Three Israeli investigative journalists regularly publish special reports on the Middle East. But their work remains inaccessible to the masses outside of Israel, primarily due to the language barrier. That is more than unfortunate, and it falls to us to inform you about matters they uncover that you’d otherwise likely never hear of.

In Israel, mainstream news shows are now more than five hours-long. They are filled mostly with domestic news that is drawn out as much as possible, giving the impression that Israel is an island, isolated from the rest of the region.

But there are a number of journalists who demonstrate that you can only really understand Israel when you put it in the context of the broader Middle East.

These journalists engage in investigative journalism by reporting on countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Syria, even at risk to their own lives.

The most important of this small group of Israeli journalists are Ohad Hemo, Itai Anghel, and Zvi Yehezkeli.

These three journalists often go incognito to countries that are downright dangerous for Israelis and talk to the local population or even to terrorists who are working to bring about Israel’s downfall.

Zvi Yehezkeli’s undercover work

Zvi Yehezkeli has published undercover reports on the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, the territories under Palestinian rule, and even in Europe.

Disguised as a sheik from Jordan, Zvi gained access to the local leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and succeeded to get them to talk about their real agenda for taking over this part of the world.

Channel 13’s religious Middle East expert speaks fluent Arabic and regularly exposes the truth about organizations such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Zvi’s latest series of reports focused on NGOs working in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas that label themselves as human rights organizations.

For these reports, Yehezkeli worked together with a Swedish woman who had done years of undercover research in pro-Palestinian organizations.

The woman was eventually given access to the Hamas leadership, which openly told her how it uses the ‘human rights organizations’ working on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs as a cover to expand its terror network within and outside Israel.

Itai Anghel’s courage

Itai Anghel has been working for the news program Uvda of Channel 12 (Keshet) in recent years and won the Sokolov Prize for best journalist in 2017. He has also won several international awards over the past decade.

Anghel travels undercover to war zones such as Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, where he reports at great risk to his own life.

These reports provide a better picture of what is actually happening in areas that are avoided by most journalists, and where war crimes are being committed routinely.

One of Anghel’s reports was made in the city of Mosul in Iraq during the war against ISIS, which then controlled large parts of the besieged city.

Anghel also reported from the Kobani area of Syria shortly after the Kurds of the YPG militia drove ISIS out. In the report, the Channel 12 journalist was accompanied by Kurds who took him to the frontline on a motorcycle and showed him the devastation.

He also speaks fluent Arabic and is highly regarded in Israel for his unprecedented courage.

Ohad Hemo exposes

Then there is Ohad Hemo, a journalist who also works for Channel 12 and who is fluent in Arabic, too.

Hemo can often be found in Palestinian cities during periods of great unrest, and does not shy away from interviewing terrorists who know he is Israeli.

Hemo usually does not travel to countries where he has to fear for his own life, and therefore the investigative journalist uses the local population or refugees who still have contact with family and friends in the countries he reports on.

Most recently, Hemo has been reporting on the uprising in Iran and the situation in Lebanon, which is on the brink of collapse, giving a good picture of what is going on in these countries.

The report on Tehran was largely made by a local journalist who once worked for Israeli television during the Shah’s reign, and who had to flee the Islamic Republic after exposing the truth.

The woman secretly recorded the situation in Tehran with a hidden camera and spoke to residents of Iran’s capital, whose faces were blurred and voices distorted for their own safety.

The Iranians interviewed on behalf of Hemo spoke of their distaste for the regime and the inability to make ends meet in the daily lives of Tehran, a city of 9.3 million.

Hemo’s camera was pointed at Tehran’s bazaar, where people are trying to buy basic necessities despite an inflation rate of between 10 and 30 percent per year, while the average salary in Tehran has decreased to just $140 per month.

Tehran residents complained on camera about current President Ibrahim Raisi’s promise to lower prices in Iran, but who instead allowed a staggering price hike of almost one thousand percent after coming to office.

