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
Jewish Anti-Zionism Does Not Deserve a Home in Hillel — at Brown or Anywhere Else
A lot has happened at Brown RISD Hillel over the past few days after a group of Jewish students planned an event that they framed as a dialogue on competing Jewish and Palestinian narratives around the 1948 War of Independence. As members of Brown Students for Israel (BSI), we don’t shrink from discussions that challenge…
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Letters Meet the Jews of Color Organizing in Partnership With JVP
To the Editor: We are three members of the Jews of Color (JOC) in solidarity with Palestine caucus organizing in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) responding to Sigal Samuel’s recent article about the JOC Convening (“Jews of Color Get Personal and Political at First-Ever National Gathering”)”). We agree with Samuel’s summary of the…
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Opinion Why We Flouted Hillel Rules To Hold Nakba Event at Brown University
On May 11, more than 70 students crowded into the Hillel meeting room at Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design for a screening of three short films produced by the Israeli NGO Zochrot, and for a discussion about the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion), the politicization of memory, and the…
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Opinion The White House Campaign of Lies That Wrecked the Middle East — No, It Wasn’t Ben Rhodes
America’s political polarization affects us all in such strange and profound ways that sometimes we don’t even know it’s there. We’re all familiar with those debates that never go anywhere because the two sides are arguing from different sets of facts. Climate change, for example. Sometimes, though, we’re living in solitudes so utterly separate that…
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Opinion Why Jews Need To Recognize the Armenian Genocide Once and for All
Imagine that you’re walking in Manhattan a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day and see five airplanes skywriting in massive letters that the Holocaust was a hoax. How would you feel? Imagine that you later find out that a full-page advertisement had run the same day in the Washington Post explaining that although some Jews…
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Opinion Let Israelis and Palestinians Be Enemies
Despite what many people may believe, humanization between individuals does not resolve conflict between groups. And yet against all the hard evidence, most conflict management or simulation exercises still put this forward as their primary objective. The Forward recently ran two articles about conflict negotiation simulations dealing with the Israel/Palestine dispute. Both mention the challenges…
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Opinion Donald Trump’s Rise Shows How Much Pro-Israel Politics Has Changed in 5 Years
Five years ago this Friday, President Obama threw Israel “under the bus.” At least, that’s how Mitt Romney, who formally announced his presidential run just a few weeks later, described Obama’s call for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines. Romney’s indignation was shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and virtually every member…
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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….
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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…
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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…
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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…
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