ISRAEL GIVES MAXWELL FAREWELL FIT FOR HERO
By Jackson Diehl and
Glenn FrankelNovember 11, 1991
JERUSALEM, NOV. 10 – Publisher Robert Maxwell today was given a funeral befitting a national hero by Israel, the country with which he developed an intimate and sometimes controversial relationship in the last three years of his life.
Maxwell, whose body was recovered from the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands last Tuesday after he disappeared from his yacht, was buried late this afternoon in Judaism's most prestigious spot, the cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives, facing the Western Wall. His funeral service in Jerusalem's Hall of the People was attended by a host of Israeli politicians led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and President Chaim Herzog, who eulogized the self-made tycoon as "a man cast in a heroic mold."
Born into an orthodox Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1923, Maxwell made his career and fortune in Britain, where he served in the army and Parliament and once announced that he had converted to the Anglican Church. In recent years, however, Maxwell reembraced Judaism and became a fervent supporter of Israel, investing tens of millions of dollars into the country's troubled economy and serving as an occasional advocate and point man for its governments.
Only a week before his death, the volatile owner of the New York Daily News and Britain's Mirror newspaper group became involved in an exchange of lawsuits with author Seymour Hersh, who accused Maxwell of working with Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. Maxwell's death at sea only intensified the speculation in London, where Hersh promised to produce further revelations of the 68-year-old publisher's clandestine Israeli connections.
So far, the evidence has not been forthcoming, and senior Israeli officials as well as sources in Britain have disputed Hersh's account that Maxwell helped the Mossad find Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who was abducted by the spy agency in 1986 after he leaked secrets about Israel's nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times, a London newspaper.