Blindfolded and Arrested on Assignment in Israel (Ambie Award-winner for Best Reporting of the Year)

Hey, so we have some exciting news. The ambies are basically the Oscars of audio. They're

given out by the podcast Academy. They pick nominees and there's a whole ceremony, which just happened

right after the blizzards here in New York at the end of February. And one of our stories won the

ambie for best reporting. This was the two-part series that our executive producer Robin Simian

reported last January about the American journalist, Jeremy LaFredo, who was arrested in Israel

while reporting there in 2024. He was the first American journalist to be arrested by Israel.

And that was initially what we were interested in about this story. But honestly,

and when a place we did not expect Robin and our producer Zach St. Louis, who produced the story

and editor Joe Lovell really followed just the facts as we found them to paint a picture of a much

more complicated and honestly challenging situation took in front. Then I certainly expected when

we started that story. I'm really proud of it. It took a lot of work. Even in recent weeks,

I've heard people talk about how these stories really stuck with them. So we figured we'd play them

again. We're going to run the two now award-winning episodes back to back this weekend next. Today we

have part one of that story. Again, we first aired it in January of last year. Here is Robin.

Hi, I'm Robin Simian, the executive producer of Question Everything. And usually I'm behind the scenes

on these episodes. But today, Brian and I have switched hats. I put down my editing notebook

and tested off my recording gear so that I can tell you this story that came to me from a very close

friend. Just tell me your name. My name is Rob guys. What do my kids call you?

Uncle Rob. No. Oh, evil gay Uncle Rob. Yes.

Okay.

Rob is a dog loving politics wank who knows more about movies than anyone I've ever met

and can tell you or my kids countless horny stories about the restaurant seen in New York in the

90s. That's his nickname. Rob and I met working in restaurants in New York over 20 years ago.

Rob 72 and is super plugged in to what's happening in the East Village since he's lived there for

30 years. He works at a sweet little Italian restaurant on Fifth Street and Avenue B that's also

a celebrity spot called LaVanya. A while ago, Rob was telling me about these two young men, 20

somethingers who started hanging out at the restaurant. And because it really can, I immediately

stereotyped him as you know, Hampton's oil brass moving into the East Village turned out they

were the furthest thing from that. Once again, stereotyping is not a good thing. They would come

in every Friday night and slowly but surely after about a month, we all became friendly.

Of course they did. Everyone loves Rob. One of them was really into politics. His name is Jeremy.

Jeremy Lifredo. He's a reporter actually. I found out a lot about Jeremy

and we would talk politics. I strike up conversations. That's why I'm good at what I do.

Then almost a year ago, Jeremy disappeared for a while. Rob didn't know why,

until one of Jeremy's buddies told Rob that he'd been in Gaza reporting. Rob was like,

Gaza. What the fuck? He got into Gaza when it was no one was getting into Gaza. Reminding me of

John Reed in the movie Reds getting into Russia when no one got into Russia in another time and

twice. He's definitely got balls. On the trailer of this truck is Wheatflower for the starving

and besieged people of the Gaza Strip. Rob sent me the video report that Jeremy made about the trip

from March 2024. In it, Jeremy is reporting at a border crossing into southern Gaza where he is

embedded with a group of Israelis who are there to physically block trucks filled with supplies,

like food, water and gas, from getting to the Palestinians and Gaza who need it.

The title of the video is, in quotes, kill them all. The quote referencing a young man,

Hebrew speaking, who appears early in the video. There are two Hebrew speaking men early in the video,

but the second one, he is in a white baseball cap, half-smiling, smirking, talking into the microphone

on his earbuds. He's subtitled, they read, we need to be united and kill all of them,

as in calling for the mass murder of Palestinians. That sentiment shows up again three more times.

One man saying Israel could erase them in one second, another saying the Torah says to destroy them.

A young woman, maybe in her teens or older, speaking in English says, kill them, I don't care.

It turned my stomach.

The video shows families, kids camping out at the border, some in matching T-shirts,

organized groups, singing, sitting in those low, tailgate folding chairs. It's kind of a wholesome

family sinister vibe. A couple of young men drink beer and one flash is a peace sign at the camera.

A man gives pastries to IDF soldiers. Jeremy says there are dozens there,

also according to Jeremy's report. As soon as the settlers show up for these crossings,

the military meant to secure the area, stands down, and guides everyone to the border gates.

Israeli defense forces, the IDF, appear to be letting this happen at the border.

The Washington Post reported on a similar scene where the IDF allowed the blocking of aid.

One of the groups that day, Zav9, were so good at repeatedly blocking aid to Gaza

that the Biden administration ultimately sanctioned them.

But at the time rap hit sent me the video, these aid blocking missions were just starting to be known.

Again, this was last spring. I hadn't seen any reporting like it, especially the views of the

people in the video speaking so plainly and hatefully. That one guy in the beginning with his creepy smile.

Jeremy's video racked up views online. Commenters expressed outrage and praised the reporting.

I was outraged and amazed. It is a reporting feat being there in person and getting all these

people to talk to him. At the end of the video, when the IDF let some of the people into Gaza,

which is not supposed to happen, Jeremy goes with them.

Jeremy films one woman in an orange t-shirt and big sun hat, fantasizing about her husband's plans

to build new Israeli cities in Gaza. He loved the Gaza strip. Would you with her? Of course.

