refuting the book Polarized: Why American Jews are Divided and What to Do About it by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall

Response to the Book on Polarization I appreciate your effort to tackle an important subject in American Jewish life. However, I think you are wrong on every single issue you discuss, and I offer the following points of rebuttal. Number One: Like many in American Jewry, you think that you can gain credence with the haters of the Jews by trying to appease them with your leftist talking points. This is only going to undermine your security and the security of the State of Israel, and it will add fuel to their fire. Our enemies are aggressively trying to undermine Israel and delegitimize the Jewish people, drawing on a classic antisemitic playbook that has been used for centuries. Rather than recognizing this as a propaganda strategy, you are playing defense with tired old lines that do not change anything. We should learn from Israel's example: be strong, stand firmly, and act with the confidence that comes from knowing we are in the right and have a mission to accomplish. We should not apologize for defending ourselves, our people, or our state, nor should we bend to the forces trying to weaken us and destroy us. Number Two: Your entire premise is flawed. Jews have always been polarized. It is built into the Jewish system. I could give you every example you could possibly want from the Bible, the Second Temple period (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and others), the medieval and premodern periods (Hasidim, Mitnagdim, the Enlightenment), and modern times (Zionists versus anti-Zionists, denominations, Democrats versus Republicans, etc.). Just as the name Israel means the struggle with God, it also suggests struggling among ourselves. It is inherent and not fixable. Number Three: You assume that polarization is bad. The Talmud suggests that disagreements can be very good, as long as their purpose is to disagree for the sake of Heaven and not for your own personal aggrandizement. Number Four: All of your proposed policy points, which you think we can rally around to end polarization, are terrible and dangerous and undermine our security and well-being. A. The Two-State Solution You suggest the two-state solution. There is virtually no support for it among the vast majority of Israelis, who now have to live with the consequences of that decision after decades of terrorism and, especially, October 7. The two-state solution would leave Israel only nine miles wide in the center of the country's population, which would make it indefensible. It is also clear that there is virtually no support among the Palestinians for a two-state solution. They want one state without any Jewish control. For the small faction that pays lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, the real agenda is to use it as a launching pad to destroy Israel. Take note of the fact that the main chant arising among the left now is “Free Palestine,” which means no Jews, “from the river to the sea,” which means no Jews. And where do you get the idea that you could get a consensus of American Jews on this issue? Just as one example, I write this as someone who participates with Chabad. Are you unaware that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who set the agenda for the movement, said that not one inch should be given over to the so-called Palestinians? How in the world are you ever going to convince the adherents of Chabad, and so many Israel-loving Jews, to adopt this ridiculous idea of two states? B. The Right to Criticize Israel You say that we can all agree that we have a right to criticize Israel. That is the ultimate arrogance and hubris on your part. You live in Highland Park, Illinois, in the United States of America, and do not have to live with the consequences of decisions made by the millions of Jews who actually vote in Israel and who live in Israel and live and die with the consequences of their votes. Who are you to tell the citizens of Israel that their decisions are wrong and that the government they elect is wrong? There are plenty of Jews in Israel who can do that just fine. They don't need you adding fuel to the fire of the antisemites and Israel-haters here, who will take what you say and respond, “Oh, even Jews say this.” Even if you claim that you say it out of love, and even if you are criticizing only 5% of Israeli policy, the Israel-haters and Jew-haters will use it to demonize and delegitimize Israel. C. Condemning Settler Violence You say we can all agree on condemning settler violence. “Settler violence” is widely exaggerated, misleadingly defined, and used to delegitimize Israel and Jews living in Judea and Samaria. We do not deny that some incidents involving Jewish violence occur; rather, we dispute how frequently they occur, how incidents are classified, and how they compare with Palestinian violence against Jews. The term itself is misleading. Reports inflate the scale of the problem by counting incidents that do not constitute violence by Jewish settlers. Examples include: Palestinian attackers being injured or killed during attacks on Israelis. Clashes involving Israeli security forces. Jewish visits to the Temple Mount. Visits to archaeological sites, traffic accidents, and alleged trespassing without harm to people or property. Incidents in which the reporting does not establish who initiated a confrontation. The overwhelming majority of violence in Judea and Samaria consists of attacks by Palestinian terrorists who try to kill Jews. When you talk about agreeing that settler violence is a bad thing, you are shielding the real perpetrators of the violence. D. The Palestinian People You are giving legitimacy to an illegitimate people. Historically, there is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab people, and I could give you many examples of Arab leaders over the course of time who have said that. As you probably know, Palestine was the name given to the area by the Romans in 135 CE in an attempt to de-Judaize it. Since that time, the name Jewish Palestine was used in various contexts. The Palestine Post is now The Jerusalem Post. