Opinion

by Yahya Sinwar, Hamas Chief Gaza City, January 7 – Thank you, gentlemen, for attending this meeting on such short notice. I know we – you – have important projects and initiatives to oversee, not to mention families who require your already-limited time. But the news out of New York yesterday is not good, not …

by Marwan Barghouti Kishon Prison, December 26 – Much has changed since our beloved Raïs passed away in 2004, some of which he would appreciate, and some of which he would decry. But perhaps the most important thing the legendary Yasser Arafat would notice if he were among the living today, and which would spark …

by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Truah Rabbis EDITOR’S NOTE: The putative author of this opinion piece thinks you’re too stupid to realize its satirical nature and that it does not reflect her actual views. She did not, in fact, write this. Despite what she thinks you might think. She even had an attorney threaten a lawsuit …

by Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian Authority, and Chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization Ramallah, December 9 – President Donald Trump and his advisers have tries to generate excitement over their impending Deal of the Century to resolve the conflict between us and Israel once and for all, but they appear not to realize I have a different …

by Ann Teasemythe, party activist London, November 28 – Slander of our anti-racist political organization as racist against Jews continues despite the fact that only fifty-six percent of our members harbour such animosity towards those of the Hebrew persuasion. The libel must end. A few bad apples will occur in every group of significant size, …

by Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch New York, November 19 – Hello, thank you, how do you do? Yes, I do, thank you very much. My, what a lovely home. Well, except for all the bad decorating, maintenance, management, parenting, relationship, and other decisions you’ve made. I came to point those out. But now that …

by Every Single Antisemite Masquerading as Just an Anti-Zionist as if There’s a Meaningful Distinction London, New York, Washington, wherever, November 7 – We see it everywhere: people who raise genuine, sincere criticisms of Israeli policy by calling for the total ostracism and dissolution of the world’s only Jewish state, branded as antisemitic for sharing …

by Abdallah Qardash, Khalif, Islamic State Somewhere in Northeast Syria or Northwest Iraq, October 30 – Our movement’s recent setbacks, including the assassination of Khalif al-Baghdadi and his chief spokesman, point to a disturbing fact: our fellow Muslims have provided much of the key intelligence to the enemy that led to these setbacks, revealing once …

by Rabbi Christine Matthews III New York, October 7 – Countless people I meet make the same error: assuming that just because the Hebrew Bible came from within the Jewish cultural tradition dating back thousands of years, it somehow represents anything authentically Jewish. That assumption misses the mark in a number of important ways, chief …

by MK Ayman Odeh, Joint List Haifa, September 23 – Our alliance of Arab parties has finally reached its fateful conclusion in the ongoing drama of the recent parliamentary elections: we have told President Rivlin that we back Benny Gantz as incoming prime minister, provided that at the same time we can have him charged …

By Susan Lefkowitz-Li, J Street donor New York, September 12 – My status as wealthy Jewish-American grants me numerous privileges, which I acknowledge, but I savor none of them as much as I enjoy pontificating about the excessive measures the Jewish State takes to protect its citizens, a task I undertake from the comfort and …

by Subhi Sh’hada Hebron, September 3 – I need not inform the reader that my hometown bears the distinction of one of the most radicalized locations in the region, if not the world. A hardcore group of several hundred Jews, with military protection, has settled in the immediate vicinity of the Ibrahimi Mosque, where various …

By Rebecca Goldsmith, If Not Now activist I always counsel my pro-Palestine allies to keep the focus of rhetoric on Islamophobic manifestations and anti-Muslim violence, especially from Israel, but it can be hard to maintain that focus when others bring up Arab enmity toward Jews. That’s why my go-to tactic always involves dismissing such points with …

by Veli Alley, conspiracy theorist I do wish the do-gooders would stop accusing me of hating Jews when every single thing I say about them indicates all the positive traits Jews possess, such as the immense intelligence they must have in order to control all the media, finance, governments, and instruments of oppression that they …

by Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian Authority Ramallah, August 5 – This office put out an official message of condolence to the people of the United States as soon as we heard of the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend, but gentlemen, that does not absolve us of the responsibility to ascertain the …

