'Why did you hurt Israel?' American journalist details Jerusalem detention

On October 8, Israeli forces detained Jewish American independent journalist Jeremy Loffredo along with three other journalists and their Palestinian driver at a checkpoint near Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

The others were soon released, but Loffredo, 28, was charged with “endangering national security and aiding the enemy during wartime”, a charge that carries 25 years to life in prison.

Since the onset of Israel's war on Gaza, the country has gone on an unprecedented campaign of arresting journalists and media professionals—frequently without any formal charges—who, along with their lawyers, say these actions are reprisals for their reporting and commentary.

As of today, the Committee to Protect Journalists has reported a total of 71 arrests of journalists in the Palestinian territories of the occupied West Bank and Gaza and in the city of Jerusalem, since the war began on October 7, 2023.

Organisations like Addameer, a Palestinian human rights NGO based in Ramallah, says the figures could be higher.

Days before his detention, Loffredo had reported for The Grayzone on the Iranian missile strikes on Israel. The report was similar to ones filed by both local and international journalists, but Israeli authorities told his employer that Loffredo had shared "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."

Loffredo denied this.

Now back home in New York, the journalist sits down with TRT World to share the details of his experience.

TRT World: You've been covering events in Israel and Palestine for The Grayzone for a while now, right? Had you ever travelled there before October 7?

Jeremy Loffredo: Before October 7, I'd never been there. I began going there once the war began.

TRT World: OK, so how many times have you been since then?

Jeremy Loffredo: I was there once directly after the war began, covering ethnic cleansing and violence in the West Bank. And then I was there for about a month and a half in February and March, covering the collaboration between the military and the settlers to block humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza.

TRT World: At any time, did you face any problems with your reporting?

Jeremy Loffredo: I always waited until I returned back to the States to publish anything, so I didn’t attract the attention of the authorities while I was there and never faced any issues.

TRT World: We know that so many journalists have been killed since this war started, and many more have been threatened. Why was this so important for you to do?

Jeremy Loffredo: There is a genocide happening so as a journalist who doesn't work for the American Western mainstream media, it seems like this is the biggest story in the world and the most important thing to be covering.

TRT World: You reported on the Iranian missile strikes hitting Israel on October 1. Like numerous other outlets. But then on October 8 you were stopped at a checkpoint near Nablus and detained - was this the first experience that you had of something like this happening?

Jeremy Loffredo: I had been at countless checkpoints before in the West Bank, there's hundreds of them, and when you stop and they ask for your identification, it's really not that strange. That's what happens at checkpoints.

But this is the first time that I've ever been blindfolded, shackled and handcuffed and detained. First time I really ever had trouble with the law while working.

TRT World: Can you talk us through what happens next?

Jeremy Loffredo: They asked for my passport. They asked for my cell phone. They went across the street to the military checkpoint. They made some phone calls. They were on the computer. They might have been researching me. They might have been talking on the phone to their superiors.

After 30 minutes, they asked me to cross the street. I asked what was going on and they told me that you're being arrested and they proceeded to take out maybe 20 feet of cloth and wrapped it around my head dozens of times covering my eyes, my nose and my ears.

They zip tied my hands with a plastic zip tie, and then they shackled my legs with steel shackles and loaded me into a military Humvee.

TRT World: And was that just to you or to the other reporters who were with you and the driver?

Jeremy Loffredo: First they did it to me and then they did it to all the reporters who I was with. The other reporters were let go soon after, and I was kept and charged.

TRT World: Where were the other reporters from?

Jeremy Loffredo: There was a dual citizen Israeli Russian. There was a dual citizen, Canadian Israeli, and there was another American Israeli. And then I was an American, so it was three other journalists, me and then our driver who was Palestinian.

TRT World: Where were you heading to at the time?

Jeremy Loffredo: The reason I went there in the first place was to cover violence in the northern West Bank, you know, raids and seizures that have been happening more often in Nablus, and Jenin and Tulkarem. And this would have been my first day where I was going to spend some time in the northern West Bank. That's the reason I went there. So we were heading into Nablus at the time.

