Opinion

• Opinion

  Goldstone v. House of Representatives: The Unending Inquiry Into the War Crimes Inquiry

  There could be trouble brewing for the congressional resolution (PDF), now circulating for signatures in the House, that condemns the United Nations’ Goldstone Report on alleged Israel and Hamas war crimes in Gaza. The House resolution, H.Res. 867, has collected 124 signatures so far for its appeal to the Obama administration to oppose any international…

  By J.J. Goldberg

  7 min read
• Opinion

  Israel Demolishes Illegal Structures in Post-1967 Areas, But Not the Ones You Think

  Pressure continues to mount on Israel to honor its commitments on West Bank settlement construction by dismantling illegally-built structures and halting new ones. It’s not going smoothly. The latest critic to pile on the Jewish state is Dorit Beinisch, chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court. Beinisch ripped into the Israeli Defense Ministry during an October…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 29, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Is Ivanka Trump Good for the Jews?

  In 1926, when writer Ellin Mackay, heiress to the Comstock Lode mining fortune, fell in love with famed Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin, her Catholic father raged that they would marry “over my dead body.” When the couple eloped, he disinherited his daughter. After their civil ceremony, Ellin Berlin was dropped from the social registry —…

  By Sylvia Barack Fishman Oct 28, 2009 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel is not deliberately killing journalists in Gaza. But it does bear responsibility for their deaths

  

• Emily Tamkin Trump’s attack on George Soros is ludicrous. It also endangers Jews (and everyone else)

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  A Club That Won’t Have Israel as a Member

  Israelis no longer seem particularly excited by the prospect of normalization with their Arab neighbors. After all, relations with Egypt and Jordan remain cold after years of peace. Indeed, as we now mark the 15th anniversary of the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace agreement, relations between the two countries are probably at their coldest ever….

  By Yossi Alpher Oct 28, 2009 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Feel of Revolution, But the Hour Is Late

  Where exactly — or even approximately — is “the center”? Is the center necessarily “the mainstream?” What if, instead of the conventional normal distribution — two dwindling slopes trailing off from a large hump between them — the distribution looks more like a “U,” with most people at either end and the middle nearly empty?…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 28, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Rips in the Peace Camp’s Big Tent

  The first national conference of J Street, the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby, convened October 25 in Washington, D.C., with all the understated reserve of a new iPhone launch or the christening of the Queen Mary. Gathered in a swank hotel a short walk from the White House, some 1,500 activists from across the country sat…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 28, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The J Street Challenge

  J Street’s coming out party was an exuberant, over-subscribed success. Now come the challenges. And they come from all directions. The scope and depth of attendees at J Street’s first-ever conference — from participants who lined the walls of packed rooms to well-placed speakers from the American and Israeli governments — proved that the new,…

  Oct 28, 2009 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  November 9, 1989

  The East German government said at the time that it was an “anti-fascist protective rampart,” but everyone knew that was Soviet-speak for what it really was: a wall. The Berlin Wall. Made of fencing, barbed wire, concrete, and later surrounded by minefields, the fortified border between East and West Berlin did not only divide a…

  Oct 28, 2009 | 2 min read
• Letters

  November 6, 2009

  On Abuse, the Catholic Church’s Progress Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to United Nations organizations in Geneva, noted that the Catholic Church has been “cleaning its own house” and that other institutions “could do the same” (“Vatican’s New Defense on Child Molestation Charges: Finger-pointing,” October 16). There is validity to his statement. While the…

  Oct 28, 2009 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Why Bibi Is Considering an Independent Gaza War Inquiry. Why Labor Leader Barak Is Against It.

  Israel is softening its early hard line against creating an independent commission of inquiry into the army’s conduct during the Gaza war. Typically, though, the debate is being conducted via name-calling and exchanges of invective and ultimatums. The floodgates were opened when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post in a…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 25, 2009 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Reforming the Vatican II Reforms: More on Benedict’s Vision

  A very intriguing piece by Politico’s David Gibson in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section claims, much as I argued in a column back in August (but in greater depth), that Pope Benedict XVI is engaged in a sweeping campaign to remake the church. In large part what he’s trying to do is to roll…

  By J.J. Goldberg Oct 25, 2009 | < 1 min read