''Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel'' is a book by
Matti Friedman
Matti Friedman ( he, מתי פרידמן) is a Canadian-Israeli journalist and author. He is an op-ed contributor for the New York Times, and columnist for Tablet magazine.
Biography
Matti Friedman was born to a Canadian Jewish family and grew ...
published in March 2019.
''Spies of No Country'' is about a pre-independence Zionist intelligence unit, the "Arab Section," that operated inside the territory of the French
Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon
The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon (french: Mandat pour la Syrie et le Liban; ar, الانتداب الفرنسي على سوريا ولبنان, al-intidāb al-fransi 'ala suriya wa-lubnān) (1923−1946) was a League of Nations mandate foun ...
towards the end of the
British Mandate for Palestine
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The manda ...
.
Synopsis
''Spies'' is the story of four Mizrachi men. They were not related to one another despite the fact that three of them shared a surname. They were
Gamliel Cohen
Gamliel Cohen ( he, גמליאל כהן; April 10, 1922 – July 15, 2002) was "one of the fathers of Israeli espionage". Much of his life was spent living under various false identities in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.Isaac Shoshan, who grew up in
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
, Yakuba Cohen, from Palestine. All four were native Arabic speakers. They operated as ''
mista'arvim
Mista'arvim ( he, מסתערבים; ar, مستعربين, translit=musta'ribīn), also spelled mista'aravim, is the name given to counter-terrorism units of the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Border Police, and Israel Police who operate undercove ...
'', "Ones Who Become Like Arabs," but Friedman raises an interesting question, "They were native to the Arab world," Friedman writes, "as native as Arabs. If the key to belonging to the Arabic nation was the Arabic language, as the Arab nationalists claimed, they were inside. So were they really...pretending to be Arabs, or were they pretending to be people who weren't Arabs pretending to be Arabs?"
Reception
Lily Meyer, reviewing the book for
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other n ...
, called ''Spies'' "an important book (because) Americans are not accustomed to hearing about Israel's complexity, or its diversity. We are rarely asked to consider Israel as a country that is, as Friedman says, 'more than one thing.'"
Bill Gladstone wrote that "In lesser hands, this story might not be capable of sustaining the interest of readers through more than 200 pages, but Friedman is a natural-born storyteller whose simple but compelling language, and level of insight and sensitivity, seem to anticipate and settle questions in the readers’ minds even before they arise." For example, early in the book Friedman writes that, "“The unwritten rules of espionage writing seem to require a claim that the subjects altered the very course of history, or at least of their war... This is tempting but rarely true, I suspect, and it isn’t true in the case of our spies, though their contribution to the war was significant. Their 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 he Mossad">Mossad.html" ;"title="he Mossad">he Mossad..”
In a review published in ''The Forward'', Raphael Magarik noted that Friedman repeated Israeli propaganda throughout the book, overlooked evidence that did not support his argument, and misrepresented events. He nevertheless praised Friedman's storytelling.
Awards
''Spies of No Country'' won the 2018, pre-publication, $25,000 Nathan Book Award, a prize given by the Nathan Fund in conjunction with the
Jewish Book Council
The Jewish Book Council (Hebrew: ), founded in 1944, is an organization encouraging and contributing to Jewish literature.