TRT World: So you were taken to the Moscovia detention centre, is that correct? The detention centre inside the Russian compound? Can you describe what that was like?

Jeremy Loffredo: Well, after I was blindfolded, shackled and handcuffed, I was actually taken to a West Bank military compound. Kind of the police headquarters of the entire West Bank. And that's where I was first interrogated for the first time, though many interrogations happened after.

And then that's when they told me that I was being tried for giving information to the enemy during wartime.

Then from the West Bank police compound, they put me in an unmarked police car and drove me to the Russian compound in Jerusalem and I was put in solitary confinement. I was given very little food and very little water. I was refused a sense of time. They wouldn't tell me what time it was. But every other prisoner there, there were lots of prisoners and lots of cells, all Palestinian, undoubtedly all Palestinian, all spoke Arabic.

I was the only American foreigner from what I can tell, and I was given solitary confinement because my crime was so grave, because I was being charged with this military Penal Code of being an enemy of the state.

TRT World: When they said you were aiding the enemy during war time, did they identify who the enemy was?

Jeremy Loffredo: That's a good question that my lawyer had asked me as well. They didn't at first identify who the enemy was, but they asked me about the video report that I had published. The video report was about the Iranian missile attack. So I was assuming they meant that the enemy was Iran, even though I don't believe there’s been any formal declaration of war called against Iran.

But I do think the enemy that they were referring to was Iran. And that's what it turned out that they were talking about.

TRT World: Going back to your time in the cell – can you describe what it was like?

Jeremy Loffredo: It was about 8 feet by 10 feet, concrete. There were four other concrete ledges in there that they would call beds. Out of the four beds, there was a paper thin fabric that could be used as a mattress or a blanket, and that's where I was supposed to sleep.

They brought me one cup of chocolate pudding as food over the course of three and a half days and they gave me a couple of little cups of water.

They refused to tell me what time it was. The only time that I was able to see what time of day it was, is when I was either brought to the West Bank for interrogation and I would be able to look out the car window, or I was brought to court and I was told what time my court hearings were.

TRT World: Were you at any time physically beaten or abused? Jeremy Loffredo: I was never physically beaten or abused.

They were definitely threatening me and scaring me and starving me. But I wasn't physically threatened, physically abused.

I think it's because I'm American. And I was in this prison with all these Palestinians.

On my second day, I was able to hear wailing, screaming, crying, only to be interrupted every few seconds with a Hebrew-yelling guard. So it was obvious that there was torture taking place in the cell next to me. Or maybe the cell next to that. And this is a prison that is notorious for torturing Palestinians to manufacture false confessions, and thankfully, nothing had happened to me.

Definitely because I was American. Everyone else in the prison was Palestinian, and they were subjected to torture.

TRT World: Israeli and US networks reported on the Iranian missile strike, so it was in the public domain and not a state secret - why was this important for you to highlight in your case?

Jeremy Loffredo: One of my priorities was proving to them that this story had been told before by Israeli media and this Israeli media is subject to the Israeli military censor. And so that would show that nothing in my report was secret.

But it was difficult because my lawyer at the time spoke very little English. So just trying to tell her exactly what our argument is and why my report is not illegal or secret was difficult, because not only does she speak broken English, she also was not able to talk to me. We're only able to talk for 40 seconds at a time, and that's how the law works in Israel if you're accused of terrorism. So I'm not able to speak to my lawyer. I'm hoping she understands what's going on.

Finally, I'm able to tell her, we need to put together a case of all the times Israeli media reported exactly what I had reported before me, and then sometimes more detailed than me.

The police want to put me away in prison, they want to consider me an enemy of the state. They know what I had been reporting in Israel before and that I've been reporting on the collaboration between the military and the settlers and have been reporting on the war from an anti-Zionist point of view. But they don't want to hear it.

But we need to show the judge this evidence because a judge cannot ignore the mounds of evidence that show that I'm entirely innocent.

So yes proving to the judge that what I was doing was not secret was really important and it didn't even seem like it should be that hard because all you have to do is turn on the news.

