Michael Karpin

Michael I. Karpin (; born on 29 November 1945) is an Israeli broadcast journalist and author, best known for his investigative documentaries and books, revealing two of Israel's most concealed affairs: The creation of the country's nuclear capability and the nationalistic-messianic incitement campaign that preceded the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin . In May 1986, Karpin broke the story of Israel's secret service (Shabak) fabrication of evidence in the course of Bus Line 300's investigation, one of the most controversial political affairs in the history of the country . In 1987, he exposed the Izat Nafsu Affair: a Muslim IDF officer and a Circassian (a small ethnic minority in Israel), who was maliciously investigated by the secret service, convicted of spying and eventually exonerated by the Supreme Court.

Karpin represented Israel's Broadcasting Authority (IBA) as a correspondent in Bonn, West Germany (1976-79), and in Moscow (1991-92). He has worked as a foreign correspondent, broadcasting television and radio reports from more than 30 countries.

Karpin is married to Pnina (née Bahat), has 3 grownup children and lives in Tel Aviv.

Biography His father, Bruno David Karpin, was born in 1912 in Wiesbaden, Germany, and studied at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne University. His family emigrated from Germany to Palestine in early 1933. In the summer of 1940, Bruno enlisted in Britain's RAF and served at the Middle East Command headquarters in Cairo. His mother, Zipporah Feige née Kreizer, was born in 1920 in Lodz, Poland, to a rabbinical family, studied accounting, and in 1937 imigrated to Palestine and lived in Tel Aviv. The two married in 1942 , and Zipporah followed her husband to Cairo. Their eldest son, Michael, was born in a British army hospital in Heliopolis. In early 1946, Bruno was discharged from the RAF and the family returned to Tel Aviv on the Cairo-Lod railway line that crossed the Sinai Desert (in 1948, the Lod-Cairo line ceased to exist and has not been renewed since). During Israel's War of Independence, Bruno was a planning officer at the Air Force headquarters in Jaffa.

Karpin studied at the Rehavia Gymnasium in Jerusalem (51st grade) majoring humanities and was member of the Masada Scouts Tribe. Two of his instructors as a teenage would be famous authors in the future: Amos Oz was sent to guide young scouts in Jerusalem from Kibbutz Hulda, and A. B. Yehoshua ("Boolie") studied at the Hebrew University and edited the Scout Movement's magazine "heye nachon" (Allways Ready). Yehoshua published several articles written by the young Karpin.

In the summer of 1963, Karpin enlisted in the Nahal Brigade as part of a cooperative group, whose members were assigned to settle in Kibbutzim Sde Boker and Magal. In the winter of 1964, while serving in the Nahal Parachute Battalion, Karpin was assigned to a squad that trained for an airborne operation intended to be carried out in the Golan Heights (until June 1967, the heights were controlled by Syria). It was one of the first combat operations that the IDF carried out using a helicopter. The squad was flown to its destination in a Sikorsky 58 helicopter in pouring rain and darkness. Due to a navigational error, an accident occurred and Karpin fell from the roof of a water tower, hit the ground, and was injured and hospitalized at Tel Hashomer Hospital (since 1971 "Sheba Medical Center").

Karpin had studied political science in the Hebrew University and mass communication in UCLA. He entered broadcasting in 1969, as a radio news reporter for The Voice of Israel (Kol Israel) and became one of the top Israeli reporters of the 1973's Yom Kippur War, covering some of the most ferocious engagements at the Southern Front and the following Disengagement Talks at "Kilometer 101" and then at Geneva, Switzerland. In 1976 he joined the Israeli Television's (Channel One today, which until 1986 was the sole television channel in the country) news department and for twenty years served as senior reporter and editor. From 1976 to 1980, Karpin was stationed in Bonn, West Germany, functioning as chief European correspondent. In 1983, he became editor in chief of his cannel's evening news (Mabat) and then, from 1986 to 1991, produced and hosted Channel One's flagship program, Second Look, specializing in investigative reporting. Between May 1991 and November 1992, he was stationed in Moscow, becoming the first independent Israeli journalist to be accredited by the Soviet Union (between 1967 and 1991, diplomatic relations between the two countries were ruptured and thereat only messengers of Israel's communist party daily were accredited by Moscow). In 1995, upon leaving Channel One, Karpin headed the group that won the bid for Radio 103fm for Greater Tel Aviv, the first private station that was established in Israel. He had built the station from scratch and after managing it for one year left to become an independent documentary producer and writer of investigative books, intended mainly for the American market.

Karpin's documentaries A Bomb in the Basement (2001) tells the story of the creation of Dimona's reactor and the development of Israel's nuclear option. It has been screened by television networks, international film festivals and professional conferences worldwide.

The Road to Rabin Square (1997) exposes the rude incitement campaign against PM Yitzhak Rabin prior to his assassination. It won a jury Special Recognition at the 1998 Biarritz FIPA Festival and a silver medal at the 1997 NY Festival for International Television Programming and Promotion.

Distant Relatives (1995), a three-chapter series about the Jewish community in North America, was awarded the B'nai B'rith World Center Award for Journalism.

Karpin's books

Imperfect Compromise: A New Consensus among Israelis and Palestinians (Potomac Books – University of Nebraska Press, 2013). An entirely different thesis from that of most publications about a Middle East's future Peace Arrangement that might have become a reality if the messianic right had not taken over Israeli politics, and leaders of the moderate majority that aspires to achieve peace would have understood the threatening reality that is developing around them The Bomb in the Basement – How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means to the World (Simon & Schuster, NY, 2006) tells how Israel became the Middle East's only nuclear power and how it succeeded in keeping its atomic program secret Murder in the Name of God, with Ina Friedman, depicts the story of the militant right-wing rabbis and politicians in Israel and the US, who launched a sophisticated campaign of incitement against PM Yitzhak Rabin, in order to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians on the division of the land from taking place. The book details the steady erosion of Israel's democracy, once vibrant and now teetering, in a process that has resulted from the rise to power of fanatical circles, some of them fascist. Published by Henry Holt and Company, New-York (1998); Rowohlt, Hamburg (1998); Granta Books, London (1999); Zmora-Bitan, Tel-Aviv (1999) Tightrope – Six Centuries of a Jewish Dynasty (John Wiley & Sons, NY, 2008), The family saga of the Backenroths, a Jewish dynasty from Galicia (today in western Ukraine) – a true story based on diaries, letters, documents, and oral testimony. Beginning at the Middle Ages, Family members were active in many of the impactful events in Jewish history: the Jewish migration from western to eastern Europe, and the successful integration within the Austrian-Hungry Empire; the creation of the Hasidic movement, the birth of Zionism, and the loss of so many of their family during the Holocaust . Time and time again family members had slide from prosperity and opulence to profound poverty and distress, and time after time they managed to surmount the crises by virtue of their personal abilities, their tenacious belief in their values, and family solidarity

Books in Hebrew Metamorphosis in the Snow''' (Domino, Jerusalem, 1983), Presents an artistic illustration of the complicated and loaded relationship between Germans and Jews according to his impressions when he represented Israeli television in the 1970s in West Germany Notes from Pushkin Square (Yedioth Ahronoth, Tel Aviv, 1993), about Karpin's experiences in Moscow during the Soviet Empire's collapse

Other documentaries

Jerusalem is Full of Used Jews (2006), about Yehuda Amichai's poems of Jerusalem I Can't Take It Any More'' (2006), about Prime Minister Menachem Begin's last years of life, from his 1981's decision to bomb Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor, through the 1982 Lebanon War, his resignation from the Prime Ministry and his nine years of solitude