Opinion

• Letters

  July 16, 2010

  Exchange Promotes Understanding Anita Epstein’s June 9 article “Why I Cannot Forgive Germany” (online-exclusive) relates a very tragic past. She feels the way she feels and, as far as I am concerned, that closes the book on her personal experience during the Holocaust. One cannot argue nor should one even comment on it. It is…

  3 min read
• Opinion

  Next Steps

  All the right words were spoken. Praise was effusive. The handshake made a perfect photo op. The wives had tea. Now that the July 6 summit between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been duly recorded, the true test of its worth will begin. It is clear that, for both political and pragmatic…

  Jul 7, 2010 | 2 min read
• Opinion

  Got Mail?

  A story is told of a man working in the city of London who routinely sent a letter to his mum in Kent to tell her what time he’d be home for supper each evening. The Royal Mail in Great Britain was that frequent, and that reliable. Up until 1950, twice-a-day delivery was available in…

  Jul 7, 2010 | 2 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 There’s a shocking new report on civilian deaths in Gaza. If only it were accurate.

  

• Nora Berman Is Netflix’s new show the most Jewish cartoon ever?

  

• Dan Perry Israel’s new gift to the far right could help end the Gaza war

  

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

  

The Latest

• Opinion

  A Time for Candor

  “Civility” is all the rage these days, but civility isn’t everything; there’s also candor. Nor should anemia be the price of civility; leave room for passion. On June 29, readers of JTA were presented with an opinion piece by two ex-officio leaders of American Jewry: Lee Rosenberg, president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,…

  By Leonard Fein Jul 7, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Israel Project to N.Y. Times: Expose Anti-Israel NGOs, Too — Like the New Israel Fund

  A little before midnight on Monday, July 5, the New York Times posted on its website its lengthy, deeply reported investigative piece on U.S. tax-exempt donations that go to fund settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the right-wing American charities that channel those donations, including some that seemed in the Times…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 6, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Obama Should Keep Bush’s Word, But Bibi Needn’t Keep Olmert’s?

  Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to the Obama White House this week gives us an opportunity to watch history unfold. Or unravel. It’s hard to tell. Maybe it’s like that old Palmach song said, Rabotai, ha-historia hozeret (“Folks, history repeats itself”). On the eve of the summit, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs is beating up…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jul 6, 2010 | 4 min read
• Opinion

  Bibi’s Trifecta: Reach Out to Turkey, Boost Fuad, Diss Lieberman

  The other day I was blogging about Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer, Israeli trade minister, crusty old general and Labor Party senior statesman, who told Yediot Ahronot last weekend that the world is getting tired of Israel and its “explanations” for failing to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and that time is running out on…

  By J.J. Goldberg Jun 30, 2010 | 3 min read
• 
  Opinion

  Awaiting a Third War With Lebanon

  It’s summer in the Middle East, and the Arab media is again stoking speculation that war will break out between Israel and Lebanon. The typical scenario being put forth suggests that attacking Hezbollah on some pretense is a convenient way for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to escape pressures in the United States regarding…

  By Yossi Alpher Jun 30, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Peace Demands Courage

  Too often Israeli-Palestinian relations are seen as a zero-sum conflict in which whatever is good for one party is bad for the other. In reality, both parties, for different reasons, need the same thing: a negotiated agreement that ends the occupation and the conflict once and for all. Palestinians cannot achieve their basic goal of…

  By Ziad J. Asali Jun 30, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  Postville: Slaughterhouse Slum

  How did former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin — convicted of financial fraud and sentenced in June to 27 years in prison — end up in such a sorry mess? And how did the company he ran, once the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the world, help transform the rural community of Postville, Iowa, into a slaughterhouse…

  By Stephen G. Bloom Jun 30, 2010 | 3 min read
• Opinion

  The Manipulative March

  A friend called to tell me, with pride in his voice, that his 16-year-old son had been accepted to a very special “Israel program” — three weeks of intensive touring, some social action work, lectures, whatnot. But first, “They start in Prague, and then Krakow and Auschwitz.” There is a tradition that dates back to…

  By Leonard Fein Jun 30, 2010 | 3 min read