Israel – The Hizbollah Captain Who Converted to Judaism

    50

    file photoIsrael – Although every ger tzedek comes with his incredible and inspiring story, Avi Sinai’s story is surely one of the most exceptional. Living today in the Galil, Avi Sinai in his past was a member of Hizbollah for years who had even undergone special terrorist training in Iran.

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    “Israelis think they can ‘solve’ the conflict with Hizbollah, but they’re mistaken. If you want to better understand the mentality of groups like Hizbollah or Hamas, think of Hitler who had planned to control the world with his thousand years Reich. Along the way, the Germans understood that they had to destroy the Jews. That’s how it is with radical Islam today,” says Avi.

    ‘You only have to hear what speakers of Islam are saying and not stuff up your ears. The Hamas spokesman said, ‘We’ll conquer Rome, and afterwards, all of Europe. Once we finish with Europe, we’ll conquer the two Americas. We won’t forgo East Europe either. Of course, we have to destroy the Jews.’

    “It’s amazing how similar their talk is to the Germans before the Holocaust. But you shouldn’t be surprised. Every Pesach night you say, ‘In every generation they stand against us to destroy us.’ Once it was Hitler, today it’s radical Islam.

    “You have to be naive to believe that a conflict over the Sheba Farm is what is motivating Hizbollah’s hatred. What didn’t you do so Hamas would have no reason to battle you in the south? With your own hands, you destroyed flourishing towns. You tore apart Israeli society. You thought Hamas wouldn’t have a reason to fight or shoot at you. Did it stop — or did it only get worse?”

    Avi believes that most Muslims admire Jews as a special people, the “people of the book.” However, their brothers who are driven with hate towards Israel are the ones in power, and the Jews are in great danger.

    In his youth in south Lebanon, Avi once attended a lecture by an Arabic sheikh who quoted verses from the Koran calling for Israel’s destruction. When he came home, he met his uncle, who noticed how stirred up he was. “Bring me a few old Korans,” his uncle commanded him, “I don’t care who printed them, as long as they are old.”

    Avi gave him the Korans. He was furious when he discovered that the verses which the sheikh had quoted didn’t even exist in old Korans. His uncle told him, “He’s making up verses.”

    Avi’s brother had been burned to death by a leading Hizbollah commander. He decided to join Hizbollah to revenge his brother’s death and find ways to thwart their efforts against Israel “I knew that the greatest revenge I could take would be within Hizbollah ranks themselves.”

    He spend a long time training in terror techniques. “Experts from other terrorist groups from all over the world came to teach us how to use weapons, but also to learn from us how to create suicide bombers,” Avi says. “They needed some of those for their battles.”

    Suicide bombers do not come from the ranks of the terrorists.

    “Sometimes, we found people who had lost all desire for life and were willing to kill themselves from the better-to-do Lebanese society. But the vast majority of the suicide bombers came from the refugee camps — people who had lost all joy in life, who were depressed, who hated themselves and therefore hated others too.

    “To encourage these people to become suicide bombers, Hizbollah offered incentives, such as offering to support their families after they killed themselves. In this way, the person who had been viewed as the “nebich” and the “family shame” now became the hero who reinstituted their honor and ensured their livelihood for the rest of their lives. The money to pay them was collected from donations all over the world.”

    Avi’s uncle was a clever man who understand the double game Avi was playing. He once called Avi over and said he wanted to tell him a story. ‘Once I saw a trapeze walker going on a thin rope stretched between two tall buildings. He went from one building to another, while hundreds of people stared below to see if he would stumble and fall. He knew that a comfortable sum awaited him if he succeeded in reaching the end. Five minutes of work and he would earn what usually takes a month. It all depended on him focusing on what he was doing and keeping his balance, and not thinking about the reward or anything else. All it would have taken is one second to fall. Just one mistake is all it takes. Remember this well.”

    Avi put all his efforts in keeping up his disguise and fulfilling his role in the Hizbollah. He kept getting promoted until he was appointed over a region and had 60 Hezbollah terrorists under his command.

    Hizbollah would attack the Israelis and kill soldiers. Then they would take pictures of the dead soldiers and distribute it to the international media to further humiliate the Israelis and weaken their resolve. “I don’t know why the Israelis themselves publish such pictures,” says Avi. “It serves their enemies’ goals.”

    Once, his Hizbollah camp was preparing a booby-trapped truck for a suicide bomber to explode into an envoy of IDF cars. Avi feverishly thought how he could thwart the scheme. During the night before the explosion, he connected he car’ electricity to the explosion’s electric clock. When the suicide comber came the next day and ignited the car, the explosives instantly blew up.