By the beach. All for sure.

My friend Rob watched this and thought, how is this story not breaking news?

I found it shocking and surprising that, you know, network, and that means all network media.

No one picked up on this story and he somewhat, you know, he moved my position.

You're saying he moved your position with that video?

Got me to see, you know, I had no idea that the Netanyahu government was allowing

settlers to come and block aid going into these poor people in Gaza. No one did. He was the first

reporter to cover this story to my knowledge. And I thought it was a very important story

that get out there. And that's when I turned him on to you because I knew you were working on

this new podcast. So I thought you two should be hooked up.

The place where Jeremy works, it's controversial to say the least. It's called the Grey Zone.

Their tagline is independent news and investigative journalism on empire.

Their coverage is strident and so hypercritical of US foreign policy that it ends up being

pretty sympathetic to America's adversaries like Russia, Syria, China, Iran. In fact,

the Grey Zones founder, a journalist named Max Blumenthal, is constantly trying to punch

away implications that the Grey Zone is paid for by Russia or Iran. He says it's funded by readers.

Though Max has met a frequent guest on Russian and Iranian State TV and others at the Grey Zone

have worked for those places. There's this place called Newsguard. It grades the dependability

of various new sources. Out of 100, it gives the Grey Zone 49.5 and a proceed with caution warning,

saying that the Grey Zone has sometimes advanced untrue conspiracies about Western interference

in global politics and used misleading headlines. Just to give you a flavor of the Grey Zone and

its founder, when Newsguard was raiding the site, Max Blumenthal responded to them, quote,

do you seriously expect us to grovel for approval from the same tentacle of the national security

state and financial oligarchy that has raided CNN as a highly credible news source?

I asked Rob about the Grey Zone. Do you know who he works for?

I've done a little digging. I know what the Grey Zone is. I know it's controversial.

The way the mainstream media makes it sound is completely funded by Iran and Russia.

I brought that up. Rob is not so concerned. I think because the Grey Zone is saying it can do

important work that traditional big name media can't do because it's too intertwined with corporate

and government interests. And then the Grey Zone is delivering on that promise with grillist

aisle reporting. I saw the appeal of that and was interested in Jeremy, who whatever the Grey

Zone was about was still doing a really hard thing, going to a war zone, getting not one that many

tricky interviews and exposing corruption at the Gaza border. I brought Jeremy's story up at a

question everything story meeting, wondering essentially, how should we think about that daring

story Jeremy did in light of where he works? I was having one of those moments. Maybe you can

relate. You find some story online and it shocks you or makes you angry. And then you wonder about

who made it. Can you trust it? In this case, because my friend knew the reporter who made the

video, I had a chance to really figure that out firsthand to see if this one story was solid.

I scheduled an interview with Jeremy back in June about that story of his, the aid blocking

story, but he had to cancel. I had to reschedule and then I stopped hearing from him.

Until this past October, when I learned that Jeremy had gone back to Israel to do more reporting,

and while he was there, got arrested and hadn't been let go.

Jeremy Lifredo holds a very particular title. He's the only American journalist to ever be formally

arrested by Israel. And yet what happened to him just three months ago has barely caught the

attention of major American news. Maybe you haven't even heard about this. When my friend Rob

heard about it, he was furious. This is an American journalist to an air quoting this, which you

can't see, an ally. Then we are sending billions of dollars as they committed atrocities

to the poor guys and people. And all he's doing is trying to find out what's going on so even

report on it. I was appalled. That's the story we have today. The story of a 20-something reporter

blindly feeling his way through truly dicey uncharted territory, with so many twists and turns

that this is a two-part series, two episodes this week, and then our next episode too.

Today on Question Everything, from KCRW and Placement Theory, what happened to my friend's friend,

Jeremy Lifredo, who was arrested in Israel for being a reporter? At least that's what he thought

at the time, though to be honest, it's not exactly all that straightforward. And by the end of this,

hopefully, we'll see. I'm still figuring it out. I'll get an answer to my question of whether I

should trust Jeremy and the Grey Zones reporting. Stick around.

The day he got detained, Jeremy Lifredo was in a car in the West Bank on his way to the city of

Nablus. This was a little over three months ago in October. It was a scorching hot day, and Jeremy

was with four other people, a human rights activist, a human rights activist slash reporter,

a photographer, and another reporter who was Palestinian and was driving the car.

It might help to picture the West Bank like this. There's a big area it's called Area C,

and that's under Israel's control. Then there are, like, islands within Area C. One of them,

Area B, is jointly controlled by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the other Area A,

where Nablus is. That's solely controlled by the Palestinians. Israeli citizens aren't even

allowed to go to Area A, though Israeli security forces regularly conduct raids there,

which is part of why Jeremy wants to go there, to see what resistance to Israel looks like

on the ground in the West Bank. I was watching videos online every day, all the time,

of what a raid in the Northern West Bank looks like right now. What type of weapons are they using?

How much movement can people exercise while the raid is happening? How violent do the

resistance fighters, the Palestinians get when their village has the army in it?

