Orna Klein

lorna thank you so much for joining us and being on our show pleasure and shalom to all of you thank you and we're i would love to hear more about your background and maybe some of your experiences and your service to the jewish people in the army maybe you can share with us any area that you want to discuss okay so maybe we'll start with the beginning you asked about my accent so my parents came to israel in from south africa as young people as a married couple we lived in a small village on the beach shore and as everybody else went to school went to the army i was an instructor in the army left the army went to university as everybody else and uh i hated it i suffered i wasn't a good pupil and you know you need a lot of patience for that so i met my brother who already worked for the israeli you know the the security forces i didn't know where and what but i told him listen you have to rescue me i have to leave the university i don't know what to do so he said to me you know what they're looking for a woman i'm not sure you'll get in you'll have to pass a lot of you know tests and all sorts of things and if you'll succeed then great you'll leave the university so that's how i started i didn't know where i was going i don't know what i was going to do i was only 21 which is very young too young in my mind and i went through all these tests and things and they said okay on thursday they told me on sunday you begin so friday morning i took the car went to jerusalem to the university collected all my stuff went back said goodbye to jerusalem for a while sunday 8 o'clock came to the place where they told me to be at and uh went into a room full of guys sitting around the table with their names on and me the only woman and a lot of people around us sat there a guy comes up and said welcome to the mossad and i almost fell off my chest i had no idea where i was going and i looked at everybody else you know there were young guys offices in the army and all that jazz and me the young girl from the village and i said to myself what can i help them with i mean me the only story i knew about the mossad was eichmann and the catching of ice on those days i read the book and that's how i started actually wow so it's great that was my first day and so share with us maybe um some memorable moment something that you did i don't know if it's classified if you can't share is there anything that you can take us through something that that you know you can share with us that we can sort of live in your life for a few moments okay firstly secrets i will not share i don't share with anybody and i talk a lot about it today these days but um we were a group working together as a group me as the only woman and a few guys around me heaven but um what we did we got all sorts of the technology around things i mean not physically talking to people but getting information technically which means following people photography getting into places where you're not supposed to be at and things like that one of the first memories and things that we did do and we and i can share is bombing the iraqi uh nuclear power back then at the 80s beginning of the 80s that was one of the first things that ever you know people spoke about and we were part of that getting the information not bombing but getting the information where it was what were they doing who was involved with it things like that um the stuff that we did of course we could not talk about but the life that we had i mean it's it's not like the movies i mean when i watch movies today which i enjoy a lot about you know police and about uh spying it's a bit far fetched it's not exactly how it is it's very it's much more gray a lot of hours that you spend watching and looking uh being out of the house for many weeks and me being 21 and my family wasn't in israel at the time actually so coming back to an empty house empty flat on a friday saturday night going away again for three four weeks coming back again very lonely life it's not easy at all also the fact that you need to be quiet about it nobody knew who i was where i worked i mean even my friends didn't know what i was doing so you have to have like a double life yeah so what what drove you you know like you're speaking about this there's two things that come into my head one is the danger again i don't know what's like you said real and what sort of drama in terms of the danger but i'm sure you were put into compromising positions i'm sure that you were in countries that um if you were exposed would have been you know horrific consequences um you don't even get the usual things people get which is the recognition from your closest people you know the so i guess i'm asking you a double question the first question i'm asking is how do you get through these difficult times you're sitting somewhere and you've got to grapple with the tension of the moment maybe this consequences of what happens and then the second question is what drives you to keep on doing it okay so i'll tell you a story i think stories are better than you know everything else the first time that i went overseas doing a job i was still in training we hardly had any women at that time i'm talking to you about 1980s and now you can know how the age you saw my granddaughter um yes it was the first time and actually when we worked we didn't go on our names we had passports we had different names sometimes we were israeli sometimes we weren't and that was the first time i flew and i flew to cyprus and we landed in cyprus an hour and a half away from israel short going to the airport stand in the queue and suddenly i realized i don't remember my name first time and you know the first time so you feel the butterflies and you get a bit panicky and and then it passes and i remembered my name and i went through and everything was okay but that's the tension that you learn to live with i mean that was a small story sometimes you have to run away sometimes you're somewhere inside an office where you're not supposed to be and somebody's knocking at the door or there's a noise coming from somewhere and you realize that you have a problem you have to learn to learn to live with the panic with the worry with the being scared many people tell me when i ask them what do you think you need to be in order to become a spy and a lot of people say you mustn't be afraid so i said to them wrong answer because you have to be afraid because that's one of your tools and when you get afraid you have to start asking yourself why am i afraid am i afraid because of me or am i afraid because the surroundings have i got a right to be afraid and you learn to live with the questions and you learn to look with attention and that's part of your life you become that's who you are so being afraid and living with attention is something that you live with i'm sure that after you know 26 i worked there for 26 years you know the body talks back at you for living with that tension but you learn to live with it i can tell you that when things happen to me not to do with work i like the tension i live by it and when when there's tension i work better i think better so not everybody can do that i know because i used to recruit people and i used to teach people as well and one of the things that we do check and you have to go through that is to be afraid but to work with it not to stop a