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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
When something humiliating like this happens, like we bought the explosives that blew us up, it really undermines this kind of driving force, the sense of enjoyment of being part of this scare group because they're part of an axis that is linked. So the failure of Hezbollah is their own failure as well. Right. And the weakening of Iran and the weakening of Hamas, et cetera, is their weakening. This is how they perceive it.
- [01:43]
Benjamin Wittes
It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare with Princeton PhD candidate Elizabeth Zerkoff in Israel.
- [01:53]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
After the gag order in Israel was lifted about my kidnapping in July of of 23, because of my political views, because of my support for Palestinian human rights, there was basically a campaign of incitement against me on social media by right wing prominent media personalities and a great deal of schindefreud that look at this lover of Arab being kidnapped by Arabs.
- [02:21]
Benjamin Wittes
You know, Surkoff was held for 903 days by an Iranian backed militia in Iraq. In this conversation we talk about the circumstance of her detention, American policy toward hostages under both the Biden administration and the Trump administration, and the sociological studies she made during her captivity of the.
- [02:48]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
People who were holding her. So I want to start with your very unexpected Atlantic article, which I think when most people come out of captivity at the hands of a terrorist group, the first thing they do in writing is not kind of to make fun of the terrorist group. And you wrote an article I believe the headline was, I've been kidnapped by morons or idiots or. And a lot of the article is deadly serious, but it is also funny. And a lot of the point of the article is that there's something comical about how stupid the people who tortured you were. So talk to me first about the relationship between. Why, when you were in, when you came out, is the first thing you're going to write in a major publication. Kind of poking fun at Kataib Hezbollah.
- [03:59]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, thank you for having me here. The article is titled I Was Kidnapped by Idiots, and I basically wrote a draft of it already while in captivity.
- [04:14]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Wrote in your head or wrote on?
- [04:17]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
I wrote it initially in my head when I was in a torture prison for the first four and a half months of captivity and then in the second prison where I was provided with notebooks. I literally wrote down the outline of the article already. And then after I came out of captivity, I reconnected with Syrian and Iraqi friends and Iranians and spoke with them about my experience and to see if it tracks with them as well and what kind of insights I could gain from this really obviously horrible experience that had also many funny elements to it. And humor helped me stay sane while inside. And at times when I was feeling, you know, utter horror 24 7, at any moment, there was no precise timing for when they would come and torture me. So it's basically I was on constant alert, waiting for the next torture session, and humor helped deal with that. Of course, when things got really bad, things stopped being funny. But really, I remember for the first month or so of captivity, basically during the first month, there was minimal torture, I would call it. I used to think that after I come out of this, and I expected to come out very, very quickly because I knew that I've been kidnapped for ransom, so that should be easy to ARR. I thought that I would go on the standup tour and talk about this experience and how funny it is. And I would tell this standup routine to myself, you know, to cheer myself up. Right. And, you know, I was always surveilled by two cameras. And basically the captors, they would occasionally see me in the cameras just laughing to myself and not knowing what. Like, probably thinking that I'm losing my mind, when in fact I was trying to preserve it, obviously without kind of doing it in a cognizant way. Like, this is how I preserve my mind from slipping. And there is an element of vindictiveness to this article. I understood that while interacting with them, that the reason why many People join these militias. And I've then spoken to friends who've also interacted, unfortunately had interactions with such militias and such regimes. Obviously, people join for a salary, but also because of the element of the ability to instill terror and to feel powerful, to feel scary. People enjoy this. Enjoy, for example, being a member of Katab Hezbollah in Iraq and knowing that your neighbors are afraid of you, knowing that you can, you know, park your car in their driveway, and they're not going to dare to say anything because they're terrified of what you will do to them because you can literally kill them and get away with it. So when you poke fun at them, it is something that undermines their power. And actually, the person who probably the most wanted person in Iraq right now is Ahmed Al Bashir. He is the Jon Stewart of Iraq. Of course, he cannot live in Iraq, and his program cannot air on any Iraqi channel, even if he's abroad, because the channel would be basically blown to pieces. So he's broadcasting on Deutsche Welle, in a German channel, in Arabic and on YouTube. And the show is incredibly popular because it is against the militias, but it also pokes fun at them. And this is something that is deeply. I think it's much more effective than just saying, you know, these guys are, you know, are Iran's puppets or something like that, which is kind of the common criticism of them in Iraq. They're actually not too ashamed of being of serving a foreign state. They are, however, very displeased with being found out to be morons.
- [08:19]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
All right, so before we backtrack and get the story of how you came to be in their custody in the first place, I want to stay on this theme for a minute. When you and I first talked about this, when you were released, you mentioned to me that your mother had a similar history and had been in the Soviet Union prosecuted for, among other things, jokes. And so tell me about your family history of making fun of authoritarian torturers.
- [08:59]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So both my mother and father were jailed in the USSR for political crimes. My father served seven years in prison and two years doing hardly labor. And my mother spent three years in prison. And my mother, she did a whole lot of things against the regime. Both of them were dissidents seeking to change the regime, replace it with a democracy. And my mother, she would be involved in samizdat. Samizdat is basically the production of books and literature that is banned in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union controlled all the printing presses, controlled all the Xerox machines. And basically people would use other Methods to basically move around this banned literature. And there was Tamizdat, which are books that were printed outside of the Soviet Union and were smuggled in. And samizdat, it means self production in Russian. And that was basically my mother would type up entire books on her typing machine, this was before the era of computers, and basically would make copies after copies of books of poetry. And she would smuggle that around. She would travel around the USSR and smuggle it around and distribute it to friends, distribute it to other people. For example, the works of Solzhenitsyn, the works of Vysotsky and other Galic, who was a popular kind of bard poet. Those were the types of works that she was distributing. Also George Orwell was banned, so that as well. So translation of 1984 and Animal Farm. And she also, she would also meet with families of dissidents who were jailed, would collect information from them about the conditions of their incarcerated family members. She would then speak to RadioFree Europe and give them the information about conditions in the Guldags. And one thing that she did kind of for fun was maintain this collection of jokes and basically grow it gradually to encompass hundreds of political jokes.
