Tehran has arrested a member of the IranDeal negotiating team barely a year after signing the agreement that lifted international sanctions and restored billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic coffers.

Iranian state media reported Sunday the unidentified negotiator is under investigation for being a “spy who infiltrated the nuclear team.” The suspect was allegedly held for several days but has since been released, according to the report.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama announced with pride that Israel’s “military and security community” has realized he was right all along and now supports the deal with Iran. “The country that was most opposed to the deal,” he said in news conference on August 6, “acknowledges that this has been a game-changer.”

Not exactly. Nevertheless, by some standards it appeared that for diplomacy’s sake the Israeli response was still somewhat restrained.

The Iranian prosecutor general announced August 16 that a dual national linked to British intelligence had been arrested, but at the time did not link the arrest to the nuclear talks. At the same time, the UK said it was trying to find out more about the arrest of a dual national, Reuters reported.

On Sunday, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei responded during a weekly briefing to a question by a reporter about a reference by an Iranian lawmaker to a member of the negotiating team with dual nationality, who was arrested on charges of espionage. He did not, however, confirm the suspect had British citizenship.

Earlier this month, nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri was executed by Iran “for revealing the country’s top secrets to the (U.S.) enemy,” Ejei was quoted as saying by the Mizan Online news site. The scientist’s body was returned to his home town with what appeared to be rope marks on his neck, according to his family, suggesting execution by hanging, media reported.

Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, 62, who was released on parole last November on Thursday lost his appeal to ease his stiff probation conditions. Pollard served out a 30-year sentence, the longest prison term imposed on a spy from a friendly country in US history. Manhattan federal judge Katherine Forrest rejected Pollard’s request to ease his release requirement to wear an electronic tracking device and to have his computer be monitored by the authorities.

Pollard’s attorneys told the court their client was not a flight risk and that whatever secrets he knew of thirty years ago couldn’t possibly have any value to anyone. In addition, they said the arbitrary required for monitoring his computer meant Pollard couldn’t get a job with an investment firm.

The judge cited the facts that Pollard received an Israeli citizenship while behind bars meant that he was a flight risk, and a letter from James Clapper, the director of US National Intelligence, stating that the secrets Pollard learned in the 1980s were still secrets today.

{Originally posted to the satirical website, PreOccupied Territory}

Tel Aviv, July 19 – Investigators in Israeli counterintelligence have caught a foreign agent when the man unwittingly exposed himself by being the only person who used grammatically correct Hebrew, Shin Bet sources reported today.

The man, an employee at a government-owned enterprise in the defense industry, was exposed during a twice-yearly review by Shin Bet officers who determined he could not be the native Israeli and Hebrew speaker he claimed to be, since no Israelis are particular about using the correct grammatical forms in everyday conversation, and most even disregard it in more formal contexts.

A source within the agency, known by its formal acronym Shabak, told reporters on condition of anonymity that reports of a mole within the enterprise had surfaced last year, but that clear evidence of the spy’s activities and identity did not begin to emerge until several months ago. Investigators gradually narrowed the field until it was clear materials were being leaked to foreign interests from a specific unit in the company.

In the guise of conducting an efficiency examination for quality purposes, the Shabak agents posed as consultants and interviewed several dozen staff and supervisors in the suspected unit. “It became pretty clear that the guy we were looking for was sitting in front of us when he started using the right verb form for the third-person feminine plural future,” recalled the agent, rolling his eyes. “I mean, even the radio announcers, who are required to speak a certain way, don’t say ‘telekhna’ when everyone just says ‘yelkhu’.”

Investigators’ ears further perked up when the interviewee actually used the first-person singular future prefix instead of just using the third-person form that everyone has adopted out of sheer laziness and mishearing. “He actually made sure we heard him pause between ‘Ani’ and ‘eshmor’ so we would hear that he wasn’t saying ‘yishmor’ as everyone else would,” said the agent. “That basically clinched it for us. Afterwards we conducted a more thorough background check and found a relative who works for a courier service used by one of the embassies here, and put it all together.” The relative has already confessed to involvement.

