Leonard Fein
By Leonard Fein
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Opinion If the Health of the Nation Were Really an Issue
By now, we’ve been told repeatedly that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the policies of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. There’s really only one exception, and because it stands alone, the interviewers and the pundits keep coming back to it. That is, of course, the healthcare proposals that the two have put…
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Opinion We Have Already Been Defeated in Iraq
Daniel Levy is one of the new stars in Washington, as also in cyberspace. Levy comes to Washington from Israel, where his distinguished record included serving as senior policy advisor to then-justice minister Yossi Beilin and as the lead Israeli drafter of the Geneva Initiative. Now, under the auspices of The Century Foundation and the…
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Opinion The Siege of Gaza Has Failed
There are times we are drawn to reject that which is obvious. If the answer’s so simple, how can it be true? Anyone would have known it, so it can’t be right. For example: Israel’s sealing of the Gaza borders and its withholding of fuel and electricity from Gaza was a stupid act. In retrospect,…
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Opinion What Makes a President?
Let us speak of political virtues. There’s oratorical skill, long since recognized as a major asset, obviously a Barack Obama strength. Here’s how Aristotle frames the matter in his “Rhetoric” (Book One, Chapter Two): “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal…
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Opinion Better Safe Than Sorry for Candidates on Israel
Let’s play make-believe: Imagine that the candidates for the presidential nomination, Democrat and Republican, are asked for their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (So far, that hasn’t happened.) And imagine that in addition to the familiar formulas regarding Israel — America’s valuable ally, the only democracy in the Middle East, entitled to live in security,…
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Opinion America Helps Best When It Helps Itself
As presidential candidates are winnowed and left for chaff, we can confidently expect the return of the quadrennial Jewish question: “Who’s best on Israel?” I set aside here the issue of how central the answer to that question ought to be in determining how a person votes. That’s a debate and a half in itself….
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Opinion A Fanfare for the Little Man
A dear friend of mine often describes us — himself, me, almost everyone we know — as “little people.” We are well-informed, politically engaged, civically virtuous — and utterly irrelevant. “Irrelevant,” that is, in the larger world. We matter to friends and family, sometimes neighbors, too; now and then we make ripples in small ponds….
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Opinion Resistance in the Kingdom of the Night
December 23 (or thereabouts) is my favorite day of the year. That is the day after the shortest day of the year (and the longest night), the day when light begins to grow again. It happens every year, dependably, and even though in modern times it marks the beginning of winter, that’s a subjective, even…
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Books In ‘Something We Said,’ Richard Pryor’s daughter finds words to discuss the unspeakable
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Culture ‘My mayor Muslim, my bagel Jewish’ — the Knicks chant capturing New York’s soul
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Opinion It’s time for Jews who love Israel to give up on Zionism
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Opinion Israeli and diaspora Jews live in different realities. The Israel Day parade proved it
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