Opinion

• Opinion

  They’re Palestinians facing eviction in east Jerusalem. They may have helped save my family.

  I heard the story countless times. My great-grandfather Raphael, an Arab Jew who was born in Jerusalem, died when my grandfather was 13. Raphael had two business partners. One partner, who was a European Jew, took advantage of the bereft widow, and stole our family’s livelihood. The other partner, an Arab and fellow Jerusalemite, saved…

  By Julia Elyachar

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  Even ‘apartheid’ doesn’t capture fullness of our Palestinian suffering. But it helps.

  In a recent meeting with a representative of the United Nations, I was asked to suggest concepts that would capture the suffering my family and loved ones in Gaza endure. I froze for a moment, not only because of the surprise of a legal scholar unsuccessfully looking for a concept that would precisely capture Gaza’s…

  By Muhammad Shehada Apr 28, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  I left apartheid South Africa. Applying the term to Israel is disingenous.

  Human Rights Watch could do with a new pair of glasses. The organization’s new report, “A Threshold Crossed — Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” is blind to fact and reality. Every paragraph in the 213-page diatribe serves one goal: brand Israel as an apartheid state. I left South Africa as a…

  By Hirsh Goodman Apr 27, 2021 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson Being Jewish in America today feels like walking multiple tightropes at once

  

• Rob Eshman If war with Iran goes badly for the US, Jews will be the scapegoat

  

• Nora Berman Did Netanyahu coerce Trump into attacking Iran? No — but he tried with Obama

  

• Dan Perry The US and Israel could seek to topple Iran’s regime. They should choose negotiation instead

  

• Emily Tamkin Israeli leaders are using Holocaust comparisons to justify attacks on Iran. Is that kosher?

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Debate | Should we use the term ‘apartheid’ in discussing Israel?

  Human Rights Watch, a major international advocacy group, on Tuesday issued a report alleging Israeli officials are committing the crime of apartheid. Conversations about the ways in which that term may or may not apply to Israel have become more prominent in recent years. With this latest development, we asked contributing columnists Joel Swanson and…

  By Ari Hoffman and Joel Swanson Apr 27, 2021 | 10 min read
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  Opinion

  For Jews and Armenians, two victories in the war on hate

  When your vocation is dealing with prejudice, hatred and antisemitism you don’t win many battles. Yet this past week, there were two moments that allowed for momentary rejoicing. Interestingly, both dealt with words and reminded us of the enduring power of speech. First, Joe Biden became the first American president to recognize the Armenian Genocide….

  By Deborah E. Lipstadt Apr 27, 2021 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Say Israel is committing apartheid? It’s not a decision we reached lightly.

  When I arrived in Jerusalem in 1989 as Human Rights Watch’s first Israel-Palestine researcher, I did not imagine the word “apartheid” applying to the Israeli and Palestinian context. But this week, HRW published a report that I edited, as the organization’s acting Middle East director, finding that Israeli officials are committing the crimes of apartheid…

  By Eric Goldstein Apr 27, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  HRW report on Israel likely to cause more problems than it solves

  Human Rights Watch, the world’s preeminent monitor of how governments treat people within their borders, has found that Israelis are guilty of apartheid. This is far more than a rhetorical charge, detailed over 213 pages in the language of a legal dossier. Long associated with white oppression of Blacks in South Africa apartheid is, in…

  By Peter Osnos Apr 27, 2021 | 8 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself:’ How Torah is helping me process Derek Chauvin’s conviction

  The video of Rodney King’s beating by members of the Los Angeles Police Department emerged 30 years ago this March. It was one month before I joined the military. A year later, in April 1992, I was 22 years old and a military police person at Fort McClellan, Ala. I still remember the April morning…

  By Sandra Lawson Apr 23, 2021 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Canned beef with juices and other lessons from a year volunteering at the food pantry

  This is an adaptation of Looking Forward, a weekly email from our editor-in-chief sent on Friday afternoons. Sign up here to get the Forward’s free newsletters delivered to your inbox. And click here for a PDF of stories to savor over Shabbat and Sunday that you can download and print. We generally show up late…

  By Jodi Rudoren Apr 23, 2021 | 5 min read
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  Opinion

  Why won’t Israel acknowledge the Armenian Genocide?

  There’s a report that Adolf Hitler once asked, “Who, after all speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” The veracity of that quote is unclear. But its popularity speaks to the uncertain place of the Armenian Genocide in the history of the 20th century’s ethnic cleansing movements — often sidelined, or conveniently forgotten about. History…

  By Stephan Pechdimaldji Apr 23, 2021 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Fighting antisemitism, and mass incarceration: Talking with Udi Ofer of the ACLU

  One of my last memories from the pre-pandemic era is of meeting Udi Ofer, the head of the ACLU’s Justice Division, in February 2020. Ofer and Rabbi Julie Roth, director of the Princeton Hillel, gathered roughly a dozen students for a series of events reconsidering the Passover exodus in light of contemporary mass incarceration. Of…

  By Zachariah Sippy Apr 22, 2021 | 6 min read