You’ve done the hard, right thing before, President Biden. Why not with the Palestinians?

To do the hard, right thing is the challenge of history, and you have shown evidence, in other broken parts of the world, that you have what it will take to meet that challenge here, the way your friend and fellow former senator George Mitchell, a Democrat of Maine, met a similarly intractable challenge in Northern Ireland. If it makes the job any easier, I hope you will fortify yourself with the support of American Jews like me, who years ago fell in love with the vision of a democratic, pluralistic and humane Israel, who feel deeply connected to its history and are concerned with the fate of the Israeli people, and whose opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians arises from that love, connection and concern; the support of American Jews younger than me, who have no memory of that faded, tattered vision, who have grown up knowing Israel as a militarized occupying power and Zionism as “a god that failed”; and of American Jews, of all ages, whose identity as Jews is resolutely forged, in the Jewish tradition, in dissent and resistance to injustice, cruelty and the arbitrary exercise of power. Our voices are often drowned out. But we are millions, and our number grows with every new settlement built, every new discriminatory law passed, in the name of the Jewish state.