Uri’s close encounter in the Jewish Telegraph

Jewish Telegraph
24th Dec 1996

By HAIM SHAPIRO
JUST in case you’re wondering what happened to Uri Geller, he’s alive and well and, at the age of 50, he can still bend spoons. Israel’s most famous ESP practitioner, whose birthday is next week, was the main attraction at a press conference this week to announce a conference on UFOs this weekend.
All 500 places at the conference, which will be held in Eilat, are sold out according to organiser Carlos Ben Nun, and he is presently seeking a larger venue to accommodate another 200 would-be participants. Looking extremely fit for his age, with a shock of pitch black hair, Geller wore a T-shirt bearing the logo of Encounters, a magazine he now publishes.
A current issue features an apparent giant face carved out of the nountains of Mars, a photograph which, the magazine says, NASA tried to suppress. He told of his own experiences with UFOs, starting at the age of four, when he heard a terrific noise and found himself facing a burning ball from which a ray came out and pierced him. It was after this, he said, that he began to discern his own powers. His Public life began after he was discharged from the paratroopers in 1968 and he began to appear at parties.
His career took a giant leap, he said, when he met Golda Meir and demonstrated his powers of ESP to her.
When, afterwards, reporters asked her about the future of the state, she responded that they should ask Uri Geller.
However, he explained, since his powers are real and not a trick, he could not improve on them, and he found his audiences decreasing to the point where he was appearing in small night clubs in Ramleh and Lod.
It was then that he took up an offer to go to the US to engage in research with the CIA. These days, Geller said, he is a millionaire, with money earned by locating deposits of precious metals.
“Someone convinced me that there was more money to be made in finding metal than in bending it,” he said. Asked if he could help create a better feeling between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Geller said he could, but the request to do so would have to be a formal one from the prime minister.
He also tells that someone had asked him to help locate the missing Israeli navigator, Ron Arad, but that his part was leaked to the press and some member of the family suspected that Geller had wanted to publicise himself. “After that I dropped it” he said.
In another instance, he says, he was asked to locate a British submarine that had been missing for a century. Eight years later, it was found that Geller had pinpointed a spot on the map, which the researchers said was totally unlikely; the submarine was found there.
“Uri Geller vindicated,” reads the headline of the somewhat worn copy of the Sunday Telegraph which Geller holds up.
A more moving but unsubstantiated story involves John Lennon telling Geller of an experience with UFOs only six weeks before the famed musician was murdered.
Lennon, Geller says, gave him a heavy metal object which the extra-terrestrial beings gave the musician.
“I have it, but I’m afraid to show it to anyone.”
“I’m afraid they’ll tell me it’s from China or Korea.”
(JPFS)