Episode 36: How marginalized Mizrahim became Israel's first spies

Aug 15, 2025

Matti Friedman, a journalist and the author of 'Spies of No Country,' shares fascinating tales of Mizrahi Jewish spies who foundationally shaped Israel's intelligence landscape. He delves into their courageous yet comedic espionage missions during a tumultuous era, revealing their struggles with language barriers and inadequate training. Friedman also explores the marginalization of these spies within Israeli society and highlights their significant contributions to culture and identity, emphasizing the need for a more inclusive understanding of Israel's diverse roots.

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INSIGHT

Origins Of The Arab Section

Early Israeli intelligence began as a tiny, improvised 'Arab section' of about a dozen young men embedded to gather rumors and work in ports.
Their Arabic skills and local plantings provided critical intelligence despite minimal training or equipment.

ANECDOTE

The Jaffa Trap

Two Iraqi-born Jewish agents sent to Jaffa were caught because their Arabic accents and ritual washing habits exposed them.
Their bodies were later found decades later under a school foundation in Khulon.

ANECDOTE

The Haifa Car-Bomb Operation

Agents in Haifa built a homemade car bomb to destroy an Arab truck bomb disguised as a British ambulance, improvising at the Technion.
The operation mixed comic failures—searching for condoms on Shabbat and teaching driving minutes before the mission—with partial success.

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Long before the operational successes of the Mossad would become the stuff of legend in the espionage world, before the Twelve Day War, before Eli Cohen, before the Mossad itself had even come into being, a small ragtag band of courageous young Jews, without training or equipment, built the country’s first espionage arm to help the nascent Jewish state defend itself against its enemies.

Journalist and author Matti Friedman returns to the podcast to talk about his book, Spies of No Country, about the Mizrahi Jewish young men who became the Jewish state’s first spies in the Arab world. Their heroic, tragic, sometimes funny stories help us fill in the longstanding lacunae in the larger story of Israel’s founding and of present-day Israeli society by paying closer attention to the enormous role and influence played by Arab-world Jews in forging today’s Israel.

This episode was sponsored by the Lichterman Family of Jupiter, Florida, and dedicated to the memory and bravery of Aner Shapira, 22 from Jerusalem, who was slain in the Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival on October 7. Aner attended the rave next to the Gaza border with a group of friends from Jerusalem, including his close childhood friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin. When the rocket fire began, they left by car and stopped on the side of the road to seek safety in a roadside bomb shelter next to Kibbutz Re’im. Aner and his friends were among the last people to squeeze inside the shelter, where they soon realized that terrorists were gathering outside to attack. Aner positioned himself at the entrance to the shelter, where he caught and threw back seven grenades before the eighth exploded and killed him. Of the 27 people inside the shelter, only seven emerged alive. Those who survived did so because of Aner’s bravery.

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Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.