The spies among us: processing the incomprehensible

Peloni:  Crimes must be treated as criminal with penalties equivalent to the crime.  Awarding less than an equivalent penalty on such a serious and far reaching crime as treason, only serves to encourage it all the more.  Notably, there is no greater crime than to raise treason against ones own country, as it is an assault on every man, woman and child in the nation with a single act of treason, and in this time of war in Israel, the cost of such actions as would give aid and comfort to the Iranians should merit nothing less than the most severe penalties possible.

A spate of cases of has Israelis shaking their heads with disbelief and disgust. What should we do?’

Douglas Altabef | Jul 5, 2025

The poster was used during World War I by authorities to remind people to be on their guard and to stay vigilant and report anything suspicious. The poster is from our Army Department archive collection. Archives New Zealand Reference: AD1 44/283. (Photo by Archives New Zealand from New Zealand – ‘Beware of Spies’ World War I propaganda poster, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia)

Since October 7th we have seen Israel at its best: thousands upon thousands of heroic soldiers engaged in breathtaking, unprecedented military heroism and success, supported by a resolute, resilient and in its way no less heroic homefront.

We will look back on this period much as Americans and Brits regarded their greatest generation of WWII heroism.

Yet, there is, as there always must be, a rub. In the midst of this heroism we have also shockingly experienced the polar opposite: high treason. There is no other way to depict the workings of dozens of young Israelis who have chosen to work on behalf of Iran.

Such work has included gathering intelligence, sending in photos of sites requested by their handlers, or worse, passing along materials. In one case, Israelis were preparing and detonating an explosive device. Most recently, two young Haifa area residents were accused of working on an assassination plot.

As difficult as it is to say, these Israelis have knowingly been giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Before focusing on what should be done about it, it behooves us to try to understand what this phenomenon represents, and why there have been geometrically if not exponentially more cases of Israelis working for the enemy than we have ever seen in our history.

The commonalities seem to be age – most all have been under 40 – and time here in Israel. Most are relatively recent olim coming from Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia. (How many of them are Jewish is a moot point, since Israel’s Law of Return grandfather clause allows immigration for anyone with a Jewish grandfather, ed.)

Perhaps the most common element is the lure of money. Regardless of whether the accused are from poor families, they individually have needed/wanted money and that has attracted them to social media offers that might initially sound innocuous, but which quickly morph to more aggressive and invasive missions.

All of this sounds bizarre to most all Jewish Israelis. How could any considerations, excuses or aspirations trump the love and support of our country, particularly as it has been engaged in an existential battle with Israel’s implacable enemy?

How could anyone betray his country, and how could material considerations ever outweigh the concern for our country’s safety? As many of the neighbors of the arrested suspects have said, they just could not believe their neighbor could possibly be capable of what he has been accused of.

Besides dealing with the shock of the actions themselves, we have to grapple with why seemingly so suddenly we are faced with these horrific crimes. One thing to ask ourselves is whether this kind of willingness to take the fast buck for a betrayal of country has always been prevalent among some but has become more actionable because of social media and a concerted effort by Iran to find extraneous elements to help the regime.

We have had olim coming from Russia, Ukraine and Azjerbaijan for many years. We have always had people with gambling debts, and other induced financial woes. None of the impetus forces seem new nor particularly unique to this moment in time. (There is speculation that some are foreign agents fwho came to Israel already prepared to damage the country and that Iran gave them the opportunity, ed.)

So, why now, and why so many? Many young people use social media as their primary means of interacting and communicating with the world. The idea of someone reaching out with a “job opportunity,” particularly when it seems like easy money for doing something relatively innocuous is attractive.

I suspect that for many or most there was no correlation between what they were asked to do and something that could harm Israel. At least not at first. But as the intensity of the required actions increased, there was likely an onset of denial.

I apologize if these rationales same lame and contrived, as I too can not conceive how any Jew in Israel could do what they have done. So, I definitionally have a hard time trying to see it from their perspective.

The Iranians likely believe that they have found the soft underbelly of Israeli society, and, for little money, they can simultaneously obtain useful information and demoralize Israeli society by the reality of their recruiting.

The real question is what do we do about it, how do we respond? The question is twofold: it concerns not only the appropriate punishment for these traitors, but the appropriate reaction for the rest of us.

Images of the historical treatment of such traitors conjures up hangings and firing squads. As emotionally satisfying as this might be, we know that the Supreme Court will never allow it, as of course we don’t do such things (unless of course it was the Prime Minister considered for such treatment…).

But I think that we can hearken back to a quasi-Biblical solution. We should gather around these low lifes and “stone” them. Not with actual rocks, but with words. We need to shame them and do so in a way that excoriates the evil from amongst us.

They should know that were we so able, we would in fact stone them to death. Failing that, however, we can still show them, ourselves, and the world the complete revulsion that we have for them.

After that, well prison is too good for them. Why should we spend millions of shekels maintaining this pox among us? We need to be more creative about the punishment.

As part of their shaming, they should be required to do teshuva, to make amends, to repent. They should be forced to confront every returning hostage and the families of the hostages that were killed.

Let them be spat upon, physically and/or metaphorically.

Then they should be part of a work gang that would be rebuilding destroyed communities or working in their fields. They should be sentenced to a lifetime of extirpating the great crime that they committed.

If they actually do repent and understand the magnitude of their wrongdoing, then great. I am more concerned about our own need to condemn, to remove this toxicity from ourselves.

As Jews, we believe that there might be hope for these traitors, that they can be made to see the evil of their ways. Perhaps. In the meantime however, we need to make sure that the traitors know that the fact that they aren’t being executed is because the people that they were willing to sell out are humane.

The spies among us deserve nothing but contempt and condemnation. We need this for ourselves, to make sure that we understand that those among us who would betray us should be massively, thoroughly and sincerely punished. And that we act on that understanding.

Douglas Altabef is the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of the Israel Independence Fund