Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Jailed American contract worker Alan Gross got a little fresh reading material from a recent visitor to his Cuban prison cell — and dished out some Jewish wisdom in return. Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba specialist at the National Security Archives, brought Gross a recent copy of the Sunday New York Times and John Grisham’s new…
Jewish professionals are known to play musical chairs and switch from one organization to another. It’s mostly institutional inside baseball, but some moves are more interesting than others. Take the switch by Alan Elsner, who until recently was a top official at The Israel Project, a centrist organization devoted to the defense of Israel’s public…
Anti-Israel groups were elated this past March when the City of Seattle’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Commission abruptly canceled a forum featuring six Israeli LGBT activists on an Israeli government supported tour sponsored by a gay and lesbian Jewish group promoting ties with their Israeli counterparts. The Israel critics, who had protested the appearance as…
The cheering delegates clapping at the United Nations General Assembly hall, the Palestinian flag pulled out and waved and that unusual smile on the face of Mahmoud Abbas, provided the Palestinian Authority with its long awaited and ever so rare moment of victory. As the General Assembly approved on Thursday, with an overwhelming majority of…
Washington’s stars came out on Thursday night to bid farewell to retiring Senator Joseph Lieberman, at an event hosted by Israel’s ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. It was a slate of guests that would make any Washington party organizer envious, including former vice president Dick Cheney, looking in good shape after a heart…
Sen. John Kerry is reportedly President Obama’s second choice for Secretary of State behind United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. But Kerry is regarded just as highly by many Jewish leaders and Israel supporters as Rice. Kerry, who was the Democratic candidate for president in 2004, has a long history of relations with the Jewish community…
Facing a group of 400 rabbis affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice opened a speech last March with her favorite quote from psalms: “Hinei ma’tov uma-nayim, shevet achim gam yachad” (Behold how good and how pleasing if people could sit together in unity). Rice conceded she needed to…
With Congress plunging into talks to avoid the much-feared fiscal cliff, the Jewish community’s umbrella organization for policy is cautiously weighing in. In a letter to Congress, Rabbi Steve Gutow, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’s president and CEO, urged lawmakers to keep in mind the impact of budget cuts on the poor and needy…
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