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra is now The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Palestinian currency all had Jewish symbols on it. There was a chief rabbi of Palestine, etc. Yasser Arafat and the Russians made up the Palestinian people in the 1960s to try to delegitimize Israel, and they convinced people like you to use their terminology. E. Israel's Right to Exist as a Jewish State You say we can get a consensus around the idea that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Where do you come up with that idea? Democrats might give lip service to the idea that Israel should exist as a Jewish state, but they obviously don't mean it when 40 out of 47 senators, including Jews in the Senate, vote for an arms embargo against Israel, or when 100 Democratic congressmen, including Jews, vote for an immediate cutoff of aid to Israel. What are they saying when the highest-ranking Jew in the country, Chuck Schumer, endorses a candidate from Maine who wears a Waffen-SS tattoo and endorses what I consider the biggest antisemite ever to run for public office? That candidate is also endorsed by most Democrats, including the Jewish senator from Michigan. Or consider the Jewish attorney general of Michigan, who said that perhaps Judaism has to sacrifice itself for world peace. There is a synagogue in Chicago that explicitly identifies itself as an anti-Zionist synagogue, and there is a new Jewish day school opening that advertises itself as anti-Zionist. There is no consensus among American Jews that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. If you do not listen to all the American Jews who now say, “I vote here, not there,” or “Why do I need to support Israel just because I'm a Jew?” you are ignoring what I hear people saying explicitly. So, no, you are wrong on this issue, too. F. The Desire for Peace You suggest that we can all agree that we want peace. Jews want peace. We pray for it constantly, but the Palestinians do not want peace. Every home the IDF entered in Gaza was, in your view, part of a society participating in the effort to kill Jews. They aided and abetted thousands of missiles coming into Israel, and they cheered wildly when Jews were killed on October 7. Hamas specifically calls for the killing of every Jew in the world. Abbas, who still refuses to call elections after more than 20 years, continues to pay terrorists who killed Jews through the “pay-to-slay” system. There is no real effort for peace in the Palestinian world, and to believe otherwise is delusional. So what good does it do for us to pray for peace and pretend that the other side also wants peace? G. Fighting Antisemitism on the Left and the Right You say we can get a consensus around the idea that we should fight the antisemitism of both the left and the right. The problem with that is that it is completely one-sided: 95% of the antisemitism comes from the left. Every single undeclared candidate for president in 2028 on the Democratic side has made strong anti-Israel statements, and I could give them to you if you'd like. Their last candidate for president said that she empathized with the students on 300 college campuses who were calling for “from the river to the sea” and “globalizing the intifada.” The candidates being elected to office and winning their primaries now, who are openly antisemitic and openly anti-Israel, are all on the left. The one Republican who was openly antisemitic lost his primary, and Tucker Carlson is himself a Republican. So to pretend that the situation is balanced is just nonsense. You are a professor of law, and the law is supposed to be about justice and truth. In sum, your book is completely flawed. The polarization that you want to fix is unfixable until the Messiah comes, and the ideas that you believe we could rally around to achieve consensus are ridiculous. There will never be a consensus on those issues. Giving in to these leftist ideas to try to appease our haters never works. Just look at what has happened since October 7. The State of Israel is immeasurably stronger today because of its own fortitude, its willingness to fight hatred and evil, and President Trump's support. Hamas is weaker. Hezbollah is weaker. Syria has a new government. Iran is weaker. Israel is by far the dominant power in the Middle East. By contrast, American Jewry is on its heels. We now spend a billion dollars trying to defend our synagogues and schools, and we have no answer for combating the virulent antisemitism that has arisen on the left. Your appeasement of those forces has never worked; it will only further endanger us and the State of Israel. We need to rally around the ideas of intensifying Jewish life and education, as well as educating people about the fundamental role that Israel plays in the world and its strategic value to the United States. We are never going to convince the antisemites, but we can try to win over the vast majority of Americans who are not crazy. Your book does not help. You're playing defense with tired old ideas that won't move the needle at all and will Aid and a bett our enemies. Israel did not become the dominant power in the Middle East by playing defense and shrinking back. you have to play offense aggressively. call out the lie that they're saying about us and assert proactively that the brilliance of our tradition in our Jewish