The Iranians are currently busy with only one thing every day, and that is surviving, residents of Tehran said.

Forty years ago, the Street of the Revolution ushered the upheaval that led to the downfall of the Shah.

Violent demonstrations against the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are now held every day on the same street.

More wealthy Iranians live in North Tehran and are able to go to ‘underground’ parties to drink alcohol and use drugs, as the hidden camera revealed.

These Western-style parties are guarded by members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran after being bribed by the mostly young Iranians, Hemo said.

The report then showed images of women dressed in Western fashion and not covering their hair with the hijab, a phenomenon that is now also seen on the streets and in the parks of Tehran.

The people of Iran have lost their fear of the regime as it cluelessly watches the return to pre-revolution habits among the new generation of Iranians.

Drugs have become a major problem in Iran with more than a fifth of the population addicted to opium or other hard drugs like heroin and crystal.

Hemo’s report showed footage of the streets in southern Tehran crowded with people smoking hard drugs and then falling asleep on the spot.

There is hardly a house in Iran where heroin is not smoked after meals, an Israeli expert on Iran said while being interviewed by Hemo.

The report also focused attention on the increasing problem of prostitution in Iran, which is likewise caused by the massive economic crisis.

Women told Hemo’s undercover journalist that in order to survive they had no choice but to fall back on prostitution, with one of them saying that there is simply no other work.

It is ironic that the less fortunate in Iranian society have always supported Khamenei’s regime, but now that image has changed radically, Hemo said at the end of the report.

Hemo’s report from Tehran can be seen here. While the reporting is all in Hebrew and Farsi, the images speak for themselves.

Ohad’s report on Lebanon

The most recent report from Hemo, which was broadcast last Sunday, dealt with the situation in Lebanon, which is on the brink of total collapse.

The once prestigious capital of Beirut, also known as the “Paris of the Middle East,” has now become a large shanty town with most residents of the city not even having enough money to provide for the basic necessities of life.

Also in this case you don’t actually need to know Hebrew to understand the situation in Lebanon, the images in the documentary speak for themselves.

המרחק בין קטאר, מעשירות העולם, לבין שכנתנו הקורסת לבנון, מעולם לא היה גדול יותר pic.twitter.com/d4ennzs2vG

— אוהד חמו (@ohadh1) November 20, 2022

For the sake of clarity, however, this is a translation of the voice-over reporting in Ohad Hemo’s shocking exposé.

“Only 211 kilometers from Tel Aviv’s promenade you come to another boardwalk, probably no less beautiful, but certainly more famous.

“It’s only a four-hour drive away, and for decades this name – the Cornish – was enough to enchant the inhabitants of our region.

“Wealth, joie de vivre, French chic, and European fragrance – everything was here, a magnet for the wealthy of the Gulf, the Arab intellectuals, or spies from all over the world.

“Those who wanted to feel like a citizen of the larger world could simply come here, to the most cosmopolitan capital of the region.

“But if you place a camera in Beirut today, you mainly see scared people and a frightening place where hardly a tourist can be found.

“Then there are those who managed to escape and are now building lives for themselves in foreign countries. But most people in this small country, six million in total, are concerned with only one thing, namely survival.

“A Lebanese citizen, a resident of Beirut, did the most dangerous job for our team: he videotaped the situation and spoke to us from Beirut, taking a great risk.

“Because so it is when the neighbors, perhaps even across the street from your house, are members of Hezbollah – the bitterest enemy there is, for both us and him.”

Hemo’s Lebanese correspondent then states:

“As you can see, Ohad, our situation in Lebanon is extremely deplorable and this, as you know, is because of the cancer that has spread in Lebanon – meaning Iran and Hezbollah, led by the infidel, the Persian idolater Hassan Nasrallah, may God punish him.

“They stole the money from the Lebanese and sent it to Syria, to support the Syrian and Iranian regimes. The people’s money was stolen.”

