The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem seems to have doomed itself to oblivion by relying solely on its superior military organization and valor. Yet the astonishing feats of arms that carried the Crusaders into the heart of Egypt tend to obscure the real problems which determined their destiny in the long run. These same problems are valid today in an Israeli context. Without a mental readiness to become a part of the Middle East, without a policy aimed at securing acceptance by the peoples in the region, any security could only be temporary.
The Crusaders captured Jerusalem in July, 1099, celebrating the event with a terrible massacre, killing Muslims and Jews alike until they had to pick their way through corpses and blood that reached up to their knees, as a contemporary, Raymond of Aguilers, described it. The last of the Crusaders was evicted from Acre in 1291. In all these hundred and ninety-two years, despite many truces, armistices and ceasefires, the Crusaders knew not one day of real peace. In this respect, the analogy with Israel is complete.
In fact, thinking about the 1967 war, which sprang up so suddenly and unexpectedly, I am reminded of a story from the time of the Crusades which has always seemed to me the epitome of the very existence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the year 1183, only four years before the armies of the kingdom were crushed by Saladin at the Horns of Hattin, a little hill overlooking the Sea of Tiberias, a marriage was celebrated in the castle of Kerak, whose ruins today overlook the Dead Sea from the east. The Lord of the castle, the notorious Reynald, Lord of Transjordan and leader of the war party, was presiding over the marriage of a seventeen-year-old nobleman to an eleven-year-old princess. From all the far-flung territories of the Crusading states, from the north of Syria to the frontiers of Egypt, the barons and noblewomen rode to the event. Some must have ridden for two weeks, carrying with them their armor, without which life was unthink¬