05 May 2025 – Missile from Houthi impacts and more on The Israel Brief.
06 May 2025 – Is Israel about to launch Operation Gideon’s Chariot? This and more on The Israel Brief.
07 May 2025 – IAF disables Houthi airport and more on The Israel Brief.
08 May 2025 – Israel is gravely concerned for the fate of 3 hostages and more on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Nearly executed like her cellmate affords understanding of the depravity and dangers of the Teheran regime.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
This year, more than ever, it’s impossible not to think about the execution of my best friend, Shirin Alamhooli on May 9, 2010. I met Shirin in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison where I had been arrested and sentenced to death by hanging because of converting to Christianity, a “crime” the Islamic regime calls “apostasy” and which carries a death penalty. I was arrested in March 2009. Shirin had already been in prison for some time as a political Kurdish prisoner.
Iranian Injustice. This photo of Shirin Alamhooli was taken by the writer while in Evin Prisonm Teheran. Shiran was executed on May 9, 2010. (Photo: Marziyeh Amirizadeh)
As a Christian, I had many people advocating for my freedom from the first day, and miraculously, I was released that November, and then came to America where I have become a proud citizen. Unfortunately, neither the world nor the terrorist Islamic regime cared about the life of a 28-year-old Kurdish woman. Shirin spent months being brutally tortured: repeatedly kicked in her stomach, bashing her head against the wall until she passed out, hanging her from the ceiling for hours on end, and beating her with a cable. They would only stop the torture for the Islamic prayer, to dedicate their savage acts to Allah. To satisfy him.
For months Shirin could not walk because the skin was torn from the bottom of her feet during the torture. Most of the time we would sit together and from a small window looked at the mountains beyond the walls of prison. She would sing a beautiful Kurdish song. She wished just to walk to the mountains freely, to fly away like a bird one more time.
At The Mercy Of Evil Men. Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner and former aid worker, faces the confirmation of her death sentence by the Iranian Supreme Court.
We ate and talked together almost daily. She asked me to promise her that if I got released and she didn’t, to never stop fighting against the evil Islamic regime.
From the first day of my release, I started fighting for her release, even though I remained in mortal danger myself. I will never forget that horrific day I got a call from one of my cellmates still in prison:
“Marzi, Shirin was executed.”
…. then uncontrollable crying.
I felt like I died. I hung up the phone, and for a few hours I felt as if all my internal organs had frozen. My whole body froze. I could not move, talk, or think.
Along with my roommate, Maryam, with whom I had also been arrested and sentenced to death and then released, we went outside the prison with Shirin’s brother, pleading just to get her body to bury her with dignity. The prison authorities lied. They told us her body had been sent to the cemetery. We rushed there and they said they never received Shirin’s body. We returned to Evin Prison, begging them to give us her body. They refused, mocking us. Today, nobody knows her burial place, if she even has one.
Even 15 years later, Shirin’s execution is one of the most painful things in my life. Growing up in the Islamic Republic, there were many. This year we must take a lesson from her murder, as the Islamic regime remains the greatest threat to the US, and the world. I am pained that those leaders in my adopted country, which I love and am so grateful for, are being deceived by the notion that the ayatollahs can be rationalized with, that negotiation is anything more than a fool’s errand.
Indeed, the Iranian Islamic Republic cannot be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon – ever, under any circumstances. Negotiation will only give them time to bury their centrifuge deeper, and to hide the enriched uranium that has no civilian purpose. To be clear: if the Islamic Republic is able to acquire a nuclear weapon, they will use it. They will threaten the US and Israel, the “Great Satan,” and the “Little Satan.” They will establish a nuclear umbrella that will let them blackmail and terrorize the rest of the world. There is no doubt about this, yet too many in the West don’t realize it.
While all this is horrible, and is threatening, and cause enough to do everything possible to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, no less horrible is the cancerous threat of spreading of their evil, extremist Islamic ideology: in the US and the rest of the world. A nuclear bomb can kill millions instantaneously, but their dangerous ideology infects the whole world, spreading like a virus, and destroying and threatening millions from within over decades.
Condemned to Die. For 46 years, the gallows of the Islamic Republic have claimed countless women’s lives.
My friend Shirin is evidence of that. Arrested, tortured, and executed, she was one of millions of Iranians alone who are victims of this extremist ideology. While no level of torture is out of bounds in the Islamic Republic, according to their strict following of Islamic laws, it’s not allowed to execute a virgin. It is a known practice for women like Shirin, and others, that before being executed they are brutally raped, taking the level of obscenity beyond imagination. That’s another example of why negotiations are futile, and they can never be trusted.
I was supposed to be one of its victims too. Outside Iran, through its terrorist proxies around the world including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Syrian Assad regime, Kataib Hezbollah, and more, millions of others have been killed and maimed. Vast “no-go” neighborhoods of major European cities have become dangerous cesspools of Islamic hate.
The US and the world must be saved from this threat. But there’s another reason as well. For more than 46 years, 85 million Iranians have been held captive, hostage to the ayatollahs -victims of their lies. They have been repeatedly let down by the West looking to make a deal. The worst of these examples was President Obama who, while I was in prison, not only abandoned the Iranian people during the Green Movement, but sent billions of dollars to Iran, thinking that he could pay off the ayatollahs. Still today, Iranians consider Obama as having betrayed them.
Revelations from the Inside. In Captive in Iran, two courageous Iranian women – the writer and a former cellmate on death row in Evin Prison who made it out alive – recount their experiences in one of the world’s darkest places.
There have been reports of Islamic Republic, today, offering the US billions in contracts to rebuild Iran, but that is nothing more than extortion. In fact, the US can achieve unlimited potential and billions in contracts rebuilding Iran by doing everything possible to bring down the Islamic regime, making Iran and Iranians free, and eliminating the world’s greatest source of terror and war.
