Israeli arrested in Beirut, after entering Lebanon as journalist on foreign passport
Joshua Tartakovsky, 42, is a graduate of Brown University, LSE; Israeli official tells TOI government is responding to case, urges citizens not to enter enemy countries
An Israeli citizen was detained in Beirut on Tuesday, after entering the country as a journalist on a foreign passport, and put under arrest when an Israeli passport was found in his possession.
According to Hebrew reports, citing the Hezbollah-aligned Al-Akhbar newspaper in Lebanon, Joshua Tartakovsky — a 42-year-old Israeli citizen, born in the United States — entered the country at some point in the last two weeks on a British passport, with a group of other journalists.
Israeli officials said they were aware of the incident and dealing with it.
Relevant officials in Israel are aware of Tartakovsky’s arrest, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday, and the case is being handled by the appropriate officials.
“Unfortunately,” said the official, “this is not the first time that Israeli citizens have entered the territory of enemy countries, even though this is prohibited by law, and constitutes a clear danger to their security.”
The National Security Council also said in a statement, “We would like to sharpen the ban on entering these countries, as the issue appears in messages to the public on the NSC website and has been sharpened even recently around the holidays.”
Tartakovsky was reportedly detained in Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
There, his behavior aroused suspicion, according to Al-Akhbar, and he was taken for interrogation, at which point an Israeli passport was discovered in his possession.
It is illegal for Israelis to enter Lebanon under both Israeli and Lebanese law.
According to posts on social media, Tartakovsky, a graduate of Brown University and the London School of Economics, had been in Beirut before.
He was described by friends as traveling the world, with hard-to-pin-down politics that frequently change. “One day he was an extreme right-winger, the next day an extreme leftist,” one friend told the Ynet news site. “Not one of his friends was surprised when he was arrested in Lebanon.”
