Features
Robert Maxwell was a publishing magnate – and a crook, but what else may he have been?
By BERNIE BELLAN A few weeks back, during one of the weekly bike excursions that a group of men (and occasionally women) go on every Tuesday during the summer, I happened to be talking to one of the members of our group, the ageless Mickey Hoch. (I had profiled Mickey in the April 3, 2019 issue of this paper.)
Mickey asked me whether I knew that there was a new biography out of famed media tycoon Robert Maxwell? When I said that I didn’t know that, Mickey added: “He was my first cousin.”
Robert Maxwell a cousin of Mickey Hoch? Now that was something I just had to find out more about. So, in short order, I bought this latest biography of Robert Maxwell, which is titled “Fall – The Mystery of Robert Maxwell”, by journalist John Preston.
There have been reams of material already published about Robert Maxwell – and although it’s been 30 years since his mysterious death from aboard his yacht, the “Lady Ghislaine”(pronounced Gee-Layn), the escapades of his notorious daughter – the very same Ghislaine, have kept the name Maxwell in the news long after Robert Maxwell’s death.
But to think that Maxwell’s real name was Jan Ludvik Hoch and that he was a first cousin of Mickey Hoch, well – that was something I found so intriguing I just had to dive into this new biography to learn much more about a man who was larger than life in so many respects.
I’m not sure how much more Preston has uncovered in this newest biography of someone about whom so much has been written. Frankly, I had trouble keeping track of all the names that were mentioned throughout the book, often wondering just what was that particular person’s relationship to Maxwell again?
What intrigued me more than anything, however, was Maxwell’s discomfort with his Jewish heritage. For years he disavowed ever having been Jewish, but late in his life he seemed to have done a complete about face and was more than eager to associate himself with his Jewish heritage.
Apparently there were two seminal moments in Maxwell’s life that led to this grand reawakening: One was in 1984, when he was already 61 and was persuaded to go on a trip to Israel for the first time in his life. It was during that trip – and a meeting with then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, that Maxwell decided he was going to become a fervent supporter of the State of Israel. He told Shamir that he was going to become the largest individual investor in the state – and he did, actually investing $50,000,000.
It was also during a visit to Yad Vashem that Maxwell seems to have come to grips with the awful calamity that befell almost his entire family.
Here is how Preston describes that visit: “With his head lowered and his hands plunged into his jacket pockets, he walked through canyons of stone blocks bearing the names of communities that had been wiped out. Stopping in front of one of the blocks, he pointed at the lettering. ‘At the bottom is the shtetl Solotvino where I come from,’ he said. ‘It is no more. It was poor, it was Orthodox and it was Jewish. We were very poor. We didn’t have things that other people had. They had shoes and they had food and we didn’t. At the end of the War, I discovered the fate of my parents and my sisters and brothers, relatives and neighbours. I don’t know what went through their minds as they realized they had been tricked into a gas chamber. But one thing they hoped is that they will not be forgotten …’ Tears welled up in Maxwell’s eyes as he glanced towards the sky. Barely able to speak, he managed to add: ‘And this memorial in Jerusalem proves that.’ Overcome, he walked away.”
Later, Maxwell also paid a visit to his birthplace in Solotvino, which had been part of Czechoslovaki when Maxwell was born, but later became a part of Hungary. Maxwell described his childhood as so impoverished that he was hungry almost all the time.
That impoverished childhood, followed by his managing to escape Czechoslovakia while all but two of his nine siblings – along with his parents, were murdered in Auschwitz, also seems to have traumatized Maxwell for life, although he would never admit it.
And, while reading about Maxwell’s business exploits and his duplicitous nature is certainly interesting, it is the aspect of Maxwell remaking himself into a non-Jew, then making a 180 degree turn the other way that I think most Jewish readers will find most fascinating.
Not only was Maxwell able to adopt a different persona depending upon the occasion, and switch languages with ease (he actually spoke nine different languages), it also seems that he himself had difficulty knowing who exactly he was.
At one point Preston reveals that Maxwell changed his name to DuMaurier, pretending to be French. Why DuMaurier? Because he liked the cigarettes.
As well, Maxwell seems to have been quite fearless. He was decorated with the Military Cross by Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery in 1945 for, among other things, wiping out a German machine gun nest single handedly.
