The Shin Bet estimates that Iran is responsible for sending the flowers to the family home of the abductee, Yiri Elbag, with a letter of condolence for her death – which was not announced and no evidence pointing to it was published. The wreath was sent to the family’s home at the end of the week, and the attached letter reads: “Blessed memory (of Yiri Elbag). We all know that the country is the most important.”
In a Shin Bet announcement published in the afternoon, it was stated that an initial investigation raises a suspicion “that the people behind the delivery of the bouquet of flowers to the home of the abducted family to Yiri Albag, are most likely Iranian people.”
According to the investigators of the “Active Info” network, the phone number used to order the mourning wheel is associated with the account of an Iranian influence network posing as a campaign to free the abductees and which was exposed by the Shin Bet last January. The network was called “Bringing them home now”, and the Shin Bet revealed its existence to the public in a message published in the media. In the influence operation, the members of the network published a Google form and asked to fill in personal details, including phone numbers and addresses. The phone number in question, which was behind the order of the mourning wheel, is identified as the person who manages the network and is distributed to the public as a number to contact.
Eli Albag, Liri’s father, said that “I would be happy (to find out) that it is the Iranians and not from the country. And the next time they send beautiful foreigners that Liri loves.” Earlier today, the police announced that an investigation had been launched to find out the circumstances, and the professionals in the Investigations and Intelligence Division, and the online crime unit of the Central District are partners in it.
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The stranger sent to the house of the Albag family
The stranger that was sent to the home of the Albagasgira family
The letter attached to the wreath
The letter attached to the wreath
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The stranger arrived at the gate of the settlement where the family lived, but it is not yet clear how the Iranians managed to locate the address and provide instructions to the messenger. According to the order documents at the flower shop, the bouquet was ordered through a WhatsApp number that is not available for phone calls. As the name of the inviter, “Berzovsky” was specified – the original surname of the head of the Shin Bet Ronan Bar.
And the documents show that the name specified in the email address provided by the ordering party was the same as the name of a YSM policeman who was killed in the October 7 massacre and whose body is kept in Gaza. Since the publication this morning, the flower shop that accepted the invitation – and in fact fell victim to fraud – has received threatening calls from angry citizens.
In the past two years, “Haaretz” revealed several cases in which Iranian officials used Israeli citizens as agents – for the purpose of gathering intelligence information, operating influence operations and even psychological warfare. In the past it was revealed that the Iranian agents purchase credit cards and local phone numbers, and use them to operate couriers. If the Shin Bet’s assessment is correct, then this is a step up in Iran’s local activity in Israel – and the first action directed at a particular family in its home.
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Screenshot of correspondence between the flower shop and the foreign customer
Screenshot of correspondence between the flower shop and the foreign customer
In January, the Shin Bet announced that intelligence agencies in Iran were using fake media channels to collect information on Israeli citizens and use them in security missions. In its announcement at the time, the Shin Bet confirmed information that appeared in the “Haaretz” investigation and in other publications – according to which groups and pages on social networks, including “Israel the Second” tried For the conflict between the secular and the religious, they were used for the purpose of psychological warfare and gathering information on senior officials in the Israeli security system.
Along with operating groups for the purpose of influence, Iran used platforms such as WhatsApp for the purpose of operating agents as part of “active intelligence”, that is, to turn Israeli citizens into agents for the purpose of gathering intelligence. The Shin Bet announcement in January also stated that this activity included “hanging up signs drafted by the Iranians, photographing demonstrators, filling out ‘surveys’ and more.”
The fact that foreign agents made protest activists hang signs according to a design they dictated was revealed for the first time in “Haaretz” during the demonstrations against the coup d’état last year. The Shin Bet also confirmed that Iran was behind surveys designed to gather information about protesters and senior members of the security establishment. In addition, Iran was behind a network to recruit Israeli citizens and operate them. The Iranians used this network to get the Israelis to photograph residential addresses of members of the security establishment and individuals who spoke out in the media against Iran.
According to security sources, there is great difficulty in thwarting influence networks because there is usually not one person behind them who can be arrested. A Shin Bet source said that for every network that is exposed, ten more are opened, and that exposing them is part of the organization’s efforts against them. Ahya Shatz, CEO of the organization “Fake Reporter” which deals with exposing networks of influence, said that “it is possible to deal with the engineering of the Iranian consciousness and it is possible to prevent incidents such What ends with sending a stranger to a kidnapped family begins with the establishment of an infrastructure of fake profiles on the networks.”