By Kenneth Roth, Director, Human Rights Watch Our researchers should be free to conduct their observations and analysis in a country that purports to call itself democratic, but Israel’s behavior in this regard raises some disturbing questions: what does it say about Israel that, unique among all states, it tries to remove our personnel from …

by Javad Zarif, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran Tehran, July 16 – During my current visit to the Big Apple, I will need to keep in mind that I cannot react to challenging questions from journalists by signaling to my staff that those journalists must never breathe fresh air again. The rules …

by Linda Sarsour It’s difficult for me to choose one episode or incident in Scripture that appeals to me more than any other, but if forced, I’d have to say when Moses, after four hundred years of wandering through the wilderness, finally led he Palestinian People into the land Allah promised to their ancestor Cain. …

By Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian National Authority Ramallah, June 26 – The Trump administration’s upcoming conference in Bahrain will go nowhere because it denies the Palestinian people the dignity they maintain through living on international handouts, refusing to develop a sustainable economy, avoiding democratic development at all costs, and remaining a byword for the empowerment …

by Nimrod Rothschild, CEO, Triumvirate Holdings Tel Aviv, June 17 – My company has always prided itself on embracing the most advanced management techniques. We were among the first to develop and adopt a social media strategy, and we continue to ride the wave of socially-conscious trends, among which the most recent include an embrace …

By Moshe Katz, Deputy Assistant Elder of Zion New York, June 5 – What’s this? Hello? Weinberg, what are you doing here? The Elders assigned me the task of manipulating the New York Stock Exchange today, not you. Please leave. Yes, Weinberg, you schmendrick. Look. See this email from Schottenstein? It couldn’t be clearer: Wednesday, the …

By Dominic Lord, human rights activist Tel Aviv, May 23 – We activists take our role seriously: forming alliances, raising awareness, generating political pressure, and partying till all hours in this fabulous city. This is where the human rights action is, where Israeli public figures can be held accountable; where journalists frequent, facilitating attention to …

By Linda Sarsour I make a good deal of noise about the oppression and marginalization of various disadvantaged groups within American society, but I do recognize the relative privilege that we Americans, even many marginalized ones, have, compared to the situation of my Palestinian brethren. That is why I would never presume to instruct Palestinians …

By Wafa Shtayyeh, Hamas wife and mother Shuja’iyya Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip – Honey, I know you love when we break out the special missiles with the sleek design, but you know we only use those when special people are visiting. That’s not today. I understand you think it’s a waste to have those rockets …

By Shir Dimensha, Professor of Comparative Literature New York, April 17 – The quantity of self-identifying progressives in our society has grown steadily in recent decades, in volume if not absolute numbers, but the best way to demonstrate one’s seriousness in the progressive realm remains to take an ancient Jewish text about individual and national …

By Roger Cohen, New York Times Columnist London, April 10 – My various columns over the years in which I showcase my upper-middle-class, translatlantic, more-educated-than-thou, and secular-but-culturally-Jewish-as-long-as-it-fits-my-politics-and-lifestyle outlook may have conveyed the wrong idea to many readers as to my guiding assumptions. Therefore let me state with no pretense: please view me not as one …

By Yasmin al-Yamani, Gaza Strip Resident Gaza City, April 1 – Thank you for checking out my profile at GazaDate and choosing to get in touch! I’m sure we’ll have lots to talk about once we get past the preliminaries, but since you’ve expressed interest, here are a few more tidbits about me to help …

By Amira Woker Few Israeli parents give much thought to the societal or political implications of the mask or other attire their children don for this holiday, but that also means few parents realize how problematic that attire is, especially when it appropriates culture, glorifies or romanticizes violence, or otherwise causes offense to marginalized identity …

By Yusuf Daar, student Mogadishu, March 12 – Somalia has not had many reasons to gloat in recent years, even decades. Protracted civil war, Failed State status, rampant Islamic terrorism, and economic challenges have each played a part in creating, prolonging, or exacerbating our misery. So when one of our own attains an achievement on …

