The risks to which the Lebanese expatriate is exposed
By KKhodor Awarki
Three risks to which the Lebanese abroad are exposed
First, Lebanese entities classified as terrorist abroad seek to recruit him to benefit from him and do not consider that he is a student or expatriate seeking a decent life; rather, they exploit him in favor of officials who are often corrupt and unsuccessful, because a successful intelligence officer does not recruit a Lebanese but seeks to recruit anyone far removed from Lebanese, and recruits officers from the same country or from Israel; as for the Lebanese, he is exposed to the agencies in the countries where he resides, and all his communications are monitored, his movements are monitored, and his acquaintances—there is no check among them; they are spies, and they approach him because they are spies.
This is the reality of life for expatriates.
The second danger is relatives belonging to organizations classified as terrorists outside Lebanon; any relative who is a member of a terrorist organization recruits them to recruit their relatives abroad, so cut off your contacts with your relatives classified as terrorists.
Whoever wants to succeed in intelligence does not recruit a Lebanese but recruits a foreigner who does not attract attention.
The second danger is the Mossad’s pursuit of recruiting any Lebanese expatriate; and if it were possible to recruit the entire Lebanese people, Israel would do so. Therefore, do not say, “Who am I for them to recruit me?” They will try with every Lebanese abroad to recruit him, and if they did not contact you, they did it and found you unsuitable for them without you even feeling it, and you are lucky that they did not.
The dangers from the Mossad’s pursuit are real, and its amazing capabilities in knowing everything about Lebanese abroad, because it has in Lebanon an archive of all Lebanese that it obtained from spies in Lebanon for seventy years, collecting information about every Lebanese living in Lebanon and abroad; and the Mossad recruits any Lebanese who accepts recruitment and sets him in the trap of greed for money or the trap of protection or intimidation and blackmail.
How do they know everything about you??
The Mossad obtains information from all the American, Canadian, Arab, and European governments, and they provide it to Israel because there are information exchange agreements with them.
How do they trap you?
New friends… especially those you love quickly, who have distinct, humorous, and close-to-heart personalities—these are often professionals
Through emotional relationships
Through greed for money, position, job, opportunity, fame, prizes, and facilities for residence and citizenship—and all of these are tools of blackmail, but the Mossad and the intelligence agencies of the countries in which the innocent person resides often deceive those greedy and never help them once he becomes a slave to them upon accepting to work for them and filming his conversations with them on video.
Through your close friends
And it is the same method used by drug trafficking gangs
Through blackmail with your pictures with them, then they threaten to publish the pictures and say, “I am Israeli; I will publish my picture in Israeli military uniform and my picture with you so that all the Lebanese people think you are a spy for Israel,” and this is a known method and used a lot.
How do you resist this method?
You publish the photos yourself if they publish them, and publish the story of their attempts as soon as they happen, and notify the authorities in the presence of a lawyer.
The second method:
Giving you money
Accustoming you to religion
Offering jobs with imaginary salaries
Helping you find work and obtain a nationality
In these cases, kill yourself and do not accept their help or their blackmail, and if you fall into their trap, do not submit and go to the police and inform them and publish your story, and do not accept submitting to them; when you publicly announce your story, they will flee from pursuing you.
The third method:
Threatening to kill your family and whom you love
They will not kill anyone; it is just blackmail
And the answer is: “Kill them, and I will not work with you”
And expose them immediately in the media, such as Facebook and Instagram, and through the police submit a complaint to the judiciary.
Restricting you in work or residence and threatening you with deportation
Tell them: “Deport me, and I will not work with you, and I will expose you.”
How do we escape recruitment??
1- You declare on social media what is happening to you
2- And you inform the police immediately with an official record at the station in the presence of a lawyer
3- And do not go without a lawyer
4- And do not tell the lawyer before you arrive at the police station what the problem is; rather, say: “Take your fees and come with me,” and it is best to choose a human rights lawyer known for integrity
5- The best act to protect yourself is to publish, and whoever does not have a page should create one and publish the whole story in detail and appeal to the local authority to protect him, because intelligence agencies fear scandals, especially mentioning their criminal methods in blackmailing innocents.
Why do they pursue Lebanese?
Because the battle between Lebanese and Israel was not started by Lebanese, but Israel wants to recruit any Lebanese it can, and the same is done by the agencies of the countries in which the Lebanese expatriate resides.
Recruitment provides them with free information, and they promise the recruits money, but when he becomes a collaborator they do not give him a penny; rather, they blackmail him, and he becomes a slave to them.
To know how the special methods of recruitment are:
Methods of intelligence recruitment and blackmail
In the world of intelligence, recruitment strategies often rely on four main axes known as MICE:
Money: offering attractive financial benefits or exploiting financial hardship, such as offering the person a lucrative job or a large amount of money in exchange for information.
Ideology: appealing to the person through their beliefs, such as inflaming a sense of injustice or affirming religious or national identity.
Compromise: using embarrassing information or private photos to pressure the person, either directly or later.
Ego: exploiting the desire for influence or distinction; the one who thinks he can “change the world” may become more vulnerable.
Among the methods used:
The sexual trap (honeytrap): impersonating an attractive personality (such as a woman in traditional relationships) to lure the target, then photographing him in a way that serves blackmail later.
Fake employment: creating fake recruitment offices or companies under the guise of analysis or training to attract engineers or specialists and then extract sensitive information from them.
Fake connections: communicating through suspicious channels or fake websites that appear to belong to states or official bodies to lure the target into unsafe spaces.
Real examples:
Two Lebanese engineers at the telecom company “Alfa” were targeted for recruitment: the first provided phone network plans and switch locations, and the second was lured via an interview in Cyprus and received very small amounts of money for highly requested surveillance and espionage data.