I'm seeing all these videos. This is probably the first time that this era, where you can watch a raid

from someone trapped in a house from their cell phone video, and they can upload to the internet,

and I can watch what it's like. I know what it's going to be like there, and I'm definitely

really nervous. I'm with people in the car with me that have been traveling in and out of these

villages for a few years, so I do feel more comfortable being with them and being with a group

than just being by myself. The person driving Hussein Aharini had just turned 30. Everyone

else is in their 20s. Jeremy's 28. He was riding in the front passenger seat. In the back seat was

the human rights activist, Mayor Geraud Skoy. There's another woman, an Israeli photographer named

Sophia, who asked me not to use her last name. And a Russian Israeli who calls himself an activist and

reporter Andre. He goes by Andre X on Twitter. Mayor and Andre both work for many different human

rights advocacy organizations in the West Bank. Hussein's Palestinian, he lives in not 20,

a small village in the southern West Bank, so he's allowed to move through the checkpoints

into Palestinian controlled territory. And Jeremy's an American citizen, so he's allowed to go

there too. Jeremy believed the others in the back seat were playing a slightly higher stakes game

than he and Hussein were, because they are Israeli. And they're not technically allowed

into Nablus. They've been driving for four hours on a main highway that was gridlocked with traffic,

so they turned off onto the crappier two lane back roads. So far Hussein, the one driving the car,

had been asked to show his idea at every checkpoint. They pulled into the city of Bureen

about 20 minutes from Nablus. When they arrived at what Jeremy thinks is the last checkpoint of

the trip on the border of area B and area C. Apparently our Palestinian driver drove a few feet

further than the army soldiers told him to drive when they told him to slow down. And for that

reason they told us to pull off to the side and hand over our identification. And Israeli soldier

asks for all of our IDs. How are you feeling at that moment? I'm thinking I am way better off

than everyone else in this car. Like I really am thinking like I'm nervous for them,

but I know I'm American and I know I'm allowed to go where I'm going. So worst case scenario,

he tells us to turn around because these people are Israeli and he found out somehow,

or they get in trouble and I'm fine. The soldiers are in no hurry.

Maybe an hour or so goes by. We're eating cucumbers. We got out of the car a few times.

There was fig trees next to us. We grabbed figs and went back in the car. We're talking.

What were you talking about? They are all pretty nervous because they are actively about to

break the law. So they're nervous. They're talking about maybe we should just go back

a moment. We can't because they already have our passport. Which I say if he asks me if I'm

Israeli, should I lie? Should I just say I'm Israeli? So they're having this conversation. So

people are deleting things off their phones, deleting pictures, deleting apps off their cell phones,

hiding their phones and taking out. Maybe they have a second phone. They say that's their primary

phone. The Palestinian driver, he was deleting things off his phone. I'm kind of calm. I am looking

behind me and wondering what's taking so long. I should mention I've spoken to everyone in the car

that day for this story and some remember the order of events differently but the details here

reflect the summation of what I learned. And it's Israeli soldier with an assault rifle,

came over to their car and asked for their phones. Andre started recording the soldier on his phone.

Jeremy describes him Andre as someone who doesn't mind yelling at a soldier.

Andre says, I'm not going to give you my phone. You cannot take my phone. And the guy says,

no, give me your phone right now. Get out of the car. The soldier puts his hand in the door,

opens the door, grabs Andre. Grabes Andre out of the car by like his head and neck. Put some on

the ground, points his gun in his M16 or AR-15. I don't know what it was. A long gun like a rifle

in Andre's face. Keeps it there for like maybe five seconds. Everyone's silent. It's really a

scary. And then he takes it away. He hits Andre once in the face with like an open hand

and then takes his phone. And now he says, now everyone gather the car and give me your phones.

I said, I'm an American. I don't understand. And they ended his sentence by saying,

but you still have to give me your cell phone. He told us all to get out of the car and sit on

the dirt outside of the car. I'm like, Chris Cross applesauce. We're all a few feet away from

each other sitting in dirt about 30 feet away from this checkpoint. And they went across the street.

They made phone calls to like what presumably was like their superiors and one by one,

they're asking us to come unlock our phones. And we all said no.

Andre asked me if I was okay. I said yes. And we get yelled at by three different soldiers

say to stop talking. And like I would just like look at the sun or like I would look at the soldiers

or look at the ground. No matter where I looked like I'd have a soldier pointing at me saying like,

what do you have a problem? And I was like, I don't know how do I act like I have less of a problem.

Like, where do I look? The Palestinian driver next to me. I don't know exactly what's

happening with him, but like he needed water or something. And he was like getting very tired

week. And they were making fun of him saying that vitamin D is good for you. Vitamin D is good for you.

Jeremy says one of the soldiers called Jeremy by his last name. Mr. Lafredo come here. He says

Jeremy asked what's happening. They took out maybe 20 or 30 feet of cloth.

And they wrapped it tightly around my head. My eyes, my ears and part of my nose as a blindfold.

They shackled my legs and they put my hands behind my back and zip tied my hands.

And I say, why are you doing this? And they said because intelligence.

Jeremy doesn't know what that means intelligence. The others are being handcuffed and blindfolded too.

One of them, Sophia, was allowed to not have her face covered.

Also, this is one of the spots where the people in the car remember the timing differently,

whether they got shackled this early in the ordeal or later.

They were taken to a military building where they sat in a room together.

