Opinion

• Opinion

  The Shooting

  After 48 hours of nationwide hilarity, discussion of Dick Cheney’s hunting accident turned suddenly somber on Tuesday afternoon. That’s when America learned that the man Cheney shot, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, had suffered a heart attack. A pellet from the vice president’s shotgun had lodged in the lawyer’s heart. At that moment, Americans were forced…

  2 min read
• Opinion

  A Lesson In Protesting Insulting Cartoons

  As mobs throughout the Muslim world assaulted European targets in response to the publication of caricatures of Muhammad, an Iranian government newspaper offered its own bizarre response to the controversy by announcing a contest for cartoons mocking the Holocaust. In their fevered imagination, the Iranians believe they will expose a double standard, according to which…

  By Edward Koch and Rafael Medoff Feb 17, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Bush’s Budget Works Against Americans

  After five straight budgets that have made the lives of working people more difficult, few among us expected this year to be any different. Earlier this month, President Bush met our diminished expectations when he unveiled his 2007 fiscal year budget. As in previous years, the president’s budget cuts funding for domestic programs, reduces taxes…

  By Bruce Raynor and Simon Greer Feb 17, 2006 | 3 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 I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel

  

• Nora Berman ‘Eddington’ is full of conspiracy theories but it’s not about Jews. Or is it?

  

• Dan Perry Recognizing a Palestinian state is a great way to doom Palestinians

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  In Search of a Liberating ‘Jewish Mystique’

  Since Betty Friedan’s death I’ve found myself wishing that the cause I care about most had a voice like hers to speak for us. That cause is traditional Judaism — which, among many others things to recommend it, offers a wiser and ultimately more humane vision of womanhood than does feminism. Indeed, women under 45…

  By David Klinghoffer Feb 17, 2006 | 4 min read
• Letters

  February 17, 2006

  Let No Topic Be Sacred Opinion writer Tariq Ramadan’s call for calm among Muslims is much needed and appreciated (“A Muslim Call From Europe For Faith in Civility,” February 10). However, in dismissing the notion of a clash between the values of the Enlightenment and those of religious zealotry, he ignores the fact that the…

  Feb 17, 2006 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Knowing What We Don’t Know

  Here’s a puzzle, a small piece of a much larger set of nagging issues that bubbles just beneath the surface of our ordinary lives: On December 23, 2005, Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor of The New Republic, asserted in The Wall Street Journal that “Israeli officials were lukewarm about the war [in Iraq] from the…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 10, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Cartoon Jihad

  If history had turned out differently, Iranian troops might now be patrolling the alleyways of Chicago and Las Vegas, busily confiscating pornography, breaking up drug gangs, checking teenagers’ skirt lengths and helping us to recapture the moral core we lost a generation ago. Some Americans, dismayed at the relentless coarsening of our public and private…

  Feb 10, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Friedan Mystique

  No greater tribute can be conferred on a revolutionary than the privilege of living to see one’s revolutionary ideas taken for granted as commonplace truisms. Betty Friedan, who died on her 85th birthday February 4, had that privilege. Like few other figures in recent history, she introduced a transformative concept that changed the way we…

  Feb 10, 2006 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The Cost of Not Raising Gas Prices

  Although Americans have been grousing about the price of gasoline, the truth is that pump prices are still not high enough. As high as prices might seem today, they do not reflect the true costs of oil. The free market normally does an excellent job of allocating society’s scarce resources because prices usually incorporate all…

  By Donald Losman Feb 10, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Know Thine Enemy

  Because Israel and Palestine are more than neighbors — because they are almost Siamese twins, difficult and dangerous to separate — it seems inevitable that, despite the barriers of ideology and antisemitism, despite Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel and Israel’s refusal to talk to bigots who don’t recognize it, eventually the two will simply have…

  By Yossi Alpher Feb 10, 2006 | 4 min read
• Letters

  Letter February 10, 2006

  Fighting the Good Fight Arts and culture writer Paul Buhle’s January 27 review of Douglas Century’s biography of my uncle, boxing champion Barney Ross, noted that Barney “supported the Irgun and reportedly served indirectly as a gunrunner in Israel’s War of Independence” (“Elegy for a Fighter”). I am not sure of Uncle Barney’s role in…

  Feb 10, 2006 | 6 min read