    The terrorists in the camp were shocked. They were sure the Israelis had done it, but saw no signs of an infiltration. Avi was safe because the wires he had connected had blown up together with the truck without leaving tracks. “I was saved, and several Israeli soldiers were saved with me. A similar fate, a blood pact was formed between me and people who I never saw and who didn’t even know I existed.”

    Then Hizbollah planned another booby-trapped vehicle for the Israelis early in the morning. Avi’s fellow terrorists were already grinning to imagine the Israelis’ shock and pain at the loss of Israeli lives, Avi was feverishly thinking how he could thwart it.

    This time, they planned to sent an ambulance filled with dozens of kilograms of explosives and nails, as if it was an ambulance bringing a seriously ill person for treatment. Hizbollah knew that the Israelis would let it through. The driver was instructed that if the Israelis tried to stop it at the border point, he should blow up the ambulance with them.

    Avi couldn’t set up the wires again, or blow it up in the camp, because that would give him away and endanger his family. Only shortly before the ambulance left the camp, did an idea occur to him. He went to the driver and sent him off with words of encouragement. The driver didn’t notice that Avi had written on the dust covering the front window “tofes” (in Hebrew “mechonit tofes” is a car-bomb).

    When the Israelis saw the ambulance coming, they spotted the word on the window and a soldier immediately threw a grenade at the vehicle. It blew up on the spot, only causing light injuries to the soldiers manning the border post.

    The Hizbollah camp was furious. The terrorists raged that it was probably the UN soldiers who had given them away. Avi was among the most vocal accusers.

    When Mossad agents interrogated the soldiers in the hospital, one revealed that the word ‘tofes’ had alerted him to the danger. Once the Mossad realized that they had a friend in the Hizbollah camp, they resolved to discover who he was.

    A short time later, a new terrorist called Mahmud joined the Hizbollah camp in South Lebanon. Avi, who was aware that there might be collaborators with the Israelis within the camp, nevertheless was impressed with Mahmud’s dedication and abilities and didn’t imagine he could be an agent. It turned out that Mahmud had been sent by the Israelis to discover who had alerted them with the word ‘tofes.’

    “Until today, I don’t know how Mahmud discovered me, but it didn’t take him too long,” says Avi. “Once he discovered who was the last person who had stood next to the ambulance before it left, it was obvious to him. He asked me to write the name and telephone number of one of the soldiers in our camp. Now that I think it over, I think he wanted to compare my handwriting with the example that he received from his operators in Israel. In the end, he decided I was the one who had written ‘tofes’ and he approached me with a tiny telephone pen, and asked me to speak with one of his commanders in the Mossad.” Avi became a Mossad agent.

    Once, Mahmud asked Avi to go to the Syrian camp in Baalbek, which Avi was familiar with. The Mossad knew that they were getting a specially sophisticated radar with missile capacity. He was to exchange a chip in the computer. But first, he had to learn how to do it. The solution came from an unexpected direction: his commanders decided to send him for a series of religious seminars by Islamic imams in Teheran. The Mossad utilized the opportunity to send him a special teacher, a strictly religious Muslim who believed he had to help the Jewish people. This man taught him how to change a chip.

    Avi entered the Syrian camp in a simple but ingenious way: When he saw a gas tanker entering the camp, he placed a nail on the ground. The container suffered a puncture, and the upset driver got out to check what had happened. Avi approached him to help him change the tire, and then went to the back of the tanker, entering the camp together with the tanker.

    After waiting in a secret place, he managed to enter the bunker where he figured out the radar was. After managing to fool the guards into letting him enter, he quickly changed the chip.

    Unexpectedly, the computer requested that he write his name and the appropriate password. Warning beeps began to go off. The camp’s soldiers began searching for an intruder, and they surrounded the area, encircling the bunker while checking every inch of the ground.

    “I wasn’t afraid because of my dream,” Avi recalls. “When I was young, I used to dream that I was traipsing above mountains and hills, looking at people, and continuing on until I reached a place full of light and joy. When I reached the light, I felt completely calm, and then heard a voice blessing me, “Don’t be afraid. You’re protected.”

    Now, in deep trouble, Avi prayed to G-d. He had always prayed, but this time he felt specially close. He prayed, “I’m giving up my life for the Jewish people. They’re your children. Please protect me, and protect my children. Please get me out of here!” The Syrian soldiers were a meter away from him, but somehow didn’t see him. Then, suddenly, the candle which Avi had lit next to the diesel tanks, ignited the pieces of wood he had soaked in oil. Thick smoke and flames of fire began to billow from the large gas container. Everyone left the bunker area, and shouts and orders filled the air. Fear fell upon the soldiers and chaos reigned.