And then the two women were put in a car and driven off. Jeremy and Andre got put in a different

vehicle. We're laying down on the back of a military truck. There are soldiers in the car

saying, do you love Israel? Do you love Israel? Just taunting us?

I've seen the army go into Palestinian villages. And when they arrest someone,

they arrest them like they blindfold them with a white thing. They shackle them in the

handcuff them. They have seen that done before never to an American, never to anyone who's not

Palestinian. Jeremy can't quite get a handle on what's happening.

Journalists are supposed to be treated as civilians during wartime,

supposed to be protected. That's in the Geneva conventions that Israel,

which touts itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, signed on to.

And yet, Israeli forces have been arresting Palestinian reporters in record numbers.

As of this week, according to the committee to protect journalists,

Israel had arrested 72 Palestinian journalists and media workers.

The number of Palestinian journalists and media workers who have lost their lives

covering this war makes it one of the worst conflicts for journalists.

157 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in the conflict.

Again, that's from the committee to protect journalists, which found that 11 journalists

were directly targeted by Israeli forces. It classifies those as murders.

And Al Jazeera's numbers are more damning, citing 222 Palestinian journalists and media

workers killed as of December 26 in Gaza alone. And in 2022, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian

American reporter for Al Jazeera, Sharin Abu Aqle. She was covering a raid in the Janine refugee camp,

a place where Jeremy's hoping to go. An Israeli soldier shot her in the head while she was

wearing a blue press vest. Jeremy is not totally naive about the dangers,

but he also knows the US's Israel's ally. So why him? What's going on here?

Blindfolded in the back of the Humvee, Jeremy wondered if they were being driven in circles

as a scare tactic. Eventually, they stopped and pulled him and Andre out of the vehicle.

They on handcuffed me and told me that I can take all my blindfold. I was in a parking lot

on top of a mountain. I don't know where I was exactly, but all I can see was a parking lot

and that everything else was lower than me.

So Jeremy didn't know where he was and didn't know what happened to Sophia, Mayor, or Hussein.

Before leaving on this trip, he'd been checking in regularly with his dad in New Jersey and his

girlfriend in New York, telling them that he was fine, downplaying his nervousness about the

reporting he was doing. How long would it be before they started to worry because he hadn't touch

base? How long would it take his editor back in New York to notice that he dropped out of contact?

Did the soldiers believe he was a journalist, but they seen his work? And if they had,

would that help him or hurt him?

When he was 19, Jeremy went to Manhattan College in Riverdale in the Bronx.

Ray studied history before switching to journalism and international relations.

In college, he worked at a local paper called the Riverdale Press. Straight out of college,

he landed his first full-time job. I worked for, this is controversial here, and I understand

how people might look down on it, but I worked for Russia today, like RT.

RT is Russia's state-run media channel and textbook propaganda.

A megaphone funded by the Russian government. It blurs real reporting with conspiracies,

like Obama-Birthorism theories, or stories managing to blame Ukraine for making Russia invade it.

The original RT was English-speaking only, so deliberately in search of an English-speaking

audience. It has since expanded to 10 other languages.

Where Jeremy worked, RT America was a branch of RT proper during a window of time when Russian

funded media operated openly as Russian-funded media in an office in DC. First in, they even

acquired Capitol Hill press credentials. But RT America was still RT, for us, by Russia.

Some of Jeremy's former professors were not thrilled about him working for RT.

It thought it wasn't a great place to start off a career in journalism,

but Jeremy still thought he could do impactful work, producing a TV show.

Covering international relations and U.S. domestic policy, and it was nice,

because as a young person, I was able to truly produce a new show at 21 years old.

I picked the topics I found, the guests, I booked the guests, the professors, the UN

rapporteurs, and it was lots of fun. Of course, it's funded by Russia, but at the same time,

it's American journalists and American audience. Of course, they want to, Russia wants to

categorize and show how corrupt U.S. systems of power are and how bad our military is.

Of course, they want to use that for propaganda, and I get that. But at the same time, a lot of

that is true. There's a lot of corruption here. Our military is not always great. If we are Americans,

telling Americans this, I don't see the harm. I understand my paychecks coming from the Russian

state. That's not great, but becoming from Murdoch or becoming from Fox News and to each their own.

RT America shut down in 2022, right after Russia invaded Ukraine. This was after it had been

labeled a foreign agent by the DOJ, and it lost its Capitol Hill press credentials. Jeremy was

gone by then, but he had made some industry connections at RT, and it was at RT where he met his

future editor and Greyzone founder, Max Blumenthal. Max, who at one point had written for more

traditional places like the nation and the New York Times, had been a guest on the RT America show

Jeremy worked on. So years later, when Jeremy found himself out of a job, with RT on his resume,

and looking for freelance work, he got a job at Max's online new site, the Greyzone.

Before Jeremy, back in 2014, Max had gone to Gaza and reported on the conflict. This reporting is

all very critical of Israel. Jeremy is Jewish and so is Max, and one of Max's books Jeremy loved

about on the ground reporting in Gaza. When October 7th happened in 2023, 27-year-old Jeremy

thought truly he would love to go to Israel, try to do something similar to what Max might have

done. Report the conflict there in person, to try to tell a story that shows Israel not as a

victim, but as a clear oppressor, a state committing war crimes that the US is aiding, with Max as his

editor back in New York. Jeremy had never reported in a conflict zone before, had no training, had

never been to Israel. Max told him about a few fixers in the West Bank, in names of hotels,

but that was about it. But he was eager. So barely a week after the October 7th attacks, Jeremy

got on a plane to Tel Aviv. Going to Israel, how nervous were you? I wasn't that nervous.

