Opinion

• Opinion

  The Legacy of a Pope

  For those of us who are neither Catholic nor Christian, it was at first startling to witness the worldwide outpouring of emotion that greeted the death of Pope John Paul II. A man dies. His job comes open. A replacement will be chosen. One might expect this to be a time of grieving for those…

  4 min read
• Opinion

  Elections Do Not a Democracy Make

  It may be the fondest wish of many outside the Middle East — and much more importantly, the wish of those who reside in the region — to move toward democratic freedoms, but wanting it and doing it are entirely different matters. Claiming that democracy is on the march does not make it so. It…

  By Kenneth Stein Apr 8, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  In the Name of Values, Not Politics

  Few things can be more calculated to raise hackles and end calm discourse than using the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, as John Danforth did last week, to accuse the Republicans of being in thrall to “conservative Christians.” And when the finger being pointed belongs to a former Republican senator and member of…

  By Jeff Ballabon Apr 8, 2005 | 4 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• Letters

  April 8, 2005

  Ugandan Government Is Failing Its People As a native of Acholiland, I highly commend the Forward for exposing the slow-motion genocide perpetuated in northern Uganda during the past 18 years by the Lord’s Resistance Army and the equally ruthless Ugandan national army (“Children Forced To Become Killers, Sex Slaves in Forgotten Uganda War,” April 1)….

  Apr 8, 2005 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  We Reap What They Sew

  The sweatshops of the Lower East Side and the largely Jewish-led labor movement to which they gave rise are part of Jewish iconography. My Russian-born, Brooklyn-bred mother-in-law was able to support her disabled husband, her young son and her own widowed mother on her wages as a seamstress in a Lower East Side garment factory…

  By Kathleen Peratis Apr 1, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  When Academia Favors Values Over Facts

  At Campus Watch, one of the main problems we address is politics disguised as pedagogy. Our critique of Columbia University’s Middle East and Asian languages and cultures department, at the center of the recent, much-publicized controversy, has been that faculty members present their own political opinions to the exclusion of others and in place of…

  By Alexander Joffe Apr 1, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Call the Massacre In Darfur by Its Name: Genocide

  As the United Nations Security Council deliberated this week on whether to send suspected Sudanese war criminals to the International Criminal Court for atrocities committed in Darfur, one man was noticeably absent from the proceedings. Not once in the recent U.N. report on which the Security Council decision was to be based was Raphael Lemkin’s…

  By William Korey Apr 1, 2005 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The $20 Billion Peace Plan

  Suppose — just for a decade or so — that for a mere $20 billion, you could solve the thorniest issue dividing Israelis and Palestinians: to wit, the issue of Jerusalem. Yes, of course I know that the containment of terrorism is considerably more urgent than a permanent solution to the Jerusalem dispute. But we…

  By Leonard Fein Apr 1, 2005 | 4 min read
• Letters

  April 1, 2005

  Revised ‘Passion’ Still Morally Irresponsible Mel Gibson still refuses to acknowledge what more than 100 biblical scholars and church leaders have said to him publicly: He is wrong in his presentation of responsibility for Christ’s death and is relaying the seeds of historic antisemitism in displaying it (“Less Gory ‘Passion’ Still Raises Hackles,” March 18)….

  Apr 1, 2005 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Our Culture of Life

  Sun Hudson died in a Texas hospital last month, just shy of 6 months old. Few Americans ever heard his name, before his death or since. They ought to learn it, repeat it to themselves and remember it. His fate can teach us a great deal about the American “culture of life” of which President…

  Apr 1, 2005 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Uganda Plan

  Starting this week, the Forward begins a multipart series of articles looking at some of the civil conflicts that are wreaking havoc in the traditional societies of central Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions. We sent our correspondent Marc Perelman to spend several weeks in several countries, including Uganda, Congo and Rwanda, observing the…

  Apr 1, 2005 | < 1 min read