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
Bush’s Speech, Full of Our Sound and Their Fury
President Bush’s not quite prime-time address on Monday at the Army War College had four vital audiences: the American people, the international community, the Iraqi people and the American military. But the president could not or did not tell any of his audiences what they needed and deserved to hear. At a critical moment for…
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Opinion The Ground Shifts
The ground shifted this week, subtly but critically, in the ongoing debate over the role of Israel in America’s Iraq policy, one more step in the growing insecurity facing Jews and the Jewish state in the wake of the Iraq war. As recently as a week ago, reasonable people still could dismiss as antisemitic conspiracy…
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Opinion America’s Hemisphere Of Interest
It seems that issues central to the American foreign policy agenda today are unequivocally and insistently pursued everywhere — except in Latin America. As Secretary of State Colin Powell stated at a briefing to Congress last February, America’s “top” priorities of a “more serious nature” — the consolidation of democratic regimes, the guaranteeing of open…
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Opinion From Rafah to Sachnin
Call them juxtapositions, call them contradictions — Israel overflows with them. Three examples from my recent six week-long visit there: During a week in which international attention was focused on events in Rafah in southern Gaza, the attention of Israelis was divided. The destruction in Rafah was impossible to avoid, and the controversy over what…
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Letters May 28, 2004
Milken Misrepresented A May 14 article previewing Michael Milken’s keynote speech to an Israel Bonds event was partially correct to the extent that it described Milken’s extensive philanthropy, widespread support of Jewish causes and his “message of solidarity” for which “all Jews and the people of Israel should be very grateful” (“Junk-bond King To Keynote…
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Opinion The Spectacle Of a Dirty War
A few days ago, in a conversation with a retired senior officer in the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, I dropped a derogatory remark about the now infamous posing of naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. “We learned it from you,” the DIA man retorted. “Not the taunting women and the photos,”…
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Opinion The Same War
In the space of eight days this month, Islamist radicals successfully assassinated both the president of the American-backed governing council in Iraq and the president of the Russian-backed government in Chechnya. While America and the West frantically debate the progress of our war in Iraq, the mounting violence of the opposition and the best way…
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Opinion The Gift of the Law
Traditionalists may be forgiven for finding a dark irony this year in the celebration of Shavuot, which begins next Tuesday, May 25. The festival traditionally marks the giving of the Law to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai, seven weeks after their departure from Egypt. True, the Passover holiday, coming just weeks before, enjoys…
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Opinion Tearing Down the Ethnic Wall in Germany
Once again, Jews are fighting for their place in German society. This time, however, the battle is internal — Jew vs. Jew, with the identity of the world’s fastest growing Jewish community hanging in the balance. In one corner stands the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the longtime champion of communal interests and official…
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Letters May 21, 2004
Teach the Children Well After reading the April 16 account of Holocaust education teachers in New Jersey and Iowa, I found that I could not simply turn the page (“Two Holocaust-Ed Teachers Find That Empathy Is Often Born of Adversity”). My reasons were many and varied. As a combat infantryman in France and Germany during…
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Opinion Greater Expectations
Is it really so snobbish to ask, “What did you expect?” when it comes to the soldiers who behaved so inhumanely, so outrageously, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? After all, who are they? Six, at least, come from the 372nd army reserve unit, many of whose members live in Appalachia. One of them, married…
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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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