An Israeli visiting London while war rages in the Middle East.
By Sidney Victor Kaplan
If life is crazy in Israel these days, sometimes it is no less crazy for an Israeli finding himself outside Israel.
I live on a moshav ‘Manof’ in the north of Israel that has been subjected to endless sirens warning of incoming missiles, mostly from Hezbollah in Lebanon but also from Iran.
It is not that we are specifically being targeted but because we are situated near Rafael – Israel’s state-owned aerospace and defense technology company responsible for pioneering and producing such famed operational defense systems like the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Iron Beam – we are ‘included’ on a ‘hit list’ and I’m not referring to a collection of popular songs.
So, like all Israelis, I am armed by having a fully loaded cellphone, which has the lifesaving Home Front Command app that prepares you with a warning of an impending siren that in turn warns you of an impending missile. The only thing is, this abrasive ear-piercing rat-a-tat warning sound is loud, disruptive, intrusive and irritatingly inescapable.
To escape it – or so I thought – I went off to London for a week on my annual pilgrimage to watch cricket and listen to music.
MANOF TO MARLEBONE
So, there I was this past June ensconced at my usual seat, not watching the Ashes, which I try never to miss, but a 5 -day test between England and New Zealand at Lords, home of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).
Having a Field Day. Away from war in the Middle East, the writer watches a more sedate battle at Lords between England and New Zealand.
The atmosphere could not be more different from Israel. Far removed from the soundtrack of war of sirens and planes flying above to a blend instead of reverent tradition, hushed anticipation and quite elegance all set against historic architecture, where the crowd’s deep knowledge and respect for the game shines through.
However, one can never really escape.
Despite being away, the mind never leaves Israel and so one is constantly tracking the news. It was refreshing looking at the sky above Lords, seeing only birds and the flight of a red cricket ball rather than planes and missiles. Also, no piercing warning and sirens, just the occasional “HOWZAT” when things were hotting up on the pitch. Meanwhile, I could see – tapping into newsfeeds – that things were ‘hotting up’ in the north of Israel, although all was quiet at Manof.
That was until that evening!
And this is where it gets crazy. I forgot to turn off my blaring siren warning app and off I went to the Wigmore Hall to hear a solo violinist performance of Bach. And, midway during the recital in this famed historic concert hall, my phone starts blaring, warning on an incoming missile – in the middle of a Bach concert!
OMG, I was stunned, immobilized, instant panic. What do I do? Nobody sitting around me, or more likely their parents or grandparents had experienced anything like this since the bloody Blitz!
I felt like Mr. Bean – How do I shut down this noise. The last thing you want in London is to advertise you are Israeli, which was exactly what I was doing. I wonder what people thought as they saw me shove my phone under my bum as I tried to muzzle the shrieking alarm competing with the solo violin.
Lover of Lords. The writer stands below a board at Lords Cricket Grounds that includes a plaque celebrating his birthday with the wording ‘HOME AWAY FROM HOME.
To say this felt CRAZY is an understatement. There I was, absorbed in the beauty of a Bach solo, only to be suddenly yanked back to the reality of what was happening back home, thousands of miles away in the Middle East.
How do you explain this to someone? Sitting peacefully in a world class concert hall in London but technologically and emotionally tied directly back to an air raid alert back home in Israel.
You can’t even get away and relax overseas.
Bach to the Bizarre. Enjoying a Bach recital in Wigmore Hall, London shortly before the writer’s app on his cellphone warned him of an incoming missile near his home in Israel. (Photo: Sidney V. Kaplan)
About the writer:
Sidney Kaplan is originally from Cape Town South Africa and a founding member of ‘Manof’, a moshav founded in the Galilee in 1978. Today, he is retired, having been involved in marketing in Cape Town prior before coming to Israel, and in Israel, one of three partners involved in the flower growing industry for export.
*Feature picture: Lord’s Cricket Ground, the most famous cricket ground in the world.
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).
Willing to take, but not to give – have the ultra-Orthodox in a post October 7 world overplayed their hand?
By Stephen Schulman
Living in Israel in these particularly troubled and turbulent times, and after encountering a certain photograph in the newspaper, my thoughts were inexorably drawn back to the contents of an article that appeared some years ago, long before the October 7th massacre, in the weekend magazine of a Hebrew daily.
The article was penned by an Israeli journalist who had travelled to England and interviewed the chief Hamas ideologue who was then residing there. He was most cordially received by this punctilious and affable gentleman who then set out to calmly, patiently and methodically explain his genocidal terrorist organization’s long-term master plan for the destruction of Israel. “Look,” he said, “We follow your media very closely and are aware of what is constantly transpiring within your country. We see a house divided. Many sectors exist, each pursuing their own interests, often inimical to the others and competing to attain as much as possible at the expense of the state. You are becoming a weakened country and in order to survive will have to continually make concessions to us. Eventually, when we dominate and control, you Jews will either have to leave and return from whence you came or be pushed into the sea.”
A chilling observation with an ominous ending. Nevertheless, a photograph taken during an anti-conscription protest of the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) sector, brings some hard truths home. The picture shows a Haredi protester holding a commercially printed banner about two meters in length that contains two pictures each with their own captions. The first one is of a crematorium in an extermination camp and the second one is of the identical picture with the caption:
“We will not send our children to the crematoria of the IDF.” (Israel Defense Force)
Anti-conscription demonstrations by the Haredi with their panoply of scurrilous banners and placards, take place regularly, often turning violent with chants of: “We will die rather than serve in the army,” and they, unfortunately, have become so part and parcel of our daily lives that we have grown accustomed to them. Nevertheless, I was shocked to my core for here was a poster so vicious, and so callous that it defiles and desecrates the memory of the martyrs of the Holocaust. For a Jew to equate serving in the Israeli army with burning in the ovens of the Nazi death camps, reveals the unfathomable depths of blind hatred that exist within a sector comprising a present 14% of the population – and that for all extents and purposes has become a state within a state.
A Bridge too Far. Manning the Chords Bridge at the entrance to Jerusalem, ultra-orthodox men have drawn battle lines that is dividing the nation.(Photo: AP Photo/Leo Correa)
This inner state of the ultra-Orthodox Haredim with its different sectors and sects has evolved, not overnight, nor despite, but with the acquiescence, complicity, and nurturing of the liberal secular democratic state which within it exists. Since the Israeli electoral system is one of proportionate representation, it allows groups and/or sectors to form their own political parties to represent and pursue their own interests. Consequently, there have been many small parties that have carried weight far beyond their size as the major ones needed their support to cobble together a coalition in order to attain a parliamentary majority and effect legislation. The ultra-Orthodox bloc has long been a decisive factor in many successive governments in swinging the balance towards a coalition majority. Throughout the years, in return for its support, prime ministers have acquiesced to their lists of demands that have swelled exponentially and they have been given – disproportionately to their representation in the Knesset – various key ministries and posts controlling and dispensing large budgets. Consequently, their demands have grown interminably and their appetite has grown insatiably as they tenaciously hang onto and voraciously suckle on the swollen pap of the public purse. This accrual of political power, public funds, social and welfare benefits plus being sheltered from shouldering the economic and military burden has enabled the ultra-Orthodox parties to develop their own state within that of the liberal secular democratic one.
Creating Chaos. Despite the outrage to the general population and the causing of a constitutional crisis, PM Netanyahu conspires with the leaders of the Haredi parties to pass a draft exemption law. (Photos: Yair Sagi, Reuven Castro, Amit Shaavi, AFP, Alex Kolomoisky, Yoav Dudkevich, AP)
This de facto autonomous state, theocratic and authoritarian in nature, is ruled and strictly controlled, together with a fixed hierarchy, by councils of elderly learned rabbis. The Shas party representing the Jewry from Arab countries (Sephardim) has at its spiritual head a former chief rabbi, scion of a distinguished rabbinic family, whose pronouncements reflect an insularity, narrow mindedness, intolerance, arrogance and contempt for the liberal secular democratic state, with the Council of Sephardi Torah Sages sharing similar views. The pious leader of the Shas bloc in the Knesset is Aryeh Deri – a distinguished felon and former convict who in 2002 had sat in prison for two years after being convicted for breach of trust, moral turpitude, corruption and bribery while serving in a government post. But, as the saying goes: “Practice makes perfect” and on 20 November 2018, Israeli police ended a criminal investigation into Deri with a recommendation to state prosecutors that he be indicted for “committing fraud, breach of trust, obstructing court proceedings, money laundering, and tax offense.” Later, the state attorney decided to drop all charges except for the tax offense. The Ashkenazi bloc (Jews from European countries) is also ruled by a Council of Torah Sages consisting of elderly rabbis – who share roughly the same sentiments towards the secular state, seeing it solely as a means towards their common goal with Shas of having their communities devote themselves entirely to Torah studies to the exclusion of all else.
