Letters
The two-state solution
Larry Dvores, in his Aug. 28 letter (The two-state solution is a trap for Israel”), criticizes Rabbi Shammai Engelmayer for holding out hope for a two-state solution as a possibility for bringing peace between Palestinians and Jewish Israelis (“Israel’s future depend on ousting Bibi,” (Aug. 21, 2026). Citing polls indicating the likelihood for Palestinian support for Hamas control of a Palestinian state “along Israel’s longest and most vulnerable eastern border,” Dvores argues that opposition to the two-state solution is the only choice for Israel.
To be fair to Rabbi Engelmayer though, he recognizes the danger Dvores raises, but cites other polls indicating the possibility of Palestinian voter support for a peaceful state alongside Israel — admitting that if, during the process of establishing the two states, indications become ominous, Israel will have to return to military control of Palestinian areas.
So, if it may not work, and even is risky, why does Rabbi Engelmayer think it so important to try? Maybe because the continuation of military control of one people by another is also a terrible idea — even if the controller attempts to be benign. And the current Israeli government is not benign — note the horror that continues to unfold on the West Bank — a reason why Rabbi Engelmayer is advocating to replace the Netanyahu-Ben-Gvir-Smotrich government.
Engelmayer is channeling one of the greatest ideals of our Tanakh — Seek peace and pursue it (Psalms, 34:15). And military control of one people over another is no way to peace. It is by definition violent, and begs for a violent response. Nor is the sometimes-mentioned solution of emptying the controlled territories of the “unwanted people” an alternative. This is also unrealistic, and, in itself, a violent war crime.
No matter how much disparaged, the two-state solution is the only way. If it fails again, it will have to be continually retried. There are precedents of such solutions succeeding after many failures — when the two sides finally realize they must learn to live with each other to live at all.
And in addition to some of the hopeful opinion polls mentioned by Engelmayer, there is another base on which to build — one rarely mentioned in the media. That base is certainly not Hamas, probably not even the Palestinian Authority, but local-level Palestinian-Jewish organizing in Israel, the West Bank and even in Gaza. According to The Alliance for Middle East Peace (allmep.org) there are already thousands of Palestinians and Jews, in over 200 grass-roots organizations, who have been building cooperative/peaceful relationships over the years. These Palestinians and Jews can provide an important base for political leaders on both sides, if they commit to the two-state project.
Arthur J. Lerman
Teaneck
Dr. Lerman is an emeritus professor at Mercy University, specializing in political science, history and conflict management.
A Shanda far de Goyim
What accounts for the rise in antisemitism, or Jew-hatred, in England and America? The answer is threefold.
First, there is a surge in anti-Zionism and anti-Israel rhetoric among students and activists over what they see as the colonial enterprise of Israel, which they view as an apartheid state. They point to the Binyamin Netanyahu-led Likud government’s conduct of the war in Gaza and its broader military actions in the Middle East, with critics going so far as to label the conflict a genocide. While Israel maintains it is fighting Hamas — a terror group that uses human shields — the rhetoric has reached fever pitch. There is a heavy irony here: the word genocide was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, to describe the destruction of national, ethnic, and religious groups, including European Jewry under Nazi rule.
Second, Jews are disproportionately represented among the world’s wealthiest individuals. This includes extraordinary fortunes: Sergey Brin ($255 billion); Michael Dell ($236 billion); Larry Ellison ($193 billion); Steve Ballmer ($152 billion); Miriam Adelson and family ($33 billion); Len Blavatnik ($30 billion); and George Soros ($7.5 billion) according to Forbes. Jewish leaders are highly visible at elite institutions such as the Bilderberg Group, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Saudi Arabia, and the Trilateral Commission. Financial titans like Larry Fink (BlackRock), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), David Rubenstein (Carlyle) and David Solomon (Goldman Sachs) are fixtures at such gatherings. This visibility among the wealthy and powerful provides material for conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and a one-world government — theories that hark back to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the 1903 antisemitic forgery detailing a Jewish plot for global domination.
Third, there is a highly visible succession of infamous Jewish figures whose crimes and misconduct have caused profound harm to countless victims: Jack Abramoff, Sam Bankman-Fried, Roy Cohn, Robert Durst, Jeffrey Epstein, Bernie Madoff, Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert Maxwell, Fred Neulander, and Harvey Weinstein. Their crimes range from massive financial fraud and kidnapping to sexual abuse and murder. While they acted as individuals, antisemites string their notorious names together to craft a damning narrative about Jews as a group. As my grandmother would call it, their misdeeds are a shanda far de goyim — a disgrace before the Gentiles.
The antisemitism rooted in pre-Vatican II depictions of Jews as Christ-killers, or the gentlemen’s agreement that kept Jews out of restricted country clubs and WASP enclaves, is largely a thing of the past. But if highly placed individuals of Jewish descent continue to be implicated in spectacular cases of sexual abuse, fraud, murder, and other serious wrongdoing, the only direction antisemitism goes is up.
The answer is to condemn antisemitism, and condemn Jewish wrongdoing, with equal moral clarity. That is not self-hatred. That is self-respect. And that is how we begin to heal the world.
Richard Romm
Horsham, West Sussex, U.K.