TRT World: Foreign journalists have to sign up to get credentials to report. Did you have this credentials card and were you aware of this military censor? If you didn’t have it, do you think that went against you?

Jeremy Loffredo: It definitely did not work in my favour that I had not been running all of my reporting past the Israeli military, but I would argue as a journalist, as a reporter, why would I do that?

Why would I give all of my reporting to the Israeli military? Also, in the past, none of my reporting has been published while I was still in Israel. Everything is always published when I come back to America. This was the first time actually that anything I had ever published was published while I was still inside of the country, which is unfortunate.

TRT World: In your opinion, what do you think the real motives were behind your arrest?

Jeremy Loffredo: It's not even a matter of opinion. There was a time when we were in court when the judge said 'If Ynet, if this Israeli publication, can publish exactly what Mr Loffredo was publishing information wise, why can't Mr Loffredo publish it? It doesn't make any sense.'

And the prosecutor for the Israeli intelligence agencies said, 'Well, Mr Loffredo doesn't like Israel.' So you can see very clearly that this is political and this is because of the reporting that I've done inside of Israel in the past. It actually doesn't have much to do with this actual video report about the Iranian missile strike. It has to do with what I've done in the West Bank. What I've done in the South of Israel, what I've done exposing the collaboration between the Israeli military and settlers to stop aid from going into Gaza.

And also I did a lot of reporting on settlers who want to resettle in Gaza.

That’s a real Israeli government line. Ben Gavir and the Likud party all want to repudiate Gaza. All want to resettle in Gaza. And I was embedded secretly with the settlers who were going into Gaza and building their little outposts.

TRT World: They've started rebuilding?

Jeremy Loffredo: I mean, these are tiny little outposts and buildings. The military takes them down after they leave. But it's supposed to symbolise to the government that we are ready to move back, you let us know.

This type of reporting was the only type of reporting that any American was doing, and so I think that my prosecution was to stop that from happening again.

TRT World: While you were in prison, the Committee to Protect Journalists contacted the US government and a spokesperson for the State Department said there is 'no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens abroad.' Did you feel you were a high priority? And what level of support did the US embassy offer you?

Jeremy Loffredo: The US embassy and the State Department gave me no support. They gave me absolutely nothing. The only support that they gave me was at a certain point when I was in solitary confinement, they sent what they called, a social worker for a wellness check to check on me while I was in prison.

They came to my cell, they opened the steel slide on my prison door and they said, 'Mr Lofreddo, I'm a social worker. I said, 'this is great. Maybe I'm going to get food, maybe I'm going to get water. This is great.'

And she said, 'Why did you hurt Israel? You hurt Israel. Do you love Israel? Why did you hurt Israel? What you did is not good.'

And she berated me for my video report and my journalism in the country, and that's all she did.

She berated me and then she left.

So the only support that the US government gave me was the Zionist social worker who came to my cell only to berate me and criticise my reporting and then leave. That was all the US embassy did for me.

Jeremy Loffredo: I would have liked the same amount of support from the US government that US citizens detained and US journalists detained in other countries get. When The Wall Street Journalist reporter was detained in Russia, you had a journalist at CNN wearing his name on a pin. You had Anthony Blinken and the entire State Department and the entire US Federal government flexing their diplomatic muscles and trying to get their citizen out of Russian prison and criticising the state of Russia for detaining their citizen as authoritarian.

Now my story was unworthy to the US government because they aren't trying to demonise Israel right now.

They're actually trying to minimise any demonisation of Israel. So Israel might be the worst place in the world for a journalist to be for a US journalist to be detained because it's the only country in the world that America isn't willing to criticise or flex their diplomatic muscles and get their citizen out of prison.

TRT World: We know that Palestinian journalists are being imprisoned today by Israel, many held under administrative detention, which means that they're not actually told what their charges are. In your opinion, why do you think Israel is upping its ante, or its mission against journalists in particular? Why are they seen as such a threat?

