The study of antiquity often leads to deep insights into contemporary geopolitics. This phenomenon is underscored by the attention given to the works of military historian Barry Strauss, especially his book “Jews Against Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Most Powerful Empire”, published in August 2025.
The book appeared in an era marked by intense conflict in the Middle East. It offers a detailed historical account of the protracted struggle of the Jewish people against the Roman Empire between 63 BCE and 136 CE, covering three major uprisings: the Great Revolt, the Diaspora Revolt, and the disastrous Bar Kokhba Revolt.
The contemporary resonance of Strauss’s work, which presents “a gripping narrative that links past to present”, stands out particularly through the acknowledgment that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reading the book, with an explicitly strategic motive: “We lost that game, and I think we have to win the next one.”
This statement turns the reading of ancient history into an immediate act of strategic consultation, making the book a “timely handbook for today”. These developments reflect the deep strategic lessons that current leaders perceive in narratives of resilience, internal division, and the management of regional imperial rivals.
As a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, an experienced scholar of ancient Greek and Roman history, a former distinguished visiting professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the United States Naval Postgraduate School, and a figure with influence among decision-makers, Strauss has consciously crafted his narrative to draw parallels between ancient conflicts and modern struggles, noting that “the past is a mirror image of current conflicts”.
For contemporary Israeli leadership facing what it regards as existential security challenges, the book functions as a historical laboratory for testing hypotheses about national survival, the consequences of internal friction, and risk calculation in the face of overwhelming power.
From here arises the importance of analysing the specific strategic lessons derived from Strauss’s comprehensive narrative and his claims regarding the Jewish revolts, which strongly echo the current geopolitical situation of Israel and clarify the strategic value of this historical text for its leadership.
Netanyahu’s declared desire to remain in power directly engages with the book’s central theme, Jewish resilience, which Strauss identifies as one of the greatest cases of survival in history.
Geopolitical Context: Reassessing The Rivalry With Iran
One of Strauss’s main intellectual motives in writing the book, which he began around 2020, was the striking modern hostility between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This contemporary hostility stands in sharp contrast to the historical dynamic he explores, which reveals a complex and often beneficial relationship between the ancient Jewish state and the Iranian empires, especially the Parthian Empire.
The Parthian Empire, which lasted from around 247 BCE to 224 CE, extended from the Euphrates to the Himalayas and controlled the Silk Road.
For the Jewish people, who lived on the fringes of the Roman Empire, Parthia acted as a constant geopolitical counterweight: an eastern empire positioned against the western power of Rome. This strategic position, located between two giants, meant that Judea had to navigate constantly shifting allies and enemies.
Strauss highlights ancient Iranian empires, such as Cyrus the Great, who allowed the Jews to return from Babylonian exile, and the Parthians, as historically friendly empires toward the Jews.
Over two centuries of revolt, the large Jewish community within the Parthian Empire provided a refuge and a constant source of hope for assistance against Rome.
This hope for intervention is similar to the crucial aid provided by France in the American Revolution of 1765, a comparison Strauss explicitly draws. It was central to the strategic calculations of the rebels, even though the Jews ultimately failed to persuade Parthia to intervene with force.
Strauss argues convincingly that the current deadly hostility displayed by the Islamic Republic of Iran toward Israel is a “deviation” from the typical historical relationship between Iranians and Jews, which generally consisted of relatively good relations over thousands of years.
For a modern leader analysing the complexities of regional balance of power, this historical context suggests that current Iranian policy is not an inevitable product of deep-rooted historical enmity, but rather a political stance that could, in theory, be subject to change. Thus, historical analysis guides strategic thinking regarding long-term regional alliances versus immediate conflicts driven by ideology.
The Enduring Necessity Of Resilience
Netanyahu’s declared desire to remain in office directly addresses the book’s main theme, Jewish resilience, which Strauss identifies as one of the greatest survival stories in history. The book stands as an assertion in the form of a “testimony” to the “enduring spiritual strength” of the Jewish people and explains their continued existence.
