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Last update - 02:07 22/06/2009
Arison: Message from above told me not to sell Housing & Construction
By TheMarker
Tags: bank hapoalim, israel news 

Ahead of the launch of her autobiography "Birth: When spirit and substance meet," Shari Arison talked with the press, saying it was time they met the inner her.

"I foresaw the financial crisis. I get messages in my sleep, in pictures and words," Shari Arison, the controlling shareholder of Bank Hapoalim, told Channel 2 television in an interview that aired Saturday evening.

"I understood that I have a mission and a role in ensuring human existence. I received a message that people would soon start to go crazy."
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And they did, she added.

"People see things in the opposite way that I do," she said. "There are places that spirit, soul and emotion reach. I think the bank plays a significant role. I think it has to enable people to become stronger. Matters of the heart are important to me. All this materialism and all the money and wealth are things that you don't take to the grave. One day you have it. The next day you don't. I tried to give meaning to these things."

She could have sold her assets and lounged by the sea, Arison told Channel 2, but she understood that she had a mission to ensure human existence, which she could accomplish through business and philanthropy.

The global financial crisis presented her with an excuse to sell her yacht, Arison said. "A yacht is not for me," she commented. "I don't enjoy it." At the moment there aren't any buyers for the huge boat, but when there are, she'll sell it, Arison said.

Speaking later with the press, Arison also said that she'd planned to sell her real estate company Housing & Construction, but then received "a message from above" not to. So she didn't, Arison said.

Asked why she confronted Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer rather than accepting his dictates regarding the management of Bank Hapoalim, she explained that she didn't appreciate his efforts to remove the bank's chairman, Danny Dankner. "The global crisis was caused by a collapse in values ... You can't take a man out and hang him in the city square without a trial," she said.

Referring to Hapoalim's proposed acquisition of a bank in Ukraine, which the Bank of Israel blocked, she said the deal had actually been approved by the Israeli central bank. "Then to hang only Danny because times weren't good? You don't do a thing like that," she said.

"I follow my own truth. I sat quietly," she said. "Everyone expressed himself in the press, whether it was truth or lies, and I decided to come out and speak. I am sure they thought I would give up, cave in, but they don't know me. I stick with the truth to the very end."

In telling her interviewer that she receives messages predicting the future, she explained that she received this "gift" not to make money with "but to bring the world to a different place. I needed to go with the vision and the truth. There are a lot of people who receive messages. I receive it in pictures, in words, in my sleep. I receive [it] straight from above."

"I foresaw the economic crisis. I received a message that it would be coming. I received a message that people would also start to go crazy, and that airplanes would fall [out of the sky]. That was a communication that I received two years ago, a combination of a lot of messages. You don't have to be afraid of the messages. Before the good things, not such good things also happen. I think that we are approaching redemption."

We find ourselves in the dark, she said, but the "great light" lies ahead of us.

Arison said she has learned to count on her ability to receive messages, which has become more refined over the years. "For many years I felt different and was afraid to speak. Everything that I see ultimately happens and the years have proven this."

As a child, she said, she would travel to countries in distress and would cry for days on end, instead of behaving like a typical child.

"My father didn't want to leave the businesses to me. He had a chauvinistic perspective. I was sure he thought I wasn't good enough. There was a stage when I tried to explain my perspective to him about [conducting] business with spirit and compassion."

She said they had a touching conversation on the subject, and although it interested him, she didn't think he understood.

Referring to her recent divorce from Ofer Glazer, she said she loved him very much and still loves him. She she learned a lot from him, including how to enjoy life and do big things, she said. She said her connection with him ended "because I believe in karma and in coming full circle."

Every encounter which we have, she said, "Is not just happenstance." She said she and Glazer had come full circle, and she got what she should have. She added that Glazer's sexual misconduct conviction was an injustice, and that the sexual misdemeanors never occurred. She accused the media of blowing the case out of proportion.

"People rush to judge based on what they see from the outside, and that's not necessarily correct," she said.

Regarding Bank Hapoalim, as Arison told Yedioth Aharonoth last week, "I feel like I haven't yet begun to realize my vision for the bank. When I came, there was a very profit-centered approach at the bank, very elitist, very competitive. ... I understood that the bank was part of my mission to create a better world. When I started to see my vision for the bank through my own imagination, I received a message that financial freedom was in the future. I understood that this was the role of the bank - to bring them to a place where they will have financial freedom."
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