It sounds crazy, I can't explain, but there are dozens of reporters in every war zone and every

conflict zone you can think of. And it was easy for me to justify this because it was like,

I'm just another one. If they're all fine, I'll be fine. I wasn't wrestling it. If anything,

I was really excited. Same more about that, excited. By going there, I automatically, I feel like I

was doing something more important than I was doing before. So I was happy.

I've heard this before from war reporters. You're a part of this small community of people seeing

what's really happening up close. It's thrilling. The adrenaline is addictive and obviously dangerous.

But it's exponentially more dangerous for people who aren't experienced, and Jeremy definitely

wasn't experienced. Jeremy says that on his first night in Tel Aviv. I was on the phone with my

father and talking to my dad on the phone, walking down the street, and like a siren starts happening,

and he says, what's that? And I said, I don't know, I'm going to mute you. I thought like a fire

truck was coming. And I said, the truck's going to call you back. I hung up on him, and it was a

rocket siren. And I looked and I saw people running. And like, I'm looking at everyone's going to

the hotel lobby that I'm staying at. And like in this hotel, it's just journalists at this point

than a few displaced families from Southern Israel. And we all go into a bomb shelter. And so

it was a lot to handle. I've been there for maybe four hours. He stressed out.

But my okay, should I stay in this shop, bomb shelters? I go across the street. Can I go back

outside and I text my editor, Max Blumenthal. I say, I'm in a bomb shelter. There's rockets. He says,

he says, interview people. And I'm thinking, I forgot, like I'm at work. Max is saying like,

you're fine. There's going to be bombs in Tel Aviv that you should report on it and start

interviewing people. You know, he's lived in Gaza for many years during wartime. And so I,

I'm like thinking, okay, I think I'm overreacting. And I need to like get to work.

That's the dynamic at workflow between Jeremy and Max. Jeremy would have story ideas. Max would

give guidance. Then Jeremy would wrangle together a driver here, a translator there, and report.

Over the course of the year, Jeremy made six stories from Israel and the West Bank.

There's the one about Israeli dissidents and the danger they're in for speaking out against the war.

A story titled Armenian Christians under siege by Israel about the small Armenian community

in Jerusalem's old city who were facing displacement. And that story, my friend Rob sent me.

They want more viral than the others about that group of Israelis blocking aid trucks on the Gaza

border. And then a few days before he was detained, Jeremy filed a quick story about the Iranian

missile attacks on October 1st, 2024. He loaded that story on Greyzone on October 5th, 2024.

Three days later, on his way to Noblos, he got arrested.

The story Jeremy was on his way to Noblos to report was by far his most dangerous. He made a plan.

I wanted to interview the residents of fighters from Janine Brigade. I wanted to interview the

Palestinian fighters. My phone was filled with conversations with people who I did not know who

were supposedly fixers in Janine, supposedly fiercers in Noblos. And I'm asking them how can I

meet these fighters? They're very secretive. But like, people have, journals have spoken to them.

And it's valid journalist inquiry to like ask these people questions. And I would love to do that.

You know, the Janine Brigade is an organized fighting group in Janine that protects Janine and the

Janine Refugee camp from the Israeli military. The Janine Refugee camp was where Palestinian

American journalist Shireen Abu Aqle was shot and killed by the IDF in May 2022.

So if the Israeli military wants to come in and shut off the water and tear up all the roads,

then the Janine Brigade might shoot at them. And then there will be a firefighting. So like,

their whole goal is to try to protect the village and the refugee camp from the Israeli military.

And that's what all these sort of, they call themselves resistance groups. But like, you know,

Israel would say that they're terrorists. You're really describing like a year-long trajectory.

Going from like, oh, I don't really know what I'll go see or what I'll go get. And I just

wonder if it registered for you that you're becoming a different kind of reporter that your tolerance

for risk-taking had gone up. Yeah, I actually have not thought about that until you just said that

just now. Yeah, no, you're entirely right. Just like a month before I was there, there was a

raid in Janine, which is when all the entrances to the Janine Refugee camp are closed. Buildings are

blown up, buildings are raided, the water shut off, there's fire fighting between Palestinian

fighters and IDF soldiers. And I'm thinking like the chances are really good that I'm going to be

around like live gunfire for the first time ever.

From the mountaintop parking lot, hours after he'd been taken into custody,

on his way to do that dangerous reporting in the West Bank, Jeremy still didn't know what he was

being accused of. Or what had happened to Sophia and Mayer, the two women reporters they were with.

Andre and I are put in a holding cell. This is not a jail. This is like a police military

compound in the West Bank. And all of the police officers and intelligence officers and soldiers

are wearing plain clothes. Everybody's just in jeans and a t-shirt. You're in a room.

You know, we're in a room, but like it has like a like a jail gate and everything on it.

Oh, bars. Yes. Okay, windows. No windows. The soldiers asked Andre and Jeremy to hand over

anything extra. Standard issue, contraband stuff, a necklace, a hat, shoelaces, belt.

