Larry Derfner writes at LarryDerfner.com.
Larry Derfner
By Larry Derfner
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Opinion Who Are the Israeli Centrists and Why Did They Vote for Yair Lapid?
People overseas don’t understand the amazing success of Yair Lapid in Israel’s January 22 parliamentary elections. He hardly said a word about the Palestinians, the peace process, terrorism, war — all those things that Israelis are supposedly preoccupied with every waking minute. But I understand. For the past 15 years, I’ve been living in the…
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Opinion Israel’s Silent March to War With Iran
The atmosphere in Israel is pretty surreal these days. The whole world seems to be asking whether we’re going to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities this year — the whole world except this Israeli part of it. There is zero tension in the air, and awfully little interest in the subject as far as I can…
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Opinion Recognition of Suffering, Far Too Late
Israel is definitely making progress on the subject of the Armenian genocide. In late December, during the Knesset’s first ever open-door debate on the issue, nobody was reported to have questioned whether the deliberate killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-’16 should be called a genocide, nor whether the Ottoman Empire was the guilty party,…
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Opinion Israeli Democracy Questions War on Iran
The infighting in Israel over whether or not to attack Iran, which went public more than a week ago and will continue unless and until the bombs start falling, shows this country at its best and worst. So far, the best is winning. Until Israel’s No. 1 journalist, Nahum Barnea, exposed it in his Yediot…
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Opinion Congress Shows Lack of Leverage With Threat To Cut Off Aid
As an Israeli who sees the occupation as a plague both on Palestinians and on Israelis, I think it’s a good thing that Congress just held back $200 million in economic aid to the Palestinians as punishment for their statehood bid at the United Nations. It’s a good thing, because now that the Republican Party…
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Opinion Netanyahu Left Palestinians With No Choice But the U.N.
With all the tension between Israel and its neighbors, the expected vote in the United Nations on Palestinian statehood will be a dangerous confrontation. There’s no telling how the Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world will react afterward, or how Israel will react, either. It would be better for all concerned if this…
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Opinion Why I Wrote That Palestinian Terror Is Justified
The writer, a former columnist at the Jerusalem Post, was fired from his job on August 29 for a blog post entitled “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” which he published on his personal website, Israel Reconsidered. Click here for excerpts from the blog post that got Derfner fired. Why did I do it?…
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News Settlers Make Permanent Plans
Two tractors sat at the edges of Ginot Aryeh, slated to be the first of many makeshift, barely-populated West Bank settler outposts soon to be removed in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement plan.” Set up in a rocky field not far from its “mother” settlement of Ofra, the outpost has a population of about 30…
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