At 10:50 am on August 2, 2026, Russian-Israeli
historian and Orientalist Artyom Kirpichonok arrived at Ben-Gurion airport.
Kirpichonok had flown from Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Just minutes
before, at 10:41 am, he managed to send a brief message to his relatives: “Landed.” Dr Kirpichonok, a dual Israeli-Russian
citizen was not to know that he would never make it out of the airport.
Is Israel Cracking Down? The Arrest of Kirpichonok | Alexander
Kolpakidi and Mikhail Magid
Israel’s secret police, the Shabak were lying in
wait. Within moments, his phone was forcibly disconnected, and all
communication ceased. According to law enforcement data, he successfully
cleared border control at 2:00 PM, but the scientist never reached the rented
apartment in Ashkelon left behind after his parents passed away.
To all intents and purpose Kirpichonok had been
disappeared. Despite its façade as a democratic state, Israel has past form
when it comes to disappearing people for long stretches as a time.
After disappearing from public contact on August
2, 2026, Dr. Artyom Kirpichenok
(Kirpichonok), a 51-year-old prominent anti-Zionist critic, was held incommunicado
under a strict judicial gag order. On September 4, 2026, he was formally
indicted on security charges, including espionage and contacting an agent of a
foreign intelligence service. Prosecutors allege that he undertook clandestine
influence operations against Israel under instructions from foreign
intelligence, specifically pointing to multiple trips he made to Iran. His
legal defense and family contend that his arrest is a case of political
persecution, noting that he had no access to classified state secrets.
Israel
has a long-documented history of employing media blackouts, court-enforced gag
orders, and anonymous detention—often referred to as the "Prisoner X" system—to secretly incarcerate
citizens or intelligence assets suspected of treason or espionage.
Dr Kirpichenok is not the only Israeli to have been
disappeared but unlike the others he is clearly innocent of the charges. The
only motive for his arrest and disappearance is political. Others include:
A
general view of the Ayalon Prison in the city of Ramla, central Israel, Jan. 8,
2026. Photo by Yossi Aloni/Flash90.
Ben Zygier:
A dual Australian-Israeli national who worked for Mossad,
Israel’s MI6. In early 2010,
Zygier was secretly arrested and held in absolute isolation
under a false identity in Ayalon Prison.
Even his prison guards were entirely unaware of his true identity. The government
enforced a total media blackout regarding his existence. He died by suicide in
December 2010 while still in solitary confinement. His imprisonment and
identity remained completely hidden from the public until an Australian
broadcaster exposed the story in early 2013.
Rumours
of the potential existence of a prisoner who was held in Israel for unspecified
crimes at Ayalon Prison, a maximum-security prison in Ramla, first surfaced
when an Israeli news website (Ynet) briefly posted an article about him in
2010. The article was taken down within hours, and was allegedly removed because
the Israeli security services had a gag order imposed. These reports claimed
that the man was confined in total seclusion and was being housed in the cell
that was built for Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin.
"Prisoner
X2":
Following the exposure of Ben Zygier's death, Israeli officials acknowledged
the existence of a second anonymous detainee. "Prisoner X2" was a senior Mossad
operative who was secretly jailed in Ayalon Prison around 2004 under total
secrecy. He was
convicted of severe treason and espionage on behalf of Iran. His existence was
kept a state secret for nearly a decade until it leaked in July 2013. Reports
indicate he was quietly released from custody in May 2018
Marcus Klingberg
Marcus Klingberg: A Polish-born Israeli epidemiologist and deputy director of the top-secret Israel Institute for Biological Research. In 1983, Klingberg ‘disappeared’ entirely from public view after being arrested by the Shin Bet for spying for the Soviet Union. For a decade, the Israeli government enforced a blanket gag order on the case. His family was compelled to tell acquaintances he was receiving medical treatment in Europe. His secret 20-year prison sentence was not publicly disclosed until a legal leak occurred in 1993.
The Association for Civil
Rights in Israel sent a letter to the Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein,
protesting the conditions of this man's detention. The chief legal counsel for
the Association, Dan Yakir, wrote:
It is
insupportable that, in a democratic country, authorities can arrest people in
complete secrecy and disappear them from public view without the public even
knowing such an arrest took place.
