Victor Ostrovsky was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on November 28, 1949, and moved to Israel at the age of five.

His mother, a gymnastics teacher by trade, was born in the British Mandate of Palestine. She volunteered with the British Army (ITS) during World War II, and drove trucks across the desert from Cairo to Jerusalem. After the war she joined the Haganah (Israel’s underground) to fight for Israels independence from the British mandate.

Ostrovsky’s father served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II as a tail gunner on a Lancaster bomber, taking part in more than twenty missions over Germany. His plane was shot down over Germany, but he managed to escape and return to active service. After the war, he joined the Israeli military to fight in the 1948 Arab—Israeli War, rising to command Sde Dov, an Air Force base in Israel.

His grandparents, Haim and Esther Margolin, settled in Palestine in 1912 after fleeing Russia, and Haim later served as Auditor General of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Ostrovsky’s grandmother, a Russian immigrant, introduced him to noted Israeli artist Aharon Giladi, who lived on the same street, and who bought paints and canvasses for him. Giladi mentored Ostrovsky for more than ten years.

Ostrovsky joined the Israeli Youth Brigade at 14 and quickly became an expert marksman, finishing second in a 1964 national shooting competition with a score of 192 out of 200. At the age of 17 he joined the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) after a minor eye condition ended his hopes of becoming a pilot. He was assigned to the Military Police and rose to command the Nablus Military Police Base, after which he was made commanding officer of the Military Police West Bank Central Command.

After his service with the Military Police, Ostrovsky spent six years in the Israeli navy. He was selected to attend the Staff and Command School and attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander. Ostrovsky was placed in charge of all Navy weapons testing. He helped introduce the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile to the Saar Missile Boats, as well as the Vulcan Phalanx anti-missile defense system.

In 1982, Ostrovsky was recruited by the Mossad and trained at the Mossad Academy north of Tel Aviv as a katsa (case officer). It is said that a Mossad cadet experiences more action, terror and physical assault in two and a half years of training than many Special Forces soldiers will have in a career.

In 1986, he left the agency citing what he considered cases of unnecessarily malicious actions by Mossad operatives. He also accused Mossad directors of knowingly making less than accurate reports to the nation’s political leadership.

In 1990, he published By Way of Deception to draw attention to the corruption and shortcomings he claims to have witnessed in the Mossad. Ostrovsky has repeatedly argued that intelligence-gathering agencies must be permitted certain operational freedoms, but that significantly increased governmental oversight of espionage activities is necessary. Without effective oversight, he has said, the Mossad cannot achieve its full potential and value.One topic in his book, By Way of Deception, that may alarm Americans, is the suicide bombing of the US Marine's compound in Beirut Lebanon that killed several hundred US Marines: Ostrovsky maintains that the Mossad knew there was going to be an attack on the American's peace mission in Beirut and intentionally withheld that information from the Americans. According to Ostrovsky, a Mossad contact at a local body shop in Beirut told them a truck had come in for major modifications that were consistent with creating a very large truck bomb (in fact the biggest truck and modifications for a truck bomb that anyone in war torn Beirut had ever heard of), in the weeks prior to the suicide bombing of the Marine's barrack's. The American peace mission in Beirut was the only likely target of such a large bomb, and the Mossad did not pass on this knowledge to their American counterparts in the Intelligence Services. Ostrovsky does not attempt to describe why the Mossad, and by extension Israel, allowed the American peace mission to be attacked.

Ostrovsky refused to use a pen name for the controversial book, saying that if he wanted to hide, he wouldn’t have written the book in the first place.Many of Ostrovsky's claims have not been verified from other sources nor have they been refuted, and arguments continue to rage over the credibility of his accounts. However he was named in a lawsuit by the Israeli government saying he was part of the Mossad. Critics such as Benny Morris, David Wise and others have argued the book is essentially a novel and that a case officer would not have had access to so many operational secrets.. They write that intelligence organizations practice strict compartmentalization of confidential or secretive information.

Ostrovsky has responded that in reality the Mossad maintains very few case officers and they freely share information with one another, despite minimal official restrictions. Further, he points out a katsa has liberal access to the computer systems at Mossad headquarters so for a katsa, information is not compartmentalized.

Ostrovsky also points out that his detractors have only the information the Mossad feeds them to go on and that it is “cooked” in a way that will put the best light on the agency.

Shortly before official publication of the book, the Israeli government filed lawsuits in both Canada and the United States seeking injunctions against publication. A judge in New York granted the request at a 1 a.m. hearing in his home. The New York Supreme Court overturned his decision, but the resulting publicity focused national attention on Ostrovsky’s story and guaranteed international success.

Concerns were expressed that by exposing certain prior operations, the book endangered the lives of agency personnel. Ostrovsky maintains he never placed anyone in danger because only first names or code names were used. Furthermore, Ostrovsky says the Mossad was privately allowed to see the book before publication to ensure that lives were not placed in danger.

Ostrovsky and his wife, Bella Ostrovsky, also an artist, operate Ostrovsky Fine Art Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. While he has painted many subjects, Ostrovsky is best known for his Metaphors of Espionage collection inspired by his days as a spy for the Mossad.