A couple of weeks ago I prepared and submitted for publication the following for our “On My Mind” series. In light of the fires raging in Los Angeles, though, I was able to add this brief appeal. Let us each find ways to support our fellow citizens who are enduring loss, pain, and hardship at this time. Notably, this includes a fellow Conservative synagogue, Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center, which has been fully destroyed. That synagogue has opened a donation page, accessible here:
May God bless the firefighters and all those responding to the crisis. May God soothe the broken hearts of the hundreds of thousands impacted directly by the fires.
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I am a fan of Dr. Einat Wilf’s writing and perspectives. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, I encourage you to check out her website here: https://www.wilf.org/English/
Last week, Dr. Wilf was asked what immediate foreign policy act the incoming administration could take to promote peace in the Middle East broadly and in Israel/Palestinian Territories specifically. Her response was that the incoming administration needs to give the eight-decades-too-late “You Lost” speech. I’ve pasted Dr. Wilf’s draft of said speech below, and I’d be happy to hear your reactions to this provocative text.
“Dear Palestinians: The current war and destruction in Gaza is heartbreaking. It is the direct consequence of your repeated choice, for over a century, to prioritize destroying what the Jews have built over building for yourselves.
Again and again that terrible choice has led you to ruin, and again and again, misguided (at best) western and international powers have led you to believe that you did not lose the war against Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land, but that your victory was merely delayed. This has only ever brought about more war and suffering.
If we are to chart a different future of peace and prosperity, you must come to terms with the fact that given that your goal in the past century was to initially prevent and then undo the existence of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the Jewish history homeland, you lost.
Israel, as the sovereign state of the Jewish people in their ancient homeland, is here to stay. You can live next to it, but not instead of it. Peace and prosperity depend on you finally coming to terms with your devastating loss, recognizing how terrible your ideology has been, and that in living in the West Bank and Gaza you are not multiple generation refugees and you possess no such thing as a “right of return” into the sovereign state of Israel. You need to finally, eight decades too late, accept and embrace this.
From that, and only from that, a better future for all can be built”.
What I would add to the aforementioned quote from Dr. Wilf is that there exists a minority within Israel that – if what is described above were to happen – would still refuse to live peacefully alongside a peaceful Palestine. That small subset of Israeli society would also need to recognize how terrible its ideology is and to accept the claim of the neighboring people.
What do you think of Dr. Wilf’s letter to the Palestinians?
Rabbi Ari Isenberg
