Robert Zaretsky

1 week ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

The long days of suspense over the decision that President Donald Trump would make about American involvement in the Iran-Israel war have abruptly come to an end as B-2 bombers attacked three nuclear sites in Iran. But that earlier suspense now gives way to a suspense more diffuse and disturbing: Though the bombing mission has been completed, uncertainty and anxiety over its consequences has only just begun.

1 week ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

As we struggle to find our footing amid the Trump administration's relentless assault on the rule of law and rights of citizens and non-citizens, an event that happened 80 years ago suggests reasons for hope rather than despair. June 23, 1945, marked the beginning of le procés Pétain, the postwar trial of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Venerated as the "hero of Verdun," the octogenarian Pétain was given full powers in 1940 to preside over the French State.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

Soon after he was elected president in 1789, George Washington led a slowly snowballing crowd of followers from Mount Vernon to New York City - the newly-born republic's temporary capital - commemorating a revolution that overthrew a tyrannical monarchy.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

As we follow the rapid succession of events in Los Angeles, where clashes between locals and police over the arrests of undocumented foreigners led to the arrival of the National Guard, we might want to tweak the (retired) slogan of the Washington Post: Democracy does not die in darkness; instead, it often dies in flames. Flames, of course, were the proximate cause to the power grab by the Nazis a little more than 90 years ago in Weimar Germany. On the evening of Feb.

4 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

Earlier this month, a French rabbi confessed to having been silent for too long. "I often felt the injunction to remain silent, sometimes stifling the urge to speak so as not to encourage the dangerous rubbish said by others and who demonize an entire people in the name of helping others." But, she continued, "it is urgent to start to speak again."What she said afterwards caused a political earthquake in France. The rabbi was Delphine Horvilleur.