Batya Ungar-Sargon is the former Opinion Editor at the Forward.
Batya Ungar-Sargon
By Batya Ungar-Sargon
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Opinion Netanyahu Just Saved Liberal Zionism
Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the unthinkable and welcomed Jewish terrorists into his ruling coalition. Facing possible indictment for a series of corruption charges and a plausible threat to his premiership during a rapidly progressing election cycle, Netanyahu pressured the far right party Bayit Yehudi to join forces with Otzma Yehudit, the…
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Opinion Netanyahu Just Invited Israel’s Equivalent Of The KKK To Join The Government
The Israeli election cycle currently underway has been awash in anti-Arab racism for a while now. But things just got much, much worse. On Wednesday, Haaretz reported that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed the Jewish Home Party to join another party, the “Jewish Power” party, which inherited its leaders and politics from the well-known…
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Opinion How To Speak About The Israel Lobby In A Non-Anti-Semitic Way
Ilhan Omar’s tweets blaming “the Benjamins” and AIPAC for U.S. politicians’ support of Israel launched a national conversation about anti-Semitic tropes, money in politics, and the role of lobbies in U.S. politics. Many, including the entire Democratic leadership, felt that Omar’s words invoked an anti-Semitic trope. Her tweet conjured the image of a Jewish cabal…
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Opinion Ilhan Omar Tweeted Something Anti-Semitic. Again.
On Sunday night, freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted something anti-Semitic. Again. This one came just weeks after she finally apologized for her first. In 2012, Omar tweeted that “Israel has hypnotized the world,” a message that played on the anti-Semitic trope of Jews having supernatural power which they use to control the world. Last night,…
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Opinion Israeli Rabbis Are Using DNA Testing To Police Civil Rights. This Shouldn’t Shock You.
On Tuesday, Judy Maltz reported in Haaretz that the Israeli Rabbinate, which controls conversion, marriage and divorce in Israel, is using DNA testing to verify a person’s Jewishness. Since a person who isn’t Jewish can’t marry a Jew in Israel, which has no civil marriage, the rabbinate is using the DNA test to deny people…
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Opinion Seeking To Help Israel, American Jewish Institutions Sold Us Out
Over the past year, many have pointed to the growing divide between American Jews and Israel. But another divide has opened up, and it’s equally distressing: between American Jews and their institutions. Deep in the grip of a realpolitik that prioritizes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s narrow, protectionist view of what’s good for Israel over…
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Opinion Don’t Believe The Hype. 2020 Won’t Be About Israel.
There’s a narrative emerging on the left that’s surprising only because it’s so commonplace on the right: the idea that the Democratic Party is abandoning Israel. Thus, when freshmen congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar came out in support of the boycott effort against Israel, known as BDS, you saw commentary from Republicans jubilant that…
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Opinion Why Is The Pro-Israel Right So Threatened By Black Jews?
One of the responses to the horrific massacre of 11 praying Jews this fall was a call for more firearms in synagogues. From Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to New York State Assemblyman Dov Hilkind to President Trump himself, many called for an increased presence of armed guards at Jewish places of worship. But not…
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