“Also, the guy made sure to use masculine numbers with masculine nouns and feminine numbers with feminine nouns,” added the agent, contrasting it with the general practice of using the simpler feminine form for all purposes. “It was just further proof that he didn’t have genuine roots in the country and society. What idiot does that?”

{Originally posted to Rabbi Weinberg’s website, The Foundation Stone}

Too young to understand the purpose of the x-ray glasses as advertised in the back of the comic book, I wanted them to peer into my grandfather’s brain and then compare it to mine in the mirror. My sister and I were sitting with my father zt”l in the doctor’s office, the only place where I could read comics, and I pointed to the ad and asked my father for a pair. Those of you who remember those ads can imagine how my father must have felt, but he maintained his calm and asked for my reason. It was difficult to get out all the words above my sister’s loud, “icks,” but when he finally heard my explanation, my father pointed out that the x-ray glasses would probably not work in a mirror. “Plus,” he said, “it isn’t your grandfather’s brain that’s special, nor yours, but something else deep inside that cannot be seen even by the best x-ray glasses in the world.” If I recall correctly, it was our first talk about souls.

I may not have been very sophisticated for a four-year-old, but it was clear that there were no x-ray glasses coming my way. Too bad, as there were all sorts of things I wanted to see: My father praying under his Tallit, all the secrets I used to hear my father describe as hiding inside the words of the Torah, and, most of all, what my parents were saying behind closed doors when discussing me. Alas, it was not to be. I had to learn to “see” in a different way. I had to watch my father pray and sense what was going on inside his prayer shawl. I never quite mastered x-raying my parents’ private conversations, but I did learn to x-ray a verse from a power in that place “deep inside,” to which my father introduced me in that long ago conversation.

The days when I can’t seem to access that special vision are as frustrating as being refused my magical glasses, so I can empathize with the Children of Israel wanting to send spies to see the land they were to conquer. People who had once been able to see with x-ray vision, as in, “The entire people saw the thunder…the sound of the shofar (Exodus 20:15),” only to refuse this gift of superhuman vision, were constantly reminded of what they had rejected. The most meaningful services of the Tabernacle took place behind closed walls. They could not even look directly at Moses’ face (34:30). They were abandoned by Jethro, who had previously been, “eyes for us (Numbers 10:31).” At the conclusion of the previous portion they watched as, “God descended in a pillar of cloud (12:5),” over Moses and his siblings, and when, “the cloud had departed from atop the Tent, and behold! Miriam was afflicted with leprosy like snow (Verse 10)!” What happened inside that cloud? There were far too many consequences of their rejection of  “super” vision, and they understood the price of choosing to not see.

Does Superman ever disconnect his x-ray vision when he wants to take a break? We often choose to not see below the surface such as ignoring a child acting out, or closing our eyes to dysfunctional families, or all the suffering people around us. The Children of Israel understood the price of choosing to not see, and they now wanted to assume their previously rejected role of Visionaries. They would look and assume responsibility.

They looked and they were overwhelmed by what they saw. The challenges were too huge, “We were like grasshoppers in their eyes (13:33),” and, “they wept that night (14:1).” Are we any better prepared to really see?

God responds with the gift of Tzitzit that guide us in when to see and when not. “That you may see it and remember all the commandments (15:39),” and then master when not to see when we learn to, “not explore after your heart and after your eyes after which you stray,” when overwhelmed by what we see. After we have seen how, with that, “deep place inside,” we can successfully transform a simple garment into a Mitzvah, how much we have been able to accomplish, there is no reason to be overwhelmed by what we see. Tzitzit remind us to see our ability to respond to those things we avoid seeing for fear of being overwhelmed.

I did get my x-ray glasses and Superman cape, after all; my Tzitzit. My sister was right, much is “icky,” but I can see the light beyond the icky stuff, and resolve to fight on, and so I will.

