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
Syria Chemical Attack Underlines Need for Israel Shift on Non-Conventional Weapons
The list includes North Korea, Syria, Angola — and Israel. Needless to say, a democracy like Israel would rather not be grouped together with a rogue’s gallery of outlaw states and authoritarian regimes. Yet that is exactly where Israel finds itself alongside the handful of nations that have not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)….
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Opinion Michael Bloomberg Popular With Jews — But His Policies? Not So Much.
The Jews of New York like Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As Josh Nathan-Kazis notes in the Forward, 64% of New York City Jewish voters think that the outgoing Bloomberg is doing an “excellent” or “good” job, compared with just 45% of registered voters overall. But their enthusiasm for the mayor did not carry over to votes…
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Opinion Victory for African Immigrants in Israel?
Will the doors of Israel’s detention centers really open, allowing illegal immigrants to walk free? According to today’s High Court ruling, this is exactly what should happen over the coming weeks. Israel’s High Court has just struck down a controversial law that allows the state to detain illegal immigrants for up to three years. Judges…
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Opinion The Yom Kippur When I Lost My Faith
It is a bit strange to write this, but the Six Day War was, for me, an extension of high school. At school we learned about the War of Independence and its many battles. Each Memorial Day, I was the one who read to the students the sad poems about the fallen soldiers. I was…
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Opinion ‘Half of Syrian Rebels’ Are Radical Islamists
Nearly half the rebels fighting in Syria are jihadists linked to Al Qaeda or hardline Islamists fighting for a strict Islamic state, according to a study that’s about to be published by IHS Jane’s, the respected British defense consultancy. Advance word of the study appears in Monday’s edition of Britain’s Daily Telegraph. The Jane’s study…
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Opinion In the Trenches, Panic and Disillusionment
The officers arriving at Gen. Albert Mendler’s headquarters in the Refidim base in the Sinai had come for a farewell party, but instead found themselves at a war briefing. It was Friday, October 5, 1973, the day before Yom Kippur. Mendler, commander of the only armored division in the Sinai, was supposed to leave on…
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Opinion Marshall Berman, Marxist Mentsch, Dies at 72
You’d notice Marshall Berman, if you saw him. Back when I commuted to the City College of New York from my parents’ apartment in the late 1960s, my father certainly did. He rushed into our apartment to excitedly report that “a hippie” was entering our next-door neighbor’s place, a colleague of Berman’s at CCNY. Berman…
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Opinion Fasting in Israel’s Heatwave
Israel is getting ready for the hottest and longest Yom Kippur for decades. Well, not actually longer than normal, but it will feel longer. Israel has long adjusted the clock to wintertime ahead of the fast, so that it finishes some time between six and seven pm, rather than between seven and eight. But following…
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Opinion When Putin Speaks
It’s hard to know exactly how to respond to Vladimir Putin’s op-ed essay in Thursday’s New York Times. On the one hand, polls show that most Americans agree with his call to avoid American military engagement in Syria. On the other hand, very few of us want to come out and agree with Putin. Apparently…
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Opinion The Dark Truth That Explains Unemployment
You may have noticed, if you follow this sort of thing, that unemployment declined in August. The jobless rate was 7.3%, according to the monthly report from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s down from 7.4% in July. For context, it peaked at 10% in October 2009, at the height of the financial meltdown,…
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Opinion This Week in Milestones: War, Peace, Deep Space
We’re in a season of anniversaries and memories, many of them exceedingly melancholy: the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that ignited the global financial crisis, September 15, 2008 (5 years ago); the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, September 11, 2001 (12 years ago); the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, 10 Tishri 1973 (40 years ago…
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Opinion Passover liberation and US liberty both summon us to remember and renew
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Culture 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
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Culture Gene Shalit, a mensch with a personality as big as his mustache, turns 100
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