Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these 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, just like the spies of this fascinating narrative. Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s masterfully told and meticulously researched tale of Israel’s first spies reads like an espionage novel-but it’s all true. Of the dozen members of their ragtag unit, five would be caught and executed-but the remainder would emerge as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency. In 1948, at the outbreak of war in Palestine, they went undercover in Beirut, spending two years running sabotage operations and sending crucial intelligence back home. The four spies were young, Jewish, and born in Arab countries. Piercing.” - The New York Times Book ReviewĪward-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.** 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble as well as “Great Feeling” by Alex Kizenkov.**“Wondrous. Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. They discuss the challenges and risks the spies faced while undercover, the complex identities of these Mizrahi Jews who had to pose as Arabs, and the importance of telling the stories of these Jewish heroes from Middle Eastern lands. In this podcast, Matti Friedman joins Jonathan Silver to talk about his new book.

This was the world of Israel’s first spies, the unsung heroes of the nation’s founding. These four men were spies tasked with protecting the Jewish homeland from external threats, particularly those that came from Arab countries. Focusing on the lives of four of these men, Friedman transports us back to a world without a State of Israel or an IDF, where the fate of Palestine’s Jews remained uncertain and the project of Jewish statehood hung in the balance. 26.95 Spies of No Country by Matti Friedman tells a remarkable story of the founding of the State of Israel through the lens of four men in the fledgling state’s Arab Section. In Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, journalist and author Matti Friedman tells the story of these mista'aravim, Jews who went uncover as Arabs. Sent back into the Arab lands they had left behind, these brave Jews risked their lives to become spies for a country that was yet to be born. In the spring on 1948, before the State of Israel had even been declared, a handful of young Mizrahi Jews were recruited to serve in the Palmach’s Arab Section and charged with going undercover among the Arab population of Palestine and neighboring countries. Long before the Mossad became known as one of the world’s greatest intelligence agencies before the capture of Eichmann and the raid of Iran’s nuclear archive before Eli Cohen and Rafi Eitan before Fauda captured audiences around the world, Israel’s first spies were dispatched to Beirut without so much as a radio to contact home.