Hemo continues, explaining to his Israeli viewers:

“We will talk about Hezbollah later, but first we have to start with what concerns everyone in Lebanon: the economic crisis that has led the country to the abyss.

“Karin, a Lebanese Maronite, meaning Christian, left the country more than a decade ago and lives in the United States.

“Much of her family and friends remained in Beirut, and through them, she experienced the terrible tragedy that the country is going through.”

Karin, a Lebanese Christian who lives abroad, is then heard saying:

“There are people in need, their life is very hard and they can’t make it any longer, to the extent that they don’t even have enough money for food.

“On the other hand, there are people who get work in companies that pay the salary in dollars, and they live in luxury. You see the polarization between these two parts of Lebanon.

“People are dying of diseases despite the hospitals, things that we hear in the context of Africa, and now we see these things happening here. We send them medicines, through a third party, not directly from us.

“They even ran out of headache pills, very simple things, if someone has a headache, there are no medicines.

“It’s the economy, stupid – this phrase is now in the blood of many Lebanese in the steadily crumbling country, where 78 percent (of the population) live below the poverty line yes, almost four out of five Lebanese are poverty-stricken.

“The minimum wage fell to $17 a month, and what worries everyone most is the value of the local currency, the lira, which fell by almost 95 percent from 1,500 Lira per dollar to about 40,000 Lira per dollar.”

Hemo then aired an interview he conducted with H. (name withheld for his protection), a former Lebanese citizens who now lives in Israel. H told Israeli viewers:

“The situation of my family living in Lebanon is not good at all, they work in agriculture, olive trees, so they can support their family.

“To leave Lebanon you have to pay. In Lebanon, everything is a matter of money, if you have money in Lebanon you can live, if you have no money, there is no life, there are people, with families, who set themselves on fire because of the issue of livelihood, because they cannot provide their children at home with enough food.”

Samira, a resident of Beirut, said her family is one of those that doesn’t have enough to eat:

“Now I have made them some potatoes because we can’t buy meat, we can’t buy chicken, everything is expensive. We can’t even buy oil, so the potatoes will have to be enough.

“We know the children well. My little girl is dizzy from hunger, she’s not eating enough.”

Hemo then continued to touch upon another huge problem in Lebanon:

“Lebanon’s story can be told here through its most tangible problem: the electrical infrastructure which has collapsed not only in the streets of Beirut.

“Lebanon’s two largest power plants are struggling to operate due to a shortage of gasoline, with the government’s electricity company accumulating a huge $70 billion debt.

“As a result, electricity is available here for one to two hours a day and the city is regularly darkened, after which private generators are turned on, but these also occasionally stop working because petrol is very expensive.

“It is, of course, impossible to talk about Lebanon without mentioning the huge explosion at the port (of Beirut in the fall of 2018) that distills the country’s ills – corruption, lack of transparency, and sectarian interests and this, it turns out, is how countries are destroyed.

“Exactly one year ago, the explosion at the port sparked violent clashes between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah supporters opposed to the legal process that should have held accountable those responsible for the explosion.

“Seven demonstrators were killed and the country for a few days seemed to return to the chaos of civil war.”

H. is then heard saying:

“Hezbollah emerged as an organization that basically destroyed Lebanon… Hezbollah is the one that controls Lebanon, not the Lebanese state.

“Nowadays no one is afraid of Hezbollah like before. They are much less, much, much less afraid.

“There are people who now trample on Nasrallah’s picture and this was unthinkable in the past. He (Nasrallah) is the reason for the crisis.”

Back to Hemo:

“However, the truth is that he (Nasrallah) is not the only reason (for the downfall of Lebanon), it is a deadlocked political system that failed to elect a president for the fifth time in a row.

“There’s a parliament divided between supporters and opponents of Hezbollah and a caretaker government that cannot implement the sweeping reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund as a precondition for billion-dollar loans.

“That would be the oxygen line for the collapsing country. In the meantime, the vacuum is being filled by Iran, which is providing a lot of oil (to Lebanon).”