The book presents itself as a memoir of espionage and crisis management. In practice, it is a political document, shaped by the assumptions and instincts of a man who has spent decades reading the Middle East through the prism of security.
Egypt occupies an unusual position among the regional actors Cohen discusses. It does not appear frequently, but when it does, its presence alters the direction of the narrative.
Cohen’s treatment of Cairo, and of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in particular, highlights a point rarely acknowledged in Israeli strategic writing: Egypt’s decisions can determine the limits of Israel’s ambitions.
Cohen frames Israel’s current moment through a familiar lens: a country facing existential threats, surrounded by hostile actors, and compelled to rely on its own strength.
This worldview shapes the way he reads Arab states. Many of them, in his telling, are arenas of influence or temporary partners, places where Israeli diplomacy and intelligence can shift the balance. Cairo does not fit this pattern.
The most revealing passage in the book concerns Cohen’s initiative at the outset of the Gaza war. Facing the prospect of international criticism over mass civilian casualties, he drafted a proposal to establish a large humanitarian corridor from Gaza into Sinai.
The plan, which he insisted would be temporary, required coordination with major powers. Cohen recounts preparing to travel to Washington, London, Tokyo, Beijing, and New Delhi to secure written guarantees.
However, all these efforts, he admits, hinged on one decision, as he writes in the book’s most consequential sentence: “Ultimately President El-Sisi rejected the initiative.”
The rejection is presented plainly, without embellishment. Yet its implications are clear. Israel could obtain support from the United States and several other global powers, but the plan died the moment Cairo said no.
In Cohen’s retelling, Egypt’s position is not treated as an obstacle to be negotiated away; it is a sovereign decision that carries finality.
Cohen explains that Egyptian officials understood the logic behind his proposal, but they feared that what was described as a temporary displacement could quickly become permanent.
He does not argue with this assessment, nor does he suggest that Israel could have offered stronger assurances. Instead, he describes the rejection matter-of-factly, acknowledging the strategic weight behind it.
This episode sets the tone for how Egypt appears in the rest of the book. Cohen details operations in Iran, reflects on Israel’s ties with Gulf capitals, and describes the diplomatic landscape surrounding the Abraham Accords.
Yet when he turns to Cairo, the tone shifts. Egypt is not a state to be drawn into regional engineering; it is a state whose decisions determine whether such engineering is possible.
Cohen’s personal references to President El-Sisi are limited and restrained. He describes their meetings as clear and businesslike, and he refers to Abbas Kamel as an influential adviser. He avoids psychological sketches or political judgments. This absence is notable.
Cohen is willing to write at length about the personalities of other regional figures, but he treats Egypt’s leadership with a degree of distance, suggesting, perhaps unintentionally, that it lies outside the circle of actors Israel believes it can shape.
The book’s brief allusion to Egypt’s membership in the expanded BRICS group reinforces this point. It is not a major theme in Cohen’s narrative, but it signals an awareness that Cairo is operating in a broader international environment, one in which Israel’s leverage is limited.
As the narrative returns to the Gaza war, the reader senses that the turning point for Cohen was not only the intelligence failures surrounding 7 October, but the diplomatic reality that Israel could not execute its preferred strategy without Egyptian consent.
The “new Middle East” Cohen seeks to describe, built around shifting alliances, technological cooperation, and Gulf realignments, meets a boundary the moment it reaches Egypt’s western frontier.
For Egyptian readers, the value of The Sword of Freedom is not in its retelling of familiar regional crises but in the glimpses it offers into how Israel’s security establishment interprets Cairo’s choices.
Egypt that emerges from the book is not a passive actor responding to external pressures; it is a state that sets the perimeter of what others can attempt.
In this regard, the review’s central insight may be the simplest. Cohen lists several forces he believes will shape the region in the coming years: Gulf leadership, US policy, and Iranian nuclear ambitions. Yet the most decisive intervention in his own story is a short line acknowledging that Egypt declined to cooperate with a plan he considered essential.
The book does not frame this as a diplomatic failure or a misreading of Egypt. It presents it as a fact of regional life.
That makes The Sword of Freedom a far more useful book than its author may have intended. It offers a rare window into the limits of Israeli power as seen from inside the system that often imagines itself unbound. It also affirms something
Egyptians have long understood: their country plays a stabilizing role in the region not because of rhetoric or aspiration, but because of concrete decisions rooted in sovereignty and strategy.
Cohen’s narrative tells two stories at once. One is the story he wants to tell of Israeli resilience, intelligence craft, and strategic clarity. The other, embedded between the lines, is the story of a regional order in which Egypt remains a decisive actor.
It is this second story that gives the book its enduring relevance.
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