Opinion

• Opinion

  Dreaming in Hebrew, Facing Deportation

  When I received an Oscar this past February for my short documentary, “Strangers No More,” I naively thought it would put a nail in the coffin of the idea of deporting the children of immigrant workers in Israel. The film followed a year in the life of the Bialik-Rogozin School in southern Tel Aviv, a…

  By Kirk Simon

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Goldstone’s New Tune

  The United Nations report that bears Richard Goldstone’s name stung so very deeply, felt so very wrong, because its most incendiary claim struck at the heart of Israel’s character. In asserting that Israel intentionally targeted civilians during the Gaza military operation of 2008-2009, the Goldstone Report recklessly impugned the Israel Defense Forces and, by extension,…

  Apr 6, 2011 | 2 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Op-Ed Doesn’t Close the Book on Cast Lead

  The intensity of the debate raised by Richard Goldstone’s Washington Post op-ed indicates just how much his name still symbolizes an open wound for Israeli society. Eighteen months after the publication of his commission’s report on the 2008-2009 hostilities in Gaza, Goldstone is now voicing regrets. Goldstone contends that, had he had access to information…

  By Jessica Montell Apr 5, 2011 | 3 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 Americans keep getting killed in the West Bank. Here’s how the US could fight that awful trend

  

• Nora Berman First Camp Auschwitz, now Alligator Alcatraz — why the right is obsessed with commodifying brutality

  

• Dan Perry What exactly is going on between Israel and Syria — and is the prospect of peace dead?

  

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

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Goldstone Needs To Do Teshuvah

  Judge Richard Goldstone’s recent acknowledgement that “civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel during Operation Cast Lead could be a game changer — if Goldstone continues to do the right thing. Goldstone’s reassessment of the conclusions reached in the Goldstone Report pulls the rug out from under those who are…

  By Alan M. Dershowitz Apr 4, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  N.Y. Justice System Blocks My Column for 2 Weeks

  My weekly column, “Good Fences,” will not appear for the next two weeks. Readers who are pleased that the world will be spared my flawed judgment should not leap to celebrate, however; I am participating even more directly in the flow of events by serving on Grand Jury duty. Unlike jury duty, I don’t sit…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 3, 2011 | < 1 min read
• Opinion

  Int’l Scientific Parley Mulls Slowing Warming by Blocking Sun: Giant Mirrors, Very Long Hose

  The Associated Press has a fascinating, must-read report today about an international gathering of scholars convened last month by Britain’s Royal Society to consider the last-ditch prospect of preventing global warming by developing ways of blocking out the sun. The meeting brought together 80 earth and atmospheric scientists, legal and political scholars and philosophers to…

  By J.J. Goldberg Apr 3, 2011 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  From the Civil War to Our Seders, a Song of Redemption

  At every Seder I can remember, our family has sung “Go Down Moses” (“Go down, Moses/Way down in Egypt’s land/Tell ol’ Pharaoh/Let my people go”). As a child I loved it because it was a song in English, and I did not yet know Hebrew. (Most of the fun tunes were in Hebrew.) As an…

  By Aurora Mendelsohn Apr 1, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  How Big a Tent?

  Drawing boundaries, whether for congressional districts after the decennial census, for nations (Israel/Palestine, for example) or to determine who belongs “within the tent” of Jewish life, is a complicated and often nasty business. At the moment, considerable Jewish energy is being invested on all sides of this last, the tent question. So, for example, a…

  By Leonard Fein Mar 31, 2011 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  The Pragmatic President

  “Speaker John Boehner complained that Obama ordered the U.S. military into combat in Libya without clearly defining the mission to the American people and Congress,” joked Jay Leno. “See, apparently you’re only allowed to do that when invading Iraq.” Well, inconsistency does seem to be the hallmark of governance, especially in complicated times. A waffler…

  Mar 30, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  This ‘Arab Spring,’ Only Uncertainty Blooms

  Observers are increasingly using the term “Arab spring” to describe the tsunami of revolution, revolt, state collapse and armed intervention that is sweeping the Arab world. The term implies that a better reality, a rebirth, is about to burst forth from the Arab world. Yet it is not obvious or certain that we are actually…

  By Yossi Alpher Mar 30, 2011 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Bum Rap Against Independent Minyanim

  Recent months have seen a wave of opinion pieces and statements — in these pages and elsewhere — that have been critical of independent minyanim. Minyanim are portrayed as too independent and not independent enough, and their participants are painted as both selfish ingrates who take from the community without giving anything back and energetic…

  By Ben Dreyfus Mar 30, 2011 | 3 min read