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
Ilhan Omar Just Came Out Against Sanctions. So Why Does She Back BDS?
Earlier this week, Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote a surprising oped in the Washington Post. In it, she broke ranks with the bipartisan coalition seeking to halt Turkey from devastating the people of Syria, and argued — ostensibly opposing but in fact in line with President Trump — that imposing sanctions on Turkey would be…
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Opinion BDS Is Waging War Against Liberal Democracy
Anti-Semitism is a non-sectarian project. Left and Right converge in their embrace of the world’s oldest hatred. It’s something American Jews are keenly aware of, as evidenced by a recently published AJC poll about anti-Semitism. The poll found that 89% of US Jews believe the anti-Semitism of the “extreme political right” represents a threat, while…
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Opinion What The AJC Poll Gets Wrong About American Jews And Zionism
On Wednesday, the American Jewish Committee released a survey of American Jews’ opinions about anti-Semitism. It’s a case study in how to obfuscate what American Jews actually believe. The AJC, like many establishment American Jewish organizations, tends to depict anti-Semitism in the United States as emanating roughly equally from the left and the right. Thus,…
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Opinion Sorry, Gantz: Israel Is Heading To A Third Election. A Conversation With Ehud Olmert
Benny Gantz has now been given the mandate to form a government, and the clock is ticking. He is pledging to form a liberal unity government and warning that the Israeli public will not forgive anyone who refuses to join and drags the country into third elections in the space of just one year. But…
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Opinion What Israel’s Past Leaders Can Teach Us About Its Current Problem
The Netanyahu era is coming to an end in Israel. Once again, Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to put together a government. Perhaps he will survive for a time in a national unity government, but even that may prove temporary if he is indicted by the Attorney General in early December. But regardless of whether…
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Opinion The Best Way To Fight Anti-Semitism? Jewish Joy
This piece is part of a series for the one year yahrzeit of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue massacre. I write in the aftermath of an attempted massacre in Halle, Germany and in anticipation of the Yahrzeit of the Tree of Life tragedy, the worst antisemitic attack to occur on American soil. But for…
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Opinion What The Bard Panel On Anti-Semitism Taught Me About My Own Jewishness
In early November of 1989, my mother and I immigrated from the Soviet Union. Three days after we left, the wall collapsed, bringing to an end the official state entity we were escaping. We left because we were Jewish. For seven months, we traveled between two worlds. HIAS monitored our progress, from the place we…
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Opinion The Jewish Prayer That Guided – And Defined – Our Coverage Of The Pittsburgh Massacre
A writer searches for the right language to mourn those slain in the Pittsburgh synagogue
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Opinion A Year Later, a Catholic Mother of Future Rabbi Reflects on Their Home: Squirrel Hill
The most solemn day in Judaism, Yom Kippur, was a grim reminder that the 11 Jews gunned down during morning prayer at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue had not had their names written in the Book of Life last year. Instead, as Jews everywhere gathered earlier this month in synagogues fortified with security, those 11…
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Opinion Letter | Why Is Everyone Lying About Bard? Every Other Account Proves Ungar-Sargon Right.
Ever since Batya Ungar-Sargon described being protested at Bard College’s recent conference on — irony alert — racism and anti-Semitism, the college and the Hannah Arendt Center which hosted the conference have been in engaged in a full-court PR effort to recast the events and impugn her integrity. In four letters to the Forward, some…
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Opinion Letter | What Will They Defend After Bard? Protesting Israel Outside A Holocaust Museum?
Why did so many on the left react so angrily to Batya Ungar-Sargon’s op-ed, in which she complained about the fact that anti-Israel activists demonstrated against Israel at a panel on anti-Semitism at Bard College? So far, the only argument I’ve read is that Ruth Wisse said something disrespectful about the Palestinians a couple of…
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