A prominent New York-based, Jewish news website continues to platform anti-Zionists that far too often sound like enemies of Israel.
What the Forward says about itself seems to be frequently at odds with reality: "The Forward is America’s leading voice in Jewish journalism, delivering incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews. The Forward’s independent, non-ideological perspective ..."
Huh? The Forward has never been "non-ideological."
Until 2019 the Forward regularly featured op-ed columns by anti-Israel extremist Peter Beinart. On March 1, Beinart told his followers that: "Israel, the country that speaks for Jews around the world, (has) committed the supreme international crime." Beinart went on to talk about Nuremberg trials and Nazi war criminals.
While Iranian missiles are targeting Israeli civilians, how can any Jew read Beinart's words and not be outraged and nauseated?
Returning to the Forward, below are several examples from over the last year that demonstrate just how biased the Forward truly is.
Rob Eshman stated in a late February article that "Israel has killed about 600 Palestinians, including many civilians, since the ceasefire" and a link to a UNRWA report is given.
This is highly problematic. Setting aside the fact that UNRWA itself is a biased source that is hostile to Israel, the figure itself in the UNRWA report is attributed to the Hamas-run "Ministry of Health." And Eshman is "senior columnist" at the Forward.
Sruli Fruchter, writing for the Forward on Nov. 18, claimed that “Americans are abandoning Israel" because some Israeli and American Jewish leaders have not, in his view, been sufficiently vigorous in condemning the handful of Jews who have clashed recently with Arabs in Judea-Samaria.
Fruchter did not give average Americans enough credit. It’s wrong to assume that most Americans will look at the behavior of a tiny number of fringe-element Jews, blame the entire Jewish state (which works to apprehend and punish them) for their actions, and then proceed to “abandon" Israel unless Jewish organizations issue more forceful press releases.
History shows that American public opinion toward Israel ebbs and flows, usually in conjunction with whether or not there is a war raging at the moment. Recall that in August 1982 (even before Sabra-Shatila), a Gallup poll for Newsweek found 60% of Americans believed Israel had "gone too far" in its action against PLO terrorists in Lebanon, and 43% favored cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel. Only 16% of those surveyed supported Israel's actions.
But what choice did Israel have in 1982? What choice has it ever had? Labor-led governments could have refrained from striking first in 1956 and 1967; perhaps that would have boosted Israel in the polls-but Israel would have been left in mortal danger. Likud-led governments could have refrained from striking the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, or the Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this year, and perhaps that would have helped in the polls-but again, it would have left Israel in great danger.
At the end of the day, Israel’s leaders must do what is necessary for their country’s security, regardless of the latest trends in American public opinion. And when the hostilities subside, as they inevitably will, most respondents to the pollsters will side with Israel over the terrorists of Hamas and the extremists of the Palestinian Authority.
On February 26, 2025, a Forward news article stated that there was Jewish opposition to Tony Kushner receiving an honorary degree from Hunter College in 2011 "because of his criticism of Israel."
The problem was not Kushner’s criticism of Israel-it was his opposition to Israel’s very existence. At a 2002 conference, Kushner said: “I have a problem with the idea of a Jewish state. It would have been better if it never happened." (New York Sun, October 14, 2002). Likewise, in a 2004 interview, the reporter asked if he was “saying that the very creation of Israel as a Jewish state was not a good idea," to which Kushner replied: “I think it was a mistake." (Haaretz, April 7, 2004) He has also served on the Board of Advisors of the unabashedly anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
Norman Podhoretz, who passed away in December, wrote in Commentary in October 1987 that "Secularists of the socialist persuasion tended to look upon Zionism as a form of retrograde bourgeois nationalism."
That American Jewish critics of Israel turned so vicious over the intervening 39 or so odd years is not a new observation. And that's not the point here. Most American Jewish critics are committed to ideologies that cannot be reconciled with a State Of Israel that holds that saving Jewish lives is vitally more important than holding on to the delusions that our enemies who scream "Death To Israel!" do not mean it and can be negotiated with.
Tragically, we know that they really do mean it.
As for the managers of the Forward, please don't tell us that you are "non-ideological" when your writers fit squarely into the "Blame Israel First" camp.