Israeli abducted in Iraq is a Mossad spy, say UK academic, former MP

Shafaq News/ Kidnapped Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov is a spy, British sociologist David Miller and former MP Chris Williamson claimed in recent posts on X.

Tsurkov, who was researching in Iraq on behalf of Princeton University, was abducted by Kata'ib Hezbollah in March. As the Jerusalem Post reported in July, senior Israeli diplomats have denied that Tsurkov is working for Israeli intelligence.

“Did you know the father of Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Russian-Israeli missing in Iraq, was part of an Israeli intelligence plot in the Soviet Union to recruit settlers for Palestine?”, David Miller posted on September 11.

Miller also shared an article he wrote for PressTV claiming that “she had been in military intelligence while in the Israeli occupation forces during the 2006 Lebanon war and that she had remained in the Israeli military reserves until at least August 2011.”

As evidence of his claims, Miller draws attention to the fact that Tsurkov entered Iraq using her Russian passport and did not draw attention to her Israeli citizenship. He does not mention it is illegal for Israelis to enter Iraq, which would have been a reason Tsurkov did not reveal her citizenship.

Miller went on to state that her visit to Lebanon is more evidence that Tsurkov was not entering Iraq for academic reasons.

“Tsurkov engaged in research and advocacy in support of regime change in Syria, working directly with organizations known to be Western intelligence cutouts or proxies including Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and an apparent CIA cut out, New Lines,” Miller wrote

Williamson, the former Member of Parliament for Derby in the United Kingdom, shared Miller’s article and added the text “Was Elizabeth Tsurkov an innocent Princeton University PhD student doing field research in Iraq, or was she spying for Mossad, MI6 or the CIA?”

David Miller was a Sociology lecturer at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. His employment at the University was terminated after students reported a number of antisemitic statements and ideologies the lecturer had shared in class.

In 2019, Professor David Miller, who taught about "how power self-perpetuates through lobbying and propaganda," said in a lecture that the Zionist movement is one of five sources of Islamophobia, presenting a graphic associating Jewish charities with pro-Israel lobbying, The Guardian reported. Miller has also stated that Israel is "the enemy of world peace" and that the Bristol Jewish Society, a campus Jewish organization, is an "Israel lobby group.”

Additionally, Miller said that Israel wants to "impose [its] will all over the world" and that Jewish students were being exploited as "political pawns by a violent, racist, foreign regime engaged in ethnic cleansing,” The Jewish Chronicle reported.

Chris Williamson was suspended from Labour in 2019, the Jerusalem Post reported, as he had accused the party of being “too apologetic” about antisemitism.

In his resignation letter to the Labour Party, Williamson blamed the Israeli government for interfering in UK politics and accused the Jewish Labour Movement and other Jewish groups of being behind the “witch hunt” against him.

Although Williamson was readmitted back into the party in June of that year, he was suspended again two days later after a backlash from the Jewish community and Labour MPs. He announced in August that he was suing the party over its decision to re-implement his suspension.