What We’re Reading: Spy Stories and the Changing World Order

The Spy Created by Gideon Raff “The Spy,” a six-episode series airing on Netflix, tells the true story of Eli Cohen, an Egyptian-born Israeli spy who went undercover during the height of Syria-Israel hostilities in the 1960s as a Syrian shipping magnate and billionaire. Cohen escaped Egypt, where he had experienced anti-Semitism, in 1955 and fled to Israel, where he worked as a filing clerk and married his wife, Nadia. They faced discrimination from European Israelis because of their Sephardic and Arab roots, reflecting Israel’s struggle to build a national identity in the early years of the Cold War. But Cohen’s Arab background became an asset in 1961 when he was recruited by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency to infiltrate Syria’s military ranks and Baath Party at a time when Syria and Israel were exchanging tit-for-tat strikes. In his first assignment under his new alias, Kamel Amin Thaabet, Cohen was sent to Argentina, where he mingled with Syrian military and political elite and cozied up to Amin al-Hafez, who became Syria’s president following the 1963 Baathist coup. Mossad then sent Cohen to Syria, where he posed as a prominent businessman, playboy and political player. He thrived in Syria, climbing his way […]