Kirpichenok's book - Why Did the Counter-Revolution Win in Russia? The Right Wing Against the Truth,
Weinstein's deputy replied that
The current
gag order is vital for preventing a serious breach of the state's security, so
we can not elaborate about this affair
Russian writer Artem Kirpichenok arrested in Israel
For his colleagues, this disappearance came as a
stunning shock. By concealing his arrest under the shroud of a judicial gag
order, the Zionist regime counted on complete silence.
Kirpichenok book St. Petersburg. Walks with a Breeze. A Guidebook for Scooters and Bicycles
Kirpichenok was born and
brought up in St Petersburg. He was taken by his mother to Israel in 1991, when
the USSR collapsed. He wrote articles for Russian and Turkish media and was active
in anti-Zionist meetings.
It appears that he was enticed to come to Israel by
the Shabak; though he frequently visited Israel, where he had a flat and many
friends. In Israel, they have no habeas
corpus. The secret service can keep its prisoners for years without trial
and even without specific charges. There are thousands of prisoners without
charges, most Palestinian, but Jews too can be imprisoned without trial or
charges.
Kirpichenok’s last published column in TRT was We are proud of being
hated, the previous one being The Arab citizens of
Israel from Ghetto to Apartheid. His most popular book is The
People’s History of Israel.
One of Artem Kirpichenok eight books - Notes of a Man from Atlantis,
Kirpichonok is a recognized researcher of
Zionism and the history of the Middle East. He graduated from the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, defended his doctoral dissertation under the
supervision of Professor Jonathan Frankel, and in recent years lived in St.
Petersburg, Russia, heading the Slavic Studies Department at the Center for
Arab-Eurasian Studies. He worked as a tour guide and wrote analytical columns
for major publications. His books became the primary target of Zionist hatred.
A People's History of Israel
In "A People's History of Israel", Kirpichenok argued that the victims of Zionism are not only Palestinians but also the
Jewish communities of repatriants themselves. This book, named by analogy with
the works of Howard Zinn, became his most popular and accurate study, exposing
a profound internal rift within Israeli society.
Statement by Sergey Baburin
In a special statement by the International Association of Peace
Foundations, Sergey Baburin, former Deputy Chairman of the State Duma of
the Russian Federation, emphasized the strictly scientific and historically
accurate nature of Kirpichonok's anti-Zionist stance.
Daria Barabanova's Appeal to Russia's Ambassador to Israel - the Translation is here
Concurrently, Daria Barabanova, an actress,
choreographer, ballet master, and director from St. Petersburg, pointed out the
complete vulnerability of the lonely researcher in an appeal to the Russian Ambassador
to Israel.
Past trips made by Kirpichenok to Iran served as an additional pretext for persecution. In a talk on the lecture platform "Book Center × Delib", analyst Mikhail Magid confirmed that friends repeatedly tried to dissuade him from the fateful trip, understanding the vengefulness of the Israeli authorities. However, Shin Bet lured the financially struggling scientist into a trap by sending a fake invitation to a fictional conference with the promise of a grant.
Daria Mitina, a former deputy of the State Duma
of the Russian Federation, was the first to announce Kirpichonok's arrest and
his incarceration in the dungeons of Shin Bet, breaking the information
blockade in the early days of August.
In a special report by the Latin American
television network teleSUR, journalist Oleg Yasinsky brought the affair to an international level,
calling Kirpichonok a defender of the rights of the Palestinian people and
emphasizing his significant contribution to the education of Jewish
communities. Following them, in CounterPunch magazine, artist, writer, and
founder of the David Graeber Institute Nika Dubrovsky published an essay titled
"They Are Coming for the Penguins", referencing a famous poem by the early 20th-century Russian Soviet writer
Maxim Gorky.
Dubrovsky explained that Kirpichonok is a
peaceful, defenseless "penguin" hiding his body in the cliffs, who
did not belong to any radical organisations. His arrest is a demonstrative
example aimed at eliminating any safe "zones of anomaly" and forcing
the intelligentsia into silence. In a world where the water in public discourse
is rapidly boiling, Shin Bet demonstrates that from now on, the space of the personal
and the prison cell merge into a single reality.
