Opinion

• 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…

  6 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

Columnists View All

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

  

• Rob Eshman American Jews can’t agree about anything — except Iran

  

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

  

• Dan Perry Trump’s new Gaza plan marks a radical break from Israeli policy — can it succeed?

  

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

  

The Latest

• 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
• Opinion

  A Nation of Immigrants

  It was President Kennedy who said that America is “a nation of immigrants.” What else could it be? Unless you are a descendant of one of the native “Indian tribes,” you are either an immigrant or a descendant of an immigrant. Despite this obvious truth, immigration has been a perplexing problem in every generation. Repeatedly,…

  By Gus Tyler Feb 3, 2006 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  To Starve Or Feed the Beast

  Surely Nashat Aqtash has one of the more improbable jobs in the world: He is public relations adviser to Hamas; his job is to portray the new majority party of the Palestinians as kinder and gentler than its charter and its history have convinced most of the world it is. Before last week’s elections, Aqtash…

  By Leonard Fein Feb 3, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  You Wouldn’t Know

  Watching President Bush deliver his annual State of the Union address to Congress and the nation this week, it was hard not to notice the subdued, almost chastened tone of his delivery. Gone were the trademark winks and expansive body language that have characterized his public appearances for years. He was, like his message, restrained,…

  Feb 3, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Movement Cannot Feed Society on Resistance Alone

  Painful ironies mark the new political landscape of the Middle East, following the shattering defeat of the Fatah movement in last week’s Palestinian Legislative Council elections. One symbolic moment tells the story. As many of their countrymen watched in shock — one Palestinian scholar, who met a group of visiting French Parliamentarians on that very…

  By Eran Lerman Feb 3, 2006 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Europe Should Leverage Aid To Coax Islamists to Moderation

  As Hamas considers what to do with the majority of seats it won in last week’s Palestinian Legislative Council elections, one would expect it to listen particularly well to what the European Union and its member states have to say. After all, they are the ones primarily bankrolling the Palestinian Authority. Last year alone, Europeans…

  By Eric Frey Feb 3, 2006 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Whither Hamas, and With It the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

  The day after Hamas’s “Reform and Change” list swept last week’s Palestinian Legislative Council elections, two 20-something Palestinian women staffing our international observer delegation from the National Democratic Institute started peppering me with questions. How quickly could the United States pull the plug on the democracy assistance provided by the National Democratic Institute, the International…

  By Mara Rudman Feb 3, 2006 | 3 min read