The Rabbi Who Ran an Undercover Intelligence Unit by Tzvi Leff

The Rabbi Who Ran an Undercover Intelligence Unit

Rabbi Tzachi Fenton Talks about Advancing Israel’s Cause in the Arab World

BY TZVI LEFF

It’s Friday morning, which means that it’s time for Rabbi Tzachi Fenton to release his weekly dvar Torah. From the study of his home in Elkana, a Religious Zionist community in Samaria, Rabbi Fenton sets up his laptop, and begins.

“Shabbat Salam, Ya Jamiah Al-Kheir,” begins Fenton in his fluent Palestinian-dialect Arabic. “Hal-Usbua Rah-Nikrah Parshat Tazria-Metzora.” The 53-year-old father of six goes on to explain the biblical prohibition of spreading gossip, highlighting the importance of watching one’s tongue.

Rabbi Fenton then shares the short minute-long video clip on social media, where it quickly racks up 74 thousand views within days. His Torah commentary soon sparks religious dialogue.

“The Torah is distorted; it is full of myths,” comments Nuwaf, whose Twitter profile identifies him as a resident of the Islamic holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia.

“Do you want to learn or do you want to debate?” Rabbi Fenton replies back in Arabic.

Rabbi Fenton started releasing his short Arabic-language sermons as a way to expose the Arab world to Judaism following the Abraham Accords, a historical breakthrough that saw Israel establish diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

“I disseminate, every week, a dvar Torah on the parsha, a verse, and its explanation in Arabic along with a timely anecdote. It is already being viewed by tens of thousands of people from the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” Rabbi Fenton said in an interview with The Jewish Home.

“You see people responding with curses and insults but many also accept it with nuance – they listen and are interested. It’s a beautiful thing to see,” he continued.

Nothing encapsulates Rabbi Fenton’s two professional personas more than his Arabic-language Torah sermons. Today, Rabbi Fenton is a community rabbi who manages a Kollel in Petah Tikva while simultaneously running Bareket, a private business intelligence firm.

But prior to that, Rabbi Fenton ran agents for years in Arab countries as a case manager for one of Israel’s most secretive intelligence units. This unit is so secret that its name cannot be mentioned in this article; it was until recently one of the country’s “invisible units” which officially do not exist.

This unit is tasked with collecting human intelligence, running undercover agents throughout the Arab world, and penetrating Israel’s most lethal adversaries. Case managers must frequently infiltrate enemy territory in order to recruit and debrief agents and are guarded by a secretive commando unit tasked with protecting them.

Officers sometimes pay the ultimate price for their work on behalf of G-d and country. During the Second Intifada, a senior officer in the unit was gunned down by his agent during a debriefing near Bethlehem.

With only a few dozen operational case managers at any given time – far smaller than corresponding units and agencies – its successes are legendary despite its size. In 2018, the unit received a coveted official commendation from the head of IDF Military intelligence for a series of operations it ran overseas in the preceding years.

Born to a British father and Israeli mother, Rabbi Fenton received a classic Jerusalem Religious Zionist upbringing. After graduating high school, he studied in Yeshivat Hakotel as part of the hesder program combining military service and Torah study. Following 18 months in yeshiva, Fenton drafted into the Givati Infantry Brigade.

Fenton soon rose through the ranks. Beginning as an ordinary conscript, he was quickly sent to Sergeants School and was promoted again and again. By the time he left the IDF five years later, Fenton had reached Company Commander, a position making him responsible for 80-100 troops.

After leaving the IDF, Fenton returned to the study hall. He planned to become a rabbi and had almost completed his studies for the Rabbinate ordination exam at Yeshivat Maale Adumim when he received a call from an unknown number.

“They approached me from one of the units in the Israeli intelligence community and requested that I join their ranks,” recounted Fenton. “I passed their long screening and testing process and joined.”

There, Fenton was taught “everything,” from Islam and Arabic to the fine art of running agents. Other parts of the training regimen included learning about the different religious and cultural norms prevalent in the Middle East.

“After this grueling yet fascinating training course, I began working as a case manager running agents in Arabic countries,” said Rabbi Fenton, going on to call the job “fascinating; something that brings out your creativity, cleverness, and daring.”

