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radbear76's review
3.0
A good book that explores history to explain Israel as it is today. It makes the point that many of the Jews who emigrated there weren't from Europe but other countries of the Middle East. It also demonstrates that the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is one of perspective.
cpalisa's review
4.0
3.5 stars. True account about 4 Jewish spies around the time of the the Israeli war for independence. I always connect Israel with European Jews, when in fact there were a lot of Islamic Jews in the area. The spies in this story were Jewish but were from places like Syria and could pass for Arabs. They spoke Arabic languages and knew the customs. They lived as Arabs while spying for what was to ultimately become Israel. The story is based on extensive oral interviews and memoirs from the key players. Pretty interesting and thought provoking. The only negative was that it jumped around a bit and was confusing to keep track of some of the names/aliases, and the writing style was odd at times.
lilreaderbug's review
3.0
I found the history in this book interesting, but I only gave it 3 stars because it seemed scattered. Maybe it was due to the lack of organization of the actual Israeli intelligence service in it's early days or that the author should have spent more time explaining context of situations. I'm not sure. But if you're interested in Israel's early days this is worth a read.
kahawa's review
2.0
I forgot to mark this finished and write a review. I found this quite boring, and difficult to follow. The stories weren't coherent narratives. He would start retelling one incident, and would jump to three other incidents and topics and never finish any of them.
lazygal's review
3.0
The author is writing an adult nonfiction book but it reads more like YA narrative nonfiction. That's not a bad thing, but I had to keep reminding myself that this was an adult book. What did annoy me more was the author's inserting himself into the story far too frequently, and some of the explanations of names could have been done in an author's note. This is also a very slim volume that attempts to both highlight the people involved in the Arab Section of the Palmach and what was going on politically (and religiously) in what we now call Israel shortly before and after the country was founded. There is some discussion of the differences between the European Jews and those from the Middle East, as well as something about how the various Arab countries felt about what was happening due to the British pulling out but a fuller explanation might have helped those who don't really know about that era.
ARC provided by publisher.
ARC provided by publisher.