American Journalist Gets Detained By Israel

An American Journalist is Currently in Israel's custody for his reporting.

Recently Israel detained five journalists who were doing critical reporting on their government and debunking the official lies used to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon. Tel Aviv-based journalist and human rights activist Andrey X posted to Twitter that:

Today I was beaten, kidnapped, blindfolded and taken to a military base by the Israeli Occupation Forces, together with 4 other journalists.
Two of us were held for 11 hours without charges, my phone was confiscated (stolen), and one of us is still in custody.

The journalist who is still in custody is American reporter Jeremy Loffredo who works for the independent anti-war news site “The Grayzone”. The outlet’s editor and chief Max Blumenthal confirmed that Loffredo “was among the journalists arrested by the Israeli military and is still in jail” and “His phone has been confiscated.” Grayzone reporter Wyatt Reed also confirmed that Loffredo has been in Israeli custody for “over 24 hours” and that he “remains in Israeli custody” with “his phone seized.”

For context, the reason Loffredo was “beaten, kidnapped, blindfolded” and had his phone seized by Israeli authorities is likely because he was in the midst of an on-the-ground investigation that was doing major damage to the Israeli narrative.

In a video report, Loffredo reported that “ Since the (Iranian) missile strikes, Israel has been able to downplay the significance of the attack, censor the locations of missile impacts from media publications and claim that Iran was targeting Israeli civilians, what I saw today here in Israel is clear evidence that Iran was targeting the same intelligence and military infrastructure that, over the past year has been used to carry out brutal assassinations and attacks.”

In his report, Loffredo was able to confirm two of the locations of the Iranian missile strikes on Israel. Loffredo first drove to the Israeli Nevatim Air Base, the largest air base in Israel where air assaults on Gaza and Lebanon are often launched. Loffredo was unable to get into the air base to see what destruction took place, but after speaking to witnesses on the ground was able to find and document the remains of a missile and confirmed that it was found “a quarter mile west of Nevatim air base”. He also exposed the fact that because Palestinian villages in the area were not recognized by Israel they were not “supplied with any type of state-of-the-art bomb shelters like Jewish communities”.

Pictured above: remainders of an Iranian missile documented by Loffredo “a quarter mile west of the Nevatime air base”.

Loffredo also located another missile impact strike in Tel Aviv finding “destroyed vehicles, torn up asphalt and a massive creator” “less than 1000 feet from Mossad headquarters”. Loffredo was also able to document Israel’s underreported use of human shields showing that the Mossad Headquarters where the strike took place was “strategically nestled among apartment complexes, tourist hubs and public facilities all around”.

Pictured Above: Damage from the Iranian Strike to vehicles located right next to the Mossad Headquarters

Jeremy Loffredo’s on-the-ground investigation did some serious damage to the Israeli narrative. Loffredo was not only able to document the locations of the missile strikes which were “barred from publication by the IDF censor”, but he was able to do some serious damage to the Israeli narrative. Some key takeaways from his investigation were:

• The Iranian attack was far more significant than Israel had let on publicly, doing damage to crucial military infrastructure such as the Mossad headquarters and Nevatim Air Base.

• Iran’s targets were indeed military such as the Mossad and Nevatim air bases not civilians as Israel had claimed.

• Palestinian villages near the Nevatim air base are deprived of bomb shelters unlike Jewish ones, a perfect example of how Israel is an apartheid state.

• Israel uses human shields by placing a military target, like the Mossad headquarters in populated civilian areas.

While Loffredo was in the middle of his investigation, Israeli intelligence likely had word of it and tried to intimidate him from publishing. In his video report, he revealed that on the way back from the Mossad headquarters both his and his taxi driver’s cellphones lost GPS functionality before appearing again in Jordan instead of Israel.

After publishing the investigation Jeremy Loffredo was detained, beaten, and blindfolded and is still in Israeli custody with his phone seized for his investigative reporting.

When American journalist Evan Gershkivich was detained in Russia for his investigative reporting the State Department put out a statement saying he was “wrongfully detained by Russia”, yet they have not said anything about Loffredo and likely won’t. When American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was targeted and killed by Israel the U.S. government stayed silent and even put out a statement covering up the now-proven fact that she was intentionally killed by Israel.

In a statement on the detention of Evan Gerkovitch, Joe Biden said “To all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad: We are with you. And we will never stop working to bring you home.” If he were more honest he would have ended the statement by saying “unless you upset Israel’s genocidal apartheid government”.