    “In this commotion, apparently someone thought that for the sake of the soldiers’ security, they had to shut the electricity in the camp. Or maybe it shut automatically. I don’t know. I only saw that complete dark had descended on the camp, besides the street lights. I felt it was again heavenly providence saving me while the soldiers searched the area. I approached the fence closest to me, cut through with simple wire scissors, and headed home to my wife and children.”

    Miracles continued to follow Avi during his operations with Hizbollah. But the biggest miracle of all was his escape from them, after they discovered his secret identity.

    He was in a group of high-ranking Hizbollah leaders who had just returned from a meeting with the Vatican at the request of the Pope.( At the meeting, the Pope had encouraged their operations against Israel.)

    Nasrallah was discussing with the group what they had seen in Europe. Then one of Nasrallah’s closest captains approached him, apparently with information important enough to disturb the meeting. “I didn’t see the paper he showed Nasrallah, but from his face, I could see something serious had happened.

    “The meeting finished, and I randomly walked near Nasrallah’s close captains who had surrounded the captain who had just spoken with him. I dallied near them and heard them talking about an Israel captive that had been taken and was in the Syrian camp in Baalbek”

    Avi quickly informed Mahmud, and he passed the info over. Within a short time, an elite Israeli commando made a foray against the camp and rescued the Israeli captive. The alacrity with which they did it, however, put Avi in great danger, because they figured out the Israelis must have received the information from him.

    Avi had to flee immediately. He first had to tell his wife and children to abandon their homes, but how? He fled the Hizbollah camp through the nearby wadi, and came to the local grocery store where he bought candies for the children. Then he called home. A strange voice answered the telephone. It was one of the Hizbollah men, telling him to return to the camp immediately.

    According to the principle that “the safest place is the most dangerous place”, Avi returned to the camp and hid there, hoping to hear news where his family was being held, if Hezbollah had taken hold of them. He lived off the candies for the next 2 weeks. He found out that the prison in camp was empty, from which he understood that his family was not being held by Hezbollah.

    Now he wanted to escape the camp. He left the camp as he had before, and tried to hitch a ride to the Israeli border. Many cars passed by without stopping, until one finally slowed down. The driver had identified him! Avi ran into the field, but Hizbollah soldiers rushed after him.

    “I knew that I better not get caught by the simple terrorists, because they would beat me up or even shoot me without thinking twice. I had to be caught by the most senior commander. I climbed up a tree, not to hide, but to better identify the soldiers looking for me and choose which one to catch me,”Avi says.

    He saw the camp commander himself, and called him to come. The soldiers looked up and saw him, but feared to approach because he might carry weapons or even an explosives belt. But Avi had no interest in exploding himself with them; he wanted to live.

    “Get down, with your hands lifted high!” the commander ordered him.

    Avi was arrested and taken to the camp. He was confronted by his former terrorist colleagues, who looked at him with undisguised animosity. One of them, Mahmud, gave him a ringing slap, and told him, “You wanted to reach your family? They got away to Israel, but we’ll find them and hang them, one by one!” Avi was thrilled to hear they had escaped.

    He was given the death sentence, but knew that tortures awaited him first. He knew he would stand up to them, and wouldn’t break. Another thing he realized at the time — if he would manage to escape this hell, he would convert and join the Jewish people. He had always felt that the Torah suited him better. He hated the life of thievery and stealing which was a central motif in the lives of the Arabs.

    On the day his death sentence was to be carried out, five terrorists were lined up with their rifles and given the order to shoot.

    Despite the terrorists’ pulling the triggers, the rifles didn’t respond. The commander gave the order to shoot again. This time also, the rifles didn’t shoot. The commander was consumed by fury and the terrorists were dumbfounded. “Shoot at the sky!” the command ordered. The five directed their rifles upward, and all five rifles shot. “Now shoot him!” he ordered. The 5 rifles wouldn’t budge.

    The death sentence was delayed until the next day. Shock spread throughout the camp at the bizarre developments. That night, under the protection of the dark, one soldier snuck into the prison and freed Avi from his chains. It was a soldier whom Avi had once done a favor for in the past, and now wanted to pay him back. “I don’t want to identify him. Today, he is a senior member of Hizbollah,” Avi says.

