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36Basil FrankA Past Restored“Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.” Paul Klee.Internationally renowned photo-sculptor, Basil C. Frank from Jerusalem,took the ‘Jury’s Special Award’ at the Aomori Print Triennale 2010 inJapan for his exhibit, ‘The Saartjie Baartman Story’. His work projectsa Caucasian male covered in Dead Sea restorative mud, signifyinghealing, juxtaposed with Saartjie Baartman, a Khoikhoi womanshipped to London in 1810 from South Africa.Paraded in freak shows, she became a perverted attraction in 19thcentury Europe. Negotiated by Mandela and President Mitterrandfollowing the end of Apartheid, her remains were repatriated fromFrance to South Africa and buried on a hill in her homeland - theGamtoos Valley - over 200 years after her birth.shame because I don’t think the Iranianhad a choice and I really wanted tocompete and win,” expressed Gil toTelfed.The young Israeli of South Africanparents Ron and Stephanie is right.Mohammed didn’t have a choice andGil did win, in more ways than one.He showed up the young Iranian’smasters in Teheran as small mindedbigots, ignorant of the spirit and philosophyof the Olympics.Gil now has his sights set on the2012 Olympics in London.•Telfed’s Chairman& the MossadAgentWhen Nina Selbsts, daughter of thelate Judge Joseph Herbstein readthat Ram Oren, the popular Israeliauthor, had published a book this yearon the South-African born Mossadagent Sylvia Raphael, she recalledshe had tucked away extensive correspondencebetween her father, at thetime Chairman of Telfed, (1971-1974)and Sylvia, who, following a botchedMossad agentSylvia Raphaelon a movie setin Europe withYul Brynner.Justice Joseph Herbstein,Telfed Chairman 1971-1974assassination, was languishing in aNorwegian prison.In one letter, Herbstein writes, “AsChairman of the SAFZ (Israel), I amglad to offer you our services. If youshould need any help, please write.”There were numerous lengthy exchangesbetween the two, some on thenature of her Judaism in the light ofher mother not being Jewish. In oneletter, Herbstein expresses pleasurewith her father for “imbuing you sofully with his ‘Jewishness’ as to influenceyou to come out so strongly onour side.” And strongly she did. AsEitan Haber, Rabin’s former presssecretary and a veteran Yediot columnistexpressed at the time of herfuneral in 2005: “One day, when truepeace comes, they will write booksabout her, make movies of her lifeand name streets after her.” He wasright. Oren’s 2010 book may well bethe first of many.One for the BooksLike so many who were inspired byLeon Uris’s “Exodus”, Sylvia was drawnto the heroic exploits of an emergingnation fighting for survival. Bythe time she had turned the last pageof Uris’s bestseller, she had decidedto turn a new page in her own life.She arrived in Israel in the mid-sixtiesand joined Kibbutz Gan Shmuelnear Hadera as a volunteer. If hergood looks were attracting attentionon the kibbutz, there were others alsointerested. The Mossad spotted andrecruited her.The late sixties and earlyseventies were turbulenttimes. Palestinianterrorism was constantlyfront-page news, repletewith airline hijackings,assassinations and attackson airports and embassies.Rapidly rising to becomeone of Mossad’s top operatives,Raphael, carryinga false Canadian passport, posed as afreelance writer and photographer.On any one day she may have beenseen clicking away at a movie setsomewhere in Europe, the next, pursuingIsrael’s multifarious enemies.It was hinted that she was one ofthe very few Israeli agents who penetratedthe PLO’s bases in Jordan andLebanon when an unshaven operativein khaki fatigues, adorning a black andwhite headscarf and aholstered gun on hisbelt was orchestratingso much mayhem. DidArafat and Sylvia evermeet? With both nowgone - Who knows?But she was reputedto have been very closeto the Jordanian monarchy,frequently visitingher friend Alia,the late King Hussein’sthird wife.Mystery & MystiqueMost of Raphael’s exploits are stillshrouded in mystery, apart from the oneassignment that went horribly wrong.In July 1973, Raphael joined a hastilyassembled team of Mossad agents totrack down Ali Hassan Salameh, BlackSeptember’s operation chief in Europeand thought to be the mastermind ofthe Munich massacre. In the sedateNorwegian village of Lillehammer,the team gunned down a Moroccanwaiter called Ahmed Bouchiki believinghim to be Salameh. Raphael andfive other operatives were capturedand tried. She was sentenced to fiveand a half years in prison.While incarcerated, she was visitedby Herbstein’s son Frank, a professorin Chemical Crystallography from theTechnion in Haifa. In 1974 he was on alecture tour of Norway and “Dad askedme to visit her and so I did, takingwith me a box of Israeli chocolates,”Frank told Telfed. “She was so gracious.There we were visiting an inmate of aprison and she welcomed and ‘hosted’us as if we were overseas dignitariesvisiting her estate.” No sooner hadFrank left, when Sylvia penned anotherletter to Telfed’s chairman: “Whata lovely surprise getting a visit fromyour son – someone from home andsomeone from your family.”Sylvia was released the followingyear after serving 15 months.Sylvia Raphaelwith the son of afriend on KibbutzRamat HaKovesh.No matter howmuch the professional,in the furtiveworld that Sylviaoperated, mistakeswith lethal consequencesalwayslurked. Hazards ofthe ‘trade’! Sylvia’sbotched assassinationwould provea prelude to another,this time onthe other side. InSeptember 1985,Force 17, a splintergroup of the PLO,murdered threeIsraeli tourists on ayacht off the coastal resort of Larnacain Cyprus. They claimed that the victimswere Mossad agents, one of them,the prized Sylvia Raphael.Keeping MumPeopleNot so! Raphael would live for anothertwenty years before succumbingto leukemia at the age of 67 in SouthAfrica. In accordance with her wishes,the Mossad brought her “home”to be buried on her adopted Kibbutz,Ramat Hakovesh, 7 kms north-eastof Kfar Saba.Her Norwegian husband, AnnaeusScholdt who had been her lawyer ather trial in Norway, revealed to thewriter at the time of her unveilingthat “She was a gifted woman, quickwitted and well qualified to do whateverwas required of her. I still knownothing of what she had done prior tothe business in Norway. She was theconsummate professional; she wouldnever speak about her Mossad past,even to me. All I know was that herwork was extremely dangerous.”Prime Minister Golda Meir’s clearand simple message at the time - messwith us, and you will pay - set thenew rules of the game that are stillin play today.While it’s already five years that oneof Israel’s most accomplished fieldagents has been laid to rest, there isstill so much about the life and timesof Sylvia Raphael waiting to be unearthed.•The Spy Who Came in fromthe ColdThere is another revelation that emerges from the correspondence betweenthe imprisoned Mossad agent and Telfed’s chairman. Sitting in her cold Oslocell in the snowy winter of 1974, Sylvia writes to Judge Herbstein, “I read inThe Jerusalem Post that Tel Aviv - or was it the whole country - was blastedby an unseasonal heat wave - 28 degrees!” With this past summer’s temperaturesfrequently soaring into the forties, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ emerges offthis 36 year-old casually penned weather report - Global Warming is here!Unlike much of Sylvia Raphael’s life, this today is no secret.