He was also very good looking when he was younger – and quite fit. As the years went on, however, Maxwell’s voracious appetite for food led to his becoming quite obese. As a matter of fact, he was so large upon his death that his coffin could not be fitted into his own private jet and a special plane that is designed especially to carry coffins had to be arranged to take him to Israel, which is where he had wanted to be buried.
Preston interviewed several individuals who described Maxwell’s insatiable appetite. One amusing anecdote is about a lunch that was served in Maxwell’s private dining room at his headquarters. The main course was leg of lamb. Maxwell’s guest that particular day was served first, and he asked for the knuckle of the leg, which was placed on his plate. That guest was momentarily preoccupied by discussing something with another guest who was seated beside him, but when he turned to start eating his meal, he saw that Maxwell had grabbed his own serving from his plate and was proceeding to devour it.
The author suggests that it was Maxwell’s impoverished childhood, when there was never enough food to go around, that led him to develop an insatiable appetite. In fact, according to those who knew Maxwell best, including his wife Betty, he would control himself for the most part when he was with guests in his own home, but later in the evening he would ransack the “larder”. Things got so bad that locks would be put on the larder, but Maxwell’s enormous strength didn’t prevent him from breaking down the door to get at the food.
While Maxwell was certainly a genius at business, helping to build many different companies, including book publishers, newspapers, and the MTV television network, it is not clear what drove him to want to be, as he himself would say, “the world’s richest man”.
Clearly there was an obsession with being accepted by the British Establishment which, while eager to benefit from his business deals, for the most part regarded Maxwell as an “outsider”. It doesn’t seem though that the antagonism that was so often expressed toward Maxwell had much to do with his Jewish roots as Preston does not refer to any antisemitic remarks directed Maxwell’s way.
Ultimately, Maxwell became a fervent supporter of a multitude of Jewish causes, especially the State of Israel. Preston describes a somewhat hilarious scene at Maxwell’s state funeral in Israel when two rabbis physically fought over who was going to be able to mount the podium to deliver a speech praising Maxwell as their prime benefactor.
Yet, there was something else that Mickey Hoch had told me about Maxwell that quite interested me – which was that Maxwell had reputedly worked for the Mossad. The book does reference Maxwell’s helping to arrange the departure of several Jewish “refuseniks” from the USSR, but Preston doesn’t indicae that this had anything to do with the Mossad.
Mickey Hoch (who, by the way, said that he had never met his cousin) also suggested that the Mossad had assassinated Maxwell. There has actually been a book published which makes that claim, but not once in Preston’s book does he even raise that as a possibility.
The book does discuss Maxwell’s incredible network of associates, including the leaders of a great many countries. And, while Maxwell did seem to have had very close associations with a great many dictators, especially behind what was then the Iron Curtain, the notion that has often been raised that Maxwell may also have been an agent for the KGB is given relatively short shrift. (Maxwell did have a close association with Mikhail Gorbachev, also with Boris Yeltsin. At the same time though, Maxwell was twice elected to the British House of Commons as a Labour MP, and seems to have been genuinely appreciative of Western democratic norms.)
Maxwell’s reputation was totally sullied following his death, however, when it emerged that he had ransacked the pension funds of his employees to the tune of £750,000,000. He may not have been the first crook to climb his way to the pinnacle of the business establishment, but he was certainly among the worst.
There has been so much speculation as to whether Maxwell actually jumped off his yacht or simply slipped (apparently he liked to urinate over the side at night, so it’s quite possible that he might have slipped doing that) that it will probably be fodder for more books for years to come.
Still, the question that intrigued me more than anything was the degree to which Maxwell’s impoverished childhood and surviving the Holocaust led him to becoming the legendary businessman – and scoundrel, that he ultimately became. If he hadn’t died under such mysterious circumstances, no doubt he would have spent the rest of his days fending off legal issues related to his brazen skullduggery.
This entire review, I haven’t even mentioned that, of all Maxwell’s nine children, his favourite was Ghislaine. How interesting is it that Ghislaine was the daughter of a financial rogue who was one of the greatest con men of all time, and that she ended up partnering with another notorious rogue, Jeffrey Epstein. No doubt the mysteries surrounding the deaths of both these scoundrels will haunt us for years to come.
