Alright, I guess you can have him, too. Sigh.

Signed,
Alana

Film of John Galliano’s Racist Rant In Bar [The Sun]
Earlier: A Plea on Behalf of John Galliano

Take a wild guess: What do you think Abe Foxman has to say about the hoary idea that Jews lust insatiably after money and dominate international finance? Remember, this is the professionally thin-skinned director of the Anti-Defamation League, whose primary gig since 1987 has been to oppose (or occasionally approve and endorse) representations of Jews in the international media. In Jews & Money: The Story of a Stereotype (Palgrave, November), he surveys the history of myths of Jewish money lust, which do still circulate today (though, thankfully, not always in venues that would appear to be fertile recruiting grounds for the Aryan Nation or Islamic Jihad).

***

What’s trickiest about the pernicious myth of a shady financial cabal that controls the world’s markets is that it can be disseminated denuded of any reference to Jews. As Jonathan Freedman points out in a sharp book chapter dealing with the Left Behind series and titled “Antisemitism Without Jews,” such tropes continue to be favored among American populists and rabble-rousing evangelical Christians of our time, even if latter-day demagogues are savvy enough to know that yelling “Kill the Jews!” is just so passé. Eric Weiner’s The Shadow Market: How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominate the World (Scribner, October) offers a rather different example of how such tropes continue to appeal even to those who wouldn’t dream of maligning a Jewish banker. Weiner never, in fact, mentions Jews—the economic threats in the book come largely from the Chinese—and no one could possibly accuse him of anti-Semitism. But a conspiracy that “secretly dominate[s] the world” through financial machinations and nefarious international bankers? Weiner’s observations might be true, even important—but presented in such sensationalistic terms, they sound a bit creepy.

***

While anti-Semitic rhetoric, of one kind of another, remains a troublesome presence in American discourse, it is not typically, for the time being at least, the cause of violent acts visited on Jews. This was not the case in Eastern Europe in the years after World War I, when using pamphlets and newspapers to stir up some peasants to rape and murder the local Jews could be employed as a rather straightforward political tactic. The essays gathered into Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Indiana, November)—edited by a foursome of scholars based in Jerusalem, Oregon, and Flemingsberg, Sweden—offer insights into how modern pogroms happened, how they were in some cases staved off, and what this might teach us about contemporary threats.

***

When you descend from people who have been attacked by pogromists bearing sharpened sticks and pitchforks, perhaps it’s no accident when you become an expert in advanced military technology. Not that Victor Krulak—the legendary U.S. Marine who championed the use of Higgins boats and helicopters in warfare—ever acknowledged his East European roots. But, as Robert Coram explains in Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine (Little, Brown, November), Krulak’s parents were Russian Jews who had immigrated to Denver.

***

Ferocious as Krulak could be in battle, Lewis Black manages to be even more bloodthirsty in his comedy. His latest book, I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas (Riverhead, November), attains the tone of unchecked fury one might reasonably expect if, say, Abe Foxman were asked to deliver the keynote address at a rally of the Ku Klux Klan. Is the inanity of Yuletide cheer too easy a target for American comedy’s most furious Jew? Maybe—but, then again, Black has made a fine career for himself out of an ability to get incensed about the mostly inconsequential and ubiquitous narishkeyt the rest of us manage to shrug off.

***

The midterm elections are behind us, and everyone has something to worry about: whether you’re terrified that Obama remains in power, or grimly certain that it’s only a matter of time until the Tea Party storms the streets with torches and pitchforks, take solace that Yiddish intellectuals made lasting contributions to world culture even while living through the strangest and most riotous eras of political transformation. S. An-sky, for example, penned a classic play, The Dybbuk—in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew versions—as well as war diaries, ethnographies, journalism, and poetry, during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II, World War I, and the Russian Revolution. Stanford’s Gabriella Safran tells An-sky’s crucial story in Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk’s Creator, S. An-sky (Harvard, November).