By Gree Vance, Professor of Literature, Bumblethuck College New York, February 27 – Theodore Seuss Geisel earned numerous plaudits for his children’s books, but a new examination of one of his better-known works reveals a dark undercurrent of racism, Islamophobia, and support of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by colonialist Europeans under the pretext of Jewish …

By Salam Jabari, Egyptian Academic Cairo, February 20 – Our society must not fall prey to the pernicious notions infecting other cultures, chiefly the idea that Hitler led the slaughter of millions of Jews. Conceding that Jews have suffered compromises the absolute justice of the Arab struggle to oust the thieving usurper Jew from Palestine, …

By Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) The current brouhaha over my rhetoric glosses over the most significant point of all: I declare myself to have only warm feelings for Jews, and insisting that I am something other than what I proclaim myself to be represents a denial of my autonomous selfhood and constitutes oppression. And you …

By Jack Straw, scarecrow Popular culture has given rise to the misconception that as I am a person of straw, that material accounts for all the contents of my stuffing, but the real figure seldom gets higher than one twenty-fifth of my total volume; the remainder consists of contentions that Israel-haters trot out to demolish problematic …

By the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Selma, January 21 – You don’t seem to need the encouragement, but now that my birthday has come around again, so has a boost in the apparent drive you have for taking my words and shoehorning them into your ideological box. Yay. My entire ethos revolved around …

By Vladimir Putin, President, Russian Federation Moscow, January 10 – You Israelis never cease to amuse me. You’re so self-absorbed, so politically-minded, that you think I would direct my intelligence operatives to sow discord and dysfunction ahead of your parliamentary elections this April. I couldn’t possibly improve on what you’ve got already. Don’t get me wrong; …

By Linda Sarsour, rights activist Brooklyn, January 1 – It’s bad enough that Palestinians in real life have suffered displacement, persecution, and Othering, but when those phenomena extend even to the realm of beloved children’s shows, we know our society has a problem. Every reference to Palestinians and Palestinian suffering has been erased from the …

Outwardly I have to act as if I’m really annoyed. Efrata, December 19 – Don’t tell my wife, but the recent foofaraw over de-listing Jewish-owned short-term rental properties in Judea and Samaria provides just the excuse I need to delay clearing out that spare bedroom we’ve been using as storage space and making it livable …

By Saeb Erekat, Palestine Liberation Organization Ramallah, December 12 – The news out of the Australian capital today could not be worse for the righteous Palestinian cause: the government there appears on the verge of approving recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that threatens the very foundations of morality, civilization, and any other …

By Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Jerusalem, December 3 – That time of year has come again, and I hereby make the same offer as always: in exchange for the right amount of cash, favors, or other benefit accruing to the persons or organization of my choosing, I will grace your Festival of Lights menorah-lighting event. …

By Ken Roth, Director, Human Rights Watch New York, November 22 – We human rights activists live a difficult life: our organizations are feted in Geneva, do as we please with no oversight, and enjoy unparalleled international credibility with the United Nations. Despite those hardships, however, as an activist I always consider even my moments …

By Yahya Sinwar, Hamas leader Somewhere beneath Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, November 14 – Recent confusion regarding the specific manifestations of murderous hatred that I and my organization espouse has made it necessary to issue the following disclaimer: my expressions of wishes to rid the world of the Jewish scourge once and for all do …

By Alhaf Suwij, East Jerusalem resident Ras-a-Amud, Jerusalem, October 31 – Maintaining one’s ideological principles is important. Me, I adhere to my people’s official position that participating in the holy city’s municipal elections normalizes occupation, and therefore all Palestinians must refrain from voting. But that will not stop me from criticizing the city government for …

By Professor Albert Bunchwick, Rector Sit down, Mr. Crabtree. We must have a little talk. It has come to the administration’s attention that during your lectures, you have taken to indulgence in some rather distasteful stereotypes about members of the Hebrew persuasion. Now, Mr. Crabtree, we appreciate your abilities as an instructor, but it is …

By Luqdat Tahat Cairo, October 11 – Whenever women complain that men make uninvited suggestive, derisive, or immodest remarks to them, the discussion inevitably wanders in to the subject of how women dress and what manner or quantity of clothing might forestall such rhetoric. I know I can only speak for myself here, but let …

