They were pioneers of the new state of Israel, risking their lives for it, yet their contribution has remained secret - until Matti Friedman began researching the story of Israel's 'mistarvim' - Arabic-speaking spies born in Arab countries - for his new book, 'Spies of No Country'. Read his piece in The New York Times:
Who is Jamil
Cohen? He isn’t famous, and his name was new to me when I began
researching a book about Israel’s first spies. But his story is a window
onto some crucial and forgotten Israeli history.
Playing backgammon in the 'Arab section'
Cohen
was born in 1922 in Damascus, Syria, and grew up in the alleys of that
city’s ancient Jewish Quarter. The existence of such a quarter seems
unimaginable today, with the Arab world’s old ethnic mosaic largely
destroyed by state persecution, religious violence and civil war. But
when Cohen was growing up, there were about one million Jews native to
Islamic countries, most of them Arabic speakers. Baghdad, the Iraqi
capital, was one-third Jewish in those days.
At
21, facing an uncertain future amid the Muslim majority, Cohen decided
to run away to join the Zionist pioneers forging a new Jewish future in
the country next door: British Mandate for Palestine. He crossed the
border on foot and joined a group of idealistic young people working the
land at a kibbutz. It was the beginning of 1944, with World War II
still raging and the creation of the state of Israel still four years
away.
In oral testimony recorded in
the 1990s, Cohen remembered what the experience was like. He was
exhilarated by the comradeship and ideology of pioneer life. On the
other hand, he was different from the others and found the difference
hard to escape. Although Palestine had an old community of Jews who
spoke Arabic, the native tongue of most Jews in the country at the time
was Yiddish: They had come to the Middle East fleeing abject poverty and
oppression in Poland and Russia.
To
the kibbutz pioneers, Jamil Cohen was mystifying. He seemed Arab — in
his appearance, in his Hebrew accent, in the music he loved, like that
of the Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum. He stopped using the Arabic name of
his childhood, Jamil, and instead used his Hebrew name, Gamliel, but
that didn’t resolve the problem. Cohen made friends but didn’t talk
about his old life in Damascus; they weren’t interested. “Because I was
the one who wanted to join them, and not the other way around,” he
remembered much later on, “I was the one who was worn down, who had to
round his edges to fit the machine that spins around, sparing no one.”
The ability to “round your edges” is useful for a spy, as he’d soon find
out.
No comments:
Post a Comment