Talk:Victor Ostrovsky

Untitled
Many of Ostrovsky's claims (like that the Mossad concluded that John Connally, rather than JFK, was the intended victim of mobsters wanting in on the oil business) are impossible to prove either way, however, it is not the responsibility of wiki editors and contributors to determine Truth. Identifying misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, opinion, and incendiary material is tough enough... "Just the facts, ma'am" - Jack Webb. Kcol 23:30, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This post is VERY badly written by non-English speaker and appears to support Ostrovsky's claims, which are no longer taken seriously.

If that's the case, then why is Israel taking him seriously? - The article is written in perfect English, and seems to be reasonably impartial. The only question is whether Ostrovsky's allegations have ever been investigated. This applies especially to the claim that Israel framed Libya in 1986 by placing a Trojan in a Tripoli apartment building that would rebroadcast seeming Libyan terrorist messages emanating from Israel. If no one has investigated this, why not?

With regards to the first comment about how supposedly nobody takes Ostrovsky seriously, denigrating Ostrovsky's claims and printed evidence contained in his book, I would offer my comment that if you put the man down and then not sign your statement as a registered user on Wikipedia, then you're running the risk of making yourself look like someone who simply opposes him or his message for your own purposes or perhaps those of some organisation. Where is your proof that nobody believes Ostrovsky? Did you take an international census and publish it? And how come you will not identify yourself when you make statements for which you offer no evidence?

With regards to the second comment about investigating anything in Lybia: I would think that it would be sort of dangerous to go into denied territory and be snooping about. Lybia is not exactly a common vacation resort where everyone comes and goes as he or she pleases. If you are so eager to investigate it, I'm sure you can manage to go there and then report your findings. If you would not go, why would anybody else? I'd rather go whalegutting in Antarctica.--Achim 14:25, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Truth
Seeing as the Israelis tried to bring the book down in a court, I think it can be safely assumed that at least some of what he has written is true. The article should not read like a deproving of a hoax until his books are proven to be a hoax. Joffeloff 13:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Or it could be that Israel for some reason wants you to believe that the book is real. This certainly would be a better explanation for taking it to court, as the case had virtually no chance of succeeding. Better yet, as suggested by Achim, I could be posting this very message for my own purposes or perhaps even those of some organisation. --Argmagus (talk) 18:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Just because Israel tried to "bring the book down", does not prove anything. The book is bad publicity either way. And I mean that as an objective statement, whatever my personal opinion may be as to its content or intent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.162.66.130 (talk) 14:00, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

He was NAMED in a lawsuit by the Israeli government and that same lawsuit states that he WAS in fact in the Mossad. I don't know why there is "alleged" and "self-proclaimed" in there. READ the lawsuit!! That is proof upon proof. The Israeli government brought the case to the United States court of law naming him as part of the Mossad and wanted the book banned because it would endanger current operatives. There is no "alleged" or "self-proclaimed." What other proof does there need to be? Really? What? You have the book, which many have found credible and true, you have a lawsuit that states he was in the Mossad from the Israeli government itself.Bdiggs (talk) 00:23, 14 April 2010 (UTC)bdiggs


 * Do you have a source for that?Drsmoo (talk) 09:10, 14 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If Ostrovsky had written anything really damaging for Mossad or Israel, do you think he would still be alive? Possibly he was allowed to publish lesser scandals to divert from the really big issues Mossad is involved in. Ontologix (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Citation Needed Tags added
I tidies up some of these, but some of them are ridiculous, I think. Do you alse need a reference that the Pope is Catholic? --Achim 05:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I note that the article bibliography references only a list or articles by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. My personal opinion is that the WRMEA is a completely disreputable, biased source, particularly in this context: it's consistently and vehemently anti-Israel, far beyond the bounds of responsible journalism. On a topic as controversial as Victor Ostrovsky, I don't think that WRMEA articles should be referenced here; or, at a minimum, they should be referenced only along with information from other, more reliable sources. Any thoughts on this? I don't want to start an editing war here, so I'm not going to make any changes in the article until and unless there is some relevant discussion. Don Radlauer (talk) 12:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous edits
http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/f.php?pagetitle=Victor+Ostrovsky See who's attempting to edit anonymously. --Achim (talk) 04:05, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

References in the biography section
There are not many references in the biography section, but rather specific information (such as dates) are given. I didn't really know anything about Victor Ostrovsky before reading this article, but the impression I've gotten from the talk page and references to him in other situations is that there's controversy about his background.

