By Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal – Grayzone
Emails show sex trafficking billionaire Jeffrey Epstein worked Israeli connections to help his lawyer’s daughter join an elite IDF unit. The woman, who Epstein wrote would make a “fantastic ambassador for Israel” at Columbia University, served on the board of Hillel International.
Jeffrey Epstein personally recruited an 18-year-old girl from New York to serve “in one of the elite IDF units,” email records show.
Epstein’s request came in a June 29, 2011 email to Anat Barak, the daughter of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In the message, the financier described the girl in question, “Tali,” as an 18-year-old who’d been accepted to Columbia University’s Barnard College and had “been to Israel more than a dozen times.”
His young female friend had spent a summer hiking the so-called Israel Trail and another “working as a counselor at a summer camp in Dimona Israel for children who are victims of terrorist attacks,” and would therefore “be a great asset to any unit,” Epstein wrote.
Tali, he said, would continue serving Israeli interests long after her placement in the Israeli army. Upon her return from military service in Israel, Epstein wrote that “she would be a fantastic ambassador for Israel” at what he called “one of the more important college campuses in the country, Columbia.”
A few hours later, Barak fired back an email saying that Tali “sounds like an amazing girl” and informing the lecherous billionaire: “I’ll be in touch with her, and we’ll take care of her.”
The senior Israeli politician’s daughter then sent an email of her own to Tali, explaining that “Jeffrey Epstein told me about you and about your plans to join the IDF this summer.”
“This is absolutely wonderful,” Barak gushed, adding: “Kol Ha’kavod!,” a Hebrew expression meaning “much respect!” She requested to speak with Epstein’s young associate over the phone, adding, “if there’s anything you might need while you’re in Israel please don’t hesitate to call me.”
A review by The Grayzone of public records indicates that “Tali” is Talia Lefkowitz. Her father, Jay Lefkowitz, worked as Epstein’s lawyer and helped negotiate the billionaire’s sweetheart deal with then US Attorney Alex Acosta. At the time, her father argued that Epstein was “not in any way a typical sex offender.”
Talia Lefkowitz did not respond to an email from The Grayzone requesting comment on her relationship with Epstein, and his role in advancing her pro-Israel crusade.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Talia went on to serve as a sergeant in a “Special Forces Paratrooper Unit” – likely Israel’s 35th Brigade. The 35th Brigade is an elite unit of the IDF’s 98th Division, which was responsible for the destruction of large swaths of the city of Khan Younes during Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza in 2024. Its commanders were documented burning civilian homes and leaving behind graffiti taunting their former residents.
When she returned to study at Barnard after her time as a ‘lone soldier,’ she quickly emerged as a vocal advocate for Zionism, penning op-eds for prominent Israeli media outlets. In one such piece in the Jerusalem Post, Lefkowitz tearfully recalled taking shelter while volunteering at the camp mentioned by Epstein, declaring: “We are the kids of the bunker.” In another, published by The Times of Israel, Lefkowitz accused Columbia of “support… for a one-state solution” because the university failed to reserve a space for Zionists to protest against an anti-apartheid exhibit set up by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
At that point, Lefkowitz had become heavily involved in the Columbia-Barnard chapter of Hillel International, a global Jewish youth organization which supports Israel unequivocally. Her branch, she wrote for the Jewish Telegraph Agency, was “a magnet for students from Orthodox backgrounds, many of whom begin college after spending a gap-year in Israel.”
Lefkowitz later returned to Hillel, serving on its board from 2020 to 2022. Currently, however, Lefkowitz is employed as a “philanthropy advisor” to the Areivim Philanthropic Group, which says it aims to “impact the next generation of Jews through formal and experiential Jewish, Hebrew, Zionist, and Israel education.”
According to her bio at Areivim, Lefkowitz “worked for five years for The Paul E. Singer Foundation,” which ultra-Zionist billionaire Paul Singer has used to support neoconservative media outlets and pro-Israel causes. Singer is a top donor to the presidential campaigns of both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, and currently owns Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum, securing it in a fire sale through his Elliott Capital Management Fund.
While Lefkowitz’s exploits in the upper echelons of the Zionist movement are public, it was unknown until now that she received assistance from Jeffrey Epstein, who despite having no apparent military or special forces experience himself, was seemingly able to arrange her acceptance into “one of the elite IDF units.” The emails between Epstein and Anat Barak raise serious questions about nepotism in the Israeli military’s recruitment process.
They also highlight Epstein’s involvement in Zionist lobbying efforts within the US, both on and off campus. As proposed by Epstein, Lefkowitz appears to have served as an unofficial “ambassador for Israel,” engaging heavily in Zionist activism at Columbia. Her recent tenure on the Hillel board enabled her to take her campus crusade onto the global stage.
While Epstein is best remembered as a well-connected financial dealer who solicited young women and girls for assorted sex acts, his gift as a recruiter for Israel’s genocidal occupation army is just becoming known.