According to the author, the ongoing nature of the conflict is astonishing. The Jews were “Rome’s most determined rebels”, holding out longer than the Gauls, the Germans, the Britons, or even the Carthaginians. This persistence, fuelled by national determination and resilience, manifests both physically and spiritually in:
- Physical resistance despite catastrophe:
The Jews engaged in three major revolts over two centuries, despite their catastrophic loss in the Great Revolt with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE. This resilience was expressed through the development of advanced military tactics. In the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136 CE), for example, the rebels adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, building underground shelters, tunnels, and caves to launch surprise attacks on Roman legions, catching them completely off guard. This tactical innovation and persistence forced Rome to deploy massive resources, including transferring the governor of Britain, Julius Severus, to Judea, a clear indicator of the scale of the threat. - Spiritual survival:
Even when crushed physically, the spirit did not break. After the destruction of the Temple, Jewish leaders, the sages and scholars who became the rabbis, engineered a spiritual resistance centred on the Torah, establishing daily religious services and practices that allowed the religion to continue without the Temple. This successful long-term strategy of spiritual resistance preserved national identity and ultimately proved to be “stronger than Rome”.
The central contemporary lesson here, which Strauss explicitly draws, is that Israel’s present-day enemies (such as Hamas and Iran) may have committed a “serious miscalculation” by underestimating this historical strength and determination. Yet is it not this same spiritual strength that has also ensured the continuation of Hamas and the resistance for more than two years?
As a strategic guide, “Jews Against Rome” reinforces the rich reservoir of historical experience and religious resources available to the Israeli people, affirming that “Israel will not disappear”.
Warning Against Internal Division
Perhaps the most powerful and urgent strategic lesson for the current leadership of the Zionist entity, especially in the context of recent domestic political conflicts, concerns the destructive role that internal division played in the ancient revolts.
The ancient revolts were constantly plagued by internal conflicts and factional fighting, often referred to in Jewish tradition as “baseless hatred” (sinat chinam).
For example, during the Great Revolt, various rebel factions, including the Zealots and the Sicarii (the dagger men), resorted to violence against their own people instead of focusing solely on the Roman enemy.
This internal war had directly catastrophic consequences:
- Self-sabotage:
The rebels in Jerusalem destroyed their own grain supplies, burned one another’s food stores, and starved the population, significantly shortening the siege and facilitating Rome’s victory. Josephus, the famous historian who witnessed these events, concluded that “civil strife is what subdued the city and that the Romans regarded civil conflict as a much stronger enemy than the city walls.” - Encouraging the enemy:
Strauss explicitly connects this historical weakness to contemporary analysis: “The lack of cohesion in Israel is one of the reasons that encouraged the other side to attack on 7 October.”
Thus, the narrative of “Jews Against Rome” functions as a serious warning against political and social fragmentation in times of crisis. For a leader entangled in a long-term conflict, the historical record of self-destruction serves as a compelling argument to prioritise national cohesion over factional conflicts, lest the enemy be invited to strike.
The Limits Of Roman Power
It is unlikely that Netanyahu’s interest is limited to the Jewish side alone. Rather, it extends to understanding the strategy of “the greatest empire in the world”.
The book highlights the disastrous mistakes committed by Rome and offers cautionary tales for any powerful state managing a hostile population.
Rome often mismanaged the conflict and failed to achieve lasting peace despite its overwhelming military power.
