| Dear Friend, Towards the end of the 2014 Gaza war, I was having dinner with the Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston, a Berkeley grad who had made aliyah to a kibbutz in the 1970s. He said he was getting a lot of flack from his lefty American friends for writing that he no longer thought he would see a two-state solution in his lifetime.
We all laughed; we knew the real question, given the negotiations stalemate and cyclical violence, was whether Israel would survive as a Jewish democracy in our childrens’ lifetimes.
Now, with President Trump giving Israel leeway to annex large swaths of the West Bank and the Palestinians not even part of the process, it seems like everyone is asking, “Is peace still possible?”
That’s the title of a conversation I’m going to be having on Sunday with my longtime friend and colleague Peter Beinart, author of the book “The Crisis of Zionism,” and a columnist for The Forward for the past three years. We’ll be talking about Trump’s plan, the impending third round of Israeli elections, the Democratic candidates’ positions on Israel, and our own experiences on the ground talking to people on all sides. The event is at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, N.J., and open to all; for those of you not in the area, the talk will be live-streamed on the synagogue Facebook page and YouTube channel, and we’ll be sharing excerpts.
We’ve also been tackling the question in our pages, of course. We’ve published a dozen Opinion pieces since Trump’s plan was announced, including three by Palestinians (here’s our regular contributing columnist, Muhammad Shehada), and my own essay about zero-sum empathy.
On the news side, we had excellent explanatory pieces by our deputy news editor, Aiden Pink; talked to engineers about what it would take to build a tunnel between the West Bank and Gaza; collected the Democratic candidates’ responses; and, after Jared Kushner told Sky News he’d read 25 books on the conflict, collected suggestions from a range of experts for an essential reading list on the conflict. (Congratulations, Yossi Klein Halevi, your “Like Dreamers” was the most recommended -- including by yours truly.)
Is peace still possible? It’s one of the most important questions on the Jewish agenda, and we’ll keep coming at it from every angle. Let me know what you think: rudoren@forward.com.
Best,
Jodi Rudoren
Editor-in-Chief | 