{"id":1142,"date":"2019-04-01T10:28:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T07:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2019-04-01T10:28:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T07:28:08","slug":"how-israel-welcomed-jews-from-arab-lands-as-spies-jtatimes-of-israel-march-9-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/2019\/04\/01\/how-israel-welcomed-jews-from-arab-lands-as-spies-jtatimes-of-israel-march-9-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"How Israel welcomed Jews from Arab lands \u2014 as spies (JTA\/Times of Israel, March 9, 2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Emily Burack<\/em><\/p>\n<p>At the beginning of his new book,\u00a0Matti Friedman writes that \u201ctime spent with old spies is never time wasted.\u201d When he went to meet Isaac Shoshan in his suburban Tel Aviv home, Friedman had no idea what to expect \u2014 but knew it might be good.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was a really old guy who came up to my shoulders,\u201d Friedman tells the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cHe told me a story about 1948 that I had never heard before; it took me a few meetings to figure out what he was telling me. From there I was led to other sources, recently declassified files and some oral testimonies that had been recorded by other participants in the Arab Section.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The result?<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-promo\">\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2UjF6Nq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel<\/a>,\u201d which tells the captivating tale of Israel\u2019s first spies, young Jewish men originally from Arab countries who could slip across borders undetected. They were part of the \u201cArab Section\u201d of the Palmach, Israel\u2019s prestate force that would turn into the Israel Defense Forces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"newsletter-promo\">(Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/how-israel-welcomed-jews-from-arab-lands-as-spies\/\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Emily Burack At the beginning of his new book,\u00a0Matti Friedman writes that \u201ctime spent with old spies is never time wasted.\u201d When he went to meet Isaac Shoshan in his suburban Tel Aviv home, Friedman had no idea what to expect \u2014 but knew it might be good. \u201cHe was a really old guy who came up to my &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattifriedman.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}