Was he in fact in the Mossad? Do we have reliable sources -- other than his word -- that corroborate this? Note that I'm not saying that we should say he wasn't in Mossad or omit the information entirely, but the way we present it needs to be different if we only have his word and the Israeli government (for example) denies it. Right now we say things like "In 1982, Ostrovsky was recruited by the Mossad and trained at the Mossad Academy north of Tel Aviv as a katsa." The tone of this sentence makes it seem like this is well-established, but it's not sourced, and elsewhere we say that the Israeli government has sometimes denied his role. On the flip side, there's a reference on the talk page to them naming him in a case as an agent in the Mossad, but the article says nothing about it.

Looking at this from the opposite side now: the lede currently calls him "a self-proclaimed former katsa". This is a deeply NPOV wording. Yes, he claims to have been a katsa, and so technically I suppose this makes him a self-proclaimed former katsa, but the wording makes it sound like we doubt his assertion (see WP:CLAIM for an example of why claim is a bad word for WP in general). Sounding like we doubt his assertion is bad because it means we're taking a point of view, which we shouldn't do, *unless* we're taking the predominantly established point of view, and we back this up with ironclad sources. We have failed to do this here. It's also bad in the context of BLP because we are essentially implying that he's a liar without any kind of evidence to back it up.

The article overall fails to give us any kind of idea of what's contested and what's not, and his biography section in particular suffers from this problem. Things that are uncontroversial (like the opening sentence, "Victor Ostrovsky was born in Edmonton, Alberta on November 28, 1949, and moved to Israel at the age of five.", which is also the only sourced sentence in the section) are stated with the same format and tone as things that apparently are controversial, like "In 1986, he left the agency citing what he considered cases of unnecessarily malicious actions by Mossad operatives."

We should strive to separate what is in fact non-controversial from what is controversial and source this section (and the rest of the article) better than we have. Eniagrom (talk) 18:01, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I came across the name Victor Ostrovsky as a man who precisely described the intricate method by which a politician committed "suicide" (=assassinated by the Mossad). The method was confirmed by modern forensic examination. According to another online encyclopedia the state of Israel confirmed that Ostrovsky was an agent of Mossad when they applied for a court injunction with regard to his first book. The last sentence you quote as controversial came from his own statement, he himself is probably the best source for his motivations when quitting Mossad. Wikipedia has recently become a propaganda battleground for a variety of causes (Russian FSB, Israeli Jews, leftist activists and AGW/climate change activists who all want a more favourable description of their own causes and ideas). I am positively surprised that this article has escaped that pressure. I hope that an experienced editor sources the text and then the article will be fine as is. 93.196.244.187 (talk) 22:32, 20 April 2015 (UTC)


 * 7 years after, in a world that's totally changed, I will still react to this post, mentioning that in the last years it has been made clearer that this guy wasn't a real Mossad agent, he was a trainee for less than 2 years who was kicked out of the programme (didn't "quit", he did quit the Mossad, enraged, because he had been kicked out of the trainee programme), after before that he had been rejected by the israeli military intelligence, based on personality assessments. The ex vice-director of the Mossad said that even his own driver, who had been 5 years with the Mossad (as a driver), had more access information than this guy. Israel did a mistake of persuing him, which made him internationally famous, making the world believe that there was a lot into what he wrote. Which are basically personal opinions of an "intelligence personality", but in fact a person thirsting for revenge which had little to do with the operational intelligence world, actually his longest connection to this world was his book. So it's basically a guy with theories, like many others, who by saying to be "ex-Mossad" (which for many is a big "wow") and intelligently using the reaction of Israel, became a best seller writer. The book is full of speculations, exaggerations and personal opinions. Even anti-Israeli historians like the "New historians" have been  professional enough to have evaluated the little significance of the first book (let alone the second). No serious organisation or personality has it as a reference book about Israeli intelligence, a book which today serves mainly anti-Israeli personalities and organisations. So no, it is nothing to do with "propaganda", it has to do with a person who was very eager to be a Mossad agent but was not good enough, developing all kinds of theories in order to self-justify his own failiours. Virum Mundi (talk) 08:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Sayan (Mossad)
Sayan (Mossad) Should not redirect here. BlueD954 (talk) 13:39, 5 November 2020 (UTC)