Like An-sky, who until 1904 wrote primarily in Russian, Meir Wiener chose Yiddish after already establishing himself in another language. An Austrian scholar of Jewish mysticism who wrote in German, he moved to the Soviet Union in 1926 and committed himself to orthodox Marxism and to Yiddish culture. If Wiener’s name isn’t already familiar, that might be because of the linguistic and logistical obstacles to understanding his rich and fascinating career: In From Kabbalah to Class Struggle: Expressionism, Marxism, and Yiddish Literature in the Life and Work of Meir Wiener (Stanford, November), the University of Michigan’s Mikhail Krutikov surveys his output in German, Yiddish, and Russian and argues that the radical transformations of Wiener’s career are not exactly contradictions, but typical of the dynamism of Jewish intellectual activity in the early 20th century.

***

In a sense, German-speaking Jews had already established models for multifaceted intellectuals like An-sky and Wiener in the 18th and 19th centuries. Moses Mendelssohn, for example, was a philosopher whom even Immanuel Kant could admire, and he also produced one of the most socially influential translations ever, of the Torah into German. The eminent Israeli intellectual historian Shmuel Feiner explores the personal and professional life of this crucial thinker in Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity (Yale, November).

Samson Raphael Hirsch, for another example, was an intellectual forebear of the movement now recognized as Modern Orthodoxy; in addition to a number of leadership positions, he wrote a commentary on the Torah in German and translated the Psalms, while also founding the Freie Vereinigung für die Interessen des Orthodoxen Judentums, an organization of Jewish communities that would inspire the founders of Agudat Yisrael. Michael Miller contextualizes Hirsch’s activities in the particular history of the region for which he served as chief rabbi in Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation (Stanford, November), which also surveys the achievements of other key Moravians including the Talmudist Mordecai Benet and Hirsch’s ideological opponent Hirsch Fassel. Miller’s study emphasizes that even a relatively small region—in 1754, only 20,000 Jews lived in Moravia, while 750,000 lived in the nearby territories of Poland and Lithuania—can produce world-class intellectuals, whose polemics continue to matter centuries later.

NOTE: This article has been edited to clarify that Eric Weiner’s book is not in any sense anti-Semitic.

• Jerusalem:Ankara::Tel Aviv:Istanbul. That is the only hope for salvaging the Turkish-Israeli alliance, writes Aluf Benn. [Haaretz]

• For four miles, the Washington, D.C., Beltway also serves as an eruv. [Historian for Hire]

• A J Street poll shows that attacks on Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), who is favored to defeat challenger Joel Pollak, have backfired among her own Jewish constituents. [J Street]

• Apropos Peter Balakian’s essay last week, today is Hug an Armenian Day. So, you know, get on that. [Facebook]

• Spook fans will love Tablet Magazine contributor Yossi Melman’s (very) inside look at how Israeli intelligence works. [Haaretz]

Don’t make Abe Foxman angry. You wouldn’t like Abe Foxman when he’s angry.

Abraham Foxman from Blue Pilgrimage on Vimeo.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan are the couple behind the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) and the Cordoba Initiative, the latter of which held a noon event yesterday flaunting its supporters, many of them Jewish. The Cordoba Initiative is not wealthy. As of 2008, according to tax files, its net assets were $18,255. ASMA has deeper pockets, with an annual intake of nearly $1 million, according to its 2009 filing [pdf]. It received substantial grants from the United Nations Population Fund, a Dutch Fund for gender equality, as well as standard U.S. philanthropy groups. Nearly half of its funding, though, comes from the Qatari government. (The building was actually purchased by SoHo Properties, a private real estate company run by Sharif el-Gamal, a congregant of the imam.)

This obviously leaves the center well short of its ambitious fundraising goal. Oz Sultan, a spokesman for the new nonprofit that will take charge of the fundraising effort, called Park51, told me that fundraising efforts were “super-nascent right now.” Funds will arrive, he said, “from a variety of different sources,” including grants, bond issues, and private contributions. Arts funding are a possibility, he shared, noting Park51′s aspirations to create a city structure on par with the Guggenheim. “There’s not going be minarets,” he added.

