Letter to the New York Times: West Bank settlers’ hawk real estate to investors in New Jersey

To the editor:

Your report about West Bank settlers’ efforts to hawk real estate to investors in New Jersey (“Seeking New Israeli Settlers, Synagogue Draws Protesters”, Feb. 25) demonstrates, in a few brief paragraphs, the essential folly of the Israeli settlement enterprise.  Whether motivated by religious or economic factors, the settlers became, not guardians of Israel’s security, but security impediments, extracting an enormous cost in Israeli resources and lives over the now forty years of this ill-begotten policy. Today, overwhelming majorities of Jewish Israelis and American Jews understand that Israel’s interests are served by its extrication from the West Bank, not a deeper entanglement there. 

The Orthodox Rabbi in Teaneck who hosted the West Bank settlers and woefully remarked that, “Peace is an illusion,” is more than doing his part to  perpetuate the conflict.  Fulfillment of the Zionist dream depends on the end of the occupation and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state committed to Israel’s security by treaty, international guarantees, and “on-the-ground” arrangements reining in the extremists on both sides. 

Lawrence I Lerner, President 

Theodore Bikel, Chairman

Click here for the article, published Feb. 25 in the New York Times.