Because the Most Cliched Observations are Cliched For a Reason ...
Israel is a tiny country. Even knowing that, and even having spent a lot of time here before, I tend to forget it. I forget it because it's always in the news, so it winds up feeling more substantial in my mind than it is. It took me a lot less time to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem than it does to get across Istanbul during rush hour. And in fact, Israel's population--all of it, Arab and Jew--is about a third that of Istanbul.
If you haven't seen it yourself, I don't think you can fully grasp the disproportion between the role this country plays in the world's imagination and its size. When you read about the disputed territories, try to remember that the amount of land in dispute feels, when you look at it, like "about what you'd need to build a good-sized shopping mall."
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May '10
Re: Because the Most Cliched Observations are Cliched For a Reason ...
And the world does not want Israel even to have that little space. What is it with all the Jew-hatred, anyway?
May '10
Re: Because the Most Cliched Observations are Cliched For a Reason ...
According to the CIA World Factbook, Israel is "slightly larger than New Jersey" while the West Bank is "slightly smaller than Delaware" and Gaza is "slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C."
Of course, being from Texas, none of that means anything to me. So I'll stick with the shopping mall example.
Jul '10
Re: Because the Most Cliched Observations are Cliched For a Reason ...
Carrying the idea further: Vatican City is the size of a large shopping mall. Ground Zero is a few square blocks. The Constitution is four pieces of parchment.
It's the size of these and other things in the minds of people that really matters.
Feb '11
Re: Because the Most Cliched Observations are Cliched For a Reason ...
And from a defense perspective, of course, size matters. When the Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi Germany---had its distances been on a par with those in the earlier German invasion of France, the Soviets would surely have been defeated in a similar time frame.