These leaders control the lives of those that live within this state, and depend upon it for employment, housing, social welfare and financial benefits. It has its own educational system with a fixed syllabus that perpetuates the status quo, denying its graduates the skills to be employable in the outer state and rendering them dependent on their own one. Their leaders also decide the voting in municipal and general elections. It regulates the public and private discourse, dress code, behaviour, morals and public taste, defining what is acceptable and forbidden. Those who deviate from these strict societal norms are punished and those who choose to leave this state are regarded as pariahs to be shunned.
Blocking Roads to Blocking Country’s Future. Ultra-Orthodox protesters, some of them wearing Holocaust-inspired yellow stars at a Haredi demonstration against military service at the Ben Shemen Interchange in central Israel, June 11, 2026 are blocking a way . (Photo: Israel Police)
Ironically, this state of the ultra-Orthodox cannot exist on its own and is an integral part of the outer liberal democratic one on which it entirely depends to build its homes, supply and maintain the vital infrastructures of water, electricity and multiple municipal and government services. The secular democratic liberal state maintains public health services, hospitals, public transport and the police. The ultra-Orthodox population, like the rest of Israel’s citizens, enjoy all the benefits of a modern welfare state. In essence, due to their large families, high level of unemployment and correspondingly high levels of poverty, they are privileged and enjoy subsidies in public transport, children’s day care, municipal rates and many other perks. While their population comprises 14% of the population, their contribution in taxes is a negligible 4% and many of their families enjoy negative taxation. All this translates into a tax burden on the rest of the population.
Tragically and deplorably, the ultra-Orthodox regard themselves as apart, superior and distinct – willing to take but not to give – and this attitude manifests itself in their abject refusal to do military service. Their elderly rabbis are learned in the ways of the Torah and Talmud but willfully blind to the realities of living in a hostile Middle East. Haunted by the spectre of hordes of their faithful defecting to the corrupting sin pits of an IDF Sodom and Gomorrah that will lead them to perdition, they expressly forbid them to don a uniform.
Raw Nerve. Referring to the Israeli state that financially supports their lifestyle as the “ENEMY STATE” has touched a raw nerve following October 7 and the ensuing wars.
Today, the State of Israel is in crisis. Almost three years of continuous existential conflict defending the country against our enemies has taken a tremendous toll on our non-ultra-Orthodox citizens. In defending the country, more than 1,150 Israeli soldiers, police personnel, and security officials have died with many thousands being wounded and permanently scarred, both physically and mentally. The circle of bereavement has widened immeasurably as too many families have had to mourn the loss of their beloved ones. Young women have been widowed, children growing up fatherless and parents denied the joy of standing together under the wedding canopy. Countless citizens’ lives have been turned upside down as army reservists have spent hundreds of days on the battlefields. Family lives have been disrupted, jobs lost and businesses closed down. Young people having just finished three years of army service, see their goal of uninterrupted tertiary studies vanish down the tubes as they once more are called up for long periods The Israel Defense Forces is facing a critical manpower shortage and urgently needs at least 12,000 more recruits to ease the load on those serving.
Where to get them?
A simple solution: the ultra-Orthodox population presently has 80,000 young men eligible for the draft, but an insoluble problem: they refuse to serve. “But,” you naively ask:
“These young men are citizens and the law obliges them to serve. In fact, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that stressed this obligation and they all got call up notifications. So why don’t they come?”
The guide for the perplexed lies within the country’s political climate. The thirty-seventh government of Israel was formed on 29 December 2022, with Netanyahu at its head. Netanyahu, a seasoned wheeler dealer, for his own personal reasons, went out of his way to form a coalition government and to meet the demands of the different factions, creating a lumbering and costly dinosaur of 38 ministers and deputy ministers. The ultra-Orthodox bloc, seasoned political extortionists aware of their power, with 17 out of a total 120 Knesset seats extracted a dream agreement: key ministries, huge budgets, sitting firmly on the gravy train and success in their quest for the cherished holy grail: Bibi’s commitment to legislation giving permanent blanket exemption for all military aged members of their community.
Pouncing on the Police. Haredi protesters stormed the home of the head of Israel’s Military Police in the south of the country in protest against the arrest of draft evaders.
Now, a few months before the coming elections, the State of Israel stands at the crossroads and must determine a path that decides the future character and possible fate of the country. The Knesset will be dissolved and enter its pre-election recess on July 17th and Bibi has not delivered the goods. The promised legislation has not been passed and to make matters worse – anathema to their leaders who told them all to destroy their call up notices – a few token Haredi draft evaders have actually been arrested and jailed. The ultra-Orthodox camp has reacted with fury: protesters blocking main junctions and a motorcade led by their Knesset representatives deliberately setting out, just before afternoon rush hour, causing paralysis and gridlock on main highways throughout the country. The protesters are not immune to violence, thuggery and vandalism; amongst others, invading the home of a Supreme Court judge, causing extensive damage and threatening his family. At a rally attended by the Shas faithful, one of the venerable rabbis present on the stage placed a curse on the head of the army chief of staff. True to form and highly adept at political weaseling, the Haredi lawmakers, with the backing of Netanyahu, hell bent on his political survival regardless of the cost to the country, are trying their utmost to rush through a bill that would enshrine Torah study as one of the country’s Basic Laws i.e. granting yeshiva students equal status and giving them equal benefits to soldiers serving on the front lines.
If the bill passes, it bodes ill for the country’s future. The ultra- Orthodox with their high average birthrate of 6.7 children per family, by 2050 will comprise 24% of the Israeli population and 40% of young men of military draft age. In practice, this quarter of the population will be contributing a miniscule 7% of the nation’s taxes placing a huge burden on the rest of the citizens. Moreover, as the ultra-Orthodox always turn out en masse to vote en bloc for their designated representatives, it is highly likely that they will be the largest political party in the Knesset with unprecedented powers. As it has been demonstrated, this can only lead to increasing allocations of public funds being swallowed by this sector notorious for its opacity and lack of financial accountability.
Assault on Judiciary. Israeli police officers use force to disperse an ultra-Orthodox Israeli demonstrating against the arrest of fellow activists who took part in a protest outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, outside the Abu Kabir detention facility in Tel Aviv, June 10, 2026. (Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
In 2050, a young secular person recently graduating from high school will receive call up papers. He/she will have to serve for more than three years due to a chronic manpower shortage while 40% of his peers eligible for service will be safely studying in the yeshivot where their stipends are much larger and their conditions are immeasurably better. Upon eventually finishing service and entering the work market, he/she will be heavily taxed with a corresponding drop in the standard of living in order to support the dominant ultra – Orthodox sector. They will then weigh whether or not there is a future for them in the country and if they should remain.
Is my scenario overly bleak? Possibly, but I am far from being alone in my pessimism. In 2023 and 2024, a shocking 90,00 citizens – mainly young middle-class families in the higher education bracket: doctors, hi-tech workers and professionals, drawing their own conclusions, left the country – the equivalent of a medium sized town such as Ra’anana emptying out. If the present state of affairs continues, Israel in too short a time, lacking the economic locomotive of an educated and skilled middle class and with a large section of the population doing menial work and mired in poverty, will have the economy of a 3rd world country. The Israel Defense Forces suffering a lack of means and a huge manpower deficit will be considerably weakened and the enemies surrounding us will have long taken note. Our beloved country, for whom so many of its citizens have paid the ultimate price, could economically and militarily implode.
I once more see that photograph in front of me, recall the words of that despicable genocidal ideologue and I worry for my children and grandchildren. Tragically, many of my friends echo the same sentiments. We see our country in a parlous position: divided, riven by internecine hatred fomented by politicians in their overarching lust for political survival, unconcernedly jettisoning all concern for the good of the state. Let us pray that the 27th October will usher in a sea change.
*Feature picture: Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men protesting on Oct. 30, 2025 the military draft, shutting down Jerusalem, halting public transport and closing major roads. (Photo: AP Photo/Leo Correa) (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg).
About the writer:
Stephen Schulman is a graduate of the South African Jewish socialist youth movement Habonim, who immigrated to Israel in 1969 and retired in 2012 after over 40 years of English teaching. He was for many years a senior examiner for the English matriculation and co-authored two English textbooks for the upper grades in high school. Now happily retired, he spends his time between his family, his hobbies and reading to try to catch up on his ignorance.
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).
The power of money to influence, corrupt and ultimately erode the liberal western way of life.
By Neville Berman
(Warning from the writer: There may be incidents referred to below that you may find disturbing)
This article is not about nuclear war, global warming or a strain of some unknown virus that could result in the destruction of mankind. Instead, it is aimed at highlighting the actual greatest current threat facing the liberal Western way of life. Forget about Russia, China or communism as the major threats facing the West. The cold war is over. Russia is clearly no longer the power that Vladimir Putin thought it was when he ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine. China might be an economic competitor to American financial dominance, but China relies on the markets in the West to ensure that its export-based economy can bring prosperity to China. It would be a strategic mistake for China to believe that its exports will not suffer if it wages war against the West.
The First World War was billed as “the war to end all wars”. It ended with a German surrender, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire that had ruled large parts of the Middle East for nearly 400 years. The terms of the surrender agreement did not bring peace to Europe, and the Muslim community in the Middle East was plunged into turmoil.
