Rarely, be it private or official, will such a voyage have given President Saakashvili the opportunity to yet again affirm his differences with Moscow. This was evident as much during his interviews with the Prime Minister, Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the President of the State of Israel, Moshe Katsav and the president of the Israeli parliament, Dalia Itzik, as in the course of his various public positions. For example, speaker while receiving an honorary doctorate at the University of Haifa, guest speaker at the international conference on the “Globalization of energy and political orientation,” and inaugural speaker of a monument in memory of Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli, who is buried in Jerusalem.

Loyal to his image as a demagogue and certainly emotional after hearing himself proclaimed “Nelson Mandela of the 21st Century” by Brand Schafer, director of the Scientific Research Center for Energy Problems, President Saakashvili, throughout his visit, did not cease establishing a surprising parallel between the Jews and the Georgians.

Making reference to a decree issued on April 26, 1727, which stipulated that the possessions of Russian Jews be confiscated and that they be expelled, Saakashvili did not hesitate to compare Vladimir Putin and his anti-Georgian politics to Empress Catherine I and her anti-Semitic measures. Exactly three weeks after having issued the decree, on May 17, 1727 Empress Catherine I passed away, certainly never having imagined that, nearly three centuries later, this decree would permit the Georgian president to baptize his citizens, “modern day Jews.”

Carried along by his own momentum, President Saakashvili then definitively conquered his audience by declaring that his model for the reconstruction of his country was not one of the grand Georgian monarchs of medieval times, King David IV, nicknamed “the baptizer,” but David Ben-Gurion, one of the founding fathers of the State of Israel. For him, the parallel is essential and the Georgian beleaguered fever is comparable to that of the Israelis during the creation of their state.

The end of his visit was consecrated to the inauguration of a monument dedicated to Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli. During this inauguration, President Saakashvili seized upon the secular wish of the Jews – “next year in Jerusalem” – evoked the wishes of Georgians to one day meet in Sukhumi.

On a more diplomatic note, Israeli analysts estimate that the interview between President Saakashvili and their Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave Israeli authorities an opportunity to counterbalance the Moscow-Damascus-Tehran axis. According to what are usually referred to as well-informed circles, conversations would have centered on the sale of Israeli arms to Georgia. In a sense, a response from the shepherd to his wife. During the Israeli prime minister’s recent visit to Moscow, the Russian authorities never ceased to explain to him that “his country had nothing to worry about regarding the delivery of arms to Syria.” It is now easy for Ehud Olmert to tell Russian authorities that they have nothing to fear regarding the delivery of Israeli arms to Georgia.