Opinion

Op-Ed: An incentive for a two-state solution you can take to the bank

Last week, a team of the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation came to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority to present a new study, calculating the costs of different Israeli-Palestinian scenarios. According to the study, in the case of a two-state solution, the Israeli economy would gain more than $120… Read more »

Op-Ed: Illinois BDS law should be model for country

Steven B.Nasati

CHICAGO (JTA) — There are many important endeavors already underway to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman argues in his recent JTA Op-Ed. From educating and mobilizing our own community to engaging non-Jewish leaders and institutions, much work is being done. But… Read more »

Op-Ed: Time for a regional solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

NEW YORK (JTA) — In the last 48 hours, rockets from Gaza were again fired at innocent civilians. This cannot be tolerated. The Israel Defense Forces must respond swiftly and without hesitation. We, as the opposition, will support strong government action. Yet such action cannot stand alone. We need… Read more »

Op-Ed: Comprehensive approach to fighting BDS is needed

Abraham Foxman

NEW YORK (JTA) — Let’s be clear from the outset: the BDS movement, the effort to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, is sinister and malicious and is having a negative effect on Jewish students on some campuses and on the wider Jewish community. The origins of the… Read more »

From ‘Bring Back Our Boys’ to ‘Unity Day’

Israelis lit candles in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on July 6, 2014 to mourn the death of three teenagers who were abducted and murdered in the West Bank. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

This piece was written by Iris and Ori Ifrach, Rachelli and Avi Fraenkel, and Bat-Galim and Ofer Shaer, the parents of Eyal Ifrach, Gil-ad Shaer and Naftali Fraenkel. (JTA) — One year ago, our families were thrust into a nightmare beyond anything we could have ever imagined. Our sons,… Read more »

Op-Ed: When Israel turns its back on pluralism

(New Jersey Jewish News via JTA) — This past week was exhausting, but not in the way I’ve become accustomed to as the father of three children in a demanding profession. It began with the uplifting gala of the Masorti Foundation and a conference celebrating 30 years of women’s… Read more »

Op-Ed: What a biblical tale of rape can teach us about Baltimore riots

Protesters marching in Baltimore following the announcement that six city police officers would be indicted in the death of Freddie Gray, May 2, 2015. (Andrew Burton.Getty Images)

GREAT NECK, N.Y. (JTA) — From 2011 through 2014, the City of Baltimore paid nearly $6 million in over 100 judgments and settlements relating to false arrests, unlawful imprisonment and police brutality. Once the justice system takes its course, the family of Freddie Gray may well be added to… Read more »

Infertility Op-Ed evokes Hadassah programs

Just before Passover, the AJP published Amy Klein’s Op-Ed about compassion for women who do not readily conceive children (“At Passover time, remember pain of those struggling with infertility,” AJP 4/3/15). The February/March 2015 Hadassah Magazine (hadassahmagazine.org) describes the Rimon Mind-Body Fertility Center at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center… Read more »

Op-Ed: A century after mass murder of Armenians, threat of genocide remains

Bodies of Armenian victims of a campaign of mass killing by Ottoman Turks. (Wikimedia Commons)

In April 1915, while World War I was raging, the government of the Ottoman Empire attacked its Armenian citizens. Over the next several years, it is estimated that one to 1.5 million Armenians died. Able-bodied men were murdered or enslaved as forced labor in the army, and hundreds of… Read more »

Op-Ed: After Baltimore, reflecting on the chasm between black and white

Police subduing an injured demonstrator during the July 1967 race riots in Newark, N.J. (Three Lions/Getty Images)

(JTA) — The Newark riots of 1967 have shaped the imagination of the New York-New Jersey area for over 40 years — probably more than they shaped the actual political and social landscape of Newark and its suburbs. The riots often are held up as a pivotal moment in… Read more »

Op-Ed: Why doesn’t the world care about Palestinian refugees in Syria?

Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, awaiting food aid from the United Nations, Jan. 31, 2004. (United Nations Relief and Works Agency via Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — It’s happening again — Palestinian refugees are caught between warring factions in the Middle East and the world is reacting too slowly to their plight. In earlier times, Palestinian refugees found themselves in the crosshairs at the Sabra and Shatila camps, when Lebanese Phalangists massacred… Read more »

Op-Ed: Why more American Jews are voting Republican

WASHINGTON (JTA) — America has good allies all around the world, but there is no greater ally than Israel, a beacon of democracy, freedom and liberty in a part of the world filled with darkness. However, the Obama administration continues to create more and more daylight between itself and… Read more »

Op-Ed: Courting Adelson is not Jewish outreach

(JTA) — This weekend, a collection of GOP presidential candidates will arrive in Las Vegas for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. But don’t allow yourself to be fooled into thinking that these candidates are making a real attempt to appeal to American Jewish voters. Their presence is… Read more »

Op-Ed: Holocaust education is for memory and action

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — The International March of the Living is in its 27th year. In those years, over 220,000 young people from around the globe have come to Poland to study, reflect and remember. They then return to their communities to share their personal reaction to facing the… Read more »

The history and the future of Israel

Next week, Israel will celebrate the 67th anniversary of its establishment as a modern nation. On Remembrance Day, the day before Independence Day, Israelis will cherish the memory and legacy of the 23,000 soldiers who gave their lives so that we would be able to live as free people… Read more »