my friends houses in Jerusalem and I get a call and

from my lawyer that says, "Listen, we've only been able to talk, you know, 30 seconds at a time before court. We don't know if you're going to get called back in for interrogation. We don't know if we're going to have to go back to court. Just come to my house. Let's go over everything in entirety and just like make sure we have everything understood." I said, "Of course." I did that. The next day they called me in for interrogation. I thought they were just like telling me to leave for, stay for 10 days because they want to bother me. They don't like my politics and they want to make my life hard. But no, like they, they call me back.

It was a seven hour long interrogation where they just kind of talked about this six minute video the entire time. That has been republished by Ynet.

that you have established the more detailed information has appeared in other publications and they're still questioning you about this at this point. Yeah, I in that video, like I took I found one of the missile impact sites a mile away from Nevitim Air Base. I took a video of the missile and in Israeli media you had satellite images from inside the air base the next day. Like I was a mile away in a random part of the desert.

And for some reason, I'm giving too much sensitive information to the enemy when you have Israeli media publishing images from inside this sensitive base. So they asked me about why did I put the coordinates? I said, providing as much context and information is just a priority for me as a journalist, for the readers and viewers, as much information as possible.

They asked me, they said, so you're a journalist. You've taken journalism classes. You expect us to believe that you've never taken a class and learned about the importance of a military censor. I said, no, we have like, you know, the First Amendment in America. Like, that's just not how I was taught about being a journalist, being a reporter, publishing information. But I am aware of the fact that you have a military censor.

I just saw your entire mainstream media apparatus publishing the same information of me. So I assumed it wasn't secret. And they asked me, you know, again and again in a thousand different ways, if I have ties to, you know, foreign militaries, seven hours or just questions like that. And then they asked me, it got really chaotic towards the end of the seven hours,

where I had detectives running in and out of my interrogation room, asking me questions about messages on my phone. And they were asking me questions and they would leave the room as if they were going through my phone and seeing if I was telling the truth or not. And they come back and ask me more questions and do the same thing over and over. They were very, very interested in

This PBS NewsHour video that I kept bringing up that I'm sure you guys saw on Twitter. Nick Schifrin, it has like 4 million views. He's in front of the Mossad headquarters the night of the attacks. He's showing the camera the crater in Tel Aviv. He's showing the camera how close it is to the Mossad headquarters. And I told the detectives, that's one of the videos that I saw. That's the only reason I was able to find the impact site in Tel Aviv. And...

they kept like kind of brushing me off as if they didn't believe that this video existed.

they kept saying like PBS PBS PBS like mimicking me I was like no this is actually this is very important this is very this is this is the crux the whole case right because yeah you're saying if I understand this right is that you were basing your reporting on previous reporting that did not violate the sensor exactly and Nick Schifrin has a GPO card um you know he all of his reporting is subject to the military sensor so if Nick Schifrin

a PBS NewsHour is posting this video, it goes to show either that it's not about the information in my video and it's about the politics of myself and Grayzone, or it's about the information, in which case it's not secret. Nick Schifrin said all the same things I did of PBS NewsHour.

So this didn't violate the sensor, but they obviously didn't want this information out there. Why is that? Is it because they didn't want to give Iran the propaganda win of having fired close to those targets? Is it because they didn't want the Israeli people to know that is that Iran had fired on military targets and not civilian targets? What do you think is the reason? And there may be multiple why they didn't want this information out there.

Yeah, no, I think there are multiple reasons. When they're trying to tell, like, justify the information being a threat to the state of Israel, of course, in the interrogation room, they're saying they don't want that information out there because Iran can look at my video and

and see where the missiles landed, and then recalibrate their future attacks and actually hit their targets more precisely and kill people and destroy Israeli infrastructure. So the forward-facing justification for not allowing the information out

is that the enemy will use my information and attack more precisely next time. Of course, there's also a propaganda angle to it that they don't want the Israeli public to know that they are so vulnerable. Whenever there's a missile strike, you see about it on Twitter, just like kind of anonymous accounts in Israel, I'll see it on Twitter. I'll be with a taxi driver, I'll say, you know, that

They hit a house. They hit a house outside of Tel Aviv. They struck a residential street in Haifa. And they just like almost like they refused to believe it. They said, no, no, no, no. I'll say, no, no, look, look, it's right here. They really did. And like he'll say, no, no, no, they didn't do that. Like they don't want to believe even when the information is put in front of them that that.

that the missiles are hitting. The missiles, they're not protected by the Iron Dome at some point. So they don't want the Israeli public to know that they are at risk or getting attacked or successfully getting attacked. And they also, they say that they don't want the enemy to use the information against them. Apparently, even in the interrogation, he said, you know,

Nasrallah said in an interview long ago that watching the Israeli media after a rocket attack is the best, you know, the best form of intelligence because they report on where the missiles had fallen and that helps us a lot. I don't know if that's true. I've never fact-checked that, but that's a story that I was told in interrogation to make it seem like I'm helping out terrorists. Well, why single you out? Why you? Yeah, I mean, it's...

