To Chaim Weizmann: The Moral Algebra of 1947
August 2, 2014, Dear Dr. Weizmann, When I wrote to you eight years ago, it was to explain why I believed that the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine -- in which you played no small part -- was unwise and unjust, and why the "one-state" solution you fought so strenuously against should have prevailed. Since then, nothing has happened in Israel or Palestine to make me reconsider. This weekend, Israeli jets are bombing Gaza, and Hamas rockets are streaking into Israel. Palestinians shriek, "Lift the seige!" Israelis shriek, "Abandon your demand for the right to return, and recognize our right to exist as a Jewish state!" Israeli Jews and the Palestinians are still at war. August 15, 2006 Dear Dr. Weizmann, You were 23 in 1897 when the rabbis of Vienna, enthused by the first Zionist Congress and Theodor Herzl's new book Der Judenstaat (the Jewish State), sent two of their own on a fact-finding mission to Palestine. Do you remembe...