In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
A Tale of Justice
In a display of wry humor that may or may not have been intentional, the British government went to court last week to argue that human rights violations by its occupation forces in Iraq are not subject to international human rights law. The reason, Her Majesty’s lawyers told the high court in London, presumably with…
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Opinion Teaching Courage
Colman Genn died last week at the age of 68. The New York Times carried a long obituary, which he earned the hard way, but it missed some of the really big stuff. Cole was best known because back in the late 1980s, when he was superintendent of Community School Board 27 in Queens, N.Y.,…
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Letters July 23, 2004
Shoah Funds Played Major Role for Israel Although Israel did not have a formal voice in the Claims Conference’s negotiations for compensation for Holocaust survivors, Israel conducted simultaneous and coordinated negotiations with West Germany (“Netanyahu Seen Angling to Control Shoah Funds,” July 16). Under the 1952 Luxembourg Agreements, Israel received 3 billion Deutschmarks in goods…
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Opinion Sharon, France and the Jews
As if they had nothing better to do, the good people of France managed to work themselves into a lather this week over an insult to French honor by Israel’s Prime Minister Sharon, who had the temerity to suggest that French Jews should run for their lives. Sharon must have thought he was offering harmless…
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Opinion Fast Times
The fast day of Tisha B’Av, which falls next Tuesday, is not a central day on anyone’s version of the Jewish ritual calendar, but it probably should be. Sad to say, it captures more closely than any other holiday the dominant theme of Jewish communal culture in our age: grief and outrage over the cruelties…
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Opinion The Devaluation of Values
The current theme of John Kerry’s campaign can be summarized by a single word: “values.” In his speeches, he deploys it compulsively, nonstop, ad infinitum. We’re supposed to be reassured by this. In fact, his use of the term opens a window to a worrisome modern way of thinking about the things that matter most….
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Opinion An Investment in Mideast Peace
There are many reasons why most Palestinians never got an economic peace dividend from the Oslo process in the 1990s, and why the current unemployment rate in the territories is above 50%. Israeli policies certainly contributed. But a big, underreported reason is that attracting private capital and fostering free enterprise never has been a high…
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Opinion Bush’s Silence on Saudi Antisemitism
The Bush administration’s current policy toward Saudi Arabia is both unprincipled and cowardly. Speaking at the recent NATO summit in Istanbul, President Bush reiterated one of the central themes of his foreign policy agenda: the dual imperative of promoting democratic reform in the Middle East and ending Western support for regional dictators. Bush should be…
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Opinion Death Be Not Loud
Rest easy, help is on the way. It comes to us via a dazzling invention by Robert Barrows, of Burlingame, Calif., as reported the other day by Reuters. While others engage, or fail to engage, in leaps of faith, Barrows is concerned with bridging the gap of death. Accordingly, he proposes a talking tombstone, wherein…
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Opinion Judging the Fence
With its spurious ruling last week on the legality of Israel’s West Bank security fence, the International Court of Justice has created an unnecessary complication in the search for Middle East peace and undermined its own credibility as an arbiter of international law. The truth is that the damage to the court is graver than…
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Opinion Cry for Argentina
Ten years have passed since Argentina’s main Jewish communal center was hit by a terrorist bomb on July 18, 1994, leaving 85 persons dead and 250 injured in what remains the worst antisemitic attack since World War II. Ten years of botched investigations, rumormongering, diplomatic stonewalling — yet the case is no closer to resolution….
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Fast Forward Mississippi fire suspect called the temple a ‘synagogue of Satan’
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News Synagogue arson suspect posted satirical antisemitic cartoon on day of the attack
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News The ADL’s turn away from civil rights was years in the making — Oct. 7 accelerated it
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Culture He works at a Holocaust museum by day. How’d he end up in ‘Marty Supreme’?
In Case You Missed It
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Culture His mother is Israeli, his father is Palestinian. His life? Complicated.
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Opinion There’s a vicious antisemitic precedent for Trump’s demonization of Renée Nicole Good
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Film & TV Judd Apatow on why Mel Brooks’ influence ‘will last as long as our jokes’
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Opinion I was in a high school production of ‘Anne Frank’ — today in Minnesota, I feel her fear more than ever
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