The Jewish Voice website reports that fallen soldier Yona Efraim Feldbaum had previously been approached by the ISA for recruitment as an informant against residents of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Feldbaum, a resident of Zayit Ra’anan in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, is survived by his wife, Shulamit, and their five children. He worked as a contractor and was known for his volunteer work preparing food for lone soldiers and reservists.
Gruner recalled his acquaintance with Feldbaum, saying he first met him 14 years ago in the community of Nahaliel, during a period when the ISA’s Jewish department allegedly tried to pressure Feldbaum into becoming an informant.
“His gun license had been revoked after he was attacked by Arabs and fired a warning shot into the air,” Gruner wrote. “The ISA exploited that to pressure him into cooperating, supposedly in exchange for getting his firearm returned. The meetings began to include payments, and he realized they were trying to extract information about his friends. When he understood what was happening, he turned to me to expose it.”
In a recorded testimony from that time, Feldbaum described the alleged recruitment attempt:
“He presented himself as a friend who wanted to help me get my gun back. In that meeting, he gave me 500 shekels and said, ‘Take it.’ Later, we met again, presumably at an ISA facility, and he started asking questions about my friends. He showed me a list of names and tried to gauge my reactions. The next time, he brought 300 shekels. I told a friend that if I didn’t report these meetings by a certain time, he should make them public so I wouldn’t be pressured further.”
“In the third meeting, I still hadn’t received my gun back. They told me that if I continued cooperating, I’d get it. Again, I was given 500 shekels. I consulted my rabbi, who sent me to the Honenu legal aid organization. After I reported everything to Honenu, the ISA stopped contacting me.”
Shmuel Medad, CEO of Honenu, confirmed that his organization had assisted Feldbaum at the time. “People don’t realize how cruel and manipulative some of the ISA’s methods are-and these continue even today,” Meydad said. “I call on the new ISA chief, David Zini, to take responsibility and bring order to the agency. I recently received word of an internal ISA decision to ‘take down’ the Honenu organization and me personally. I would like to hear from him directly-why?”
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