Obama last week.

CREDIT: Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

Foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead has joined Thomas Friedman and others in congratulating the Obama administration for condemning Israel over the announcement it was building 1600 apartment units in East Jerusalem.

“The Obama administration had no choice but to respond strongly,” Mead writes. “Otherwise the administration would have looked weak and irresolute and the repercussions throughout the world could well have been grave.”

But in the Middle East, nothing reeks of weakness more than lashing out publicly at an ally. The administration is well aware of this, because it has endured the insults of virtually every one of its Arab allies (all except for Egypt). Most recently, for example, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal criticized Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her face, explaining that the United States’s proposed sanctions against Iran were too little, too late.

On top of that, the White House has gladly swallowed the far worse taunts of actual adversaries, like Iran and Syria. At a Damascus banquet featuring Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, and Hamas’s Khaled Meshaal, Syrian President Bashar Assad openly mocked Clinton: he joked that he had misunderstood her demands that Syria distance itself from Iran, so instead, said Assad, he was waiving visa requirements for the Islamic Republic.

“The President of the United States cannot afford to look like a patsy,” writes Mead. “Any American president needs to be seen as a figure who commands respect.” Well, sure. But it is not clear why that respect should come at the expense of our allies instead of our enemies.

The Israel Crisis [The American Interest]

CREDIT: Visiting D.C.

Somebody give Ulysses S. Grant’s publicist a raise: Despite the fact that the 18th president has been dead for nearly 125 years, prestigious historian Sean Wilentz positively fawned over him in last Sunday’s New York Times. The reason? Some Republicans wish to replace Grant’s visage on the $50 bill with that of President Ronald Reagan. Wilentz—a progressive who nonetheless wrote an altogether admiring book called The Age of Reagan calls the proposal “a travesty that would dishonor the nation’s bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality.”

Now, leaving aside Grant’s reputation as a corrupt, passive chief executive, Jews may think of his notorious General Order No. 11, which in 1862 expelled all Jews in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky on the grounds of halting the black-market cotton trade. (The order was quickly rescinded; Lincoln condemned it.)

But actually, notes J.J. Goldberg, Grant ought to be remembered as, yes, good for the Jews! Grant was probably only vaguely aware of the order. Beyond that:

• Grant made the first nomination of a Jew to the presidential cabinet, asking close friend Joseph Seligman, a Wall Streeter, to be his first Treasury Secretary; Seligman turned him down, but remained a close adviser, with access unprecedented for a Jew.

• In response to anti-Semitism in newly sovereign Romania, Grant appointed as U.S. consul Sephardic attorney Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, who had just finished a stint as national head of B’nai B’rith.

• Grant was the first U.S. president to attend services at a synagogue (Adas Israel in Washington, D.C.—which, I think I’m obligated to add, is my family’s congregation).

Now might be a good time to mention that historian Jonathan Sarna is writing a book all about Grant and General Order No. 11 … for Nextbook Press.

General Grant, The $50 Bill, and The Jewish Question [J.J. Goldberg]
Who’s Buried in the History Books? [NYT]

Earlier: Adolf Lincoln?

Evangelical leader Pat Robertson, 2007.

CREDIT: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Today in Tablet Magazine, Adam Kirsch considers a new book’s innovative argument: that the rise of secular political philosophy with Locke, Hobbes, and the rest was helped by Protestantism’s interest in Jewish law and government. Mideast columnist Lee Smith weighs the complex question of how Jews should feel about evangelical Christian support for Israel. Following up yesterday’s Vox Tablet podcast with contributing editor Judith Shulevitz on her new book, The Sabbath World, we look at how nine different authors—from Shalom Auslander to Philip Roth—have written about Shabbat. If you want a tenth example, catch The Scroll on a Friday.

Yummm.

CREDIT: Flickr

Because of course Yeshiva University held a Cholent Cook-Off. The Shabbat stew—commonly containing such staples as beef, potatoes, beans, and more potatoes—is delicious, nutritious, and (with apologies to the same-named blog) Jewlicious. After a three-way tie, the school’s president awarded first place to Team Heerlijk (the word is Flemish for “delicious,” but surely you already knew that). Attendees leaving the competition last Thursday were left to ponder the question: Is cholent not eaten on a Saturday really cholent? Who says they don’t discuss serious things in school anymore!

Students Spice Up Culinary Competition [YU]

Netanyahu, Sunday.

CREDIT: Jim Hollander-Pool/Getty Images

• U.S. envoy George Mitchell, scheduled to head to the region today in advance of the proximity talks, has put his trip on hold pending an Israeli response to U.S. concerns. [AP/Gulf News]

• U.S. diplomats want Prime Minister Netanyahu to quash the 1600 planned new houses in East Jerusalem; however, in a speech, Bibi noted that every PM dating to Golda Meir has built there and argued that doing so doesn’t hurt the city’s Arabs. [JPost]

• Most observers believe the Obama administration was genuinely shocked by the building announcement, and now must articulate how its rancor fits (and doesn’t fit) with broader regional strategy: chiefly, opposing Iran. [Politico]

• Because its rededication happened to take place Monday, Jerusalem’s Hurva Synagogue has become a lightning rod for Palestinian anger at the announcement. The structure is located in the Jewish Quarter—not an area that reasonable parties dispute. [NYT]

• Sholom Rubashkin, the former kosher slaughterhouse honcho since convicted of federal financial fraud, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider his case. [FailedMessiah]

• Several senior House Republicans, led by House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia), lashed out at the administration for its chastisement of Israel. [JPost]

Eichmann in Jerusalem.

