Spies of No Country, Matti Friedman
Spies of No Country, Matti Friedman
3 Rating(s)
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Spies of No Country
Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel

Author: Matti Friedman

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 6 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/05/2019


Synopsis

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.

The four spies 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 and assassinations, 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 in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk, collecting intelligence, and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they'd become. 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, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel's vaunted intelligence agency.

About Matti Friedman

Matti Friedman's 2016 book Pumpkinflowers was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and as one of Amazon's 10 Best Books of the Year. It was selected as one of the year's best by Booklist, Mother Jones, Foreign Affairs, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA's Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history. A former Associated Press correspondent, Friedman has reported from Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, D.C., and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Friedman grew up in Toronto and now lives with his family in Jerusalem.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Glen on February 11, 2019

I won this book in a goodreads drawing. A history about Israel's first spies, who infiltrated the Arabs before the war that started the day Israel was founded, and then formed the legendary Mossad. Gripping reading.......more

Goodreads review by Krista on February 28, 2019

If you're spying for the CIA, you have Langley and the United States of America. You might not see them from your street corner or hotel room, but you know they exist, and their power is a comfort. These men had no such thing. They had no country – in early 1948, Israel was a wish, not a fact. If......more

Goodreads review by MH on January 05, 2019

An engaging history of four young Mizrahi Jews and their undercover work for the pre-Israeli intelligence unit, the Arab Section. Using recently declassified documents, interviews with the few survivors, and numerous happy snapshots the men took (they were not the most professional of spies), Friedm......more

Goodreads review by Fran on November 21, 2024

Quick summary: A well-written and fascinating book, with special relevance today. "Spies of No Country" is the story of the earliest days of Israel's vaunted spy agency--starting even before the modern State of Israel was founded in 1948. It tells the story by focusing on four young men, all mizrahi,......more

Goodreads review by debra on May 16, 2020

Give this a 3+ stars for a fascinating story -- a new incite into yet another area I was unfamiliar with. Some interesting observations and descriptions but overall found the writing choppy. There wasn't an easy flow to reading and thus sometimes hard to follow . That said, worth the read for those......more