Black Box (5 page)

Which brings me to your request. I enclose postal orders to the value of IL 3000. If you need any further sums, and if you specify a positive purpose, we shall be only too happy to try to comply. As for the interest you mentioned, as a matter of fact I should not be opposed to your repaying the money with interest, but not now, Boaz, but many years from now, when you are rich in commandments and good deeds and also materially (and before then I hope you’ll learn to write without mistakes!!). Meanwhile it would be best for you to continue putting some savings aside. You listen to me, Boaz.

In one respect I was obliged to break your request: your mother knows about the money I am enclosing herewith. That’s because we have no secrets from each other, and with all due respect to you I am not prepared to do any secret deals with you, however worthy the purpose. If this does not meet with your approval, don’t accept the money. I shall close now with warm regards and all good wishes for the festive season.

Yours,
Michael (Michel)

***

To Michael Sommo
Tarnaz 7
Jerusalem

Hello Michel and thanks for the lone. Ive bought the equipment and Ive already started to put it together slowly. Bruno Fuks from the Planetarium (Janin’s husband) is helping me a bit. He’s a good guy. He knows about optics and he doesnt preech. Its my opinion, and dont laugh, that everyone should no one thing very well and do it very well and not tell other people what to do and how to do it. Then therd be a lot more satisfaction in the country and a lot less personal problems. I dont care that much about your wife nowing about the lone I just dont want any complecations with her. With you its difrent. Tell me how did you manage to by the dictionery you needed in Paris? Thanks again and kiss the pretty little girl from me Boaz. PS Anyway Ill start repaying your money slowly starting as from next month. Its your money, right?

Boaz B.

***

Boaz Brandstetter
c/o A. Abudarham
Wholesale Market
Carlebach St., Tel Aviv

By the Grace of G-d
Jerusalem
23 Nisan 5736 (23.4.76)

Dear Boaz,

Since you asked, I have a responsibility to reply. The money is not mine; it is your father’s. If you come up to Jerusalem for the Sabbath, or for another Sabbath, we’ll gladly tell you all we know about this business (apparently there are some aspects we have not been informed about). Your mother and sister join me in this invitation. Stop being a mule, Boaz, just come and that’s that. We’re planning to build an extension to the flat soon, comprising two extra rooms (toward the backyard) and one of them is for you for whenever you want it. But even before then we always have room for you. So don’t be a child, come for next Sabbath. In my opinion your pride is always pulling you in the wrong direction. I believe, Boaz, that the difference between a child and a man is that a man does not wastefully spill his seed or his pride but keeps them for the right moment, “until it is pleasing,” as the Good Book says. And you’re not a child any more, Boaz. I mention this analogy both in connection with your refusal (so far) to come home, and in connection with your generally stubborn attitude toward your mother, and also to hint to you not to react childishly to the information I have just given you concerning the source of the money. After all, I didn’t have to tell you, did I?

Which brings me to the second question you asked in your letter: how did I buy the Larousse in Paris when I was your age after my uncle refused to let me have a loan? The answer is simply that I did not buy it until a year later, but that uncle lost on the spot a cheap and willing assistant, because I felt so insulted by him that I left him and took a job cleaning stairs (after school!). It was in 1955, and you could say that I was definitely a mule. In any case I was still a child. I shall sign off now with friendly good wishes,

Yours,
Michel

P.S. If you really insist on repaying me the loan right away, in monthly installments, I have no objection. I’m actually rather impressed! But in that case let’s be quite clear that interest is out of the question.

Three documents enclosed with letter from M. Zakheim, lawyer, of Jerusalem, to Dr. A. Gideon in London, dated 28.3.76:

ITEM A.
: Report by Shlomo Zand (private investigator) of S. Zand, Private Investigations Ltd., Tel Aviv, on the case of Michel-Henri (Michael) Sommo. Drawn up on instructions from Mr. M. Zakheim of Zakheim & di Modena, Lawyers, Jerusalem, and handed to the client on 26.3.76.

