About a year after Elimelech Stern, a Vizhnitz Hasid from Beit Shemesh, was arrested on suspicion of espionage activities for Iran, details of the investigation were revealed - revealing how Iranian intelligence managed to recruit him.
In the holiday magazine of the Ynet website, journalist Liran Tamari described how Stern was recruited through the Telegram app after he was dealing with debts of about 70,000 shekels.
Stern, he said, purchased a smartphone to invest in crypto and fell into the trap of an agent who introduced herself as "Anna Elena" from Canada.
""Anna" claimed to be leading a campaign against traffic accidents and asked him to help her "save lives in Israel as well." She approached Stern to help distribute ads in Israel for $20 per post.
Until that message he received from Anna in a telegram, Stern, 22, had lived a seemingly ordinary life. He was a young man who studied to be a sofer, but he also had to deal with debts of about 70,000 shekels that arose from "misconduct," as he put it. His Shin Bet interrogations paint a picture of someone who doubted he knew exactly who he was talking to, but also someone who understood that he was already far beyond the gray area - and that doubts, anxiety, and pangs of conscience haunted him the whole time.
In fact, on the very night he was captured by Shin Bet agents, on June 27, 2024, Stern immediately poured out his heart, as if he had been waiting for just this for a long time.
He was interrogated at his home in Beit Shemesh between 2:50 and 4:05. During that interrogation, the Shin Bet officer told him that he thought he knew the reason for the troops' arrival - and Stern nodded and replied: "I think I know what this is about, and it has to do with the phone I gave the police a few minutes ago (-during the arrest) and the things I did recently. It all started with a Telegram profile about a month ago (-in fact, it was longer).".
The first task involved printing 150 copies of a picture of a hand with blood and the caption "History will write that children were murdered. Let's stand on the right side of history.".
To this end, Stern recruited a man from Betar Illit to carry out the hanging in Tel Aviv, for 1,800 shekels.
The tasks, he describes, gradually escalated. "Ana" demanded that the police exchange his phone and receive a device buried in the ground in Haifa, and then asked him to set fire to a forest for $7,000, burn cars and break store windows.
When he refused to burn the forest, she asked what would happen if she asked him to shoot a man for $75,000. Stern began to suspect that it was a hostile entity, but continued the relationship for the financial gain. "In light of these examples, he concluded that the tasks he was asked to perform were against the State of Israel, and possibly on a background resembling anti-Semitism," the investigator wrote.
The investigator detailed what Stern described to him that very night: "He received a picture of hands with blood, printed it out, and asked someone (Yonatan) to hang them in Tel Aviv. He received several hundred shekels for this task. The profile also asked the subject to set fire to a forest, obtain a slaughtered sheep's head and place it in front of the Israeli ambassador's house at the IAEA, make a doll with a knife inside a cardboard box, and all for money. The profile also asked him to do things he refused, such as setting fire to a forest or shooting at a person.".
At one point, Stern asked the investigator to take tefillin with him and accompany him to the Petah Tikva police station, but the young Hasid replied that he put on tefillin at the synagogue. "Stern confessed to me that despite all his efforts, his daughter did not wake up," the investigator said. "He blessed his wife and left the house.".
On the way to the police station, the interrogator informed Stern that they would stop by the synagogue to bring tefillin. "He shook my hand and thanked me for the understanding attitude," it was written. And so, the Shin Bet interrogators traveled to a Vizhnitz Hasidic synagogue in Beit Shemesh just before dawn, together with Stern, collected tefillin - and from there continued to the police station in Petah Tikva.
The article recounts the entire sequence of events and the investigation - and the Shin Bet investigator summarized the findings: "Stern estimated that it was some factor in Israel or abroad who was hostile to Israel with malicious intentions, but in practice he did not contact the police even when he feared that the phone Anna sent him was rigged. After receiving a reply in a telegram from an anonymous user that there was no risk from the cell phone she sent him, he continued the contact. During the contact, when Stern heard about fires that had occurred, he worried whether it might be related to the places she gave him. Stern was in fact in deep contact and chose to continue it safely.".
When the Shin Bet interrogator asked Stern why he carried out all of these actions, he replied: "For money.".
The interrogator asked: "Would you be willing to do an act that dishonors Hasidism for money?""
Stern: "No.".
Interrogator: "Do you mind acting against the state?""
Stern: "In this case, I feel neutral and less committed.".
During further questioning, he told the investigators simply: "A servant of God is always free.".
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