Obama To Honor Famous Jews and Righteous Gentile [Mazel Tov!]

By Zach C. Cohen May 4, 2012

Bob Dylan, Madeleine Albright, Shimon Peres and Jan Karski will all receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom this summer. “These extraordinary honorees come from different backgrounds and different walks of life, but each of them has made a lasting contribution to the life of our nation,” President Barack Obama said in a press release. The…

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Obama visits Holocaust museum [News]

By Zach C. Cohen April 27, 2012

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama announced new sanctions on Iran and Syria and a renewed commitment to preventing genocide and mass atrocities. “We need to be doing everything we can to prevent and respond to these kinds of atrocities, because national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people,” Obama said at the United…

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“Obamulkes”

By Zach C. Cohen March 14, 2012

Exactly what they sound like. “Obama yarmulkes.” This year, “Jewish Students Wear Their Politics on Their Heads” (clever, PR-guy-who-sent-me-this-press-release. Very clever) with the reemergence of kippot branded with the Obama’s campaign logo. Don’t be confused, the Obama campaign actually has nothing to do with this. Though the story goes Obama got a real kick out…

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School is for ‘snobs’ [Politics]

By Zach C. Cohen February 29, 2012

Yup. You know all that debt you’re getting into paying your tuition? You better just drop out now, says presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Not really, but pretty close. Santorum, who has a BA, an MBA and JD, criticized President Barack Obama for saying in the State of the Union that everybody should go to college,…

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Israeli Apartheid Week continues; Obama’s Jewish fundraiser; Agunot and Facebook, and more [Required Reading]

By pkessler February 28, 2012

Training to be a Jew [Tablet] Jake Kohlman, a Jewish soldier in the American armed forces, reflects on how his basic training enabled him to connect to his religion. “At that Sunday service, for the first time, I started to understand. The chaplain’s words lifted my spirits. I remembered why I had joined in the…

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Running on Religion to the White House [Campaign 2012]

By Zach C. Cohen February 23, 2012

For a nation focused on separation of church and state, there’s an inordinate amount of church in this race to run the state. Over the past week, presidential candidates have made religion a forefront issue for the presidency. Democratic strategists suggest the Republican contenders are looking for another way to attack President Barack Obama since the economy…

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Lower tuition… yay! Israel and Iran… meh… [State of the Students]

By Zach C. Cohen January 25, 2012

Everybody and their mother is trying to predict what’s going to happen in the 2012 race to the White House. At New Voices, we’re wondering what college students will vote for. Well, tonight may have given us a hint. Most college students use their Tuesday night to catch up on homework or party before class-free…

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I Don’t Think Netanyahu is Mad at Obama

By greback May 20, 2011

There is nothing new under the sun. Nothing Barack Obama said is dramatic. But Benjamin Netanyahu is making it seem so. “He doesn’t get it,” said one Netanyahu aide: Referring to the US president’s Mideast policy speech, a Netanyahu associate said: “He (Obama) didn’t deliver the goods…Obama apparently does not understand the reality in the…

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A Quick Read of Arab Reactions to Obama’s Speech: in English and Arabic

By greback May 19, 2011

Scanning the headlines from Barack Obama’s speech about the Middle East, it is compelling the way different newspapers and online sources decided to interpret his words. You don’t need to read the Arabic to see Arab papers are putting words in Barack Obama’s mouth. Thus far, there is no wide division in the analysis. Barack…

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Syria police massacre pro-democracy protesters

By mekeisler April 22, 2011

I have no idea why, but the Obama administration has been very warm toward the Syrian regime, calling the dictator/son of a dictator Bashar al-Assad a “reformer”. This leads to the obvious question, what does that make Pol Pot? While Syrian police have been killing protesters en masse, the US has been silent. In fact,…

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The J Street You Don’t Hear About

By Ben Sales April 6, 2011

A multiple-choice question for our readers: Last week, a  Jewish advocacy group sent an email to its supporters titled “Tell Obama: Go to Jerusalem.” Which group was it? a. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) b. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) c. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) d. J Street As is obvious from…

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How I Lost Faith in Barack Obama

By Ben Sales December 21, 2010

I never thought Obama was the messiah. Sure, the posters moved me. So did his words, his slogans, that music video and all the rest of the propaganda that came with his movement. But despite my enthusiasm, I did not expect Barack to fix all of our problems. I, like many, knew that there would be pitfalls…

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The Naïveté of ‘Generation O’

By agood November 1, 2010

“Young voters say they feel abandoned” is the title of Sunday’s New York Times article about the disillusionment that followed the Obama campaign.  We couldn’t get enough of Obama back in 2008.  He was new.  He was grassroots.  He was hip and cool, and  he won 66 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old-vote because he…

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No Surprise

By admin October 4, 2010

This is a guest post by Moriel Rothman, a senior at Middlebury College and the president of J Street U. The Israeli government did not renew the ten-month settlement freeze that ended on Sunday, so settlement construction restarted. No surprise. Netanyahu would have displayed courage and conviction by renewing the freeze, given his hawkish history…

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The Reading List: Sunday Brunch–Israel and Palestine, talking again?

By Ben Sales August 22, 2010

And they’re off. For the first time since the 2007 Annapolis Conference, the US is restarting direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This comes after numerous strains in the US-Israel relationship (Settlement Freeze, East Jerusalem, Flotilla, etc.), months of “proximity talks” wherein the US met separately with the Izzies and Pallies to convince them…

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