Features
Susan Silverman: diversification personified
By GERRY POSNER I recently had the good fortune to meet, by accident, a woman I knew from my past, that is my ancient past. Her name is Susan Silverman. Reconnecting with her was a real treat. The treat became even better when I was able to learn about her life story.
From the south end of Winnipeg beginning on Ash Street and later to 616 Waverley Street – I can still picture the house in my mind – and then onward and upwards, Susan has had quite a life. The middle daughter (sisters Adrienne and Jo-Anne) of Bernie Silverman and Celia (Goldstein), Susan was a student at River Heights, Montrose and then Kelvin High School. She had the good fortune to be exposed to music early in her life as her father was (aside from being a well known businessman) – an accomplished jazz pianist. He often hosted jam sessions with talented Black musicians. As well, Susan could relate to the visual arts as her mother became a sculptor and later, a painter.
When Susan was seven, she (and a class of 20 others), did three grades in two years. The result was that that she entered the University of Manitoba at the tender age of 16 – something that could not happen today. What she gained the most, as she looks back on those years, were the connections she made and friendships formed, many of which survive and thrive to this day. She was a part of the era of fraternity formals, guys in tuxedos and gals in fancy “ cocktail dresses,” adorned with bouffant hair-dos and wrist corsages.
Upon graduation, Susan’s wanderlust took her to London, England. That move ignited in her a love of travel – which remains to this day. But that first foray into international travel lasted a short time and soon she was back in Winnipeg working for the Children’s Aid Society. That job allowed her to save some money and soon she was off to Montreal. It was there, along with her roommate, the former Diane Unrode, that she enjoyed a busy social life and a place for her to take up skiing. She had the good fortune of landing a significant job as an executive with an international chemical company that allowed her to travel the world as in Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, the Netherlands and even the USA. Not a bad gig.
In 1983, her company relocated to Toronto. She ended up working for companies in the forest products industry as well the construction technology industry. After a long stint in the corporate world, Susan began her own company called “The Resourceful Group,” providing human resource and management consulting services to smaller enterprises. Along the way, she served on a variety of boards of directors for both profit and non-profit sectors.
Even with all that, Susan was really just beginning. Upon her retirement in 2006, she began a life of volunteering. That role included many areas, from mentoring new Canadians in English conversation through JIAS (Jewish Immigrant Aid Services) to visiting patients at a Toronto rehabilitation hospital, to conducting minyan and shiva services. Few people volunteer in such diverse ways. She is even a frequent contributor to the National Post Letters section, usually with respect to the defence of Israel
and Jewish causes.
The stars aligned on New Year’s Eve, 1986, when she met her soon to be husband, Murray Leiter, an ex- Montrealer. Now married for 36 plus years, they have been blessed with a love of travel and adventure. In the early 1990s they moved to Oakville and joined the Temple Shaarei Beth -El Congregation. They soon were involved in synagogue life, making life long friends there. Susan and Murray joined the choir, then Susan took the next step and became a Bat Mitzvah. Too bad there is no recording of that moment. Later, when they returned to Toronto, they joined Temple Emanu-el and soon sang in that choir as well.
What has inspired both Susan and Murray to this day is the concept of Tikkun Olam. Serving as faith visitors at North York General Hospital and St. John’s Rehab respectively is just one of the many volunteer activities that has enriched both of their lives and indeed the lives of the people they have assisted and continue to assist.
Another integral aspect of Susan’s life has been her annual returns to Winnipeg. She makes certain to visit her parents, grandparents, and other family members at the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery. She also gets to spend time with her cousins, Hilllaine and Richard Kroft and friends, Michie end Billy Silverberg, Roz and Mickey Rosenberg, as well as her former brother-in-law Hy Dashevsky and his wife Esther. She says about her time with her friends: “how lucky we are to experience the extraordinary Winnipeg hospitality.”
Her Winnipeg time always includes requisite stops at the Pancake House, Tre Visi Cafe and Assiniboine Park. Even 60 plus years away from the “‘peg,” Susan feels privileged to have grown up in such a vibrant Jewish community. The city will always have a special place in her heart. Moreover, she seems to have made a Winnipegger out of her husband. That would be a new definition of Grow Winnipeg.
