According to former Mossad katsa and author Victor Ostrovsky and Thomas Gordon, Sayanim is a term used to describe Jews living outside Israel as foreign citizens that volunteer to provide assistance to the Mossad. This assistance includes facilitating medical care, money, logistics, and even overt intelligence gathering, yet sayanim are only paid for their expenses. No official number is known, but estimates put the number of sayanim in the thousands. The existence of this large body of volunteers is one reason why the Mossad operates with fewer case officers than fellow intelligence agencies. Ostrovsky's claims have not been verified from other sources.
― El Tomboto, Friday, 4 January 2008 01:30 (seventeen years ago)