SA citizen imprisoned in Lebanon ‘for being Israeli’

South African citizen Dan Brotman’s worst nightmare came true when the Lebanese equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) threw him into a cell on crossing the border between Lebanon and Syria. Worse, he soon discovered, he was believed to be an Israeli spy.

“I’ve travelled to the Arab world, and I’ve even been to Iran, but this was my worst nightmare come true,” he told the SA Jewish Report when he was safely back home in London after six excruciating days of incarceration. He was held in horrific, filthy conditions, deprived of water and food, and handcuffed for most of the time alone in a dark cell.

Brotman was part of the largest group of Western tourists to go to Syria since the revolution and fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. They went for eight days. Brotman was proud to have managed to track down one of the six remaining Jews left in the country, and he visited a Jewish cemetery.

The group entered Syria from Lebanon, and were on their way back to catch their flights home on 8 May, when Brotman was singled out. Without asking any questions, they ordered Brotman away from the group and into an office where he was made to wait without knowing why.

A group of Lebanese guards eventually came back into the room and told Brotman that he was suspended. “I had no idea what suspended meant. I didn’t know if I was being arrested or detained,” said Brotman. “They took my phone, my watch, and my wallet. Then they led me to a filthy holding cell. There was no water in the cell, and I just waited.”

The first question that Brotman recalls being asked was if he had served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He told the SA Jewish Report, “You have to be truthful because, if they’re asking, they know. So, I said I had, and it was about 20 years ago when I was 18, and that I was in an administrative position.

“I was eventually able to convince them that I wasn’t a spy,” Brotman said. “My crime ultimately was that I had Israeli citizenship, even though it’s just one of my multiple citizenships.” He holds South African, United States, and Israeli passports, has permanent residence in Canada, and now lives in the United Kingdom. He lived in South Africa for 11 years, from 2001 to 2002 and from 2011 to 2020.

From the border holding cells, he was transferred to Zahlé, a city in eastern Lebanon, and then to the capital, Beirut, before the end of the day.

“In Zahlé, I was put in another cell with faeces smeared all over the walls. I can’t describe how filthy it was. There was no natural light. After a few hours, I was handcuffed, and put in the back of a prisoner vehicle to Beirut.”

Brotman was assured by his guards that when they arrived in Beirut, after what he described as “a terrifying journey where I was jostled around the back of the vehicle”, he would be able to speak to someone from the United States embassy. However, he was met in Beirut by more guards with machine guns, and was taken straight to a prison cell after being bombarded with more questions. They also gave him his phone to open it so they could scour it for information.

While being held, Brotman managed to write a diary to keep his mind occupied and to document what was happening to him.

“I slept on a mattress in a very cold cell with no toilet,” he said. “I kept asking if I could have some food as I hadn’t eaten all day, but they wouldn’t give me any.

“I was handcuffed. I was in my clothes. I had to pee in a bottle because at least there was an empty bottle there.”

He said that for much of his time in the cells, he wasn’t fed, and was ill because many in his group got food poisoning in Syria.

Brotman was held by the Lebanese General Security, the equivalent of the American CIA or ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and was interrogated for each of the six days.

“At first, they thought I was a spy. They went through every single photo, every single message in my phone, my emails, everything for days and days and days and days,” Brotman said.

Though he wasn’t concerned, his family, who quickly became aware of the situation, was afraid that since the Lebanese General Security was closely affiliated with Hezbollah until 2023, he would be assassinated.

One of the first questions the investigator asked Brotman was whether he had any other nationality. “I said, ‘South African’ as I was hoping they would just think that I was an American who had served in the Israeli army. He then said, “Daniel,” which was something I got used to, and told me that I wouldn’t be in any trouble, but I needed to be honest. I told him then that I was also Israeli.”

He said his investigator asked him about every single detail of his life, from his childhood to his current life and time in the IDF.

The investigator would constantly come back to tell him, “You have to trust me because you’ve got no other choice.”

“I heard people being tortured,” Brotman said. “There was one man, I believe he was Syrian. They took him to the room that I normally slept in at night, with a bag over his head. They were shooting him in the head with blanks, and every time they shot him, he would scream. And this was in the room that I slept in, right next to where I was detained.

“There was another detainee who had German citizenship. He was on day four. They still hadn’t given him access to the German embassy. There was a well-known Lebanese sports figure who was held because he had another passport. He told me that conditions in Lebanese prisons were so bad, he would kill himself if they imprisoned him.”

Brotman soon learnt that in Lebanese prisons, prisoners don’t get fed. To eat, their families have to bring them food or they have to buy their own food. Brotman had run out of cash by the time he re-entered Lebanon because he knew that he was going home. So, he had to rely on the kindness of others.

He said that it was the words of Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a hostage murdered in Gaza, that inspired him to stay strong and survive. “I would look out the window at night because eventually, when I was locked in an office to sleep, I had a window with bars, and I would think to myself, ‘Just survive, just survive.’”

Brotman was repeatedly told that he would be released the next day, but that day never seemed to come. And every time he thought it was home time, he was disappointed.

“Even until the very last minute, when the prosecutor got hold of my phone and was going through messages, I thought he was going to find something to keep me longer. He found the Magen David necklace in my passport pouch. He found three old travel SIM cards, which they hadn’t found. I don’t use SIM cards anymore. They were old. I thought it could be another piece of evidence, and it would delay my departure.”

When he was finally released, Brotman was handcuffed, blindfolded, and had soldiers with machine guns on either side take him through Hezbollah territory to the Beirut airport. “Until that plane took off, I didn’t truly believe that I was going to leave Lebanon,” he said.

“I wasn’t held in Lebanon and treated the way I was because I did anything wrong. I didn’t commit espionage. I didn’t commit a crime. My crime was my existence,” he said.