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Nov
18
Wow. Well - lots to review but first, the news, from the Jerusalem Post.
The Who and What:
According to a report in Jahan News, which is close to Iran’s intelligence community, quoted by the Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar, the blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, returned to Iran about three weeks ago, having previously been based in Canada.
“Prior to his return,” Javedanfar writes on his middleeastanalyst.com Web site, Derakhshan had “started attacking [former Iranian president] Ayatollah [Hashemi] Rafsanjani in his blog. It is possible that he fell foul of a power struggle within Iran.”
But it sounds as though that was a screen for support for Israel and democratization of Iran:
He first visited Israel in 2006, when he told the Post he knew his visit here would mean he could never return to his homeland. “But it’s worth it,” he said at the time.
He blogged from Tel Aviv that “I’ve publicly come to Israel to break a big taboo and to be a bridge between Iranian and Israeli people who are manipulated by their own governments’ and media’s dehumanizing attitude, especially now that the possibility of some sort of violent clash is higher than ever.”
He subsequently posted photographs and videos of Israel on the Farsi-language blog, which was being read at the time by some 20,000 Iranians, who had to bypass a filter Iran had placed on it.
Returning to Israel in 2007, when he addressed a conference on “Reform and Resistance in the Middle East” at Ben-Gurion University, he told the Post, “Those were the first videos any Iranian has been able to see about ordinary daily life in Israel. 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. I want them to see Iranians who don’t look like [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.”
I’m sure there’ll be more, but in the meantime, here are some good resources, hattip to Andy Carvin:
Global Voices Academy on the arrest which says that Hoder has reportedly admitted to spying for Israel
YNET news coverage, which includes a story about another Iranian blogger
A 2005 podcast of an interview of Hoder by Andy Carvin
Andy’s 2006 post about Hoder’s “one man peace mission” to Israel
Hoder’s English-language weblog
Hoder’s writings for The Guardian
Note this one in particular in which he says Iran does not jail bloggers.
UPDATE: Andy Carvin has a full entry here at NPR.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 9:54 am November 18th, 2008 in Blogging, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Politics
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