Like it's not even that they said that you are, um, you know, breaking some military censorship law. They went, you know, way, way, way past that. And they ended up accusing me of, you know, you know, kind of these terrorism offenses. This must have been so terrifying. What's going through your mind as all of this is happening. Um, it's, you know, it's half and half. It's like, it's terrifying. Um,

because I'm being told that the punishment for if I'm convicted of these charges is 25 years to life to the death penalty. And of course, that's an insane thing to hear. I'm pacing back and forth in my cell. And I'm thinking, OK, maybe if they let me out in 10 years for good behavior, I'll be 38 years old. It's not that old. It's fine. I'm justifying this in crazy ways. On the other hand, I'm seeing with my own eyes that

Three judges or two judges then three judges in a row, you know, they were siding with me, you know this anti-zionist leftist and

even though they're Zionist Jews and Israeli judges, they're starting with me over these intelligence officers and police officers. They're saying, you want seven days? How about one day? You want seven days? How about zero days? And now he's free. You guys can keep interrogating him and keep questioning him. But according to us, the judges, we don't think he's a threat. So knowing that the courts were on my side and knowing that the truth was on my side, because I would put together these questions

these dossiers of so much proof that the Israeli media published exactly what I did in more detail way before me. I mean, like I, I knew I was right. Like there was no, there was no doubt in my mind that what I had done was fine. So wait, so at the end of this interrogation, they asked me,

Who sent you this PBS NewsHour video that you keep talking about? I don't believe that exists. I say, well, Max Blumenthal sent it to me on October 2nd in iMessage. They say, you sure it wasn't WhatsApp? And they're just like trying to psych me out. Like they're not in my phone, but they're acting like they are. I said, no, it was iMessage. And then finally they like give up. It's a chaotic moment. And they tell me to go home.

So after the seven hour interrogation, it ends in such a chaotic way where I know for a fact that this is not over. They're going to I'm going to come back here, but I don't know when. And this is this is like day two of my 10 days in the big prison in Israel. And so I go back to the to my my friend's house where I'm staying for the 10 days. I get a call the next day.

I'm with my lawyer already. They called the lawyer. They said, we want Jeremy to come in. We want him to unlock his phone. We want to see this Max Blumenthal text message about this PBS NewsHour video. We want to click on the PBS NewsHour video and we want to watch it. And so I said, well, that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking like this, like this is day one.

You know, three of my of me being, you know, out of prison and still in the country and then like day seven of them having my cell phone. And I've been through court three times where I keep bringing up this PBS NewsHour video. These are detectives. You think that they would have looked it up by now? And maybe they did. Like, I don't know. Your video is the one that you guys did.

No, I'm thinking they would have looked it up by now. I mean, the PBS NewsHour video. Yeah, because I brought it up so much and I'm using it to justify my own video. You'd think they'd just watch it, you know? So I go in there. Sounds like it might have been a trick to get you to unlock your phone. That's what I was thinking as well. I'm thinking like, are they looking at a camera above me and they'll see me put in my passcode? Or they're just going to rip the phone from my hands and go through it. What rights do I really have? I don't know. But I go in there.

I don't really have a choice. I try to unlock my phone and I put my passcode in incorrectly by accident. And it said iPhone disabled for 15 minutes. So it kind of told me that they had been trying to get in and they couldn't. But I put it in because I knew that I had that text there.

I knew and I didn't even know if they actually wanted to see the text. I wasn't sure if this was just a pretext for them to go through my phone. They like just saying, we want to see this one text message. You know, I wasn't sure what's happening. Really scared. Unlock the phone. Show them the text from Max Blumenthal on October 2nd, exactly where I said it would be. We click on it and it loads. You see the tweet. You see the thumbnail of the tweet, but it says like content unavailable.