This is what needs to be done. While it cannot bring back Shirin, it will at least fulfill her wishes for a free Iran, and those of so many others who have suffered their brutality.
*Feature picture: Shirin Alam Holi, born in 1981 in a small village near Maku, executed in Evin Prison on May 9th 2010 after passing one year and nine months in prison. She was charged for cooperating with Pajak (Iranian branch of PKK) on Nov. 29th 2009 and sentenced to death. (Photos: Marziyeh Amirizadeh)
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com. Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Dogs are proving to be partners in caring and literally a friend – for life!
By Rolene Marks
(*First appeared in Jewish News Syndicate)
April is a bittersweet month in Israel calendar. It is the month when the national holidays of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day), Yom Hazikaron (Memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror) and Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day) fall in succession. It is a time of remembrance and celebration – but also a time that can be very sensitive and triggering for Israel’s soldiers. Various cities have made the decision not to have fireworks to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut out of sensitivity to soldiers suffering from PTSD.
The Defense Ministry Deputy Director General, Limor Luria, who heads the ministry’s Rehabilitation Department, recently said that soldiers struggling with PTSD feel that holidays and memorial days as especially straining, even more so during wartime. The Rehabilitation Department estimated that they would be treating approximately 100,000 wounded personnel by 2030, half of whom expected to experience PTSD.
The number of suspected suicides among Israeli soldiers had risen sharply since the Hamas-led assault on October 7, according to the data published by the IDF. Since the start of the war, 28 soldiers have died by suicide as compared in 2023 when – before the attack – 10 suicides were recorded. Laura reveals that since Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, the Rehabilitation Department has absorbed 16,500 injured soldiers, with nearly half of them treated for PTSD.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is defined as “a mental health condition that is caused by an extremely stressful or terrifying event — either being part of it or witnessing it.” It is often characterized by recurring nightmares, frequent panic attacks, depression, and other trauma symptoms. Often, those with PTSD fear sleep because persistent nightmares torment and awaken them.
The wounds are not physical but internal and for many years, PTSD has been misunderstood and often stigmatized. Treatment for veterans suffering from PTSD has been inadequate and neglected. In April 2021, IDF veteran, Itzik Saidyan an IDF veteran set himself on fire outside the Petah Tikva offices of the Rehabilitation Department for disabled soldiers, after years of struggling to receive the care he had sought for PTSD.
Following the horrific October 7 surprise attack and the rising number of soldiers experiencing PTSD, the Ministry of Defense has amped up efforts to treat this with a variety of different therapies – including special dog companions.
Best friend on Soldier’s Shoulder. The Dogs 4 Soldiers program gifts Israeli soldiers with the comfort and healing of therapy dogs. Says Belev Echad committed to restoring wounded IDF soldiers back to life, “Partnering them with a furry friend in need of care gives them something positive to wake up to every morning.”
Animals play a vital role in helping PTSD sufferers process and cope with the emotions and challenges they face. Canine companions are excellent at providing a special kind of therapy. Therapy dogs help their soldier get active and leave the house because they need a lot of exercise. They help rebuild trust and give unconditional love. Dogs also help solders make the sometimes-difficult transition to civilian life and help their humans feel protected.
A board member with No Soldier Left Behind – a non-profit organization that offers canine therapy – Tal Morag explains the clear distinction to JNS between therapy and service dogs:
“Soldiers live with the shock of battle that they can relive at any moment. A sudden loud noise or the smell of blood can be a cue to trigger it off. It can take years to understand what is happening to them. We don’t question them; we give them the chance to tell their stories and therapists to assist them. It is not only combat soldiers who find themselves with symptoms of PTSD but also those in the police, in the security forces and we paramedics. The dogs are trained not to be a service dog but just to be the soldier’s dog and you can see how effective they are. The dogs learn to understand his or her owner and is able to smell that a panic attack is about to happen and can calm them down.”
Furry Friends. Fractured from the battlefield, troops find friendship from their furry companions. (Photo: Elad Gershgorn)
Liran Dimri, the Director of the Dog Training Centre for Belev Echad who offer the program Dogs 4 Soldiers, also suffers from PTSD. Speaking to JNS, Dimri advocates how therapy dogs help:
“People who suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder usually prefer to be alone, locked up at home, and this is what causes them depression. Dogs help them by getting them out of the house at least three times a day. In addition, when they are alone at home, the dog is always with them and seeks the person’s attention and treats them, so they don’t feel alone.”
Caring Canines. Belev Echad is working tirelessly to provide service dogs to soldiers struggling with PTSD. These dogs detect adrenaline spikes and nightmares, reduce stress and anxiety, provide balance assistance, and serve as loyal companions.
Dimri understands too well the impact that PTSD has on the families of soldiers and encourages family members to be actively involved in the training process. A sufferer himself from post-traumatic stress disorder mainly affecting his sleep, Dimri acquired a dog three years ago which has helped him deal with depression, and so “in a good positionto advise on what to do and how it helped me. I also talk to family members and explain to them about post-traumatic stress disorder and how they should deal with their children or partners, and that way it helps them deal with them better. I encourage family members to join in the dog training sessions, to go through this process together, so that the soldiers understand that they are not alone in this process. Their family is with them, and so am I. In addition, it gives them quality time together at least once a week when we meet for training and eat together at the end of the evening.”
Man’s best friend can also be his best therapist.
*Feature picture: Pets for Vets. Veterans of the Israel Defense Forces with trainee pups in the Dogs 4 Soldiers program. (Photo: Courtesy of Liran Dimri/Belev Echad.)
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
