Opinion

• Opinion

  Diva of the District

  Mindy Meyer is a 22-year-old Orthodox law student who went to Prospect Park Yeshiva in Brooklyn, wears knee-length skirts — and is running for New York state Senate. Her website, pink and flashy, incorporates glitter and leopard print. Campaign slogan? “I’m Senator and I know it.” “I’m trying to appeal to the younger population,” explains…

  By Simi Lampert

  2 min read
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  Opinion

  Considering Evil in Age of Banality

  By the time we read Anna Breslaw’s assertion in a recent article in Tablet magazine that “there is no ‘banality’ of evil” we have already suffered paragraphs of banal prose about evil. The author — a grandchild of Holocaust survivors — led a recent story about a television program by declaring that Shoah survivors are…

  By David Paul Kuhn Jul 23, 2012 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  ‘No Occupation’ Report Negates Israel’s Legitimacy

  Considerable attention has been focused these last several weeks on the report of Israel’s Levy Commission. No great surprise: The three-person commission, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to render an advisory opinion regarding Jewish settlement in the West Bank, determined that there is no barrier to such settlement and, indeed, that the legality of…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 23, 2012 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz Class assignment: Get to know your murdered Jewish neighbors

  

• Rob Eshman Liberal Zionists are under attack. A new book proves their work has never been more important

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s most dangerous war is with itself

  

• Emily Tamkin American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt

  

• Jay Michaelson Epstein and Iran are an antisemitism mega-crisis. Here’s what Jewish organizations should do about it. 

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Mind the (Gender) Gap

  Where are the women? It?s a question the Forward has asked repeatedly for several years now, as we?ve documented the paucity of women leaders in Jewish communal life and sought to ignite a community conversation about how to better include half the population. It seems that the issue is not ours alone ? the British…

  Jul 23, 2012 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Talking Iran, Palestine With Top Hawk Uzi Arad

  In my most recent weekly column I quoted at some length from Uzi Arad, professor of strategic affairs at Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center, who served until a year ago as chairman of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s National Security Council. Arad is one of Israel’s most influential strategic thinkers, a former Mossad director of research, founder of…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 22, 2012 | 6 min read
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  Opinion

  Syria Bloodshed Could Lead to Break-Up

  The fighting in Syria, now officially designated by the Red Cross as a “civil war,” could end up differently than most people expect, with dangerous consequences. Survival of the Assad regime is increasingly in doubt as rebels close in on Damascus and senior officers either defect or are assassinated. On the other hand, out-and-out victory…

  By Yossi Alpher Jul 20, 2012 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Rabbi Elyashiv’s Legacy of Women’s Pain

  Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the 102-year-old Lithuanian religious figure who died this week, is being hailed in some circles as the “greatest leader of his generation”. He may have been great to some men, but for women, his ideas and rulings were often the cause of enormous pain. For example, he was a vigorous adherent…

  By Elana Maryles Sztokman Jul 20, 2012 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Death of a Soviet Jewry Activist

  Last Friday, June 13, Joe Smukler died. For anyone involved with the Soviet Jewry movement — and certainly for the refuseniks who spent years struggling to get out of the Soviet Union — the Smukler name was synonymous with the kind of dogged, unrelenting, year-in-year-out activism that defined the cause. Joe and his wife, Connie,…

  By Gal Beckerman Jul 19, 2012 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Red Baiting in 2012? Bring it on!

  The Daily Caller has a scoop today right out of the 1950s. Tucker Carlson’s right-leaning news website reported that an Obama nominee to a relatively obscure federal post sent her kids to a leftist Jewish summer camp. As the Daily Caller notes, Kinderland is a “a politically left-wing Jewish summer camp with Communist roots.” The…

  By Josh Nathan-Kazis Jul 19, 2012 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Report From the Two-State Frontlines

  UPDATE, 12:38 PM The session ended with summaries by the three panelists of where they see things heading. Aaron David Miller: In five years the Israelis will have a state but the Palestinians & Arabs will not let them enjoy it. If there is a will to move forward do five things: 1) Keep the…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 19, 2012 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Israel Can’t Ignore the World’s Opinion

  A friend wrote in last week to dispute my critique of Israeli judge Edmond Levy’s settlements report. Levy claimed the West Bank isn’t “occupied” under international law, and therefore settlements aren’t illegal. I wrote that while his interpretation squares with the language of the relevant treaties, not one nation in the world accepts it, so…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 19, 2012 | 4 min read