As Magid noted in an interview with the
socio-political channel "Krasnye
Dyadki",
Netanyahu's regime carried out a purge of the security services on the eve of
the elections, appointing radicals who required an "internal enemy."
In another piece in CounterPunch, Vijay Prashad, Director of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research, supplemented the picture with frightening statistics of repression:
Shin Bet arrested more than 1,400 citizens for anti-war publications on social
media.
Although there are still a few fools who believe
that Israel is a parliamentary democracy and the embodiment of what it means to
be Jewish, what happened next was confirmation that Israel belongs to that
group of states where the security services can act with impunity.
Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz
Israeli lawyer Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz remained Kirpichonok's
sole defender. She was denied access to her client for 20 days while he was
being broken in the Petah Tikva detention center. At their first meeting, a
Kafkaesque underbelly of the investigation came to light, which Yaakov Rabkin,
a professor at the University of Jerusalem, characterised in an interview with
the Swiss channel Neutrality
Studies as an absolute absurdity: his
lawyer was forbidden to bring with her even a blank sheet of paper and was forced
to memorise all statements by ear through bulletproof glass.
Artem Kirpichenok
It is known from investigative materials in
Anhar Kochneva's military blog on Yandex.Zen that Kirpichonok was subjected to sleep deprivation torture, being
interrogated continuously for 18–24 hours a day. The historian, whose vision is
minus 11 dioptres, was kept in shackles on an iron chair under the blinding light of lamps for days on end. In an interview with
the socio-political portal "Rabkor", Magid emphasised that under conditions of brain function deterioration
from multi-day sleep deprivation, Kirpichonok was forced to sign
self-incrimination protocols.
Only international pressure from the Russian Presidential Council for Human Rights, which sent an appeal to the UN, forced the censorship to back down. Citing this move, Israeli journalist Itamar Eichner published an investigation in Ynet that tore away the veil of secrecy. Richard Silverstein pointed out in his blog Tikun Olam that Shin Bet is using the historian as a geopolitical hostage in the confrontation surrounding Iran.
Update from Artem’s lawyer: "Today, the prosecution submitted a declaration of intent to indict. This was the final hearing in the Magistrate’s Court; the case will now move to the Lod District Court. The indictment will be read out on Friday, 4 September. The declaration means that the investigation has officially ended and that the prosecution believes it has established the elements of the offences that will be made public on Friday. It needs these five days to prepare the indictment. Artem will remain in prison. The request to transfer him to house arrest was denied because of the alleged severity of the charges. Let me remind you that the charges have still not been disclosed. They may involve espionage, but we still know very little. Artem’s condition is satisfactory. Perhaps he has grown somewhat accustomed to his situation. But because today’s court hearing was delayed, I finally saw how they transport him. They lead him bent almost double, with shackles on his wrists and ankles and a heavy weight attached to the chains. Looking at Artem, I kept remembering Dostoevsky’s novels and everything nineteenth-century Russian literature wrote about prisoners sent to penal colonies. I was deeply upset, and I will not hide that from you. In ten years of legal practice and working in the courts, I have never seen anyone escorted like this. Even people accused of murder are not treated this way. This is unprecedented. I have never seen anything like it."
— Nika Dubrovsky (@nikadubrovsky) September 1, 2026
On September 4, the State Attorney's Office filed
charges of "espionage for Russia" against Kirpichonok in Lod
District Court. On October 1 Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz gave a detailed video
interview to the RT Arabic television channel. She openly called the prosecution's accusations
"Scheherazade's tales"—a fantastic fiction completely devoid of real
documents and built on self-incrimination extracted under torture. As Daria
Mitina and Anhar Kochneva noted earlier, investigators applied unacceptable
methods of pressure to her client, depriving him of sleep and threatening him
with a life sentence.