Dear Sir,

Since we received your instructions on 22.3 and we were requested to effect a very rapid check and convey our report to you within a few days, the present material is not to be considered a full and thorough investigation but merely as preliminary findings, hastily collected. We would however point out that the material does provide a basis for various lines of investigation, including some that are potentially sensitive. If I am asked to continue working on this file, I could expect to submit a comprehensive report within a month or thereabouts.

Your instructions comprised the collection of information on the background of MHS and also on his present mode of life, including the professional, financial, and family aspects. Our partial findings were as follows.

General Background

MHS was born in Oran, Algeria, in May 1940. Parents’ names Jacob and Sylvie. The father worked in Oran as a tax collector until 1954, when the family moved to a suburb of Paris. (Three brothers and one sister, all older than MHS, had previously emigrated to France and raised families of their own. The eldest brother lives in this country.)

MHS was a pupil at the Lycée Voltaire until 1958 and subsequently studied French literature at the Sorbonne for two years. He did not complete his studies and holds no academic degree. During this period he became associated with groups of the Betar movement in Paris (under the influence of his eldest brother) and also became an observant Jew (apparently under the influence of another brother, who underwent a return to religion and is still active in religious Zionist education in Paris).

MHS gradually abandoned his studies at the Sorbonne and devoted himself instead to Hebrew and Jewish studies. By the time he emigrated to Israel he had already mastered the Hebrew language. In late 1960 he emigrated to Israel and for a few months he worked as a construction laborer for a religious contractor in Petah Tikva. He then applied to the Police College and was accepted (apparently with the help of one of his relatives), but he left in the middle (we have been unable to ascertain the background), and went to study at the Sacred Lamp Yeshiva in Jerusalem. But he did not persevere with his studies here, either, and in the years 1962–1964 he supported himself through a part-time job as an usher at the Orion Cinema while he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to complete his course in the French Culture Department at Hebrew University. During this period he lived in a laundry room on the roof of the block of flats where his brother-in-law’s brother lived in Talpiyyot. In 1964 he was permanently exempted from military service (reserve duty in the town major’s unit), in consequence of a kidney disease with complications.

Since 1964 he has worked, first as an assistant teacher and subsequently as a regular teacher (nongraduate) of French in the Isaac’s Tent Religious State High School for boys in Jerusalem. Since his marriage in 1970 to Ilana (Halina) Gideon nee Brandstetter he has been living in a one-and-a-half-room flat at No. 7 Tarnaz Street, Jerusalem. This flat was purchased with the help of members of his family in Israel and France, on a ten-year mortgage with monthly repayments, of which roughly half has now been repaid.

Financial Situation

MHS earns IL 2550 per month from his job. The wife does not work. Additional sources of income: private lessons (some IL 400 per month), plus a regular allowance from his parents in Paris (IL 500 per month). Principal expenses: IL 1200 monthly mortgage repayments on the flat; IL 500 per mo. to keep his wife’s son Boaz Brandstetter at the Telamim Agricultural High School (until three weeks ago); monthly donation of IL 650, payable by standing order at the Talpiyyot branch of the Bank Leumi, to the Jewish Fellowship Movement. He is frequently in arrears on his bills (electricity, water, tax), but is always punctilious about paying the mortgage, the school fees, and the donation.

Family Affairs

Married (since 1971) plus one daughter, almost three (Madeleine Yifat). The wife was previously married to the well-known scholar Professor A. Gideon, now living in the USA (marriage dissolved). In accordance with a decision of the Rabbinical Court and following a lawsuit between the two parties in 1968, there is no financial liability on either side. MHS and his wife lead a respectable married life. They keep a kosher home, observe the Sabbath, and so forth, and their way of life could be described as traditional or moderately religious (they do not refrain from going to the cinema, for example).

We found no evidence of romantic ties outside the marital bond on the part of either MHS or his wife. Information is, however, available (although it goes beyond your brief to us) concerning apparent entanglements on the part of Ilana Gideon-Sommo from the time of her previous marriage. There is also information about her son Boaz’s being on probation since May 1975 (see the report by our agent A. Maimon, submitted to you at your request with this report). The relations of the boy Boaz with MHS and his wife are not good (for some years now he has refused to visit them in Jerusalem). On the other hand, relations between MHS and his extended family (cousins, in-laws, etc.) are very close.