Right. So he like takes a video on his phone of it saying content unavailable. I know that I just watched it on my cell phone in Jerusalem hours before and the night before the night before that probably. So I'm wondering what's happening. Like, why can't he see it at the same time? Because they seem so interested in this video. I bring a kind of a frame by frame printout of this video with Hebrew subtitles on paper.

to the interrogation today and I handed it to him. I'm moving back like five minutes. This is before he went through my phone. I handed it to him and it's as if I'm showing him something that he's never seen before. He's looking at it so closely. He's highlighting things. He's taking notes. I can't believe it because this is the video that I've been talking about in every interrogation and every court hearing. And it looks like he's never seen it before. He puts it on his side of the desk as if he's going to keep it. So in that moment, I thought to myself,

maybe, maybe what's happening. Like I can watch it on my, on my wifi. I can watch it on my cell phone. Um, they don't believe me that it exists. And then I show them a paper that proves it exists and they click on a thing and

And it doesn't load for them on their network. I think the police were censored from, from accessing the video. I think that, um, everyone else could see it. And then I would tell them about it and they, they just don't believe me because they can't access it. Um, and I actually read, it kind of clicked for me. I read this, um,

When Google Met WikiLeaks is a book by Julian Assange. And in it, he says in the UK and China, he gives a few other examples. He says the networks that the censorship offices censor videos and information first is the police station, is the politicians. Because if the policemen and the politicians don't know that a video is around,

then they can't get angry or reprimand those who work in the censorship office. So it's not even political. It's kind of just like covering their own asses in like a bureaucratic way. So they censored those videos so they don't get in trouble for allowing videos to exist inside of Israel. I don't know if that's exactly what happened, but after I showed him that paper, it was kind of like an aha moment. Like he finally...

softened up a little bit like this is the guy who interrogated me seven hours a day before and he he let me leave like they they they said it was just I was only gonna be there for a short while because it was just the phone so I left and I'm thinking like this is either they let me leave because they finally got my iPhone passcode or they let me leave because this honestly seems what it is it's like they did not believe this video exists and now they believe this video exists so I left

Now it's like the Jewish high holiday. So they tell us that you're not going to hear from us for four days, five days. And that brings me to the 20th when I'm supposed to find out if I'm getting rearrested or if I'm able to go home. So during that five days, I put together an exhaustive dossier of every instance of this information appearing in Israeli media.

Like 17 or 18 examples, 20 pages long, screenshots, dates. I also sent an MP4 file of that video, of the PBS video, so it can't be censored by the internet or whatever. It's just a file that they can watch. I sent over some statements of concern from...

People who I've worked with in America, I sent them that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweet just because I thought that held a lot of weight with any court. I gave them everything I could. I did a lot of research on the computer at my lawyer's office. Finally, it's the day where I find out what they're doing with me. My lawyer gets a call.

And they say, can Mr. Lafredo book a flight out of the country as soon as possible? And she says, well, you know, he does already have a flight the 23rd. They said, no, no, no, no sooner. And so she called me. I said, yeah, yeah. She's like ASAP. Um, I, I, she called me. She said, they want you to book a flight out of the country as soon as possible. I said, I don't have a phone, a wallet, a computer. I don't have anything. She said, just go to my office, figure it out.

I booked the flight. I sent her the flight information. She sent it to the police. And then the police went incommunicado entirely. Um,

so we sent to the flight she said okay they asked you to book a flight they haven't said anything after but let's give someone you know power of attorney and send them to this wisp bank military compound where your stuff is at let's see if they'll give you give them the passport the phone and laptop and let's just see so we sent a friend um to this compound and he was able to get my stuff he brought it back to me so i had my phone

my laptop, my passport. I mean, my phone and laptop. It's like, at this point, I don't want them. You know, like I feel like it's more dangerous to have them with me. But they give me everything back with my passport and I book my flight. She calls the police one more time and says, okay, you gave him the stuff back. You told him to book a flight. Can you give him maybe a letter?

or some something that says like he can leave the country that he can show to the airport authorities because you know Ben Gurion is like the most securitized airport in the world so to be moving through there um being accused of a terrorist just the day before it would you know it'd be a mess so um

They didn't answer that. They said we're not, they didn't answer. They didn't give me any type of paper, any type of permission to leave the country. Like they said nothing to me. They went incommunicado entirely. So I just shrug and I crossed my fingers and I bring my,

everything to the airport. I bring a letter from my, um, from my lawyer that has the detective's names and numbers on it. They interrogate me once at the airport. I show them news articles that say, um, the 20th is the date where I find out what's happening. I show them a letter from my lawyer, um,

You know, at this point, it's like they don't want to step on the toes of the higher up intelligence officers who were dealing with my case. They're just airport workers. They're kind of confused. They look at the gray zone website because I tell them it's for the gray zone. Their eyes are wide and they're rolling their eyes. They're saying mean things. But at the end of the day, they let me go and I get on the plane and I.

