Ben-Ami Kadish, who allegedly passed classified material to Israel, leaves the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Tuesday after being freed on $300,000 bond. Photo by Ben Harris
April 23, 2008
Friends and neighbors of a Monroe man charged with spying for Israel say they were puzzled by his arrest and concerned about his ability to weather the proceedings against him.
Cantor Eli Perlman, religious leader of the Jewish Congregation of Concordia, said he did not know congregant Ben-Ami Kadish well, but was concerned about his age and health.
“I’ve only been in meetings with him, but I don’t think he’s in any shape to sit through a trial,” he said of the 84-year-old Kadish. “He doesn’t look like somebody who gets around easily.”
Perlman questioned why the government was bringing charges against Kadish decades after the alleged incidents.
“It sounds like a red herring—there’s something else going on,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense after all these years. Why has this all of a sudden come to the front?”
Charles and Fran Koppelman, who live in Concordia-- another of Monroe’s adult communities—have known both Doris and Ben-Ami Kadish for several years.
“He’s outstanding as far as I’m concerned; very patriotic and caring,” said Charles Koppelman. “I know him as an outstanding individual as is his wife. I don’t know what he’s done before because I can’t see into the past. But, I can only praise him.”
Fran Koppelman, who described both Doris and Ben-Ami as “such nice people,” said she sees them around town.
“We just wish everything turns out well,” she said. “At his age he could drop dead from the humiliation.”
A former U.S. Army engineer employed at the Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, N.J., Kadish appeared in federal court in Manhattan Tuesday to face charges that he assisted the same Israeli handler who recruited Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard to spy in the early 1980s, a case that remains a sore point in relations between Washington and Jerusalem.
The United States briefed Israel on the arrest of Kadish, Israeli officials told JTA.
"We received an official update from the Americans. We are following the developments," Arye Mekel, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, said Wednesday when asked for comment on U.S. allegations that Kadish spied for Israel between 1979 and 1985.
Israel has yet to confirm or deny that Kadish passed it classified U.S. military information.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has so far declined comment on the Kadish affair, but a Cabinet colleague voiced confidence that bilateral ties would survive.
"I believe that relations between Israel and the United States are well-grounded and serious," Environment Minister Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio. "In my opinion, the state of our strategic ties with the United States is stronger than this."
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