Park51 intends to have an interfaith board. Sultan could not offer specifics, but noted the ongoing involvement of the Cordoba Initiative, which he called the “programming and interfaith head of the project.” In their search for funds, they will likely turn, in part, to their existing relationships and networks.

Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi is an adviser to the Cordoba Initiative with a resume, like Imam Feisal’s, steeped in NGO and government work spanning continents. In addition to work with the U.S. State Department and British government, Kazmi has served with a host of interfaith organizations here and abroad. His bio lists work with the Open Society Institute, the liberal organization led by George Soros. (An OSI spokesperson confirmed that Kazmi had been a consultant.) For five years, he was a senior adviser to Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Daisy Khan said Park51 would not rule out receiving funds from foreign governments. Politicians pounced on this possibility. Rep. Peter King (R-New York) and Rick Lazio, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, have called for investigations into the funding, which Mayor Bloomberg dismissed as “un-American.” (King’s charge packs less of a punch since he has fiscally supported actual terrorist outfits.)

Park51, Sultan insisted, will fully comply with state and federal investment regulations. “If anyone doesn’t fit with what the Treasury or Homeland Security [Departments] say,” he assured me, “then they won’t be an investor.” Government agencies would, he noted, be eager to support Park51′s mission—which is to say, creating what he repeatedly referred to as “moderate communities.” Sultan sounded mildly frustrated with the calls to unveil their funding structure. “We just got landmark status two days ago,” he said. “I do not have a hundred-page plan.”

At yesterday’s noon event, which swarmed with as much press as participants, the Cordoba Initiative flaunted its partners. Representatives from Jewish organizations, led by the liberal Shalom Center, gathered at the proposed site for a show of support, ceremony, and general amicable goodwill.

One of the speakers was Rabbi Richard Jacobs of the Westchester Reform Temple, who commended the center’s didactic approach. “I pray that the funding for this noble project,” he said into the pack of microphones, “will come from individuals, countries, and institutions that share this vision.” As the event ended, he clarified his remarks. The estimated price for the center, he admitted, was a lofty sum. “We need people,” he told me, “moved by the mission of the center to come out” and back it financially. Then the funding, he added, “won’t be from sources that don’t support the core mission.” He predicted that Park51 would find several willing contributors among liberal and moderate Jews. Like the other speakers, Rabbi Jacobs lavished Imam Feisal with praise, citing him as an intrinsic testament to the center’s virtuous purpose: “His life is the message.”

Reached by phone, Yossi Klein Halevi, a Shalom Hartman Institute fellow (not to be confused with the group from yesterday, the Shalom Center, nor with the Israel-based Shalem Center) and frequent contributor to The New Republic, agreed. When a panel was organized around Halevi’s latest book, Imam Feisal was the only Muslim who would participate. And enthusiastically so: “He’s someone who doesn’t hesitate to interact with the Jewish community,” Halevi told me.

For the record, Halevi does not endorse the center “as currently conceived.” He echoed Abraham Foxman’s concerns for the families of 9/11 victims and urged instead the creation of a center that fused the Abrahamic faiths. At the same time, he expressed contempt for the “attempts to demonize the Imam.” And anyway, he argued, extremist organizations would not back an imam so close to Jews. Feisal’s views may occasioanlly depart from his own, Halevi explained. “But if we hold every Muslim moderate under a microscope,” he continued, “then we’re really going to be left with no one to talk to.”

Earlier: Foxman Keeps Digging
Ground Zero Mosque Organizers Pledge 9/11 Memorial [WSJ]
Mosque Plan Clears Hurdle In New York [NYT]

I’ll defer to J.J. Goldberg for a summary of the findings:

Don’t count on those American Jewish blockheads to stand up for Israel: 11.
Well, they’d better / Hey, they just might: 7.
I’m hoping Obama will see the light and we won’t have to choose sides: 7.
Obama isn’t Israel’s enemy / This symposium is a right-wing set-up: 4.
Miscellaneous (Both sides are nuts / We haven’t properly taught Israel to our young’uns): 2.