lot of people are afraid and they they can't live with it well you since you are an instructor can you share this what is what does it take to be a great spy what are some of the the qualities that you look for when when you're training people okay firstly it depends which direction they're going because there are a lot of jobs different jobs so you need different different qualities for every job but if we you know summarize it all i can say one of them is you know working with being afraid being brave you have to uh work by a plan and stick to it but also know how to work around the plan uh because every time that we go and we work we get a list of things that we're allowed to do and not allowed to do and everything is like there is a map like a log book but there's always something missing and there's always a new thing that happens and you always have to know when you need to stop and when you can continue and how you have to be flexible with that so that's another thing that you need you have to be like an actor always talk about acting because we have all sorts of different names and every name has a story behind it and a reason why we chose that certain personality for that specific trip so you you are you're an actor you act but unlike actors who some of them maybe most of them they you know they act for the for the clapping they need the recognition of the people we don't have that many times you know on television or things you hear about things and back then i used to say to myself around the people i was sitting with oh that's me you know i was there and you shut up nobody knows so you have to be an actor that's another quality that you need um you have to have the language mostly not hebrew usually you're not israeli right you have to be very thorough with your history and your background because you have to live it i mean it's not like a stage where you go for two hours and you get off because you're there for a week for two weeks for three weeks for four weeks it depends on the job when you go to these places you're collecting information so you are you have to you have to blend in so you have to be from there you can't do you speak like earlier we had the opportunity to speak to another um individual named avner and he was saying to me that it's interesting because you know the mossad's an interesting organization i've been watching i i know very little i've only been watching it as you know as a with big eyes since i was a little kid waiting for you know someone to tap me on the shoulder um but what's interesting is that what's unique about the mossad from what i understand is that it uses everything that it has properly we're a jewish state which means we have things and don't have things like jews have talents don't have talents like you know we may not be like you know the the strongest people in the world but we have specific talents and what he said earlier which i thought was fascinating was one of the things that make us very unique is that we come from a lot of places which means we have a lot of natural normal languages that is a tool that may be even more powerful than jumping out of an airplane and hitting a target the way you'd see it in the movies right yeah israel is unique because we do have all these people not only the the languages the mentality right so yeah you can if you know the mentality you can blend in naturally yeah it's not only only that you have to know how to work around it i mean it's colors and it's the way you look and a woman like a woman a woman usually walks in the street and she wants everybody to think that she's beautiful guys too these days but never mind um we we did the opposite i mean i lived in france when i was already with a family with kids my my kids and my family we used to live in paris and i used to live from there so i was around 40 already wow and i used to walk around and nobody ever spoke to me because we know how to do that with the colors that you wear you like a great person that nobody talks to you if you don't want to be talked to when you spend weeks and unless you want to have the conversation you don't have conversation because a person can do that i mean nobody will talk to you unless you invite them to talk to you it doesn't matter how with your eyes with your your behavior whatever so it's it's a life of a lot of loneliness yeah especially when you're alone and not with the group because i wasn't always with the group at the beginning i was but a lot of the times i was by myself weeks on end and it's very very hard and i can tell you as a mother i used to come home and it used to be very hard because i used to come home after a week or two weeks and i wanted peace and quiet i needed time to re-shuffle my cards to get acquainted to my family again and by the time you know time passed they they realized you know they didn't jump at me when i came home they gave me the time and then when i left and that's a terrible thing to say as a mother sometimes i felt relief i'm back to my quietness you become a loner and as a family it's very very hard sure especially as a mother yeah and that's these are some of the things that you need to live with i mean apart from being you know knowing how to look at things knowing how to follow people and not being seen all sorts of technical things that you can learn better or you know you can be very good at it unless it depends on you but it's much more than that and a lot of people are unable to do that not because they're not clever enough a lot of people are much cleverer than i am and a lot of people are you know technically they know better and they can see the whole picture much better than you but you need those certain qualities put together you need to be like we always use this i use the time i tell my pupils you need to be like a cat in the street you know you need to live in the streets and survive there absolutely and find yourself you know you mustn't be seen and when you go overseas especially for instance in europe take uh switzerland for instance when you walk in the streets as a spy you don't only look forward you have to look forward you have to look at the sides you have to look at the back and you have to look on top why firstly you want to know if you're being followed so you need to check your back and you don't just turn around and check your back you know you need to see the sides because people are looking at you from the side as well and you need to look in front of you to know where you're going but you also need to look at the top of you because a lot of people you know on the balconies looking at you and switzerland for instance is like a police state if a guy on the third floor on the balcony sees you crossing on a red light you know by foot you'll call the police and we've had people being caught because citizens called the police so you always have to have you know like the 360 degrees and on top and on the bottom for the you know the dog all that but but you know it's it's that's how it is you always have to be uh focused all the time and it's tiring a lot of the times you work at night so everybody's asleep and you go into places like a thief you're not by yourself when you do that usually we know how to do things but you have to be awake during the day as well why because for instance you're a tourist somewhere it's not logical that you'll sleep