Victor Ostrovsky, whose tell-all book about Israel’s secret intelligence agency Mossad is currently No. 1 on the New York Times best seller list, encountered a hostile studio audience here last week at the taping of his appearance on a Canadian Television talk show.
He also traded invectives with former Mossad chief Isser Harel and an Israeli journalist, who accused him of lying and breach of trust from the CTV studio in Jerusalem.
The Canadian-born Ostrovsky, author of “By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer,” served as a Mossad case officer for 18 months in the 1980s.
He and his co-author, Canadian news columnist Claire Hoy, are guests on CTV’s “Shirley Show” to be broadcast this week.
Emotions ran high at the Oct. 17 taping where the writer was shouted down by members of the audience. When he accused Mossad of giving the Israeli government false information about Arab intentions, an older man in the audience called him a “thief” who “abused the trust of Mossad.”
Harel, whose own book, “The House on Garibaldi Street,” is an account of Mossad’s 1960 kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, accused Ostrovsky of having criminal past.
“Only a truly wicked villain could have fabricated lies of this kind,” Harel said, referring to allegations of nefarious activities by Mossad Ostrovsky’s best seller.
Hirsh Goodman, former military correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, called the author a “damn good liar” who began to believe his lies.
At one point, Ostrovsky, Hoy and Goodman engaged in a shouting match via satellite.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