Shabbat Shalom

In this segment, The Hezbollah Officer hides for days in the most UNLIKELY of places, but as he escapes, eventually gets caught by the Hezbollah. What will his fate be now? Tamar continues to share the amazing story translated from the Hebrew book, ‘From Both Sides of the Border’ -The Story of a Senior Hezbollah Officer Who Spied for Israel. PART 7 Tamar Yonah Show 09May2016

Israeli Bedouin Ouda Tarabin has been freed from an Egyptian prison after 15 years’ incarceration on suspicion of spying for the Jewish State.

He returned to Israel early Thursday morning, just as two Egyptian prisoners completed their prison terms in Israel and were released to return to Egypt.

Tarabin was arrested by Egyptian authorities while crossing the border to visit his family in the Sinai Peninsula. He was tried and sentenced in absentia in 2000 on charges of aiding others in gathering intelligence.

(JNi.media) Some words really do work best in Yiddish, and “Rishus,” which roughly means nastiness mixed with hate (the Hebrew original is a pale “wickedness”), and the NY Times radiated that special kind of mix in a Nov. 22 editorial titled, “No Exception for Jonathan Pollard.”

Written by the Times editorial board, the piece combats the popular notion that recently released convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was some kind of hero, a “cause célèbre in Israel.” They argue that “the narrative of the selfless spy is unfounded. In the charges against him, Mr. Pollard was portrayed as a flaky operator who tried to peddle secrets to Israel but also to Pakistan, South Africa and other countries for the money, of which Israel paid him a lot. … the known facts do not warrant special consideration.”

But Pollard did receive “special consideration.” On June 4, 1986, Pollard pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government. The prosecutor, in compliance with the plea agreement, recommended that Pollard receive “only a substantial number of years in prison.” But Judge Aubrey Robinson, Jr., who received a personal note from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger—without the defense’s knowledge—imposed a life sentence.

It is commonly agreed that what irked Sec. Weinberger so much about Pollard, then and in years to come, when he continued to thwart every presidential attempt to pardon the Israeli spy, was the Wolf Blitzer interview. Three weeks before his sentencing, Pollard gave Wolf Blitzer, the Jerusalem Post Washington correspondent, a jail-cell interview which also ran in The Washington Post (February 15, 1987), crowing him “Israel’s Master Spy.” Pollard told Blitzer about the information he provided Israel: reconnaissance satellite photography of the PLO headquarters in Tunisia; specific capabilities of Libya’s air defenses; and “the pick of US intelligence about Arab and Islamic conventional and unconventional military activity, from Morocco to Pakistan and every country in between. This included both ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly’ Arab countries.”

The stated reason for Pollard’s harsh sentence, which ignored his plea bargain was violating his plea agreement, which came down to the Blitzer story, which made the Reagan Administration look bad, for holding back vital information from its ally, Israel, which stung Caspar Weinberger.

One wonders how the NY Times editorial board would have opined this week had Blitzer peddled his interview on 41st Street instead of to the Post.

The other “special treatment” Pollard received was in being kept behind bars for the duration of his sentence, which had never been done to any other spy working for a friendly country. Dennis Ross said in 2004: “Pollard received a harsher sentence than others who committed comparable crimes.” Stephen Fain Williams, a Senior Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stated: “Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence represents a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Former US assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb wrote: “We believe that his continued incarceration constitutes a travesty of justice and a stain on the American system of justice.”

What did the NY Times have to say about this “stain on the American system of justice?” There was this April 1, 2014 editorial board piece titled, “Bad Move on Jonathan Pollard,” which opened: “The emergence of the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard as a bargaining chip in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is a lamentable sign of America’s desperation to keep both sides talking.”

In other words, when choosing between peace talks and keeping Pollard in — for the Times it’s Pollard all the way down.

On Jan. 14, 2014, in “Don’t Trust This Spy,” by M. E. Bowman, a former deputy general counsel for national security law at the F.B.I. and a former deputy of the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive He wrote: “At the time of Mr. Pollard’s sentencing, federal law did not permit the death penalty, and a life sentence meant a maximum of 30 years. As such, Mr. Pollard is close to release, counting time off for good behavior. That release, however, should occur when his sentence expires and not, as four former directors of naval intelligence have put it, as a result of a ‘clever public relations campaign.’”