In the Forward’s opinion section, you’ll find analysis and essays from diverse corners of the Jewish world.
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Opinion
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Opinion
Why I Wrote That Palestinian Terror Is Justified
The writer, a former columnist at the Jerusalem Post, was fired from his job on August 29 for a blog post entitled “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” which he published on his personal website, Israel Reconsidered. Click here for excerpts from the blog post that got Derfner fired. Why did I do it?…
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Opinion Larry Derfner’s Offending Blog Posts
We’ve now posted a piece by Larry Derfner, who was fired earlier this week from the Jerusalem Post, where he had been a longtime left-leaning columnist. He makes reference to his initial blog post (dated August 21 and now removed from his website, Israel Reconsidered) that lost him his job. With his permission we have…
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Opinion To Get on Winning Path, Obama Should Act Like Democrat
Some time after Labor Day (ironically) President Obama plans to deliver a major speech on jobs. Nobody knows what he’ll say — not even the president himself, Washington pundits say — but that hasn’t stopped critics from attacking him. The left is accusing him of planning halfway measures. The right attacks him for pandering to…
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Opinion Remember Who We Are
When Amy Waldman was writing her engrossing new novel, “The Submission,” premised on a Muslim winning the competition to design a memorial at the World Trade Center site, she wondered if her depiction of the uproar and violence by opponents of the design would ring true. That was before plans to build an Islamic cultural…
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Opinion Hardliner and Tent City Leader Tell Tale of Two Israels
There is a man in Israel of whom you most likely have never heard, though he is among the noisiest people in the country. His name is Danny Danon. He’s 40 years old, has been in the Knesset for all of two years, yet serves as deputy speaker and chair of its Committee for Immigration,…
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Opinion Israel, Egypt and the Chill in the Arab Spring Air
With political and social upheaval sweeping the Middle East, Israel is threatened by a tsunami of hand-wringing, angst-ridden warnings of impending doom. New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner summed up the situation in this news analysis over the weekend. Here is Reuters’ Crispian Balmer on the issues a week earlier, and here’s Haaretz’s…
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Opinion Israel’s Image Won’t Improve Without Policy Changes
The thousands of scantily clothed bikers, skateboarders, walkers, hawkers, gawkers and performers were simply taking advantage of another breezy, crystal clear Southern California day. They had fought their way valiantly through relentless freeway traffic to participate in the year-round weekend ritual of parading down Los Angeles’ bohemian thoroughfare, the Venice Beach boardwalk. This was not…
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Opinion The Ingatherers
The United States and Israel were born to ingather — the U.S. as the proverbial nation of immigrants, though not all its early settlers came here voluntarily; the modern state of Israel, as the haven and magnet for dispersed Jews everywhere. That is the ideal, anyhow. The reality of who is allowed to enter and…
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Opinion Makovsky on Egypt and Restarting the Peace Process
The website of Foreign Affairs magazine has a very useful interview with David Makovsky, fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, former Jerusalem Post editor, former Haaretz diplomatic correspondent and one of the smartest Middle East watchers in Washington, on the various uncertainties Israel faces right now. He notes that Israel and Egypt…
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Opinion Is It So Strange That Obama Has Yet To Visit Israel?
This question has been haunting President Obama ever since he took office: When will he visit Israel? Israelis wanted to see Obama come over right after his June 2009 visit to Egypt in which he gave his famous Cairo speech to the Muslim world. But Obama passed on the opportunity. Since then, the issue has…
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Letters Not the First Case
Your article (“Line Between Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic Protests Splits AJC,” Aug. 16) inaccurately stated that the 2009 complaint alleging a hostile environment at UC Santa Cruz was the first case of anti-Semitism that the U.S. Department of Education ever agreed to investigate under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In fact, the first case…
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