After a while, some soldiers opened the gate and walked them down a hallway. When Jeremy says

they were suddenly reconnected with the others from their group. The two dual citizens from Israel,

they're two girls. They're women. Please picture two women. They're walking down the hall with

the soldiers. And like they seem to be like they're not having the same type of time that we are

having. Maybe because it's two Israeli girls. They're having a better time or? Yeah, yeah. No,

they're having a better time. They don't have the blindfolds on and they don't have a look of fear

like in their face. So I think they at that point had figured out that like we're going to get

let go very soon. They walk to the second floor of the police station. And they're in a hallway.

They've put a big sign or a flag against the wall. And it says together we will win,

which is like the nationalistic war slogan right now in Israel. There's five police officers.

They told us to stand in front of like a militaristic, nationalistic war slogan. I'm shackled

and handcuffed in front of a big wartime slogan flag. And they take out their phones and

they're taking photos with their cell phones and laughing. Telling us to smile, telling us to stop

smiling, yelling at us in Hebrew. Like I don't understand them just just to just for fun.

This is like a trophy photo. Yes, that's exactly what I mean that it felt like a trophy photo.

And I have all these soldiers and police officers taking pictures on their phones and laughing.

It's getting later, which is scary. It doesn't seem like there's protocol like there's no one

no one is keeping checks and balances on anyone. Was anyone in charge? Like did you have a sense

just of the soldiers who were there? Oh, this guy. He's in charge.

There was one woman who was like maybe 45 years old that I only saw for a few seconds that night.

That would come out of an office and ask them a question in Hebrew and they would ask me in English

and I would tell them the answer. She said who is the American? I said me kind of like um

I'm so naive to think like she's asking for who the American is because she wants to let the American

go. That's like oh it's me. It's me. She said okay and then she walked away.

This whole time midday to late at night Jeremy and Andre told me they had not been offered food or

water. Not even a phone call. Until finally a police officer comes and tells Andre there's a lawyer

on the line for you. Andre steps out of the cell. He's gone a little while and he comes back.

He's gone for maybe 30 minutes and then I see the two girls, the Israeli girls walking by my

holding cell and like they have a guilty look on their face. They feel bad. Their heads are down

from my cell. I said where you guys going? What's happening? And one of them looked up at me for

a second like she did not make eye contact and said like they're letting us go. It was the

guiltiest way letting us go ever. Within the next hour or so Andre was let go too.

And that's when I got scared in my heart drops.

Andre left and with him any possible chance for Jeremy to understand what the soldiers

or anyone around him was saying in Hebrew. Jeremy sat there quietly listening to occasional

chatter in a language he doesn't know. And then Jeremy says something surreal happened.

I hear from the police office that's next to my prison cell my own voice. I hear them listening

to my video report on the Iranian missile attack. That story that he quickly published

right before heading to the West Bank. I hear them listening to it on their computer speakers

and that's when it finally clicks for me that this is not about trying to get into Nablus.

This is not about being with Israelis who are not allowed in this part of the West Bank.

This is about my journalism.

What Jeremy reported that so pissed off the Israeli military that's after the break.

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wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.

The story that got Jeremy arrested. The one he says he heard

wafting through the bars of his holding cell at the police station was the story he'd filed

just a few days before his arrest about rocket attacks from Iran.

Jeremy was at a cafe in Jerusalem when sirens went off. People started to panic.

And when you look up what do you see? They look like shooting stars passing by.

They're far enough into the sky where it looks like a plane almost.

How do you ever see anything like that with your own eyes? No.

I was really nervous.

Iran's missiles were fired at several targets including an air force base and at intelligence

headquarters, the Masad and Tel Aviv. Israel said it shot down most of them.

I remember texting my editor saying this is the first time that Iran had set missiles to

Israel since the start of the war. How unprecedented is this? I'm not sure I know.

What did they say? He said this is the second time. They did this one other time when Israel bombed

an Iranian type of diplomatic mission embassy in Syria. But this was definitely the biggest

you know, quantity of missiles ever sent by Iran, at least since October 7th.

Jeremy had been getting ready to go to Noblos, but given the missile attacks, Max was thinking

about a new assignment, a detour. By the next day, he started texting Jeremy reports, specifically.

Some videos that people have gathered just what is happening in different parts of the country

that after math of the missile attacks says it is a really newsworthy story. Like these rockets,

I know that's not your plan. I know that we really have no interest in reporting on that,

but it's newsworthy and you're there. As Max said it, if an Iranian missile landed in Tel Aviv,

that's an important story. Not just because Tel Aviv is a big, dense, cosmopolitan city,

but because there were some photos and videos already out saying that there was a crater

very close to Masad headquarters. There was a PBS NewsHour report of a journalist,

his name is Nick Schifrin. He posted on his Twitter account the video of him and he is standing

in front of a crater in Tel Aviv the night of that night. This is the impact site for one of those

Iranian ballistic missiles. He shows the camera of the crater and then he points to a building

behind him and says that white building back there about 1500 feet behind me is the headquarters

of the spy agency, the Masad. So he says where the crater is, he shows it and he says how far it

was from the Masad headquarters. So that's the only thing that I saw about there being any

craters in Tel Aviv about them being near the intelligence agency headquarters. So Max sent

this video to me. He said apparently there's craters in Tel Aviv and you can't find anything

anywhere except for this one PBS NewsHour video in terms of the damage caused to Tel Aviv.

