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Sundown: Obama, Merkel Nix U.N. Route

Plus, West Bank mosque arson, anti-anti-circumcision victory, and more

by
Marc Tracy
June 07, 2011
Chancellor Merkel and President Obama today.(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Chancellor Merkel and President Obama today.(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Tablet Magazine and The Scroll will not publish new content until Friday morning, in observance of Shavuot. Have a meaningful cheesecake binge.

• Speaking beside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama said the two agreed that the Palestinians should not seek statehood at the United Nations. [Ynet]

• Israel Shamir, the Jewish-born anti-Semite extensively profiled in Tablet Magazine, has played an even more active role in WikiLeaks than has been believed. [Jewish Chronicle]

• A mosque in a West Bank village near Ramallah was torched; indications are that the arsonists were militant Jewish settlers. [WP]

• The International Atomic Energy Agency’s finding of elements of an Iranian nuclear weapons program obviously discredits its parent body, the U.N., President Ahmadinejad pointed out. What with there being no Iranian nuclear weapons program and all. [AP/WP]

• Contributing editor Jeffrey Goldberg points out that Iran clearly has a nuclear weapons program. [Bloomberg View]

• Spurred in part by strong Jewish opposition, an anti-circumcision movement leader dropped her campaign to place an initiative to ban the practice on the Santa Monica, California, ballot. [JTA]

• English Jewish author Harry Bernstein, who precociously penned his acclaimed memoir at the age of 96, died at 101. [NYT]

• The Syrian-American blogger known as “A Gay Girl in Damascus” was arrested. [AP/WP]

• President Obama is so anti-Israel that some are now worried he will lose Arab-American support. Wait, what? [Salon]

• Note to whoever paid $200 for 14 pairs of Bernard Madoff’s boxers: That money could be better spent feeding starving African children. Or feeding me at Le Bernardin. [JTA]

• You know who else drank decaf coffee? Hitler. [berfrois]

JTA editor-in-chief Ami Eden has a grand theory of the X-Men, involving Magneto and Meir Kahane. Watch his video feuilleton:

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.