I leave and I spoke to my lawyer after I landed in Italy because it was Israel to Italy to New York. And she said what they did was it's like this is called like informal deportation. They leave your case open. They don't tell you to leave the country, but they give your passport back. And so you leave the country. Your case is still open. And the idea is to get you out of the country and to dissuade you from ever coming back. Because if I ever went back,

I would have an open case related to aiding the enemy. I'd be detained immediately and I would go back to court and it would be a big problem. So they didn't have the information to actually deport me because to deport someone, you have to charge them with something. So there was nothing to charge me with. So they opted for this informal deportation and hope that I never come back.

So it must break your heart that you're not able to return to this wonderful place anymore. I would imagine. I hear it's an oasis of democracy in the Middle East. Yeah. Well, chocolate pudding is definitely getting added to the BDS list after that. That's my main takeaway. No question about that. Hear that, everybody? No chocolate pudding. Pass it, but leave it on the shelf.

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So you obviously got the most press out of this recent report that you did for the Gray Zone about the Iranian missile strike. But I would like to show everybody this piece of reporting, which went kind of viral that you did back in March, just to give people a sense of the kind of work that you do. And, you know, I joked in the last segment, you must be heartbroken that you can't go back. But it is a loss that you can't go back because you've done some amazing work.

over there. So this is a report you did back in March. For a week, I embedded myself with Jewish Israeli nationalists who believe it's a worthy cause and religious duty to block desperately needed humanitarian aid at the Gaza border. They enjoyed pastries with the military while confessing to war crimes and cheering for genocides. This is about a three minute video that you put out. I want to show everybody this.

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. The police gave you lollipops and watermelon? Yeah, watermelons and it was great. It was great with them.

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.

We give pastries for the people, for the soldiers, for the cops, for everybody. This is what we give to our people. This is really humanitarian. They need to block the AIDs to Gaza. They need to block the gas to Gaza. Everything to block. And this is what we do every week, two, three, four times a week.

I think that we need to be united and we need to go back to Gaza and take control of the country.

Bibi is a puppet of Biden. Because we cleaned all Gaza, except for Wafiakh. Why aren't we going in there? Because Biden asked us not to. That's the only reason. Oh, you got your way eventually, son. Jog fioli!

so that's obviously a chilling report and that's actually that's actually just a like a three minute trailer to a longer like 30 minute documentary i made oh wow so so being out there interviewing these people

What is it like getting that stuff out of them? Because the very few times I've been in this situation, I've been like covertly trolling Nikki Haley supporters like the stakes are much lower. And so to be there in this just surreal and dystopian scene, trying to get

What what should be confessions out of these people, but they seem to offer it up pretty freely What's it like being there getting this stuff from straight from the source? Yeah, I was I actually went to so in the beginning I saw this was happening I was there and I went to a few of the there, you know, like direct action aid blockades With a journalist who I knew kind of like a leftist journalist in Israel and I drove there with her and

She was kind of like, just kind of arguing with people. And you're not going to change their minds. You're going to turn these people into leftists. We're not there to argue with people. We're here to document what they're thinking and what they're doing. And so all these people saw me walking around with this leftist journalist who's kind of obnoxiously saying, do you know how many women and children are there, this and that? And of course, she's right. But that's not...

we're not we're not going to change anyone's mind um so instead of going back with her i ended up just going for like a week straight on um on this greyhound bus that they were taking from jerusalem and it would go throughout the entire west bank pick children up pick young people up pick mothers and fathers up at settlements illegal settlements and bring them to these border crossings to block the aid so i would spend time with them on the bus

I would, you know, eat lunch with them on the bus. Um, I spent, you know, a lot of hours and hours and hours with these people, a week's worth of hours with these people, um, to the point where they felt really comfortable around me. Um,

And they just started telling me, admitting to war crimes. Not just saying we blew up a terrorist tunnel. We blew up a UN office and that UN office was actually helping people, helping families in Gaza. He wasn't saying the UN office was filled with terrorists. He was saying exactly what it was doing. And

I was able to see firsthand how, because people were saying, oh, these are just fanatical Israelis. They do not represent the government or all of Israeli society. There's only a couple hundred people there. And it's true that there was a few hundred people there, but you would see how these aid blocks were in closed military zones. And so it's illegal for them to even be there. And

