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 … many of them — Sephardi Jews — had olive skin like his.” Rabinovich uses one …

‘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 felt underpinned his lifelong Zionism. He believed, unshakably, that Jews needed a …

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 the depths of their lives — or, more aptly, their humanity. Matti Friedman’s “Spies …

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 at work in conditions of the greatest danger to serve a Jewish state that …

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 sides of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. For those who require it, a brief history. …

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 Farhud, a two-day pogrom filled with vandalism and violence against the Jewish …

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 might be good. “He was a really old guy who came up to my …

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 No Country, Friedman, who is now based in Jerusalem, combines his in-depth knowledge of Israel …

By Roger Abrams […] Matti Friedman, a former Associated Press reporter in the Middle East, has constructed a noteworthy and authentic spy story. Spies of No Country tells the story of the birth of the State of Israel in 1948 through the accounts of a small group of Jewish heroes, the Arab Section, who spied for the new state in surrounding Arab …

By Edward Kosner No intelligence agency in the world has quite the crafty mystique of Mossad, Israel’s spy service. Shrewd, patient and ruthless, Mossad’s spooks are celebrated for their triumphs, and even the rare known failures are legendary in their way. … In Spies of No Country, Matti Friedman, a Canadian-Israeli journalist, resurrects early operations of the intelligence service of the …