Press of Atlantic City · Pleasantville/Atlantic City, NJ · 22 April 2018
CP-2018-030
Israel survives through iron will and an iron wall
ZEV CHAFETS / Bloomberg News
Transcribed from the clipping
In the run-up to this week's 70th anniversary of Israel's independence, Israeli Defense Forces chief of Staff General Gabi Eisenkot pronounced the country "invincible." This was a bold statement. The country faces a growing threat from Iran and its puppets in Lebanon and Gaza, and the possibility of a clash with Russia over Syria.
And yet, few Israelis have disagreed with this assessment. There is a mood of confidence here, and its origin lies in a doctrine of strategic defense that has proven itself over nearly a century of intermittent warfare.
That doctrine was first enunciated in a 1923 article titled "The Iron Wall" by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a visionary Zionist leader and the ideological father of the Likud. The Jews of Palestine were then a small, embattled minority. Only three years had passed since the first Arab riots in Jerusalem against them.
The Jewish community's socialist leaders hoped they could appease Arab enmity by offering economic cooperation, progress and prosperity. [...] Hamas is marching again during the Independence Day weekend. It is a futile gesture. The Iron Wall is no longer simply a metaphor. It is a description of the Jewish state itself. And, as Eisenkot says, it is invincible.
How this transcription was made
Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.
Context added by this archive
Syndicated opinion column from Bloomberg News, not staff copy.
Tagline: "Zev Chafets, former aide to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, is founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report Magazine." The page also carries an editorial cartoon whose lettering reads "BUT WOULDN'T MOVING OUR EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM MAKE SOME PEOPLE ANGRY?" and "YOU GET USED TO IT.." — cartoon lettering, not a headline or dek.
This and the Concord Monitor column (slide 4) run four days apart in April 2018 and cite Eisenkot to opposite ends.
Cite this clipping
"Israel survives through iron will and an iron wall," Press of Atlantic City, 22 April 2018. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2018-030. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2018-030
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2018-030.
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