Opinion

• Opinion

  How To Save the Planet

  Last Monday, a scant eight days before America’s critical midterm elections, the British government released a new report on global warming and its consequences that is being described — in Britain, at least — as the most thorough, authoritative study of the topic to date, and the most apocalyptic. Commissioned by the British Treasury, prepared…

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Balfour’s Message

  This Thursday, November 2, marked the 89th anniversary of the historic Balfour Declaration, the British government statement that marked the first international recognition of the goals of Zionism. It was a simple letter, addressed from the British foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to a Jewish community leader, Lord Rothschild, expressing sympathy with the goal of…

  Nov 3, 2006 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The Lieberman Perplex

  By a curious coincidence of events and timing, America and Israel appear poised in the coming days to take big steps in opposite political directions: America to the left, Israel to the right. More curious still, the traumatic changes that are convulsing the political systems in both countries may be captured, at least symbolically, in…

  Oct 27, 2006 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Jay Michaelson What can really be done to prevent antisemitic attacks like Bondi Beach?

  

• Rob Eshman A year after the LA fires, the lesson is clear: Our greatest disasters are often self-inflicted

  

• Nora Berman Did crypto-Jews invent the modern tarot deck?

  

• Dan Perry A quiet diplomatic shift in the Middle East, with monumental consequences for Israel

  

• Emily Tamkin Is Mamdani bad or good for Jews? Here’s how to tell

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Turkey’s Choice: Europe or Amnesia

  On October 12 Europe sent two powerful messages to Turkey about the way it should deal with the crimes of the past and the civil liberties of the present: The Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for literature to dissident Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, and the French National Assembly passed a bill making denial of…

  By Eric Frey Oct 27, 2006 | 4 min read
• 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 Oct 27, 2006 | 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
• 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