On the December issue:

A Century of Anti-Semitism

To the Editor:
I believe Sol Stern is in error when he claims that the Peel Commission was the first time a two-state solution for the Arabs and the Jews had been attempted (“It’s Not the ‘Occupation,’ Stupid,” December). Wasn’t a two-state solution first proffered in 1921, when the British, bowing to terrorism, offered 70 percent of the British Mandate for Palestine for the creation of an independent Arab state, which became the Kingdom of Jordan?
Dan Goorevitch
Toronto, Ontario

To the Editor:
Sol Stern refers to the fact that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s to the 1940s, was a Nazi collaborator and was indicted by the government of Yugoslavia as a war criminal. It’s worth noting that today there is a school named after Husseini in the Palestinian Authority–governed city of El Bireh. What does that tell us about the mindset of today’s Palestinian Arab leadership?
Rafael Medoff
Director
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Washington, D.C.

To the Editor:
Thank you for publishing Sol Stern’s clear-eyed summary of the 100-years-long Arab and Muslim war against Israel and the Jews. The Islamist and Nazi roots of the Palestinian cause have been one of history’s best-kept secrets, but articles like this one help readers better understand the radical hatred behind it. Led by torchbearers for the Nazi cause, the Palestinians’ movement should have been crushed after the 1948 war, just as the Nazis were crushed three years earlier. Instead, the same implacable hatred of Jews, fused with religious fanaticism, was allowed to fester and grow, decade after decade. It’s time the world faces the hate behind the Palestinian cause and stops pretending that it can be pacified with a state. It will take the kind of reprogramming that was done in Germany and Japan after WWII to stop the Palestinian threat to Israel from erupting again.
Liz Wagner
South Pasadena, Florida

Sol Stern writes:
I appreciate the attention to my article and the interesting issues raised by all three letter writers. Dan Goorevitch is right to point out that Great Britain unilaterally detached the territory east of the Jordan river from its League of Nations mandate. However, that can’t be considered a “two-state solution,” since nothing in the original mandate required or even promised a sovereign state for either the Jews or Palestinians.

I thank my friend Rafael Medoff for reporting on the school named after Haj Amin al-Husseini, something I didn’t know but find unsurprising. What that fact tells us, as I’m sure Rafael would agree, is that the mufti’s dreadful Jew-hating legacy still exercises some sway over the present Palestinian leadership.

I agree with Liz Wagner that almost nothing useful was done by the West, including most U.S. administrations, to combat the Jew-hatred from the various Palestinian national movements. But I don’t agree that this hatred can be “deprogrammed” out of existence by force. Japan and Germany were very special and atypical cases.

Our Candle

To the Editor:
“Commentary’s Candle,” by John Podhoretz, is an inspiring call to action of Churchillian eloquence (December). I’m not Jewish, but all of us who enjoy the blessings of Western civilization share the legacy of the Covenant People who founded and preserved its foundational and enduring social and moral precepts, including human dignity and political, economic, and intellectual freedom.

As for action, I’m 70 years old and retired now, so when I found American Friends of Magen David Adom’s message inside the front cover of COMMENTARY, I sent them my October salary from my military pension and will contribute regularly for the duration of this war. And I am speaking out.

Thank you, Mr. Podhoretz and COMMENTARY, for your courage and leadership.
John W. Jenson
Col. USAFR (Ret.)
Morgantown, West Virginia

To the Editor:
I am writing to you in response to John Podhoretz’s “Commentary’s Candle.” I grew up in a Christian family in the Seattle metro area, and I want to express my heartfelt gratitude and encouragement for the exceptional work you have undertaken in the weeks since the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel. Your efforts have provided me with valuable information and resources, enabling me to engage and inform my friends, family, and co-workers about the complexities of the ongoing events.

COMMENTARY has proven to be an incredible blessing for me personally and, as a downstream effect, for the people with whom I share your knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Podhoretz, for your dedication and contributions.

