In 1986, the Jewish Quarterly Review celebrated the centenary of David Ben-Gurion’s birth by publishing the Russian-born Anglo-Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s recollections of their personal encounters. The second of these took place in New York City during World War II, when Berlin, seeking the American Zionist activist Ben Cohen, knocked on a hotel-room door and found himself greeted by a surprised pajama-clad Ben-Gurion.

We next met at his house in Tel Aviv in 1950, when he was prime minister of Israel. He asked his wife Paula to give me some coffee or orange juice—“Coffee? orange juice? water would be much easier,” she said, “would you mind?” I did not. BG then spoke passionately and at length about the decisive role of individuals in history—his heroes were Churchill (BG was in London in 1940), Tito, and de Gaulle—men who fought against apparently overwhelming odds, and won. The image of David and Goliath, it seems to me, governed his thoughts at many moments of his life.

After this I saw him in Oxford on two or three occasions—he used to come incognito (during his premiership), mainly, it seems, because Richard Crossman had first interested him in the works of Plato and then told him that Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford was by far the best place to obtain books by and on him. On one occasion he stayed in the old Mitre Hotel. . . . I went to the Mitre and found him in an upstairs parlor, surrounded by noisy beer-drinkers, warming his feet in front of a coal fire, absorbed in a translation of Indian classical poetry. He tore himself from the page and greeted me with the words “Socrates, gurus, rebbes—same thing, no difference, deep wisdom.”

On another occasion, Berlin took part in a Bible discussion group the prime minister held at his home on Sabbath afternoons. The conversation had turned to King David and the prophet Nathan, who famously remonstrated him for his misdeeds:

Someone then remarked that, as was known, David was not allowed to build the Temple because he was a man of blood; only Solomon could be permitted to do this. At this point BG sprang to the defense of David with mounting passion—declared that he was by far the greatest of the Jews since Moses, that the blood he had spilt was in a holy cause, that he was the creator of a nation, and that Nathan had gone far beyond what was proper in making so fierce an attack on this great and good king.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.