• 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.