Forbidden from recounting virtually anything he did, Fenton says simply, “Everything you see in James Bond and other espionage movies is only a trailer to the real thing.” He would go on to serve seven years as an active member of the unit, rising to command one of its key divisions.

Even after leaving active duty, Rabbi Fenton’s connections to the national security and intelligence community remained strong. Continuing to serve in the unit in a reserve capacity for an additional 11 years, Rabbi Fenton today commands a sensitive operations center in the IDF’s Northern Command with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

“There’s no real separation between active duty and the reserves in this unit,” shares Rabbi Fenton. “Reserves duty here is extremely intensive. Every week, I would disappear for a few days.”

Returning to civilian life, Fenton finished his studies and received rabbinical ordination. When asked why he decided to put off his dream of becoming a rabbi in favor of handling agents in enemy countries, Rabbi Fenton says that he saw no contradiction between the two.

“In my eyes, the intelligence and Zionist activities in the Land of Israel is part of the Torah,” Fenton declares. “There’s a direct line connecting halachic, religious, and spiritual activities to protecting the State of Israel.”

Running agents “is completely part of serving G-d and doing mitzvot,” Rabbi Fenton continues. “It’s true that it sometimes can be on the account of learning Torah but serving in the IDF and the security establishment is a massive mitzvah.”

“I’m sure that my grandparents and all of our ancestors before them over the last 2,000 years are extremely proud of us. They prayed for this moment where they could fulfill this mitzvah of sovereignty [over the Land of Israel] and to protect themselves. Once they only yearned for this, but today we merited to actually do it.”

Case managers tasked with collecting intelligence from human sources (known in the industry as “HUMINT”) are considered the elite of Israel’s Defense Establishment. Ever since Moshe Rabbeinu dispatched spies

“Everything you see in James Bond and other espionage movies is only a trailer to the real thing.”

to scout out the Land of Israel, HUMINT has been the backbone of intelligence and used by every empire in history.

In Israel, agent handlers fill the most secretive and classified units in the Mossad, the Shin Bet internal security service, the Israel Police, and IDF intelligence. Becoming a member of these hallowed units means passing a grueling barrage of tests that can often last for more than a year, including a security clearance in which candidates are grilled on every detail of their lives followed by a polygraph.

Through the recruitment process, candidates are scrutinized by a battery of behavioral psychologists to see if they indeed possess the rare skill set required to run agents. These include charisma, the ability to convince people to betray everything important to them, and to pretend to be someone they’re not.

A special focus is on honesty. Handlers must pass on what their agents told them precisely and accurately, with even a slight deviation or exaggeration potentially having a dramatic effect in how decisionmakers understand the enemy.

Officers sometimes disguise their true allegiance when attempting to extract information from agents who would never agree to work with the Jewish State. Rather than identify themselves as Israeli intelligence officers, case managers can present themselves as a representative of a foreign hedge fund seeking knowledge relating to their investments or even members of a different country’s espionage agency.

Paradoxically, people tasked with consistently lying to garner information must display high levels of personal integrity towards their bosses and colleagues. As legendary Mossad chief Meir Dagan would frequently say, “The dirtiest work must be done by those with the cleanest hands.” An unscrupulous officer can lead to devastating results. To illustrate, legendary Mossad agent runner Yehuda Gil almost led Israel to attack Syria in 1996 after supplying false reports of imminent war from a nonexistent agent.

According to Rabbi Fenton, the skills he utilized to run agents in Arab countries helps him today in his career as a rabbi, using his proficiency in body language and ability to accurately read people.

“The art of running agents is first and foremost the art of listening,” he relates. “We learn what’s called ‘active listening,’ which is an entire discipline and means how you move along a conversation and improving the quality of information you’re getting by listening correctly and letting the other person talk,” Rabbi Fenton says.

“Another thing is learning to look for the personal factors that motivate a person,” he continues. “When running agents, this is obviously our bread and butter – the ability to provide a solution to the person’s psychological needs, not just his physical ones. You need to examine the situation a person finds himself in and how to properly answer to that situation.”

He continues, “This is something which I find very helpful in the halachic world. Two people can ask the same question yet will get a different answer. The circumstances, the person, and basing everything on a [halachic] opinion that is relevant at that moment, to that situation, to me is something very important, and not just to be an ‘answer machine’ but to know how to accommodate the person asking.

