Yossi Alpher
By Yossi Alpher
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Opinion What Trump’s Withdrawal From Syria Means For The Kurds – And For Israel
There are three basic reasons why, on Sunday night, the Trump administration announced that US armed forces are abandoning the Kurds of northeast Syria. The reasons reflect brutal logic. That doesn’t make the outcome any more attractive or palatable. First, President Trump is consistent, albeit with frequent zigzags, about keeping American forces out of conflicts…
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Opinion The Last Thing Netanyahu Wants Is A War With Iran
The US-Iran confrontation in the Persian Gulf is escalating day by day. President Trump’s cautious reservations about the use of American military force in the Middle East—perhaps the only sound strategic pronouncement he has consistently made since before being elected in November 2016—are one factor militating against war. But there are other factors at work…
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Opinion Israel Has Chosen Ultra-Nationalism Over Diaspora Jews
Back in the late 1990s, it seemed appropriate to describe relations between Israel, the United States and the American Jewish community as a strategic triangle. Each of the three sides to the triangle interacted with and nourished the other two. This was not an equilateral triangle: Israel seemed to be replacing U.S. Jewry as the…
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Opinion Jared Kushner’s Peace Efforts Will Only Make Things Worse
Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s Middle East peacemakers, just completed another round of Middle East visits. Their most important interlocutors were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), the revolutionary new Saudi leader. Together, the four appear to be launching a project to create a Palestinian Islamist mini-state…
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Opinion Memo To The World: Israel And Hamas Are Both To Blame For Carnage In Gaza
Last Monday, Israel’s security forces faced off against 40,000 angry Gazans. Some were armed. All were incited by Hamas to tear down the fence separating Gaza from Israel and implement en masse the sacred principle of “return.” And though the majority kept their distance, time and again groups of young men would approach the fence,…
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Opinion Actually, Netanyahu’s Speech Was A Warning — And Not For Trump
Israeli PM Netanyahu’s cartoonish presentation to the world on Monday of Iran’s stolen nuclear archive predictably aroused a broad spectrum of reaction. Much of the scorn heaped on the presentation is technically correct. There was nothing really new here. There was no smoking gun of Iranian violation of the JCPOA nuclear deal. And this was…
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Opinion Carnage In Gaza Is A Disaster For Israel Too
The Israel Defense Forces are currently confronting masses of Gazans along the Gaza-Israel boundary fence. Sadly, the confrontation brings into focus the abject lack of a viable strategy on the part of all sides to this conflict. Accordingly, when the smoke clears a month or so from now, there will be no winners. And everybody…
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Opinion Why Putin and Trump Remain Silent On Israel/Iran Flare Up
Saturday, February 10, witnessed a dramatic escalation in Israel’s simmering war to its north. The Israel Air Force shot down an Iranian drone flying provocatively in Israeli airspace. The IAF then bombed Iran’s drone base deep inside Syria. Then an Israeli F-16 was downed by Syrian missiles. In response, the IAF proceeded to destroy a…
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Fast Forward Columbia’s president releases a video addressing decision to call police to campus
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