Israel as a Regional Power: Prospects and Problems

Abstract

Right after the fall of the Bastille in 1789, a French revolutionary with pretensions at leadership is reputed to have heard an uproar outside his window one day and said to his companion, “Quick, which way is the mob heading? I’m its leader and I have to get to the front.” The story is almost certainly apocryphal and it betrays a peculiar notion of leadership, but it does imply something significant about one condition enabling leadership, which is that while a political entity, even one so inchoate as a “mob,” may not have a coherent sense of direction, it must at least exist before a leader can presume to shape the direction in which it heads.