The historian of Israel's intelligence services, has described Yoseph Davidescu as 'the number one intelligence agent in the history of Israel before independence'. Davidescu had multiple personas. He was a winegrower and farmer. He was a volunteer soldier in the Turkish Army facing the British. He was a Jewish intelligence agent working for the British against the Turks. He circulated in Arab society as Abu Djaj, an Arabic name for a poultry trader. He attended mosque disguised as a Muslim Arab and attended Muslim festivals in the tents of Bedouin sheikhs, accepted as a son of their tribes. He was decorated by King George V and admired by Winston Churchill. He was imprisoned in Lebanon by the French for gun-running for the Jewish militia. Davidescu was the most important and effective intelligence agent for the British and for all the Jewish militias and Jewish leadership in British Mandate Palestine across the political spectrum - from the left-leaning mainstream Jewish militia, the Haganah, to the right-wing Jewish militants. In the Great Arab Revolt in Palestine during 1936-1939 Davidescu was hunted by Arab rebels, but ironically it was Jewish militants who later sentenced him to death and killed him.
It is the author's aim to present the full story of the life of one of the key personalities in the history of the Middle East, whose time spans the period from the late Nineteenth Century until the end of the Second World War. It is a life which made one of the greatest contributions to the development and security of the Yishuv, the modern Jewish project in Palestine. This book aims to redress an imbalance in existing reporting about Davidescu, which mostly concerns his assassination. Davidescu's story offers insights not only into the Yishuv, but through his unique intelligence, into the Arab communities in Palestine and its neighbours, and into Turkish, then British, rule. It also provides insights into French rule in Syria and Lebanon, where Davidescu ran a network of agents and informants. It puts into context today's territorial, political and security competition between Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab nationalism. The book documents the history of the period in Palestine and its neighbours through the medium of Davidescu's first hand experiences, observations and analysis, often in his own words.
Volume 1 covers Yoseph Davidescu's activities and the Palestine story under the Ottoman Turks and the early years British rule, until Davidescu's second recruitment into British Intelligence and the early period of the Great Arab Revolt.
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