The siege of Masada has been turned into something like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae or Di Alamo. A story of heroic self-sacrifice. Hundreds of Jewish defenders bottled up at a mountain fortress, Masada, commit mass suicide, rather than being murdered by the besieging Romans. The Israeli army embraced this idea and inspired soldiers with slogans like: ‘Masada will not fall again.’ Until not so long ago new Israeli tank crews went to swear an oath at Masada.

There are more than a few problems with the story though. There is only one written account of it. That should already raise doubts. It was written by a defector, a Roman-Jewish historian called Flavius Josephus, his account of the first war between Jews and Romans is unlikely to have been objective. As a defector he certainly had a motive to be kind to the Romans and be like: ‘they did it to themselves’.

There is also the slight issue that these Sicarii are hard to take as a symbol for all Jewish resistance to attempts at oppression or extermination. Why? Because they attacked fellow Jews and raided  Jewish villages. The word Sicarii can be roughly translated as ‘dagger men’, they were assassins. They were fanatical and wanted to rid Judea of all Romans, at any cost. Any Jew they saw as a collaborator of the Romans was also a target.

We can’t actually be sure of what happened at Masada. According to the legend they did not run out of food during the siege, as the fortress had been something of a logistical marvel constructed by Herod. In the mythical retelling of what happened at Masada they preferred mass death over surrender, not because they were starving, but because they didn’t want to be slain by the Romans. Reality was likely much more complex with the Romans killing some of them, capturing some others and some indeed comitting suicide.

What’s most disturbing about this whole story is not its blurry history, but its legacy in Israel. Whether they really committed suicide or not we don’t know. We do now that a substantial number of Jewish Israelis wants that to be the real version and glorifies this self-aborting sect. Israelis are quite enamored with going out with a bang. Remember the Samson option? If Israel is ever at risk of being overrun, they will bring down the whole ‘temple’ (the world) like Samson did. Trouble is that Jewish Israelis seem to think that Israel is always minutes away from being overrun.

Plus, it’s fascinating to say the least that militant Jews who attacked other Jews are so revered by the Israeli army. Should Jews, and there are many, who do not agree with Israeli policies or that Israel represents them in any way, be worried?