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
Freed From Shackles of the Past, Europe Forges a Unified Future
This weekend, much of Central and Eastern Europe will be celebrating as my country of Latvia and nine other new member-states officially join the European Union. Last month, five of those states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia — also joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. For many in Central and Eastern Europe, membership…
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Opinion Kristol Clear About War
Patrick Buchanan and other likeminded commentators have repeatedly tried to direct the public’s attention to the fact that, in the Iraq conflict, some of the leading pro-war advocates in the conservative movement have Jewish surnames. There’s Wolfowitz, Perle and Feith, not to mention Kristol, Frum and Weinstein. The presumption is that President Bush was led…
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Opinion New Dread, New Promise
It seems a lifetime ago, but it was only four or five years back that Israel’s independence day was marked by Jewish communities around America as a high point, a time to celebrate the transformative role of Jewish statehood in the lives and identities of Jews everywhere. This year the celebrations — if that’s the…
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Opinion A Purge in Pennsylvania
Strange are the ways of zealots. Iraq is in flames, global terrorism is on the rise, President Bush’s 9/11 alibi is in tatters, and yet one of the greatest threats to Bush’s hold on power comes at the moment from — of all things — a Republican congressman who is one of the president’s most…
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Opinion Twilight of the American Idol
I had a bad dream. It was really creepy. I still shudder when I think about it. I was looking forward to watching the final eight contestants compete on “American Idol” last week. As it is for millions of other good folk of this nation, the televised talent show is a staple of my Tuesday…
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Letters April 23, 2004
Reports on Genocide Will Engender Action The Forward published an eye-opening and crucially important article and an accompanying editorial in the April 16 issue about the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Rwanda 10 years ago and the one currently going on in Darfur, Sudan today (“Groups Question Own Inaction on African Killings”; “Genocide and Conscience”). We…
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Opinion Blinded by the Light Unto the Nations
In the last month, the Israeli military has assassinated the two top leaders of Hamas while Prime Minister Sharon has been pushing for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Many of us watching from the American Jewish sidelines have alternated between two feelings: Dreading that worse yet may result from these killings and the retaliatory rage they…
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Opinion While the Jewish Community Watches, Survivors Suffer
Throughout the last half century, as Jewish communities have raised large sums of money for various philanthropic causes, I cannot remember a single organization that has not used the theme of Holocaust survivors as a means of raising funds. We did not mind because the funds raised were for good causes. We believed that if…
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Opinion Between an Ax And a Scalpel
There’s a reason the Left (or the liberals or the progressives, or whatever nom de guerre you prefer) seems so bereft of a positive agenda. The Right, by and large, knows precisely what it seeks to accomplish. It seeks to dismantle government. It wants to privatize medical care, and social security, and our prisons, and…
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Opinion Bush and the Terrorists
President Bush got at least one thing dead-right at the Tuesday night press conference where he attempted to defend his floundering counterterrorism policy. The terrorists, the president said, “can be right one time. We got to be right 100% of the time in order to protect the country.” What was missing from Bush’s remarks was…
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Opinion Genocide and Conscience
The continuing agonies of the African continent — in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Congo and now Sudan — are a constant reminder to the rest of the world of the fragility of what we call societal decency. The inability of the international community to address those agonies and aid the sufferers is an ongoing stain…
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