Biography
Victor Ostrovsky was born in Edmonton, Alberta on November 28, 1949, and moved to Israel at the age of five.
His mother, a gymnastics teacher by trade, was born in the British Mandate of Palestine. She volunteered with the British Army (ITS) during World War II, and drove trucks across the desert from Cairo to Jerusalem. After the war, she joined the Haganah (Israel's underground) to fight for Israel's independence from the British mandate.
Ostrovsky’s father served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II as a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber, taking part in more than twenty missions over Germany. His plane was shot down over Germany, but he managed to escape and return to active service. After the war, he joined the Israeli military to fight in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, rising to command Sde Dov, an Air Force base in Israel.
His grandparents, Haim and Esther Margolin, settled in Palestine in 1912 after fleeing Russia, and Haim later served as Auditor General of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Ostrovsky’s grandmother, a Russian immigrant, introduced him to noted Israeli artist Aharon Giladi, who lived on the same street, and who bought paints and canvasses for him. Giladi mentored Ostrovsky for more than ten years.
Ostrovsky joined the Israeli Youth Brigade at 14 and quickly became an expert marksman, finishing second in a 1964 national shooting competition with a score of 192 out of 200. At the age of 17 he joined the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) after a minor eye condition ended his hopes of becoming a pilot. He was assigned to the Military Police and rose to command the Nablus Military Police Base, after which he was made commanding officer of the Military Police West Bank Central Command.
After his service with the Military Police, Ostrovsky spent six years in the Israeli navy. He was selected to attend the Staff and Command School and attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Ostrovsky was placed in charge of all Navy weapons testing. He helped introduce the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile to the Saar Missile Boats, as well as the Vulcan Phalanx anti-missile defense system.
According to court papers filed by the Israeli government in an attempt to stop the publication of his book By Way of Deception, in 1982, Ostrovsky was recruited by the Mossad and trained at the Mossad Academy north of Tel Aviv as a katsa (case officer).
In 1986, he says he left the agency saying it was because of what he considered cases of unnecessarily malicious actions by Mossad operatives. He also accused Mossad directors of knowingly making less than accurate reports to the nation’s political leadership.
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