In his book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, published in May, Yossi Klein Halevi attempts to explain the Israeli “narrative” to an imagined Palestinian correspondent, in an effort to foster the sort of dialogue and mutual understanding that he believes must precede peace. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, the Palestinian writer Raja Shehadeh has criticized it for, in effect, attempting to win Palestinians over to the Israeli perspective. Klein Halevi responds in an open letter to Shehadeh:

My intention was not, as you write, to turn Palestinians into “Zionists, to embrace the narrative of Jewish suffering and redemption . . . as a prerequisite to peace.” In my book I repeatedly write that neither side can or should abandon its narrative, that we are peoples who define themselves by their stories. Your book didn’t lead me to replace my people’s narrative with yours. But you helped me . . . open myself to another perspective.

A prerequisite for peace is that we stop denying the right of the other to exist—to define itself as a people with rights to sovereignty in this land. I don’t expect Palestinians to accept my narrative of what happened in 1948 or 1967. But neither do I see how peace is possible if the Palestinian national movement continues to tell a story about the Jews that denies our very identity as a people with a 4,000-year connection to this land.

You write that you have Israeli friends and have made “serious attempts . . . to appreciate their worldviews.” But most Palestinians have not had that opportunity. Instead, what they hear in their media is a relentless denial of any legitimacy of Jewish history. What Palestinians “know” about the Jews is that we invented our ancient presence here, distorted the archaeological evidence, [and] lied about the existence of a temple on the Temple Mount. That is the normative and unchallenged account of my people’s story in your people’s public space.

I have received some moving responses to my book from Palestinians who, along with their deep criticisms of Israel, write that the time has come for Palestinians to come to terms with the legitimacy of the Jewish presence. But almost all of them have asked that I not publicize their names because of fear of retribution. Can one publicly say, in Palestinian society today, that this land belongs to two peoples, that this is a conflict between two legitimate narratives, that the Jews are uprooted natives who returned home?

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.