Opinion

• Opinion

  Why Do We Fawn Over John Hagee?

  Of politics, bedfellows and such: The dustup over evangelical Pastor John Hagee’s endorsement of Senator John McCain would not have attracted the attention it did had it not come in the wake of the Tim Russert-provoked controversy regarding Senator Barack Obama, the pastor of his church and Louis Farrakhan. In the aftermath of the revelation…

  By Leonard Fein

  4 min read
• Opinion

  What Makes Nader Run?

  When Democrats discuss Ralph Nader’s new presidential bid, the conversation is usually studded with emphatic assertions of what the aging activist surely “must realize” and what he “couldn’t genuinely believe.” It seems as though liberals with memories of the 1960s and of Nader’s glory days as a consumer advocate can’t bring themselves to believe he…

  Feb 28, 2008 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Nader, Obama and Israel

  Ralph Nader’s imagined list of political unmentionables — the issues that he believes won’t be aired unless he runs — includes one item that might be described as missing from the current campaign debate: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Missing, that is, if “talking about” it means buying into Nader’s view that Israel is the aggressor nation….

  Feb 28, 2008 | < 1 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 A billionaire Gen Z influencer is reinventing philanthropy — with this South African rabbi’s help

  

• 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

  Discrimination By Any Other Name

  In a speech early last month, Reverend Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, was just a bit too Muslim-friendly. He spoke of the “inevitability” of some “constructive accommodation” between British law and Sharia. Williams’s use of the terms “accommodation” and “Sharia” in the same sentence freaked…

  By Kathleen Peratis Feb 28, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Catholics Have a Right To Pray for Us

  Israel prays for gentiles, so the other monotheists, the Catholic Church included, have the right to do the same — and no one should feel offended, as many have by Pope Benedict XVI’s recent revision of the Tridentine Mass. Any other policy toward gentiles would deny their access to the one God whom Israel knows…

  By Jacob Neusner Feb 28, 2008 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  There Is More to the ‘Arab Jews’ Controversy Than Just Identity

  A recent column in these pages by Philologos rejecting the term “Arab Jew” has sparked a spirited e-dialogue among Forward readers and led the columnist to write two follow-up articles (including one in this week’s Arts & Culture section). Philologos’s point of departure was a Reuters dispatch of January 20 that cited remarks made in…

  By Yossi Alpher Feb 28, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Thinking the Unthinkable

  Israel is in a diplomatic and military jam that keeps getting worse, but has no obvious solution. It is rapidly approaching the demographic tipping point, when Palestinian Arabs outnumber Israeli Jews in the land now under Israeli control. When that happens, Israel will find that it has become a minority-rule state, and it will have…

  Feb 28, 2008 | 2 min read
• Letters

  February 29-March7, 2008

  A Generosity of Spirit Rabbi Irwin Kula’s February 22 opinion article on the Tridentine Mass is a welcome voice of reason on this issue (“Enough Tridentine Mass Hysteria”). As a Catholic I have heard and read many disparaging comments, both within and without the Church, about the petition in the Good Friday prayers calling for…

  Feb 28, 2008 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  If Audacious Hope Turns Into Dispirited Cynicism

  Of course there are risks; there always are. Let us be frank. It is by no means clear that the next president, no matter how skillful, will be adequate to the multiple challenges we face: ending a war, restoring American honor, dealing with the Medicare crisis (and the crisis of healthcare costs in general), reversing…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 25, 2008 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Wooing the Jewish Vote

  Representative Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, is in trouble again. One of Tennessee’s most liberal politicians, he represents a mostly black district in Memphis. Since he first ran for Congress in 2006, he’s faced periodic murmuring that the district should have a black representative, as it had for 30 years. In early February, however, the…

  Feb 20, 2008 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  There Can Only Be One Law of the Land

  Earlier this month Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams stunned much of his own church and the rest of the world by saying that it seems unavoidable that elements of Sharia will be adopted into the British legal system. His argument was that doing so would make the law of the land more palatable to Muslims,…

  By Michael Broyde and Yitzchok Adlerstein Feb 20, 2008 | 4 min read