Um, as soon as they would show up, the military would use their presence as justification to shut down, um, the aid crossing. So the military was working hand in glove with these, with these activists, um, to,

to stop aid from going in. So it wasn't just these fanatics. It wasn't these fringe Israelis. It was a policy that wanted to be put forward and enacted by the government, but they would get global pushback and everybody would condemn them if they didn't let any aid in. So no, it's not the state. It's just these

these citizens, these Israelis doing it. So they would show up, they use their presence as justification to shut down the crossing. And they would do that day after day after day. And now we see, you know, four months later, five months later, we see that just last week there was, I think it was head by, you know, Ben Gavir,

like the minister of national security at the border of Gaza, um, calling for, you know, resettlement with all these people, um, the same people who were at these aid blockade, um, actions. And so like, it wasn't, it wasn't really fringe. It just took a few months for the entire Likud party and the Knesset to say, we do support these types of things because I was, when I was with those people, I was also with them while they were crossing the border into Gaza.

with vinyl, with plywood, with nails and hammers, building what they called symbolic settlements, symbolic outposts. And the military would allow these Israelis to cross into Gaza for a couple of hours to build these little houses, these little sheds, to symbolically tell the government that we're ready to live in Gaza as soon as you tell us we're allowed to. You know, they want to Judaize it. They said to me, you know, we have a...

We have our yeshivas planned. We have our neighborhoods planned. We're just waiting for the okay from the government. So now, Itamar Ben-Gavir and people from the Knesset are there on the other side of the border, and they're saying that this is happening. And that's one reason why it's like, why did they come after me for a video that the entire Israeli media had already reported on? Well, I mean, you know, I don't know for a fact, but...

Like, Judaizing Gaza and settlements in Gaza is, of course, a giant political goal of a big part of the Knesset and maybe the entire Likud party. So to sort of pull the curtain back on how Israelis think about resettlement, being embedded with them from a leftist, from an anti-Zionist perspective, talking to them.

Um, like they don't, that's, that's, that's a hard, that's horrible PR. Um, so it seems like they came after this report to stop, um, other reports in the past ever happening again, because this was not, this was not interesting. This, this missile report, I mean, it was fine, but none of the information was new. Um,

Unlike my other reports where you know, I'm interviewing I'm in refugee camps interviewing people who were in Israeli prisons recently like and talking about the the conditions inside the prison Sorry, there's a siren happening So Like it seems like they came after this report to you know, get gray zone out of Israel it seems I

Well, what the sense I really get watching those for one, it's, it's just incredible how indoctrinated they are. You have to be really indoctrinated not to think maybe you shouldn't say this in front of a camera because they live in a bubble where that's an acceptable point of view. Right. It's like, it's so, um, that's entirely correct. It's so crazy because the,

They just like think they're so sure that they have the moral high ground that they don't care who they're speaking to. They don't care if he's a leftist, if he's an anti-Zionist. They don't care if it's for the gray zone or if it's for Reuters. They just want they're so sure of themselves that they just want their ideas out there, no matter how they're presented or where they're put. Like they invited me. Some of them invited me back after that video.

Even after the video. Even after the video. Wow. They didn't take it as an expose. They took it as a promo. Well, some did take it as an expose. They kicked me out of some of the WhatsApp groups, some of the Telegram groups. But some of them said, like, you're welcome to come back whenever you want. Like, they were so sure that they didn't sound insane in that video that they were willing to have me back. Now, looking from a distance, it looks to me like,

Like you have a combination of people like that and people who are looking the other way on what these people are doing. Would you say that I'm right in that take on Israeli society? It seems like some people are pretending they don't know what they know about what's going on. And in the end, the country pretty much wants to have greater Israel and get these people out of there. Some people just don't want to get their hands dirty in the process.

Exactly. I mean, even the, you're entirely correct. It's crazy. Cause you'll be, you know, you'll be at a bar or at a pub and you'll be speaking to, you know, someone who would be considered a progressive here in America. They're in art school. They want free housing, free healthcare. And then you start talking about Palestinians with them and they sound like Netanyahu, you know, it's like there is a, there is a progressive left, but there's no progressive left really when it comes to the Palestinian question. Um,

I mean, there are like, you know, I don't, I don't mean to say that there's none because there are activists in Israel. There are leftist activists, anti-Zionist activists, but it would surprise you when you're in like, you know, a metropolitan area talking to like an art student and, um,

They start sounding like Netanyahu really quickly and talking about how the Arabs are smelly and how they should find somewhere else to live, et cetera, et cetera. But that person would never actually go down and block the A themselves, like Kareem Shalom or the Nassan of border crossings. That's just what they think, and that's probably what their parents think, and they're not willing to actually get their hands dirty, but they're glad that people are willing to get their hands dirty. ♪

New Trump ad appeals to old Jewish ladies who vote Democrat, urging them to switch sides on the basis of their deep-seated anti-Palestinian racism. All right, so let's throw that up.

