Dear Mr. President:
It has been published in the Israeli media that a large group of Israeli artists, writers, and professors have written to you, asking you not to meet with the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu. As an Israeli writer, film director, and former faculty member of the New York University School of the Arts, I am writing to you to request the very opposite. Please meet with our Prime Minister who was voted into office by a landslide majority in the past Israeli election.
In your honored role as President of the United States, the world’s leading democracy, I am sure that you respect the will of the majority. While freedom of belief and expression is cherished in Israel just as it is in America, and people are free to express their opinions in our country just as they are in yours, please be advised that the writers of the letters you have received asking you not to meet with Israel’s democratically-elected Prime Minister represent a very small minority of the Israeli public. If until now you haven’t received letters requesting you to meet with Mr. Netanyahu as planned, it is because such a meeting between two of the world’s leading democracies is so obvious that the great majority of Israeli citizens would never think that you would act otherwise.
As you know, Israel is undergoing a time of social and cultural conflict, very similar to the conflicts in America today. And just as a majority of the Israeli public supports a change in Israel’s judiciary system, you, Mr. President, are on record in demanding a change in America’s institutions of justice.
Similarly, while a great controversy surrounded the past Presidential election in America, you, Mr. President, emerged the winner and no one questions your democratic right to enforce the policies you championed in your successful campaign to lead the American people. The policies which carried Mr. Netanyahu to his landslide victory, including judicial reform, were crystal clear to the Israeli public who overwhelmingly voted him to be their leader.
Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel, the United States of America has been a steadfast ally and we, the people of Israel, are certain that this relationship will continue, as you yourself have promised on numerous occasions. We are taught in the Bible that the Lord Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, focuses his gaze on the Land of Israel from the beginning of the year to its end.
As we approach the holiday of Rosh Hashannah which marks the end of the year and the beginning of the next, the people of Israel look to you as the leader of America to meet with our Prime Minister to discuss the crucial world issues which will determine the future of mankind. May the same God who bequeathed the Land of Israel to the Jewish People watch over the people of America in the coming year, and as the Bible promises, may all those who bless the Jewish People be rewarded with Divine blessing and prosperity in return.