In 1928, Hassan al-Banna started a Sunni Muslim organization in Egypt called the Muslim Brotherhood. He stated the following:
“The nature of Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
The Enforcer. Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential global Islamist movements, Hassan al-Banna encouraged Egyptians to abandon Western customs and argued that the state should enforce Islamic public morality.
He rejected nationalism, and regarded all Muslims as members of a single Islamic movement that needed to establish Islamic rule across the world. Its core message was to subjugate the world to Sharia law by means of Jihad. He maintained that Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim, and that a guaranteed way to heaven was to die fighting for the cause of Islam. Partly due to the social activities in helping the poor, and partly due to the support from the Imams in the Mosques, membership in the Brotherhood grew rapidly across the Arab world. The Egyptian government recognized the threat that the Brotherhood posed to its rule, and in 1949, Hassan al-Banna was assassinated by agents of the Egyptian secret police. Despite his death, the message of the Muslim Brotherhood still resonates with millions of Muslims.
There are two significant changes that have now elevated the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The first involves the change in the financial position of the major oil and gas exporting countries in the Middle East, and the second involves the huge increase of the number of Muslims now living in the West.
The world runs on oil and gas and Saudi Arabia is the world’s number 1 exporter of oil, and Qatar is the second largest exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas. (LNG) The profits from the sale of these commodities have transformed these previously poverty-stricken countries into modern financial powerhouses. They are now using their financial power to undermine the West, and promote the growth of Islam across the world.
The second important factor is that the liberal West decided to promote a policy of human rights for mankind. The idea of prosperity through diversity, multiculturalism, and equal opportunity, led to the West opening its borders to immigration. Millions of immigrants from poor countries with little or no prospects, moved to the liberal Western world in the hope of finding a better life for themselves and their families. The vast majority of them lack marketable skills, and are impecunious. They do not share the same culture, religion, language or values of the countries that they have immigrated to. The result is that Europe and America now have sizable immigrant and Muslim populations. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have financed Mosques and Islamic cultural centers all across the world to serve the Muslim immigrant communities. The Imams in these institutions have radicalized tens of thousands of their followers to oppose the values of the West, and to see themselves as part of the army of Islam that aims to control the world.
The greatest threat facing the Western world at present is militant Islam coupled with the support that it is receiving from Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. (The role of Iran and Saudi Arabia as a threat to the West will be presented in a follow up article.)
Qatar is a sovereign country surrounded by the Persian Gulf. It has a small land border that can be used to cross into Saudi Arabia. It has been ruled by the Al Thani family since the mid-19th century. There are approximately 3 million people living in Qatar, of which about 320,000 are Qatari citizens. All the rest are expatriates and guest workers with almost no rights in the country. Qatar has donated billions of dollars to Hamas, which is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.
All in the Family. Qatar, a small Gulf country with enormous global influence, has been ruled by the Al Thani family since the mid-19th century.
Qatar has the same aims as Al-Qaeda, but is much smarter in its strategy. Instead of blowing up buildings in the West and causing a military retaliation, Qatar is buying the buildings and using its financial resources to gain influence. The Al-Jazeera TV channel is financed by the rulers of Qatar. It broadcasts 24/7 in Arabic and English to 430 million households worldwide. It has radicalized millions of its viewers to hate and despise the West and is laying the seeds of an Islamic takeover of the West.
Qatar has spent billions on financing the building of Middle Eastern departments on all the major American university campuses. Only professors with a track record of being anti-Israel are hired. Their aim is to train the future leaders of America to oppose the values and foundational pillars of Western civilization, and especially to oppose Israel. The end result can be seen in well financed and organized protests against Israel on American campuses and across the Western world.
Gift or Graft? Seeming oblivious to the image of Qatar buying influence at the highest level of the US administration, President Donald Trump celebrates the new Qatari-gifted ‘Air Force One’ before its initial voyage to North Dakota, saying the U.S. “should be very proud” of the new luxury jet.(AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Qatar has used its enormous wealth to corrupt the world. They bought the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. They are also buying influence within the American administration. Steve Witcoff owned a hotel in New York that was sold to Qatar for $400 million. He claims it was at fair market value. According to a Netflix program called Dirty Money, Jared Kushner was bailed out of insolvency by a $400 million loan from Qatar. Witkoff and Kushner are presently the negotiators representing America in negotiating a deal with Iran. Qatar has just presented Trump with the world’s most luxurious Boeing 747 aircraft costing over $400 million. The Attorney General has determined that the gift is legally permissible, as it is gifted to the US government and not to Trump personally. Trump is now using the plane. Whichever way you look at it, there is no doubt that Qatar has bought influence within the highest levels of the US administration. President Trump sees Qatar as a friend and ally of America. Qatar is playing a double game of pretending to be a friend of America, while actively promoting the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood and the downfall of the West.
More than a decade ago, Dutch politician Gert Wilders produced a short movie of the growth of Islam in Holland. The final scene was filmed inside a mosque of an Imam waving a sword during a sermon, declaring, “Come and cut off his head! By Allah, we shall cut it off!”
To Crown it All. This Bel Air home in LA, listed on the market as the US’s most expensive residential property is owned by a Qatari billionaire and former prime minister. Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family and state funds have amassed massive real estate portfolios across Western capitals with their holdings often exceeding those of local monarchs. (Photo: Simon Berlyn/The Beverly Hills Estates)
Gert Wilders was charged with inciting hatred for making and showing the movie. No charges were ever laid against the Imam. There is no doubt that the message of that particular Imam is part of Islam.
In the early hours of October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel. They rejoiced at filming themselves committing the most violent crimes of murder, rape, beheading, and hostage taking. Many people in the West believe that the Muslim concept of Jihad applies only to Jews. They are mistaken. Jihad is aimed at every single person who does not believe in Islam. This is a wakeup call to all those Westerners who are totally ignorant of what Islam and Jihad are all about. One day, when the Islamists decide that it is time to overthrow the West, tens of thousands of militant Islamists that are your fellow citizens, and could be living next door to you, will act in the same way that Hamas acted against Israel. They will take out their guns and invade your residences. They will shoot your dogs, murder your babies and children in front of you. They will gang rape the female members of your family, and then mutilate and decapitate you and your parents. Some of you will have metal rods shoved into your vaginas and others will have your breasts cut off. All of this will be filmed by the people rejoicing at what they have done. Some of you will be kidnaped and kept in cellars. You will either be killed, used as sex slaves, and finally used as bargaining chips to secure the release of other Jihadists that have been incarcerated. If you find the above shocking, then it is time to wake up to the reality of what Hamas actually planned and carried out in Israel. This is what Jihad is all about. As they say in Hollywood, Coming shortly to your neighborhood. Groups such as “Gays for Gaza” are the epitome of the ignorance that exists about the dangers of militant Islam.
Tuitions of Terror. The preferred host of Hamas terrorist leaders, Qatar is the largest foreign donor to American higher education, funneling billions of dollars into U.S. and Western universities. Seen here is Cornell University that received over $2.3 billion. (Credit: Cornell University stock photo)
I will end with what must be the strangest case of genocide ever recorded. Thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank are finding illegal ways to cross into Israel to find employment. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza would gladly come to work in Israel, if Israel would allow them to do so. It defies all logic that all these Palestinians would be trying desperately to come to Israel, if Israel was committing genocide against them. It is time for all those gullible Westerners who are protesting that Israel is committing genocide to understand that you are supporting a blood libel and false narrative. It is time to reflect on your support for those that aim to kill you. It is time to understand the disproportionate role that tiny Israel is playing in preventing militant Islam from taking over the western world.
It is time to say “Thank you Israel.”
About the writer:
Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award. In 1978 he immigrated to the USA to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel. He is married with two children and one granddaughter.
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).
Surprise discovery of Iranian women’s hair raises serious concerns but reminds – you can imprison a person but not an idea.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attempted to convince the world that it represents justice, morality, and the will of the Iranian people. But behind the propaganda lies a brutal reality that millions of Iranians know all too well. The regime’s systematic oppression of women remains one of the clearest examples of its cruelty and fear. For as little as showing a strand of hair, Iranian women are met with intimidation, imprisonment, torture, or worse.
Today, the world is once again witnessing the Islamic Republic’s relentless assault on the dignity and freedom of women.
Recently, reports emerged from Armenia that customs officials intercepted 143 bundles of natural hair weighing approximately 26 kilograms at the Agarak border crossing with Iran. The “best” case is that the hair belonged to impoverished Iranian women selling their hair simply to survive in an economy devastated by corruption, sanctions, and government mismanagement. The “good news” is that women may be seeking ways other than the religiously sanctioned prostitution racket of “temporary marriages” to earn money.
The worst case is that the hair came from women who have been gunned down or executed by the Islamic Republic, in one of the most inhuman forms of human trafficking possible: profiting from women’s bodies after they have been murdered.
Either way, the discovery is deeply symbolic. The Islamic Republic has spent decades subjugating women by forcing them to cover their hair, arresting and torturing them for showing a single misplaced strand. Now, as economic desperation deepens, the very symbol of control over Iranian women has become a commodity.
