Opinion

• Opinion

  Hillary Needs To Get Her Funny On — and Al Franken as Veep Could Help!

  Donald Trump’s popularity seems unharmed by his lack of experience, integrity or policies. Even repeating the “textbook definition of a racist comment” in public in a way that his own party disavows hasn’t stopped him from reaching 85% approval ratings among Republican voters. So how does Hillary Clinton counter the smears (that Bill is a…

  By Dan Friedman

  3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Anthropologists’s Narrow Vote Against Israel Boycott Is Not the Last Word

  Ancient Athens had its way of social shunning. Citizens would write on pieces of broken pottery the names of those they wanted to banish. Enough shards, and that person would be expelled from the city. The pottery fragments were known as “Ostraka,” and the rite itself came to be known as “ostracism.” The modern counterpart…

  By Ted Gup Jun 11, 2016 | 5 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Of Course Bernie Sanders Is Grumpy, It’s His Genetic Imperative

  On Tuesday June 7, Bernie Sanders got crushed by Hillary Clinton in the California Democratic primary. Since then the pundits have been lunging at keyboards and cameras to explain why he refuses to concede the nomination race. Many focus on his personality — with the most notable attack coming in a Politico piece that describes…

  By Gordon Haber Jun 10, 2016 | 3 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

• Emily Tamkin Zohran Mamdani’s victory proves it: The ‘gotcha’ mode of fighting antisemitism has to go

  

The Latest

• 
  Opinion

  Why the Tel Aviv Terror Attack Is Different — and What Comes Next

  The cold-blooded murders of four Israelis at the popular Sarona mall in Tel Aviv on June 8 brings to 38 the number of Israelis and visitors killed in the wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks that began last September 13, according to official government figures. Another 466 have been injured. In several important respects, though, the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jun 10, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Donald Trump Is a Candidate for White Supremacists — Not the Jews

  I’ll say it plainly: The high-profile Jews supporting Donald Trump make me sick. This is not about Democratic and Republican politics; I’ve certainly never said the same thing about supporters of (any) Bush. It’s about white supremacy. Let’s take “white supremacy” out of the realm of insult. It is an ideology, after all, not simply…

  By Jay Michaelson Jun 10, 2016 | 5 min read
• 
  Opinion

  The Sickening Triumphalism of Trolls Who Are Glad ‘Tel Aviv Lefties’ Got Killed

  The images of Palestinians rejoicing after Wednesday night’s terrorist attack sicken me. It nauseates me to think about the dozens of Jerusalemite Palestinians who were cheering the gunmen at the Damascus Gate, only about a mile and a half from my home, and passing out candies in cities and towns throughout the West Bank. It…

  By Eetta Prince-Gibson Jun 9, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Bloody Terror Attack Poses Tricky Questions for Israel — Especially New Defense Chief

  The shooting on Wednesday night in the very heart of Tel Aviv, in which four people were killed and six wounded, was the first lethal attack in Israel for exactly three months. The last time that the so-called ‘stabbing intifada’ claimed a life was in March, when American citizen Taylor Force was killed in Jaffa….

  By Amos Harel (Haaretz) Jun 9, 2016 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Mah Ramsey Got Arrested

  I had an illegal abortion in 1964, and I have hardly mentioned it in the last 52 years. I might have mentioned it to my former husband. I know for sure my four adult children didn’t know because I told them one by one on the day I decided to write this piece, and asked…

  By Kathleen Peratis Jun 8, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How Hillary Clinton and the Haggadah Made Me a Feminist

  I am not ambivalent about Hillary Clinton. I have never had a problem with her “likability.” I have never had an “enthusiasm gap.” I’ve never felt that there was “just something about her.” Most “somethings” about her I happen to love. I covered the 2008 election closely — daily, hourly, minute by minute in real…

  By Rachel Sklar Jun 8, 2016 | 5 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Why Hasids May Have a Decent Legal Point About Single-Sex Swimming in Brooklyn

  The Jewish world has recently been abuzz over the latest clash between law and religion, revolving around — of all things — a public swimming pool in Brooklyn. Waves have reached beyond the community; an editorial in The New York Times provoked Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt to take up cudgels in an opinion piece for the New…

  By Michael A. Helfand Jun 8, 2016 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  How (Not) To Wield Jewish Privilege in Israel

  As Israel reels from yet another rightward lurch in its governing coalition, the question again arises: Can the first Jewish state in thousands of years be democratic and liberal while retaining its distinct religious and ethnic character? Even as staunch a defender of the Zionist enterprise as Moshe Ya’alon is uncertain of the answer. In…

  By Jane Eisner Jun 8, 2016 | 4 min read