Born
in 1949 in Canada, Victor moved to Israel at the age of five. His
inclination for the arts was apparent from a very early age. The
well known Israeli painter, Giladi, lived on the same street and
would often set up his easel outdoors to paint. Victor would watch,
spellbound, on his way to and from school as Giladi created
wonderful images on the blank canvas.
Eventually, the artist
presented Victor with his own box of oil paints and took the time to
guide him into a world where expressions come through images and
color, handing the child a gift that would soon become a passion.
At
eighteen years of age, Second Lieutenant Victor Ostrovsky was the
youngest officer in the Israeli armed forces (Navy). He was an
ardent Zionist with a fervent commitment to David Ben-Gurion’s
founding vision of Israel as one of the greatest and most principled
states in the post-War world.
Few families can claim deeper or more honourable
Zionist roots, or a more fierce commitment to the creation and
defence of the State of Israel than Victor Ostrovsky’s. His
grandparents, Haim and Esther Margolin, settled in Palestine in 1912
after fleeing the Russian pogroms, Haim, eventually rising to become
Auditor General of the JNF
(Jewish National Fund).
Victor’s father, after More then twenty bombing
missions over Germany in WWII as a Rear gunner on a Lancaster in the
CRAF (Canadian Royal Air Force) – a job that was the closest thing
to a suicide mission the war had to offer – commanded an air force
base in Israel during and after the Israeli war of Independence; his
uncle was a member of the Wolves of Samson a pre independence
commando unit, while his mother fought with the Haganah, the Israeli
underground, after serving during WWII with the British army.
Victor rose to rank of a lieutenant
commander in the Israeli Navy and served as head of the weapon
testing program.
It's not surprising then, that when Victor is
invited to train for the Mossad, (Israel's elite foreign
intelligence service) he leaps at the opportunity to serve his
country in such an extraordinary way.
The Mossad
is probably the most highly trained effective and ruthless
organization of its kind, anywhere in the world. In some ways Mossad
is a microcosm of the state of Israel: because it is smaller, poorer
and more isolated than its enemies, it must unfailingly act smarter,
hit harder and be better, than all of them.
A Mossad
cadet will experience more action, more pure terror and more
physical assault during training than many Special Forces operatives
will in the course of an entire career. Training for the Mossad will
take Two and a half gruelling years, during which time most
candidates will fail. The Mossad famously boasts that it has no
compunction in failing 5,000 recruits to find just one. There is no
silver medal, no second best, no compromise when it comes to
defending the security of the State of Israel.
But through the years of his training and his
experiences on subsequent missions, Victor comes to the reluctant but
certain realisation that, unaccountable even to the prime minister, a
certain element within the Mossad, through callous, irresponsible and
increasingly self-motivated actions, rather than defend the interests of
the state, were in fact in danger of destroying it.
After five years of trying to
inform the powers to be with little success he wrote an exposé
"By
Way of Deception" that shook the foundations of the agency and is
said to have brought about change. Victor has written three more books
since, A non fiction "The Other Side
of Deception" and two fictional spy
novels "Lion Of Judah" and "Black
Ghosts" |