“This includes what stage of his life he is in and his family and psychological status. The two fields are exactly the same in this regard,” Rabbi Fenton asserts. He adds that, like with running agents, a rabbi needs to understand the importance of respecting religious and traditional family customs.

“We returned to the Land of Israel after a very lengthy exile. Something that to one person appears legitimate to a different person looks like running afoul of the worst prohibition. Before everything, I give my full-hearted respect to people’s traditions,” says Rabbi Fenton.

“This is completely legitimate and it’s something I advocate for,” he continues, “That’s one of the beautiful things we have here in Israel. When 12 tribes come together with their ‘different flags and colors,’ they transform the picture into something richer and more colorful. Not everyone needs to be the same.”

Rabbi Fenton’s unusual professional background has become particularly relevant following the Abraham Accords. Inked this past September, the groundbreaking agreement saw Israel normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and likely Sudan, triggering a geopolitical alignment that essentially stymied the greater Arab-Israeli conflict.

Unlike previous agreements Israel reached with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, the Abraham Accords included an explicit message of religious-based coexistence. Deciding to name the diplomatic breakthrough after Abraham, the ancestor shared by both Jews and Muslims, the peace agreement text explicitly acknowledged that shared heritage and called for it to be “a spirit of coexistence, mutual understanding, and mutual respect.”

Invoking the history of the three Abrahamic religions marked a sea of change. For the first time, the Jewish people were recognized as a nation, not just a religion, counteracting years of propaganda contending that the Jews were not a People and were thus not entitled to a state of their own.

The agreement also references the Jewish People as descendants of Abraham whose origin and homeland are in the Middle East, diverging from the long-held narrative that Israel is a foreign colonial occupier. In addition, the Abraham Accords draw inspiration from

“There’s a direct line connecting halachic, religious, and spiritual activities to protecting the State of Israel.”

Arabs’ and Jews’ common ancestor, implicitly recognizing the validity of the Jewish religion. Over the last eight months since the festive signing agreement at the White House, the Persian Gulf has seen an explosion of Jewish-Muslim interfaith activities. Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef paid an official visit to Dubai in December and was treated like royalty, meeting with the Emirates’ most senior religious and governmental officials. Three new academies that teach Hebrew to local Arabs have sprung up in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, with organizers reporting a waiting list lasting for months.

Jewish holidays have become an opportunity for Israel and the Gulf States to connect, leading to scenes of royal princes attending public Chanukah lightings, Passover sedarim and Lag Ba’omer bonfires throughout the UAE and Bahrain. In a meeting with the Emirati Jewish community in late 2020, UAE Minister of State for Youth Affairs Shamma Al Mazrui extolled the “message of Shabbat,” telling her spellbound audience that the customs she witnessed had turned her into “a new student of the Jewish tradition and wisdom, your values, your ethics that guide you through a full year of weekly Torah portions.”

“I want to learn from you today,” she added.

The explosion of local interest in Judaism spurred by the Abraham Accords has led to a renaissance of Jewish life. In February, the Jewish communities in the Gulf Arab states announced that they had united to form an umbrella organization, the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (AGJC), that will oversee some of the key aspects of “building and enhancing Jewish life in the region.”

Based in the United Arab Emirates, the AGJC has since run a slew of religious events in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and has established a kashrut organization and the first Beth Din of Arabia.

With his extensive knowledge in both Judaism and Islam and fluent Arabic, the unprecedented interest in religious dialogue takes on added resonance for Rabbi Fenton.

“As an Arabic-speaking rabbi, I sense a tremendous growth in interfaith relations. If the ties were once mainly economic or based on interests, today the relationship is more about mutual respect and understanding between Islam and Judaism,” he says.

“I’m in contact with all sorts of imams, sheikhs, qadis and preachers, and there is a significant interest. Until today, we were locked in a battle with an enemy with horns ‘beyond the hills of darkness’ yet suddenly they can approach me directly without risking arrest immediately after,” Rabbi Fenton points out.

“People speak to me from the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other places. After the tragedy in Meron, I received so many messages from people who emphasized with our pain and consolations...something very human between two people. “In the background of the economic peace and security relationship, I think there is something very beautiful between people. Remember that fervent Muslims believe that the Torah was counterfeited and taken from somewhere else. I can’t underestimate the value of this respect. It is a huge revolution.”