Orly Halpern
By Orly Halpern
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News Jerusalem’s Leadership Crisis Deepens
Herzliya, Israel – When Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke this week before the seventh annual Herzliya Conference on the Balance of Israel’s National Security, her dignified bearing and statesmanlike appeals to Israeli patriotism struck many observers like a breath of fresh air in a smoky room In the past week, Israel’s leadership scandals spiraled into…
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News Arab Cabinet Pick Stirs ‘Zionism-Racism’ Debate
Jerusalem – When Knesset member Esterina Tartman opened her mouth on Israel Radio last week to attack the Labor Party for naming Israel’s first-ever Muslim Arab Cabinet minister, she did more than just rattle Ehud Olmert’s shaky coalition. She opened up a raging national debate on the taboo topic of where Zionism ends and racism…
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News Israeli Experts Say Middle East Was Safer With Saddam in Iraq
Jerusalem – Although few tears were shed in Israel over Saddam Hussein’s death last week, a small but growing chorus — including government officials, academics and Iraqi émigrés — is warning that Israel could find itself in more danger with him gone, and that it might even regret having welcomed his toppling. “If I knew…
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News Rapist’s Escape Further Erodes Israel’s Faith in Leaders
Jerusalem – A few weeks ago, Rachel Iscove, a 27-year-old lawyer in Tel Aviv, joined the other female workers in her office and approached her employer with what normally would be an unacceptable request. “We asked our boss if we could leave early every day so we could get home before sunset,” said Iscove, a…
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News Amid Chaos, Hamas Talks Pragmatism
Rateb Quzmar, 20, and his cousin Mohammed Quzmar, 20, lie side by side in a small room on the fourth floor of Ramallah Hospital. This wasn’t their plan. Rateb came from Qalqilya last Friday to visit Mohammed, who had been shot three days earlier by a member of Fatah-allied Palestinian security forces — “because they…
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News Knesset Mulls Ban on Proselytizing
For 15 years Rabbi Shalom Butman has been standing next to a stand on the Nahalat Binyamin boardwalk in central Tel Aviv calling on male passers-by to put on tefillin. The 72-year-old Chabad activist never paid attention to whether they were minors or not, but now he might have to — or find himself in…
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News Iran Denies Visa to an Arab Shoah Scholar
Khaled Kasab Mahameed waited until the very last moment, hoping that his visa would come through. A Muslim lawyer from the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, he had reserved a seat on an afternoon flight December 10 from Amman to Tehran, expecting to address Iran’s international conference on the Holocaust. His bag was packed. His…
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News Olmert’s Remarks Draw Fire
It’s not clear whether they are gaffes or calculated slips, but several comments made publicly by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have not only raised the ire of many Israeli citizens but have raised fears that he has endangered the lives of kidnapped soldiers — and perhaps Israel’s defense policy. “He’s a chatterbox,” said Hebrew University…
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