Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel

Spies of No Country tells the unknown story of four of Israel’s first spies. Recruited by a rag-tag outfit called the Arab Section before the 1948 War of Independence, these men assumed Arab identities to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations. At the height of the war, the spies posed as refugees fleeing the fighting, reached Beirut, and set up what became Israel’s first foreign intelligence station.

Beyond telling a true espionage story, Spies is an attempt to look at Israel’s own secret identity and to suggest a different way of understanding the country. Israel has always seen itself as part of the story of Europe, but over half of the Jewish population comes from the Islamic world. The spies of this story were Jews from Arab countries – members of a marginal minority in the early Zionist movement who put their Arab identities at the service of the new state. These identities were, in large part, genuine.

Understanding Israel in the 21st century means thinking less about Europe and more about the Middle East. Not only are Israel’s surroundings Middle Eastern, and not only were most Israelis alive today born in the Middle East, but the native culture of much of Israel’s population is Middle Eastern and Mediterranean. As the old elite of the kibbutz movement has faded, this culture has come to the fore – in religion, politics, pop music, and food. It shapes every aspect of life in the country. This makes Israel increasingly hard for North Americans, natives of a different culture and of Jewish communities almost entirely European in background, to understand.

Press for Spies of No Country

• NPR Books review
• Fathom interview
• WSJ Review
• JTA review
• Matti's Globe & Mail Article
• Jewish Journal review

About Matti Friedman

Matti Friedman’s work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. He is a contributor to the New York Times Op-Ed Page, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Tablet, and elsewhere. He is a former Associated Press correspondent.

Matti’s 2016 book Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War was chosen as a New York Times’ Notable Book and as one of Amazon’s 10 best books of the year. Pumpkinflowers was selected as one of the year’s best by Booklist, Mother Jones, Foreign Affairs, the National Post, and The Globe and Mail. Matti’s first book, The Aleppo Codex, an investigation into the strange fate of an ancient Bible manuscript, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history. It was translated into seven languages.

Matti’s journalism has focused in recent years on understanding the lopsided media coverage of Israel (“An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” in Tablet; “What the Media Gets Wrong about Israel,” in The Atlantic; “Falling for Hamas’s Split-Screen Fallacy,” in The New York Times), the rise of Mizrahi culture in Israel (“Israel’s Happiness Revolution,” in Tablet), and about real life behind the headlines in Jerusalem (“The Ties that Bind Jerusalem,” in The Globe and Mail and “The First Palestinian in Jerusalem’s City Hall?” in The New York Times).

Matti was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem with his family. He is an engaging, dynamic speaker who speaks frequently to English-speaking audiences across North America and in Israel.