- The leader of the two Israelis arrested after leading
police on a high speed chase in a moving van last Saturday in rural Tennessee
is the son of the spokesman for the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
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- The arrested Israeli 'mover,' Shmuel Dahan, 23, is himself
a former spokesman, for the National Union of Israeli Students which represents
the country's 150,000 university students.
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- News that one of the two Israeli 'movers' belonged to
that country's political elite might have proven useful in the criminal
investigation underway in rural North Carolina and Tennessee, where the
two men led authorities on a high-speed chase in a rented moving van last
weekend.
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- However, the investigation was halted Wednesday, after
the men were released from Unicol County Jail to the custody of federal
officials from the INS, where they face only a deportation hearing.
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- "They're taking it out of my jurisdiction,' stated
Sheriff Kent Harris, who apprehended the men last Saturday after a high
speed chase on a little-used state highway.
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- 'We may never know what they were doing.'
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- "They're our Israeli movers now"
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- Local law enforcement officials in Tennessee expressed
dismay at losing custody until it had been established what two Israelis
were doing attempting to elude police on a back road near the North Carolina
border so far off the beaten track that the only local attractions within
25 miles are the Rural Life Museum, the Southern Appalachian Repertory
Theatre, and the birthplace of Zebulon Baird Vance, a Civil War officer
and governor of North Carolina, but not exactly a 'Historical Hottie.'
Folks were puzzled.
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- Federal officials offered little guidance. A spokesman
for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a local reporter they couldn't
comment on the case while the men were in the custody of local authorities,
and was unavailable afterwards. Charges against the two included reckless
driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. The Sheriff
said the FBI had even ordered him to hold the duo without bond.
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- But now the only one doing any talking was the Israeli
Deputy Consul General, who, in a bit of fancy footwork until his boys were
'safely out of Dodge,' told reporters the men had been 'overwhelmed by
the process.'
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- "If they did something that was wrong, out of parameters
of the law,' stated Israeli Deputy Consul General Aviv Ezra in Atlanta,
'they have to pay the punishment."
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- Presumably he meant flying home in coach.
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- Israelis' Right here in River City'
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- Clearly the leader of the two Israelis while in custody,
Dahan was called 'the spokesman for the National Union of Israeli Students,
which represents most of the country's 150,000 university students,' in
the January 12, 2001 Jerusalem Post.
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- This gibes with early press reports after the men's arrest
in Tennessee, in which the Israeli deputy consul stated Dahan had recently
graduated from college.
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- Dahan, like many Israeli students, is a reservist. He
is quoted in the Jerusalem Post speaking for student reservists after Israeli
students marched around the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv in protest
of an increase in the number of days required on reserve duty.
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- With an articulateness that would be the envy of most
furniture movers, Dahan said, 'They want to be paid for each day of duty,
instead of only after a second or third consecutive day in the reserves.'
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- "Fiddler on the Roof" meets "Gomer Pyle"
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- While the Israelis were gone from his jail, for Sheriff
Kent Harris, the mystery remains... Although the two men had denied throwing
a bottle of suspicious liquid from their vehicle during the chase, for
example, Sheriff Harris said witnesses saw the men throw a bottle out the
window during the pursuit. "I called the witnesses back in and both
told me the same thing," Harris said. "The bottle was spinning
in the road after the pursuit came by."
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- After a witness gave the bottle to authorities, Harris
sent it for testing. Tests showed a chemical mix that turned out not to
be explosive. "It's very dangerous to drink it, but other than that,
there's nothing harmful," Harris said.
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- So why had the men lied'
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- But the biggest mystery surrounded the reason for the
men's presence in the area in the first place. William B. Lawson, one of
the lawyers appointed to represent the Israeli men, said they rented a
truck and were hauling furniture when they accidentally got off the interstate
and got lost.
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- But this is unlikely, since local law enforcement officials
had already stated that the men rented a storage locker nearby, in Mars
Hill.
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- "Even if you're trying to get lost," explained
Sheriff Harris, "Mars Hill is a hard place to get to."
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- Indeed, Mars Hills, North Carolina, appears at first
glance to be as remote a location as can be found in the Northern Hemisphere.
Any further off the beaten track and they'd be getting yesterday's CNN
Headline News.
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- One can only speculate on what business compelled two
young Israeli men to visit the regions' rural splendor...
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- Because they just can't get enough NASCAR in Tel Aviv'
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- Jonathon Pollard & Bin Laden's "Spiritual Mentor"
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- This remote region of North Carolina does have one big
Israeli connection, however. We discovered that convicted Israeli spy Jonathon
Pollard is imprisoned in the area, at the Federal Correctional Institute
in Butner, North Carolina.
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- Strangely, the same Deputy Consul General from the Israeli
Consulate in Atlanta that smoothed the release of the two latest Israeli
movers to run afoul of the law, Aviv Ezra, 'is a lifeline' to Pollard,
according to a report at www.johnathonpollard.org, visits him regularly
in prison, and acts as his interlocutor with visitors from the outside.
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- This is no doubt just sheer coincidence.
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- However the next sentence from the story on Pollard's
website mentioning Avri Ezra indicates to the conspiracy-minded (although
certainly not to us) that perhaps something else is going on'
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- Israeli Deputy Consul Ezra himself may be a spook. At
least he seems to know a lot of them'
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- Ezra's training for this sensitive task (hanging out
with Pollard) was gained while working at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo,"
states the convicted Israeli spy's website, "where he also served
as the contact person to Azzam Azzam."
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- Azzam Azzam is an Israeli spy.
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- Don't deport the 'NASCAR' Israelis!
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- Azzam had been imprisoned for more than seven years in
Cairo, we learned from news reports, until his release by Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarek.
-
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- Israeli Deputy Consul Aviv Ezra, the 'NASCAR Israelis'
friend and protector, can thus be said to be'and fairly'a 'spy handler.'
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- Confusingly, Azzam is also referred to in published reports
as 'Bin Laden's spiritual mentor.'
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- Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors.
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- Still, this news puts a slightly different spin on what
has otherwise become just the latest episode of 'Israeli Movers Doing Inexplicable
Things Before Being Deported.'
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- But not to the stolid campaigners at the FBI.
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- FBI agents searched the two men's storage facility by
late Monday night, The Asheville Citizen-Times reported, but found no evidence
of anything suspicious.
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- What is suspicious is the unbelievable story the two
men told investigators... that they were just on their way to West Virginia
to deliver furniture.
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- Right.
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- "Israelis delivering furniture in West Virginia"
doesn't exactly have what used to be called the ring of truth, does it.
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- It has been a day of strange omens in the news.
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- Mexican air force pilots filming UFOs. Israeli soldiers
scouring Gaza for body parts of fallen soldiers. And now this...
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- Following their arrest last Saturday afternoon, the local
sheriff said he had 'had a sick feeling' when he found a 'Learn to Fly'
brochure in the Israelis moving van, especially since the county they were
in was home to the nation's only Nuclear Fuel Services plant.
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- It wasn't a 'learn to fly in Florida' brochure,"
the Israeli Deputy Consul cheerfully assured everyone. It had been just
a 'learn to fly in Florida' business card.
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- Tonight, the local Sheriff could be forgiven for feeling
just a little sore at the Feds stepping in and screwing his case.
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- The man does not get all that many 'at bats.'
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- Last year in Mars Hill, according to 2001 crime statistics,
the latest available, there were no murders, no rapes, no robberies, and
one assault.
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- 'This is still a very suspicious case,' Sheriff Harris
said last Sunday, stubbornly reiterating the same comment he'd made a day
earlier.
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- Four days later, nothing has changed.
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