I hate religious Jews, and I’m not one, so how could I be self-hating? North Tel Aviv, September 13 – You people need to stop the name-calling. When I oppose the sale of apartments in my neighborhood to Jews who maintain their traditions, even in public, it makes no sense to call me a self-hating …

By Hamas If you love something, set it on fire. Beloved Land, we would give our lives for you. And we do, all the time. The depth of our attachment to you runs so deep, so strong, that we will start numerous fires to prevent us from ever being able to develop and cultivate you …

By UK Labour When an MP from our party whose family members were killed in the Holocaust stood up in Parliament on Tuesday and called our chairman a “@%$&ing anti-Semite,” we were appalled that the situation had deteriorated to the use of such language. Not so much by what prompted it. As Labour members and …

By Albert Einstein I never said the original quote, you know. It first appeared in a 1983 mystery novel by Rita Mae Brown, attributed to a nonexistent Jane Fulton. But since in the popular mind I mouthed those words, let’s run with it. It’s as fine an example as any other of the phenomenon in …

By Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Hamas spokesman All means are acceptable in throwing off the yoke of the Zionist usurper. Staging incidents and inflating casualty figures boasts a long and glorious history in Palestinian lore, at least since Deir Yassin. But the mere acceptability of such measures does not automatically make them the recommended course of action, …

By Rabbi Mendel Moskowitz

By Yusuf Jabber We have encountered the claim so many times that refuting it has become tiresome, but once and for all, allow me to explain why the establishment of a “Jewish” state in Palestine is such a historical travesty: they are not even Jews, and therefore cannot claim ties to this Islamic land, because …

By the staff of the United States Penitentiary for Males, Leavenworth, Kansas On behalf of all the employees and outside contractors operating this facility, we hereby extend our sincere apologies to any resident of this prison who has taken offense at the institution’s use of gender-specific formulations in signage, forms, instructions, disciplinary talks, or other forms …

By Basher Assad, President, Syrian Arab Republic It’s amazing where life can take you, and how it takes you there. My dear father knew how to run a country, and brooked defiance from no one. Me, I was slated for smaller-scale achievement, attending a western medical school with the goal of becoming an eye doctor, …

By the IDF Kibbutz Nir-Am, June 4 – Here in the communities along the border with the Gaza Strip, we soldiers receive constant reminders why we do what we do: the families who live here who need protecting; the local economy that suffers when rockets and mortars are fired from Gaza; and the beauty of …

By Fashla Fadikha, Gaza protester May 27 – Call me bitter, but I, for one, cannot bring myself to feel unmitigated joy at the sight of Zionist fields and brush aflame as Palestinian kites bearing Molotov cocktails ignite blazes. For weeks, I have argued that incendiary boomerangs were the way to go, but the leadership …

By Hussein Jabari I’ve been lugging these crutches around for days, participating in staged incidents that purport to showcase Israeli brutality against innocent Palestinians – I play the role of a wounded youth; thus the accessories – and I have to tell you: I have no idea how people who genuinely need crutches handle the …

By Yahara Kussemek, Professor of Islamic Thought It’s been a widely accepted notion in the Muslim world and beyond for some time now that the people who call themselves Jews today, mostly of the European variety, descend not from the ancient tribes of Israel, but from ninth-century converts in the Khazaria region where Europe meets …

By Israel’s security barrier It gets a little frustrating when you’re assigned a certain role, given a certain job description, and then don’t get a chance to perform that job. I’m sure you can understand how I feel after years of carrying the job title “Apartheid Wall” but coming nowhere close to enforcing bona fide …

By Stan Dartkafuhl, legal scholar The position of the international community on the subject of the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Jordan, and between Israel and Egypt, has long been clear: Israeli control of any territories beyond those lines constitutes an illegal occupation, and Israel’s permanent border must follow the lines on the armistice …

By Yahya Sinwar The Great Return March, known by various similar names, has been going on for more than a week already, and the intense planning that went into it now appears to have gone to waste, all because those inconsiderate Syrians in Douma had to go and put themselves on the receiving end of …