- [11:20]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And for people who don't know Soviet era jokes, it's like an art form. They are unbelievably dark and funny.
- [11:31]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
It is, it is. It's a very developed and sophisticated form of political satire was basically transferred from one person to another as a form of resistance that is could be called the weapon of the week. Right. James Scott is written about it in a different context, but basically it is a way to resist that is risky, but not going out in a protest against the regime, which is obviously very, very dangerous, or taking up arms or whatever. So. So my mother maintained this collection of jokes. And while she would never keep in the house any samizdat work that is kind of, you know, political. The classic samizdat, let's say the writings of Solzhenissen. She kept the collection of jokes because she saw, you know, it's just jokes, you know. So then when the KGB raided her apartment, they found nothing except this collection of jokes. So this is why she was sentenced for it, even though she did a whole lot more, you know, talking to Radio Free Europe, traveling around, smuggling the Samosdat.
- [12:37]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
But what she actually went to prison for is a joke book.
- [12:40]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So the article in the law that she was sentenced for was Klvitan savieskyi abshessoni Stroy, which is spreading lies about the common Soviet order. And the lies are the jokes, basically.
- [12:56]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And you told me that during her trial they had to read the jokes as evidence.
- [13:03]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
So this was during the interrogations. Basically, they would ask her to tell them the jokes because that was basically the case against her. And initially she resisted. She's like, oh, you're not going? Are you fucking kidding me? You're going to then sentence me for telling this joke now? So I'm not going to double up my sentence here. It's like, no, no, no, it's okay. You can just tell us. So she started telling them the jokes and. And the funny thing is that they tried to avoid laughing, right, because they need to be taking this seriously. But the jokes are genuinely funny. So they just started laughing. So then she would just, you know, pass the time and by telling them. And then afterward, after she was sentenced, she was. The trial was in Leningrad. She was transferred basically to serv out to sentence in Siberia. And while she was on the train, the guards who were accompanying them, who were not kgb, were just, you know, ordinary soldiers of. Or internal security organ of some kind. Ask her, is it true that you were jailed for jokes? She's like, yes, I was jailed for it. I was sentenced three years. And they're like, tell us some of the jokes. She's like, are you trying to get me sentenced for more years? Like, no, no, no, please, please. And she's like, no, I'm not going. And then they told her, why don't you come to our cabin and you will have. You will have dinner with us and you will tell us the jokes. So the offer of the dinner was very tempting. So she came in and basically what they had there was a big jar of homemade jam. And she just devoured this jam while she was telling them the jokes. So that was her payment for the performance. And indeed she was not. They didn't rat on her. They told her, you know, we're just commissioned, you know. You know, we are doing like our obligatory service, you know, we don't have anything to do with the kgb. We're not going to rat you out. Just come and tell us the jokes. So that's what she did. She told them the jokes in exchange for jam.
- [15:05]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So you, your parents moved to Israel when you were young. You are Israeli, Russian, and a graduate student, Ph.D. candidate at Princeton. How did you end up in Iraq? Which is not a place that people expect Israelis to end up. How did you end up in Iraq? And how did you end up specifically in Iraq? In the loving embrace of Katayb Hezbollah.
- [15:38]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So I was in Iraq. This was my seventh visit to conduct field work for my PhD dissertation. The dissertation is in the field of comparative politics. It basically compares two political movements, one of them in Iraq, the Sadrist movement, which is the largest political movement in Herak. And it compares it with a Lebanese party, a Maronite party, Christian party in Lebanon. So I did field work in both countries. And basically, you know, you come into a country and you start through the connections that you have to recruit interviewees. And I was basically recruiting people who are for interviews, people who are Sadrists and former Sadrists in particular, and also informed individual people from their milieu who are not Sadrists, et cetera. And my initial end was through activists who are members of the 2019 protest movement in Iraq called the Tashirian Movement, which was very violently crushed by the militias. They basically slaughtered about 800 of these protesters, kidnapped many of them, tortured many of them, and many of them are former Sadrists. And therefore they were my into the Sadrist community. And also I would just travel by myself to Sadrist areas and interview people. And basically the Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the first Trump administration in 2020, oversaw the mass murder of these protesters and their repression. He arrived shortly after the protests began and basically held the meeting with the leadership of these militias and oversaw basically the repression of these protests that were really nationwide. And millions of people came out into the street, interestingly, mostly in majority Shia areas. It was a revolt of the Shia against this regime that is supposedly ruling in their name. So the repression was very, very violent. And the Iranians, similar to how they present the last wave of protests in Iran, they presented the protests that were taking place in Iraq as a foreign conspiracy, basically led that. Basically the Americans made people come out into the streets and protest in exchange for money, in exchange for whatever, which is obviously bullshit, but this is something that they genuinely believe in. So if you perceive them to be a foreign threat, the protesters, you basically then once the protest movement ends and there's still activists out there, what the militias did, I found out very unfortunately only while in captivity, was to basically recruit people from this protest, you know, this activist milieu, and also plant people to spy on other activists. So basically, there were several people in my environment who basically turned out to be plants of these. Of these militias, and they used them to essentially lure me out of my home. They used one of them to lure me out of my home during the evening time and to be for the meeting to be held very, very close to my home so that I don't take a taxi, and therefore, walking on foot, and therefore kidnapping is easier. And this is how it was. I was kidnapped.
