(The whole thing reminds me, somehow, of a 19th century German army song: "To the Rhine! To the Rhine! To the German Rhine! / Who wants to be the watchman of the River! / Dear Fatherland, don't worry / Steady and true stands the watch on the Rhine! / The German youngster, pious and strong / Protects the German borderland!")
BACK TO the future.
The Crusaders established their kingdom in Palestine when the Arab world was splintered. Their great adversary, the Kurd Salah-al-Din al-Ayubi (Saladin), devoted decades to unifying the Arab world around them before vanquishing them on the battlefield of Hittin.
Today, the Arab world seems more splintered than ever. But a new Arab world is taking shape, the contours of which can be conceived only dimly.
Our place is within the new reality, not outside, looking on.
Alas, our leaders are quite unable to see that. They are still living in the world of Sykes and Picot, a world of foreign potentates (now American). For them, the turmoil around us is -- well, just turmoil.
The founder of modern Zionism wrote 118 years ago that we shall serve in Palestine as pioneers of European culture and constitute "a wall against Asiatic barbarism."
Our leaders still live in this imagined reality, re-phrased as "a villa in the jungle."
So what to do when the predators in the jungle are approaching and roaring? Build higher walls, of course.
What else?
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