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
Letter | No, Joe Biden does not owe Linda Sarsour an apology
On Monday, the Forward published a piece by Joel Swanson titled, “Joe Biden owes Linda Sarsour a public apology.” The piece was written in the aftermath of a statement released by Joe Biden’s campaign about Ms. Sarsour, saying that she has “no role in the Biden campaign” and that Biden “obviously condemns her views and…
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Opinion Jews – and Americans – need Biden to stand against extremism from both sides
Joe Biden is undoubtedly a lion in winter, but so much depends on his ability to roar with conviction. The Democratic nominee actually has to run two campaigns: The first is to defeat Donald Trump and save the country from an ongoing nightmare. The second is to save the left from an illiberal future. It…
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Opinion Joe Biden owes Linda Sarsour a public apology
One of the most defining characteristics of President Trump’s personality is his consistent refusal to apologize, even when he has obviously behaved wrongly. It’s something observers have pointed out about Trump ever since he launched his campaign in 2015. But Joe Biden makes a point of portraying himself as a different sort of person, someone…
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Opinion The Jewish community has a blind spot: class differences
A few months ago I interviewed a Jewish member of an interfaith couple as part of a research study conducted by Rosov Consulting. During the interview, I heard an anecdote that perfectly illustrates the way that Jewishness is implicitly classed: At an event for interfaith couples, a Jewish man met a couple in which one…
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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 A Reichstag fire is blazing in Trump’s America and we know exactly who is fanning the flames
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Yiddish נײַ בוך וועגן אַמאָליקן ניו־יאָרק איז ווי אַ סעודה פֿאַר ייִדישיסטןNew book about old New York City is like a feast for Yiddishists
דער מחבר הענעך סאַפּאָזשניק איז אַ גאָר פֿעיִקער װעגװײַזער איבער אַ פֿאַרלוירענער װעלט.
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