Israel is experiencing an epidemic of espionage by its most dangerous enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the spies—to the shock of many Israelis—are ordinary Israeli citizens, just like them: their neighbors from all walks of life.
Their motives are mixed. Most seem to be in it for the money, others are driven by sex, and there is a measure of disaffection with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership. Government authorities are disturbed that the surge of treasonous acts comes in the midst of Israel’s long and frustrating war in Gaza, and perhaps, in some cases, even because of it.
Gag orders issued by judges limit what has been reported publicly, but Shin Bet, the security agency that’s the equivalent of the F.B.I., tells us that more than 60 citizens are being prosecuted and more indictments are expected. Upward of 1,000 Israelis are believed to have been in contact with Iranian spies. Most are accused of small acts of treason, but a few Israeli turncoats have been willing to kill for cash.
Shin Bet agents use cyber-countermeasures to try to detect those covert conversations, but the situation is so dire that the agency is now appealing to the public to reject and report messages from unknown parties making strange requests. The usually secretive security agency has launched an unprecedented campaign of radio and online ads—with the slogan, “Easy Money, Harsh Punishment.”
Israel prides itself on the strength and ingenuity of its own spycraft, most recently demonstrated by Mossad agents and saboteurs who were planted deep in Iran when Israel decided to bomb that country’s nuclear program in June. Iranian attempts to penetrate Israel don’t even come close.
And yet, Iran’s espionage recruiters get in touch from abroad using Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. Some use fake identities to get in touch through LinkedIn, pretending to offer lucrative jobs.
Before long, the friendly stranger asks for a seemingly minor favor, such as painting some graffiti or torching a parked car. Payment is made anonymously and untraceably online, by PayPal or Bitcoin transfers. And then come more menacing requests, such as sending photos of the neighborhood around Netanyahu’s weekend home or the perimeter of a military base.
For years, Iranian intelligence agencies fishing for spies within Israel hid behind the “false flag” method of not revealing they were from Iran. But once they saw how enthusiastically—without guilt or moral hesitation—many Israelis responded to the offers, the handlers dropped their disguise and openly identified as Iranians.
It was lust and greed that drove two seemingly upstanding Jewish Israelis to betray their country: Moti Maman and another man whose name cannot legally be disclosed.
Maman, 74, is described by prosecutors as a failed businessman who fell madly in love with Natalya, a much younger woman from Belarus. She increasingly insisted on expensive gifts, such as designer clothes, perfumes, and trips abroad. On a trip to Turkey, someone introduced him to an Iranian who offered the Israeli a way to make some easy money. Natalya was apparently not wittingly part of a honey trap.
Maman’s contacts twice smuggled him into Iran, where he enjoyed lavish treatment in a luxury hotel. The Iranian handlers could see his weak spot was cash, and they offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars if he would help assassinate Netanyahu, Shin Bet agency chief Ronen Bar, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and former prime minister Naftali Bennett.
Maman didn’t say no, but he told the Iranians that he doubted he could get through those leaders’ bodyguards. Instead, he offered to murder two mayors in northern Israel.
The second accused traitor is the owner of a shoe store, in his 40s, an Iranian Jew who immigrated to Israel in 1999. About a decade ago, he fell in love with a well-traveled Iranian woman. They met from time to time in Turkey, Thailand, and Abu Dhabi. About a year and a half ago, prosecutors charge, Iranian intelligence learned of the romance and instructed the woman to bring her lover to a meeting in Turkey with spy handlers. It is unclear whether the woman was being blackmailed by Iran or had been working for her native country throughout.
The missions assigned to the shoe merchant were no less serious than Maman’s—and were perhaps even more severe, as the information he gathered was delivered in June of this year, during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran. For several thousand dollars, he supplied information about routes flown by Israeli drones to Iran, and about an Iranian sailor working on a Persian Gulf oil tanker who was purportedly a Mossad agent.
Prosecutors are not revealing how the accused could have acquired the information he gave to Iran.
Maman accepted a plea deal this past December, expressed remorse for his actions, and was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison. The shoe merchant has been indicted, but his trial has not yet begun.
More than 50 Israelis have been jailed by Shin Bet, pending prosecution, and officials say 1,000 have been questioned—in a nation of only 10 million citizens. In one particularly serious case, a network dubbed “the Azeri Seven”—Jews who had immigrated from Azerbaijan—were together paid around $100,000 for 600 missions ordered by Iran over a two-year period. Arrested last September, they could face life in prison for charges that include “aiding the enemy in wartime.”
Officials urgently want to understand the key causes and find a way to dissuade Israelis from such massive disloyalty in the future.
Shin Bet’s counter-espionage agents used to believe that disloyal Israeli Jews, few and far between, were from the margins of the general community and had no high-level information to sell. But lately the trickle of treasonous greed looks more like a flood.
“We’re concerned about the trend,” a Shin Bet source tells us. “The problem is moving from the fringes of society into its mainstream center.”
Why is betrayal a growing phenomenon? It’s obvious that Netanyahu’s 18 years in power have been divisive, and even more so since the invasion of Gaza and the deepening rifts over how to defeat Hamas and win freedom for the hostages. Unity and patriotism feel like slogans of an extinct past.
“Israeli society has disintegrated to the level that people think only of themselves, or a small group they identify with,” says Yoram Peri, a longtime Tel Aviv newspaper editor who was head of Israeli studies at the University of Maryland.
“The Gaza war is the worst crisis for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and it’s had an impact,” Peri adds. “As have the social media, which divide society and introduce hatred and nastiness.”
Shin Bet hopes that going public with its concerns—and stressing the severe legal consequences—will be persuasive. Security is like a religion in Israel, and one man who has made a career of it tells us, “We might have no choice but to add an eleventh to the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not spy against your homeland.”
Yossi Melman is a commentator on security and intelligence affairs and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and the host of the Mossad Files podcast. They are co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars
