Gideon Tries to Fund Boaz’s Red Sea Tour-Boat Business

Alexander Gideon’s effort to finance Boaz Brandstetter’s Red Sea tourist-boat business becomes a sequence of reversals: after first telling Manfred Zakheim to leave Boaz alone, Gideon later urges Zakheim to provide money, even against the Zikhron Yaakov property. The financing never materializes through Zakheim, and Michel Sommo separately rejects Boaz’s proposal to enter business with him. The episode sets Gideon’s willingness to spend against the practical limits of his finances and the competing idea that support should not underwrite an unearned venture.

Discovery and an initial refusal to interfere

Zakheim and detectives locate Boaz working on a glass-bottomed tourist boat at Sharm el-Sheikh. Gideon’s account to Ilana Sommo stresses the contrast between the two men: he claims credit for finding Boaz, while Michel Sommo did not, and reports that Boaz is doing well at the job. At this point, Gideon tells Zakheim by telephone to leave Boaz alone. He expects Michel to refrain from interfering too, and turns the discovery into a sardonic accounting joke: Boaz might be entered as Gideon’s contribution to the redemption of the liberated territories, with a stamped receipt to prove it.

That apparent decision to stand back does not last. The initial report presents Boaz as already employed and managing for himself, not as someone in immediate need of rescue. Yet the later requests for capital draw Gideon back into the question of what Boaz should be allowed to do with money, and how far Gideon is prepared to go to enable it.

Requests from Sharm el-Sheikh and Ophira

From London, Gideon receives a telegram from Zakheim reporting that Boaz has appeared and requested five thousand dollars to buy a glass-bottomed boat and start his own business at Sharm el-Sheikh. Boaz also wants another thousand dollars to build a telescope for tourists. Zakheim has answered negatively. Gideon’s reply, sent to Zakheim in Jerusalem, is terse and decisive: he tells him to give Boaz the money and calls him an idiot. The exchange turns Gideon’s earlier noninterference into active advocacy for the enterprise.

A second request raises both the stakes and the apparent disorder of Boaz’s circumstances. Zakheim reports that Boaz now wants five thousand dollars for an apartment in Ophira. Investigators have found him living at a gas station with two Swedish girls, one French girl, and a Bedouin. Zakheim says he has given Boaz nothing; he also warns that Gideon has no available cash in London and that Zakheim has not succeeded in realizing property. His message is not simply a refusal to finance one boat: it presents a widening demand for money while questioning whether there is a practical source from which to provide it.

Gideon’s appeal against Zakheim’s resistance

Despite Zakheim’s warning, Gideon asks him to make a loan secured against the Zikhron Yaakov property and to give Boaz what he is asking for. Gideon adds that this is to be the last time. The proposed security makes the request concrete: Gideon is not merely expressing sympathy or offering encouragement, but asking for his property to carry the financial risk of Boaz’s plans. At the same time, the promise that it will be the final advance acknowledges the accumulating nature of the assistance.

Zakheim refuses the loan. In a further message, he says he will continue only on condition that Gideon stop providing social assistance to people he calls the needy of Greater Israel, including refusing Boaz’s requests for boats and apartments in Sharm el-Sheikh. He compares Gideon to Dmitri Karamazov and King Lear, framing the spending as extravagant and emotionally driven. The exchange puts their disagreement into practical terms: Gideon wants one more exception for Boaz, while Zakheim treats the request as part of a larger pattern that has to stop if their financial arrangement is to continue.

Boaz’s proposal to Michel Sommo

Boaz also approaches Michel Sommo directly, travelling to Jerusalem to propose that Michel become his partner in a Red Sea tourist-boat business. Boaz calls the requested money a preliminary investment and expects it to be recovered within a few months. His pitch unfolds alongside an improvised gift: as he talks, he dismantles a matchbox and makes Yifat a camel on chicken’s legs. Gideon watches the work of Boaz’s fingers, describing the energy spent on the fragile task of not breaking a matchstick. The small construction sits beside the much larger request: Boaz can make something delicate with scraps, but asks the adults around him to supply the capital for a business.

Michel does not accept the partnership or offer a loan. While Boaz speaks, Michel climbs onto a window sill to free a stuck roller blind by taking apart and reassembling its mechanism. From that elevated position, he answers without anger and without softening his refusal. He says that even exceptional wisdom would not make the investment acceptable, and invokes the biblical injunction that bread is earned through labor. His objection is directed not simply at Boaz’s idea of tourist boats, but at financing a life of boats, tourists, and girls with money Boaz has not earned.

Michel’s refusal is followed by care rather than expulsion. He comes down from the sill, prepares Boaz and his friend hamburgers, fried potatoes, and salad, and later takes them, Gideon, and Yifat to the cinema and for ice cream. When Boaz asks about the money from America, Michel explains that it belongs in equal parts to Boaz, Yifat, and their mother, while the children remain minors and their mother is responsible for them. He says the money is available if Boaz wants to study, but not for the proposed business. His position therefore differs from Zakheim’s refusal: Michel identifies a permitted use for the funds and places a boundary around the rest.

Outcome and significance

The episode does not show Gideon succeeding in funding the business. Zakheim refuses the loan against the Zikhron Yaakov property, while Michel declines to finance Boaz’s partnership proposal. The distinction between Boaz’s existing work on a glass-bottomed boat and his request to own a venture matters: Gideon initially reports him doing well as an employee, but the ensuing requests require those around him to decide whether to convert that foothold into a business backed by family money.

Money here is both aid and a source of conflict over responsibility. Gideon’s repeated instructions show that his first wish to leave Boaz alone gives way to a readiness to risk property for him. Zakheim counters with the limits of available cash and demands an end to further assistance. Michel refuses the business investment but combines that refusal with food, an outing, and an offer to fund education. The episode thus leaves Boaz’s commercial ambition unsupported while making clear that the adults’ disagreement concerns not whether he matters, but what kind of help might make him responsible for his own life.