Moti Kahana is not your average businessman.
He has considered turning the story of his life — from Jerusalem foster home to multi-million pound fortune in New York — into a book, but for the moment the 47-year-old is focusing his attention on the Middle East.
His mission to extract the last Jews of Aleppo began with a trip to Yad Vashem five years ago.
There, he discovered that the 1941 massacre of 14,000 Jews in Iaşi — his family's city of origin — had not been ordered by the Nazis but by local government officials.
“The government of Romania was shooting its own people — that really got me very emotional.”
He continues: “Back in New York, I saw on the news that Gaddafi was shooting his own people. It was history repeating itself. I told friends: ‘We should help those people.’”
Through contacts in Taiwan, he sourced bullet-proof vests to send to Libyan rebels. He also bought them satellite phones from an Israeli company.
He took the same approach at the start of the Syrian uprisings, sending rebels bullet-proof vests and Israeli phones. He travelled regularly to the area, spoke to fighters in English and even drank whisky with them.
“These were kids on the street asking for democracy,” he said. “It was the right thing to do. They wanted democracy and freedom — the early Syrian revolution was kids in college. There weren’t fanatics.
"To them, I was an American Jew. I never told them I was an Israeli.” Then in 2013 his identity was exposed by Islamist activists on social media. He has never entered Syria since — but instead works with rebels and governments to establish diplomatic solutions to the conflict.
He says he has raised $1m for his cause and is looking for more donations to get the last Jews out of Syria.
He is confident that the money has not been used to fund terrorists: “I am a businessman and a control freak. I will give a satellite phone or goods, but I won’t send money.”
Mr Kahana, who used his contacts to get Canadian-Israeli Gill Rosenberg out of Iraq after she joined the fight against Daesh, says he is negotiating with Israel to create a no-fly zone in southern Syria.
It was, he says, through his Syrian contacts that the last Jews of Aleppo were identified.
And he is determined to provide humanitarian care for Syrians, even though he is often asked why he does not turn his attention to Israeli organisations in need: “We are Jews; helping others is what we do.”
And Mr Kahana’s own personal story is key.
Born to Romanian Jewish parents, he grew up in Jerusalem but spent time in foster homes. His mother went onto marry a Druze man.
He served in the Israeli Air Force, graduating as an officer, before going onto work for a private security company that specialised safeguarding Jewish homes in Muslim quarter of the Old City.
He was charged with protecting Jewish families and walking their children to and from schools in dangerous areas.
He even protected one property owned by former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.
He recalled: “The cookies were great. His wife was a great baker.
“He was a good guy. To me, Sharon was really ‘Israel’ – for the good and the bad. He made good and bad decisions.
“Sharon never slept, he worked all the time. He was a bulldozer.”
Aged 22, he took a week’s holiday in New York.
“That week turned into years,” he laughed.
He launched a car company that specialised in shipping vehicles from one end of the United States to the other. After setting up a sale platform online, in 2009 he signed a multi-million pound deal with American car rental company Hertz – but found the loss of control frustrating.
“Personality wise, I am way out of the box,” added the serial entrepreneur. “I do not do corporate.”
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