Hillel Halkin
By Hillel Halkin
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Opinion Are Women of the Wall Pathbreakers — or Provocateurs?
For 25 years, the Women of the Wall have met for prayer services at the Kotel at the beginning of each Jewish month. But until a Jerusalem court’s ruling this past April, women in the group who donned prayer shawls or sang too loudly would often be detained by police. Now the police are protecting…
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Opinion Why American Jews Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Put Israel First
Now that distribution of its questionnaire has been canceled, the proposed poll of American Jews and Israeli immigrants to America, commissioned by a Los Angeles organization called the Israeli American Council with the initial collaboration of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, will presumably fade from the headlines. Yet the issues raised by it are real;…
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Opinion Syria U-Turn Sends Troubling Message of American Weakness
Now that Act I of the Syrian poison gas drama is over, and America has, as in a slapstick comedy, managed to stumble, skid, slip, slide, and finally somersault into a co-director’s chair for an Act II that no one dreamed of when the curtain first rose, Israelis can take stock of what has happened…
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Opinion As Egypt Falls Apart, Israel Whispers: ‘We Told You So’
Were there any satisfaction to be gotten from saying “I told you so” about Egypt, Israel would have every reason today to be a satisfied country instead of a worried one. While just about everyone else was giddily celebrating the fall of Hosni Mubarak and the wondrous “Arab Spring,” Israeli government circles were among the…
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Opinion John Kerry Is Wasting His Time — and Ours
To what can John Kerry’s efforts to restart the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” be likened? Perhaps to those of a mechanic doggedly working on the engine of an old jalopy whose body is eaten by rust: Even if he gets the damned thing running, it won’t go anywhere. When something has gone nowhere for 20 years…
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Opinion Women’s Prayer Protests at Western Wall Are Just Childish Provocation
I am, in my religious behavior, somewhere between what Israelis would call a hiloni or “secular” Jew and a masorti or “traditional” one. My wife and I light candles on Shabbat, we celebrate the Jewish holidays with our children and grandchildren, and now and then, for one reason or another, I find myself in a…
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Opinion What’s a Pro-Boycott Cartoon of Stephen Hawking Doing in a Jewish Paper?
Would America’s best Jewish newspaper publish a cartoon in support of renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking’s joining the academic boycott of Israel? It would — and it did. I can think of no other accurate way of describing the prominently featured appearance in a recent issue of the Forward of Eli Valley’s “A Brief History…
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Opinion Israel Was Right Not To Return Golan Heights to Syria
Here’s the beginning of one newspaper article about Syria that you didn’t read this week: “Israel Weighs Golan Invasion.” “U.S. Warns It Not To Act.” “Israeli troops exchanged fire with Syrian rebels on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and Syrian army artillery fire killed two vacationing Israelis on a nearby beach, Israel’s Cabinet…
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