Opinion

• Opinion

  Peace Can’t Be Provisional

  Israel needs to achieve an end to its conflict with the Palestinians. Recent developments in the region make this goal all the more urgent. Yet instead of working to achieve a permanent-status agreement, ending all claims by the two parties, we are increasingly hearing talk about pushing for an interim agreement based on provisional borders….

  By Ephraim Sneh

  3 min read
• Opinion

  The ‘A-Word’ in Hebron

  You’ve probably read about the situation in the West Bank city of Hebron, where some 800 Jewish settlers live in the midst of 170,000 Palestinians. But being there is something else. Being there can make you sick to your stomach; being there you can’t help thinking of the “A-word.” A few weeks ago, I spent…

  By Letty Cottin Pogrebin Mar 23, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Sarah Palin’s Geography Lesson: Bethlehem Is Where? Oh, Whoops.

  Sarah Palin has been raising eyebrows in Israel since she set out Monday morning, on her second day in Israel to visit the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem. According to several news reports, which appear to trace back to this one in the London Telegraph, her car headed south from Jerusalem but stopped just short…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 22, 2011 | 2 min read

Columnists View All

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

  

• Jay Michaelson I supported Israel’s actions in Gaza in October 2023 — not anymore

  

• Rob Eshman How anti-Israel rhetoric led to the killing of 2 in Washington, DC

  

• Nora Berman How the Oct. 7 aftermath splintered the New York Dyke March

  

• Dan Perry It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump

  

• Emily Tamkin Even if the Capital Jewish Museum shooter ‘did it for Gaza,’ his actions were antisemitic

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Learning From Itamar

  Like many others who have been watching the story, my immediate reactions to the grotesque murders in Itamar jumped from shock, to horror, to profound sorrow. Again, like many, I scrutinized the gory details repeatedly, read accounts of the funeral and the eulogies of the family members, and even lay in bed at night forced…

  By Zev Farber Mar 18, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Shocked, Shocked: Israeli Web Freedom Group Cries Foul As Police Block Gaming Sites

  The Israel Internet Association warns in a court filing, reported on News 1 (Hebrew only) ,that freedom of expression in Israel will be “mortally wounded” if the police are allowed to go ahead with an order blocking access to eight Internet gambling sites. The Internet Association’s lawyer, Web freedom specialist Haim Rabia, presented his arguments…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 18, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Barak Attacks Bibi: Time To Offer Genuine Negotiations Before ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’ Hits

  Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, warned this week that the government he helps to lead is leading the country to disaster. Speaking to the Institute for National Security Studies Tel Aviv on Sunday March 13, he said that the country faces a “diplomatic tsunami that the majority of the country is unaware of.” He sounds…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 18, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Reckoning Wrongly in a Massacre’s Wake

  “A proper revenge for the blood of a little child/Satan has not yet devised.” So wrote the revered Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik in his searing poem “On the Slaughter” in April 1903, a few days after the bloody Kishinev pogrom. The two-day rampage by townspeople in the czarist regional capital had left the Jewish…

  By J.J. Goldberg Mar 16, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Fogel Photographs

  Two images of the Fogel family are circulating after five of them were brutally murdered March 11 while sleeping in their home in the Israeli settlement of Itamar. The first is a montage of warm, sweet faces: Udi and Ruth, the parents, he with a full, neatly trimmed beard, she with a scarf covering her…

  Mar 16, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  The Triangle Legacy

  A century later, why does a fire in a garment factory resonate so deeply? The deadly inferno at the Triangle Waist Company on March 25, 1911, is being commemorated in hundreds of different events, coast to coast, in word, song, poetry and deed, because it represents many of the touchstones of the American experience. It…

  Mar 16, 2011 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Awards and Accolades

  It’s awards season in the journalism world, and I’m pleased to report that the Forward has already brought home a few. At its annual dinner March 10, the Community Media Alliance in New York gave two of its Ippies Awards to Josh Nathan-Kazis for writing about labor and education, and one to Nadja Spiegelman for…

  By Jane Eisner Mar 16, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Letters

  Stand With Workers

  I am a Jewish Wisconsinite, a member of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Madison, a public employee and a union member. I have been deeply disappointed that Wisconsin’s Jewish federations are not standing with me as I struggle to preserve (and now restore) my rights (“In Madison, Only Some Jewish Voices…

  Mar 16, 2011 | 2 min read