THE IDEOLOGY OF MASADA in Israel gets some attention from the BBC, evidently inspired by the current Gaza conflict:

Masada legend galvanises Israel

By Paul Moss
BBC News, Masada

"You cannot surrender, you cannot give up. You should fight to the last second," the young Israeli boy said after scratching his head and thinking for just a few seconds.

He was talking about what he had learned from his tour of Masada, the ancient site where a band of Jewish rebels once held out against the might of the Roman Empire.

The tour prompted a similar conclusion from one of his female classmates: "It's really important to stand up for yourself."

They want us to vanish from the world. But it will never happen. Masada will never fall again!
Teacher at Masada

"Especially now that we're at war. We need to do whatever it takes," she told me.

It is something of a rite of passage for Israeli schoolchildren - a trip to Masada - as obligatory a part of their upbringing as exams and sports days.

And Masada is a remarkable story, albeit one that is mired in legend.

[...]

I have posted on the historicity and ideology of the Masada story here and here.

UPDATE (19 January): Jodi Magness has a post on the siege of Masada at the ASOR Blog (a blog that's new to me). (Noted on Joseph I. Lauer's list.)