Opinion

• Opinion

  All Quiet on the Israel-Gaza Front? All the More Reason To Act Fast

  Israel celebrates its independence the day after it mourns the citizens killed in its conflicts. The festivities are a welcome liberation from the grief those deaths caused. This pattern is built into the Israeli conception of the wars, too: Once the violence ends, it’s time to celebrate, not focus on the causes of the violence….

  By Nathan Hersh

  4 min read
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  Opinion

  What Do Arab Youth Really Want? The Answer May Surprise You (and Donald Trump)

  A new survey of young people’s attitudes in 16 Arab countries has just been released, and it offers two significant and related insights about them and us: There is a growing sentiment in favor of religious moderation, support for gender equity and human rights, and even admiration for the United States — almost to the…

  By Jane Eisner May 16, 2016 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Watch How New York Reacts to This Jewish-Muslim Couple Experiment

  (JTA) — What happens when a conspicuously Jewish-Muslim couple walks hand-in-hand through the streets of New York City? Three YouTube personalities set out to answer that question. Karim Metwaly teamed up with Alaaldeen Shehadeh and Moe Zahrieh for a video that has garnered nearly 1.3 million views since being posted last week. Last month, Shehadeh and…

  By Gabe Friedman May 15, 2016 | 2 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

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  Opinion

  Why Is the Left Silent About Gaza Tunnels?

  The recent discovery of yet another Hamas tunnel from Gaza into Israel elicited shock and condemnation throughout the Jewish world. Not. Actually, though widely reported in Israel, and sporadically here in the United States, you could hear a pin drop in much of the progressive world, especially among those organizations pressing Israel to pursue peace…

  By Jay Michaelson May 13, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  What That Ben Rhodes Profile Really Tells Us About the Iran Deal

  It’s hard to know whose face was more red — White House foreign policy wunderkind Ben Rhodes or Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine — in the days following publication of the magazine’s embarrassingly frank May 8 profile of Rhodes. Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, is…

  By J.J. Goldberg May 12, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Finally, a Ceremony That Lets Me Celebrate Israel While Mourning the Nakba

  This time of year is always hard for me. In Israel, we move quickly from Passover to Holocaust Memorial Day; a week later, we mark the Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror; a day later we celebrate Independence Day. We go from attending solemn ceremonies as the sirens blare to attending joyful…

  By Eetta Prince-Gibson May 11, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Meet the French Jews Who Love Marine Le Pen and Her Far Right Party

  Samuel Johnson’s riff on female preachers and walking dogs — “It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all” — comes to mind with the news from France of the creation of the UPFJ, a bland acronym that stands for the Union des Patriotes Francais Juifs, or the Union…

  By Robert Zaretsky May 10, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  68 Reasons To Respect, If Not Love, Israel On Its 68th Birthday

  This week, as Israel celebrates the 68th anniversary of its hard-won independence, it’s worth celebrating the unlikely success story of this embattled little country, amid all its imperfections. Like other countries, Israel is a work in progress. Blemishes abound and Israelis are the first to criticize and question their own shortcomings: political corruption, a dysfunctional…

  By Robert Sarner May 9, 2016 | 7 min read
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  Opinion

  These Rare Texts Will Remind You What Israel Once Aspired To Be

  Israeli democracy is under threat. Incitement against human rights organizations proceeds with little trace of official censure; cabinet ministers aim to impose new ideological litmus tests in the realm of education and culture; government-sponsored bills place Jews on a higher plane than other citizens, and the State’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi declares that “Israel is first…

  By Chaim Seidler-Feller and David N. Myers May 9, 2016 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Is New London Mayor Sadiq Khan Good for the Jews?

  London has elected its first Muslim mayor, Labour MP Sadiq Khan. The inevitable questions have followed: Is Khan a front for Muslim extremists or a poster boy for enlightened secular pluralism? Is he “good for the Jews”? Fears that Khan is a closet jihadi appear groundless. Attempts by Zac Goldsmith (the Tory who lost to…

  By Matthew Zachary Gindin May 9, 2016 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Why If Not Now Is Right To Snub Jewish Establishment

  As a small but growing anti-occupation group, If Not Now has received much recent publicity. First, one of its founders, Simone Zimmerman, was hired by Bernie Sanders’s campaign as director of Jewish outreach before being abruptly fired for an earlier Facebook post about Benjamin Netanyahu. Then came widespread coverage around the group’s Passover “liberation seders”…

  By Mira Sucharov May 9, 2016 | 3 min read