Opinion

• Opinion

  Max Steinberg Was Not Brainwashed

  L.A. native Max Steinberg, killed in combat during fighting with Gaza / Courtesy of Steinberg Family There have been many responses to Allison Benedikt’s indictment of Birthright in the death of Max Steinberg, an oleh and a lone soldier, the IDF’s term for new recruits whose families live outside Israel. Many have pointed out the…

  By Yareeve Zemel

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  News Quiz: What Do You Call a Jew in Alaska?

  Thinkstock Penguins, Zumba and dirty pictures. If that doesn’t scream Jewish News Quiz, what does?

  By Lenore Skenazy Jul 29, 2014 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  8 Reasons Menachem Creditor Is Wrong To Be ‘Done Apologizing’ for Israel

  We’re all exhausted by the horrors of Gaza. Whatever our political points of view, this is a trying time to care about Israel, Palestine, or the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Recently in these pages, my friend Rabbi Menachem Creditor has given eloquent voice to this frustration. He is fed up, he says…

  By Jay Michaelson Jul 29, 2014 | 6 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party

  

• Rob Eshman Gavin Newsom isn’t waffling on Israel — he’s voicing sensible ideas in an era of outrage

  

• Dan Perry The moral degradation of Israel’s far-right is even worse than you think

  

• Emily Tamkin We must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars

  

• Jay Michaelson Antisemitism is exploding on the right but the Jewish establishment is focused on the left

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Gaza War Diary: Silence, Then the Bombs Go Off

  A Palestinian carries the remains of an Israeli shell in the Gaza Strip / Getty Images Editor’s Note: Walid Abuzaid’s diary will run in two parts. This is the first installment. Thursday, June 27 I was in Cyprus when it all started. When we heard about the kidnapped teens, we were thrilled by the possibility…

  By Walid Abuzaid Jul 28, 2014 | 8 min read
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  Opinion

  When ‘Anti-Israel’ Looks Like ‘Anti-Semitism’

  Since Israel launched its military operation in Gaza, other countries are seeing an increase in anti-Semitic hate speech and attacks. In France, synagogues are being firebombed. In Belgium, coffee shops are barring Jews from entry. In Chicago, leaflets threatening the Jewish community are being discovered on parked cars. In India, Jewish sites are being threatened…

  By Sigal Samuel Jul 28, 2014 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Solitude and Quiet Will Not Cure You

  It seemed like a fairly simple task. For a just-published study, researchers asked their subjects to sit in an empty room alone for 15 minutes. The only potential distraction was a device that allowed them to self-administer electric shocks, which they were allowed to try out beforehand. One-quarter of the women and two-thirds of the…

  By Elissa Strauss Jul 28, 2014 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  The Gaza War Through Ultra-Orthodox Eyes

  An ultra-Orthodox Jew watches the bombardment of Gaza from southern Israel / Getty Images (JTA) — Most Israelis blame the war in Gaza squarely on Hamas, though there are plenty who fault the Israeli government for not pursuing peace more aggressively. In the haredi Orthodox community, however, where practically everything is ascribed to the omnipresent hand…

  By Miriam Moster Jul 27, 2014 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Conflict Has a Past — and a Future

  Some years ago, a career military person told me that when the first intifada broke out, in 1987, there had been no indication of the impending uprising. A simple traffic accident sparked rioting that spread, while the military, and indeed Israeli society, was caught by surprise. I ventured that after 20 years of holding a…

  By Dahlia Scheindlin Jul 27, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Gaza Tunnels: How They Work, What Israel Knew

  In my last post I promised to translate Alex Fishman’s Friday column in Yediot Ahronot discussing Hamas’s tunnels. Here it is. He briefly traces Israel’s growing awareness of the problem over more than a decade. He reaches much the same conclusion as Nahum Barnea: “…the fact is that everyone saw, everyone knew, everyone understood, and…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 26, 2014 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  Dani Danon Is Such a Threat to Israel Even Bibi Fired Him

  Credit where credit is due: A year ago, I wrote about Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Dani Danon, that he is Israel’s “enemy within,” perhaps the most dangerous current threat to Israel and a star of Likud, the linchpin of the governing coalition. My favorite Danon quotes: He refers to “the mistake we made in…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 26, 2014 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel’s Latest Fib: ‘Gaza Tunnels Were Surprise’

  Nahum Barnea, commonly described as Israel’s most respected political journalist, has spent much of the past two weeks with the troops in Gaza and talking to general command in Tel Aviv. His weekly column in today’s Yediot Ahronot weekend supplement, which I have translated below, happens to say some of the things I’ve been writing…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 26, 2014 | 8 min read