CREDIT: art.com

• New documents purport to show that Iran tried to purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan in 1987. [Haaretz]

• The Monsey, N.Y., Beit Din investigating Rabbi Leib Tropper filed a civil suit to get him removed from one yeshiva’s bank accounts. [FailedMessiah]

• A Republican research document, apparently geared toward winning over Ohio’s (not insubstantial) Jewish community, is titled, “Buck-Oy State” and in one place reads, “Ohio Dems Are All Verklempt Thanks to Obama’s Meshugeh Health Care Experiment.” [Ben Smith]

• Paul Krugman notes that Israel’s central bank has, with great success, intervened in its currency in the way America fears China will intervene with its own. [The Conscience of a Liberal]

• Researchers want access to sealed records that, they say, prove that the Catholic Church aided Adolf Eichmann’s escape to Argentina. [JPost]

• Gawker takes down Dan Senor, the Jewish former Bush speechwriter who is considering a run for Kirsten Gillibrand’s Senate seat in New York. [Gawker]

In an effort to raise its quite low 10 percent organ-donor rate, Israel has been planning to give those who agree to be donors a leg up when it comes to receiving organ donations. They would move up in the queue, in other words, should it ever come to that.

While bioethicists say this is perfectly kosher—“reciprocal altruism” is the apparently not-oxymoronic term—the plan has come under fire for allegedly discriminating against some ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe they are religiously barred from being donors. (Never mind that they’re not, assuming the organs are being used to save a life and not for profit.) Specifically, Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv’s 100,000 Israeli followers believe they are not allowed to donate their organs until after cardiac death (at which point the organs are dead, too). In case you were wondering, yes, they are allowed to accept donated organs.

The Knesset has passed a law enacting this whole thing. Implementation, however, is up to the health minister … there is no health minister currently, so instead it is up to the deputy health minister … the deputy health minister is—of course—an Elyashiv follower. So, we’ll see.

Does Radical New Way To Boost Organ Donation Discriminate Against Ultra-Orthodox Jews? [AP/Vos Iz Neias?]
Earlier: Israel’s New Organ Donor Policies

The lobby of the fateful Dubai hotel.

CREDIT: Bustan Rotana

There’s no more proof that the Mossad was indeed behind the January 19 assassination of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. But there are nonetheless several interesting nuggets in this Los Angeles Times article about the Dubai police force’s “mixture of high-tech razzle-dazzle and old-fashioned investigative work.”

• Al-Mabhouh’s death was supposed to look like a heart attack—the door’s inner latch was set; the room was tidy; he was found splayed on the floor with no immediately visible marks—and was almost mistaken for one, until one doctor spied something fishy in his blood.

• The muscle relaxant the assassins used was probably supposed to do the job by itself—in high enough doses, it mimics cardiac arrest within 15 minutes. The fact that al-Mabhouh was also suffocated by a pillow suggests, says one investigator, that the assassins “were panicking for one reason or another.”

• The Dubai police employed sophisticated facial recognition software to the video of the assassins.

• The doors to almost all rooms at the hotel at which al-Mabhouh was staying are visible from the central atrium.

• Authorities believe one of the assassins knew al-Mabhouh—hence, there was no evidence of forced entry.

• Authorities are now taking a fresh look at the 2001 death of Palestinian activist Faisal Husseini in Kuwait in light of the al-Mabhouh revelations.

The article implicitly assumes that because al-Mabhouh’s death has definitively been established as murder, and almost as definitively established as Mossad-backed, then it failed. But one could also argue that the Mossad—which has not (and surely will not) either confirmed nor denied involvement—gains some benefit from having the world think it is able to do this. Anyway, if an operation that achieved its primary mission and resulted in zero apprehensions is a failure, then success must be very sweet indeed.

How Dubai Unraveled a Homicide, Frame By Frame [LAT]
Related: Murder in Dubai

CREDIT: The Simpsons

A state senator and a state delegate in Maryland who are co-sponsoring a tough gun-control bill both happen to be Jewish, so they have attracted the ire of Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. The Wisconsin-based group’s self-appointed mission is “educating the Jewish community about the historical evils that Jews have suffered when they have been disarmed”—presumably the Holocaust could have been averted if only shtetl-dwellers had more AK-47s? Anyway, JPFO has mailed around charming fliers about the bill, including to these politicians’ homes, headlined, “Bagel Brain Jews Want Your Bullets and Your Guns.”

The state senator represents Montgomery County, the tony suburb north-northwest of Washington, D.C. I don’t know about elsewhere, but as a MoCo native myself, I can tell you that the (many many) Jews there have pretty little to fear beyond not being able to get a Saturday 8 pm reservation at a decent Bethesda restaurant, and I don’t see how guns could help that.

Anti-Semitic Flier Takes Aim at Md. Lawmakers for their Gun Bill [AP/Baltimore Sun]

Both Behemoth (top) and Leviathan (bottom) are kosher.

CREDIT: William Blake, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Ever been to a restaurant, and you see something imaginary on the menu—roasted Jabberwock, say, or braised Ent with balsamic vinaigrette—and you don’t know if you can order it or not because you don’t know if it’s kosher? Now, there’s a new book that will tell you: The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals.

Basically, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have done extensive research (no, but really) into both fictional creatures and the laws of kashrut to determine whether 34 imaginary animals are kosher or not. Only seven are, including the biblical Behemoth, Leviathan, and Ziz. (Jewcy took a look at a few of these as well a couple months ago.)

Oh, and if you want to learn a bit more about mythical animals from Jewish folklore—presumably they are more likely not to be trayf, right?—Tablet Magazine had the skinny on several last Halloween.

It’s the Monster Manual With Manischewitz [i09]

Related: The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals [Jewcy]
A Very Hebrew Halloween [Tablet Magazine]