Read Spies of No Country Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel edition by Matti Friedman Politics Social Sciences eBooks
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“Wondrous . . . Compelling . . . Piercing.” —The New York Times Book Review
Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff—but it’s all true.
Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies reads like an espionage novel--but it’s all true. The four agents at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage operations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities.
In 1948, with Israel’s existence hanging in the balance, these men went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end, the Arab Section would emerge as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.
Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about the complicated identity of Israel, a country that presents itself as Western but in fact has more citizens with Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this narrative. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Spies of No Country is an eye-opening look at the paradoxes of the Middle East.
Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff—but it’s all true.
Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies reads like an espionage novel--but it’s all true. The four agents at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage operations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities.
In 1948, with Israel’s existence hanging in the balance, these men went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a newsstand, collecting intelligence and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end, the Arab Section would emerge as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.
Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about the complicated identity of Israel, a country that presents itself as Western but in fact has more citizens with Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this narrative. Meticulously researched and masterfully told, Spies of No Country is an eye-opening look at the paradoxes of the Middle East.
Read Spies of No Country Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel edition by Matti Friedman Politics Social Sciences eBooks
"This is yet another great story from Matti Friedman that can be read with so many different lenses."
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Spies of No Country Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel edition by Matti Friedman Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews :
Spies of No Country Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel edition by Matti Friedman Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews
- Few books grab and hold me from start to finish but this was one that I just could not put down. It contains factual information that I had never before known regarding the birth of the Jewish State and those brave youngsters who repeatedly risked their lives in support of the birth of Israel despite the largely disorganized activities they conducted daily. The author's descriptions of the places, activities and players made me feel as if I was personally participating from page to page throughout his excellent reporting. BRAVO and THANK YOU to the author as well as each and every participant described herein.
- It's almost an oxymoron to be a "spy of no country," and yet here it is spies of a yet-to-be country, so immersed in their work that they were unaware of Israel's birth. The danger was palpable, and Friedman portrays it with tasteful restraint.
Words rarely fail me, but in trying to describe the book, here they do. It's small, but it's intensely moving. It was hard to put down. - Though not yet a nation, Israel’s fledgling intelligence network recruits four, heroic Sephardic Jews devoted to the Zionist ideal. Sketchy stories, serious and dangerous, emerge from the author’s overly detailed but murky style. As Israel’s resources were limited and impoverished, the young men largely depended on their own wits and skills.
Clearer however are Friedman’s accounts of Ashkenazi racism against their Arab Jewish brothers Friedman refers to as “blacks†knowing the term is inaccurate. Interestingly omitted are the many derogatory terms Ashkenazi Jews pinned on European Jews, those from Germany, Poland, Romania etc. More shocking was the nefarious suggestion that Sephardic Jews were not wanted in Israel, but what could the Ashkenazi do?
The book winds in and out of the spies individual stories. Regretfully remiss by the book’s end, Friedman offers not even a wink of Israel’s fully integrated society. No doubt Israel’s first spies, (immigrants from both societies,) lived to see their grandchildren marry Jews from the very different cultures.
And Yigal Allon, never had a home in Israel? Really? In spite of all his many successes? Fascinating. IDF commander, Government minister, Renowned archeologist with unfettered access to Israel’s antiquity of which he enjoyed..
Not Friedman’s best work. - When Americans think of Israeli history, we fasten on a handful of names Chaim Weizmann. David ben Gurion. Golda Meir. We think of kibbutzim, the Israeli Defense Force, the country's great universities, and its legal system. All these people, and many others whose names are prominent in the country's history, are of European origin. And every institution they created was a product of European thought and tradition. That simply reflects the fact that "in the 1940s, nine of every ten Jews in Palestine came from Europe."
Yet the persistent image of Israel today as a Western outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean is highly misleading. To understand how that changed and so deeply influences the nation's politics today, you can do no better than to read Israeli-Canadian journalist Matti Friedman's revealing new book, Spies of No Country.
Four young Arab-speaking Jewish men were the first Israeli spies
Friedman's book tells the tale of four young Arab-speaking Jewish men who became spies for the scattered forces working to establish the State of Israel. They had emigrated to join Jewish settlements in Palestine from their homes in Damascus, Aleppo, Arab-occupied Jerusalem, and Yemen. They were, in a word, Asian Jews, like millions of others who later fled the towns and cities of the Middle East and North Africa following Israel's declaration of independence in 1948.
Though Friedman doesn't venture into Israeli political history, it's clear that long-neglected population rose into prominence in 1977 with the election of Menachem Begin. The country's rightward shift ever since then is one result. As Friedman points out, Asian Jews account today for half the country's population, and they tend to be poorer and less well educated than those of European descent. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long term in office is only the most recent manifestation of the sea change they embody in the country's political orientation.
"There was no state called Israel, nor did it seem likely there would be one."
The four men who constitute Friedman's principal subject were among some ten Arab-speaking Jews recruited by the Palmach in the years leading up to the War of Independence. They were formed into an Arab Section that has received scant attention from historians. The men were sent, singly or in teams, to Beirut and other Arab capitals to gather intelligence, armed with their wits and only the most minimal training. "There was no state called Israel, nor did it seem likely there would be one. The United Nations had no way to enforce the partition plan" mandated by the General Assembly in November 1947. And war had immediately broken out following its passage.
They were "the embryo" of the Mossad
It's difficult to imagine how poorly trained and ill-equipped were the men of the Arab Section. As Friedman wrote, "there weren't any cars. At the time, the Arab Section didn't even own a radio. When they needed a camera for one surveillance mission . . . they'd had to borrow a Minox from a civilian they knew." And at first there was no money, either. "It wasn't just that the Palmach couldn't pay salaries. The unit couldn't always cover bus fare or a cheap plate of hummus for lunch, and on at least one occasion agents had to stop trailing a target because they didn't have money for a night in a hostel.
"The men lived by their wits, acting on instinct that frequently led them to make mistakes. Yet they survived (unlike most of their fellows in the Arab Section), and they succeeded in feeding useful intelligence to their handlers in Palestine. "[A]fter hostilities began in 1948, the Section proved to be one of the only effective intelligence tools the Jews had."
However, there is no earth-shattering revelation in Spies of No Country. The four agents's "mission didn't culminate in a dramatic explosion that averted disaster, or in the solution of a devious puzzle. Their importance to history lies instead in what they turned out to be—the embryo of one of the world's most formidable intelligence services." And one of the four men Friedman writes about became one of Mossad's most celebrated agents. - Well and carefully researched, this book reads like good spy fiction, given gravitas by thoughtful reflections of the author. Recommended for anyone interested in true spy accounts or the origin story of the State of Israel.
- Just when you think there is nothing new to learn about the post-WW II British Mandate era, along comes a book like this.
This is the story of people that history books left behind.
Well written book. Very insightful and informative. - Evocative. The reader “is there.†The book gives insight about the subject unknown to us in the West.
The book is profoundly human. - This is yet another great story from Matti Friedman that can be read with so many different lenses.
