Larry Cohler-Esses is the best reporter on Jewish life and the Forward does much of its best journalism.
The first journalist from an American Jewish pro-Israel publication to be given an Iranian visa since 1979 reported Wednesday that he had found little evidence to suggest that Iran wanted to destroy Israel, as widely asserted by critics of the Iranian nuclear agreement.
The journalist, Larry Cohler-Esses, assistant managing editor for news at The Forward, an influential New York-based newspaper catering to American Jews, also wrote that people in Iran, including its Jews, were eager for outside interaction and willing to speak critically about their government.
While he heard widespread criticism of the Israeli government and its policies toward the Palestinians, Mr. Cohler-Esses wrote, he also found support among some senior clerics for a two-state solution, should the Palestinians pursue that outcome.
“Though I had to work with a government fixer and translator, I decided which people I wanted to interview and what I would ask them,” Mr. Cohler-Esses wrote in the first of at least two articles from his July reporting trip. “Far from the stereotype of a fascist Islamic state, I found a dynamic push-and-pull between a theocratic government and its often reluctant and resisting people.”
