ISRAEL: The Watchman of Zion

Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

—Psalms 121:4

On the wall of his unpretentious office in infant Israel's ancient capital of Jerusalem, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion keeps a huge map. It is a map of the Moslem world; and in the midst of it the New Jersey-sized state of Israel, heavily outlined in black, looks like a jagged, tiny black arrowhead. "This is to remind me always," he says, "how small we are."

In the nine years since David Ben-Gurion founded the New Jerusalem by the force of a fanatical...