Opinion

• Opinion

  Memorial for German Expulsion ‘Victims’ Makes Mockery of Shoah

  Many people suffered during World War II, Germans among them. But let there be no mistake: To label as victims the millions of ethnic Germans who were expelled from their homes in Eastern Europe after the defeat of the Nazis is to make a mockery of the Holocaust. Since 2000, an association representing some 2.5…

  By Marek Edelman

  3 min read
• Opinion

  In Keeping Terrorists Out, Security Fences Israelis In

  The declared aim of the security fence being constructed between Israel and the Palestinian territories in the West Bank is military: to provide better security for Israel’s Jewish population, under continuous attack in the bloody and seemingly endless intifada. But there is no question that its overriding purpose is psychological: to give the Israeli population…

  By Shmuel Erlich Sep 12, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Vote SpongeBob SquarePants for California Governor

  Democrats need not panic over the runaway train that is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s candidacy for the California governorship. They need only to borrow a page from Hollywood and field their own media-friendly candidate. So here, forthwith, a list of nominees for the Democratic nod: • Ronald McDonald. Name recognition, Q ratings and positive feedback off the…

  By Bruce Stockler Sep 12, 2003 | 3 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz Class assignment: Get to know your murdered Jewish neighbors

  

• Rob Eshman Liberal Zionists are under attack. A new book proves their work has never been more important

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s most dangerous war is with itself

  

• Emily Tamkin American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt

  

• Jay Michaelson Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it. 

  

The Latest

• Letters

  September 5, 2003

  Impassioned Warning Or Confused Criticism? Former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg’s scathing critique of the present state of Zionism is as painful as it is true (“A Failed Israeli Society Collapses While Its Leaders Remain Silent,” August 29). Burg discloses what seems so obvious yet so unspoken in the Jewish media — that we are committing…

  Sep 5, 2003 | 5 min read
• Opinion

  Damaged and Desensitized

  One of the more remarkable aspects of the human species is our capacity to become inured. What begins as a shock comes eventually to feel quite routine, if repeated often enough. Think, for example, of airport security, each new upward ratcheting disconcerting at first but soon enough absorbed, no longer worthy of comment. So also…

  By Leonard Fein Sep 5, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Bush’s Quagmire, and Ours

  Even the most determinedly partisan critics of the Bush administration have been taken aback lately — dumbfounded is more like it — by the spectacular unraveling of the administration’s Iraq strategy. For all the doubts about the wisdom of the president’s plans, few of us thought they would collapse this utterly or this fast. Now…

  Sep 5, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  The Numbers Game

  The sharks are already circling the waters in anticipation of next week’s planned release of the long-awaited National Jewish Population Survey, or NJPS. The $6 million study, originally scheduled for release in 2000, has been delayed repeatedly while scholars argued arcane questions of survey methodology. Now, it appears, one side has won the battle, and…

  Sep 5, 2003 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Israeli Economists’ Dangerous Minds

  In discussions of the Israeli government’s economic program in various forums in the economics department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the students expressed firm opinions against the poor who don’t work, against the welfare state and against the public sector. In a conversation with the professors, the students said, “What do you want? We…

  By Avia Spivak Sep 5, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  How Pride Beat Hate in Montreal

  Summer is ending and students are returning to campus. Many Jewish students, however, will be returning not only to seminars and syllabi, but also to the anti-Israel protests and propaganda that have plagued many North American campuses since the Palestinians launched their intifada in the fall of 2000. Montreal’s Concordia University, in particular, has become…

  By Gil Troy Sep 5, 2003 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Convergence on Commandments

  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s long fight appears to be ending. Moore’s eight colleagues on the state Supreme Court, facing a federal court order and the prospect of $5,000-a-day fines, last week ordered the removal from the Alabama Judicial Building of a certain notorious 5,300-pound block of granite he had previously planted there. And what…

  By David Klinghoffer Aug 29, 2003 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Israel’s Choice

  Those of us who watch the Middle East anxiously from afar may suppose that the latest explosion of violence is just another round in a never-ending cycle of rage and slaughter. Israelis and Arabs have been killing each other for generations, and we assume they will carry on killing for generations to come, until one…

  Aug 29, 2003 | 3 min read