Inna Leybedinskaya-Katz was also arrested - Israel's justice system is quite unique for a self-declared democracy
The retaliation of the Iscoraeli state followed
immediately: Shin Bet arrested the lawyer for defending her client. Lebedinskaya-Katz
was thrown in gaol, depriving Kirpichonok of legal assistance. To arrest the lawyer
demonstrated, as if it needs demonstrating, that Israel’s judicial processes are
a charade. When they choose, the State and its secret police simply do what they
want with the judiciary giving a rubber stamp of approval.
Kirpichonok is currently being held in a
maximum-security block at Ayalon Prison. According to updates by Mikhail Magid, the
researcher has completely lost sight in one eye due to the lack of medical care
under conditions of torture. B’Tselem, Israel’s human rights organization, describes
Israeli prisons as a network of torture camps.
Letter from the State Comptroller and Ombudsman of Israel rejecting ACRI's complaint (Case No. 1254441), declaring a lack of jurisdiction over judicial matters.
The Office of the State Comptroller and
Ombudsman, in response to a complaint from relatives under number № 1254441,
stated its refusal to interfere in the affairs of the judicial system.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
(ACRI) cited procedural limitations in its response. The sole international
legal shield has been the decision by the Scholars at Risk network to include
Artyom's case in its global Academic
Freedom Monitoring Project.
At the same time, the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights registered a complaint filed by human rights defenders regarding the arrest of
Kirpichonok and his lawyer under tracking number 1bblaq2e.
The world's leading thinkers have joined the
solidarity campaign. A
joint open letter in defense of Kirpichonok has been signed by philosopher
Judith Butler (USA), physicist and co-author of Noam Chomsky Jean Bricmont
(Belgium), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Professor Darko Suvin, Member
of the Order of the British Empire Professor Tariq Modood, and Professor of
Psychological Sciences Felicia Pratto.
The only force against the secret police is
stubborn human memory. Kirpichonok and Inna's personal Facebook profiles
preserve the evidence of their public academic and legal work, while the website for the campaign to defend Artyom Kirpichonok and the coordination email
address ArtemKirpichenok@gmail.com remain available for anyone ready to visit and add their name to the Open Letter in Defense of the Historian.
The scientist and his lawyer must not vanish
into the darkness of Israeli detention facilities.
You are Not Allowed to Criticise Israel. The Case of Artyom Kirpichenok
They are Coming for the Penguins: Artem Ivanovich Kirpichenok is in a Shin Bet Prison in Israel
BREAKING:
Shin Bet Disappears Russian-Israeli Academic
Tony Greenstein
Dear
Colleagues!
I
am writing to you in connection with the critical situation that has developed
around the arrest in Israel by the SHABAK special service of the
scholar-historian Dr. Artyom Kirpichyonok and his lawyer Inna Lebedinskaya-Katz.
On August 2, 2026, Dr. Kirpichyonok arrived in Israel to participate
in academic events and on personal matters. After passing border control at the
Ben Gurion International Airport, he was detained by the Israel Security Agency
SHABAK (Shin Bet) and placed in a detention facility.
For
the first 3 weeks, the historian was held in complete isolation without
access to a lawyer. According to available reports, Dr. Kirpichyonok was
subjected to hours-long interrogations (lasting 18-24 hours a day), sleep
deprivation, and intense psychological pressure, which forced him into
self-incrimination. Currently, the State Attorney's Office of Israel has
filed an official indictment, incriminating him with "espionage"
and "operating under the guidance of foreign intelligence" within a
closed trial.
In
an escalation of the situation, on October 12, at 8:00 AM, SHABAK
agents arrested the lawyer of Dr. Kirpichyonok -- Inna Leybedinskaya-Katz,
criminalizing her professional activity under the pretext of "contact
with a foreign factor". On October 15, the court remanded her in
custody and imposed a strict gag order (Tzav Issur Pirsum),
completely banning domestic media coverage of her case.
Earlier,
on September 24, the court extended the detention period of Dr. Kirpichyonok
for another 2 months -- until November 24, refusing to lift the
judicial censorship despite demands from the defense and Israeli media. On
October 8, the High Court of Justice (BAGATZ) also refused to lift the
judicial ban from the historian's case. He is currently being held in
a solitary cell in Ayalon Prison under conditions that threaten his life. The
Israel Prison Service (SHABAS) continues to unlawfully deny any
meetings with the client.
