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Sundown: Praise From Strange Quarters

Plus blaming the Orthodox, Oren and the Lakers, and more

by
Marc Tracy
September 14, 2011
President Obama.(Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)
President Obama.(Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)

• A former Mossad director was unusually effusive in his praise for President Obama’s handling of the crisis at Israel’s Cairo embassy last weekend. [Ben Smith]

• Christians United for Israel was unusually effusive in its praise for Obama’s pledge to veto a Palestinian statehood resolution in the U.N. Security Council. [JTA]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government says it plans to respond to Turkish rhetoric with silence in an effort not to further exacerbate tensions. [Haaretz]

• Blogger Richard Silverstein: leftist ideologue, or one-man Mideast WikiLeaks? [Forward]

• Some Orthodox Jews were turned off by the official Democratic response to the Weprin loss, which was in part to, well, blame it on the Orthodox. [Ben Smith]

• The last interview Tony Judt ever gave makes me sad, because he is more unfair to Israel than I usually thought of him as being. Here, for the record, is an interview I did with him about a month prior. [The Atlantic]

Why did Israeli ambassador Michael Oren leave his speech at the University of California, Irvine, early last year? It wasn’t because of the pro-Palestinian protesters; it was because of tickets to the Los Angeles Lakers game. Doesn’t he know what happens when Jews go to Lakers games?

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