A stun grenade was thrown late Sunday night at the home of the Head of Shuva Yisrael Institutes, Rav Yashiyahu Pinto, after Israeli television's Channel 10 revealed that he has filed a complaint with the FBI according to which a group of people has been blackmailing him and demanding millions of dollars.

Rav Pinto of Ashdod is known as a spiritual advisor to many prominent figures in Israel's political and business worlds. He was allegedly being blackmailed by people threatening to reveal information from the medical files of a member of his family.

In addition, he blackmail related to a person upon whom the rabbi had allegedly placed a curse.  The person's relatives said that Rav Pinto had said that the man would be dead within 70 days' time, and that the person committed suicide 70 days later.

Former police major general Aryeh Amit, who is close to Pinto, told Arutz Sheva that US media bodies were complicit in the blackmail. "This appears to be a case of media terrorism," he said. "People who own communications bodies – internet, radio and television – have been conducting a campaign of libel against Rav Pinto in the past few months.

"These people know that in the hareidi religious public, when there is a bad rumor about someone, you can never recover from it. They know how much power they have in their hands and that is why they tried to blackmail Rav Pinto," Amit said.