- [19:13]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And they did not know at the.
- [19:16]
Benjamin Wittes
Time that you were Israeli.
- [19:18]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Right. That you were not kidnapped because you were no secret Mossad agent. You were kidnapped because you were available.
- [19:26]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly. They didn't know that I'm Israeli. They actually thought at first that I'm American because I'm coming from a US University. I presented myself to everyone as Russian, which I am. And so they thought that I'm American and Russian. But then they asked for the passport of my phone. They were. The kidnapping itself was extremely, extremely violent. So I knew that I have to comply. And then, according to the records that I now have, they basically opened my phone about two and a half weeks after my kidnapping and then rummaged through it. And then after a month, came, you know, found enough evidence to show that I'm Israeli, and then basically came in and started torturing me, demanding that I confess to being a spy.
- [20:17]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So just to be clear, you have no relationship with any intelligence agency?
- [20:23]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Well, since coming back, I have been questioned by several intelligence agencies.
- [20:27]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Right, but you had no relationship with.
- [20:30]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Well, I mean, I did my obligatory military service in. In Israel, which is compulsory for both men and women in the Directorate of Intelligence. I was an intelligence analyst, but that ended in 2007.
- [20:44]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And how did you come to speak good enough Arabic to conduct field research not just in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and Syria over many years in your Arabic is, as best as I can tell, near native at this point.
- [21:05]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So I started learning Arabic in 2014. So quite late in my life, this was driven by basically a changing dynamic on the ground in Syria. So when I joined kind of social media and Twitter and became connected to many Arab activists back in 2008, late 2008, and then many of these activists became prominent members of the uprisings that occurred across the Arab world, then known as the Arab Spring. So I very closely followed developments in Tunisia and Egypt and Bahrain, and, of course, was very, very supportive of those, I think due to kind of very much the legacy of my parents and reading a lot of neoconservative literature as a young adult, I would say. So I was very, very supportive of those uprisings. And I remember speaking to Syrians before the uprising in Syria started. They were debating, will it happen here or not? You know, the regime is so brutal. It is known for its brutality. Last time, people rose in 82 in Hama, you know, Tens of thousands were killed, entire neighborhoods flattened by Hafez al Assad's regime. And then the uprising started, and I started following it, along with following all the other uprisings in the region. And while other uprisings succeeded in Tunisia and in Egypt, others were crushed very violently, like in Bahrain, Others petered out. And Syria, it kept going, kept going and was more and more violent. And I just kept following the developments and connecting with more and more Syrians. And initially basically knowing English was sufficient not to do any kind of high quality research, but just to just follow events. And then my contacts and friends, people who came, my friends in Syria who spoke English were either killed because the regime very much targeted this kind of liberal elite that played a role in leading the uprising, particularly in urban areas and during the first months of the uprising. So those individuals were targeted very, very heavily for arrest, for, for killing. And many of them, as a result, those who were not jailed fled the country. So to be able to continue to follow events, I started basically learning Arabic. It took a long time for me to be able to speak fluently. For me to be able to read and write, it takes time. The Arabic also has multiple dialects, so I learned, initially I learned Palestinian Arabic with Palestinian teachers. Then I had to adjust to Syrian Arabic to some extent. I studied with Syrian teachers who were my friends, basically, and I would pay them to have conversations with me. Well, Princeton would pay them to have conversations with me. And that very much helped. And then in Hierarch I just picked up from France, basically, I would ask them, what's the hierarchy word for this? Because Iraqi is quite different from Palestinian or from Shami, Syrian or Lebanese Arabic. So this is how I picked up the language. And then during the second part of my captivity, the prison without torture, I was given books in Arabic, much of them in kind of classic Arabic, kind of 6th 7th century Arabic, and basically had an opportunity over the span of the 25 months that I spent in the second facility to also improve kind of my classical Arabic, because I studied it at university, but no one actually speaks it. And there I was held in isolation without contact with people. And just, you know, it's a great.
- [25:08]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Opportunity to learn a classical language.
- [25:10]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly, exactly.
- [25:11]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Because it's not like. It's not like you need dialogue with people.
- [25:14]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly, exactly. There was very minimal dialogue, unfortunately.
- [25:17]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So a lot of listeners are going to hear this story and say it is one thing to be an Israeli who learns Arabic, who reaches out by zoom and other electronic media remotely to lots of activists in the field, is quite another Thing to pick up and go on multiple occasions to Iraq and Syria and. And Lebanon, none of which have relations with Israel, all of which have factions that are likely to view any Princeton graduate student who happens to be Israeli as a spy. Why did you think that this was something you could do safely?
- [26:11]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Because I am. Well, first of all, I think that I'm not a widely known figure. I'm not a journalist who is out there, and even Israeli journalists have traveled to such countries. But I'm basically known to quite a limited number of people, mainly people who follow me on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, things of this kind. So therefore I'm not, you know, my face is not well known. On top of that, the name on my passport, the Russian passport, is my name, but it's just the way it is pronounced in Russia. If you Google that name, it does not lead to my English name, basically. So therefore, in theory, and no one actually ever did that, in theory, if someone, you know, has access to my passport and Googles my name, they will.
- [27:02]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Not find anything that links because it uses Tokova.
- [27:06]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Because basically it's the Russian way of pronouncing my first and last name.
- [27:11]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Right.