Whether Iranian women are driven to such severe poverty that they must sell parts of themselves to feed their families, or the regime chops off the emblem of freedom for Iranian women from the corpses of their victims, the bottom line is that a woman showing her hair has never been about morality.
It’s always been about control.
Another shocking example of this oppression has captured international attention. Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi was sentenced to 74 lashes after performing without a hijab during a livestreamed concert. In addition to the flogging sentence, she and members of her production team reportedly received travel bans and restrictions on their artistic activities.
Iran Lashes Out. The Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without hijab. (Photo: Hosseinronaghi)
Think about what this means.
In the twenty-first century, a woman can be sentenced to brutal whipping simply because she sang a song with her hair showing. I witnessed such torture of my husband who was forced to confess to the “crime” of drinking wine, which he never did. Neither the physical nor psychological scars of his 80 lashes ever healed and led to his death at the hands of the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic fears music because music inspires hope.
It fears artists because artists tell the truth.
It fears women because women have become the strongest voice of resistance against tyranny.
Parastoo Ahmadi’s case is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader campaign against women who refuse to submit. Women have been arrested for removing their hijabs, imprisoned for posting photographs online, and physically assaulted for challenging discriminatory laws. The regime’s “morality police” and Basij militia have become instruments of terror directed primarily at women and girls.
I witnessed this firsthand during my nine-month imprisonment and death sentence for the “crime” of becoming a Christian. Numerous cellmates shared harrowing stories of all kinds of physical and sexual abuse, judges and prosecutors demanding sex in order to receive a favorable verdict, and misogyny so deep seeded in Iranian society that it’s passed off as normal.
No story illustrates this reality more painfully than the death of Mahsa Amini.
“WOMEN,LIFE, FREEDOM”
In September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating the country’s mandatory hijab regulations. She was brutally tortured and within days, she was dead. Her death ignited nationwide protests under the powerful slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.”
Millions of Iranians recognized what had happened. Mahsa Amini was not simply one victim among many. She became a symbol of every woman humiliated, threatened, beaten, or silenced by the regime.
The protests that followed, demonstrated the courage of the Iranian people, especially Iranian women. Young women publicly removed their hijabs. Students challenged government officials. Mothers demanded justice. Despite brutal crackdowns, arrests, executions, and intimidation, the spirit of resistance did not disappear.
An Iranian ‘Cover Up’. An Iranian woman walks on a street amid the implementation of the then new hijab surveillance in Tehran in, April 15, 2023. (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/Wana/Reuters)
While I was saved from physical torture, I still bear many scars of my experiences and what I witnessed. My closest friend, Shirin Alamhooli, suffered such severe torture, for days on end she could not walk and every day suffered debilitating headaches because her torturers brutally beat her on the head. Knowing that she was savagely raped (according to Islamic doctrine of not permitting a virgin woman to be executed), is a pain and indignity that Iranian women deal with – causing widespread pain and suffering to survivors like me, as well as the victims.
The Islamic Republic may imprison individuals, but it cannot imprison an idea whose time has come: freedom and the end of the regime.
As someone who personally experienced persecution under the Islamic Republic, I understand the regime’s tactics. Fear is its primary weapon. It sets men in the position of controlling women, and seeks to convince citizens that resistance is futile and that freedom is impossible. Yet history repeatedly proves otherwise.
The courage of Iranian women continues to expose the weakness of the regime. Every woman who walks without a mandatory hijab, every artist who continues to sing, every activist who speaks out, and every family that demands justice for victims like Mahsa Amini represents a challenge to a government built upon coercion.
The discovery of smuggled women’s hair at the Armenian border and the sentencing of Parastoo Ahmadi to 74 lashes may appear to be unconnected. In reality, they are inseparable. Both reveal a regime that exploits, controls, and punishes women while claiming to defend their dignity.
The international community must not look away.
Governments, human rights organizations, churches, and freedom-loving people everywhere should continue to amplify the voices of Iranian women. Silence only emboldens oppressors.
The women of Iran constantly show extraordinary courage. They risk everything for freedom, dignity, and equality. Their struggle is not merely an Iranian issue. It is a human rights issue.
One day, the women of Iran will no longer fear arrest for showing their hair, imprisonment for speaking their minds, or lashes for singing their songs. One day, the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” will no longer be a protest cry but a lived reality.
Until that day arrives, the world must stand with them.
*Feature photo: Armenian customs officers seize 143 bundles of undeclared hair from Iran.
About the writer:
Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh, the founder and president of www.newpersia.org, an author, public speaker, and activist. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison- one of the most brutal prisons in the world.
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).
The Church should be a protected sanctuary rather than a site for political standoffs- sanctity of life over frictions of the past.
By David Nekrutman and Jonathan Feldstein
The images from last month’s Iranian missile barrage remain seared into our collective memory, specifically the sight of ballistic streaks over Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst this high-stakes war, a localized controversy erupted that touched the very heart of the faith communities with whom we spend our time building bridges. During Holy Week, Israeli police barred Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for a private, livestreamed Palm Sunday service.
Cardinal Issue. Need to provide a bomb shelter following the issue with Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who is seen here holding a prayer service to mark Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, March 29, 2026. (Photo: Ammar Awad/Pool Photo via AP)
Predictably, the incident became a Rorschach test for the region’s geopolitics. Critics of Israel seized upon it as evidence of anti-Christian bias, while defenders pointed to the genuine threat of falling shrapnel, noting that religious gatherings for Jews and Muslims were also restricted. The fallout was significant enough that Israeli government leaders, including the Prime Minister himself, condemned the police decision and intervened to ensure a solution was found for future services.
Targeting Jerusalem. Israel intercepts an Iranian missile above Jerusalem’s Old City on March 1, 2026. (Photo: AP/Mahmoud Illean)
While high-level political fixes can salvage a holiday, they do not address the underlying infrastructure failure. As leaders of The Isaiah Projects and the Genesis 123 Foundation, we believe the time has come to ask a glaring, practical question:
Why does one of the most significant religious sites on Earth, in a place that has been targeted by terrorist missiles, lack a bomb shelter?
STREAMLINING SECURITY FOR THE CLERGY
The absence of a shelter doesn’t just impact pilgrims; it hamstrings the ability of Israel’s Home Front Command to make nuanced security calls. When the sirens wail and the threat level is raised, as we experienced during last month’s state of war, the military’s default position must be the total shutdown of unprotected spaces.
Under Fire. Smoke in the Old City shows where fragments from an Iranian missile fell near the holy sites of all the three major religions. (Photo: IDF)
If the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had an on-site shelter, the logistical calculus would change overnight. It would provide the Home Front Command with the safety “cushion” needed to allow the Cardinal and his clergy into the building even during high-alert periods. While a shelter might not allow for full congregational attendance, it would alleviate some of the safety concerns that currently lead to total bans on public holy sites. A shelter turns a high-risk security gamble into a manageable situation, ensuring the liturgy does not have to go dark while protecting lives — a value central to both Judaism and Christianity.
A COALTION OF WILLING NEIGHBORS
Recognizing this gap between spiritual necessity and physical safety, our organizations have publicly offered to donate and install a bomb shelter within or adjacent to the church premises. We would be working in tandem with Operation Lifeshield, an Israeli organization with decades of specialized experience installing shelters for both Jewish and non-Jewish communities across Israel.
To date, however, the Church has yet to accept our offer. We understand the complexity of the “Status Quo” — the centuries-old web of agreements between different denominations that govern the Holy Sites. Historically, even moving a laddercan trigger an internal Christian crisis. Yet, as the region prepares for a potential “Phase 3” escalation with Iran and the lack of a long-term solution becomes glaring, the absence of modern safety infrastructure is a liability that prayer alone may not solve.
BEYOND THE STATUS QUO
The threats last month in Jerusalem and across Israel were real. While any physical change requires a delicate consensus among the various Christian denominations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, “bureaucracy as usual” is a luxury we can no longer afford when the stakes are human lives.
Nowhere is Safe. Following an Iranian missile exploding over Jerusalem’s Old City, its fragments fell on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Patriarchate, the Jewish Quarter and on the Temple Mount near the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Iranian regime is firing missiles toward Jerusalem’s holy sites, endangering Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. Israel, meanwhile, acts to protect worshippers of all faiths in its capital city.
Moving beyond these administrative hurdles would signal a profound shift in interfaith relations, especially as an initiative of two Jewish-led organizations supported by both Jews and Christians. We are currently sixty years post-Nostra Aetate, the landmark declaration that reshaped the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. We speak often of “rapprochement”, but it is often confined to high-level summits and theological papers.
We believe a bomb shelter for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, facilitated by Jewish neighbors with a proven track record of protecting all citizens, would be the ultimate modern manifestation of that vision. It would be a tangible, “concrete” sign of a brotherhood that prioritizes the sanctity of life over the friction of the past.