Meanwhile, from the other half of Dysentery, Dissent posts an essay co-written by founding editor Irving Howe in the aftermath of the Six Day War. “Israelis should take a constructive and humane attitude toward the problem of the Arab refugees,” the 1967 essay argues, “who, even if exploited by the Arab governments, are suffering human beings and deserve more sympathy and active help than they have gotten from a nation itself comprised of refugees.”

Obama, Israel, and American Jews: The Challenge—A Symposium [Commentary]
‘Commentary’ Polls the Experts [J.J. Goldberg]
From the Archives: Irving Howe and Stanley Plastrik, ‘After the Mideast War’ [Arguing the World]

In his article, Foxman establishes that the announcement “couldn’t have been worse.” And he says—in apparent revision of what he told Haaretz earlier this week—that he fully understands the administration’s anger.

By the end, we are back in Dog Bites Man territory. Foxman concludes: “Ultimately, Palestinian unwillingness to compromise for peace and to stop the hate are the real obstacles to peace.”

After Biden’s Israel Contretemps, Stepping Back [Huffington Post]

The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman called the comments “borderline anti-Semitic” and suggested that Limbaugh apologize:

Limbaugh’s references to Jews and money in a discussion of Massachusetts politics were offensive and inappropriate. While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans. His notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

Limbaugh put the cart before the horse: what Obama said is offensive to Jews only if he was making the connection that bankers are Jews. But, of course, he wasn’t. Instead, Limbaugh made the (offensive) connection himself, and then tried to cut-and-paste it into Obama’s prior remarks. It doesn’t really work that way. Sometimes a banker is just a banker.

ADL Whacks Limbaugh [Ben Smith]

Last year, Rosenthal—who sits on the advisory board of J Street, the left-leaning Israel lobby—published a controversial op-ed in New York’s Jewish Week, timed to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary, calling on progressives to make themselves heard on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of timidity, we have failed to stand up to those who favor military solutions to political problems or oppose peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts in the name of promoting Israel’s best interests.” The piece drew criticism from Anti-Defamation League chief Abraham Foxman, who responded with an open letter to Rosenthal disputing the claim that conservative voices dominate the Israel debate; this week, the right-leaning Brooklyn-based Jewish Press sharply criticized Rosenthal’s appointment in an editorial, while conservative blogs took it a step further, tarring Rosenthal as anti-Israel.

Rosenthal spoke to Tablet Magazine about her plans for her new job and about her critics.

Your predecessor, Gregg Rickman, was very involved in winning visas for Yemeni Jews and was also very critical of the United Nations for its approach to Israel. What are your top priorities?

I don’t know what the top agenda item is going to be, but when I look at newspapers and listen to people around the world who I know, I’m very troubled to see increases in anti-Semitic acts and attitudes in Europe. As the child of a Holocaust survivor, I thought Europe would be further along in the tolerance agenda than they are. I hate to hear about boycotts; I hate to hear about graves and cemeteries being defaced; I hate to hear about speeches tinged with stereotypes of Jews. These are things we thought would fade into distant memory.

So there will be a reactive part of my job, and a proactive part. The proactive part has me as an ambassador or an educator to various cultures on tolerance, on human rights, and on making sure that they recognize the importance of combating anti-Semitism on a human-rights agenda. There will also be a reactive piece of it, where we hear a speech being done by someone, or a cemetery being harmed, or even a public policy that may be introduced, where we will probably need to intervene to say, also in an educating way, that this is a fundamental human-rights issue. And I think the fact that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have put this appointment high on their list in the field of human rights shows that there’s a strong feeling that the public at large needs to be educated that combating anti-Semitism is a fundamental human-rights issue.

Does responding to criticism of Israel fall into your portfolio?

I don’t know the answer. It’s a very fuzzy line. I can’t answer your question because I don’t know yet how that will shake out, but it will certainly be involved. Middle East realities and politics and challenges will be part of this job but I really don’t know how much.

There is no question in my mind that some of the attacks in the media and in the public against Israel come from a place of anti-Semitism. That is the unfortunate reality of some of the bad statements and hurtful ones. But not all of them are. Criticizing a certain policy in Israel or a certain policy in the United States regarding Israel does not make someone an anti-Semite. It makes them, perhaps, a thoughtful analyst of what’s going on, recognizing we can’t keep doing things the way we’ve been doing them.