The main Roman errors include:
- “Winner takes all” policies:
Instead of engaging in compromise and balance of power, Rome often pursued a “winner takes all” approach. Leaders such as Herod the Great, who tried to balance Jewish identity with Roman demands, were of great strategic value, but Rome often lacked the “political finesse” needed to preserve this long-term stability. - The folly of humiliation:
After crushing the Great Revolt, Rome imposed the infamous fiscus Judaicus, a humiliating tax of two drachmas levied on every Jew in the empire, regardless of whether they had supported the revolt or not, to be paid to the treasury of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the chief pagan god of Rome. This act of theological and political humiliation, designed to force Jewish loyalty to Rome and erase the memory of the Temple, only fuelled resentment and future revolts and reinforced the “ongoing revolutionary spirit” of the Jewish people. - Failure to think long term:
Roman administrators often failed to think in the long term or to strike the right balance in their handling of the provinces, creating conditions that practically guaranteed “the next revolt”. The Jews saw Hadrian’s decision to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city, with temples honouring Jupiter and the emperor, as a profound insult and as fuel for the Bar Kokhba Revolt.
The lesson for contemporary leaders is that military victory and harsh repression alone are not enough to guarantee peace. Control strategies based on humiliation and erasing national identity are likely only to guarantee future resistance and require continuous, costly military deployment. Rome’s failure stemmed from its inability to find “the right mix of incentives to give the defeated people assurances that it would not happen again”.
The Warrior Versus The Rabbi
The book implicitly challenges contemporary leaders to distinguish between tactical heroism and strategic viability. Figures admired for their military prowess, such as Simon bar Giora, Eleazar ben Yair, and Bar Kokhba, led revolts that were “glorious failures”. In the end, they led their nation into catastrophe, mass enslavement, and exile.
Strauss argues that, by contrast, the successful long-term strategy was pioneered by the sages, notably Yohanan ben Zakkai, who escaped from Jerusalem to establish an academy for religious teaching, and Rabbi Judah the Prince.
These men realised that “armed resistance against the Roman Empire was futile”. They developed a methodology of spiritual resistance, focusing on preserving the Torah and Jewish identity and ensuring survival as a nation without a state.
The historical data traced by the author imposes a precise strategic evaluation. Rabbi Judah the Prince, who later served as Jewish patriarch with Roman approval, was a model of humility toward the ruling power while internally believing that Roman rule was temporary and destined to fail.
The rabbis, whom Strauss metaphorically calls the “Odysseus” figures for their cunning and wisdom, ensured that although the Jewish spirit was preserved, the military spirit was largely extinguished for several centuries.
This historical dialectic poses a critical question to modern leadership: Do you seek short-term, heroic but potentially devastating resistance, or do you adopt a long-term, patient strategy to preserve the spirit of resistance even under military defeats? Do you throw yourself into pragmatic engagement with dominant global powers? Or do you combine multiple strategies to secure strategic shifts in a long, historic conflict?
Affirming Historical Legitimacy
Finally, “Jews Against Rome” aligns with and reinforces modern strategic discourse by forcefully addressing arguments that question the basic legitimacy of Israel.
Strauss’s work, which details two centuries of Jewish struggle for independence in the land, including the Bar Kokhba state that minted its own coins affirming the identity of “Israel” and the “redemption of Jerusalem”, functions as a powerful counter-narrative to the idea that Israel is merely a “settler colonial state”.
The historical record he presents attempts to establish that the region has, over thousands of years, been the historical homeland of the Jews, full of archaeological evidence of continuous Jewish presence, revolt, and cultural life. At the same time, it implicitly assumes, although this has been scientifically proven false, that the Jews of today in Palestine are the historical extension of those who lived there thousands of years ago.
At its core, for Prime Minister Netanyahu, consulting “Jews Against Rome” is not merely an academic exercise but a strategic necessity.
The book offers a powerful historical perspective from which to analyse the current conflict by highlighting the remarkable strategic advantages of the historical relationship with Iran, the necessity of internal unity to deny opportunities to adversaries, the dangers of overreliance on coercion and humiliation by dominant powers, and, ultimately, the triumph of resilience and long-term strategy over tactical military zeal.
The core message remains a warning: unity and carefully considered strategy are essential for survival, because, as Strauss notes, if the Jewish people are united, they are “almost invincible”.
The question remains: What could an Arab leader draw from a book like this if he were to read it?
