A few upcoming dates in the U.S. and Canada: Thursday, May 2: Kansas City JCC, "Get Lit Author Event," 7.pm. Details here. Friday-Sunday, May 3-5: Detroit, MI, Congregation Adat Shalom. Details here. Monday, May 6: New York, Park Ave. Synagogue, 7 p.m., with Mijal Bitton. Details here. Thursday, May 9: New York, Columbia...
By Steven Silber Haaretz English edition, April 1, 2019 In his 2004 book “The Yom Kippur War,” Abraham Rabinovich notes how an Egyptian cameraman, arriving to film captured Israeli soldiers near the Suez Canal, was surprised that some of the prisoners looked “like himself ...
The Department of Lost Spies: How Israel brings its missing soldiers home By Matti Friedman The Globe & Mail, March 8, 2019 [Nissim Attiyeh, left, who was caught and killed in Dec. 1947. Another Arab Section spy, Yakuba Cohen, right in the uniform of an Arab militiaman, circa 1944....
'Spies Of No Country' Offers Nuanced Understanding Of Israel's Complexity By Lily Meyer My grandfather was too young to serve in World War II. He watched from Bridgeport, Conn. as Hitler, then Stalin, murdered unspeakable numbers of Jews, including most of his family. The helplessness and guilt he...
By Neal Bascomb If experience is any guide, spies are not wont to emote. On the rare occasions they do speak about their perilous missions, they avoid sentiment, as if recounting a visit to the dry cleaners. For this reason, histories often fall short in tapping...
By Jonathan Kirsch Israel is much admired, even among its enemies, for the valor and acuity of its storied secret service, Mossad. Before there was a Mossad, however, and even before there was a State of Israel, a few brave young men and women were already...
By Chris Rutledge Like its subjects, Matti Friedman’s Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel is more than just its “cover story.” Yes, on the surface, it’s an engaging spy saga. Beneath that, though, lies an examination of identity and the humanity behind both...
Mizrahi Jewish spies built Israel, their descendants meet racism there By Hen Mazzig In 1951, my great-grandfather was executed in the city of Baghdad, Iraq. He was accused by the government of being an Israeli spy. My grandmother always told us things were never the same following the...
By Emily Burack At the beginning of his new book, Matti Friedman writes that “time spent with old spies is never time wasted.” When he went to meet Isaac Shoshan in his suburban Tel Aviv home, Friedman had no idea what to expect — but knew it...
Journalist Matti Friedman has reported from around the world, including Israel, Lebanon, Morocco and Moscow, and is the author of Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War, about Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, which was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. In his new book, Spies of...