Political Life

Here we had no difficulty in finding plentiful information. MHS’s views are close to the right. His eldest brother and other members of his family are known activists in the Herut Bloc (some of them in the National Religious Party). MHS has been at various times a paid-up member of both the aforementioned parties, albeit intermittently. In 1964 he was one of the organizers of a group of North African intellectuals and students in Jerusalem under the name
Moledet
(Fatherland). The group split on financial and ideological grounds and went out of existence in 1965. On the eve of the Six-Day War MHS was very active in propaganda and signature-gathering against the wait-and-see policy of the Eshkol government and in favor of taking the military initiative against Egypt and the other Arab countries.

Immediately after the Six-Day War MHS volunteered for an active role in what later became the Greater Israel Movement, specializing in propaganda and demonstrations. In 1971 he suddenly left the movement. Shortly afterward he made a great show of handing in his membership card to the NRP. In 1972 he was among the founders of a group called Jewish Fellowship, most of whose members are young immigrants from America and Russia. MHS still serves on the executive committee of this organization. After the Yom Kippur War it was involved in demonstrations against the troop disengagements in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, and also in attempts to purchase land illegally from Arabs in the area around Bethlehem. MHS was twice interviewed by the police in connection with his activities for this organization (in October ’74 and again in April ’75), but he was not charged. So far as we can ascertain, MHS was not personally involved in any violent act of lawbreaking. He had a dozen letters published in the two evening newspapers in which he urged a policy of encouraging the Arab population to leave the country and the occupied territories peaceably and through financial inducements.

In conclusion we shall cite a detail that seems to us particularly significant, and that hints apparently at an important item of information we have not yet managed to track down: In December of last year (four months ago) MHS applied to the French Embassy in Tel Aviv for the restoration of his French nationality (which he had voluntarily relinquished in 1963) side by side with his Israeli nationality. His application was turned down. Immediately afterward, on the tenth of December last, he went to Paris and stayed there four days only (!). It is not clear what the purpose of his trip was or who paid for it. Not long after his return, his French nationality was indeed restored, with a speed that indicates beyond all doubt a departure from the normal procedures. We did not succeed in ascertaining what lay behind this episode.

As already stated, we consider the report now before you a partial and nonexhaustive effort, owing to the severe time limit imposed upon us by yourselves. We shall be happy to place ourselves at your disposal should you be interested in further investigation either of this or of any other matter.

[Signed] Shlomo Zand
S. Zand Private Investigations Ltd., Tel Aviv

ITEM B:
Report of Albert Maimon (private investigator) of S. Zand Private Investigations Ltd., Tel Aviv, on the case of the youth Boaz Brandstetter. Drawn up on instructions from Mr. M. Zakheim of Zakheim & di Modena, Lawyers, Jerusalem, and submitted to the client on 26.3.1976.

Dear Sir,

Following your instructions we put in hand a rapid search (one working day) and established that the aforementioned, son of Mrs. I. Brandstetter-Sommo of Jerusalem and unknown father, voluntarily left the Telamim Agricultural High School on 19.2.76, on account of general unsuitability and long-standing and repeated disciplinary problems, for an unknown destination. Two days later, on 21.2, he was arrested at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv and questioned concerning dealing in stolen property (he already has two previous records for similar offenses, and has been on juvenile probation since May 1975). The following day, 22.2, he was released on the surety of Mr. Michael Sommo of Jerusalem (his mother’s husband) and apparently with some internal connivance within the police. Since then, he has been employed by a relative of Mr. Sommo in the wholesale vegetable market in Tel Aviv, apparently in contravention of the law on employment of minors. At present BB is living on the premises of the Planetarium in Ramat Aviv on the invitation of one of the people in charge, and he is described as “volunteer night watchman.” BB is not yet sixteen (born 1960), but looks much older (to go by my personal impression, I would have put him at eighteen at least: physically very big and exceptionally strong). As far as I could ascertain, he is not making any social connections at present. Of his social life at the time when he was studying at Telamim College I received contradictory assessments. There is no further significant information. Please let us know if there are any specific questions you would like us to investigate for you.