What about critics who accuse you, like they accuse J Street, of being anti-Israel because of your position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or on America’s relationship with Israel?

My entire adulthood has seen the same thing over and over and over. I love Israel. I have lived in Israel. I go back and visit every chance I can. I consider it part of my heart. And because I love it so much, I want to see it safe and secure and free and democratic and living safely, where children don’t have to learn where every bomb shelter is. That’s my vision of what the future is, and if we keep the current policies and the current strategies that will not happen.

I don’t think questioning any policy, foreign or domestic, makes somebody an anti-Semite or an anti-anything. It makes them someone who wants a thoughtful discussion. I think J Street needs to be at the table, and I think other organizations representing many strategies all need to be at the table, because the status quo in the Middle East is totally unacceptable. And the people who are doing name-calling, and apparently taking me on—I have made a point of not reading them. My sister said I would need a bodyguard. I said it’s just the blogosphere.

And Abe Foxman?

I understand that Abe Foxman wrote a public letter to me. The problem is that he did not send it to me. I just heard about it. But I have worked with Abe in the past and I consider Abe a friend of mine and I would be shocked if he thinks this is a bad appointment. He and I will have differences and he and I will agree on things. He and I will agree that the world needs to have more good people to stand up and fight injustice. He may look to certain groups of people to find good people to stand up next to him, and I may look in a different group, or a broader group, but mostly we agree.

Fair-minded viewers will not accuse him of having denied that some people still spew horrendous stereotypes of yid and kike, given that he practically begins Defamation by interviewing one of the offenders: his grandmother in Jerusalem. Jews? They’re nothing but schemers and layabouts, she tells him, liquor-store owners and interest gougers, too lazy to do any real work but skilled in every sharp practice. (Her definition of “Jews,” I should note, is limited to those in the Diaspora.) Shamir also records, and argues with, some equally noxious slurs voiced by African-Americans on a streetcorner in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where the Protocols of the Elders of Zion continues to win adherents because, look, you can see it checks out. Moving from word to deed, he visits a synagogue in Moscow, where an intruder had recently expressed his opinion of Jews by attacking some of them with a knife.

That said, Shamir is not bent on amassing evidence of widespread, virulent anti-Semitism (as Marc Levin tried to do in his 2005 documentary, Protocols of Zion). He is interested, rather, in a different project, and a legitimate one: examining the moral effect on Jews in general, and Israelis in particular, of their persistent fear of anti-Semites.

To explore this topic, Shamir proceeds in the most labor-intensive tradition of documentary filmmaking, carrying his camera through three continents, poking its lens into the ongoing lives of more than two dozen people and developing the material he gathers into three intertwined storylines.

In the first of these, he follows Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Shamir visits with Foxman’s staff in New York; attempts (with often comic results) to find an appropriately blood-chilling case of anti-Semitism in the ADL’s register of reported insults and slights; and then accompanies Foxman and some ADL donors on a visit to Eastern Europe.

Rotund, bustling, and quick to smile, Foxman appears in these scenes as someone who is open enough to give Shamir the run of his office and thoughtful enough to discuss with him the contradictions of the anti-anti-Semitism trade. (Foxman explains that foreign political leaders receive him respectfully only because they believe he has the ear of the United States government—putting him in the position of subtly reinforcing the myth of Jewish power, even while he combats it.) Shamir confesses in voiceover that he admires the way the ADL director handled a high-level meeting—you get to see it and judge for yourself—and concludes that Foxman is so highly attuned to threats to the Jewish people that he might be thought of as an early-warning instrument. As much as Shamir may be at odds with Foxman as a political figure, he seems to like the man.

The reverse holds true in the second storyline. In this part of the film, Shamir interviews academics—including Norman G. Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry—who argue that the Jewish community’s institutionalized preoccupation with anti-Semitism is exaggerated and that it serves the unwholesome function of forestalling criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. I think it’s fair to say that Shamir endorses this position—but, again, his presentation of it has surprising nuances.

