December 28, 2005
by Reb Yudel |
Despite his being one of the preeminent journalists in Israel, there is something wonderfully unguarded and ingenuous about Yossi Klein Halevi. One is struck immediately by his warmth and openness. And he smiles a lot, at least for an Israeli. But together with the openness there is an edge, a cynicism, born partially on the streets of Borough Park, Brooklyn, partially inherited from his father, Zoltan, who survived the Holocaust in Hungary, and partially learned through his own experiences in Moscow with the KGB and in Gaza faced with hard-edged Palestinians.TrackBackIn addition to his cynical naïveté, Halevi is in many other ways a walking contradiction. A hardliner ardently concerned with human rights, he is one of the few in the political center involved in Arab-Jewish dialogue and a deeply spiritual Jew who prides himself on his participation in Islamic chants, Sufi dances, and Armenian Christian mourning processions. Not only is Halevi unjaded by these seeming contradictions, he seems to take pride in them—an eternal iconoclast.
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