The leader of the two Israelis arrested after leading police on a high speed chase in a moving van last Saturday in rural Tennessee is the son of the spokesman for the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The arrested Israeli 'mover,' Shmuel Dahan, 23, is himself a former spokesman, for the National Union of Israeli Students which represents the country's 150,000 university students.

News that one of the two Israeli 'movers' belonged to that country's political elite might have proven useful in the criminal investigation underway in rural North Carolina and Tennessee, where the two men led authorities on a high-speed chase in a rented moving van last weekend.

However, the investigation was halted Wednesday, after the men were released from Unicol County Jail to the custody of federal officials from the INS, where they face  only a deportation hearing.  

"They’re taking it out of my jurisdiction,” stated Sheriff Kent Harris, who apprehended the men last Saturday after a high speed chase on a little-used state highway.

 “We may never know what they were doing.”
 
 "They're our Israeli movers now"

Local law enforcement officials in Tennessee expressed dismay at losing custody until it had been established what two Israelis were doing attempting to elude police on a back road near the North Carolina border so far off the beaten track that the only local attractions within 25 miles are the Rural Life Museum, the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, and the birthplace of Zebulon Baird Vance, a Civil War officer and governor of North Carolina, but not exactly a ‘Historical Hottie.”  

Folks were puzzled.

Federal officials offered little guidance. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement told a local reporter they couldn't comment on the case while the men were in the custody of local authorities, and was unavailable afterwards.   

Charges against the two included reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. The Sheriff said the FBI had even ordered him to hold the duo without bond.

But now the only one doing any talking was the Israeli Deputy Consul General, who, in a bit of fancy footwork until his boys were ‘safely out of Dodge,’ told reporters the men had been “overwhelmed by the process.”

"If they did something that was wrong, out of parameters of the law,” stated Israeli Deputy Consul General Aviv Ezra in Atlanta, “they have to pay the punishment.”

Presumably he meant flying home in coach.

Israelis? Right here in River City?

Clearly the leader of the two Israelis while in custody, Dahan was called “the spokesman for the National Union of Israeli Students, which represents most of the country's 150,000 university students,” in the January 12, 2001 Jerusalem Post.

This gibes with early press reports after the men’s arrest in Tennessee, in which the Israeli deputy consul stated Dahan had recently graduated from college.

Dahan, like many Israeli students, is a reservist. He is quoted in the Jerusalem Post speaking for student reservists after Israeli students marched around the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv in protest of an increase in the number of days required on reserve duty.

With an articulateness that would be the envy of most furniture movers, Dahan said, “They want to be paid for each day of duty, instead of only after a second or third consecutive day in the reserves.”

"Fiddler on the Roof" meets "Gomer Pyle"

While the Israelis were gone from his jail, for Sheriff Kent Harris, the mystery remains…  

Although the two men had denied throwing a bottle of suspicious liquid from their vehicle during the chase, for example, Sheriff Harris said witnesses saw the men throw a bottle out the window during the pursuit. "I called the witnesses back in and both told me the same thing," Harris said. "The bottle was spinning in the road after the pursuit came by."

After a witness gave the bottle to authorities, Harris sent it for testing. Tests showed a chemical mix that turned out not to be explosive. "It's very dangerous to drink it, but other than that, there's nothing harmful," Harris said.

So why had the men lied?

But the biggest mystery surrounded the reason for the men’s presence in the area in the first place. William B. Lawson, one of the lawyers appointed to represent the Israeli men, said they rented a truck and were hauling furniture when they accidentally got off the interstate and got lost.

But this is unlikely, since local law enforcement officials had already stated that the men rented a storage locker nearby, in Mars Hill.

“Even if you’re trying to get lost,” explained Sheriff Harris, “Mars Hill is a hard place to get to.”

Indeed, Mars Hills, North Carolina, appears at first glance to be as remote a location as can be found in the Northern Hemisphere. Any further off the beaten track and they'd be getting yesterday's CNN Headline News.

One can only speculate on what business compelled two young Israeli men to visit the regions’ rural splendor…

Because they just can't get enough NASCAR in Tel Aviv?

Jonathon Pollard & Bin Laden's "Spiritual Mentor"

This remote region of North Carolina does have one big Israeli connection, however. We discovered that convicted Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard is imprisoned in the area, at the Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina.

Strangely, the same Deputy Consul General from the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta that smoothed the release of the two latest Israeli movers to run afoul of the law, Aviv Ezra, “is a lifeline” to Pollard, according to a report at www.johnathonpollard.org, visits him regularly in prison, and acts as his interlocutor with visitors from the outside.

This is no doubt just sheer coincidence.

However the next sentence from the story on Pollard’s website mentioning Avri Ezra indicates to the conspiracy-minded (although certainly not to us) that perhaps something else is going on…

Israeli Deputy Consul Ezra himself may be a spook. At least he seems to know a lot of them…

Ezra’s “training for this sensitive task (hanging out with Pollard) was gained while working at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo,” states the convicted Israeli spy’s website, “where he also served as the contact person to Azzam Azzam.”

Azzam Azzam is an Israeli spy.

Don't deport the 'NASCAR' Israelis!

Azzam had been imprisoned for more than seven years in Cairo, we learned from news reports, until his release by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek.

Israeli Deputy Consul Aviv Ezra, the 'NASCAR Israelis' friend and protector, can thus be said to be—and fairly—a “spy handler.”

Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors.

Still, this news puts a slightly different spin on what has otherwise become just the latest episode of “Israeli Movers Doing Inexplicable Things Before Being Deported.”

But not to the stolid campaigners at the FBI.

FBI agents searched the two men’s storage facility by late Monday night, The Asheville Citizen-Times reported, but found no evidence of anything suspicious.

What is suspicious is the unbelievable story the two men told investigators… that they were just on their way to West Virginia to deliver furniture.

Right.

"Israelis delivering furniture in West Virginia" doesn't exactly have what used to be called the ring of truth, does it.

It has been a day of strange omens in the news.

Mexican air force pilots filming UFOs. Israeli soldiers scouring Gaza for body parts of fallen soldiers. And now this…

Following their arrest last Saturday afternoon, the local sheriff said he had “had a sick feeling” when he found a “Learn to Fly” brochure in the Israelis moving van, especially since the county they were in was home to the nation’s only Nuclear Fuel Services plant.

It wasn’t a “learn to fly in Florida brochure," the Israeli Deputy Consul cheerfully assured everyone. It had been just a “learn to fly in Florida” business card.

Tonight the local Sheriff could be forgiven for feeling just a little sore at the Feds stepping in and screwing his case.

The man does not get all that many 'at bats.'

Last year in Mars Hill, according to 2001 crime statistics, the latest available, there were no murders, no rapes, no robberies, and one assault.

“This is still a very suspicious case,” Sheriff Harris said last Sunday, stubbornly reiterating the same comment he’d made a day earlier.

Four days later, nothing has changed.