within a few hours of landing in Israel I found myself standing in

Israel I found myself standing in the rain looking out into Gaza.

We are about a kilometer and a half from Gaza, that's why you hear the firing in the background.

This war that has been tearing this region apart, this war that arguably has been the focus of the entire world for the past few months. There it was,

just right there, right in front of us. You're going to hear it all day. You're in a war zone.

You're going to hear helicopters firing in here.

In between the booms of howitzers sending fire across the border,

I was doing my best to focus on the historian and former Israeli

ambassador to the US, Michael Orrin.

Fifth century, b.C.

Roman general.

He was telling me the story of a Roman general

named Lucius Quintus Cincinnati.

But he was also a farmer, and all he wanted to do was go back to his plow.

And every time he went back to his plow, the Roman Republic came to him and said,

we need you to come back and be a general.

A general who walked the world 500 years before Jesus was born, not too far from the spot we were now standing.

And the Cincinnati myth is a foundational myth for the American Revolution.

It's George Washington. All they wanted to do was farm, you know?

He wanted to sit under his own vine and fig tree.

And they kept on coming back and said, no, you got a good, got to lean an army.

And that is why the image of Cincinnati is emblazoned on the roof of the House of Representatives in Washington.

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