Holy Sepulchre in the ‘Cross’hairs. Missile debris from an Iranian attack landed just feet from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – one of the most sacred sites in Christianity, believed to be the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
LOOKING AHEAD TO PHASE III
As tensions with Iran threaten to escalate into a “Phase III” conflict, the issue of shutdowns in public and even sacred spaces will only intensify. Israel has recently appointed a new Christian envoy; while he is still getting his feet wet in this complex space, he cannot carry the burden of the Church’s safety alone.
The Church leadership must step up. It is easy to blame security forces for restrictions, but it is much harder to justify the lack of basic safety infrastructure in a high-profile target area frequently caught in the crosshairs of regional conflict.
Our offer stands. We are ready to work with the Church to navigate the technical and diplomatic hurdles. Accepting this shelter would ensure that when the next barrage of missiles from Iran, Hezbollah, or the Houthis comes, the Church remains a protected sanctuary rather than a site for political standoffs. Let us work together to ensure that the prayers at the Holy Sepulchre never have to be silenced by the sound of sirens.
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).
If the West cannot stand with its Jews when they are threatened, blamed and smeared with recycled blood libels, then we are dead as societies.
By Andrew Fox
I am done pulling punches. This will not be an easy read. Do not look away.
Fuck this. I am furious at the antisemitism pouring through the West, confident and shameless, and at those who know it is wrong, yet sit by and let it happen and say or do absolutely nothing.
View at burnt Ambulances in a car park at Golders Green in London, Monday, March 23, 2026, after an apparent arson attack on four vehicles belonging to a Jewish ambulance service, Hatzola Northwest, in London. (Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP)
In Britain, we have already had Jews and their security guards stabbed to death. Jewish ambulances were set on fire. Now we have had multiple synagogue fire bombings in London. I woke this morning to a WhatsApp message from a Jewish friend I treasure, telling me about the latest atrocity against British Jews. I am sick of this. I am sickened by it, and I do not understand how anyone with any decency is not sickened too. Why are we not angrier?
Jewish people are being forced to answer, again, for every accusation, every fantasy, every blood libel hurled at the State of Israel. A Jewish student in London, Paris, New York or Melbourne is treated as if they sat in the Israeli war cabinet. A synagogue is treated as if it were a military installation. A kosher restaurant becomes a proxy battlefield. A Jewish child in a school uniform is expected to carry the moral weight of a war they did not start, a government they did not elect, and a region most of their accusers could not find on a map without help. It is grotesque. It is ancient hatred with new slogans. I am angry, and you should be too. If you are reading this, why the fuck are you not angrier?
A 45-year-old Muslim man goes on a rampage in Golders Green looking for Jews to stab. Antisemitism is being ‘normalised’ and not taken seriously enough, chief rabbi tells BBC. (Photo: Screen shot from BBC)
Holocaust survivors have told me in person that the atmosphere in Britain today is like 1930s Germany. Why will our leaders, our government, our legal system not listen to them? The Holocaust did not arrive fully formed. It started with demonisation, isolation and undeserved blame.
Wake. The. Fuck. Up.
The blood libels are back. They have just been laundered through the language of activism, human rights and moral urgency. Jews are again cast as uniquely cruel, uniquely conspiratorial, uniquely bloodthirsty. Israel is accused not merely of error, not merely of brutality, not merely of war, but of metaphysical evil. Every casualty is flattened into proof of Jewish depravity. Every complexity is erased. Every Hamas or Hezbollah or Iranian atrocity is contextualised into mist. Jewish grief is interrogated. Jewish fear is mocked. Jewish self-defence is treated as criminal.
The most sickening expression of this is the obscene inversion of the Holocaust in Gaza. Gaza is not the Holocaust. Gaza is not Auschwitz. Gaza is not Treblinka. Gaza is not the industrialised, continent-wide mechanical attempt to exterminate an entire people. Gaza is not the murder of six million people because they were Jews. Gaza is not children selected for gas chambers, families shot into pits, communities erased from Europe, nor names turned to ash. To compare the war in Gaza to the attempted extermination of the Jewish race is an obscene desecration. There is no parallel. None whatsoever.
April 14, 1945 – Pile of ashes and bones found by U.S. soldiers at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
Civilian suffering in Gaza or Lebanon is simply a feature of war. It can be real without turning Jews into Nazis. War can be horrific without becoming the Shoah. Palestinians can be mourned without stealing the language of Jewish annihilation and weaponising it against Jews. The Holocaust is not a metaphor for anyone’s rhetorical convenience. It was a specific crime, committed against a specific people, at a specific scale, with a specific ideological purpose: the eradication of Jews from the earth. To invert it against Jews now is morally obscene.
Everyone in the West should stand with their Jewish neighbours. They should stand with Jews because Jews are being threatened, harassed, isolated and collectively blamed for the actions of a state. They should stand with Jews because history has already shown us where this road leads when decent people find a thousand elegant reasons to look away.
April 12, 1945 – Bodies of prisoners of Ohrdruf concentration camp stacked like cordwood (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
Silence is permission. When Jewish schools need guards, when students hide Stars of David, when families wonder whether it is safe to walk to synagogue, and when mobs chant slogans that make Jews feel hunted in the cities they call home, when Jewish ambulances and places of worship are being firebombed, the moral test is not complicated. Stand with Jews, or admit that your principles are worth piss in the wind.
The absence of solidarity is a stain. The refusal to name antisemitism because it wears a fashionable political mask is a stain. The cowardice of institutions, politicians, universities and cultural figures who can identify every hatred except this one is a stain.
What the shuddering fuck are we doing, Britain? Why are we not angrier? Why are we not forming human shields around our Jewish community? Our grandparents fought a global war so that this could never happen again. It is literally happening again, and we are standing by and doing absolutely fucking nothing.
I am angry because Jews should not have to beg for support. Jews should not feel they have to thank someone merely for showing solidarity with them. I am raging because “Never Again” has become a slogan people applaud, yet it fails when courage is demanded. I am angry because standing by Jews is the only right option, and too many otherwise good, decent people are choosing silence, disregard or antipathy.
Look: I cannot say this anymore simply. Once they are done with the Jews, they are coming for you, too. Get fucking angry before it is too late, if not for the Jews, then for yourselves and your children.
About the writer:
A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.
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).
Israel cultural icon Zubin Mehta, who turns 90 this week cancels all his 2026 performances in Israel over politics. Should the hotel that embraced him for decades memorialize his legacy? A personal view.
By Motti Verses
Many believe there would never be a slowdown for the legendary conductor marking his 90th birthday this week on April 29. His presence on stage, baton in hand, felt almost immune to time. Born in Mumbai, Zubin Mehta became one of the most enduring figures in classical music, and his relationship with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, spanning more than five decades, remains one of the longest in the field.
Contribution to Culture. Zubin Mehta receives the Presidential Award from Israeli president Shimon Peres for his contribution to Israeli culture. (Photo: Haaretz)
Mehta’s connection to Israel extended beyond the concert hall. For decades, that ‘connection’ was also embedded in a place, the Hilton Tel Aviv, where I was part of the management. Zubin was not just a guest – but a constant presence.
Decades of Delight. Prior to a farewell Gala event after a lifetime of delighting Israeli concert goers, Zubin Metha is seen here (center) being interviewed in 2019 at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv with the writer (left) and Hilton Israel Magazine editor David Kaplan. (Photo: Motti Verses)
In the late 1960s, when Tel Aviv offered few international-standard hotels, the Hilton stood at the forefront. Mehta, still early in his international career, was quickly embraced by the Philharmonic’s circle. The hotel, in turn, embraced him. Over time, that relationship deepened into something unusual: a leading global artist becoming inseparable from the identity of a hotel.
Music not Missiles. Zubin Mehta conducts a concert in 1977 at the opening ceremony of the ‘Good Fence’ on the Israeli-Lebanese border. (Photo: David Rubinger)
At one point, even a rooftop suite at the Hilton bore his name for more than 20 years. It was not a marketing gesture; it reflected a real, lived connection. Mehta himself took part in placing the plaque. A small but telling act. For years, guests passing through the adjacent lounge would see that name, quietly linking the hotel to one of the world’s great conductors.
TradingPlaces. Switching from a conductor’s baton to an engineer’s hat, Maestro Mehta 30 years ago places a new plaque by the door of the rooftop suite named after him, following a renovation. (Photo: Motti Verses)
He was a familiar figure there. Not only at formal events such as fundraising galas, state-attended evenings, performances but also in ordinary moments – at the Concierge desk; in the lobby. Present, accessible, part of the daily Hilton’s rhythmic routine.
During the 1991 Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, Mehta remained at the hotel. At a time when most foreign visitors had left, his presence was not symbolic but consistent with who he had been in Israel for decades. As he said at the time, “I couldn’t imagine not being here.”
Sights and Sounds. Zubin Mehta with gas mask visits the site of the first Iraqi Scud missile strike of the Gulf War in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 1991. (Photo: Colin Davey/Getty Images)
What is more, he performed under fire getting special permission since emergency government measures prohibited mass gatherings. Baton in hand, he led concerts for several mornings in a row, as there was a strict night curfew during the war. The most visually catching addition to people’s dress at these ‘concerts’ were the bringing of their gas masks into the performances.