Features
Beneath the Prairie Calm: Manitoba’s Growing Vulnerability to Influence Networks
By MARTIN ZEILIG After reading Who’s Behind the Hard Right in Canada? A Reference Guide to Canada’s Disinformation Network — a report published by the Canadian AntiHate Network that maps the organizations, influencers, and funding pipelines driving coordinated right wing disinformation across the country — I’m left with a blunt conclusion: Canada is losing control of its political story, and Manitoba is far more exposed than we like to admit.
We often imagine ourselves as observers of political upheaval elsewhere — the U.S., Europe, even Alberta.
But the document lays out a sprawling, coordinated ecosystem of think tanks, influencers, strategists, and international organizations that is already shaping political attitudes across the Prairies. Manitoba is not an exception. In many ways, we’re a prime target.
The report describes a pipeline of influence that begins with global organizations like the International Democracy Union and the Atlas Network. These groups are not fringe. They are well funded, deeply connected, and explicitly designed to shape political outcomes across borders. Their Canadian partners translate global ideological projects into local messaging, policy proposals, and campaign strategies.
But the most concerning part isn’t the international influence — it’s the domestic machinery built to amplify it.
The Canada Strong and Free Network acts as a central hub linking donors, strategists, and political operatives. Around it sits a constellation of digital media outlets and influencer accounts that specialize in outrage driven content. They take think tank talking points, strip out nuance, and convert them into viral narratives designed to provoke anger rather than understanding.
CAHN’s analysis reinforces this point. The report describes Canada’s far right ecosystem as “coordinated and emboldened,” with actors who deliberately craft emotionally charged narratives meant to overwhelm rather than inform. They operate what the report characterizes as an “outrage feedback loop,” where sensational claims spread faster than journalists or researchers can contextualize them. The goal is not persuasion through evidence, but domination through repetition.
This is not healthy democratic debate.
It is a parallel information system engineered to overwhelm journalism, distort public perception, and create the illusion of widespread grassroots demand. And because these groups operate outside formal political structures, they face far fewer transparency requirements. Manitobans have no clear way of knowing who funds them, who directs them, or what their longterm objectives are.
If this feels abstract, look closer to home.
Manitoba has become fertile ground for these networks. Our province has a long history of political moderation, but also deep economic anxieties — especially in rural communities, resource dependent regions, and areas hit hard by demographic change. These are precisely the conditions that make disinformation ecosystems effective.
When people feel unheard, the loudest voices win.
We saw hints of this during the pandemic, when convoy aligned groups found strong support in parts of Manitoba. We see it now in the rise of local influencers who echo national talking points almost in real time. And we see it in the growing hostility toward institutions — from public health to the CBC — that once formed the backbone of civic trust in this province.
CAHN’s research also shows how quickly these networks can grow. Some nationalist groups have seen membership spikes of more than 60 percent in short periods, driven by targeted digital campaigns that exploit economic uncertainty and cultural anxiety. These surges are not organic. They are engineered.
The document also highlights the rise of explicitly exclusionary nationalist groups promoting ideas like “remigration,” a euphemism for mass deportation of nonEuropean immigrants. These groups remain small, but Manitoba’s demographic reality — a province where immigration is essential to economic survival — makes their presence especially dangerous. When extremist ideas begin to circulate within mainstream political networks, they gain a legitimacy they have not earned.
Even more troubling is how these ideas migrate.
CAHN warns that concepts once confined to fringe spaces are now being repackaged in sanitized language and pushed through influencers, think tanks, and political operatives seeking legitimacy. When these narratives appear alongside conventional policy debates, they gain a veneer of normalcy that obscures their origins.
None of this means Manitoba is on the brink of political collapse.
Our institutions remain resilient, and our political culture is still fundamentally moderate. But sovereignty is not just about borders or military power. It is also about information — who controls it, who manipulates it, and who benefits from its distortion. When opaque networks shape public opinion through coordinated disinformation, that sovereignty erodes.
CAHN’s broader warning is that trust itself is under attack. Farright networks intentionally target public institutions — media, universities, public health agencies, cultural organizations — because weakening trust creates a vacuum they can fill with their own narratives. A democracy becomes vulnerable when people no longer share a common set of facts.
