When something humiliating like this happens, like we bought the explosives that blew us up,

it just really undermines this kind of driving force, the sense of enjoyment of being part of the scare group

because they're part of an access that is linked.

So the failure of Hezbollah is their own failure as well, right? And the

weakening of Iran and the weekending of Hamas, etc. is their weakening. This is how they perceive it.

It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, with Princeton PhD

candidate Elizabeth Zerkov.

In Israel, after the gag order in Israel was lifted about my kidnapping in July of 23,

because of my political views, because of my support for Palestinian human rights,

there was basically a campaign of incitement against me on social media by right-wing prominent media personalities and a great deal of Schandefreuth, that look at this lover of Arab being kidnapped by Arabs, you know.

Sarkov was held for 903 days by an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq.

In this conversation, we talk about the circumstance of her detention, American policy

toward hostages under both the Biden administration and the Trump administration and the sociological

study she made during her captivity of the people who were holding her.

So I want to start with your very unexpected Atlantic article, which I think when most people come out of captivity

at the hands of a terrorist group, the first thing they do in writing is not kind of to make

fun of the terrorist group. And you wrote an article, I believe the headline was,

I've been kidnapped by morons or idiots. And a lot of the article is deadly serious, but it is also funny.

And a lot of the point of the article is that there's something comical about how

stupid the people who tortured you were. So talk to me first about the relationship between,

you know, why, why when you were in, when you came out is the first

thing you're going to write in a major publication, kind of poking fun at Katayib Hezbollah?

...