Opinion

• Opinion

  BDS Is Not the Answer

  As it transpired, the brouhaha surrounding Brooklyn College’s BDS event was a good deal of hullabaloo over not a lot. Roughly 300 people turned up to listen to Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti speak about the need to boycott and divest from Israel, while outside the hall 150 protested either in favour of or against…

  By Liam Hoare

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  Is BDS Hate Speech?

  When the national director of the Anti-Defamation League takes out a large advertisement in the print edition of The New York Times, you kind of have to take notice. Given the cost of such an ad (surely more than one in the Forward!), the February 7 statement by Abraham Foxman signals that his organization believes…

  Feb 14, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Deserving a Vote

  They deserve a vote. With that simple exhortation, President Obama cleverly married two causes that were certainly the emotional high points of his recent State of the Union address. In introducing his idea for a nonpartisan commission to “improve the voting experience in America,” he cited the hours-long wait some citizens endured last November just…

  Feb 13, 2013 | < 1 min read

Columnists View All

• Jodi Rudoren This is my last column as editor of the Forward

  

• Jay Michaelson Mamdani’s victory is an opportunity for Jews to relearn the art of disagreement

  

• Rob Eshman Want to understand what’s wrong with the ‘pro-Palestine’ movement? This Palestinian can help.

  

• Nora Berman Did Netanyahu coerce Trump into attacking Iran? No — but he tried with Obama

  

• Dan Perry Trump wants to control the Israeli judiciary. Uh, good luck

  

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

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Dedicating SOTU Moment to Slain Dad

  As far as Sami Rahamim knows, the seating at the State of the Union address is random. He told the Forward that there “were couples invited who were separated.” His seat, as the guest of his congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), was “up in the gallery, facing the President on the left side.” The man…

  By Beth Kissileff Feb 13, 2013 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Jonah Lehrer’s $20K Mea Culpa

  ‘I’m sorry’ never felt so good — nor paid so handsomely. Jonah Lehrer, the disgraced New Yorker writer who quit his job in July after it was discovered he was recycling his own work, for blog posts, acknowledged his plagiarism and fabrications at a February 12 talk in Miami. It wasn’t just any talk. It…

  By Anne Cohen Feb 13, 2013 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Why Can’t Jewish Settlements Remain in a Palestinian State?

  “There’s no greater cliché,” I wrote in this column a month ago, “than the one that keeps insisting that the settlements are an obstacle to peace. They may have been that once, when they were few and sparsely populated enough to be removed. Now that they’ve long passed that point, any peace agreement will have…

  By Hillel Halkin Feb 13, 2013 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Pro-Gun Backlash to Newtown Could Help Elect Republicans

  Two devastating tragedies struck the American northeast last fall with a deadly force that riveted the nation’s collective imagination, battered our conscience and rewrote our national agenda. One was the massive destruction of Superstorm Sandy. The other was the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Sandy and Sandy Hook. They came at a pivotal…

  By J.J. Goldberg Feb 13, 2013 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  SOTU: Big Government, Small Footprint

  Five thoughts on President Obama’s State of the Union address: • Obama called for “smarter government” but, as many noted, he also called for a bigger government – or, more precisely, a federal government with bigger ambitions to educate, protect and defend. (More on this in a moment.) But that expansive vision did not translate…

  By Jane Eisner Feb 13, 2013 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  I Am Jewish

  God has burdened human beings with the task of being the carriers of God’s vision for human history. The law and the commandments express not only God’s legislative authority but also, and above all, God’s need for human beings.” Despite the varieties of lifestyles and outlooks among Jews today, there are certain organizing principles that…

  By David Hartman Feb 12, 2013 | 6 min read
• Opinion

  Jewiest Dog in Show

  I have spent my entire life avoiding dogs. They make me sneeze, wheeze and itch, and please, don’t start with the hypoallergenic dog argument; I’m indiscriminately allergic to all of them. Also, when I was five years old, the dog next door — a gigantic, snarling, barking, brown fuzzy beast — chased me halfway around…

  By Abigail Jones Feb 12, 2013 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  4 Jewish Things in the SOTU

  It will be President Obama’s first State of the Union address in his second term and White House leakers are already promising an aggressive speech, designed to push Republicans ahead of the upcoming battle over budget sequestration cuts. It will also be a chance for Obama to outline a vision for his second term and…

  By Nathan Guttman Feb 12, 2013 | 3 min read