all day and be awake all night so you have to be awake during the day and awake at night as well wow which people don't think about these things you know it seems like yeah that's how it goes but it doesn't so you get very tired and um what else i mean wow so powerful i i i know i want to be respectful of your time i know we don't have that much time left um was there anything just to share you know i know that you're collecting and doing and following and and you're providing i guess the information that we only read about maybe even years later you know the iraqi bomb the 1981 or i'm sure what we're seeing right now even today in gaza is the product of of the work of the mossad months and years maybe even beforehand that will so a lot of what the world sees could be years after you're on the streets was there anything in particular you can remember where you may not have realized it or or you you were able to see the end of an operation and how your work even though it was in one area allowed israel to do something um that that you can share i'll share with you something that i wasn't involved with iran bringing all that stuff from iran that bibi netanyahu you know showed the world that's why i can talk about it a most heroic uh operation i must say this is i can say that these are the things that we do it doesn't always have to be in iran it can be everywhere because there's a lot in a lot of information not only back there but you know they buy things and they do things all over the world so you can do it don't have to go into iran but what happened there the way that they did things was an amazing amazing operation which i think the world was a stunned and i don't know why i mean we're such a small country with so many problems which you can hear about now we know i mean the whole world has suffered the last i mean 2020 but since then what's been going on in israel now you think to yourself i mean how can we do all this such a small little country and how we have to suffer and i i really don't know i mean maybe it's because we know we haven't got an another place to go to maybe because we believe i mean when i used to work the first time when people go and get a job the first thing they ask is how much will i earn we never ask that question ever i remember as a recruiter if somebody asked me how much will we earn the first few questions he was out wow that's how it went back then because we worked for israel we believed in zionism we believed in the cause so much it wasn't just you know a job it was our lives yeah we really believed in it wow so powerful that's and that's why we did all that i mean we gave up so many things as me as a as a young girl as a woman to i found my husband as a mother i mean i can tell you that when we lived in paris my daughter my young daughter she was 10 11. when we came back she said i have no mother wow when the psychologist asked her what do you mean she said i gave up on her she was never there i found my solutions and it took me years to recover her trust and her love we're okay today i'm happy to say but but you know it's it's it's a lot it's a lot and not only is it a lot but it's and this is why this is so important is that it's sacrificed that nobody can see it's not gonna make a movie about the love of a mother to a child and saying goodbye to do something that she can't even share with her best friends like we're talking about we we always speak about the idea that we have we need to have nefesh for each other and that when we're together and we're biya we can bring miracles and we talk about it when we get to meet people that are actually living their lives doing it at a level that no one can even see we can see the movies we can see what it's like to put eichmann in the back of the car and that's also very hard and it's also very hard to okay but what we can't see is the invisible woman in france that is shedding a tear because she's leaving her daughters and she's doing it without asking when i'm getting mine because she's doing it for the better of the world and of the jewish people and the reason why it's so important is because and this is what we're doing on the show is because it sends a message to the rest of us be bigger be bigger israel is now in the middle of a crisis step up for the jewish people the neighbor needs you step up for the neighbor right like when you see when i get when we get to meet people like you it reminds all of us that there's more in us than we thought and whatever we're sacrificing you can always go a little bit further and that's the story of the jewish people it's been the story of the jewish people from the beginning hashem drives us to things that are lo yuman but when you come out of it we go how did we do this it's because people really do when we started talking you said you know you hear all these stories and when i lectured a lecture a lot about the people the people behind the work and the women behind because a lot of people think that the women are doing different things more sexual things but the women are doing exactly what the men are doing and i talk about the people and i talk about you know the sacrifice and how and we didn't do it because we felt that we are sacrificing we really did it from the bottom of our hearts of our beliefs yeah it wasn't it wasn't a game and now when you see the politics and you see the pettiness and you see the power games and you see all that around you you say what's going on here somewhere we lost our way yeah and we need we really need to you know focus back in and change our ways because israel is not a regular country right we're here for a reason yeah i don't know where your parents came from but i know where my parents came from from lithuania and all their family was killed yeah yeah where i mean my grandparents are holocaust survivors and why i come from the world of the syrian jews that ran out of syria and the holocausts are having jews that ran out of europe that's my background and and when i grew up i grew up in a world where we were looking at israel from from from birth from earth i'm not that old but almost i was born in 56 yeah 19 years oh and i've seen all the wars and everything go you know by me yeah and i said to my husband the other day you know we we've been suffering this country the people we've been suffering so much i don't know of any country that had this for such a long time you know the suffering and this unknowing like the people around gaza the way that they live day by day is unbelievable and the world doesn't see it yeah well they won't see it they'll never see it i'm a diaspora jew i live here yeah i know i can tell you stole nothing i'll tell you they're never gonna see it paris uh in the 90s i saw how europe was conquered by palestinians and europe doesn't know it yet maybe i think they're realizing it now yeah they've been conquered yeah well we're starting here now what's going on we're starting now we're starting beginning now with congress starting this is the beginning of the end or anna thank you so much for joining us and really your sacrifice for our people is inspiring and we thank you for what you do and keep on shining your light on this world thank you very much and let's hop for a better world thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8 pm eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube [Music]