Opinion

• Opinion

  Defending Israel’s Defenders

  Spy scandals, wrapped as they are in mystery and skullduggery, inevitably give rise to conspiratorial speculation. The espionage scandal that’s currently roiling American-Israeli relations offers more mysteries than most, and the conspiracy theories are proliferating accordingly. When the dust settles and the facts emerge, however, it will become clear that this story is not one…

  4 min read
• Opinion

  A Closed Mind Is a Terrible Thing To Haste

  Last week, the Department of Homeland Security revoked an earlier decision to grant an entry and work visa to Swiss theologian Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan had accepted a visiting professor position at the University of Notre Dame, but spokespeople for Homeland Security and the State Department are now invoking laws suggesting that Ramadan represents a “public…

  By Jonathan Laurence Sep 3, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Why Do We Still Blame Victims Of Date Rape?

  According to Alfred P. Doolittle, shrewd and cheerfully unemployed working-class nemesis of Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady,” some poor people are deemed “deserving” of charity — the ones who seem miserable and wretched — and others, the “undeserving” (like him), are not. We divide sexual abuse victims into similar groups: those who deserve justice…

  By Kathleen Peratis Sep 3, 2004 | 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 A new humanitarian outrage is unfolding in the Middle East. It’s not in Gaza

  

• Nora Berman The left is turning on AOC over Israel — and imperiling its own agenda

  

• Dan Perry Actually, Trump made things between Israel and Iran way worse

  

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

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  When a War of Words Becomes More Than Just Semantics

  Some of my best friends are skewish. Israel’s ideological detractors have long sought to skew public debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by using particularly loaded terms to describe the Jewish state’s actions. But now, in listening to discussions about Israel’s new barrier, it is becoming clear that the transmitting of unfair prejudicial phrases has become…

  By Douglas Kahn Sep 3, 2004 | 4 min read
• Letters

  September 3, 2004

  Right on Settlements The August 27 editorial about the Bush administration’s questionable approach to Israeli settlement expansion was absolutely correct (“Bush and the Settlements”). The president’s blessing of settlement growth in the Palestinian territories is more than just poorly timed, it’s also substantively incorrect. The expanding settlement movement is not in Israel’s interests — it…

  Sep 3, 2004 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  ‘Pro-Israel’? Hardly.

  However the sordid facts play out in the current FBI investigation of alleged spying on Israel’s behalf by a senior Pentagon analyst, they raise a raft of nettlesome questions — and memories. Recall, for example, that the heart of Jonathan Pollard’s self-justification was that he passed on to Israel information regarding Iraq’s evolving capabilities for…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 3, 2004 | 4 min read
• Letters

  August 27, 2004

  Scapegoating of Pagans Reveals Author’s Bias As a neo-pagan, Wiccan and Druid for nearly 20 years, I feel compelled to respond to David Klinghoffer’s August 20 opinion column (“We Are All Pagans Now”). Klinghoffer bemoans the loss of the undisputed dominance that monotheism, as personified in the Abrahamic faiths, has had over Western civilization for…

  Aug 27, 2004 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  The Sinking Ship And a Swift Boat

  Can farce be brilliant? If so, the Bush campaign’s current production merits rave reviews. Act One: A United States senator who, during his 20 years in office, has inspired just about no one manages to win the Democratic party’s nomination for the presidency. His lackluster record is a burden relieved by only two chunks of…

  By Leonard Fein Aug 27, 2004 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Bush and the Settlements

  The Bush administration has shown what can most charitably be described as exquisitely bad timing in its reported policy reversal on settlement construction. Signaling approval, even tacit, of new home building in the settlements, as reported last weekend in The New York Times and confirmed by our Ori Nir this week, will not make Israel…

  Aug 27, 2004 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Conscience and Sudan

  This weekend, the clock will run out on the 30-day United Nations deadline given to the Sudanese government to crack down on the killing in the Darfur region. By most accounts, nothing has changed. The so-called Janjaweed militias continue to operate unimpeded, villages continue to burn and villagers continue to flee into exile in Chad,…

  Aug 27, 2004 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  And the Oscar Doesn’t Go To…

  With the DVD release of “The Passion of the Christ” on August 31, Mel Gibson will certainly make money. If he chooses, though, he also can use the occasion to make some interfaith peace. He can withdraw “The Passion” from Oscar consideration, thereby preempting a new round of acrimony at Academy Award time. Despite its…

  By Kevin Doyle Aug 27, 2004 | 3 min read