NZ, Saturday, July 24, 2004
Fourth "Israeli
spy" a Kiwi academic by Francis
Till CURRENT affairs and
entertainment broadcast programme Holmes on
Friday revealed the identity of a man it said
was the mysterious fourth suspect in the drip-fed
passport affair, Anthony (Tony) David
Resnick. Mr Resnick is 35-year-old family man and former
St John Ambulance paramedic -- and a native New
Zealander who spent 13 years in Israel, at least
part of them as an ambulance worker. During the opening segment of the half-hour
show, presenter Paul Holmes fronted a story
reported by Robyn Janes that said Mr Resnick
was a "person of interest" to the police and that
he had left the country
without warning on the 24th of March and had
since resigned from his job. Ms Janes said that unspecified sources had told
the Holmes programme that police had executed a
search warrant on Mr Resnick's office at Auckland
University of Technology, where he had been working
for the last several years as a lecturer. The
Resnick family home, where he lived with his wife
and children, is now empty, the Holmes programme
reported, and Mr Resnick's father said he had been
in contact with his son but did not indicate where
his son might be. The New
Zealand Herald said Mr Resnick had
gone to Israel, but
did not substantiate that claim. It somewhat oddly
identified Mr Resnick as "a practising Jew," and
said he had been a member of the Jewish Council in
Auckland. According to the Herald, Mr Resnick was
"a respected and well-liked paramedic with the St
John Ambulance in Auckland before taking a job as a
lecturer in the division of healthcare practice at
AUT two years ago." Stephen Goodman, president of the Jewish
Council in Auckland, told the Herald he would be
"very surprised" if Mr Resnick were involved in the
passport affair. Neither the Herald nor the Holmes
programme revealed the source for conclusions that
Mr Resnick was the fourth man and police told the
Holmes programme that no comment would be
forthcoming "on any specific matter" pertaining to
its investigation of the passport affair. The
disappearing Zandvoort and other odd
twists But
purported plot kingpin Ze'ev Barkan (left)
and his alleged sidekick Tony Resnick are not the
only figures to have vanished from the scene.
The Weekend Australian said a police witness in
the case against Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman,
identified in the New Zealand press as Michael
Zandvoort, may have been using a fabricated
identity. The Weekend
Australian said it had been unable to
locate Mr Zandvoort and that when its reporters had
spoken with a woman by that name, they discovered
she was wheelchair-bound and had
lost her passport in
Australia. The woman told the paper that shortly
after that she had started receiving phone calls
for a Mr Zandvoort, someone she had never heard
of. "I don't believe he exists," she told the
Weekend Australian. "I am the only Zandvoort
in New Zealand." A quick search of Telecom's online white pages
reveals that there are several listings for
Zandvoort in New Zealand, however. Still, the Weekend Australian said the
woman "believes she too may have been caught up in
a fake passport scandal." The same story includes
a new twist on the role of the Australian
Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in the
affair. Early versions of the story included speculation
that the ASIO had tipped New Zealand intelligence
and police officials off about a purported Israel
spy ring, but the Weekend Herald says it was
the other way around. According to the Weekend Australian, at
some point after Mr Cara's arrest New Zealand
authorities alerted ASIO, which subsequently raided
Mr Cara's rented home on Sydney's north shore. The Weekend Australian has contended that
Mr Cara's claim to have worked for an Israel-based
travel agency, Eastward Bound, is dubious since no
such agency had filed required business papers in
Australia. It said the Haifa headquarters of the
agency "didn't appear to know that it even had a
Sydney branch" -- but also said that the agency had
not returned calls and that Mr Cara's employment
with the agency while he was in Israel had been
substantiated by a third party. It also says the community in which Mr Kelman
lived in Israel, a young and family-friendly town
of 17,000 named Shoham, is "well known as home to
former defence force and Mossad agents." It does
not reveal sources for that claim. The story partly repeats an earlier,
undocumented assertion that Mr Cara's mother,
