I first came across author Matti Friedman in 2016 when he spoke at a venue in Seattle, WA. At that event, I purchased a copy of The Aleppo Codex. I next came across Matti in Tucson AZ at the Tucson Festival of Books in March of 2019, where he was promoting Spies of No Country.
In this latest book, Friedman describes the events in which four men participated before and during the early years of the country of Israel. They were precursors to the current day Mossad. The four men were born and raised as Jews in Arab countries so they spoke the Arabic language as natives. After some exciting times in Palestine/Israel, three were given spying assignments in Beirut, Lebanon, and one was assigned to Damascus, Syria. They lived undercover, got jobs in local businesses, and sent critical messages to their leaders in Israel/Palestine.
This is a story more hair-raising than any James Bond or John Le Carré novel because it really happened. Three of the four survived a long time while the fourth died in the early 1950s. Among their later adventures was the tracking down of the 1972 Munich Olympic killers (not part of this story).
If you are Jewish or a history buff, this is not to be missed.
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–Jim Harris, retired book sales rep
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