Jeremy and Max figured there had to be more out there, more evidence of the damage done.

And what if the Grey Zone could break that news? Try to show the extent to which Israel was

much more damaged by Iran, possibly than anyone was saying. To them it seemed like the kind of thing

the government would be covering up. If they could see the destruction up close, maybe they could

report some new details that other outlets might be less likely to publish because they are

embarrassing to Israel. So Jeremy made his way to the spot where the reporter Nick Schifrin

from PBS NewsHour broadcast in Tel Aviv. He says he was 2000 feet from the Masad headquarters.

He said that in the video. So I'm finding the neighborhood that the Masad headquarters is in.

I think we're on the right street. It seems like we're near this building that was in one of the

videos that you could see. There was a 2013 or 2013 sign on the building and now I'm driving and

I'm seeing that building out of my window. Oh, you just recognize it. Yeah, I'm looking for it.

Tel Aviv is similar to Los Angeles or New York City where there's giant buildings of apartments

or offices everywhere, public transportation, cars everywhere, highways. And so that's why seeing

a crater in Tel Aviv was so incredibly interesting. In Tel Aviv, in the Israeli media,

you're told that a target that they missed was in Tel Aviv. But that's not really the story is

that there's a crater in Tel Aviv. I get to the place where I think the crater is

and I look around and I don't see anything out of the ordinary and then I see a car that is

totally demolished with dirt caked in to the entire vehicle. I'm thinking that's not a car crash.

There was four or five entirely total vehicles with dirt and giant concrete pieces

the size of my torso scattered around everywhere. All the vehicles are mangled. This is the day after

the missile attacks. It's still haven't cleaned anything up. I'm looking around. There's dirt everywhere.

There's cars that look like they just came from the front lines of a war right here. I'm looking

around and I'm seeing all this dirt and I think, oh wait, this is where Nick Shiver was standing

from a previous news hour. I look behind me. Everything is the same as the video.

Except for one thing. The crater is no longer a crater. It's more of a mound of packed dirt.

Jeremy thinks Mossad must have tried to hide the hole where the crater was.

That's what this big pile of dirt is. They just filled in the crater with dirt and also thinking

why are there no other journalists here? This is a giant story.

What Jeremy is seeing? He feels like it confirms the idea that something is being covered up,

that there's something big here that the Israeli government does not want anyone to see.

This is the day after and it's just eerie kind of. It's silent. I'm the only one there.

Every time a car, like I hear a car, I think it's the police. I don't know why I'm the only one there.

And I'm also, they say, two thousand feet from the Mossad headquarters.

But it was just a street that I drove to with my taxi driver. Like an Uber driver could take me

there. It was totally open to go to that street was not closed off. There's no signs, no anything.

A missile came from Iran, their biggest geopolitical enemy and landed in their biggest

and most populated city. And there's no drills here. And there's still all the destruction around.

Destroyed cars everywhere, debris everywhere. Nothing had been swept up even yet.

But the street is open. It's just empty. So I started to be worried. I'm thinking the police

are going to come yell at me. Something's about to happen. It was like an interesting energy

in this place because like it's just a giant story to be the only one there. It was strange.

I got back and I told Max that I had done this and this and this and got videos of this and this.

And he said, cool when could we have it out by? I said, oh, you're expecting me to, okay.

So I said, okay, I'll edit it now. I'll put it together. I'll be done in a day or two and then I

will finally get to go do what I've been trying to report on, which is violence in the West Bank.

So I go to my hotel and I put it together. The scene unfolded. Destroyed vehicles,

torn up asphalt and a massive crater roughly 30 feet wide, recently filled in with dirt.

It's night. The camera pans from an empty city street lit up with street lights to a white

maybe 10 story building much wider than it is tall. The missile had hit less than 1,000 feet

from Assad headquarters. In a graphic and overhead Google map image with two big red circles

shows where the crater is and Assad headquarters with coordinates. Given the proximity to what is

considered one of the world's most advanced intelligence agencies, it seemed clear that Israel

was taking extra precautions to conceal the exact impact location for the Grey Zone in Israel.

Jeremy Lefredo. One thing to be aware of. In order to report an Israel reporter's

typically get something called a GPO, a government press office card. They are recommended not

required. Jeremy doesn't have that. He told me he meant to apply for one, but that after October

7, he had the impression that it was harder than ever to get one. So he skipped it. Plus,

he thought if he was formally denied, he would raise a red flag or carry some kind of penalty.

Then he got used to not having one and never applied.

