Sundown: Michelle Obama Selects a Menorah
Plus, the freeze is temporary, watch the Swiss, and more
December 01, 2009
• On Dec. 16th, for the sixth night of Hanukkah, the White House will light a 19th-century menorah on loan from Prague’s Jewish Museum; Michelle Obama specifically requested it after seeing it on an official visit. [JTA]
• Benjamin Netanyahu clarified that the current West Bank settlement freeze is not permanent, but rather intended to create room for negotiations on a final status: “We did not mean to halt reasonable life,” he said. “The settlers in Judea and Samaria are an integral part of our nation.” [Arutz Sheva]
• Israel’s UN Ambassador lambasted the United Nations’s practice of marking its “solidarity” with the Palestinian people on the anniversary of UN approval of partition. [ynet]
• A former Israeli Ambassador to Switzerland warned that the Swiss decision to ban the construction of minarets reflects the same “fear of things foreign and different” that is also “the basic root of anti-Semitism.” [Arutz Sheva]
• Amid much protest and in a close vote, the London School of Economics elected to twin with the Islamic University of Gaza. [Jewish Chronicle]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
