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A former Jerusalem librarian has been sentenced to prison after being outed as a spy for the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. The group is the world’s most well-funded terrorist organization and operates out of Lebanon.
She received 2.5 years in prison for aiding and abetting the Lebanon-based group.
On Sunday, the Jerusalem District Court found Arab Yasmin Jaber guilty on charges of attempting to recruit Arab Israelis to a network of Hezbollah operatives in Israel. She was also found guilty of being a member of a terrorist organization and contacting an enemy agent in a foreign country.
Jaber, a 26-year-old resident of east Jerusalem, accepted a plea bargain in exchange for the lenient prison sentence.
According to the indictment, Jaber traveled to Lebanon and Turkey several times between 2015 and 2018, where she “knowingly had contact with foreign [terror] agents…was a member of the terrorist organization, took part in the organization’s activities and carried out…operations to help…fund terrorist organization activities.”
Because women generally fall under less scrutiny than men, Jaber’s role was to recruit Israeli Arab women as Hezbollah spies to provide information for the planning and execution of terror attacks.
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Jaber used social media posts on Instagram to communicate with her handlers, sending coded messages via the captions, prosecutors said.
She was arrested in September 2020 after a year-long investigation by Israel’s security forces known as Shin Bet. It had been investigating an Iranian-Hezbollah recruitment network operating in Israel.
News of Jaber’s arrest shocked her employer, the National Library of Israel.
In a statement, the institution said it came as a “great surprise” that their diligent employee was accused of “such grave offenses.”
“This Shin Bet investigation is the product of a lengthy intelligence operation to locate those suspected of being recruited by Hezbollah. It is another step in the counterterrorism efforts carried out in the past year against Quds Force and Hezbollah’s attempts to recruit Israeli Arabs,” a senior Shin Bet official said in a statement.
–Wire services
