In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
Playing Favorites in Palestine
One of the first questions that President Obama’s Mideast envoy George Mitchell will have to address is how to deal with a politically empowered Hamas and a politically weakened Fatah. Some counsel that America should continue its policy of trying to strengthen Fatah and undermine Hamas. But attempts to pit one Palestinian faction against another…
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Opinion Taking Back the Night
It is still much too early to start singing dayenu, that wonderful song that celebrates each element of the Exodus and that says, bluntly, that each alone would have been sufficient. But the first building blocks of such a song celebrating the movement toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians have now been laid down….
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Letters February 6, 2009
Don’t Blame Israel I take issue with your January 30 article titled “Gazan Doctor’s Tragedy Opens Israelis’ Eyes to Palestinian Pain.” The article describes the unintended deaths of three children of Gazan physician Izzeldin Abuelaish when an Israeli shell hit his home. The article quotes an Israeli army spokesman saying the troops fired on this…
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Opinion A Day Bright With Sunshine
At Barack Obama’s inauguration, when the Rev. Joseph Lowery began his benediction by quoting the third and final stanza of James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” he provided the historical memory for this historic occasion. I recognized the words immediately and was taken back to the late 1940s and the Sunday afternoons…
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Opinion Let Obama Be Obama
Pity President Obama and his speechwriters, for they are cursed with reputations of great skill and talent as wordsmiths. Imagine the weight they labor under as they begin each speech, look at the blank screen or page, and say: “How can we top ourselves?” No matter what they do, however, many people will say their…
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Opinion Recognizing Ourselves in One Another
More than all the eloquent phrases and the snippets of wisdom that marked President Obama’s inaugural address, I remain in the thrall of words he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial just two days earlier: “[I]f we could just recognize ourselves in one another… maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.” Obama…
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Opinion ‘The Price and the Promise of Citizenship’
Well into his somber, stirring inaugural address, after pointedly repudiating the policies and behaviors of the past eight years, President Obama set out a new task for his fellow citizens — a return to America’s animating values of hard work, honesty, courage, fair play, tolerance and curiosity to anchor a time of renewed responsibility and…
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Opinion Agony and Urgency in Gaza
When Israel opened fire on Gaza December 27, its stated goals were limited ones: weakening the rejectionist Hamas, stopping the rocket fire on Israel’s south and checking the underground flow of new weapons into the coastal strip. Three weeks later, when the shooting stopped, none of those goals had been reached unequivocally. But something bigger…
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Letters January 30, 2009
Emulating Iran? It is a sad commentary that Israel would imitate the Islamic Republic of Iran in disqualifying political parties from coming elections (“Citing Disloyalty, Knesset Bans Main Arab Parties From Elections,” January 30). It was once a point of pride that Israel included Arab parties in the Knesset. It is in the present day…
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Letters January 23, 2009
Clarifying Madoff’s AJCongress Relations The casual reader might understand from one unintentionally ambiguous sentence in your report on the impact of the Madoff scandal on the American Jewish Congress that Madoff was a member of its investment committee. He was not, and he has not had any personal involvement with us since the early 1980s…
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Opinion The Long Arm of Halacha: Jewish Law and the Madoff Scandal
The case against Bernard Madoff appears relatively straightforward. But the sheer magnitude of losses means that no individual claimant is likely to recover more than a few pennies on the dollar. As a result, hoping to recover a bit more of their investments, a number of affected parties have shifted attention from Madoff to managers…
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Opinion The Iran war ended terribly for the US, and even worse for Israel
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Fast Forward Georgia’s Jewish senator called his newly minted GOP opponent an antisemite. Why?
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Fast Forward Alex Bores’ supporters disagree on Israel. They agree on him.
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Fast Forward Organizers of London Israeli real estate fair apologize after West Bank properties surface despite denials