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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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The young Robert Maxwell procured weapons for the IDF from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe during the Israeli War of Independence, and the details of precisely what he bought and how he bought it are still not public. That would be sufficient to explain Yitzhak Shamir's presence and remarks.

Athough I assume Robert Maxwell was talking to Mossad regularly, there isn't a good reason to think he was some kind of super-agent that would explain parts of the Epstein story. In addition, he would have been most useful to Mossad for his contacts in the Soviet Bloc, which didn't pass over to Ghislaine, and were a lot less valuable after 1989 anyway. John Major also hinted that Robert Maxwell had been useful to British intelligence during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conspiracy theory shower thought - Maxwell jumps off the boat at almost exactly the time he ceases to be useful to British and Israeli intelligence.

The dates also fail to line up for a Robert Maxwell-Epstein connection. Ghislaine moves to New York shortly after Robert dies, and starts dating Epstein about two years later, after the Epstein-Wexner connection (which is the key to Epstein's wealth, and therefore to any sane conspiracy theory) is in place.

Robert Maxwell did know Epstein in the 1980's, but only in the vague sense that all elite coethnics know each other. Their business interests didn't overlap except for about 10 months in 1991 when Maxwell tried to expand in the US - Maxwell was active in the UK and Europe whereas Epstein was focussed on the US and the Gulf.

None of this means that Epstein wasn't Mossad, of course. Just that Mossad didn't use the Maxwell family to recruit him.

Mossad helped Maxwell buy newspapers, and Maxwell allowed Mossad to use his wealth to fund operations in Europe, according to Victor Ostrovsky’s book. In that sense he was a super agent, but it would be more correct to say he was a super saiyan, those individuals who inform Mossad about important details around the globe. And that sounds like a very good line of work for someone like Epstein with his suspicious sum of money and suspiciously intricate recording equipment in his home. According to a separate whistleblower, Ben-Menashe, Maxwell tipped off Mossad about Mordechai Vanunu

The young Robert Maxwell procured weapons for the IDF from Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe during the Israeli War of Independence, and the details of precisely what he bought and how he bought it are still not public.

Cool. I always wondered how they got enough hardware for an early war and how they were able to win. Where did you learn about this? Is there a good book on this man and/or the events?

One of my favorite stories is that Czechoslovakia was an early supporter of Israel and provided them with quite a few guns. Several of these guns were surplus German guns from WW2, so Israelis were literally fighting for their existence using guns emblazoned with swastikas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_shipments_from_Czechoslovakia_to_Israel

Not sure how that would have felt, holding that gun as a Jew. Hmm.

I don’t have the source at hand, but I recall reading that most of them felt proud. IIRC the example I’m thinking of was about the pilots who flew captured German fighters in the 1947 war. The attitude was basically “our enemy has been vanquished, we outlasted him, and now we get to spit on his grave by using his own tools to secure our future.”