Did he mean to hit that? Here we go. I don't know where to put it. Did you watch the news lately? Israel's under attack. Anti-Semitism like I never thought I would see. Did you read about Samantha's boy, Max? No. He got spit on just walking at Penn. That's scary. What about Kamala? Busy defending the squad. Trump I never cared for.

but at least they'll keep us safe. I never voted Republican in my life, but I am voting Trump. These eggs are too salty. Can we get another order here? Cut, cut, cut. Don't complain about the eggs till after the take. But they're so salty. I know we need one solid take. Are we seated under a vent? It's so drafty at this table. We're not near a window. Why is it so drafty? What's that breeze over here?

tables? No, man, we can't move tables. We already set the lights up for this table. Can we please get 30 seconds? 30 seconds. Can 30 seconds go by without one of you yentas bitching about something? This must have been a nightmare shoot. This must have been an absolute nightmare shoot. Could you imagine working craft services for this shoot? Imagine doing makeup for this shoot?

Hello, William Morris. I need your three biggest yentas. Yes, you heard me right. I actually want yentas. Three of them. Three of them. No, we're not picking them up. They need their own transportation. They are not driving them here. Let's watch this one more time. We're getting to end. It is only 30 seconds. They finally nailed the take. Sorry, we had to start and stop for them.

Did you watch the news lately? Israel's under attack, anti-Semitism like I never thought I would see. Did you read about Samantha's boy Max? No. He got spit on just walking that path. I mean, that's scary. What about Kamala? Busy defending the squad. Ay, vey. You know Trump I never cared for?

but at least it'll keep us safe. I never voted Republican in my life, but I am voting Trump. Amen. RJC Victory Fund is responsible for the content of this message. You know, they really should not be kink-shaming their friend's son. Yeah, well, that's the other thing. You hear Samantha's boy, Max? Are they talking about one of their son-in-laws, or is it one of their friend's kids? It's a strange thing. You hear Samantha's boy, Max?

Yeah, this kind of thing, if you're Jewish, you watch this, and it's just like watching an anti-Semitism bomb. It's like watching a Yenta under tip. You're just like, you know, now I got an answer for this. Now I got an answer for this. It's like if there was a negative stereotype of Jews they left uncovered in that commercial, I can't imagine what it is.

Also, they're fussy, they're whining. But you know what? This I will say, there's a lot of truth to that commercial. And this is part of what makes this election so unpredictable. Are there a lot of yentas like this who are quietly planning on voting for Trump? Abso-fucking-lutely. Absolutely. But are there any yentas like that outside the states of New York and Florida?

Right. Well, the thing is, those Yentas are concentrated one in one batch in a solid red state, one batch in a solid blue state. Right. You got to win the electoral college. I don't know about you. Those don't look like Michiganders to me.

No, no, not a lot. Not a lot of them in Arkansas. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Arizona, Georgia. No, no, no. That's Fort Lauderdale or long Island. Right. That, that, that is a good point. Like who is that aimed at? You've already got Florida. You already got Florida. The GOP has already got Florida sewn up. What? New York. You're going to flip New York, the MSG rally aside, right? He's not winning New York.

So who, yeah, I mean, it's New Jersey, maybe. Yeah. You got some of those Yantas in New Jersey. Yeah. But, but, but it just, as soon, as soon as I saw it, I thought, uh, Jackie Mason with the restaurants, they, they, they, they, they're always too close to the window. It's too salty. That's exactly what this is. And it, it is, Hey, I, the person who wrote it.

understands these people like they do exist they do exist and a lot of them are gonna vote for Donald Trump but as you point out like where are they voting for Donald Trump right

That is the question. That is the question. But hell of an ad. Hell of an ad there by the RJC, whatever that committee was. Well, they need to make up the Latinos they lost on that comedy bit at MSG with trying to get more yentas. Yeah, maybe it'll come more in handy than we thought. ♪

Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae. He can be found at MikeMcRae.com. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. That's it for this week. You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me. Don't freak out.

Do not freak out.

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