In later years, the hotel changed. Renovations altered its layout, and the original suite bearing his name disappeared. A posh generic suite was assigned to him, but without the same recognition. By then, Mehta himself had slowed. His appearances became less frequent. The connection, while still there, was no longer as visible.
Celebratory Concert. Celebrating in 2005, the Hilton’s 40th anniversary in Israel, Mehta conducts an unforgettable open-air concert staged over the hotel’s temporarily covered pool. (Photo: Hilton Israel Mmagazine)
A few weeks before the Covid plague, the Hilton hosted a farewell gala marking his retirement from the Israel Philharmonic. It was an evening of respect and closure. The Grand Ballroom was filled with those who had known his contribution firsthand.
Inspiring words to Enriching Sounds. Mehta passionately addresses in 2015 the audience during an Israeli Philharmonic fundraising event in the Hilton, Tel Aviv’s Grand Ballroom. (Photo: Motti Verses)
During that moment, I thought the story should not end there. That the hotel should consider restoring what had been lost and once again name a suite after him. It seemed appropriate – even obvious. I thought then that this nice gesture should be at his 90th birthday.
Now, although I’m no longer with the Hilton, I changed my mind and for different reasons.
At the beginning of 2026, Mehta announced that he would cancel all his scheduled performances in Israel, explaining that he could not separate music from politics. It was a clear, public decision, regardless of the difficult years Israel is facing since the October 7 2023 massacre. It was a position that stood in contrast to the posture he had maintained for decades – one of solidarity and support for the State of Israel.
Portrait of an Artist. The Maestro assists in hanging a portrait of himself in the Zubin Metha Suite at the Hilton, Tel Aviv, following the 1991 Gulf War. (Photo: Motti Verses)
For much of his career, Mehta was seen here as someone above political divisions. His music, and his presence, operated in a different space. One that connected rather than separated. That was the basis of his standing in Israel.
The decision to withdraw reframed that legacy. Not gradually, but abruptly – leaving a jarring discordant note; and ‘unfinished symphony’.
A hotel suite commemorating his contribution is not just a physical space. It carries meaning. It reflects an ongoing relationship, not only past achievement, but continued identification. Naming a suite after someone is a statement that the connection still holds.
In this case, it does not.
Mehta’s contribution to Israel’s cultural life remains significant. That history cannot be erased. But recognition is not only about the past. It also depends on how that past is concluded.
Legacies are shaped over time, but they are also defined at their end. Zubin Metha leaves on his 90th year disappointed Israeli concert goers with memories, but also sadly with ‘The Sound of Silence’. And this, after October 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust!
End of an Era. Is this the final note, with Zubin Mehta appearing this January on India TV explaining why he cancelled all his scheduled performances in Israel? (Photo: YouTube)
You have been in life a “classic” and wish you continue your journey to entertain and inspire – only a pity not one last time in the Jewish State, whose culture you have enriched over a memorable melodious lifetime.
Sic transit gloria Israel, Maestro.
*Feature picture: Conductor Zubin Mehta attends the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Duet Gala at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on November 10, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California.(Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty)
About the writer:
The author is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.
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).
Daily life in Israel when missiles are striking across Israel.
By Peter Bailey
Israel’s many wars, the first of which started before the rebirth of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, has resulted in an extremely efficient and effective system of everything possible being done to ensure the safety of the civilian population at all times. There is a well-worn comment that while Israel’s enemies have spent fortunes on developing armies and weapons with which to attack Israel, Israel has spent the bulk of its defense spend on defensive capabilities and citizen safety. The evolution of how wars are waged has seen the use of offensive weapons such as rockets, missiles and drones becoming the weapons of choice with which to attack Israel. The country has thus been developing increasingly sophisticated anti rocket and missile defenses, while also concentrating on the erection and maintenance of communal and private residential safe areas of various types.
I regularly found myself searching for shelter during the course of my daily travels as a result of the nature of my work for Beth Protea, a South African founded retirement home for seniors situated in Herzliya. I work with the Protea Home Care (PHC) division, which provides services to the elderly who reside independently in their own homes, but require assistance in managing various aspects of their lives. One of the services offered by PHC is the daily (Sunday to Thursday) delivery of well-prepared nutritious meals to clients, who, for various reasons are unable to prepare their own meals. These clients reside in an area which includes the cities of Herzliya, Raanana, Hod Hasharon, Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv, Ramat HaSharon and as far afield as Holon. The reality is that despite the emergency situation and missile attacks, meals have to be delivered and I am on the road four mornings a week. Recalling my experiences, might provide readers outside of Israel an idea of life governed by alerts announced on one’s cell phone, followed by the siren anywhere from one and a half to ten minutes later. Of course, if you are living in the north of the country, there may be no pre-siren alert and you may have less than 15 seconds to find safety before a missile strikes. Seeking safety quickly becomes the name of the game.
There are communal or public bomb shelters available in well-advertised and sign posted areas of almost all civilian population areas, office blocks and many of the older apartment buildings. Referred to in Hebrew as a miklat (plural miklatim), which is a communal or public bomb shelter or safe area, with many underground parking areas beneath malls, other public buildings, railway and bus stations also being used for public safety purposes. The disadvantage of the miklatim is that many of them are situated in basements, with many accidents resulting from people having to rush down stairs to the safe area. Since 1951, Israel has been passing increasingly more effective laws regarding the construction and availability of safe areas. The word miklat comes from the biblically ordained cities of refuge (ערי מקלט), so the word miklat translates as a place of refuge.
Making the most of a dire situation, Israelis do yoga at an underground garage, used as a public shelter, in Tel Aviv during the Israel-US war with Iran. March 17. 2026. (Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
We then have the mamad, acronym for merchav mugan dirati, which means home safe area, with mamadim found in many apartments and free-standing homes. Legislation was passed in 1993, making it mandatory by law for all new homes, free standing or in apartment blocks, to have a mamad (safe room). This legislation was prompted by the 1991 Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the 1st Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. The threat of chemicals or gas being released into the atmosphere by the exploding missiles resulted in the 1993 legislation, which also made provision for the proper sealing of all safe rooms.
The third category of safe room is the mamak, acronym for merchav mugan komati, which means the safe area on each floor of an apartment or office complex. The building in which I reside has a mamak, which means that it’s a short, safe and convenient walk down the passage to safety. Many older and disabled people residing in older buildings with a basement miklat, rather than a mamak or mamad, often resort to sitting in the lobby area outside their apartments as they are unable to get to the safe area in time and in safety. This is not ideal, but offers a small degree of safety, as long as there are no windows, which can shatter and cause injuries in the event of a nearby blast or explosion.
A chair for an elderly or disabled person in the lift lobby is a common sight . (Photo: Peter Bailey)
Finally, there is the migunit, which is a portable free standing safe area which can be placed in areas where there is no miklat. One of the reasons for this innovation is that business premises such as shops and restaurants are not allowed to be open for business during an emergency period, unless there is a nearby safe area for customers in the event of a missile alert. Necessity being the mother of invention, an answer to the problem was found.
A migunit or portable bomb shelter outside a supermarket. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
The most satisfying feature of my experiences seeking safety during my travels has been the friendly and helpful attitude of people wherever and whenever I have been in need of a safe area. My first experience of this camaraderie and unconditional helpfulness was following a warning alert that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes was in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bavli. Immediately after receiving the alert, I looked for a safe place to stop my car, and as I did so, a young lady knocked on the window and asked if I was in need of shelter, and if so to follow her, which I did. A few metres down the road was the entrance to a school, and I soon discovered that many schools in Tel Aviv, closed because of the emergency situation, had opened their miklatim to the public. I followed the crowd down into the basement where despite my protestations, somebody insisted I take their chair, which I did with gratitude. Total strangers were chatting with each and with my Hebrew not too wonderful, a few people spoke to me in English and I was really part of a wonderful socialising event. When the all clear sounded, off we all went, going our own way.
Another learning experience was just after leaving a residential building in Herzliya where I had delivered a meal when the alert sounded on my cell phone. I retraced my steps into the building and followed the signs to the basement miklat, where I joined a small group of adults and about 20 young children. I knew that the building had recently been renovated, which meant that each apartment had its own mamad, so I was somewhat taken aback at seeing so many kids and so few adults. I soon had the answer. The war situation meant that children were not at nursery schools or kindergartens as these were all closed, which meant that parents had to take time off work to care for their children. The very practical solution in this building was for two sets of parents to be with the youngsters while other parents were free to go to work, with the ‘duty parents’ changing every two hours.
Duty parents with children in a miklat in an apartment building in Herzliya. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
Later that same day, I found myself in the Ramat Aviv suburb of Tel Aviv, when the alert sounded. It was already the fourth time that day. I saw a curbside parking bay available and parked the delivery van, and as I stood on the pavement looking around, a man standing at the entrance to a school beckoned to me. I went over to him and he invited me to join them in the school miklat, where I saw that there were mattresses along two walls of the safe area, but this time several adults were resting on the mattresses. My curiosity once again got the better of me and I asked the man who had originally beckoned me for more detail. It turned out he was the school principal, but with no pupils, he had opened the miklat to the public. The school was adjacent to a very old quarter of Ramat Aviv, with many of the nearby buildings lacking any form of safety for the residents, so they had been invited to sleep in the school miklat in case there were siren alerts during the night. I was offered coffee and a chair, while I marvelled at the resourcefulness of the school principal and unsolicited care and kindness shown to one and all while the sirens wailed.
