Those campus protesters may share something with the British Romantic poet Lord Byron, who died 200 years ago last Friday. Yet the same poet was claimed as an inspiration by several great Zionist leaders. Martin Kramer explains: 

Byron may well be considered the secular saint of all Western enthusiasts for various foreign “liberation” struggles. He fit the description of such types offered by the Tory statesman George Canning in 1821: “a steady patriot of the world alone, the friend of every country but his own.” Today, every American and European campus teems with would-be Byrons, though slogans have supplanted cantos in their repertoire.

But in the minds of his Zionist admirers, Byron would have supported their movement had he lived a few decades longer:

The most famous exponent of this view was Nahum Sokolow, a Zionist thinker and diplomat, whose overlooked contribution to securing the Balfour Declaration I’ve assessed elsewhere. In Sokolow’s two-volume History of Zionism (1919), he devotes a section to Byron within his discussion of non-Jewish supporters of Jewish national redemption. Sokolow made the case for Byron as a proto-Zionist by quoting his Hebrew Melodies, a collection published in 1815. Byron wrote these poems at the behest of the Jewish composer and musician Isaac Nathan, who wanted to set (supposedly) ancient Jewish music to contemporary verse.

The poem “Oh, Weep for Those!,” lamenting that the Jews have no home, was translated dozens of times into Hebrew and Yiddish. Jewish settlers as early as the First Aliyah sang it to their own improvised tune.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.