Opinion

• Opinion

  The Unmet Threat Of a Nuclear Iran

  A nuclear-armed Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States and the larger international community. It is a catastrophe that we could be doing more to prevent. The Iranian regime has been listed year after year by our own State Department as No. 1 on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. With nuclear…

  By Brad Sherman

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Passing the Buck on Israel’s Periphery

  In a most dramatic fashion, the American Jewish community rallied to Israel this past summer during the war with Hezbollah. Emergency appeals raised millions of dollars, and individuals and organizations mobilized to demonstrate their political support for Israel. Philanthropists from around the world stepped in to do what Israel’s government apparently could not: alleviate the…

  By Larry Garber Oct 27, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Condi’s Unsurprising (Yet Praiseworthy) Speech

  Morton A. Klein’s opinion article condemning Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech to the American Task Force on Palestine is wrong at nearly every turn (“Condi’s Shocking Speech,” October 20). Her remarks should not be startling. They represent a reiteration of President Bush’s commitment “to two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side…

  By Seymour D. Reich Oct 27, 2006 | 2 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’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  I Simply Remember My Favorite Things…

  ‘Victory,” John Kennedy famously said after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, “has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.” But that was in 1961, before we were able to test paternity by DNA. The illusory victory of which President Bush babbles daily is a fatherless chimera. The defeat toward which he propels us has a…

  By Leonard Fein Oct 27, 2006 | 4 min read
• Letters

  October 27, 2006

  War Without End Means Endless War Powers I applaud your October 20 editorial, “Human Rights in Wartime.” You correctly emphasized the greatest concern about the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — its permanence. This war can only end when a future president declares victory and says it’s over, since there can never be a surrender…

  Oct 27, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Ben Meed z”l

  Every death embodies a world of loss, but the passing this week of Benjamin Meed at age 88 leaves a void that can never be filled. A quiet, soft-spoken man in his private life, Meed was a towering presence in the public sphere, combining indomitable will, matchless organizational skill and, most of all, lifelong heroism….

  Oct 27, 2006 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Embracing the Exiles

  Shmuel Kaplan, an 80-year-old amputee, breathed a sigh of relief in 1997 when the United States granted him political asylum after he fled antisemitism in the former Soviet Union. Two years later, we similarly received an Iranian boy, Rouzbeh Aliaghaei, and his parents. His mother was a high school teacher who had been imprisoned and…

  By Gideon Aronoff and Jonathan M. Stein Oct 20, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Preconditions for a Problematic Partner

  In early February 2006, just days after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, the Olmert government successfully negotiated with the Quartet (the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia) a framework for dealing with the Islamist movement. Any Hamas-led Palestinian government would have to fulfill three conditions before Israel and the international community would deal…

  By Yossi Alpher Oct 20, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Being Ourselves By Being For Others

  There is a Hasidic allegory in which a rebbe explains why the stork, known in Hebrew as the hasidah, is characterized as a non-kosher animal. At the outset of his homily, the rebbe observes that the stork is labeled the hasidah (the merciful one) because the kindness and compassion this animal displays for its own…

  By David Ellenson Oct 20, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Condi’s Shocking Speech

  I’ve heard and read many speeches on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those made by well-known, hostile critics of Israel always caused me great pain by their use of hyperbole, absurd analogy and falsehoods. But I was not prepared for a speech by an American secretary of state with those very attributes, such as the keynote address…

  By Morton A. Klein Oct 20, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Trumpets Did It

  Not too many years ago, corporal punishment of students by their teachers was common. A popular song recalled, “School days, school days. Golden rule and school days. Reading and writing and ’rithmetic, taught to the tune of the hickory stick.” Since the 1970s, however, corporal punishment in any form has been outlawed in 28 states….

  By Gus Tyler Oct 20, 2006 | 2 min read