Shin Bet recruits haredi leaders to counter Iranian spy recruitment

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Iran spy

Most of those accused of spying are Israeli citizens who were approached online and promised financial rewards for completing assignments.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israel’s Shin Bet security agency has partnered with Israel Police and influential ultra-Orthodox religious leaders in a campaign to warn the haredi public about Iranian attempts to recruit Israeli citizens as spies through social media, The New York Times reported.

The effort follows reported cases in which Iranians targeted members of the ultra-Orthodox community by offering money in exchange for cooperation.

Security officials enlisted senior rabbis, journalists, and community figures to deliver the warnings directly to their audiences in an effort to deter further recruitment.

Rabbi Yigal Cohen, a member of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Council, issued a video appeal urging followers not to cooperate with Iranian operatives.

“I am begging you, there is no greater blasphemy than seeing a Torah-abiding, observant Jew betray his people,” he says in the video posted to social media.

Haredi commentator Yisrael Cohen, who helped connect security officials with community leaders, told The New York Times that the recent espionage cases initially stunned the community but also prompted a coordinated effort to raise awareness and discourage others from becoming involved.

Israel Cohen, another prominent haredi commentator, also used his media platforms to spread the warning campaign. He told the newspaper he “understood the need to warn against the danger and stop it.”

Mendel Unger, a haredi journalist, recorded a video message in Yiddish, widely spoken in the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community, cautioning viewers against carrying out activities on behalf of Iran.

Despite the public awareness campaign, Israeli security officials have struggled to curb Iranian recruitment efforts, including during the recent war with Iran, the newspaper reported.

Most of those accused of spying are Israeli citizens who were approached online by anonymous agents linked to Iran and promised financial rewards for completing assignments.

Some suspects have been foreign nationals residing in Israel on visas.

The New York Times reported that Iranian intelligence relies on a decentralized social media network to identify individuals experiencing financial hardship or debt.

Operatives allegedly pose as businesspeople or journalists, assigning recruits seemingly routine tasks before gradually directing them toward increasingly sensitive security-related missions.

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IN the summer of 2019, I was seated in the wine cellar of a walled Medieval town high above the Dordogne Valley of France, not far from Sarlat-la-Canéda, making phone calls, writing reports. I have given this story in other places and it appears as though you’re about to hear it again. Rob Skiba is a name you that you might be familiar with. Though he had made a name for himself as a Nephilim researcher, more recently Rob had taken a dive into the deep end of the pool via flat earth research. The recorded interviews I conducted between he and Rick Hummer, a fellow flat earth investigator and close friend of his, was published while still occupying that very wine cellar. Read all about it. Chicago Is Not a Mirage.

Word quickly spread. Within a few short weeks, dozens of flat earth researchers began accepting my invite for a private interview, if not a series of interviews. From a 17th-century tower built by King Louis XIV, and with a stunning view of the Alps, I sat down with Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conferences, conducting multiple sessions. While staying in Dumfries, Scotland, David Weiss agreed to take part in the interviews, as did Bob Knodel of Globebusters. There were others. But when I asked the interviewees to discuss the moments that shaped their lives, among the many PSYOPs, false flag attacks, and hoaxes that were discussed, only these men committed commentary to the false 9/11 narrative.

The resulting recordings ballooned into The Unexpected Cosmology, a book which became a website and was even intended as an anthology. And of course, the following discourse was originally a chapter. It was Walt Disney who stated, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Those sentiments remain applicable here as well. American Sensationalism: The 9/11 Interviews was always intended to be expanded upon with the inclusion of new researchers. So I’m sorry to say the project became stagnant during the Covid-19 psychodrama. I took a break to tackle other projects. We lost Rob Skiba. Rob offered hours of private conversation regarding his life but we never got around to the big one. 9/11. It was in the cards. Sadly, Bob Knodel died soon afterwards. Voices are being squeezed from an entire generation. Gnosis passes with them.

In the aftermath, the FE community became fractured. People began going their separate ways. Robbie Davidson, among a noted few others who were interviewed for the project, got up and left the movement altogether. It is not my intent to erase his or the contributions of others if only brief. They came, they went, their testimonies remain.

The original vision may have hit roadblocks but it is not forgotten. I expanded this paper a few years later to include testimony from author Pauly Hart, a dear friend of mine. I had wanted to continue that trend every year thereafter but you know how it goes. For the 25th anniversary of the attack I have redirected my efforts to its first large scale expansion, including Andrew Hoy and Darrin Geisinger into the mix. Perhaps others will lend their experiences to the recorder in time.

The following is their report.

Read the 9/11 Interviews

Watch the Interviews