Kiriakou on the Israeli occupation collects John Kiriakou’s recurring argument that seeing the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories firsthand reliably changes people’s politics — an argument he grounds in his own family and travels rather than in ideology. He describes the West Bank as “the biggest open-air prison on Earth.”[1]
His mother’s 2008 trip
Kiriakou’s central illustration is his mother. Widowed in 2008 and wanting to travel, she planned a trip to Ireland with his sister until Kiriakou suggested she instead join a group her parish priest was taking to Israel. His mother, he says, had “zero political perspective” and no interest in politics or foreign affairs — but she returned “a 100% Palestine activist,” asking him, “Did you have any idea how those Israelis treat the Palestinians?”[1][2]
What changed her, in Kiriakou’s telling, was watching the occupation operate on ordinary people. The group’s driver — a Palestinian Christian, Greek Orthodox, who ferried them among Bethlehem and Nazareth — was reading a paperback novel at an IDF roadblock when a soldier snatched it, found “a picture of Arafat” on a page, tore the page out and threw it at him, then tore out clumps more; the driver simply sat and took it. When Kiriakou’s mother asked him why he allowed it, he answered, “Madam, the alternative is that they shoot me.”[3][4] She was struck, too, by the 30-foot walls topped with barbed wire, which she concluded were built not to keep Palestinians out of Israel but “to keep the Palestinians in Palestine, in cages. It’s a prison.” Kiriakou’s response to her awakening was a single Greek word — “Kalimera,” good morning — as though she had only just woken to a reality he had watched his whole adult life.[5]
The 2022 Old City stabbing
Kiriakou reports witnessing a killing during his last visit to Israel, in 2022, when he was in Jerusalem covering the Israeli elections for Sputnik. Resting on a bench about twenty feet outside the Iron Gate of the Old City, he watched three IDF soldiers standing among the bustle of Palestinian traders carrying crates of fruit and vegetables. When one soldier approached a Palestinian man to ask what he was doing, the man drew a knife and stabbed him twice in the stomach, just below his bulletproof vest; another soldier immediately raised his weapon and shot the man dead on the spot.[6][7] Kiriakou fled to his hotel as the entire Old City was locked down — helicopters overhead, armored personnel carriers entering the walls — and later turned on the English-language Israeli news to see how it was reported: “They hate us more than they love life itself… You can see that they have only murder in their hearts.”[8][9] He also recalls billboards across Israel reading “we are with you, America” — asking, “You’re with us on what? We don’t want to be with you.”[10]
’Willful ignorance’ among American supporters
Kiriakou attributes much American support for Israel to ignorance, in many cases willful. He taught at Liberty University, an evangelical school, around 2010–2011 — he is not evangelical and says he has “nothing in common with them” — and remains on its faculty listserv, where he sees an “ugly vociferous hatred” for Palestinians “disguised as support for Israel and opposition to terrorism,” voiced by people who have never met a Palestinian or set foot in the region, drawing instead on Fox, One America News, and their churches.[11][12] He frames the underlying dynamic through a debate he once had with Benjamin Netanyahu’s press aide: that by the way it treats Palestinians, Israel is “creating your monsters” — a point he says went “completely over their head.”[13][14]