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"Lost in America"
The chase began late Saturday
afternoon when County Sheriffs noticed a rental moving truck traveling at a high
speed along former U.S. Highway 23, a lightly traveled highway near the North
Carolina state line.
“They were driving recklessly and at a high
rate of speed down an old highway that nobody uses anymore,” Harris told us. "I
was really concerned because the driver would not stop after I flashed my
headlights for nearly three miles. He was weaving back and forth, and I was
wondering what a large truck was doing on a two-lane highway instead of the
much-faster I-26 interstate."
Witnesses saw the men throw something from the
truck while they were being pursued, said the sheriff. Officers scouring the
area later found a vial containing an unknown substance along the roadway.
Police said the liquid in the 12-ounce plastic
container was thick, like liquid drain cleaner. Because of slowness at the State
Crime Lab, Harris said it has been sent it to a nearby private lab to be tested.
“It looks like weed killer, but with a little
bit of grain in it,” Sheriff Harris told the
MadCowMorningNews.
A lawyer representing the Israeli men, William
Lawson, said the vial contained a "fuel source," but added that it hasn't been
identified and authorities were treating it with caution.
The attorney said the men accidentally got off
the Interstate and got lost while hauling furniture to Massachusetts and West
Virginia. "They got lost, big time," Lawson said. "It doesn't seem like they
have anything to hide."
County Sheriff Kent Harris wasn’t buying it.
“The furniture in the moving van was so old
that its hard to see why anybody would want to move it anywhere,” he told us.
“Also it was three miles before we could get them to pull over. Why would they
flee?”
Also casting doubt on the Israeli attorney’s
version of events was the
Sheriff’s revelation that the men had rented a storage unit in nearby Mars Hill,
North Carolina, seemingly contradicting the story of two foreigners wandering
lost in America.
"Ain't got to show you no stinking watch
list!"
The FBI’s response to the potential terrorist
threat was characteristically laconic.
Special Agent Gary Kidder, spokesman for the
FBI's Knoxville field office, said the agency was not investigating the two men,
but monitoring the situation and assisting local police.
“They told us the two Israelis aren’t on any
known watch list,” stated Sheriff Harris.
Dahan gave authorities a fake Florida driver's
license issued in Plantation, Fla., police said, while Naor produced a fake
identification card.
Attorney Lawson said Naor doesn't speak English
and used the fake ID to get into a Miami nightclub. He said they were both in
the country legally.
"We're trying to get these gentlemen released,"
Lawson said. "They were just traveling through, headed up north."
Israelis in Moving Vans: Scene I
The Tennessee arrests are eerily-similar to two
other widely-publicized incidents involving Israelis in moving vans engaged in
suspicious activity since the 9/11 attack.
In the first, five men in a moving van they
were driving for their employer, Urban Moving Systems in Weehawken, N.J., were
stopped by police at about 3 p.m. Sept. 11 after two women saw them standing on
the roof of the moving company van and smiling as they took pictures of each
other with the burning World Trade Center in the background.
The men -- ages 22 to 27 and all single –
carried box cutters. One had 4,000 in cash, another had a camera, and a third
had two passports because he is also a German citizen.
No terrorism charges were ever filed. A
spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York said flatly: "We were told
specifically that they are not suspects" in the terror attacks.
After Sept. 11, more than 60 Israelis, many of
whom were working for moving companies, were deported for visa violations,
including the five from Israel working illegally for Urban Moving Systems, a New
York City company that closed its doors Sept 14 2001. Its owner went back to
Israel, abandoning a collection of New Jersey warehouses.
A possible link to the latest incident
News accounts of the Sept 11 2001 arrest quoted
a sister of one of the arrested Israelis, Heni Kayea, telling reporters she
lived in North Carolina, possibly linking it to the latest incident, which
occurred on the North Carolina-Tennessee border.
Israelis in Moving Vans: Scene II
The second widely-publicized post-9/11 arrest
of Israelis in rented moving vans also had national security implications. In
May 2002 Fox News
first reported that two Israelis with altered passports had been apprehended
in a rental truck containing traces of TNT and plastic explosives, on a state
highway running past Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, home of the Navy’s fleet
of electronic warfare Prowler jets.
Local police initially pulled the Israelis over
for speeding, and became more suspicious at the truck driver's insistence
that they were moving furniture—a claim that did not seem to mesh with the late
hour.
