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The spy from Palestine.(Aaron Aaronsohn)(Essay)
- Article from:
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Queen's Quarterly
- Article date:
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March 22, 2008
- Author:
- Posner, Michael
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2008 Queen's Quarterly. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The map of the Middle East has been a maddening picture for a very long time--long before European diplomats took out their rulers and pencils in the aftermath of the Great War. Few realize that the maps may have had very different lines today if a single airplane had not mysteriously disappeared in 1919.
ON THE MORNING of 16 October 1916, at the height of World War I, British military author-ities in the port of Kirkwall, Scotland, arrested a 40-year-old, barrel-chested Palestinian Jew named Aaron Aaronsohn. A subject of the Ottoman Empire, Aaronsohn-an internationally renowned scientist-was seized from the Oskar II, a Scandinavian-American ship en route from Copenhagen ...