Opinion

These days, the word “fascism” is used here in Israel almost casually. It is spoken sometimes with glee, often in sorrow. Yet while it is fair (and painful) to say that a crop of laws, recent and prospective, are anti-democratic, the word “fascism” simply does not fit the Israeli… Read more »

The Arab upheavals of 2011 have inspired wildly inconsistent Western responses. How, for example, can one justify abiding the suppression of dissidents in Bahrain while celebrating dissidents in Egypt? Or protect Libyan rebels from government attacks but not their Syrian counterparts? Oppose Islamists taking over in Yemen but not… Read more »

Alan and Judy Gross at the Western Wall in the spring of 2005. (Courtesy of the Gross family)

DENVER (JTA) — Alan Gross is a Jewish-American contractor who is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba for “crimes against the state.” Gross, now 62 and in ill health, was arrested in 2009 as he was leaving Cuba. His family and U.S. State Department officials say that Gross… Read more »

Tel Aviv – Pictures of unarmed demonstrators clashing with police and security forces have become the defining images of the Arab Spring. The wave of mass protests and demonstrations has led to the collapse of despotic regimes including those led by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s… Read more »

Stuart and Nancy Mellan with Murray Greenfield (center), an American seaman who smuggled Jews out of Europe into Palestine in 1947, at Atlit, the British detention camp where Greenfield was held with Jewish refugees.

My first trip to Israel was in 1982 (it still seems a bit surreal when I think of it) when I went with the federation national leadership into Lebanon to witness the Israeli military action that resulted in Lebanon’s liberation from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. On that remarkable journey… Read more »

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer

I want to challenge one of the mainstay assumptions of organized Jewish life: Jewish continuity is the end goal, and everything is in service of that goal. It’s been 20 years since the release of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, which found an unprecedented rate of intermarriage. It… Read more »

My first assignment when I entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976 was as a “rotational officer” in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. I served for six months backstopping our delegation to the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council, then another six months… Read more »

This is the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, and the first one I will mark without my father.  Kristallnacht is referred to as the “night of broken glass.” But it was much more. It was the beginning of the end of most of European Jewry. It was two days of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — We have decided to take a journey. We will take the Food Stamp Challenge and live for one week on an average SNAP (food stamp) benefit of $31.50 per week. We are organizing and encouraging others to join us. Yet we hear one question again and… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Vatican’s key representative to Jews, is making his first visit to New York, home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. The cardinal, appointed president of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in 2010, has an opportunity,… Read more »

New York, NY; October 17, 2011—Building on its legacy of advancing global justice, American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development and human rights organization, unveiled its new Reverse Hunger campaign today. The campaign seeks to rally the American Jewish community to challenge and change a critical factor contributing… Read more »

The price of allowing murders to go free By Sherri Mandell Why is it that terror victims are seemingly the only ones against the prisoner exchange? While other Israelis are rejoicing, we are in despair. Arnold and Frimet Roth circulated a petition against the release of Ahlam Tamimi, an… Read more »

  The Holocaust has inevitably played an important role in the way I view the world and our responsibility to our neighbors. Knowing the facts of this genocide and the world’s complete failure to act in the face of it has led me to commit to do whatever I… Read more »

It’s so confusing … You’ve heard the arguments. All the spin, the ads, the furious blogs and heated discussions about a possible U.N. vote to acclaim an “Independent, Unified Palestinian State.” What lofty language. Independent. Unified. Words and concepts dear to our hearts. But would such a state, merely… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After the mutual accusations of ethnic cleansing and the sarcastic posturing, the ball is back in the Palestinians’ court. The upshot of last week’s Lollapalooza of speechmaking at the United Nations is that the Obama administration has succeeded in persuading the international community to back the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Will the Jewish vote, normally overwhelmingly Democratic, be up for grabs in 2012? That question became a subject of intense debate when a Republican was elected recently to the House of Representatives from New York’s 9th Congressional District for the first time in 90 years.… Read more »

Jason Epstein, in the Besiktas municipality of Istanbul, Turkey, in 2010.

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the United Nations this week, he likely will repeat his demand that the world body “raise the Palestinian flag” without acknowledging that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders… Read more »

Last month I had the privilege of being invited to a Ramadan “break fast” at the Tucson chapter of the Foundation for Intercultural Dialogue, a moderate Muslim Turkish organization. Ramadan is the Muslim month of fasting between sunrise and sunset, during which Muslims focus on introspection and study. FID’s… Read more »

In Netanya, Israel on Aug. 18 in an events hall, I felt I was living a quintessential Israeli moment. Friends and family were celebrating a Bar Mitzvah with food, music, dance and high spirits. Not exclusively Israeli, one might say. However, the Bar Mitzvah’s uncle, in between bites, kept… Read more »

In July, my husband and I attended the Christians United for Israel Washington Summit. As supporters of interfaith Israel advocacy, we have worked with students from the University of Arizona CUFI on Campus club for two years. CUFI is a non-conversionary, non-proselytizing national organization that seeks to be the… Read more »