The men were arrested after one was found to be
in possession of an altered passport, and the other was unable to produce any
identification other than an Israeli driver's license.
Involved in the subsequent investigation were
Naval Intelligence, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Even as the Navy dogs who had detected traces
of explosives in the Israeli’s van were being praised by local newspapers,
authorities stated that tests which initially revealed traces of explosives had
shown ‘false positives’ and been ‘in error.’
Reporters asking about the "furniture delivery
in the middle of the night" were told investigators had spoken with an
elderly lady at an senior-care housing facility who confirmed the men’s
account.
Authorities say she claimed that two men
fitting the description of the Israelis dropped off furniture at her facility in
the middle of the night.
The MadCowMorningNews
reported exclusively at the time that, just one week
after providing the Israelis’ alibi, the elderly woman inexplicably moved,
and could not be found to verify her account.
A spokeswoman at the elder-care facility declined to give out any information
concerning her present whereabouts.
Israelis in Moving Vans: 21st Century UFO's?
In the wake of the latest incident, we have
discovered several other less-publicized post-9/11 incidents involving Israelis
in moving vans.
A July 9, 2002 story in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel reported that a Wisconsin couple had been victimized by an Israeli
mover, Oshri Cohen, 30,
who was charged with felony common law robbery in Davie County, North Carolina.
Eventually sixteen Florida-based moving
companies, mostly owned and operated by Israeli nationals, were accused of using
“strong-arm tactics.” 74 employees were accused of wire fraud, extortion, false
billing, money laundering and conspiracy.
“Florida moving companies indicted in alleged
scheme to inflate prices,” read the headline on a March 5, 2003 AP account. “The
companies, which operated under 42 different names, all declined comment, had no
published telephone listings or didn't answer calls from the Associated Press.”
The indictments came after a nearly two-year
FBI investigation.
Miami-based Advanced Moving Systems' owner Zion
Rokah and his employees were charged with 60 counts of extortion, conspiracy to
commit wire and mail fraud and making a false bill of lading. The indictments
against Rokah also include a forfeiture provision for at least $1 million, two
parcels of land, four moving trucks and five bank accounts.
"It's all against the Jews. The police are
lying. They are corrupt," Rokah stated in a May 4, 2002 story in The Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel. He claimed his company, based in Sunrise, Fla., a suburb of
Fort Lauderdale, was "being targeted by a police network that has targeted
Israeli-owned moving companies," and being "victimized by stupid, small town,
redneck police" who "hate Jews and strangers."
"Stupid people in stupid small towns"
"You know they are so stupid, those small
towns. They are thinking we are like a crime organization, like a hundred
companies and all these things."
A Miami-based FBI spokeswoman, (the FBI
maintains a website on the scam)
said forty-six people were arrested, but Rokah was still at large.

Danny Biran, consul at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington, explained that it's very common for young Israeli men to come to the
United States after fulfilling their three-year military commitment and before
entering college.
"There are a lot of Israeli guys after they
finish their duty in the army they want to go to Australia, Japan, Thailand,
Greece and the U.S.," he said. "They want to see the world."
Last month a federal jury in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla. convicted Odelia Shmuelov and Rafi Rafael Rokah, both Israelis, on
extortion and fraud charges for operating moving companies that swindled
customers.
Rafi Rokah is the cousin of Zion Rokah, owner
of Advanced Moving Systems, who is believed to have fled to Israel, said
Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlos Castillo of the U.S. attorney's Southern District
of Florida office.
A request has not been made to extradite Zion
Rokah from Israel, said Castillo, who wouldn't say whether such a request would
be made.
A 'Learn to Fly in Florida" Crime Syndicate?
“The industry is a legal crime syndicate,” said
James Balderrama, who started an
Internet site after being ripped off by movers. “Since I started this
web site in June of 2001, I have endured death threats, harassing phone call,
e-mail spam attacks, and other intimidating types of behavior.”
A functionary in a continuing criminal
enterprise run by Israelis is found with a 'Learn to Fly in Florida' business
card in his wallet...
The news seems designed to set "conspiracy
theorists" hearts aflutter.
We wondered what to make of it.
A hearing on the latest incident was scheduled
for Tuesday morning before Judge David Schultz at Unicol County Courthouse.
Until then, the two Israelis were being held on
a ‘no bond’ order, said Sheriff Harris. The moving van, rented from a Ryder
office in the Miami area, was also being held.

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