The “Middle East” is the insanity of suicide bombings, the backwardness of a woman peeking out from her niqab. “Democracy” is a flag over Iwo Jima, Washington crossing the Delaware, a working man rising in a town meeting. Overlay the two phrases and a collage emerges—a visual representation of Herzl’s dream of “an outpost of civilization against barbarism.” And this collage is a technology, as functional as any other: Who can judge democratic Israel, which must exist in “that part of the world” where child brides, chemical weapons, and bin Laden reign?