    With the assistance of a known drug smuggler, Avi crossed the border into Israel. After his happy reunion with his family, they all decided to convert to Judaism together. Knowing that Judaism does not welcome gerim, Avi nonetheless approached Rav Shmuel Eliahu, the rav of Tsefas, to begin the process.

    Rav Eliahu spoke softly and warmly to the family when they entered. To his astonishment, Avi recognized the voice. He suddenly realized — it was the voice he had heard in his dream. The voice that had promised him that he would be protected.

    “I told the rav that I wanted to be a Jew,” said Avi. “I told him that I had been moving to Judaism my entire life. Everything I had heard in my childhood, everything I had learned in my work, all the good and bad that I had seen in my life — had brought me to ask him to accept me to the Jewish people. I want to be part of this people and part of their future.”

    Rav Eliahu rejected his request, as halacha requires, and sent him to a yeshiva to learn. “Try it out,” he told Avi, “and afterwards, you’ll decide.”

    Avi wasn’t broken. He began to study Judaism intensively in a local yeshiva, and his wife began to learn the halachos she had to keep. “We felt we had been given special powers to learn as much as we did. It was a gift from heaven,” Avi recalled. After several months, they were ready to proceed with the giyur and their deepest wish was fulfilled.

    Avi recorded in his diary after that momentous event, “We converted. We’re thrilled. We’re part of this nation about which it is written, ‘And all families of the earth will be blessed in you and your seed.” We’re not standing at the side, but we’re part of them. We’re partners with this people in bringing blessing to the world.”


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    50 Comments
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    ali
    ali
    14 years ago

    Beautiful person!! May Hashem give him and his family much strength!!!

    stop day dreaming
    stop day dreaming
    14 years ago

    i do not believe one word

    dreamer
    dreamer
    14 years ago

    fiction!

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    u think he maybe a double agent?

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    wow what a great story thanks VIN

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Is this story really true? It’s hard to believe that Hizbullah would patiently wait for a formal execution. They don’t have a reputation for formalities. It seems like they would be more likely to tear him apart with their bare hands.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    The Pope? Which one – Ratzinger, Wojtyla, Luciani, Montini??

    This sounds like a bubbemeise.

    To Everyone
    To Everyone
    14 years ago

    Who gives everyone the right to say this is false and not true all of you should think before you speak.
    I think it is a truly amazing story.
    You Should take back yup comments.

    Double Agent
    Double Agent
    14 years ago

    He wants to become a double agent, for Hezbollah

    I think we should not trust this guy.

    his story is fabricated, and it is not real!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    any way to back up this story?

    yeah, okay...
    yeah, okay...
    14 years ago

    story makes no sense at all!!! i.e…the ambulance was blown up by a grenade, but yet the front windshield was saved with the visibility of the word “tofes” to compare as a sample to Avi’s handwriting. right!…

    someone help me
    someone help me
    14 years ago

    so here lies one of my biggest qualms with yiddishkite. Obviously, this story is not what we frum yiddin use to prove that what we believe is emes. Nevertheless, I am always being told stories that frankly are probably not true. I do not believe that this story is true and I do not really think that is a result of a lack of emunah on my part. I am even more concerned about stories I hear about great tzaddikim that are clearly fables since so many of them have the same characteristics, inspirational points, and endings. Yes, we are told that if we believe them all we are fools and if we dont believe them at all, we are also fools. So here’s my general question to which I would love serious feedback… If we can get ourselves so excited and strengthened through hearing these stories and we assume the ends justify the means (telling some white lies is ok as long as one becomes a bit more shtark) so who’s to say that our entire basis of belief is not just a made up story that has good intentions? I love yiddishkite, but dont like feeling like a gullible fool. questions, comments, concerns??

    yeah, okay...
    yeah, okay...
    14 years ago

    story makes no sense at all!!! i.e…the ambulance was blown up by a grenade, but yet the front windshield was saved with the visibility of the word “tofes” to compare as a sample to Avi’s handwriting. right!…

    BOBA MASAH
    BOBA MASAH
    14 years ago

    Nice story. Wake up ich zug dir noch amul wake up…….

    power up
    power up
    14 years ago

    Nice story, whether it fiction or truth, is another story. I for myself can’t decide.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    This story has many flaws… One very significant one is, that this Mohamed guy wanted to compare his handwriting with the one on the Ambulance. This is a CROCK of CRAP!!! The story tells you that the ambulance was blown up by the soldier when noticing “Tofes” written out on it at the check point! Can someone explain HOW one can compare a handwritting from a paper to one that was written in dust on an ambulance that blew up?!?

