Political and business partnership between Manfred Zakheim and Michel Sommo

The political and business partnership between Manfred M. Zakheim and Michel Sommo takes shape when Zakheim turns a relationship of wary observation into an effort to recruit Sommo for land development. Zakheim offers contacts, advice, and access to his son-in-law Zohar Etgar, while attempting to channel Sommo’s activism into a commercial enterprise. Their alliance joins religious and territorial ambitions to private investment, and Zakheim’s role is both enabling and corrective: he wants Sommo’s energy in the venture, but not left to pursue it without financial or political restraint.

Political and ideological background

Sommo’s political activity predates his partnership with Zakheim. A report on him describes views on the right and notes his intermittent membership in the Herut Bloc and the National Religious Party. In 1964 he helped organize Moledet, a group of North African intellectuals and students in Jerusalem, which dissolved the following year after financial and ideological divisions. On the eve of the Six-Day War, he campaigned against the Eshkol government’s wait-and-see approach and for military initiative.

After the war, Sommo volunteered for what became the Greater Israel Movement, where he specialized in propaganda and demonstrations. He left in 1971 and made a public gesture of resigning from the National Religious Party. In 1972 he helped found the Jewish Fellowship Movement, an organization largely made up of young immigrants from America and Russia, and remained on its executive committee. The group opposed troop disengagements after the Yom Kippur War and attempted to purchase land around Bethlehem. Sommo was interviewed by police twice in connection with the organization, but was not charged; the report says it found no evidence that he personally took part in violent lawbreaking. This history establishes that his later dealings with Zakheim grew from existing political commitments rather than from business alone.

Zakheim’s approach to Sommo

Zakheim’s approach combines practical advice with an effort to direct Sommo’s ambitions. He tells Sommo that he will not manage his private affairs or formally represent his organization, citing ethical as well as practical considerations, but offers to advise him without charge. He also arranges a meeting with Zohar Etgar, his son-in-law, who is interested in land development. Zakheim presents the two men as potentially useful to one another: Sommo brings wealth and connections, while Etgar brings energy and business initiative.

The relationship is not simply a referral between two prospective partners. Zakheim has followed Sommo’s political and personal circumstances, and he uses that knowledge to judge where the man might be useful. He learns of a Paris trip connected to negotiations with a Christian religious order over land west of Bethlehem, and of a proposed exchange involving land there and property within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. He also connects the negotiations to the Jewish Fellowship Movement and to a Paris-based benefactor. Zakheim’s account treats these political and property dealings as parts of a larger transaction, while his stated intention is to persuade Alexander A. Gideon to reconsider the sale of his property in Zikhron Yaakov. The land project therefore draws private property, political organizing, and territorial aims into the same field of negotiation.

From introductions to a shared venture

Sommo’s expanding ambitions become visible at home as well as in politics. He begins receiving religious land dealers after the Sabbath, discussing development plots, grants, loans, property law, and investment with Ilana. Zakheim’s letters place these activities in a growing network rather than treating them as isolated conversations. He describes Sommo as seeking property in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and reports that Sommo and Etgar have established Tentpeg with a group of religious investors and discreet backing from Paris.

The Jewish Fellowship Movement, in Zakheim’s account, is turned into a reconnaissance or security unit serving the investment company. Etgar holds the company’s financial control, while the religious partners handle what Zakheim calls the ethical side of the business, including securing charitable status from the revenue authorities. These details reveal the structure of the alliance as Zakheim describes it: Sommo supplies political outreach and religious persuasion, Etgar provides a business connection and financial direction, and investors provide capital and a public-facing moral framework. Zakheim stands behind the arrangement as adviser and organizer, while keeping his own attention on Gideon’s property interests.

Political access as a business instrument

Zakheim describes Sommo as an energetic lobbyist, moving among party officials, government departments, and agencies concerned with land. Sommo’s appeals combine political persuasion with religious language, and Zakheim sees him as able to cultivate the guilt and hope that accompany calls for national redemption. In the same account, Sommo is helping to consolidate investments south of Jerusalem. The political work and the commercial work are not separate tracks: access to officials and the language of religious mission are presented as ways to advance land transactions.

Zakheim also connects the venture to his expectation of political change. He believes a change of government could open new opportunities in the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and presents Etgar and Sommo as positioned to benefit. His advice is consequently more than a personal favor. By arranging their meeting and interpreting their respective strengths, he is trying to form a partnership that can turn political connections into commercial advantage. His letters make clear that he expects a return not only for Sommo and Etgar but also for himself and Gideon.

Cooperation, control, and limits

Zakheim’s role includes an explicit effort to restrain Sommo. When Gideon considers selling property in Zikhron Yaakov, Zakheim tells him that his own efforts are aimed at securing Sommo for their side and putting him under Etgar’s influence. Later, he describes the work of training Sommo away from a reckless, destructive form of fanaticism and toward a more calculating political and commercial role. He says he has bound Sommo to Etgar and redirected him, at least in part. Zakheim reports that Gideon’s hundred thousand dollars is expected to grow to two hundred thousand through the investment; this is a forecast in his letter, not confirmation that the increase has occurred.

The partnership also has a moral tension that Zakheim does not conceal. He acknowledges that he could have taken a commission and left Gideon to pursue his own course, but says he did not want to help exploit orphans or turn over a friend to destruction. His stated concern is therefore not disinterested: he is protecting Gideon’s wealth and trying to preserve its value, while using Sommo’s political drive to do so. The resulting alliance is at once cooperative and supervisory. Zakheim supplies access and strategy; Sommo supplies political activity and connections; Etgar links that activity to investment. Their collaboration makes land development the meeting point of personal loyalty, ideological conviction, and financial calculation, without resolving the conflict among them.