Opinion

• Opinion

  On Iran, a Win-Win

  The conventional wisdom is that the latest meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even if more cordial and productive than their eight prior exchanges, highlighted the stark differences between the two leaders as their nations face the threat of a nuclear Iran. And this gulf, so some urge us to believe,…

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  The RA and the Missing Women

  UPDATED BELOW It’s International Women’s Day, a good excuse to return to my “Where Are the Women?” campaign. You might recall an editorial documenting and lamenting the absence of women in American Jewish public life, published in January. Since then, I’ve heard from a number of women with examples of their own — times when…

  By Jane Eisner Mar 8, 2012 | 3 min read
• Letters

  More Than an ‘Urge’

  Avi Shafran’s opinion piece, “Orthodoxy and Homosexuality” (February 24), obscures the relevant facts. He sets up a straw man by disingenuously asserting that we who disagree with him believe “that any human urge is inherently legitimate.” Nonsense. We abhor murder and non-consensual sex, for example. Further, his argument that “there is no incontrovertible evidence of…

  Mar 8, 2012 | < 1 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 I have the answer to Jon Stewart’s toughest question about Israel

  

• Nora Berman ‘Eddington’ is full of conspiracy theories but it’s not about Jews. Or is it?

  

• Dan Perry A US official just made history in the West Bank — did he imperil prospects for peace?

  

• Emily Tamkin Is starvation in Gaza really Israel’s fault? The facts are clear

  

The Latest

• Letters

  Perfidy

  The revelation of pederasty within and its cover-up by the ultra-Orthodox community in Australia (“Child Sex-Abuse Scandal in Australia’s Jewish Community Spills Into U.S.,” February 24), is shocking but not surprising. Similar episodes have been well documented in Brooklyn and New Jersey. They fit a pattern: sanctimonious retreats to arcane rabbinic law and ratiocination as…

  Mar 8, 2012 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  Not Surprised

  Lara Friedman is taken aback that her desire for peace found no match at the Arab League’s Conference on Jerusalem, manifest by rejection of any Jewish claim to that city (“Jerusalem Isn’t Just for Arabs, Either,” March 9). Israel’s conflict with the Arabs has never been about Jerusalem. Since the United Nations approved partition in…

  Mar 8, 2012 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Wanna Be an Ambassador? Sign a Check

  So you want to be a U.S. ambassador? Meet kings at fancy parties? Carry a black diplomatic passport? Short of spending a career in the Foreign Service, your best shot at an ambassadorship has always been to be a major fundraiser, known as a bundler, on a successful presidential campaign. That could change this year….

  By Josh Nathan-Kazis Mar 8, 2012 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel-Lover Is Branded as Hater

  In February 1969, New York’s weekly Village Voice published a scorching attack by an upstate college student on “self-abnegating Jewish leftists” who defended black militants and the Viet Cong but not the cause of Israel. “Moral cowards,” he called them, “trapped by your Long Island split-level childhood,” rejecting “the one element that gave you your…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 8, 2012 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  If it Quacks Like a Duck…

  Bibi was really just asking for it, wasn’t he? In the esteemed prime minister of Israel’s speech in front of AIPAC, he decided on an unfortunate (not to mention tired) analogy for explaining his surety about Iran’s nuclear intentions. A duck. A nuclear duck. You’ll see what I mean when you watch the video below….

  By Gal Beckerman Mar 7, 2012 | < 1 min read
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  Opinion

  Constitutional Dilemma on Birth Control

  Invoking George Washington’s famous letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, one of the foremost Orthodox rabbis of his generation, told a congressional committee on February 16 that requiring health insurance plans to cover contraception threatened “the liberties of conscience” of fellow Americans and “redefined by…

  By Jonathan D. Sarna Mar 7, 2012 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Can You Still Say Panetta is Undermining Israel?

  In addition to Mitt Romney’s remarks at AIPAC yesterday, arguing that his approach to Iran would be a radical break from Obama’s (though nothing he said indicated how it would be different), one of his high-profile foreign policy advisers, Dan Senor, also had a well-placed op-ed in the Wall Street Journal making similar points but…

  By Gal Beckerman Mar 6, 2012 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Tzipi Livni on American Politics

  On the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Obama, Israel’s opposition leader was on the phone. Tzipi Livni sounded weary. Never mind the geopolitical debate about if and when Israel or the United States should take military action against Iran, Livni has a more immediate preoccupation: Her Kadima party’s March…

  By Jane Eisner Mar 6, 2012 | < 1 min read