The danger is not that Manitoba will suddenly adopt the politics of another country. The danger is that we will drift into a political environment shaped by forces we don’t see, don’t understand, and cannot hold accountable. A democracy cannot function if its information ecosystem is captured by actors who thrive on outrage, opacity, and division.
The solution is not censorship. It is transparency. It is rebuilding trust in journalism. It is demanding higher standards from the organizations that shape our political discourse. Manitobans deserve to know who is influencing their democracy and why.
We are not immune.
And believing we are immune is the most dangerous illusion of all.
Features
Israel Has Always Been Treated Differently
By HENRY SREBRNIK We think of the period between 1948 and 1967 as one where Israel was largely accepted by the international community and world opinion, in large part due to revulsion over the Nazi Holocaust. Whereas the Arabs in the former British Mandate of Palestine were, we are told, largely forgotten.
But that’s actually not true. Israel declared its independence on May 14,1948 and fought for its survival in a war lasting almost a year into 1949. A consequence was the expulsion and/or flight of most of the Arab population. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, millions of other people across the world were also driven from their homes, and boundaries were redrawn in Europe and Asia that benefited the victorious states, to the detriment of the defeated countries. That is indeed forgotten.
Israel was not admitted to the United Nations until May 11, 1949. Admission was contingent on Israel accepting and fulfilling the obligations of the UN Charter, including elements from previous resolutions like the November 29, 1947 General Assembly Resolution 181, the Partition Plan to create Arab and Jewish states in Palestine. This became a dead letter after Israel’s War of Independence. The victorious Jewish state gained more territory, while an Arab state never emerged. Those parts of Palestine that remained outside Israel ended up with Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (the Old City of Jerusalem and the West Bank). They were occupied by Israel in 1967, after another defensive war against Arab states.
And even at that, we should recall, UN support for the 1947 partition plan came from a body at that time dominated by Western Europe and Latin American states, along with a Communist bloc temporarily in favour of a Jewish entity, at a time when colonial powers were in charge of much of Asia and Africa. Today, such a plan would have had zero chance of adoption.
After all, on November 10, 1975, the General Assembly, by a vote of 72 in favour, 35 against, with 32 abstentions, passed Resolution 3379, which declared Zionism “a form of racism.” Resolution 3379 officially condemned the national ideology of the Jewish state. Though it was rescinded on December 16, 1991, most of the governments and populations in these countries continue to support that view.
As for the Palestinian Arabs, were they forgotten before 1967? Not at all. The United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 194 on December 11, 1948, stating that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.” This is the so-called right of return demanded by Israel’s enemies.
As well, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established Dec. 8, 1949. UNRWA’s mandate encompasses Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war and subsequent conflicts, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children. More than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees. It is the only UN agency dealing with a specific group of refugees. The millions of all other displaced peoples from all other wars come under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Yet UNRWA has more staff than the UNHRC.
But the difference goes beyond the anomaly of two structures and two bureaucracies. In fact, they have two strikingly different mandates. UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees; UNRWA does not. When, in 1951, John Blanford, UNRWA’s then-director, proposed resettling up to 250,000 refugees in nearby Arab countries, those countries reacted with rage and refused, leading to his departure. The message got through. No UN official since has pushed for resettlement.
Moreover, the UNRWA and UNHCR definitions of a refugee differ markedly. Whereas the UNHCR services only those who’ve actually fled their homelands, the UNRWA definition covers “the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948,” without any generational limitations.
Israel is the only country that’s the continuous target of three standing UN bodies established and staffed solely for the purpose of advancing the Palestinian cause and bashing Israel — the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; and the Division for Palestinian Rights in the UN’s Department of Political Affairs.
Israel is also the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem, with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years, is not recognized by almost all other countries.
So from its very inception until today, Israel has been treated differently than all other states, even those, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Sudan, immersed in brutal civil wars from their very inception. Newscasts, when reporting about the West Bank, use the term Occupied Palestinian Territories, though there are countless such areas elsewhere on the globe.
Even though Israel left Gaza in September 2005 and is no longer in occupation of the strip (leading to its takeover by Hamas, as we know), this has been contested by the UN, which though not declaring Gaza “occupied” under the legal definition, has referred to Gaza under the nomenclature of “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” It seems Israel, no matter what it does, can’t win. For much of the world, it is seen as an “outlaw” state.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.