Nesanel’s only “crime” was being mistaken by missionaries for a Yad L’Achim activist. His punishment was a brutal beating at the hands of two cult members.

Nesanel, who asked that his full name not be used in this article, is a 21-year-old yeshivah student who was returning home to Ranana last week. He had disembarked from his bus at the Ranana junction, where he encountered missionaries holding up signs, distributing flyers to passersby and trying to engage them in conversation.

As revealed recently by Yad L’Achim, the missionaries have launched a campaign that is unprecedented in its scope and aggressiveness. They are out in force all across the Dan and Sharon regions, holding up huge banners and distributing materials at major intersections.

When two of them at the Ranana junction spotted Nesanel, dressed as a yeshivah student, they assumed he worked for Yad L’Achim and would try to stymie them. They gave chase, threw him to the ground and pummeled him with vicious blows. According to information that reached Yad L’Achim, one of the assailants was Marcel Clark, a senior missionary of Asian origin with Dutch citizenship who is in Israel on a tourist visa, and another from the Former Soviet Union.

Nesanel, shaking with emotion, recounted the attack earlier this week: “I had gotten off the bus and saw men holding up signs with quotes regarding ‘that man.’ When they saw me they started running toward me. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me and ran away. They caught me and subjected me to a brutal beating. Bystanders tried to get them to stop, but, the missionaries, in their chutpza, told them that that morning I had attacked an elderly woman connected to their activities.

“Each one of the two grabbed an arm and bent it back forcefully. At one point, I noticed that one of the bystanders was photographing the events. I was happy that at least there would be a record of what they were doing to me.”

Bystanders summoned the police, who arrived quickly and took the two assailants in for questioning. Yad L’Achim staffers who arrived, and who managed to obtain the film of the event from one of the bystanders, accompanied Nesanel to the police and then to the hospital.

At Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava, Nesanel was subjected to a thorough battery of tests. Miraculously, he suffered no internal injuries, but his body bore many scars.

Nesanel fears for his life, for what he feels is good reason. “After the police arrived, other missionaries came over to me,” he recalled. “They took my picture and promised that we’d meet again.”

Ironically, one of the missionaries involved in the beating likes to portray himself as a great humanitarian.

Yad L’Achim chairman Rav Shalom Dov Lifschitz said the incident must sound an alarm. “The missionaries aren’t giving up, and the only way to rid Israel of this plague is to enact legislation that prohibits any missionary activity,” he said. “If not now, when?”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)