Spies of no country by matti friedman6/11/2023 Initially, the Arab Section “didn’t even own a radio,” Friedman notes. Training was haphazard at best, and disorganization was rampant. The Arab Section had its origins as a British creation to bolster the fight against the Nazis in the Middle East. The heretofore untold story of the Arab Section is thrilling and interesting enough. That unit is the Arab Section, or - as it appears in official reports - “The Dawn.”įriedman is careful not to exaggerate or embellish history. Their stories, he notes, have “something to tell us about the country they helped create.”įriedman tells their tales in vivid and highly readable prose - the careful Gamliel Cohen, alias Yussef, born in Damascus, Syria the quiet Yemeni-born Havakuk Cohen, alias Ibrahim Yakuba Cohen, an impatient Jerusalemite who goes by the name Jamil and Isaac Shoshan, aka Abdul Karim, a Jew from Syria, whose dalliances with a Lebanese Christian woman endanger the unit. His latest work, Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, examines the careers of four spies, born in Arab lands, working for the fledgling Jewish state. “Time spent with old spies,” author Matti Friedman writes in his new book, “is never time wasted.”įriedman, a Canadian-born Israeli and former Associated Press correspondent, has devoted much of his career to shedding light on the unexplored and misunderstood aspects of Israel and the Middle East.
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