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Israel Must Not Turn Into Sparta - by Sam Kahn - Persuasion

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For anybody who’s visited Israel, submerged themselves in the thousands of years of history there, of every form of triumph and transcendence and brutality that you can imagine, there’s one site that stands out from all the others. It’s a flat promontory on the top of an astonishingly steep precipice located at the eastern edge of the Dead Sea. It’s called Masada and it is as close as anything that nature could design to an impregnable fortress. In a vivid passage, here is how the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus described it: There was a rock, not small in circumference, and very high. It was encompassed with valleys of such vast depth downward, that the eye could not reach their bottoms. They were abrupt; and such as no animal could walk upon… There is also nothing but destruction in case your feet slip. For on each side there is a vastly deep chasm, and precipice; sufficient to quell the courage of every body, by the terror it infuses into the mind. At the very end of the Jewish Revo

Israel Must Not Turn Into Sparta After the ceasefire, the country must choose. Sam Kahn Oct 13, 2025 135 12 26 Share Benjamin Netanyahu listens while U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the Knesset on October 13, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.) For anybody who’s visited Israel, submerged themselves in the thousands of years of history there, of every form of triumph and transcendence and brutality that you can imagine, there’s one site that stands out from all the others. It’s a flat promontory on the top of an astonishingly steep precipice located at the eastern edge of the

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