Opinion

• Opinion

  Nationalism got us here

  The rapid spread of COVID-19 around the world has led to the largest public health crisis in a generation. Global cases are nearing the 400,000 mark. The virus has brought the global economy to its knees, with economists increasingly in fear of a lasting depression. President Trump has consistently been a source of misinformation during…

  By Marcus Johnson

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  In the age of coronavirus, Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a death sentence

  Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on earth, has become a ghost town. #صور l من شوارع #غزة عقب قرار وزارة الصحة بإغلاق المقاهي والأسواق والأماكن العامّة كإجراء احترازي لمنع تفشّي #فيروس_كورونا في القطاع.#Gaza #COVIDー19 pic.twitter.com/D0CrvIPMQ2 — بوابة اللاجئين الفلسطينيين (@refugeesps) March 22, 2020 On Sunday, after two people tested positive for COVID-19,…

  By Muhammad Shehada Mar 24, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  I’m just so angry

  I’m angry and I can’t help but be angry about what this country faces. I’m not angry at the coronavirus that threatens to cause so much havoc it might unleash a second Great Depression. It’s just a virus, after all, that likely lurked in a bat somewhere in China until it was transferred into another…

  By Issac J. Bailey Mar 23, 2020 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson American Jews were played — now what?

  

• Rob Eshman There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Netanyahu is using coronavirus to assault Israel’s democracy

  It is understandable in a crisis such as the current pandemic that countries will declare states of emergency or impose emergency regulations. Removing red-tape, repurposing government agencies (including the military), and even restricting people’s movement are necessary to combat the rapid spread of the virus. But we should be extremely wary of the overreach of…

  By David N. Myers and Daniel Sokatch Mar 23, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel must act now to prevent a coronavirus disaster in Gaza

  Gazans used to joke that Israel’s blockade, which keeps out the world, will keep out the coronavirus — wishful thinking, it turned out; the coronavirus has finally come to Gaza. The results may be catastrophic, and Israel has a unique role in assisting current and future patients in Gaza. After 13 years of blockade imposed…

  By Mohammad Awawde and Zvi Bentwich Mar 23, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Coronavirus is no excuse to demonize Haredim

  In the endless stream of stories about the COVID-19 pandemic, an unsettling sub-plot has been the actions, or lack thereof, of various Haredi groups in the New York metropolitan area. Reports of a swarm of positive test results in Borough Park and Williamsburg have raised fears of a cluster outbreak, triggered by a small number…

  By David N. Myers Mar 23, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘We rehearse for this all the time’: Holocaust survivors face coronavirus with grit and humor

  For Cordula Hahn, a Holocaust survivor in Brooklyn, the first trigger was the lack of toilet paper. “Oh, no, will I have to go back using newspaper?” she asks, half chuckling. “That’s what we did when we were in hiding in the Netherlands, and seeing the panic over toilet paper immediately brought back that memory.”…

  By Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua Mar 20, 2020 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  Why American Jews are at greater risk for coronavirus

  More than 100 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods Borough Park and Williamsburg in what is New York City’s first cluster of novel coronavirus cases. But while the COVID-19 virus may appear to be a problem most pressing for more religious, geographically clustered groups of Jews, this pandemic is actually an existential…

  By Samuel J. Abrams Mar 20, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  I’m an Orthodox man forced by coronavirus to pray at home. Will you join me?

  Like most people with relatively normal lives, I enjoy being at home. My wife is there (at least when she’s not working), my bed is there, my chair, a well-stocked pantry, a kitchen that the missus sometimes lets me take over, a few adorable grandkids and their likewise adorable parents a few blocks away. But,…

  Mar 19, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Coronavirus’s lesson about the deep connection between the physical and spiritual

  COVID-19 is the very worst kind of news. On a warpath from Wuhan, it has inflicted enormous human suffering, savaged the global economy, and ripped apart the very fabric of daily life. COVID combines the tools of the assassin’s trade — stealth, silence, ease of movement — with the worst of the terrorist’s capacity to…

  By Ari Hoffman Mar 18, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  How not to talk about coronavirus in the Orthodox community

  Tuesday was the COVID-19 tipping point for New York’s Hasidic communities. Rumors began circulating that morning that in Boro Park, at one clinic alone, there were hundreds of new positive test results, marking an extreme jump in cases of the virus. While it later turned out that rumor was overblown, it was true that well…

  By Eli Steinberg Mar 18, 2020 | 4 min read