In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
To pitch an opinion piece, email our Opinion Editor, Talya Zax.
A study group appointed by the State Department last spring to explore America’s image in the Arab and Muslim world came back this week with a sobering if unsurprising conclusion: America is none too popular in those precincts, and our unpopularity is dangerous to our health. “Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels,” the study…
The fear, of course, is that the entire Iraq operation will stay bogged down. Perhaps the Iraqi people will drop their growing hostility to the occupying power once the electricity goes on for good and the streets are safe and the oil begins to flow, but there is no reason to think that these and…
The Anti-Defamation League did itself and the American Jewish community a disservice this week with its festive dinner honoring the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s ethical record as a businessman and as prime minister are an embarrassment to Italian democracy. His relations with fascists and fascism are an affront to Jews in Italy and…
Sometimes it seems we’re all drowning in numbers. Politicians debate the deficit while eyeing the polls. Computer wonks boast of all the bits in their latest chip. Generals and journalists tussle over the speed of our soldiers’ advance to Baghdad and the number killed en route. And everyone’s trying to count California gubernatorial candidates. We…
Ten years after the signing of the Oslo accords, three years after the outbreak of the intifada and three weeks after the fall of prime minister Mahmoud Abbas’s government, this much is clear about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Without a tough strategic decision to enforce what Max Weber called the hallmark of sovereignty — the monopoly…
Ten years ago I had the honor of being the first Palestinian journalist to interview Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for the leading daily Al Quds. “Mr. Prime Minister,” I asked him, “what is your vision for the future of the Palestinians in 10 or 15 years?” “I believe that the future of the Palestinians…
After three years of violence, a seemingly unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears resistant to any negotiated solution. From the failure at Camp David in 2000 to the debacle at Taba, from the now-forgotten Mitchell report to the abortive missions of CIA Director George Tenet and General Anthony Zinni, and most recently the wildly off-course “road map,”…
My resume is no secret. My mother was born in Hebron in 1921, a seventh generation Hebron Jew. I am the eighth generation. My family’s deep link to the City of the Patriarchs was cruelly severed in the summer of 1929, when rioters chanting “Kill the Jew” slaughtered half my family. The other half —…
Survey Affects People Lost in the criticism of the fraudulent intermarriage number is a fuller understanding of its impact on people’s lives (“The 52% Fraud,” September 12). The 1990 population survey affected the emotional lives of individuals and families. Having declared a crisis, many in the organized Jewish community accused those Jews who fell in…
The finding of the 1990 National Jewish Population Survey that 52% of Jews who married from 1985 to 1990 had married non-Jews was nothing less than a clarion call to action for organized Jewry (“The 52% Fraud,” September 12). Jewish continuity commissions were formed in many Jewish communities. Birthright Israel was established. A foundation for…
It shouldn’t make any difference, but it does, that one of last week’s suicide bombings was at a cafe on Emek Refaim Street, where I do most of my hanging out and arrange most of my meetings when I am in Jerusalem. It shouldn’t make any difference, but it does, that among the victims were…
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