| Michael Ross was a typical 20-something Canadian backpacking in Europe and trying to find himself when he decided to go to Israel to work on a kibbutz for the winter in 1982.
What was supposed to be a temporary adventure ended up radically altering his life. He soon fell in love with an Israeli woman, converted to Judaism, served in the Israeli military and most surprisingly of all, ended up getting recruited as a spy for the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, where he worked for 18 years.
In The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in Mossad (McClelland & Stewart, 296 pp.), Ross shares his riveting life story as an undercover Israeli spy. Some of the anecdotes are straight out of a James Bond movie. In one instance, he boards a Turkish ferry to attach an explosive device under the bottom of a terrorist leader’s Mercedes. The memoir is an incredibly honest and intimate account of a spy’s life. Ross describes the adrenalin rush of missions but also the alienation and loneliness of working undercover, revealing how he eventually started to unravel mentally. He found himself severely beating two Iranians who were in South Africa trying to acquire nuclear technology for their country. Ross describes how he lost control and wanted to kill them. It’s a disturbing, yet compelling and thought-provoking read. Ross offers a window into a covert intelligence world where nefarious characters try to blow up innocent civilians and get their hands on advanced weapons technology. Spies such as he attempt to foil these efforts and in the process commit a variety of criminal acts themselves. It forces the reader to consider how far intelligence agencies should be allowed to go in the interests of national security and, if such agencies didn’t exist, how much more carnage would there be in the world. But the book doesn’t make an attempt to explore those moral dilemmas. It’s simply a gripping personal tale.
"I’ve said it’s a romance because it’s about a guy who fell in love, what he did to protect the things he fell in love with and what happened to him along the way," says Ross. He not only fell in love with a woman, but also another religion, culture and country and became fervently devoted to protecting them. For the entire 18 years Ross worked for Mossad, the only person who knew he was an agent was his wife (now ex-wife). He even had to use a cover story with his own parents. Ross says living in deep cover was often a challenge. "It’s the loneliest profession in the world. There’s no doubt about it. You have to operate in sometimes total isolation, and you only have superficial relationships with people that you can’t take beyond a certain level," he says. "I remember getting to the stage where I really started to dislike people because I couldn’t become a member of the human race like the rest of them and do the things they do and relax. You can’t relax. You have to be on guard all the time."
Eventually his work became too psychologically taxing and he found himself wanting to kill the two Iranians in South Africa. Ross says he decided to be fully honest about the incident and his spy career to provide a true account. "The intention in writing this was never to portray myself as some sort of hero or whatever – I just think people need to know it can also be a dirty business and it really is a war. It’s a war that’s in the shadows and it’s fought 24-7 just like any other war. There’s an ugly, brutal side to it. I wanted to illustrate the frustrations and disappointments (and) that this job can take you to places you never thought you’d ever go," he says.
Despite the fact that he finally decided he could no longer be an agent, Ross remains convinced that what he did as an agent was justified, even if it resulted in someone’s death. "Those kinds of missions are extremely rare. They’re not as prevalent as people think due to Hollywood. It has to be someone who has a considerable amount of innocent blood on his hands, and someone who’s planning to take more lives. Then a really tough decision is made. How do we stop this person? You can’t reason with these people. In many ways, they’ve placed themselves in positions where they’re above the law. We can’t arrest them. We can’t capture them."
Ross says, since 9/11, western countries have finally started to understand what Israel has been grappling with for years. "The kinds of people that will strap on bombs and blow up a bus or walk into a shopping mall or crash a plane into a building – this is a very different enemy than we’ve ever faced in the past," he says. "(It’s) fighting that I think is going to stretch our tolerances and cause a lot of wrenching tradeoffs on human rights and our way of life." |
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