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Israeli-Russian Academic Abducted by Iranian Terror Proxy; Netanyahu Holds Iraq Responsible
Edited by: Fern Sidman
A dual Israeli-Russian academic who has been missing in Iraq for months is being held by an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the office of Israel’s prime minister said Wednesday, as was reported by the AP.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Elizabeth Tsurkov, who disappeared in late March, is still alive “and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being.”
The AP also reported that Netanyahu said Tsurkov is being held by the Shiite group Kataeb Hezbollah or Hezbollah Brigades, a powerful Iran-backed group that the U.S. government listed as a terrorist organization in 2009. The group’s leader and founder Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed in an American airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport in January 2020 along with Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional military alliances, the AP also said.
Tsurkov, whose work focuses on the Middle East, and specifically war-torn Syria, is an expert on regional affairs and has been widely quoted over the years by international media.
She is a fellow at the Washington-based think tank New Lines Institute. The AP also reported that her colleague Hassan Hassan, editor in chief of New Lines Magazine, said co-workers were notified of her kidnapping in Iraq on March 29. Hassan told The Associated Press that some of her colleagues had been in touch with her just days before she went missing.
“We could not believe the news, knowing what Iraq is like for any scholar or researcher in recent years,” he said, as was reported by the AP. “But there is hope that she will be released through negotiations.”
Hassan said they have reached out to American and foreign officials, including at Princeton University where Tsurkov is pursuing her doctorate, for assistance, the AP report stated. He added that they “called on the United States government to be involved in securing her release, despite her not being a U.S. national.”
The New York Times reported that Tsurkov was kidnapped as she was returning to her home in Baghdad after leaving the Ridha Alwan cafe in Karada, a neighborhood known for its relaxed atmosphere, according to the people briefed on the events. Full of coffee shops, clothing stores and markets, it is an area frequented by Westerners and is one of the most religiously mixed in Baghdad, with a number of Christian churches as well as mosques, the report said.
She had undergone emergency back surgery in Baghdad and was recovering from the operation before she was kidnapped, according to the NYT report. She had been active on social media, tweeting regularly about issues in the Middle East. Her last post was on March 21; it linked to a paper she had published on Syria for The New Lines Institute.
Tsurkov has worked across the Middle East for more than a decade and had visited Iraq more than 10 times, according to Iraqi officials, as was reported by the NYT. Her research centers on societies in conflict and post-conflict situations in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Syria and Iraq.
Netanyahu said Tsurkov visited Iraq on her Russian passport, “at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University,” as was reported by the AP.
Tsurkov could not have used her Israeli passport to enter Iraq as the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.
In statement released by Tsurkov’s family, they said, “She was kidnapped in the middle of Baghdad, and we see the Iraqi government as directly responsible for her safety. We ask for her immediate release from this unlawful detention.”
Her family also confirmed in their statement that she had been kidnapped while doing research for her Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement on Wednesday: “We are aware of this kidnapping and condemn the abduction of private citizens. We defer to Iraqi authorities for comment,” according to the NYT report.
If her abduction turns out to be linked more directly to Iran, it would be a serious escalation in a long-running shadow war between Israel, Iran and Iranian proxies across the Middle East, as was opined by the NYT in their report on Wednesday.
A senior official from Kataeb Hezbollah declined to comment to the AP on the matter.
Iran emerged as a major power broker in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, supporting Shiite groups and militias that have enjoyed wide influence in the country ever since.
There has been no official comment from Iraq since Tsurkov went missing. The AP reported that days after her disappearance, a local website reported that an Iranian citizen who was involved in her kidnapping was detained by Iraqi authorities. It said the woman was kidnapped from Baghdad’s central neighborhood of Karradah and that Iran’s embassy in the Iraqi capital was pressing for the man’s release and to have him deported to Iran, the AP report stated.
Some Iraqi activists posted a copy of a passport of an Iranian man at the time, claiming that he was involved in the kidnapping.
Netanyahu’s office said Tsurkov’s case is being handled by the “relevant parties in the State of Israel out of concern for Elizabeth Tsurkov’s security and well-being.”
Days before Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Soleimani were killed, U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Syria killed 25 Kataeb Hezbollah members. The AP reported that the U.S. said at the time that the December 2019 strike was a retaliation for a rocket attack days earlier that killed an American contractor at an Iraqi military base that it blamed on the group.
Born in 1986 in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tsurkov is the daughter of political dissidents who were jailed by the Soviet authorities after working alongside Natan Sharansky, a prominent activist who campaigned for Soviet Jews to be allowed to emigrate to Israel, the NYT reported. Tsurkov is mentioned in passing in Mr. Sharansky’s memoir, “Fear No Evil,” though not by name, in a passage about her parents.
Like Sharansky, the family eventually emigrated to Israel, the NYT report said. Tsurkov arrived with her mother and sister in 1990, the year before her father.
The family later moved to an Israeli settlement in Israel’s biblical heartland, also known as Judea and Samaria, according to sources familiar with the matter,
During her mandatory Israeli military service,Tsurkov grew more interested in the Arab world, according to a biographical podcast interview she gave that was released in 2021, the NYT report said.
She later earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and master’s degrees in Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University and in political science at the University of Chicago, the report in the NYT said. She lives in Istanbul, according to her website.