Due
to the refusal of medical care, the scholar's glaucoma has rapidly progressed,
as a result of which he has completely lost sight in one eye, and
his leg was seriously injured due to the constant presence in shackles
during interrogations. In addition, the Israeli authorities denied
the Russian embassy consular access to him, using his dual citizenship as a
pretext. Now that his lawyer is in prison, the scholar is left
completely defenseless in absolute isolation.
Kirpichenok's Book Israel: The Road to Catastrophe
There
is every reason to believe that these accusations are directly related to his
many years of public and academic activity, his research into the history of
Zionism, and his critique of the Israeli government's policies. His books,
including “A People's History of Israel” and “Israel:
The Road to Catastrophe”, were based entirely on open sources and archival
materials.
Reports
on his persecution have already been published by World Socialist Web
Site, the Rabkor.ru media resource, the Latin American
television network teleSUR, the independent platform CounterPunch,
and the Arabic service of the Russian television network RT.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights registers an appeal
The
international human rights network Scholars at Risk has logged
this case into its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project. The United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has registered
an appeal concerning the cases of Dr. Kirpichenok and Advocate Inna
Leybedinskaya-Katz under Reference Number: 1bblaq2e. Domestically,
the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has placed the situation
under legal monitoring to evaluate potential intervention. Meanwhile, the Office
of the State Comptroller and Ombudsman of Israel has rejected the complaint
(Case No. 1254441 / MENTA:002110013847), declaring a total lack of
jurisdiction over judicial matters.
I
request you to familiarize yourselves with the detailed materials on the
8-language campaign website. On the website and via the links below, you can
familiarize yourselves with the text and the list of those who have already
signed the Open Letter in defense of Dr. Artyom Kirpichyonok.
To add
your name to the list of signatories, please reply to this email or send
your details (first name, last name, position/title, place of work, and
country) to the following address: ArtemKirpichenok@gmail.com
Constantly updated campaign website (in 8 languages): https://sites.google.com/view/artem-kirpichenok
To sign or familiarize oneself with the Open Letter
and the complete list of signatories: https://docs.google.com/document/d/118zoysAj4yzzGpDO1wSuQhTB8Yr9bHY8/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115079145443591172567&rtpof=true&sd=true
Every
media mention or dissemination of this information in academic, journalistic,
and professional circles is of vital importance and serves as a call for
immediate action in connection with the blow to academic freedom and the right
to legal defense in Israel, as well as the salvation of the health and life of
the scholar and his lawyer. Only continuous international pressure is
capable of breaking through this blockade and saving lives.
Public
statements and signatures under the open letter in defense of the scientist
have already been made by:
Judith Butler, philosopher and professor at
the University of California,
Jean Bricmont, professor
emeritus of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain, world-renowned
essayist, and co-author of Noam Chomsky, Belgium;
Vijay Prashad, director
of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, India/USA;
Darko Suvin, professor
emeritus at McGill University and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,
Canada;
Felicia
Pratto, professor of psychological
sciences at the University of Connecticut, Sergey Baburin, Doctor
of Law and former Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, Russian Federation;
Anhar
Kochneva, war correspondent, Lebanon;
Yakov Rabkin, professor
emeritus of history, Canada;
Richard
Silverstein, journalist and author of the
Tikun Olam blog, USA;
Tony
Greenstein, journalist, author, and
co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, United Kingdom;
Itamar
Eichner, international correspondent,
Israel;
David
Roediger, professor of African American
Studies and American Studies at the University of Kansas, USA;
Robin
D. G. Kelley, professor of history at the
University of California;
Vinay
Lal, professor of history at the University of California,
Nika
Dubrovsky, artist, writer, and founder of
the David Graeber Institute, UK);
Alex Tabarrok, Dr., director
of the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University, USA;
Yevgenia
Belorusets, artist and writer,
Ukraine/Germany;
Federico
Fuentes, editor of LINKS International
Journal of Socialist Renewal, Australia; and others.
Sincerely,
Yevhen Terekhov, Ph.D.