The first time you see Finkelstein, something of his character comes through—enough to make him a gift to the filmmaker, as a painfully spare, frighteningly high-strung contrast to Foxman; but the unambiguous purpose of the interview is simply to draw out his views, and so to advance Shamir’s. The second interview, though, is all about character, and it’s a catastrophe. Raging, railing, unable to keep still, Finkelstein sarcastically tosses off a Nazi salute for the camera, after which the action really heads downhill. By the time it hits bottom, you feel that Shamir might assent to many of Finkelstein’s ideas, but he could never give this man his trust.

The characters who do claim Shamir’s heart, and the film’s, are the Israeli high-school students in the third storyline: unguarded, boisterous, impressionable kids from Haifa, who are being readied for their military service (including duty in the occupied territories) by being taken on a curriculum-approved trip to death-camp sites in Poland. As their tour proceeds, you see that no effort is spared to convince these young people that for Jews, the world will forever be an all-enveloping cloud of hostility, capable of shooting out bolts from any direction, at any time. You observe the change come over the kids as they incorporate this lesson; and if you’re like Shamir, you fear for them—and for the people who will soon be in their rifle sights.

Defamation does a remarkably good job of blending and pacing these complex, wide-ranging storylines. The film’s method of argument is honest—Shamir neither disguises his opinions nor conceals those of others—and the globe-trotting is justified by any number of discoveries made along the route. But the most appealing feature of Defamation, the one that really sells the film, is the jocular, somewhat faux-naif manner that Shamir adopts. He makes it fun to think about Jews overburdening themselves (and others) with their fears—and this, as I said, is a problem.

So long as Defamation plays to an audience of Jews—the film’s own subjects—Shamir’s light, satirical touch can only be welcome. But audiences of other backgrounds will also be drawn to the film—because it’s enjoyable, because it advances a political critique that many people want to hear, and also (let’s not forget those street corner anti-Semites) because its representative Jews sometimes come off as moneyed influence-peddlers. Let me be clear: on the whole I respect what Shamir has done in Defamation, and I think that Jews really ought to have the minimum of courage required to see his arguments aired. But having grown up as a Christ-killer, bloodied on the streets of South Chicago, I may perhaps be forgiven for lacking the full measure of mental freedom that Shamir would like me to have. When I consider how this film might play when we’re no longer talking just among ourselves, I start to think that it’s no laughing matter.

Stuart Klawans is the film critic of the Nation and author of the books Film Follies and Left in the Dark.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, wrote on the lobby’s blog that “[i]t was made clear to the President and his team the strong support that exists among American Jews and the broader public for a strong push to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for a two-state solution, and for a regional and comprehensive approach to the peace process.” The left-leaning M.J. Rosenberg at TPM Café added: “When one of the main rightwingers told Obama that he should keep his differences with the Israelis private, Obama said that had not worked in the past and he’ll go the public route.” And Lynn Sweet at The Chicago Sun-Times reports: “According to a source familiar with what occurred at the 45-minute meeting who briefed me, Obama said that he was pushing Arab and Palestinian leaders too, but the press was focused on finding divisions between the U.S. and Israel.”

Even those who disagree with Obama’s stance on settlements had warm things to say about the powwow. The Jerusalem Post quotes Abe Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League: “He understood why we are anxious. He understood and said they have to find ways to [emphasize] the requirements they have made of the Palestinians.” And Nathan Diament of the Orthodox Union, who was also present for the meeting, told the paper “the president acknowledged there’s certainly a perception problem that the U.S. is pressing Israel and not the other side.” Ben Smith at Politico quotes Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council as commenting that Obama “said we have been very specific with the Arab world on incitement, violence, commitments on accepting the reality of Israel and conveying that to their street as well.”

According to The New York Times’s Caucus blog, however, the only real critic at the meeting was Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who briefly argued with the president. Hoenlein said that diplomatic progress in the Middle East only happens when there is “no light” between the U.S. and Israel, to which Obama countered that “no light” was the situation under George W. Bush and yet nothing got done.

Obama Talks of Progress on Israeli Settlements [Reuters]