The case of “Ziyad Ahmad”: he was lured through a “honeytrap” and blackmailed with compromising photos, leading him to confess to spying for the Mossad.
A fake electronic campaign: a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard created fake recruitment firms like “VIP Recruitment” to lure security employees from Lebanon, Syria, and Iran to benefit from their information or pursue them later.
These facts confirm the cruel deception practiced by intelligence agencies: they begin with smart attraction, then blackmail that destroys the life and stability of the betrayed.
— The Mossad publishes daily advertisements for jobs that can be done from home with very high and tempting salaries, but when you apply and become an important worker, they inform you that you will work with them in exchange for not exposing that you were employed by the Mossad.
Victims who paid a high price:
Those engineers who betrayed the profession or homeland because of a tempting offer lost their freedom and social opportunities, and perhaps their lives ended in prison or they are pursued by law.
“Ziyad Ahmad” was imprisoned and subjected to legal and security questioning, and the charges against him were very serious, as expected, affecting his family and reputation.
Electronic victims who communicated with fake companies may face arrests or future pursuits based on the information collected about them from the beginning.
How does the targeted person survive the trap?
Self education first: the Lebanese must know the MICE methods and indicators of recruitment: unrealistic offers, ambiguous contacts, fast requests for personal information.
Verifying before committing: any entity that contacts you or offers you a job must be asked for official papers, verifiable numbers, names of people you can check with.
Not interacting with suspicious offers: initially, ignore or postpone the response until verifying the identity of the other party.
Turning to legal or security institutions: if you receive a suspicious offer, inform your embassy or a lawyer or even trusted family members.
Building a strong social and family support network: the first card to survive is the family and close circle who understand risks and support calm and not rushing.
Not isolating yourself or trying to resolve the problem alone: many expatriates hesitate to share their fear for fear of embarrassment, and that is the greatest gift to intelligence agencies.
Here are real, documented examples:
First:
2. “Benjamin Philip” (a pseudonym): He worked as a secret agent for the Mossad for approximately nine years without any return and caused the death of dozens of children because he told Mossad that the buildings he pointed to on maps contained Hezbollah members, gathering information about Hezbollah for free only by blackmailing and recruiting others under threat. When exposed, Mossad abandoned him; he is now homeless in Thailand and eats from the garbage, and was found dead after being bitten by a sick dog—he had fought with the dog over scraps of food in a garbage container. (The Times of Israel)
3. An Israeli agent from the Lebanese intelligence (police): In 2006, a Lebanese officer, his wife, and their two children were arrested for establishing a spy network on behalf of Israel; they had bomb-making materials, code machines, and other espionage tools in their home. He confessed to having committed the Majzoub assassinations and to working for Mossad, admitting that his cell had assassinated two Hezbollah leaders in 1999 and 2003 and a son of Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, in 2002. (Wikipedia)
Second: Lebanese recruited by the FBI—but the surprise is that the FBI recruited youth through other Lebanese who manipulated innocent, simple Lebanese emotionally, telling them that they were from Hezbollah’s security and worked against Israel while they were FBI agents. When the expatriate Lebanese expressed positive opinions about Hezbollah, they were arrested after their conversations were recorded, and an alleged Hezbollah terrorist cell was announced and they were sentenced to 240 years in prison with no early release; they are now in American prisons although they did nothing but speak positively about Hezbollah and Palestinian resistance.
The lesson is: shut your mouth and do not express any political opinion at all, because any American security officer or any country where you live who is unsuccessful and needs a victory to present to his leaders can involve you in a spying operation and accuse you, and the only proof is your posts supporting Palestine or Hezbollah or Palestinian resistance… keep your opinion to yourself, especially if you are not ready for political struggle and to pay its price: prison, deportation, and prosecution.
Third: Lebanese recruited by Hezbollah abroad, revealed, then arrested.
1. Ali Korani and Samer Al Debek: brilliant educated, but they love their sect, and via Facebook they met a scammer from the party, a security failure, who trapped them emotionally with Shiite sentiments into a trap of working for him. Was he a professional intelligence officer? No, he was a scammer. He told the young men that “Ali ibn Abi Talib calls you and the party requests your help” and told the party that he has spies but they refuse to work except with him. He was not professional, and the result was that the two brilliant students lost their futures scientifically and entered American prisons for hundreds of years because the dumb Lebanese asked them to recruit for the party despite knowing phones and WhatsApps are monitored. Two from the Lebanese diaspora in the United States (the Bronx and Dearborn) were recruited by Hezbollah for military training and interrogation planning for attacks inside America, but the FBI and New York Police arrested them. (Department of Justice) The one who recruited them in Beirut contacted them via Facebook and manipulated their Shiite emotions and did not consider that they were monitored just because they are Lebanese; but the Lebanese wanted to present themselves to party leaders as security actors needing more funding, so they became rich from the money paid to them by leadership because he recruited Lebanese while he is a donkey who entrapped top-tier academic students via Facebook, exposed them, and contacted them by phone knowing phones are monitored—and there is not a single Lebanese who is not 24/7 monitored—and no Lebanese should be involved in intelligence against the country in which they reside, for that is forbidden by religion and dangerous to the person and has no positive value for the Shiites at all; rather, every Shiite who works intelligence against the country where he resides is a donkey who does not understand at all because he cannot hide his secret work since there is no secret as long as you are monitored because you are Shiite and Lebanese—and it is not permissible religiously to betray the local laws where you live.
The wisdom from all the above: the Lebanese should not submit to recruitment attempts whether they come from Mossad or Lebanese parties or the intelligence of the country he resides in; the best life for the expatriate is to not engage at all with recruitment attempts and run to the public, the media, and the judiciary.
