Where the Desert Meets the Sea

by Werner Sonne

The first time I was in Israel, I noticed something immediately: on the edge of the narrow road to Jerusalem there still stood, so many years later, the wrecks of armored trucks. They remain there today, silent witnesses to how desperate the struggle for the Holy City of three religions was in 1948, how narrowly the Jews had escaped losing their capital. Those wrecks got me curious. I wanted to know their story. I returned again and again, including in October 1973, when the armies of Egypt and Syria invaded the country during the Yom Kippur War. I experienced firsthand how close the Jewish state was to military defeat, especially in the north, and yet was still able to emerge victorious. It’s this pattern that shapes the history of Israel: repeatedly being attacked, repeatedly reacting to the threat of being driven into the sea by the Arabs, and repeatedly triumphing. Even the founding of Israel itself began with a war. This was the direct consequence of the 1947 United Nations decision that divided the British Mandate between Jews and Arabs.