Zehava Werner, has said her son (and Mr
Kelman) were on "a mission" to New Zealand about
which she knew little. The Weekend Australian said Israeli
commentators "have no doubt that the men are
Mossad." Not proof,
just smudgeYesterday, The
Age clarified the significance of
government revelations that Mr Barkan, the alleged
mastermind of the purported passport scammers, had
worked in Israel embassies in Brussels and
Austria. Closing a story on an alleged visit to New
Zealand by a "senior Mossad regional
representative" based in Singapore, it quotes
Foreign Minister Phil Goff as saying that Mr
Barkan's work as an attache in those embassies did
not constitute evidence that he worked for an
intelligence agency and was not the basis for the
belief by the New Zealand government that the
four-man ring was a state-run operation. "That [the embassy work] gives some
indication of the man's background. It is not in
itself proof that he was in the employment of the
Israeli secret service, and that certainly isn't
the information on which the Government has based
its belief that these people were in fact employed
by the Israeli secret service," he is quoted by
The Age as having said. Not so bad
after all?The Age cites limited circulation
newsletter TransTasman as a primary source
for the widely-circulated tale of a visit from a
senior Mossad agent on a "please explain" summons
from government and says the newsletter claimed the
official was summoned for questioning only days
after the the initial arrests. According to TransTasman, it said, the
Mossad official was questioned by "senior public
servants, security service officials and police
offices." "While not disclosed in court the carpeting is
understood to have been designed to ascertain
whether the Israeli intelligence service was
focusing attention on New Zealand, or trying to
access New Zealand passports for use in other parts
of the world, on the basis New Zealand's benign
security reputation might lessen scrutiny by border
agencies," it quotes TransTasman as having
said. The TransTasman reported that the
official did not admit that the men were Mossad
agents but, according to the New Zealand
Herald, the report suggested there was "a
private understanding, if not admission, that the
offenders were operatives." The Herald said the visit was by a group,
identified the visitors as "regional Israeli
intelligence officers," depicted them as "anxious,"
and said the goup was "likely to have included
defence officers based in the Israeli embassy" in
Singapore. The Age reports that the
TransTasman concluded: "The nature of the
charges faced by the two convicted Israelis
indicates officials concluded Mossad's actions were
directed at passports only." There was no mention of earlier assertions by
the prime minister that the men had not been
charged with espionage activities because: "It may
well have been hard to be able to supply the
evidence for allegations of espionage as defined
under the law." 
New Zealand jails two
Mossad spies, punishes Israel | Suspicions
voiced that New Zealand Jews smashed up their
own cemetery-
Two Israelis plead
guilty to trying to acquire a New Zealand
passport | The
spies who stole my name
-
Mossad
sending hostile New Zealand Message Via
Asian-Based organisations after arrest of two
agents
-
May 19, 2004: BBC
reports that Lebanon smashes Mossad
assassination ring
-
May 13, 2004: The
1979 Mossad Assassination attempt on Ambassador
John Dean: Dean papers with full taste of
Mossad's evil opened at Jimmy Carter's
Presidential Library
-
May 9, 2004: Israelis
with fake docs arrested in Tennessee, 'how to
fly' leaflet found; were seen to toss something
else out of Ryder truck, FBI called in
-
May 1, 2004: Crown
Prince Abdullah says Zionists behind Terror
attacks in Saudi Arabia
-
A
history of Mossad's overseas
bungling
-
Apr 29 -- May 2004: Secrecy
surrounds two Mossad agents when they reappear
in Auckland court on NZ passport forgery
charges | Police
fear al Qaeda terrorists using NZ passports
following arrest of 2 men in Thailand and
seizure of fake NZ passports | The
two Mossad agents charged with NZ passport
offences photographed in Auckland reporting to
police as part of bail conditions |
Two
men believed by senior Government figures to be
Israeli secret service agents have been arrested
in Auckland trying to obtain a false New Zealand
passport | One
Mossad agent entered NZ on a fake Canadian
passport
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