A tale of two Jews

Haaretz happens to tell two seemingly unrelated stories on the same day.

One is the story of Mossad-KGB double agent Zeev Avni who died last week (double dealing is good for one’s health, apparently).

Avni, a Mossad agent, was arrested in April 1956 on suspicion of being a KGB agent. It emerged that while he was cultivating former Nazis employed as military advisers by Egypt’s army for the Mossad, he was also serving as a long-term Soviet mole. Avni was born Wolf Goldstein in 1921, in Riga, Latvia, to social activist parents who migrated to Germany and later to Switzerland. In 1942, after serving in the Swiss army, he was recruited to Soviet intelligence by a Czech refugee named Karl Vibrel. In 1948, Avni immigrated to Israel and settled on Kibbutz Hazorea.

And don’t you even for a moment think that Mr Avni/Goldstein has spied for KGB to complement his Mossad salary. No, he was a believer, an ideologically inspired double.

The second article deals with an entirely different animal. This one is about Rabbi Moshe Aryeh Friedman, the Neturei Karta delegate to Iranian Holocaust conference.

The infamous rabbi, according to the article, is not only a despicable piece of shit, but also an idiot who cannot even produce a consistent story, not to mention his self-aggrandizing lies:

…Moshe Aryeh Friedman – by his own account, the chief rabbi of Vienna’s Jewish community, but a “kook” and an extremist who represents only himself, according to Austria’s established Jewish community…

But his position in Vienna is different than the one he expressed in Tehran, where he was quoted as saying the Holocaust was a “successful fiction,” and that it is “legitimate to cast doubt on some of the statistics” with regard to it. On Friday, Friedman claimed that he does not deny the fact that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. His sudden change in position may be explained by fear over being prosecuted in Austria, where publicly doubting the Holocaust is a crime.

I would say that the above is more than enough, but the learned “Rabbi” is too eager to add some details that may turn even strong stomach (like mine):

“I had more than one meeting with his excellency, President Ahmadinejad,” Friedman said. “The president first recognized me at the conference in Tehran and he was especially friendly. There may be only one picture in which we are photographed kissing, but in fact we kissed 20 or 30 times.”

My only hope that we’ll not see bootlegged clips of that activity on YourTube soon.

OK, so now it is time for a quiz: two individuals with totally different backgrounds, lifestyles and bios, praying to two different gods, one is dead (no tears) and the second is alive (but it will change one of these days). So what do the two have in common?

A right guess will entitle you to a honorable mention at first convenient opportunity.

Update: Bob here got it quite quickly. And no, I did not intend to make it difficult.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews