The ground invasion, and what it will mean to Israeli soldiers, has resurfaced a very important text in Israeli history, Moshe Dayan's brief remarks at the funeral of an officer named Roy Rotenberg who was murdered in 1956 patrolling the Israeli-Gaza border in the same area where more Israelis were murdered on October 7. Dayan's brief speech is called Israel's Gettysburg Address. In few words, he nails the reality of what it will take to keep a Jewish state alive. The words seem exhausting, depressing and all too true. They were true in 1956. They remain true today.

Shavit tells the story of why the conflict which eventuated in death along the Gaza border in 1956 and again in 2023 will never be resolved, which will make Dayan's words the eternal cost of an eternal Jewish state.