healthily, it could not remain dependent upon a steady supply of men and money from the West. It must justify its existence economically. This could only be done if it came to terms with its neighbors. If they were friendly and prosperous, it too would prosper. But to seek amity with the Moslems seemed a complete betrayal of Crusader ideals; and the Moslems for their part could never quite reconcile themselves to the presence of an alien and intrusive state in lands that they regarded as their own.... The Crusaders made many mistakes. Their policy was often hesitant and changeable. But they cannot be entirely blamed for failing to solve a problem for which, in fact, there was no solution.

Yet Runciman shows that even among the Knights of the Cross, there arose a party which favored integration of the kingdom into the Middle East, which sought to turn the Crusading state into a partner of the Arab world. The same basic idea, presently being voiced by us in Israel, seems to have much more chance of success.

The Zionists and their Israeli descendants have never thought of themselves as having a holy mission to fight the Arabs. On the contrary, most of them sincerely believe that the animosity of the Arabs to their state rests on a regrettable misunderstanding. This, of course, is an illusion, but the very fact that such an illusion can exist shows the basic difference. No Crusader could ever have believed that the war between the Christians and the Moslems was anything but willed by God. Thus, without disregarding the disturbing implications of the Crusading period for the future of Israel, no one, neither Israeli nor Arab, should carry this analagy too far and derive from it a fatalistic fear or hope. Rather, this analogy should be seen as a lesson from which useful conclusions can be drawn for the guidance of our future actions. As one eminent historian once told me discussing this analogy, "Israelis should view the History of the Crusades as a practical guidebook of how not to do it."

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