'Missionary' in all-Moslem West Bank village

By the summer of 1987, MbY was an independent and self-supported "missionary" in the all-Moslem village of Beit Phage in the "West Bank." He preached to the village's Moslem inhabitants -- with dramatic signs following -- the "Gospel of the Restoration of the Kingdom to Israel" with the warning to the Avihaval and Sa'ayad clans, "if you resist what God is going to do, it will be like 'spitting' against the wind."

On December 8, 1987, two days before the start of the Palestinian intifada, when some of the children of these same Moslems rolled boulders down the mountain onto vehicles of passing motorists, he was approached by two of the Moslem men who warned him to leave the mountain and the rooftop on which he had lived for the previous five months.

"I didn't know where to go, but that same day I ran into Barry Segal, who owned a publishing company in Jerusalem and who said he had been trying to find me after a friend in Tiberias told him he needed a writer and editor for a project there. Earlier, I had helped Tom Hess ghost write "Let My People Go," which Barry had printed and published.

LSU connection and fateful reports

After assisting with the first draft of Eric Morey's outdoor drama called, "The Galilee Experience," ben Yoseif was completing the editing and formatting of a book by Wendyl Stearns called, "Biblical Zionism," when Jan Karnis of Middle East Television called.

"As it turned out, Jan and I were at LSU as transfer students, he in history and I in journalism, the same two years back in the early '70s. Jan remembered some of my writing and columns as news editor and sports editor of the Daily Reveille. With Wendyl's recommendation, he hired me to be the chief news writer for Middle East Television, which was then based in Marjahoun, S. Lebanon.

From the Jerusalem bureau, I wrote the scripts for daily voice-overs about the ongoing war between Iraq and Iran. This included a report about the attempt by Saddam Hussein to renew the ancient glories of Babylon, which was widely circulated . I also reported on the fateful battle that preceded the cease fire between Iraq and Iran and which united Shi'a and Sunni Moslems against the U.S. and specifically against former CIA Director George H.W. Bush.

Transition to Jerusalem Post

METV was widely recognized as the most comprehensive and least biased English news program available in the Middle East, but for unexplained reasons the English news was discontinued by owner Evangelist Pat Robertson and the staff was intentionally fired and disbanded. However, the same day his job ended, ben Yoseif was hired as an assistant editor of the weekly news-analysis supplements to the Jerusalem Post, "In-Jerusalem" and "Metro (Tel Aviv)."  The Post was also a volatile environment, since the paper had been sold and the new publisher immediately cut the editorial staff by 33 percent. The only non-Jew and without protection from the Israeli editorial union, ben Yoseif was the first to be laid off six months later.

Without gainful employment, the Ministry of the Interior did not renew his working visa and he returned to the U.S., where he was married to an Anusim Jewess (one whose Spanish-Mexican family had been forced to convert to Catholicism) whom he had met in Jerusalem in 1987.