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
Don’t call Orthodox Jews close minded. Our consensus is achieved through debate.
There is a recurring trend I’ve been noticing in both private conversations as well as articles and OpEds discussing “issues” in the Orthodox world: Engaging in equal parts paternalism and dismissiveness – often with an extra serving of condescension – people often accuse adherents to traditional values of being closed-minded, and of “silencing” “nonconformist” perspectives…
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Opinion ICE is forcing Muslims to eat pork. My fellow Orthodox Jews: This is our fight!
In another dehumanizing episode for detained migrants, it’s been reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been feeding pork to Muslims held in a Florida detention center seeking to move to the United States to improve their lives. While most people should be outraged at such detestable behavior, Orthodox Jews in particular should be…
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Opinion Violence begets despair begets violence in Gaza’s endless, hopeless loop
For the past few weeks, Gaza and Israel’s south have been involved in another alarming escalation. In retaliation for incendiary kites and balloons, launched from Gaza and falling on agricultural lands in Israel’s south, daily Israeli war planes carried out airstrikes on the strip. An attack by the Israeli occupation air force south of #Gaza…
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Opinion Trump, not Israel, is the biggest divider among Jews
When speaking of political divides in the American Jewish community, it’s all too easy to get sucked into a conversation about Israel. The truth is, though Israel, home to half of the world’s Jews, is not unimportant to American Jewry, it is not the most challenging issue the American Jewish community faces in the coming…
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 towards normalizing Israeli-Emirati relations demonstrates a sea change in the Arab world’s outlook on Israel. In a region plagued by failed or failing states, wars and radicalism, Israel is increasingly perceived as a beacon of stability. It also demonstrates that offering the Middle East a brighter future can no longer wait for the truly noble goal of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israel-UAE deal is a welcome outcome for a region destabilized by Iranian ambitions, Islamist extremism and internal strife. And a comprehensive framework for normalized Israeli-Arab relations that goes far beyond a “cold peace” not only deals a blow to the enemies of peace, but also creates an essential space for keeping the two-state solution alive. Amazingly, there are those who continue to view the region through the sole prism of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the point of suggesting the [dystopian paradigm](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/opinion/israel-annexation-two-state-solution.html) of dismantling the Jewish state into one state for Israelis and Palestinians. The stories of the childhood of our father, Israel’s sixth president Chaim Herzog, in civil war-torn Belfast have shaped our perspective on the need for separate political entities for Israelis and Palestinians. Our father's earliest memory was witnessing a gunfight resulting in murder. Today, some pundits cite Ireland as a hopeful example of resolving a centuries-old conflict between rival groups within one state. Yet this paradigm does not translate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which involves two competing national movements with bitter history and sharply different cultural and religious characteristics, espousing conflicting narratives and aspirations over the same piece of land. Forcing Israelis and Palestinians together into one state is highly unlikely to produce a melting pot of coexistence and equality. Rather, it would trigger an endless struggle over dominance and only inflame and perpetuate the conflict, to the detriment of both peoples. The debate over one state or two states is particularly significant in the aftermath of last month’s 20th anniversary of the Camp David Summit. One of us was there, as well as in most peace negotiations with the Palestinians since 1993. Fresh in our memory is Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat denying that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Nor can we forget his nod to a terror campaign that took the lives of over 1,000 Israelis in the wake of Camp David. In the decades since Camp David, the Palestinians have persistently rejected or ignored far-reaching Israeli and American peace proposals. Is Israel seriously expected to make a choice between fully accepting Palestinian demands or else dismantling itself? We also reject the assertion that the goal of Zionism is not to establish a Jewish state in the land of Israel but a Jewish home, in which Jews can communally practice and express their identity. This assertion ignores thousands of years of history of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, lessons from Jewish exile about how the power of our arduous history drove home the realization that only in our own sovereign state can the Jewish people exercise our inalienable right to national self-determination. We do not deny the Palestinian goal of self-determination, yet we strongly reject the notion that failing to achieve the latter denies _our_ right to self-determination. We are not here to suggest that Israel is faultless or has committed no mistakes in its relations with the Palestinians. Far from it; Israel is an imperfect democracy (though we have yet to encounter a perfect one). One of us served as head of the opposition in Israel’s parliament and openly criticized its faults in the free discourse characterizing our society. But to view Israel solely through the broken glass of an unresolved conflict, and to take its faults to the point of delegitimizing the state, denies Israel’s unique qualities and achievements in a rough neighborhood, as well as the fact that the existence of Israel is an insurance policy for Jews around the world facing anti-Semitism. If there is a lesson from millennia of Jewish history, it is to take the long, patient view and avoid forcing a hurried-up artificial endgame. Such an endgame will create not the utopia that its proponents envision, but rather a horrific dystopia. The Israel-UAE deal should put to rest such flawed paradigms. We believe that Israel must constantly pursue peace, if through incremental advances, while safeguarding its vital security interests and drawing on the changing winds in the region to keep open the window for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. _Isaac Herzog is Chairman of the Executive at The Jewish Agency for Israel and former leader of the Israeli opposition. Brig. Gen. (ret.) Michael Herzog is a senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Jewish People Policy Institute and a veteran Israeli peace negotiator._](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/970x/center/images/cropped/gettyimages-1228068872-1597934472.jpg)
Opinion The Israel-UAE deal proves the one-state solution is delusion
The historic breakthrough towards normalizing Israeli-Emirati relations demonstrates a sea change in the Arab world’s outlook on Israel. In a region plagued by failed or failing states, wars and radicalism, Israel is increasingly perceived as a beacon of stability. It also demonstrates that offering the Middle East a brighter future can no longer wait for…
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Opinion Trump’s accidental gift to Biden: the conditions for peace in the Middle East
Think about it: If it hadn’t been for the ill conceived idea of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex approximately 30% of the West Bank, the United Arab Emirates would most likely not have come with an offer for normalization in return for giving up the annexation — an offer Netanyahu could not afford to…
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Opinion CAIR is demanding the NBA stop supporting China’s Muslim genocide. Join them.
If you watch the video footage of blindfolded Uighurs – members of a Muslim minority based in Xinjiang, China – being loaded onto trains for a mass population transfer, you’ll find it hard not to recall similar persecution that has taken place across history, from the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims during the war in…
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Opinion Is this the end of the Palestinian cause?
The Israeli-Emirati deal establishing formal diplomatic relations is merely the latest blow dealt to the Palestinian people. The Palestinians are facing an unprecedented confluence of deleterious international, regional and domestic developments that make their dream of an independent Palestinian state increasingly remote. The normalization announcement was met with dismay by Palestinians, who rejected the Emirati…
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Opinion Trump is right: We Jews hate him, despite what he’s done in Israel
President Trump is the master of saying the quiet part out loud, of speaking his mind about the parts of politics that other politicians know they’re supposed to keep quiet about. And yesterday, he said the quiet part out loud more perhaps more blatantly than ever before. At a campaign rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on…
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Opinion Partisanship is tearing the Orthodox community apart
Recently, a handful of concerned Orthodox Jews, myself among them, wrote an open letter to the larger Orthodox community. It was titled “Sinai, Not Washington,” and its message was simple: “The unhealthy intertwining of Torah values and politics brings disrepute to Torah and harm to Torah Jews.” We had begun to witness some of the…
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Opinion What Disney can teach us about Israel: Our kids are ready for flawed heroes.
Do the following scenarios describe a Disney movie or the latest headline about Israel? The forcible separation of a baby from its mother, villagers persecuting a feared outsider, and factions competing in a deadly battle to control the land. Spoiler alert: it’s both. Dumbo, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King tackle these tricky…
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