The Times is out with a dispatch about Vladimir Jabotinsky’s essay “The Iron Wall,” and from where we sit, it cannot come at a better time. More than 100 years since it was first published, the essay is emerging as a charter of common sense in a region that has been a magnet for magical thinking. Jabotinsky, before there was a Jewish state, saw that its survival would depend on a healthy respect for its enemies and a willingness to fight.

“The Iron Wall” could make for edifying reading for President Biden and Vice President Harris. The essay was written in 1923 by Jabotinsky, a journalist who was equally adept with a typewriter and a gun. His brand of Zionism — well armed and liberal — was opposed to David Ben-Gurion’s Labor variety. The Jewish Legion and the Irgun were his brainchildren. Banned by the British from Palestine, he died in 1940 warning of catastrophe in Europe.