Jonathan S. Tobin
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
Get out your crystal ball! Take the 5780 Jewish pundit quiz
The year 5779 brought tragedy and great sorrow to the Jewish community as the Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue shootings by white supremacists represented the worst instances of violent anti-Semitism in American history. The month...
Could Benny Gantz make the left love Israel again?
The results from Israel’s second attempt at electing a government in 2019 are like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces don’t fit. There’s no getting around the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the...
The Netanyahu era’s last chapter begins
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted his supporters at Likud Party campaign headquarters on Tuesday evening, his demeanor as much as his words made the outcome of the vote clear to everyone. While...
Does Israel need a mutual defense pact with the United States?
Maybe it was just one more attempt to help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu win re-election. But whatever his motivation, President Donald Trump’s tweet that revealed that he had discussed the possibility of a...
Critics deny Jerusalem’s past and its future
Its critics have accused Israel of a lot of terrible things over the course of its 71 years of existence, but The New York Times has now added one more to the list that will particularly...
Reform launches a political war in time for the High Holidays
It turns out that the Jewish community didn’t need to wait until the synagogues were packed for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in order to gauge the amount of political rhetoric that American rabbis...
Why Israelis have never forgotten their 9/11
On the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, government officials and institutions throughout America commemorated the horror of that day. But after all these years, there is a sense that—other than for...
With Bolton gone, will Trump make a deal with Iran?
Perhaps it was as much about personalities as policy. The notoriously brusque and hard-driving John Bolton was always an awkward fit as National Security Advisor for a president like Donald Trump, who prefers subordinates...
The ‘first Jewish’ president’s anti-Semitic surrogate
Will Bernie Sanders be America’s first Jewish president? That’s up to Democratic primary voters and then the rest of the electorate should he receive his party’s nomination. But the Vermont senator’s choice of a...
Why people of faith should oppose Bernie Sanders on population growth
American Jews are divided on many issues. But if there is one true consensus issue for American Jews, it’s abortion. A Pew Research Center poll showed that more than 81 percent of the community...