• The whole wide world—but especially the Mideast—will be watching President Obama’s speech this morning. [NYT]
• Obama has been warned that his tough stance on Israel from the outset could very well hurt him with important Jewish donors. Reportedly, one thing that would be a nice salve is a trip to Israel. [WSJ]
• Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to offer a “daring” peace plan and admitted Israel lacks a “sense of direction.” [LAT]
• The Obama administration finally levied (mostly symbolic) sanctions on President Assad and six other senior Syrian officials. Assad claimed it was doing this to serve the interests of … Israel. So yes it’s possible Israel is being scapegoated. [AP/WP]
• Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigns as head of the IMF. Wait—he hadn’t already?! [NYT]
• Jackson Diehl comes down hard on President Abbas for allying with Hamas—“Abbas blew up four years of U.S.-sponsored institution building, relative peace and growing prosperity in the West Bank”—and says we are too hard on Bibi. [WP]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.