(Published in Frontline, India, May 2008, Vol. 25, No. 11)

It's the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of Israel's statehood, and the local media are hyperventilating. The occasion is also attracting an inordinate amount of interest outside - especially in the West, which behaves as if it is joined at the hip with the Jewish State.

Yet, as the veteran columnist and historian Tom Segev pointed out in the daily Haaretz the day before the anniversary, Israel did not pop into being from Ben-Gurion's brow when he made the famous declaration in Tel Aviv on 14 May, 1948. Israel was right here, though a much smaller entity…

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So much has already been said. An English writer wrote, "The more I know people the better I like my dog." Mark Twain wrote: "If you find a wounded dog and take it home and look after it, it won't bite you. That is the difference between dog and man." There are hundreds of statements about dogs being better creatures than man.

But the idea that has been preoccupying me for some time is the extent of our connection to the rest of the living world, and its profound significance for the human soul.
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