Opinion

• Opinion

  Peace Is Livni’s Best Option

  Tzipi Livni’s victory in the Kadima primary is the result of the Israeli version of the clamor for change that we are seeing across the democratic world. She prevailed despite ruthless attacks on her experience, her judgment, her appearance and her gender. Her record of probity, her straightforward style and — most significantly — her…

  By Naomi Chazan

  4 min read
• Opinion

  Lehman, From Cotton to Crash

  The global financial system was shaken by news that Lehman Brothers is filing for bankruptcy. Given its longstanding prominence as a pillar of high finance, it may be difficult to imagine a Wall Street without Lehman. And yet, it is worth recalling, Lehman Brothers, like so many of the firms that loom large on our…

  By Kenneth Libo Sep 18, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Don’t Make Iran an Israeli Issue

  As Iran makes steady progress toward achieving its nuclear ambitions, the debate over how best to respond is growing louder. Lately, however, the public discussion has been focused too much on the specific threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Israel. Israel’s friends do indeed have reason to worry. Iran’s leaders not only regularly…

  By Patrick Clawson Sep 11, 2008 | 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 Charlie Kirk and Alan Berg: 2 murders, 41 years apart, show the painful perils of polarization

  

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

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s strike in Qatar: An audacious bid for victory, or just another foolhardy provocation?

  

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

  

The Latest

• Letters

  September 19, 2008

  Military Action Should Only Be a Last Resort I would like to clarify my thoughts as expressed in your September 5 article “Specter of War Divides Iranian Jews in U.S.: Young and Old Split Over Using Force To Contain Tehran.” I have no conflict or worry with respect to how it might end for the…

  Sep 11, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  What Orthodox Realignment?

  ‘Political realignment,” as defined by the great political scientist V.O. Key, is when a group of voters “permanently change political loyalties.” From Nixon’s Harry Dent to Bush’s Karl Rove, Republican strategists have long dreamt of a realignment that would restore Republicans to the national majority they enjoyed before the rise of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal…

  By David Luchins Sep 11, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Our Economic Echo Chamber

  The Jewish Council for Public Affairs has been telling its members that Congress needs to pass what it calls a “second stimulus” bill — a hodgepodge of welfare payment increases and transfers from the federal budget to states. What this bill would stimulate besides government spending is debatable. In fact, it is unlikely to help…

  By Noam Neusner Sep 11, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Politics of Resentment and Derision

  Two unconventional convention afterthoughts: 1) We are witness to a manipulated politics of resentment. The American small town, mythic seat of uncorrupted virtue, is now, post-Palin, juxtaposed to the sinful big city. We have that from no less an authority than Rudy Giuliani, odd though it may seem coming from a cross-dressing adulterer who is…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 11, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Olmert Scandals

  Israelis drew a collective gasp of surprise September 7, when the police formally recommended that Ehud Olmert be indicted on corruption charges. The surprise was not that their prime minister was facing accusations of financial impropriety and abuse of power. What caught many Israelis off guard was the flimsiness of the charges. Olmert had suffered…

  Sep 11, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Peacemaker

  The cause of intergroup understanding lost a courageous champion September 10 with the death in Chicago of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, head of The Mosque Cares organization and the most widely respected leader of America’s black Muslims. Mohammed was born in Detroit in 1933, the seventh child of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the black separatist…

  Sep 11, 2008 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  When Leonard Bernstein ‘Dug’ the Irgun

  ‘I dig absolutely.” Those three awkward words, spoken by Leonard Bernstein to a Black Panther spouting pseudo-Marxist rhetoric at a soiree in the Bernstein home in 1970, immortalized the stereotype of the guilt-ridden upper-class liberal embracing violent radicals. The composer found himself publicly mocked, first by William F. Buckley Jr. in a newspaper column titled…

  By Rafael Medoff Sep 4, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Georgia Is on Our Minds, But Abuses Are Ignored

  Georgia has been America’s darling in the Caucasus since its charismatic and telegenic young president, Mikheil Saakashvili, took over from the nasty old Russian-style despot Eduard Shevardnadze in the fall of 2003, in what came to be called the Rose Revolution (because Saakashvili carried a rose, and not an AK-47, as he and the throngs…

  By Kathleen Peratis Sep 4, 2008 | 4 min read