- [27:11]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
And basically, so that offered me some protection, I felt. And indeed I was kidnapped not for being. Not for being Israeli. And you know, many of the regions to which I went, for example, northeastern Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, it's not even hostile to Israelis. It's not. It's not even a problem to be Israeli and hierarchy Kurdistan. I would tell people that I'm Israeli. In northeastern Syria, the people who were my friends, the people I was meeting through them all knew that Israeli was not an issue. Obviously, when I was in Al Hol camp, you know, that was holding ISIS families, I'm not going to announce there that I'm Israeli.
- [27:50]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So you get kidnapped and after a few weeks they figure out that you're Israeli. You have described the torture that you underwent elsewhere, and I don't want to dwell on that, except to say that it was. Was appalling. One of the very striking things about your engagement with this group of people over 903 days that they were holding you is that you made something of a study of them. And at the Middle East Institute yesterday, you gave a talk in which you described. It's unlike any talk I've ever heard anybody give, a sort of a sociological study of the psychology change in the Katayb Hezbollah universe over the course of the 903 days that they were holding you without rehearsing the entire speech, which I Urge people to listen to and which we will link to in the show notes, give us a little overview of how their psychology changed. What's the two to five minute version of the 35, 40 minute talk you gave yesterday?
- [29:14]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, so, you know, I was kidnapped in March of 2023 and obviously October 7th happened afterwards. And then so I was already held in the second prison when this happened. And October 7th was really the most joyous I've ever seen. My captors, they were very, very happy. They thought that this is an amazing victory.
- [29:42]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And what were they happy about? Were they happy that? Did they believe this was the end of the state of Israel? Did they believe that? Were they joyous that a lot of civilians had been killed? What was the source of the joy?
- [29:57]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, first of all, I think they genuinely don't have a problem with the death of civilians. I don't think they make any kind of distinction. And Hamas doesn't make either. And this entire axis doesn't. They killed these militias. Katah Hezbollah was the main actor responsible for killing protesters in 2019 were clearly civilians. So they don't make those distinctions. They were happy because it was a huge blow for Israel. It was really something quite unprecedented. The way also it was represented in media that is supportive of Hamas and of the axis of resistance like Al Jazeera and Mayadeen, et cetera, and Iraqi channels that are financed by the militias basically is that this is an unprecedented blow. It is a successful military operation. It was of course not represented as mass slaughter of innocent people and kidnapping of overwhelmingly civilians. It was presented as something very different, as, you know, constantly. I heard the TV of my guards. They were constantly talking about prisoners, Asra, not hostages. They were constantly talking about soldiers, even though very few of them were actually captured. Less than 10 or so soldiers alive, you know, were captured. Actually most of them, six of them were female soldiers, were not armed and the others were male soldiers who were indeed armed and were disarmed somehow and the rest were either civilians or corpses. So this was something that was not told until this day, not told to people who watch these channels. So they viewed it as a highly successful military operation and as something that really puts Israel at risk. And this is something that In November of 23, an IRGC commander, an Iranian, came to demand that I record a video in which I repeat the confessions that I made under torture in the first prison and then also add on top of it certain elements that are connected to October 7th. And he told me, started debating with me before the recording saying what do you think about this attack? And about October 7th, et cetera. And I said, clearly, this is a huge failure on the part of Israeli intelligence agencies. This is unprecedented. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israeli history. The magnitude of this failure. And then he said, yeah, and the state of Israel is at risk. It's going to disappear. All the Israelis are leaving Israel en masse. This is also another thing that was often repeated on these outlets, that basically there's a wave of immigration from Israel and there is immigration, but it's not something that is significant in any kind of a statistical manner. And basically he asked me to repeat that on camera, that basically Israel is at an unprecedented risk to its survival. The survival of the state itself is in question. And that, you know, immigrants are living, leaving in huge numbers. The, you know, basically Israel is done with. Right? And I didn't want to say it because it's nonsense. And, you know, as a, as a. Obviously people who would watch it understand that I'm speaking under duress, but this part is like analysis, right? So that made. So you were afraid, you were afraid.
- [33:30]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Of giving bad analysis in your torture.
- [33:33]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
He's an analyst, you know, like, this is obviously bullshit. I don't want to be saying this, so I don't mind, like, repeating confessions I already made under torture. They're obvious, you know, bullshit. But this is analysis. So in theory, people may think, oh, she's saying it, you know, because she agrees with this, right? This is genuinely what she believes. But he insisted on it. And obviously this was only three months after I was transferred from the torture prison. No one told me at any point in the second facility that I'm not going to be tortured. I was trying to find out, you know, no one would give me a clear answer. So I thought, okay, I need to comply. He insisted on it. His tone was very firm. You know, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to say it. And so this was genuinely their belief. Then things obviously started changing as time went on. Particularly a major blow for them was the killing of several Katab Hezbollah commanders and other militias by the Biden administration. This was in 2024, after basically they targeted US forces in Jordan and in Syria and in Iraq. So that made it clear to them that the efforts that they made after the assassination of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al Muhandis in 2020, those were in vain. They're still deeply penetrated, intelligence wise. Then afterwards came the Pejor attack, and that was really that day. They walked around shell shocked. They were in utter. They were just so flabbergasted by what was done. And there was a real humiliating element to this because Hezbollah purchased the explosives, like it purchased tracking devices that would track the movement of these. There were GPS trackers implanted into the pagers and into the walkie talkies, but also explosives, obviously. So this is something that. Is that, you know, as. As. As I mentioned, people join these groups to feel powerful, to lord over others, to feel that they're scaring others. And when something humiliating like this happens, like we bought the explosives that blew us up, it really undermines this kind of driving force, the sense of enjoyment, of being part of the scare group, because they're part of an axis that is linked. So the failure of Hezbollah is their own failure as well. Right. And the weakening of Iran and. And the weakening of Hamas, et cetera, is their weakening. This is how they perceive it. So throughout this, particularly in the first month of the war, there was a real sense among them that the war is about to end soon and that they will be victorious and Israel will accept the demands that Hamas was making. And basically, on Christmas of 23, I was given a TV and I started following the news. I was given a TV in my cell and I started following the news, and I was seeing that this is utter nonsense. This belief that the war will end soon is utter nonsense. And I spoke about it with the nurse who was allowed to come in and check on me from time to time and speak to me. He was the only one allowed to do so. And I told him, this analysis is nonsense. This war is going to last for a long time. It is politically useful for Netanyahu to continue this war. It is very destructive to his coalition. If he stops it, this will just continue for a very long time. And there's no pressure from the Biden administration to stop it. It. And he asked me to write this analysis for them. So basically, I started basically writing. I wrote multiple analysis papers for my captors.
