Opinion

• Opinion

  For Israel, There’s Only One End Game

  The “two state solution” to the Israel/Palestine conflict has become the glamourless default position of most of those who think about the conflict. It has achieved that lumpy status despite the flaws in its logic, the problematics of its implementation, the dangers that inhere in it and the determined hostility to it from some on…

  By Leonard Fein

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Facing Alzheimer’s

  Have you confronted Alzheimer’s disease in person? Then you know it’s not simply about someone who misplaces the car keys or cannot remember the name of the movie seen last week. The loss of short-term memory is frustrating, and sometimes frightening, but Alzheimer’s is so much more. It’s the man who wanders away from home,…

  Aug 11, 2010 | 3 min read
• Letters

  August 20, 2010

  The American Jewish Congress and Us As a former executive director of the American Jewish Congress (1971-1978), I was saddened by the news that it has suspended its operations. Jerome Chanes’s July 23 essay on the unique contributions of the AJCongress was a moving tribute to the many innovative actions that are part of the…

  Aug 11, 2010 | 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 The challah that changed everything: Tracing Jewish baking back to Poland

  

• Nora Berman The world is outraged by a reporter’s death in Gaza. It’s part of a much bigger problem.

  

• Dan Perry Netanyahu’s new Gaza plan is a disaster. But it contains a tiny kernel of wisdom

  

• Emily Tamkin Entering motherhood — and an obsession with the works of an Italian Jewish literary hero

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  Citizens at Birth

  In the United States, the debate is over the 14th Amendment. In Israel, it’s centered on a government decision to deport the children of migrant workers. The core issue is the same: Should birth confer citizenship? And who gets to decide? The first question ought not to be difficult to answer, for the right to…

  Aug 11, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Remembering Tony Judt, Heartsick Lover of Zion

  If you’ve been following the news lately, you’re probably aware of the death August 6 of Tony Judt, the British-born historian of modern Europe. You’ll surely have noticed the cascades of tribute to “one of the world’s most prominent public intellectuals” (Toronto Globe and Mail), “a historian of the first order” (Time magazine), “widely regarded…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 11, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Why Social Security Isn’t Broke, Why We Think It Is and Where the Money Went

  Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik has an essential piece today debunking what he calls “The Myth of the Social Security system’s financial shortfall.” It’s based on the newly-released 2010 report of the Social Security Trustees. In fact, he argues, Social Security is doing fine, sort of. If there’s a problem, it’s the fact…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 8, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Why the Lebanese Border Is Heating Up. Hint: It’s Not About Israel

  Progressive Zionists rightly insist on the right to declare one’s love for Israel and still point out when Israel is in the wrong and the other side has a legitimate case. The trouble is that one neglects to take note from time to time (to time to time to time, actually) when Israel is in…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 7, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Tale of Two Citizens

  Now and then, there’s a moment when everything comes together, when all the sturm und drang that so often characterizes Israel’s saga recedes, the land is girdled by rainbows, it streets are filled with song and marshmallows. So it must have been when 29-year-old Hillary Rubin, who had made aliyah to Israel (from Detroit) in…

  By Leonard Fein Aug 4, 2010 | 4 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Don’t Take Hamas’s Goals Out of the Equation

  Why do the debates over the morality of Israel’s responses to Hamas never seem to produce a consensus? A debate broke out last year after Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and another after the publication of the Goldstone Report. Recently we have found ourselves in the midst of yet another debate in the wake of…

  By Michelle Sieff Aug 4, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Seizing a Moment of Promise for Mideast Peace

  Things are starting to look up on the Middle East peace front. From the very positive White House meeting in July, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to take to “concrete steps” to revive the peace process, to the Arab League’s recent green light for direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, we’re finally seeing some…

  By Uri Savir Aug 4, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  A Wounded People vs. Oliver Stone

  Abba Eban once told me a story about a conversation he’d had years before with a British friend. It happened in 1970, shortly after the Six Day War. The friend complained that Israel was acting unnecessarily defensive and inflexible for a country that had just won a major victory. “You must understand, we’re a wounded…

  By J.J. Goldberg Aug 4, 2010 | 4 min read