    THIS IS RETARDED!!!!! I’m sorry

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    This goes into the urban myth folder along with the story about the Bais Yaakov girls who committed suicide.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    after a while he woke up from his dream. wow this will make a good book. its a bunch of bolony right the soldier noticed the words on the ambulance but the driver didnt

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    well this is not the first time you hear of such a story. there are a handful of arabs out there who left their religion for numerous reasons

    STEVE
    STEVE
    14 years ago

    Several parts of the story do seem implausible.story makes no sense at all!!! i.e…the ambulance was blown up by a grenade, but yet the front windshield was saved with the visibility of the word “tofes” to compare as a sample to Avi’s handwriting. right!…

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Standing in front of the firing squad and not getting killed,and nobody even thought about killing him by a sword its just not possible.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    The Pope encouraged Hezbolllah to commit acts of terror, right. I’m no fan of his, but in all of his public statements he has condenmed terrorism and urged that both sides negotiate.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Misnagdim can’t believe such stories, sorry, I don’t see the big deal, Gd runs the world…everything is possible, or did Eliyahu Hanavi not die?!

    a yid
    a yid
    14 years ago

    When is it going to be in paperback? Pure fiction.

    Five Towns Resident
    Five Towns Resident
    14 years ago

    I would love to believe this story, I really would. But it reads like a story out of “Olameinu” from when I was a kid, especially the part about the rifles that wouldn’t fire.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    In the last 20 years Israel has not rescued a soldier from a Lebanan camp. This story is false!

    jt
    jt
    14 years ago

    i once made up the same story. id faster believe in aliens thn this bs

    pushiter yid
    pushiter yid
    14 years ago

    by telling such stories your using the same taktics as the hizbolla speach writers , our torah is pure and don’t need such lies to affirm it

    Seriously?
    Seriously?
    14 years ago

    I’m too proud of a Jew to make a mockery out of myself and believe this story. Whoever passes this on to others is making a fool out of themselves.

    yisroel
    yisroel
    14 years ago

    it sounds like a story that you tell kids to keep their attention.their are just too many bloated facts that sound exaggerated…………..but who knows

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    I was in North Israel last year for Passover dinner and I think I met him. I’m pretty sure at least part of this story is true. If it was the guy I’m thinking of (people there told me he used to be Hezbolah leader) he had a huge smile on his face and had zeal for judaism. He told a long story and was very animated, but I didn’t speak hebrew then so I didn’t understand. I am almost sure it is this guy who I saw and he seemed sincere. As for some of the details of this story, they could definitely be exaggerated but as far as I know, the basic story of the Hezbolah leader who converted is true. I could tell the location where the seder was…but maybe he still has people looking for him.

    Loshon Hora
    Loshon Hora
    14 years ago

    Any noticed same author as The Rochel Imeinu Gaza fairy tail.
    Also notes of the dibuk.
    Somehow these stories don’t happen in aschkenazi circles.
    Well I guess we will have atleast three books published & in a few generations people maybe calling others apikoores in the mikvah for not believing a printed fairy tail.
    Not to say that it isn’t possible for a Hizbolah Ger, although I wouldn’t so easily be mekabel one.
    BTW the Swazi Prince is another novel, if you Wikkipedia the Swazzi kingdom, he maybe from the family, but it seems not too likely he is a son of the king unless they have children very young, or an earlier king. A very grey area,I cannot confirm it not possible, but a good story teller, I would go hear him again, such a good job, a smart guy for sure.

    Anonymous
    Anonymous
    14 years ago

    Nobody has to believe it. All I can say is my brother was one of the soldiers who saw the word written on the ambulance and from then was in touch with Avi. Its all a hundred percent true. They compared it through the video cameras. My brother spoke to Avi before he got cought and said If he doesn’t make it out he will make sure his family is taken care of. Every word of this story is true. So all you idiots shut up.

    Motti
    Motti
    14 years ago

    It’s always interesting to see how some people have to mock things.
    Just admit, you can’t stand converts and on top of all this an Arab convert
    Who bothers if the story is true or false, aren’t many other stories simply written to testify of the power and love of Hashem?!
    We should be welcoming this new addition to our people as the holy Torah commands us, to mock him is an issur d’risa (but maybe the halacha of “love the convert” is left out in your new world translation of the chumash).
    Prejudice against converts seems still to exist, which is sad and those who act like converts are 2nd degree Jews, should look at themselves maybe it is just jealousy to see somebody chose something that some of us hold for granted!