- [37:11]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So they basically kidnapped a think tank.
- [37:14]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly. It was unpaid labor that I was performing for them, but it actually kept my mind busy. So I enjoyed this process intellectually. Obviously, there were exploitative elements to this whole story. So the war dragged on and on and on and on. Then Nasrallah was assassinated. The war on Hezbollah, they clearly, even though the public rhetoric was different and Hezbollah again proclaimed that this was another victory in the series of victories that it has achieved, they clearly admitted in private that, no, like, this is. This is not true. Like, we, like Hezbollah, lost. We lost.
- [37:58]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
You know Deleteme makes it easy, quick.
- [38:02]
Benjamin Wittes
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Elizabeth Zerkoff
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- [42:12]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So you watched them go. From a euphoria of our victory is imminent, it is unfolding before our eyes, to realizing that they had bought the explosives with which they were being targeted, to realizing that they had been defeated. I mean that must have been an incredible emotional development to observe. This was after the period of your torture. Were you aware that you were watching something that basically no intelligence service has real time access to? I mean, except in the deepest. But to actually insinuate not merely a collector, but a really first rate analyst into Kataib Hezbollah to watch the emotional trajectory of this. This was, I don't mean to make it sound like this was a good thing for you, but this is an incredible intellectual opportunity.
- [43:20]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Absolutely, absolutely. I definitely would have forgot it, but it really was fascinating to observe it and also learn because I purposefully, you know, one of the things I did to avoid getting kidnapped is never ask any sensitive questions about anything related to military, to militia, to whatever. So for example, with Sadris, who I would interview, they were often formerly members of Jesh al Mahdi, the Sadris militia. So I would ask them, tell me about your involvement with the Sadris movement. And they would start speaking and sometimes they would talk about their military background and what they did. This is information that is utterly irrelevant at this point. You know, this was 2004, 2005, et cetera. And I would never prod and never push and I would never get close to militiamen, to these militias. Even though research wise it may have been beneficial to basically compare the motivations of these, of these two groups. But I avoided it on purpose because they're dangerous people. Right. And here I got access to them, you know, and I'm already. The worst thing has already happened. I may as well, you know, use this opportunity to research them. So I've actually. I got oral consent from two of my captors to conduct interviews with them for my PhD.
- [44:38]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Wow.
- [44:39]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Because it's very useful information to understand how their motivations and their worldview differs from that of Sadris, because they're both Shia, but one went in the direction of Iran, and one went in, you know, stayed with the Sadris movement because many of these militias actually emerged from. Originally from Jaishin Mehdi. They split off from it.
- [44:59]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And just for people who don't know the vocabulary, that's what English speakers call the Mehdi Army.
- [45:06]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Right.
- [45:08]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
So let's talk about the circumstances of your release. But let's start with the circumstances that did not lead to your release, which is you had one government, the Israeli government, that was otherwise preoccupied for most of the time and did not particularly take responsibility for your case. You had another government on whose passport you were traveling, who, if memory serves, told your family that you were a waste of oxygen. And you had a third government, which is to say the US Government that you were not a citizen of. I guess we haven't mentioned that, but you're not a US national, but actually was the chief agent, both during the Biden administration and during the Trump administration. Your sister, who was really the chief agitator for you the entire time, was convinced that. That the avenue that would get you released was through American pressure. So talk to us about the three governments and the two iterations of the US Government, because, of course, the Biden administration and the Trump administration were, as your story reflects, quite different in this regard. So let's start with the Israeli government. You were there not representing yourself as an Israeli, but as somebody who is an Israeli citizen who grew up in Israel. And yet the Israeli government did not make you a headline issue the way it did with the hostages in Gaza.
