Opinion

Tenth anniversary of Durban Conference is no cause for celebration

Daniel S. Mariaschin

Which nation doesn’t let women drive? Jails dissenters by the thousands? Beheads minors? Attacks civilians living peacefully in a neighboring nation? Persecutes homosexuals? Executes children? Encourages “honor killings”? Unfortunately, quite a few nations can be plugged in as correct answers. But not Israel. Yet Israel was the sole focus… Read more »

Op-Ed: A Palestinian state should be the result of negotiations

Mervyn Danker

To establish its independence, Israel had to win a war against the combined might of the Arab nations in 1948. The Arab failure to destroy the nascent Jewish state became known, in Orwellian Arab vernacular, as “Nakba,” a catastrophe. For the next 20 years, neither Jordan nor any of… Read more »

Op-Ed: Israel should support the Palestinian statehood push

Michael J. Weil

Israelis and Jews around the world are awaiting the Palestinians’ push at the United Nations for statehood with trepidation. The official response of the government of Israel and American Jewish groups has been to do everything possible to prevent any action at the U.N. and to line up votes… Read more »

Op-Ed: Eradicating torture should be the legacy of Sept. 12

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — What is the legacy of 9/11? The 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, give us a chance as a nation to reflect on more than just our own stories of what happened that day. One theme that has emerged is “Remember Sept.… Read more »

Terror attacks highlight new challenges on Israel’s border with Egypt

Last month’s multifront Palestinian terrorist attack along the Egyptian-Israeli border highlighted two major new challenges to Israel’s national security. First is the breakdown of Egyptian central authority in the Sinai Peninsula, which has created fertile ground for terrorism against Israel. Complicating matters further is a heightened sensitivity in post-Mubarak… Read more »

Op Ed: Jews must respond to Somalia crisis

On July 14, 2011, a severely malnourished baby lies in the pediatric unit of a hospital in Lodwar, Kenya, west of Somalia. The famine in the Horn of Africa is getting worse, human rights group say.

A tragedy is unfolding in the Horn of Africa, where hundreds of thousands of children are at immediate risk of death. The disastrous combination of the worst drought in 60 years, high food prices and regional conflict has left 12 million people, including more than 2 million malnourished children,… Read more »

After Gadhafi’s fall in Libya, is Syria’s Assad next?

(JTA) – He was the Arab world’s most quixotic leader. During the Reagan era, he was Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States. Later, after his apparent cooperation in dismantling nonconventional weapons, he became an ally to President George W. Bush’s administration in the war on terror. He… Read more »

Obama isn’t being treated fairly on Israel

Marc Stanely

I was amused by Adam Serwer’s recent blog post titled “Is Bibi anti-Israel?” in which he pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conditionally offered this month to negotiate with the Palestinians using the pre-1967 borders as a framework. Amazingly, there was no outcry by American Jews that… Read more »

Obama and Israel are not on the same page

Morton A. Klein

It’s high time to face an unpleasant fact: President Obama and Israel are not on the same page. This has been true ever since Obama took office in January 2009, but it was most recently apparent this May when the president ambushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an… Read more »

Israeli, Palestinian narratives are both right

It has been interesting to read the spate of letters in the last issue of the Arizona Jewish Post, mostly responding to letters in the previous issue disagreeing with Guy Gelbart’s opinions on the Steadfast Hope series. I always prefer for there to be open airing of issues, and… Read more »

Why recognizing the Bergson Group matters

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After many decades of being excluded from most history books and Holocaust museums, the 1940s’ rescue activists known as the Bergson Group are finally receiving the recognition they deserve. That’s important to ensure historical accuracy, to promote Jewish unity and, most of all, to help inspire… Read more »

Shout down the Sharia myth makers

NEW YORK (JTA) — The threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years. The notion that Islam is insidiously making inroads in the United States through… Read more »

Judaism is always ‘tikkun olam’ — and more

NEW YORK (JTA) — I have no patience for survival Judaism. Whenever I hear someone talk about what Jews must do in order to “survive,” I head for the door. Joel Alperson has joined the long list of Jewish communal leaders offering a formula for Jewish survival. Along the… Read more »

Judaism is more than ‘tikkun olam’

OMAHA, Neb. (JTA) — At least a portion of my hometown of Omaha, Neb., may well be under water in the coming days. Pumps are in place at various locations, including at a nuclear power plant located not far from town. The Missouri River, which borders our city, has… Read more »

Israel needs West Bank for security

As a recent high school graduate who will be traveling to Israel for a nine-month program of study, I feel the need to respond to the letter written by Mr. Julius Gordon, “West Bank, Warsaw ghetto alike.” Ever since 1967 and Israel’s acquisition of the West Bank, there has… Read more »

Palestinians still seek Israel’s end

Regarding the letters to the editor of July 1 about Israel’s disregard for human rights, I found them to be sad, naíve, totally untrue and with a complete lack of history about the Holy Land. Before the legal partition of 1948, the small Jewish population was subject to pogroms,… Read more »

Israelis value civil liberties for all

My wife and I are considering relocating from Northern New Jersey to the Tucson area. To learn more about Jewish life in Arizona, we subscribed recently to the Arizona Jewish Post. Letters from members of the Arizona Jewish community obviously are of great interest to us since they reflect… Read more »

‘Steadfast Hope’ series was promoted as dialogue

Guy Gelbart, community shaliach, was absolutely right in his June 17 column, “Billed as dialogue on Israeli-Palestinian peace, local series is pure ‘hate pill.’” The letter writers who responded to his column — and there’s no room to refute all their unfounded accusations — disingenuously suggested that the Steadfast… Read more »

Ghetto comparison distorts history

A July 1 letter to the AJP titled “West Bank, Warsaw ghetto alike,” inverts the Holocaust by claiming that Israel behaves like Nazi Germany. The letter was written with the aim of clarifying the “obfuscation,” “distraction” and “fabrication” the author found in the “Shaliach’s View” column of June 17,… Read more »