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at Hebrew University. During this period he lived in a laundry room on the roof of the block of flats where his brother-in-law’s brother lived in Talpiyyot. In 1964 he was permanently exempted from military service (reserve duty in the town major’s unit), in consequence of a kidney disease with complications.
Since 1964 he has worked, first as an assistant teacher and subsequently as a regular teacher (nongraduate) of French in the Isaac’s Tent Religious State High School for boys in Jerusalem. Since his marriage in 1970 to Ilana (Halina) Gideon nee Brandstetter he has been living in a one-and-a-half-room flat at No. 7 Tarnaz Street, Jerusalem. This flat was purchased with the help of members of his family in Israel and France, on a ten-year mortgage with monthly repayments, of which roughly half has now been repaid.
     
    Financial Situation
     
MHS earns IL 2550 per month from his job. The wife does not work. Additional sources of income: private lessons (some IL 400 per month), plus a regular allowance from his parents in Paris (IL 500 per month). Principal expenses: IL 1200 monthly mortgage repayments on the flat; IL 500 per mo. to keep his wife’s son Boaz Brandstetter at the Telamim Agricultural High School (until three weeks ago); monthly donation of IL 650, payable by standing order at the Talpiyyot branch of the Bank Leumi, to the Jewish Fellowship Movement. He is frequently in arrears on his bills (electricity, water, tax), but is always punctilious about paying the mortgage, the school fees, and the donation.
     
    Family Affairs
     
Married (since 1971) plus one daughter, almost three (Madeleine Yifat). The wife was previously married to the well-known scholar Professor A. Gideon, now living in the USA (marriage dissolved). In accordance with a decision of the Rabbinical Court and following a lawsuit between the two parties in 1968, there is no financial liability on either side. MHS and his wife lead a respectable married life. They keep a kosher home, observe the Sabbath, and so forth, and their way of life could be described as traditional or moderately religious (they do not refrain from going to the cinema, for example).
We found no evidence of romantic ties outside the marital bond on the part of either MHS or his wife. Information is, however, available (although it goes beyond your brief to us) concerning apparent entanglements on the part of Ilana Gideon-Sommo from the time of her previous marriage. There is also information about her son Boaz’s being on probation since May 1975 (see the report by our agent A. Maimon, submitted to you at your request with this report). The relations of the boy Boaz with MHS and his wife are not good (for some years now he has refused to visit them in Jerusalem). On the other hand, relations between MHS and his extended family (cousins, in-laws, etc.) are very close.
     
    Political Life
     
Here we had no difficulty in finding plentiful information. MHS’s views are close to the right. His eldest brother and other members of his family are known activists in the Herut Bloc (some of them in the National Religious Party). MHS has been at various times a paid-up member of both the aforementioned parties, albeit intermittently. In 1964 he was one of the organizers of a group of North African intellectuals and students in Jerusalem under the name
Moledet
(Fatherland). The group split on financial and ideological grounds and went out of existence in 1965. On the eve of the Six-Day War MHS was very active in propaganda and signature-gathering against the wait-and-see policy of the Eshkol government and in favor of taking the military initiative against Egypt and the other Arab countries.
Immediately after the Six-Day War MHS volunteered for an active role in what later became the Greater Israel Movement, specializing in propaganda and demonstrations. In 1971 he suddenly left the movement. Shortly afterward he made a great show of handing in his membership card to the NRP.