Dear Sir,

As widely reported in the international media there has been broad bipartisan condemnation led by President Biden of these Iranian-inspired terrorists who heap unfathomable suffering upon their own people as well as upon Israelis. However, you just call for a cease-fire, as if there is some sort of equivalency in the actions of the protagonists.

In that regard your ambivalence toward the stark moral distinction between the defensive obligations of a sovereign democratic nation towards its citizens and the despotic denizens of terrorism who would indiscriminately target those self-same citizens is frankly startling and shocking. I assume that if we came under a blistering barrage of rocket attacks right here in southern Westchester you would rush to our defense—or should I manage my expectations more carefully?

This latest escalation arose directly from the not-yet-finalized adjudication of the Israeli courts on the status of four (not 40, not 400, not 4,000, not 40,000, not 400,000) residences in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.

A modicum of research on your part would have revealed deeds for these properties, going back to the 1870s, ascribing them to Jewish ownership. Those Jewish residents were dispossessed by the illegal Jordanian military advances beyond armistice lines in 1948, which were intended to throttle the nascent state of Israel at birth.

A modicum of research on your part would have revealed that Israeli high courts have often ruled against Israelis and in favor of Palestinians in matters of property and land.

A modicum of research on your part would have revealed how ludicrous it is to tie aid punishment to the behavior of the “bellicose child.” Virtually every penny of U.S. aid to Israel is for the qualitative-edge security needs of the greatest ally and intelligence partner in the region. Moreover, it is virtually all expended here in the United States. Far from being a burden on the American taxpayer, it actually provides us with hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs. Check with the defense contractors.

A modicum of research on your part would have revealed the historic reality of the fact that what fuels Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s rockets and riots is the failure to condemn them.

But I get ahead of myself, because perhaps you have not yet had the opportunity to establish a research department of perhaps just a couple of students in order to undertake these rudimentary tasks of ascertaining basic accuracy in reportage. After all, you claim not to have had time to establish the apparatus of basic communication with your own constituents despite having been in office for months and this being the 21st century.

Rest assured that many of us will be assisting in the process of arriving at truth by fact-checking you and adhering rigidly to our own moral compass and our ideals of decency.

I look forward to the opportunity of continuing this admittedly contentious but hopefully civilized dialogue in person, but until then I remain respectfully yours,