- [46:59]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, basically Israel. My family notified the authorities there very, very early on, basically within the first 24 hours. And a beneficial thing that Israel did was at the time was to ask the FBI to open a case into my kidnapping, because the FBI has, you know, experts on Katak Hezbollah, because it has kidnapped and killed Americans. And during the first months of my kidnapping, prior to October 7, there were efforts to get me out. The problem is that my kidnappers did not make any demands for a very, very long time. This is probably because they were assessing basically my value. They were trying to get all the confessions out of me and basically through repeated rounds of torture. And then the commander in the base to which I was transferred, the second prison on the border with Iran, he then also asked for my confessions in written form. Took a very long time to produce them. They were very long to type them up for him anyway. This whole time, basically, they didn't raise any demands. So Israel was quite limited in what it could do then, basically. And then eventually when the demand came, it was basically contradictory from two different mediators, one asking for $600 million, the other for $500 million, probably because they wanted, one of them wanted a larger cut basically from the ransom. And Israel and the United States treated it as kind of a joke number, like basically this is saying we want all of the ice cream in the world, something ridiculous like this. And throughout the period of my captivity, this is something that both Israeli and US officials have told me since coming out the Kataib. You know, obviously they're deeply incompetent at their, you know, official, you know, role of, you know, protecting Iraq's security or even serving the Iranian regime. And this is something I detail in the piece in the Atlantic. They're highly ignorant about issues related to intelligence, et cetera. Information that is not secret and is available out there. If you just read it, you would know all these different things. They were not aware of them, but they were also incompetent negotiators, which is not surprising. Right. So they would raise contradictory demands from different intermediaries. So it was basically very difficult to negotiate with them in Israel. After the gag order in Israel was lifted about my kidnapping in July of 23, because of my political views, because of my support for Palestinian human rights, there was basically a campaign of incitement against me on social media by right wing, prominent media personalities and a great deal of schadenfreude that look at this lover of Arab being kidnapped by Arabs, you know, and the traitor who is now there. So this political climate, the fact that I went into Iraq willingly, you know, was not sent there by my government in any way, is definitely something that reduced the motivation of Israel to work for my release. And Indeed, particularly after October 7th, really the actions that were taken were not significant. Now with the Russian regime, my family met with Russian officials, reached, managed to reach through Israeli officials to high ranking Russian officials to Bogdanov, who is the Putin's advisor on Middle east affairs. And basically they refused to do anything. They said, we have no relationship with these militias. The United States created them. They should be the one taking care of them. And this is obviously bullshit because Russia is actually quite close to these militias. It could have gotten me out, but it refused to do so. And they were quite explicit when they met my family in D.C. at the embassy, that they're refusing because of my political views, because of my critical writing about the Russian war crimes in Syria and Ukraine. And that's when they said that I'm basically a waste of oxygen. It's better if I die. So they did nothing, even though they could. Israel had more difficulty. It has fewer difficulties.
- [51:33]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
It doesn't have an on the ground presence.
- [51:35]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly. And doesn't have a relationship with these militias as opposed to Russia that genuinely does. And then the US during the Biden administration, basically, they didn't see me as their responsibility because I'm not a US National. So, you know, it's an administration that follows things kind of by the book and doesn't see, you know, even though Qatar Hezbollah is a list terror group in the US it has harmed many Americans.
- [52:06]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
It fires on US Troops on a semi regular basis.
- [52:11]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, it used to, before they got knocked on their head, and now they stopped doing that because they're terrified. But, yes, it has killed Americans. And obviously, some people inside the US Administration believed that it would serve US national interests to get me out. Particularly also because as a researcher, I was also briefing officials in. In many countries, including in the United States. So I was well known to officials inside the Biden administration, including at very high levels. Yes, yes. You know, I was, as someone who conducted research in the region on the ground, it is something that is appreciated in the US and in other countries as well. So the Biden administration essentially didn't do much. And things really changed when Trump got elected. And I'm saying elected because it was even before he was sworn into office. Now, everyone knows that my political leanings are liberal, but I genuinely believe that if Trump had not been elected, I would have just died there in captivity. This is just the reality, because the same people who were in the Biden administration running policy would have remained in the Harris administration, and they too would have believed that this is not in our interest to do anything to get her out. Some officials inside the Biden administration even believed that it would be harmful to US Interests if I got out because it would cause a civil war between Iraqis, I don't know, maybe Iraqi factions like the Shia factions, Sadris and.
- [53:52]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Do you want to name names on that?
- [53:54]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
I mean, I think that people who listen to this podcast are familiar with the geniuses who worked at the Biden administration Conventure, I guess, as to who would think such utter nonsense. I'm out and I'm free, and there's no civil war in Iraq anyway. After Trump was elected, my sister and Adam Bowler was appointed as the special envoy for. For Hostage Affairs. She reached out to him even before the inauguration and managed to meet him in his family home, him and his wife. And he just agreed to take on my case. He felt sorry for me. He realized there was no one else fighting for me. The governments whose passports I hold were not interested, not able to do much, and he took on my case. And he also recognized that US has immense leverage over Iraq and over these militias because they're terrified of the US and particularly they're terrified of Trump, the former leader of Katab Hezbollah. Really, the members worshiped like a God, would kiss his hand when meeting him, really just saw him as this holy figure. Trump killed him like that. And he was even collateral damage to the killing of Soliman.
- [55:16]
Sleep Number Advertiser
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- [55:17]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
He wasn't even the target.
- [55:19]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
So they genuinely fear Trump. This is something that I noticed during torture sessions when Trump came up, this was still during the Biden administration, and the matter of the assassination of Soleimani came up, that they were incredibly. Obviously, they hate him, but also they're terrified of him, and they think that he's crazy. And this is something that. So Adam Bowler got involved in this case and met with, flew to Baghdad basically uninvited, barged into a meeting with Sudani with the Iraqi prime minister, brought up my case, demanded movement, demanded to be connected to the kidnappers so that he can talk to them directly and get me out. Threatened that if they don't talk to him, he said bombs will drop on them. And then at a later stage, really, in early September, Mark Zavaya, who is an Iraqi American business person who is friends with Trump and participated in the 2024 campaign in Michigan. He traveled to. To Iraq and met with Prime Minister Sudani. The meeting was on other issues, but he brought up my case. And he basically told Sudani, I want you to convey a message to the leadership of Katab Hezbollah that if Elizabeth is not released within a week, guys will be killed. And that Trump is pissed. And he even gave him two photos that show Mark and Trump in the same photo and Trump looking angry, basically. So he said, tell them Trump is pissed. You need to get this done. And indeed, I was released within a week. Mark remained in Iraq. He didn't fly out. He waited for me to come out and then came. I was taken from where I was held captive near the border with Iran. I was taking to Baghdad. There I was in the Green Zone. Then I was handed over to the Iraqi government. Iraqi government brought me to a very fancy guest house in the Green Zone. And from there Mark came to pick me up and took me to the US Embassy.
