Constructed around the year 81 CE, the triumphal arch in Rome depicts the ceremonial military parade a decade earlier celebrating the emperor Titus’ defeat of the Jewish rebellion. Its most famous image, visible to this day, shows people carrying a seven-branched menorah. To scholars of the era, it is evident that these are victorious Roman soldiers bearing the spoils of Jerusalem. Nonetheless, the belief is widespread among Jews that the menorah is being carried by Jewish captives. Steven Fine traces this legend from Renaissance Italy, to 19th-century British Protestants, to early-20th-century Jewish scholars, to Zionist iconography past and present:

The earliest identification of the Arch of Titus menorah bearers as Jewish captives appears in an almost offhanded way in the writings of the early-modern [Jewish] historiographer Gedaliah ibn Yahya’s Shalshelet Hakabbalah (The Chain of Tradition), a treatise that appeared in Venice in 1587. . . . The Arch of Titus is transformed by ibn Yahya—himself closely associated with the messianic pretender David Reuveni (d. 1535/1541) and his claims to command Jewish armies beyond the borders of Christendom—as a monument to the strength of the Jewish people. Since Titus was forced to fight so strenuously to defeat the Jews (a war that did, in fact, take the empire eight years to win), ibn Yahya reasons, he merited this triumphal arch. Thus, the “strong” Jewish captives are depicted in its bas-reliefs, and the shame that Jews experienced in relation to the arch inverted. . . .

Like ibn Yahya before them, Zionists of the fin de siècle adopted the Arch of Titus—especially the menorah panel—and subverted it. No longer was it to be a sign of Roman victory and Jewish defeat—the original intention of the arch—but rather it was transformed into a symbol of Jewish strength. It was a “refusal to admit defeat,” as Chaim Weizmann so succinctly put it. This resignification . . . allow[ed] a subjugated population to imagine the possibilities of its own strength in the face of European power, read through a marble metaphor of ancient Roman imperialism. his recourse to an ancient artifact spoke to both Jewish proclivities and to Enlightenment romanticism. The “martyred race” (as Jews were often called during the fin-de-siècle) was actually “a strong nation.”

This “hidden transcript” was surely a poignant survival tool for early modern Italian Jews. It was developed by Anglophone Protestants of the Victorian era for their own theological and poetic purposes. And, finally, it was adapted by modern Jews as they began the processes of imagining themselves a modern “secular” nation—and then seeing that nation take shape. Taken over into Israeli popular culture, it has been preserved among Hebrew speakers and Italian and American Jews.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.