Daniel Lubetzky

Nazila Fathi reported in the New York Times that Iran recently executed a man it claimed was a "spy" and has arrested another one also for "spying." 

This second man, Hossein Derakhshan, is among the most famous Persian bloggers.  Hossein is jailed & threatened with the same fate of execution by the Iranian government.

His crime? Trying to humanize Iranians and Israelis towards each other.

A couple years ago, he apparently defied a ban on travel by Iranians to Israel in order to explode stereotypes about Iranians to Israelis, and to report from his blog about ordinary Israelis to Iranians.  As a Canadian-Iranian, presumably he figured he could get away with it – and visited twice, then dared to return to Iran.

According to Abraham Rabinovich who wrote for IHT:

The object of his visit, Derakhshan said, was to show his countrymen Israel’s human face and to detoxify relations between the two peoples after Ahmadinejad called for Israel’s elimination.

"I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying – that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood," he said. "And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel. I want them to see Iranians who don’t look like Ahmadinejad."

The Iranian regime accused him of spying, as it conveniently does of any humanist who threatens the Iranian regime.

I felt a lot of anxiety when I first read about this story.  After all, if Hossein indeed took such risks for the sake of humanity (and particularly for the sake of Iranians and Israelis who are turned against each other by divisive politicians), shouldn’t we all (regardless of religion or political orientation) demand his release and stand behind him?

I read Hossein’s blog and was struck at how much it pandered to Ahmadinejad.  It has a weirdly pro-Ayatollah and pro-Ahmadinejad slant lately.

His last post, on October 6th, for example, states:

Ahmadinejad’s brilliant strategy of dismissing Israel and smiling to the U.S. has divided the the U.S. in all levels and that’s a big achievement comparing to Khatami’s weak anf failed U.S. strategy that led to Iran being part of the ‘axis of evil’. Now the same Bush administration has officially opened the diplomatic line. Please get over Ahmadinejad’s scruffy look, prayers, and plain language and see these achievements.

So I am a bit perplexed, with four possible explanations for this:

a) He knew he was visiting Teheran and wanted to ingratiate himself with the Iranian rulers before his arrival;

b) These posts were written under duress by him, or totally fabricated;

c) He is a complex individual who really admires Ahmadinejad and is certainly recognized as an Iranian nationalist, even if he also is a humanist;

d) Nothing is as it seems and there is something else going on.

Initially I thought it my duty (and that of anyone who believes in freedom and justice) to try to bring attention to Hossein’s plight.  To contact every Muslim, Arab as well as Western and non-aligned politician, dignitary, academic, and business leader who has any possible sway over the Iranian government and urge them to release him.  To reach out to Obama to ask him to ask the Iranian rulers for an act of good faith.  To prod the Canadian government to seek the release of their citizen.  To encourage human rights and peace groups to get behind a campaign which could not only achieve freedom for Hossain but also use his story to inspire others to disavow blind hatred of the other.

Does anyone have any thoughts or information?

The ‘blogfather’ of Iran

By Abraham Rabinovich

Friday, November 21, 2008

JERUSALEM:

What surprised me about Hossein Derakhshan when I interviewed him in a café on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim Street two years ago was that the self-exiled Iranian, who was arrested this month during a visit to Tehran on suspicion of being an Israeli spy, favored a nuclear-armed Iran and a religious Islamic regime.

Derakhshan, a former journalist, was blatantly defying the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by visiting Israel and writing about it on his Farsi blog, widely read in Iran. The blog’s videos, he said, offered the first views of ordinary life in Israel that Iranians had been able to see. But the expatriate, ostensibly a dissident, clearly remained an Iranian patriot.

The object of his visit, Derakhshan said, was to show his countrymen Israel’s human face and to detoxify relations between the two peoples after Ahmadinejad called for Israel’s elimination.

"I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying – that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood," he said. "And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel. I want them to see Iranians who don’t look like Ahmadinejad."

Derakhshan made it clear, however, that it was only from the current regime that he was dissenting, not from the notion of an Islamic republic, even though he was an avowed atheist. "I support any government that attempts to marry democracy and religion," he said.

Israel was an example of a democracy that successfully integrated religion into its national fabric, he said, while Turkey, which attempted to subjugate religion, found it forcing itself into the political arena in contentious ways.