- [57:40]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
I want to dwell on a couple of themes that are latent in what we just, everything we've just talked about. Your politics are extremely complicated. On the one hand, just within this conversation, you've described yourself as having your interest in this, having been inspired to some degree by neoconservatives. You're a figure of hate campaign in Israel because you have your pro Palestinian stances on a lot of issues. You take Arab democracy in many countries extremely seriously in a way that a lot of people do not. And you have advised and briefed many people in the prior administration on all kinds of analytical questions. And you're also very, you describe yourself as left leaning or liberal leaning, and yet you are frank that the Biden administration was ineffective and that it is precisely the, the things that people fear about the Trump administration, which is the chest thumping, willingness to violate rules. That is the reason that you're alive and free. And I want you to reflect, I was very struck by this in your MEI speech yesterday, that you're not afraid of the complexity of the world that you interact with and you're not afraid to be a complicated figure in that world. Situate for us your core commitments. Who are you as a political being?
- [59:33]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So I think I would say that my core commitment is to human rights. However, I, in the current political climate in the US and also in Israel, I don't fit neatly into any kind of category too well, because, for example, human rights organizations would object to the use of force to achieve a goal that is, in my view, beneficial for the advancement of human rights and would revert to issues related to international law. And this is not allowed, et cetera. I think that killing people who have harmed, not just Westerners, most of the victims of these regimes, of this axis of resistance, and of oppressive regimes in general are.
- [60:31]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
And just to be clear, when you say the axis of resistance, you mean the Iran back world across Syria, Lebanon.
- [60:40]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Exactly. Palestine, Iraq, Iraq, Yemen, et cetera. My opposition to this axis does not stem from their, or does not just stem from their hostility towards Israel or the United States. My problem is much more in line with what locals in the region are saying is that these militias and these regimes, Muslims are highly oppressive. Most of their victims, overwhelmingly most of the victims of the Iraqi militias, of the Iranian regime, of the Assad regime, of Lebanese Hezbollah, are fellow Muslims and Arabs, in the case of, you know, and Iranians. So I, for me it is very important and it was important before my captivity and it is much more visceral now to acknowledge the suffering of these individuals. So for example, after the assassination of Soleimani, when the people who are generally supportive of human rights and liberals, leftists, would condemn this killing, I went and spoke to people who are victims of this man, who are victims of Soleimani. I spoke to Syrians and I wrote an article, it was published in the Forward basically of what Syrians think about this, of people who survived, resented the siege on Madaya and Zobadani. Those are two towns near the border with Lebanon that were besieged by Lebanese Hezbollah, you know, which is run, was run by Soleimani, right in his network. And children there starved to death. You know, people there, you know, in Syria, many of the kind of traditional ways of taboo and the way to make bread is basically those are ovens made with clay mixed with salt. People would break them up because they were lacking salt. They were fainting in the streets to just lick the salt off of the mud. This is what people were driven into. And so of course people who survived this horror will rejoice at the killing of this mass murderer. Soleimani, at the time of his killing was probably the person responsible for the largest number of deaths alive because the former North Korean dictator was dead during the famine in the 90s. This is basically a person who's responsible for propping up the Assad regime since 2012. The Assad regime relied on Iranian advisors, relied on Qassem. Soleimani personally relied on Shia militias to prop itself up as it lacked legitimacy, lacked popularity, and could not trust its own military not to defect. So it relied on these forces and could not rely on them to fight. So he's responsible for so much human suffering. So this tendency to look at things from a legalistic and international law point of view, those international laws were inherently written by states, all of international law. It was not written by the people that are oppressed by different regimes. It was written by states and guarantees the rights of states and issues like sovereignty, et cetera. Now of course, I'm not saying go around violating other countries sovereignty willy nilly, but when it serves an interest that advances human rights, I don't see why the rights of a state, meaning a regime, trump the rights of millions of human beings that they oppress. So therefore, I don't neatly fit into any kind of a box. But in my mind, it is a very clear commitment to human rights. And of course, I would prefer human rights to be advanced solely by human rights organizations and writing statements and diplomacy. But this is not how it works. These are thuggish entities that don't hesitate to murder their own people. So you usually fail to deal with them through, you know, kind of regular means that you would negotiate a trade agreement with whatever country, you know, whatever democracy.
- [64:50]
Benjamin Wittes
What are your future plans?
- [64:52]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
I mean, they took two years out of your career and life. You emerged. We haven't talked about this, but with significant physical injuries, hence the comfy chair that you're in. What's next for Elizabeth Zerkoff?
