There are life-shattering moments that I will never forget: * The look on my mother's face when the military court judge announced her sentence: death by hanging for the crime of spying for Israel. * The cry for help from the security officer at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, who informs me that a mob of Egyptians has broken into the embassy and is threatening the besieged Israeli staff there. * The pride when the Orchestra of the Presidential Palace in Cairo played "Hope" in my honor on the day I submitted my letter of credence to President Mubarak as Israel's ambassador to Egypt. * The excitement when I first saw the Israeli flag flying over the Israeli embassy in Cyprus, and it was neither trampled nor burned. It was the day I permanently left Beirut and Lebanon. *** Yitzhak Lebanon is a different kind of diplomat. The storms that befell him as a teenager in Beirut left a mark on him. After immigrating to Israel with his family, following the Six Day War and the release of his mother as part of a prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Lebanon, he became involved in diplomatic life and fulfilled his childhood dream: to represent Israel before the nations of the world. In his book In the Eye of the Storm, Lebanon reveals for the first time diplomatic secrets and clandestine contacts that were born outside the box and were realized with extraordinary daring. This is the fascinating personal story of a boy from the Jewish neighborhood in Beirut, who, through his diplomatic activity, was able to accompany the wonderful story of the emerging and growing State of Israel in his adulthood. *** "Not many can be proud not only of such impressive plots of their own in the effort to represent the State of Israel in all corners of the world, but also of the heroism of my mother, Shulamit Cohen Kishik, who worked in Lebanon in the service of the State of Israel and succeeded in bringing about the immigration to Israel of many members of the Jewish communities in Syria and Lebanon." Yitzhak (Boji) Herzog, President of the State