SIREN IN THE SUPERMARKET
While shopping with my wife during Pesach (Passover) at the local hypermarket, we had just finished paying for our trolley, when the alert sounded on our cell phones. I pushed the full trolley to the area designated as the safe area, and while somewhat concerned, was instructed to leave the trolley outside, together with many other trolleys. We were shepherded through a door only to discover that this led to a stairwell, which was full of people as the miklat was already overcrowded. So, there we stood for the next 20 minutes, waiting for the ‘all clear’. Probably one of my less enjoyable miklat stays, although I was delighted to find my trolley intact with all our paid for shopping just as we’d left it. So good to experience honesty of the highest degree in adversity.
Not the saftest place nor recommended with an incoming ballistic missile from Iran, nevertheless a packed stairwell of a building following a siren.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
While on a delivery call in an area known as the Old North of Tel Aviv, not far from Hamedina Square (Kikar Hamedina), where there are many older buildings with no protection, the siren sounded. Where would I find safety here? While most residential building entrance doors in this area are usually locked with a code, I found that many doors were wide open with signs in Hebrew advising that a miklat was available. This was once again a wonderful example of the caring and sharing attitude of most Israelis. Although I’ve had many experiences seeking safety during this war, one particular miklat stay stands out. I was travelling on the highway near Hod HaSharon, having heard the alert warning that missiles from Iran were on their way and that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes. I took the first off ramp and found myself outside the Sokolov Train Station, illegally parked in the no stopping zone right outside the station and jumped out the car as the siren went off. I was cutting it fine. The normally officious barrier guards who usually take no nonsense from anybody, were now holding the barriers open and ushering all and sundry into the station building. I was shepherded into a crowded small miklat behind the ticket office, which looked more like a staff coffee area than a miklat, but it had a proper bomb proof security door. I was touched at the total personality change of the security personnel, but it was nothing more than typical Israeli caring during times of adversity.
People find refuge in the miklat in Sokolov Railway Station. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
The last miklat I want to talk about is really a case of saving the best for last. While doing a delivery in Ra’anana the siren went off and I immediately sought refuge in the miklat of the building I was in. I’d walked into the gold standard of miklatim. What a pleasant surprise to find a carpeted floor, very comfortable chairs including a few armchairs, and to top it all, a ping pong table. That one must take the prize for the best appointed miklat I’ve been in. While living through a war with missiles dropping extremely dangerous cluster munitions on civilian areas, injuring some 8,000 people and killing 20, the residents of this building decided that if they had to spend many hours in the miklat, home comforts were important.
A more ‘up-market’ miklat with carpeted floor, television set, artwork, armchairs and ping pong table in Ra’anana. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
To bring home the danger and how daily life in Israel under fire reminds me of Russian roulette, a friend of mine was on her way to pay a shiva call (condolence visit) in Ramat Gan, an area she was unfamiliar with, when she received an alert on her phone. With the clock ticking until the siren went, she ran into a nearby apartment complex and followed others down into the building’s miklat. She was lucky – some were not. The building she had randomly selected took a direct hit from one from one of the thirty or forty cluster bombs released by an Iranian ballistic missile, and Yaron and Ilana Moshe, a disabled couple in their seventies, were unable to reach safety in time and were killed.
The damage to the building was immense.
A neighbor later recounted how after hearing the powerful blast, he exited his safe room to find his own apartment severely damaged. Rushing to check on his neighbor’s apartment, he discovered their front door destroyed and a large hole in the ceiling with another resident, they tried to clear debris at the entrance, fearing the couple were trapped inside. He later expressed to the media some relief that the victims’ grandchildren were not present at the time.
Such is daily life in Israel during this war with Iran.
Images of apartment hit by Iranian attack in which two Israelis were killed in Ramat Gan and which the writer’s friend took refuge in the building’s underground bomb shelter (miklat).
Feature photo: Packed tight, people take cover as siren warns of incoming missiles fired from Iran, at a public bomb shelter in Jerusalem, June 15, 2025. (Photo: Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
About the writer:
Peter Bailey made Aliyah from South Africa with his wife Jeanne in 2013 in order to join their three sons and families who were already in Israel. He spent 35 years in the glass industry in South Africa while also being active in military veterans affairs, being National Chairman of The South African Jewish Ex Service League prior to making Aliyah. He completed his compulsory military training in South Africa in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in 1965, retiring with the rank of major, after 19 years service in the SADF Citizen Force. While on active service on the Namibian Angolan border in 1976 he commanded 101 Task Force’s Counter Insurgency Operations Training Centre. He has enjoyed a lifelong interest in military history and has conducted intensive research into the Jewish contribution to South Africa’s military history, writing many papers on the subject and giving relevant lectures across South Africa. He is the author of two published books, Street Names in Israel and Men of Valor, Israel’s Latter Day Heroes.
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).
Britain cannot claim to confront the Iranian regime while simultaneously serving as a repository for its money.
By Emily Schrader
The United Kingdom likes to pretend it is still a defender of democracy and a leader in confronting authoritarian regimes. Yet when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Britain’s policies reveal a far more uncomfortable reality.
Despite years of warnings from security officials and lawmakers, the UK government has still failed to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, even after the European Union has done so. There are a litany of excuses offered as to why, but one possible factor is increasingly difficult to ignore: Islamic regime-linked wealth has become deeply embedded inside the British financial and property system.
Recent reporting illustrates just how extensive these connections may be. Investigations into the financial network surrounding the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have linked him to a series of luxury properties in London. Property records indicate that two high-end apartments in Kensington were purchased in 2014 and 2016 for roughly £50 million. The apartments are located just meters from the Israeli Embassy. The properties were reportedly registered through companies tied to Iranian businessman Ali Ansari, a longtime associate of regime elites who has since been sanctioned by the British government for his alleged role in helping finance activities linked to the IRGC.
Too Close for Comfort. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei (left) reportedly owns two London apartments on same street as the Israeli embassy (right). Only 50 yards away, it enables easy surveillance, constituting a ‘serious security breach’.
Further reporting suggests these apartments may represent only a fraction of the assets connected to that network. Investigations have identified a broader web of London properties linked through intermediaries and shell companies, including homes on Hampstead’s Bishops Avenue, often called Billionaires’ Row. The combined value of these properties has been estimated in the hundreds of millions.
At the center of this network is Ali Ansari, an Iranian banker and businessman who built a vast property empire across some of London’s most expensive neighborhoods. Yet by the time sanctions were imposed, many of the assets connected to his business network had already been absorbed into the British property market through offshore companies and complex ownership structures – something which works to the benefit of nefarious actors like the Supreme Leader.
The financial power surrounding the Supreme Leader’s office is enormous. A 2013 Reuters investigation estimated that Setad, the conglomerate controlled by the Supreme Leader and formally known as the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, oversees assets worth roughly $95 billion across industries including telecommunications, banking, pharmaceuticals, real estate, and energy holdings. Setad was originally created after the 1979 revolution to manage properties confiscated from Iranians who fled the country, including businesses and land seized from political opponents and religious minorities. Over time it evolved into a vast corporate empire operating largely outside public oversight and answering directly to the Supreme Leader’s office.
Tentacles of Terror. Iran’s new Supreme Leader’s London properties were reportedly registered through companies tied to Iranian businessman Ali Ansari (above) who has been sanctioned by the British government for his alleged role in helping finance activities linked to the IRGC.
Setad is only one component of the broader economic structure controlled by Iran’s ruling elite. Religious foundations known as bonyads, which also report directly to the Supreme Leader, control an estimated 10 to 20 percent of Iran’s economy. These organizations operate with minimal transparency and enjoy sweeping tax exemptions while managing massive portfolios of real estate, industrial assets, and financial investments.
Analysts have long viewed Mojtaba Khamenei as a key figure inside this financial and political network. For years he has been widely described by Iran experts as a power broker within the Supreme Leader’s office who maintains close ties with senior commanders of the IRGC. Together, the economic empires of Setad, the Bonyads, and IRGC-linked business networks control significant portions of Iran’s economy, creating a system where political authority and economic wealth are tightly intertwined.
The IRGC itself operates one of the largest economic empires in the Middle East. Analysts estimate that companies connected to the IRGC control between 20 and 40 percent of Iran’s economy, with holdings in construction, telecommunications, banking, energy, transportation, and shipping. The Guard’s massive engineering conglomerate, Khatam al Anbiya, has secured billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy contracts across the country. Because many of these businesses operate through private companies, front organizations, and intermediaries, the financial networks tied to the regime frequently extend far beyond Iran’s borders.
