Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion From Gaza to Sderot, Trauma Marks The Past — And The Present
There’s a line in one of Godard’s films: “I’m trying to be humane. Too bad I’m only human.” Shmaryahu Levin, a prominent American Zionist of the mid 20th century, said it even better: “Kh’bin bloys a mentsh, un amol dos oykh nisht.” “I’m only human, and sometimes not even that.” Leonard Fein was not a…
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Opinion ISIS Aimed at Ideals When They Destroyed Jonah’s Tomb
I The Sunni extremists of ISIS who recently in Mosul destroyed the shrine that is believed to mark the tomb of the prophet Jonah knew what they were doing. What they almost surely did not know is the special poignancy that attaches to their deed. Jonah was not a run of the mill prophet, if…
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Opinion Dani Danon Is Such a Threat to Israel Even Bibi Fired Him
Credit where credit is due: A year ago, I wrote about Israel’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Dani Danon, that he is Israel’s “enemy within,” perhaps the most dangerous current threat to Israel and a star of Likud, the linchpin of the governing coalition. My favorite Danon quotes: He refers to “the mistake we made in…
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Opinion When We Stop To Really See Each Other
A phrase — actually, just a word — in Ethan Bronner’s recent New York Times analysis of the “divorce” between Israelis and Palestinians caught my eye. In lamenting that daily interactions between Israelis and Palestinians have virtually disappeared, Bronner writes, the two peoples “who once knew each other intimately” have become “virtual strangers.” The separation…
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Opinion Are Jews Now Safe and Free From Being Haunted?
Is the manifest decline in anti-Semitism tied in some way to the uptick in attention to the Holocaust? Bear with me. For a variety of middlingly important reasons, I’ve recently spent some days re-reading appraisals of American Jewish life that were written and published in the 1950s. And oh my, how things have changed! Back…
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Opinion Which Side Has No One To Talk To?
Among the Israeli government’s favorite mantras is the allegation that “we have no one to talk to.” Alas, that stance is faulty on two grounds: It implies both that the “other side” — that is, the Palestinians — do have someone to talk to and that the Palestinians themselves have nothing constructive to say. Do…
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Opinion The Deceptive Style of Settlement Leader Dani Dayan
“My religion is Zionism,” Dani Dayan says. It is hard to know quite what to make of him. Is he, as Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now suggests, the enemy? “His agenda is the same as the most fanatic right-wing settlers. But he has this ability to hide it and to speak with the public…
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Opinion Those Who Reject J Street Are Blind
The decision by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to reject JStreet’s application for membership was perverse. More than that, it was pathetic. There are some 5,000 students, on 60 campuses, who are involved with JStreet U, JStreet’s college organizing vehicle, this at a time when the Jewish community is appropriately agitated…
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