Derakhshan also favored a nuclear-armed Iran. "We need it as a deterrent," he argued, not against Israel, but against the United States, which organized a coup in Iran in 1953 and which still maintained a strong military presence in the region. (But he opposed, on environmental grounds, Iran developing nuclear power plants.) If war were to break out between Iran and the United Statse, he said, he would fly home to fight for his country.

Derakhshan had first visited Israel the previous year and had been invited back to address a conference on "Reform and Resistance in the Middle East" at Ben-Gurion University. For Iran, he favored reform, not resistance: "The system is democratic enough to permit change through elections. We can gradually change Iran. We are already doing it."

It is not clear why Derakhshan flew home this time, despite being warned in the past that he might be arrested for his blogs. However, those blogs have in the past year turned sharply pro-Iranian government and anti-West.

In the interview in Jerusalem two years ago, he said Ahmadinejad did not have the intellect to convince people who can think. "He’s street smart and has good social communication skills. But he can’t respond to sophisticated questions," he said.

But in a blog posted two months ago, he wrote: "Ahmadinejad’s brilliant strategy of dismissing Israel and smiling to the U.S. has divided the U.S. at all levels and that’s a big achievement compared to (former President Mohammed) Khatami’s weak and failed U.S. strategy that led to Iran being part of the ‘axis of evil.’ Now the same Bush administration has officially opened the diplomatic line. Please get over Ahmadinejad’s scruffy look, prayers, and plain language and see these achievements."

An Iranian Web site reportedly close to that country’s intelligence community, Jahan News, claimed that Derakhshan had admitted during initial questioning to spying for Israel but said that his confession included several "intricate points."

The son of a rug manufacturer in Tehran, Derakhshan was among the first of his generation to take up computers. In a reformist newspaper where he wrote a computer column, he revealed his method of adapting the Internet to Persian letters, touching off the creation of tens of thousands of blogs. Even Ahmadinejad took it up. Derakhshan became known in Iran as "the blogfather."

During his visit to Israel, he spoke of establishing chat rooms in English, where Israelis could correspond with peers in Iran, and of organizing blogs where videos could be shown about each other’s country. It is not known if anything came of these ideas.

Before departing two years ago for Canada, where he had been living since 2000, Derakhshan celebrated his 32nd birthday in what he described as "the coolest bar in Tel Aviv," where he wore an "I love Tehran" T-shirt and was able to get a haircut in a side room at 10 p.m. "Tel Aviv is a city I could live in," he said. "It’s a mix of Middle East and European values and lifestyle. If Iran opens up a bit more and could have public bars, Tehran would beat Tel Aviv."

Abraham Rabinovich is a journalist and historian. His books include "The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East."

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November 23, 2008

Iran Executes Man in Spy Case, and Blogger’s Arrest Is Reported

By NAZILA FATHI, New York Times

TEHRAN — Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israel, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Saturday.

The agency reported that Ali Ashtari was executed by hanging on Monday. It said he was arrested in 2006 and confessed during his trial in June to spying for Israel through security and telecommunication equipment.

Iranian news media reported in June that Mr. Ashtari, 45, had received a death sentence for spying. At the time, newspapers said he had been the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.

An Israeli official said in June that Israel had no knowledge of his case.

Tension between Iran and Israel has escalated in recent months over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has not ruled out launching a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran does not recognize Israel as a state and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken of Israel with hostility since his election in 2005.

A Web site affiliated with the Iranian Intelligence Ministry has reported that a high-profile blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was also arrested this month and accused of spying for Israel. Judiciary officials have not confirmed his arrest but the Web site, Jahan News, reported that he had confessed to spying for Israel.

Mr. Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian, had lived in Canada since 2000 but moved back to Tehran a few weeks ago. He traveled to Israel in 2007 and wrote about it on his blog.

Abraham Rabinovich, an Israeli journalist who interviewed Mr. Derakhshan in Jerusalem two years ago, described him in an op-ed article for The International Herald Tribune on Friday as an “Iranian patriot” who through his blog “offered the first views of ordinary life in Israel that Iranians had been able to see.”

Mr. Rabinovich quoted Mr. Derakhshan as saying: “I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it’s not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying, that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood. And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn’t even thinking about doing harm to Israel.”