Four Arab Jews emigrate to Israel in 1948, at the birth of the new nation. Recruited almost immediately to spy for Israel, they are sent back to Lebanon and elsewhere to pose as Arabs (which they actually are) and collect intelligence. They operate out of a kiosk in Beirut. It is dangerous work and they don't know to whom they are reporting; they don't know whether their information is useful; and by the end, they don't know who they have become. The unit--called the Arab Section--will eventually become the Mossad, Israel's vaunted intelligence agency.

Borderland is about the disguises and identities of particular spies, but it's also about how Israel itself has assumed a false or misleading identity. Israel presents itself as European country when in fact it's comprised of Middle Easterners like the men in this story. And, according to Matti Friedman, that partially explains the politics of the country and why it often baffles the West. With writing that is both stunning and journalist, Borderland gives us a window into the past and the future of the Middle East.