Tel Aviv – Israel’s Shin Bet secret service planted ten sleeper agents in Arab-Israeli villages after the establishment of Israel and allowed them to marry and raise families, the Yediot Ahranot daily reported Sunday.
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The agents, all Jews of Iraqi extraction, were sent to the villages in case the locals joined Arab forces in an all-out war with Israel, the daily said.
Prior to their infiltration, the ten spent a year learning the Koran, Palestinian dialect, and spying techniques. Armed with new identities and detailed cover stories, they were sent to various Arab villages and towns, pretending to be refugees from the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war who were returning to Israel.
Their families in Israel were not told what they were doing and were discouraged from trying to find out.
Once established in their new homes, the sleepers were expected by village elders to take wives, and were encouraged by their handlers back in Tel Aviv to do so, to give their cover greater depth.
Many of them did in fact marry, without revealing their real identities to their new wives.
‘The boys had no option,’ Sami Moriah, the senior member of the unit, said. ‘It would have looked suspicious if young, virile men went around alone without a partner. When we dispatched them on the mission, we did not order them to marry, but it was clear there was such an expectation.’
With the passing of time, pressure grew on the Shin Bet to bring the agents home, especially as it became clear that their use was limited.
Once back in Israel, many of the families experienced difficulties. ‘We tried to rehabilitate them, but did not really succeed,’ Moriah said.
The children, he said, suffered traumas. They tried to forget their past, where they came from but were not able.
‘Some were exceptional and succeeded in life, but the majority did not. They suffer from problems until today.’
Why talk about it? Sounds childish.
why talk about it–because journalists haven’t learned the rule–not everything has to be reported.
old rule–not everything I think must be said, not everything I say must be written, not everything that is written must be published.
To #1 It cannot sound childish. You are asking people to give up years of their lives and to forget years of their lives!! Can you forget your childhood or where you played when you were small?? Some of those times are the happiest to a child if you think about it!! As an adult you can say forget!! It is easier said than done!!
Sounds straight out of the book samsons lion (shin bet)
Did they accomplish any missions for Israel at all, or were they just a waste of time and money?
where are the religious MKs?
they need to come out and denounce this act. how dare a so-called jewish state encourage jews to intermarry?! i doubt there was any rabbinic rulling to this.
#8 lol but true
And that is EXACTLY why when I came home from my school with an Arabic textbook, my father took me out of the school. Children whose parents spoke Arabic were recruited by the Israeli government to become spies. They were not given a choice, either you serve as we tell you or leave Israel.
The men and women who were selected to be sleeper agents gave up their lives. One of my childhood friends did stay in the class and ended up in Lebanon for 15 years. Another friend of my husband’s also lived in an Arab village for more than a decade. Both were from kosher, Shomer Shabbat homes and could not observe kashrut or Shabbat at all during that time. Both men were living with non Jewish women during this time.
Rachmono Letzlon
At this point talking about it does not hurt anyone. The Arabs know the Israelis spy on thier villages. The question is whether this was smart and whether it was fair to the men involved. I have to wonder. Could they have not at least sent couples who were married and kept them their a few years before they kids who were too old for the fakery.
All spy agencies are brutal in their misuse of their agents.
first of all,i’m touched you follow my posts so carefully.second,these are two very different situations.here i was responding to a general indictment against “rabbis” having any authority accept over chickens,an obvious slap in the face.in the bublil case,do you think every rabbi,in the times we live in, is trully speaking with daas torah? that would indeed be foolish to assume.
Sometimes when I reread the posts here, I wonder why no one writes a sitcom loosely based on some of the characters, it would make a fortune! Nu?