- [65:13]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah, yeah, I'm very determined to finish my dissertation. I'm actually working on it. Yesterday I sent the first chapter to my advisors that I've written kind of a rough draft. While I was in captivity, I was disconnected from electronics, and I had a great deal of time to think about my dissertation and really flesh out the theory. And I wrote kind of the outline of my PhD while already in captivity during the. In the torture prison. I would write it on cardboard pieces, then it would confiscate them, and I would write it again and again. So I managed to memorize it and then was able to basically recreate it after coming out from captivity. It was a notebook with research ideas that I kept in the second prison. I was not able, tragically, to take it up with me when freed, but. But because of. I kept rewriting it, I managed to recall it. So this is definitely my plan, and I'm interested in doing something that affects policy. I very much enjoy academic work. I enjoy the process of research, the immersion, really, in your field. But at the end of the day, I want to, in any way I can, affect the lives of people in the region. And this commitment is only been reinforced after previously, the commitment to the rights of the people of the region was from talking to friends, from knowing what they've gone through, from hearing about the torture that they went through in Iraq at the end of militias in Iran, in Syria, in other countries as well, obviously in Egypt, in Bahrain, et cetera. And this commitment, after experiencing it myself, is so much deeper. So it's very important for me to do something that is impactful. And so my hope is to be based in D.C. and doing something in the policy space basically soon. This of course, really depends also on my health because at the moment I can't live independently because of the back injury. So I need to do more physical therapy, possibly if that doesn't work, undergo an operation for my back. But yeah, that is my hope.
- [67:39]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
There's a lot in this conversation that is inspiring, but I want to close it with something you said at Mei yesterday, which you mentioned only in passing, but I, I found inspiring. And I think a lot of people who feel powerless in this political environment for 100 different reasons with a hundred different causes will also your sister, I have never seen anybody work harder on anything than she worked on your release for two years. And that one, for those who remember, she and I had a long conversation on this podcast, I want to say, a year after you were captured, which we will link to in the show notes. But one thing she did in the course of that campaign was when Iraqi Prime Minister Sadani came to Washington. She and your two other siblings went on a multi day harassment campaign of the Iraq visiting Iraqi delegation that included invading the Willard Hotel where they were staying and sort of, you know, buttonholing individual diplomats. It included shouting him, the Prime Minister down at a, at a Atlantic Council event, by the way.
- [69:14]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
That became a crazy meme in Iraq. One of my captors told me about it while I was in captivity. I didn't see the video since coming out. Multiple Iraqi friends had sent it to me. But I'm also just seeing it pop up in my feed on Instagram and on TikTok. It's just, it has become a meme, you know.
- [69:32]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
You know, she did not ask my advice about that. I would have advised her not to do it and I would have been so, so wrong. I would have advised a polite question on the subject. So, you know, you never know what's going to be effective. But this campaign that they went on, you described an impact of it and a real world impact that I want you to tell the story of what happened as a result of this because I think oftentimes people think that the protests they engage in, the activity that they're capable, the signs, the no Kings protests or whatever, you know, don't actually have any impact on things. So what happened as a result of your sister's and brother and other sisters harassment of Prime Minister Sudani.
- [70:35]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Yeah. So I'll just preface it by saying that you participated in that campaign as well and I'm very, very grateful to you for doing that. And we've never met, you know, until, until yesterday.
- [70:49]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
Until yesterday.
- [70:50]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
And it's it's really astounding how, you know, in this experience I really saw a great deal of evil. You know, I really came face to face with it, you know, but I also saw so much goodness in people, in utter strangers, you know, who really worked very, very hard for my release. So. And you're. Yeah. And you're one of those wonderful people. And so I'm very, very grateful to you for that. Now, with regards to, with regards to the campaign, so Sudani, you know, my family harassed him. U.S. officials spoke to him about me. And after he came back, he and I know this from friends of mine, Iraqi friends of mine, that they were contacted by the Iraqi Mukhabarat, the internal security, one of the internal security agencies. And basically they were told that the. The Prime Minister has given an order to not spare any efforts to find Elizabeth and that we have an unlimited budget. They were telling this to my friend, if you can think of any lead, we will pay you a lot of money to go and bring this information. So they were making an effort actually to get me out. And I've confirmed this also with, with other sources that they were really trying, particularly after this visit, they felt that this is an issue that matters and they didn't like being embarrassed. And I'm sure the Sudani didn't like becoming a meme like this is appearing in my feed now, you know, years later. So at the time it was even, you know, it was just utterly viral and very, very humiliating for him. And you know, the Iraqi government was actually, from my knowledge, never able to locate me, never able to find me. The area where I was held was an ex territory that is not under their control. But it did matter. They did make an effort. And they also conveyed to Qatar, first of all, this is something that, you know, my sister mentioned that my captor, one of them mentioned to me about my sister doing this. And they. I'm confident because it's just constant communication with them that he conveyed to them the seriousness and that she needs to be released. And I think this contributed to them, to their final decision also to release me. This continues to be a problem. They're not getting anything out of it. It is only bringing down pressure. And they thought that they captured this one of a kind super spy that is running eight different conspiracies for two different agencies. And they keep trying to sell me at the price that they think is logical for this and no one is buying it. So I think they kind of gradually lost hope in being able to salvage anything out of my captivity. And they saw it, particularly after Trump came in, as just a liability that they and this is something that I mentioned in the talk at Mei because of the changing nature of these militias, the kind of mass embezzlement that they're engaged in, of the natural resources that belong to the Iraqi people, they've gotten the commanders of Katab, Hezbollah and other militias have gotten incredibly rich. And you don't steal so much to then become a martyr for the cause. So when Mark made that offer to them to become martyrs if they don't release me within a week, they passed on it very hard and let me go.
- [74:54]
Interviewer (Lawfare Host)
We're gonna leave it there. I am so glad you are well and back, and I think this conversation will give a lot of people a lot of reason to explore your other work, both from before and since your capture. And we will have you back early and often on the many areas of your substantive work. And thank you for joining us today.
- [75:26]
Elizabeth Zerkoff
Thank you so much. Thank you.
- [75:31]
Benjamin Wittes
The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a material supporter of Lawfare at our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. The podcast is edited by Jen Patia and our theme music is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.
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Benjamin Wittes
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