Yossi Alpher
By Yossi Alpher
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Opinion Cut Losses in an Unwinnable War
The extraordinary terrorist events in Russia in recent weeks are in many ways unique. But the Russia-Chechnya conflict also has an important element in common with other arenas where, for a variety of mostly bad reasons, powerful non-Muslim societies are ruling over Muslims. Chechnya, Iraq, Gaza — all have become lose-lose situations for the occupier….
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Opinion Arab Misunderstanding of Israel Moves From the Center to the Periphery
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail recently accused Israel of fomenting the violence in Darfur from its “base” in… Eritrea. Evidently he was undeterred by the 600 miles of inhospitable desert that Tel Aviv’s intrepid agents would have had to negotiate between Eritrea on Sudan’s east and Darfur in the country’s west. Or, for that…
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Opinion The Specter of Another Political Murder
The new rabbinic pronouncements, rendered loudly from the bare hilltops of Judea and Samaria, that label Prime Minister Sharon a traitor and that imply — in veiled and barely deniable innuendo — that he could or should or must be murdered, are merely one end of the spectrum of right-wing settler opposition to disengagement. The…
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Opinion Out of Egypt… and Into Gaza
In army staff colleges all over the world, the Egyptian-Israeli military agreement in the Sinai Peninsula is taught as the way two veteran belligerents that are tired of war but still don’t trust each other can best manage their cold peace. The solution is simple, if not ideal: They demilitarize the large, empty desert that…
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Opinion The Spectacle Of a Dirty War
A few days ago, in a conversation with a retired senior officer in the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, the Defense Intelligence Agency, I dropped a derogatory remark about the now infamous posing of naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. “We learned it from you,” the DIA man retorted. “Not the taunting women and the photos,”…
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Opinion Israel’s Missed Opportunities
The countdown to the Iraq war was marked by grand pronouncements on the part of both its boosters and its detractors regarding its potential impact on Israel. Some backers of the war suggested that removing Saddam Hussein from power would have a transformative impact on the Middle East — helping pave the way for regime…
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News ‘I am de Gaulle, I am Mandela, I am Washington’
Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography By Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin Oxford University Press, 354 pages, $27.50. ——– Arafat’s War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest By Efraim Karsh Grove Press, 320 pages, $25. ——– In the course of several meetings during the latter half of the 1990s, I witnessed Yasser Arafat…
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News RFK Jr. wants fluoride out of drinking water. Israel has a decade of lessons to offer.
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Culture The crucial Bob Dylan question that ‘A Complete Unknown’ fails to answer
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Recipes Four secrets for making great homemade latkes for Hanukkah
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Opinion It’s been a dark year. The holidays are challenging. Let Isaac Bashevis Singer guide you
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Fast Forward Israel has spent millions trying win hearts and minds abroad. It’s about to spend 20 times more.
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Opinion Hidden in Hanukkah is a story of Jewish unity. At the end of this fractious year, we must heed it
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Fast Forward IDF loosened rules of engagement after Oct. 7, fueling high death toll in Gaza: Report
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