The government press office application requires you to say who you work for, show contracts with

your employer and is necessary to get a work visa. And so if you have a government press office

card, you need to go through this Israeli military sensor. The Israeli military sensor is pretty

much what it sounds like. It's a department of the IDF that requires journalists to subject the

reporting to military approval before publishing. The idea is that during wartime their sensitive

information regarding national security that could harm the country. The IDF has published a list

of topics that are off limits to reporters. The list includes things like weapons used by the

IDF and stories about people held hostage by Hamas and the exact location of missile strikes

and the extent of damage caused. Right here are the censored coordinates, which Jeremy definitely did

in his missile strike video. In fact, he makes a point of doing exactly what the censors say are

off limits. Finding the exact impact site was difficult. Israel's military sensor had borrowed

the media from reporting the locations of the missile strikes. So yeah, Jeremy was aware of the

censors. Yeah, it truly was. But when I made this report of trying to document where missiles

had fallen, I saw that PBS NewsHour and Yenet and all these big mainstream media organizations

operating inside of Israel were reporting exactly what I was reporting. Now, you might notice

a discrepancy here. In the report he published, Jeremy is suggesting that no one has reported on

this because of the censors. Israel's military sensor had borrowed the media from reporting the

locations of the missile strikes and that he and the Grey Zone are bringing you the real unsensored

truth, which may be good for the Grey Zone's branding, but it's not entirely the case. Because

here he's saying he was aware not just of that PBS NewsHour report, but of other outlets in Israel

reporting the story to which if they were reporting presumably they'd gotten approval from the

censor. So you are like, I'm going to go out and do the kind of reporting that I do and I feel

like it's not that risky basically because I'm seeing it reported in other international sites.

Exactly. Yes. Had you run your other reporting through the military sensors?

I've never gone through the military sensor. This is the first time I've ever published something

in Israel while I was still in Israel. I always go there and I document things on my camera

and I never publish anything while I'm there and I come back to New York and that's when I put

everything together. So this was the first time that I was reporting in Israel and putting it

out in real time. I was moving fast and willing to, I didn't take seriously the threat of the state.

I could never picture them actually doing anything to me for what I thought. So I

put out the video and I even like, I thought to myself, how can I make this better than the video

reports I've already seen on this? I said, well, I could maybe overlay where I was standing with

Google Maps and show the viewer or the reader exactly where I was. And it is, it's public information,

the massage building that you can find it on Google Maps. How would we visualize that? How about I

put a circle where the missile landed on top of Google Maps so people can really see where it landed?

So I was trying to, I was pushing the envelope. I just was trying to make my video better.

But now sitting in his cell, it seemed bad. Well, listening to that was scary before I didn't

have to defend anything. I wasn't doing anything wrong. But like now this video, they're gonna,

I don't know what they're gonna say. They're gonna say something about it was not allowed to be said

and I'm gonna have to defend it. I yell at myself like, excuse me, and like someone finally comes

and I say, why am I still here? And they say, oh, like, we have to ask. And then finally, the lady appears

and say, what's happening? Why am I still here? What's going on? She says, there's a different protocol

for you because like you're a journalist. I said, they were all journals as well. I don't understand.

She said, it's a different protocol. You will have your interrogation or you'll talk to your lawyer

very soon. So I'm sitting in this holding cell. Maybe now it's midnight and an officer comes down

and says, your lawyer's on the phone. I said, okay, so I went to this office and I answer the phone.

Jeremy says he has no idea who this lawyer who called him is. He doesn't even know her name,

which means we weren't able to convert it beyond Jeremy's account. We have only his account

for this whole stretch of the story where he's being held alone. The police didn't respond to our

requests. And the lawyer says, Mr. Lefredo, I want you to be very honest with me. I want you to be

very clear. I said, excuse me. They said, what did you do? Israeli authorities believe Jeremy

was possibly giving information to the enemy during wartime. Jeremy tried to explain.

It could be this video. She says, what do you mean this video? Jeremy says, he's in the middle of

trying to explain more about the video to his lawyer when the door behind him opens and a soldier comes

in, walks over to the desk phone. Jeremy's on and he ends up hitting the thing that makes the phone

hang up. So he hangs up the phone. What he managed to gather from that call, Jeremy wasn't suspected

of being a journalist who was too flagrant with the military sensors. Jeremy was suspected of

espionage and that the consequences are very grave, very serious. Did they say what the consequences

were? Not at that moment, no. In the days to come, Jeremy would learn. If convicted of

aiding an enemy during wartime, the sentence could be life in prison or the death penalty.

We reached out to Israeli defense forces and in a statement, they said they did not use verbal

or physical violence against Jeremy or the others he was with. Except to use, quote,

reasonable force to remove Andre from the vehicle when they say he refused to exit to let them

search. They said part of the reason they detained Jeremy and the people he was traveling with

was because the five of them said they were journalists, but none of them presented a government

press office card. I'm Robin Simian on our next episode. We'll have the second part of our

story about Jeremy Lefredo and learn more about why Israel chose to arrest him.

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This episode was produced by Zach St. Louis and was edited by Joel Lovell.

Our show is made by host Brian Reed, producer Sophie Casis, an associate producer, Emily Maltair.

Jonathan Goldstein, Neil Drumming, and Jen Kinney are contributing editors,

fact checking by Anika Robbins and Maggie Duffy, sound designed by Brendan Baker,

music by Matt McGinley. Brian and I are the executive producers of questioneverything.

Today, our team includes managing editor Kevin Sullivan, associate producer Kevin Shepard,

and fact checker Marisa Robertson-Texter. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Cipole,

Gina Delvack, Tadjal Ajamera, and Jennifer Faro. Special thanks to Evia Tarr Rubin,

Yael Evan Orr, Dan Afran, Mickey Meek, and Laura Starchesky. Thanks for listening.