He wrote a history of the Arab Section in 2001 and a few years earlier provided oral testimony to the Yigal Allon Center, named after a founder of the pre-state Palmach strike force of which the Arab-speaking spies were officially a part. Also key is Damascus-born Gamliel Cohen, the one who finished high school. 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. His conversations with the author form the backbone of the book. Aleppo-born Isaac Shoshan was in his late 80s and 90s when Friedman interviewed him, the only one of the four still alive. Recruited almost immediately to spy for Israel, they are sent back to Lebanon and elsewhere to pose as Arabs (which they actually are) and collect intelligence. Four Arab Jews emigrate to Israel in 1948, at the birth of the new nation. But it’s the Syrian Jews we get closest to. Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel. They were between 20 and 25 years old in January 1948 three happened to be named Cohen, including Havakuk from Yemen and Yakuba from Jerusalem. Hero or Subject of a Conspiracy? Druze Cop's Death Remains a Mysteryįriedman focuses on four agents in the unit, also known as the mista’arvim, or, as he frequently calls them, translating the term literally, Ones Who Become Like Arabs. Friedmans 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.Why Israeli Jews Are Terrified of Arabic.
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