Jeremy Loffredo: Israel is raising the courage threshold so high that in order for a journalist to do their job, in order to truthfully report on Israel's war efforts, you need to be willing to be thrown in administrative detention, you don't even know how long for.

You need to be willing to be incarcerated like myself, and you need to be willing to like so many journalists in Lebanon and in Gaza, you need to be willing to give your life almost immediately.

It's a censorship regime enforced by rocket fire. They're so scared of the truth coming out.

It's proof of the fact that they're willing to kill and incarcerate to stop journalists from reporting. It shows that they see reporting and journalism and truthful information as a threat.

The silver lining is that – they clearly understand, and we know that they know that they don't have the moral high ground. And we know that they know, if the truth gets out, they will look bad.

So I think that's what this says about the Israeli censorship regime.

TRT World: So they're losing the media narrative?

Jeremy Loffredo: They're definitely losing the media narrative and the information war.

But what you're seeing is, we're one year into a genocide and you have the UN, you have international institutions, you have the ICC, all accusing them of genocide and telling them to stop. And they're not stopping.

It’s easy to believe that they don't care about what the world or the media thinks of them. They're just kind of a rogue state. But then you see how scared they are of journalists and they're imprisoning journalists, they're killing journalists. And that shows you that they do actually care, that they do see in the information as a threat. And they do see their criticisms in the media as a threat.

TRT World: Going back to your story. So after you were released from prison, you weren't actually free to leave, right? When you were actually told that you were free to go, and did you believe it?

Jeremy Loffredo: The only positive part about me being in solitary confinement was that I had three court hearings, one each day, and each day I could see that the courts, maybe not the police, but the courts were deciding each decision in my favour.

The police wanted seven days. The court gave them one day. The court said I can go. The police appealed it and then finally, the court said he can go.

Now the police were no longer able to appeal and all the police can do is say, how about we keep him in the country for 10 days? We keep his phone, we keep his laptop, we keep his passport so he can't leave and we want to be able to interrogate him whenever we please for the next 10 days.

And the court said yes to that.

When I heard that I could leave, I knew it was real. I knew it was only a matter of time because I didn't break the law or do anything.

TRT World: You were then informally deported by the Israeli police. What does informal deportation actually mean?

Jeremy Loffredo: So informal deportation happens when the Israeli military or police can't actually charge you with anything, so they can't formally deport you because there’s a whole bureaucracy and a whole system that you need to go through.

They can't charge me with anything. They can't charge me with journalism. They can't charge me with giving information to the enemy, because they found out that I actually did not do that. So they just gave me my passport back and then they were incommunicado. They did not speak to me.

So they gave me my passport back. I'm supposed to take that as a sign that I'm allowed to leave the country, but they did not tell me to leave the country. They did not speak to my lawyer, and they left my case open. So now I am able to leave the country, but my case is open so it dissuades me from ever coming back and if I do go back, I have a terrorism charge open against me. And so I will be immediately detained.

So it's deporting someone without doing all the paperwork, essentially.

TRT World: Do you feel that you can still continue to do your job?

Jeremy Loffredo: I can definitely do my job. I plan on continuing to report on Israel's war efforts and expansionist war efforts from here in New York and from the countries surrounding Israel. I just can't go inside of Israel right now. I can't go to the West Bank right now, but I plan on continuing to report on exactly what I was reporting on before.

But I can't do it from inside of Israel, at least right now.

TRT World: You've got US presidential elections happening right now, what are your hopes for the best outcome both within the US and for Palestine-Israel as well?

Jeremy Loffredo: As an American journalist, seeing first hand what's going on in the West Bank, in Israel and Gaza, I don't see there to be any difference in terms of the most important policy between Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

I believe that no matter who wins, Israel will still have carte blanche to do whatever they want to people in Gaza and people in the West Bank.

And I think that Americans right now are prioritising domestic policy, abortion, in justification for Kamala Harris. I think it's morally repugnant to be prioritising American women's access to abortion over a genocide.

I think that it's really hard to try to say one candidate is better than the other right now when there's a genocide happening and they have the support of both candidates.