Avraham Sinai

Sinai was born Ibrahim Yassin around 1964 in a Shi’ite village in eastern Lebanon and worked as a shepherd and cattle farmer.[1][2] He was married to Diba, and the couple had children while living in Lebanon.[3][2] In his accounts, he described local Palestinian terrorist groups as disrupting life in the area and said that concern for his family shaped his initial dealings with Israelis.[4][2]

His first contact with Israeli personnel was placed in 1983, when he was 19. Israeli Unit 504 officer Tzachi Bareket, whose operational nickname was “Zaki,” had helped arrange medical care for Yassin’s wife and newborn and later identified him as a potential source of local information.[3][2] Bareket said Yassin’s early assignments involved reporting on Palestinian locations, weapons and movements; more operational tasks followed after he demonstrated reliability.[2]

Yassin described the relationship as a practical exchange rather than an initial declaration of political allegiance: he supplied information and received assistance such as fuel and a document intended to ease passage through checkpoints. He said his first motivations were personal and familial and characterized his relationship with Bareket as a partnership.[2] Bareket recounted entering the family home during the birth, delivering the baby and calling a doctor, after which the mother and newborn were sent to Rambam Hospital in Haifa. This assistance became part of the relationship that led to Yassin’s intelligence work.[2]

Accounts of Sinai’s intelligence career describe him passing information to Israel while operating within Hezbollah. In 2006, he said he began assisting Israeli intelligence as a teenager, at age 17, by reporting on the PLO and other Palestinian terrorist organizations in Lebanon. He said Israeli handlers later encouraged him to join Hezbollah after Palestinian power declined; he initially resisted, then reported on Hezbollah’s Shi’ite rival Amal and gained the organization’s trust.[1] In later interviews, he described entering Hezbollah’s ranks while continuing to provide information to Israel but rejected the label “double agent,” saying he worked with Hezbollah against other terrorist organizations and hostile forces, including Amal and Syrian forces.[2]

Sinai said he became acquainted with Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi, met him during visits to his village and discussed operational matters with him.[1][2] He also claimed that information he supplied in February 1992 contributed to Musawi’s killing by the IDF. The accounts do not independently establish that role; the 2006 profile noted that Sinai had no photographs or documents to substantiate his account of serving for years as a senior Hezbollah intelligence officer.[1][2]

His accounts also describe repeated detention and torture. Armed men seized him from his home in 1985, after which he said Hezbollah held and tortured him. Sinai recounted that his infant son was brought to him during an interrogation and killed; one account says he was released about a month after the killing.[2] A separate 2019 profile also reports that his eight-month-old son was killed during his captivity and that he was released months after his abduction.[3][2] The published accounts differ in some chronology and details and present the episodes as reported testimony rather than independently established findings.

Sinai said Syrian authorities detained him in 1989 on suspicion of clandestine activity and held him for a year. After his release in 1990, he said, he continued working for Israel from within Hezbollah for a further seven years.[3][2] He also described reporting Hezbollah officers’ movements and relaying information used by Israel in operations, including a warning about a car bomb allegedly headed toward the Israeli border.[1][2] These operational accounts are attributed to Sinai and former handler Tzachi Bareket in the published reports, which do not independently verify every claim.[1][2]

Sinai said a relative warned him that Syrian authorities had identified his conversations and meeting places with Israeli contacts. He recalled that his name and photograph were displayed at checkpoints, prompting him to flee with his family to southern Lebanon. Israeli personnel later told him it was too dangerous to remain there.[1] In 1997, Sinai and his family were brought to Israel and settled in Safed as suspicions increased and his assignments became too sensitive to perform while he continued living within Hezbollah.[2]

Sinai later described having long dreamed of moving to Israel: “I would sit on Jebel Baruch, look at northern Israel, and dream that I was moving there.”[1] In another account of the transition, he contrasted his life in Lebanon with his new home by saying, “Here it’s heaven, there it’s hell.”[5]

Published profiles differ on family details. A 2016 report says that five children accompanied Sinai and his wife to Israel.[5] A 2019 profile describes him as having seven children and notes that five were born in Lebanon.[2] The 2014 Ynet account, by contrast, describes the couple as having nine children; the reports do not explain the discrepancy.[4]

After settling in northern Israel, Sinai pursued conversion to Judaism. Published accounts vary on when the process was completed: a 2014 Ynet interview says he completed his conversion in 2004, while 2019 reports give 2001. The accounts may refer to different stages but do not resolve the difference.[3][4]

Sinai described becoming interested in the Quran while involved with Hezbollah and later visiting a synagogue in Israel. In the 2014 account, he recalled attending synagogue on Yom Kippur about two years after the family’s move. A rabbi welcomed him and gave him a kippah and tallit; he subsequently approached Rabbi Tzefania Drori in Kiryat Shmona about conversion, while his wife began studying Judaism. Sinai said he studied for four years at the Or Yakar yeshiva in Safed.[4]

A 2006 profile says Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu began the conversion process after a senior officer introduced them and that Eliyahu first checked the account of Sinai’s past. Sinai explained his decision by saying that his experiences in Lebanon had led him to conclude that “the truth is in Judaism.”[1] His wife, Diba, also converted and took the name Ziva. Sinai became Haredi and studied in a yeshiva after leaving his intelligence service.[3][2]

Sinai spoke emotionally about Jewish religious practice. He said wearing tefillin and a tallit moved him to tears and that he wished to remain wrapped in them for much of the day; he wore them while walking from his home to the synagogue and back after prayer.[4] He also summarized his decision to build a life in Israel with the words, “I came here to live, not to die.”[6]

In later years, Sinai lived in the Safed area and spoke publicly about his reported work for Israeli intelligence. A 2019 profile says he received a military pension and earned income from lectures about his experience. It also describes him as living in a caravan near Safed, being a grandfather and planning a small goat and chicken farm while building beehives.[3][2] He ran unsuccessfully for a seat on Safed’s city council and was described as a friend of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.[3]

Sinai’s story became the subject of an Itamar Chen documentary. Published accounts give different English renderings of its title: one calls it The Hezbollah Yeshiva Student and describes it as built around Sinai’s monologue and archival footage, while another calls it The Rabbi from Hezbollah. Chen said he had pursued Sinai for five years before Sinai agreed to be filmed.[3][2]

The family’s life in Israel also figured in accounts of his son Amos. Amos served in the Golani Brigade and received a presidential citation.[2] He said his father had endured danger to bring the family to Israel and allow them to live freely; he was also described as the fourth of Sinai’s sons to enlist in the IDF.[5]

The details of Sinai’s intelligence career are chiefly presented through his own testimony and accounts by former Israeli personnel. The 2006 profile noted that he had no photographs or documents to support his claim of serving for ten years inside Hezbollah, and published reports do not independently verify all of his claims about operational activity or his contribution to Musawi’s killing.[1][2]

Accounts vary on when his cooperation began and when he entered Hezbollah.[1][2] They also differ over the chronology of his captivity and the killing of his infant son.[3][4] The reported completion date of his conversion is 2004 in one account and 2001 in another.[4][2] The available accounts do not reconcile these differences.