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
How High Does The Body Count Have To Get Before Congress Shuts Down 8chan?
2019 will be remembered as a year of mass shooters targeting minorities. This year alone, Muslims, Jews, and Latinos were targeted by murderers in El Paso, Poway, and Christchurch, New Zealand. Though they targeted different groups in different places, these three men had something in common: 8chan. At its core, 8chan, an image-based message-board, is…
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Opinion Don’t Believe The Haters. Israeli Democracy Is Still Robust.
The tempest over Israel’s travel ban on two congresswomen and the year-long roller coaster of back-to-back elections has unleashed an avalanche of misplaced condemnations and hand-wringing about the health of the country’s democracy. Yet democratic life in Israel remains remarkably strong and resilient. For starters, democratic and liberal norms continue to predominate. Voter turnout, contestation,…
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Opinion This Elul, It’s Time To Do Teshuva For American Racism
When I arrived at the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana earlier this summer, a staff member handed me a card with a photo of a statue of a young girl wearing a yellow dress. A quote on the back of the card explained that before this girl, Carlyle Stewart, was freed at the age of seven,…
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Opinion It’s Time To Admit It: The U.S. And Israel No Longer Have Shared Values
I’ve always believed that the friendship between Israel and the United States is based on deep, shared values between their respective peoples. It’s a thought that has offered me some comfort as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump seem so committed to proving me wrong. The two seem to labor tirelessly to make…
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Opinion We Muslims Must Fight Anti-Semitism In Our Own Communities
Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise across the country. Last week alone, three Orthodox Jews were attacked in Brooklyn in vicious hate crimes, just the most recent attacks in a year that saw two synagogue shootings. From spray-painted swastikas to anti-Semitic messages written in the sand on beaches to the attacks in Crown Heights to…
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Opinion Bloomberg’s False Anti-Semitism Smear Proves The Danger Of Cancel Culture
This morning, news emerged that a Trump Labor Department official had lost his job just 18 days into it, after what the reporter called “anti-Semitic Facebook posts” came to light. Leif Olson, who started at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division on Aug. 12, was accused by Bloomberg News of writing on Facebook that…
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Opinion Fighting BDS Isn’t Courageous. It’s Authoritarian.
In recent attack ads against the nonviolent, Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, politician Stav Shaffir alleged that the group and its work were just like Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. In an article and online video, she claimed the BDS movement represents “anti-progressive” politics “based on fear and isolation.” As a member of the…
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Opinion This Rosh Hashanna, Jews Must Commit To Ending Climate Change
You may have heard this one: The story is told of the melamed, the wise schoolteacher, who was walking along the back streets of Chelm one dark night when he was accosted by a masked bandit with a large pistol. “Your money or your life!” the bandit said. “Take my life,” the melamed replied. “I’m…
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Opinion A Lot More Jews Are Anti-Zionists Than You Think
Nineteen out of twenty American Jews are Zionists. At least, that’s the perception you would get if you read the breathless coverage of a recent Gallup poll about American Jewish political attitudes. The fact that the poll found that 95% of American Jews “have favorable views of Israel” was cited by a variety of commentators…
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Opinion No One Cares About Attacks Against The Orthodox Because You’ve Been Dehumanizing Us For Decades
You’ve all heard the story: A Haredi Jew violently assaulted in broad daylight somewhere in New York City. It happens so often now, with what is almost a chilling regularity, it’s virtually impossible to miss. According to the NYPD, anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed in the past year; the 145 complaints so far in 2019…
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Opinion This Labor Day, Jews Must Recommit To Workers’ Rights
The fight for working people — for labor and against income inequality — is picking up steam. Workers’ voices are being heard. Organized labor unions in the transportation sector are standing up. Teachers unions are being revitalized. Non-traditional walkouts at places like Google or Wayfair are increasingly common. Both the right and the left have…
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