Keep the candle burning.
Alex Evenson
Seattle, Washington

The Genius State

To the Editor:
I appreciate Bret Stephens’s laudatory review and analysis of Israel’s strengths (“The Genius of Israel, Even Still,” December). But missing from his article is what binds the Jewish people together and generates their love of the land of Israel throughout the millennia. That, of course, is the Torah and Hashem’s Hashgacha Pratit (Divine Providence) over the Jewish people, who are immersed in Torah study and observance of Mitzvot. That is the reason that the Jews have maintained their identity and survived and thrived through the millennia in foreign cultures and lands. There are three holy things that Hashem created in the world: the Torah, the Jewish people, and the land of Israel. The divine plan, as recorded in the Prophets, is for the Jewish people to return to the land promised to their forefathers in the Bible, and we see that happening in our day. The land was desolate without the Jewish people and now has become lush and verdant. Some on the outside looking in cannot appreciate what the true “secret sauce” of the Jewish people is, and that is fine. But the Jewish people themselves should understand it. We are unique, and that is because of our Torah.
Richard Schiffmiller
Teaneck, New Jersey

To the Editor:
I enjoyed reading Bret Stephens’s fascinating article about the enduring “Genius of Israel,” even after October 7. Unfortunately, his perspective also fills me with frustration. No matter how brilliant and extraordinary a country may be, its brilliance is insufficient if it cannot protect those who depend on it to do so. We are not living in a virtual world, even though sometimes it seems we are. Israel’s inability to remove a destructive prime minister speaks louder than any “bring them back” call.
Gail Loon Lustig
Givatayim, Israel

The Envious Left

To the Editor:
Abigail Shrier has written an outstanding piece of pure common sense, which would be completely lost on the activists that are the subjects of her article (“This Is Not a Drill.” December). What has made these generations so bitter, envious, and violent? They live in one of the most stable periods of human history, marked by health and wealth, and yet…what?

I was born in the United Kingdom right at the end of WWII, and even now I recall the damage and destruction and their effect on the population at large. This has always tempered my sensibilities and made me grateful, particularly for those who gave so much so that I could not just survive but thrive. There are huge swathes of societies that have simply just had it too good. Thank you for providing sense in the world.
Robert Ladley
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

To the Editor:
Thank you to Abigail Shrier for her excellent description of Marxism as envy, resentment, and hatred.

I only wish that Shrier had touched upon the dark-money incentives that have created a growth industry out of activism and anarchy. “Why are those people tearing down statues or rioting in our city?” friends ask me. “Don’t they have jobs?” Perhaps, in some real sense, rioting is their job. If not for the large sums of money put in service of these
causes, we would not have seen the rise of Antifa, BLM, Code Pink, and so on.
Kelly Kullberg
Columbus, Ohio

Abigail Shrier writes:
I thank Robert Ladley for posing this worthy question: What has made these generations so bitter, envious, and violent? The rising generation, notably radical, saw no World War, no Great Depression. Their economic circumstances have objectively been very good. But envy, hatred, and resentment are not the inevitable outgrowth of economic circumstances. They are a function of values and education.

The ancient Israelites, indigent ex-slaves, were forbidden from coveting or bearing grudges and commanded to bless G-d for what they had. Their level of poverty can scarcely be imagined by Americans today. And yet, the Torah believes them capable of virtue because avoiding hatred, envy, and resentment is a matter of values not of circumstance.

The rising generation is far less rooted in Judeo-Christian religion than previous generations. Instead, its primary educational influence, from their first days of kindergarten through university, has been leftism. And a leftist education is an indoctrination into bitterness: reviling America; despising the successful; worshiping their own imagined victimhood.

Malley’s Malice

To the Editor:
Eli Lake’s article on Robert Malley is marked by excellent writing and supported by solid research (“The Scandal of Robert Malley,” December). However, Lake touches on the Iranian nuclear deal but not the $150 billion that Barack Obama freed up for Iran without Congress’s approving a treaty. There is also no mention of the $450 million in cash that was sent to Iran for the release of four lost hikers. I’d be curious to know the extent of Malley’s involvement in these transactions.
Brad Bertoch
Moab, Utah

Attiah Agonistes

To the Editor:
I enjoyed Christine Rosen’s column on Karen Attiah (“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Attiah,” December). But I thought it was, if anything, too kind. Attiah was not just morally equivocating about the October 7 attacks. She snarkily celebrated them in the hours after the horrific news broke, approvingly retweeting posts stating: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers,” and “Settlers are not the victims here and never will be.” She bragged about seeing the slaughter of babies and children through the lens of anti-colonial resistance, tweeting: “Honey, we did the scholarship way before it was ‘cool.’” 

Only after the Palestinian death toll started to rise did her tone change. At that point, she claimed that she saw the world through a “human rights perspective” and that her brain “is just not wired to think that one group of people is inherently more valuable than others.” Does she think we cannot see her posts from a couple of weeks earlier? 

At one point, she haughtily asks, “Does my moral consistency upset you?” Quite the opposite, Karen.
Andrew Vitelli
Dobbs Ferry, New York