This financial ecosystem intersects with another vulnerability inside the British system. London’s real estate market has become one of the world’s most attractive destinations for opaque foreign capital. Transparency advocates have warned for years that Britain’s property sector functions as a global laundromat for politically exposed wealth. According to Transparency International, more than £5.6 billion in suspicious funds has been invested in UK property linked to corruption or politically exposed individuals.
A major reason for this vulnerability is the widespread use of offshore ownership structures. Prior to recent transparency reforms, roughly 90 percent of foreign-owned property in London was held through offshore shell companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands or Panama. Even today, more than 90,000 properties across the United Kingdom remain owned through offshore entities, often making it extremely difficult to identify the ultimate beneficial owner. These structures have allowed politically connected elites from around the world, including figures linked to sanctioned regimes, to quietly park wealth in Britain’s property market.
Members of the Islamic Republic’s ruling families have also established personal and professional footholds in the United Kingdom. Hadi Larijani, the son of senior Iranian regime official Mohammad Javad Larijani, works as a professor at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. Another Larijani family member, Zeinab Ardeshir Larijani, is listed in UK corporate filings as a director of British companies. The Larijani family is one of the most powerful political dynasties in the Islamic Republic. Several brothers have held top positions in the regime including speaker of parliament, head of the judiciary, and senior adviser roles to the Supreme Leader.
The contradiction is striking. While the Iranian regime arrests protesters, suppresses women’s rights, and funds militant proxies across the Middle East, relatives of senior officials appear able to live, work, and conduct business in Western countries including Britain.
This reality raises an uncomfortable question. If the UK government were to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and aggressively dismantle the financial networks tied to the regime, what else, and who else, might be exposed inside Britain’s own economy?
For years, London has benefited from its role as a global financial hub. But that openness has also created vulnerabilities. The same system that attracts legitimate international investment has also provided opportunities for authoritarian elites to shield their wealth abroad.
Britain cannot claim to confront the Iranian regime while simultaneously serving as a repository for its money. If the UK is serious about countering Tehran’s destabilizing activities, it must begin by addressing the regime-linked financial networks operating within its own borders.
Until that happens, the message from London will remain painfully clear:
The Islamic Republic may be condemned in speeches and sanctions lists… but its money is still welcome.
About the writer:
Emily Schrader is an American-Israeli journalist, human rights activist, and the founder of the Iran Israel Alliance. She is an an anchor at ILTV News, and the host of Axis of Truth on JNS. Emily also is a cofounder of the Cyrus Strategic Fund, and she sits on the executive board of the Institute for Voices of Liberty, a think tank focused on European and American Iran policy, and has advised lawmakers across North America and Europe on Iran policy. In 2025, she released her first book, 10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go To College and has lectured all over the world on the topic of rising antisemitism. Emily is the winner of the 2023 Nefesh b’Nefesh Bonei Zion award for outstanding immigrants to Israel, and in 2025, she was given the Women of Iron award by Chochmat Nashim for her dedication to women’s rights.
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).
Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
The elimination of the Islamic Republic cannot come too soon. After 47 years since the Demonic Revolution that brought the ayatollahs to power, and Iranians to their knees, subjugated by the mullah’s extremist Islam, Iranians need to be free. Iranians will celebrate the fall of the terrorist regime with glee, but to be complete there also needs to be justice for the perpetrators. What’s needed is an Iranian version of the Nuremberg Trials.
While the ayatollahs seat of power physically is in Tehran, the spiritual seat of power is in their “holy city,” Qom. The Qom Trials will turn the city from which the Islamic Republic derived its theological “authority” abusing Iranians for decades into a capital of justice.
Members of the Iranian parliament chant slogans in support of Hamas on Oct. 7. (IRNA)
Following WWII and the Holocaust (with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz commemorated this week), the allied powers needed to come up with a framework to bring justice to the perpetrators of the genocide of the Jewish people and other crimes against humanity. Facing the challenge of how to deal with Nazi war criminals, rather than summary executions or purely national trials, they instituted an international legal process to establish individual accountability and deter future such crimes.
The charges against the Nazis included: conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. A total of 199 defendants were tried, 161 convicted, 37 of whom were sentenced to death. While this was groundbreaking and critical, it’s worth remembering that the Nazi’s crimes spanned less than 15 years. After 47 years of the Islamic regime in control, it seems that these numbers will only scratch the surface in Iran.
What’s needed now is to establish a new framework to try and bring to justice leaders and agents of the Islamic Republic. There is a body of international law and precedent for the world to hold foreign terrorists to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.
While I was subject to the misogyny and cruelty of the Islamic Republic since I was a young girl, many of these experiences I recounted in my books, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Iran who doesn’t have a list of people who are responsible for unspeakable crimes. I have mine.
Ali Akbar HeydariFar who played an important role in repressing, torturing, and killing protesters in 2009, is one of the judges who sentenced the writer to death
Abolqasem Salavati is an infamous execution judge who ordered the execution of my best friend Shirin;
Ali Akbar HeydariFar is one of the judges who sentenced me to death;
Judge Heydari was my second judge;
Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told me he will make sure I will be executed;
Yahya Pirabbasi, another of my judges;
MohammadMoghiseh is the judge who ordered the execution of many of my friends in prison;
Sadegh Larijani, the head of all judges;
Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi, the Tehran prosecutor who visited me in prison before my release, enraged by Pope Benedict’s letter advocating for me and my friend Mariyam, and threatening not to talk to anyone about what happened to us in prison and our trial.
Infamously known in Iran as the “Hanging Judge”along with Mohammad Moghiseh and Yahya Pirabbasi, Abolqasem Salavati, presided over the case of Mohsen Amiraslani, executed for heresy for describing Jonah and the Whale as an allegory and who ordered the execution of the writer’s best friend Shirin.
Many of the most terrible people have no online presence and go by fake names. In order never to forget them, and pray that they will be used to be brought to justice – something that seemed unimaginable in 2009 – my friend Maryam and I came up with sketches of two of the criminals. One of our interrogators went by “Rasti”. He was the one who lied and got me to the police station where the interrogations began. Another, “Haghighat” threatened to beat us until we vomited blood.
In order not to forget the faces of their tormentors in prison so that they could be brough one day to justice, the writer and her friend Maryam sketched “Rasti” and “Haghighat”.
Two more people who must be brought to justice are:
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’I, the Chief Justice of Iran who has blood of countless Iranians on his hands;
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While no Iranian presidents should escape justice, when I was in prison I witnessed how many people were arrested, tortured, and killed because of his direct order and fraudulent election that sparked the Green Movement which he repressed with unspeakable brutality.
It is important that the leaders of the regime are not able to flee, and that there is an immediate means to arrest them all, and hold them until charges can be brought. It’s also urgent that agents of the regime abroad are arrested and extradited to free Iran, and brought to justice. That’s necessary for Iranians who know who they are, but also for the Western and other countries where they live and in which they infiltrate with their evil extremist Islamic values at the behest of the ayatollahs. Left alone, they will be a national security threat to the countries that harbor them. Any country that takes and shelters leaders and agents of the regime to be protected in their borders should face unrelenting sanctions.
Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told the writer he “will make sure I will be executed”, has been linked to the closure of 120 publications, the murder of Iranian Canadian journalist in July 2003 Zahra Kazemi and the murder of protesters in the Kahrizak detention center in 2009.
Part of the justice that’s needed in order for Iranians to feel as if they are truly liberated is that the trials must be held, and justice served, in Iran. Doing so will create an example to the world and to the Iranian people. International trials will not do the same.
The crimes of the Islamic regime and its leaders has not been limited to the horrific scenes we have seen coming out or Iran these past weeks, but the wholesale brutalization of millions of Iranians for nearly half a century. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. Maybe millions. The Islamic Republic and its leaders are guilty or widespread crimes directly, and through its terrorist tentacle proxies, around the globe, where millions more have suffered. There needs to be justice for them, and there needs to be a trial of the ayatollahs, mullahs, judges, IRGC, basij, jailers, interrogators, police and others who are guilty of these crimes.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi – responsible for the arrest and torture of many journalists, young bloggers, human rights advocates, political activists and reformist leaders – visited the writer before her release and threatened her not to talk to anyone about her experiences in prison.
Following President Trump’s post to encourage Iranians in early January:
“KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY! MIGA!!!,” Iranians took to the streets and have continued to protest. Tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured.
Like those found guilty in Nuremberg, the bodies of those who are sentenced to death should be cremated, their ashes dumped into the Persian Gulf in order to prevent ever setting up a shrine to them. The tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini should be burned to the ground, and its remains and his also dumped into the Gulf.
Doing this will serve as an additional form of justice for the hundreds of thousands or more victims of the Islamic Republic, many of whom were simply disappeared and have no resting place, and no closure for their loved ones. While their crimes cannot be erased, every physical presence of their lives can be.
In a dream once, I asked God why He allowed the suffering to take place in Iran. He said that He was giving the leaders the opportunity to repent and, if not, He would bring His justice. I am praying that President Trump will follow his words with swift action, that the senseless and criminal murder of tens of thousands of Iranians will stop, and that everyone involved from the “Supreme Leader” down to the lowest policeman will be arrested and see justice.
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.
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).
