Navigate to News section

Sundown: Hama Then, Homs Now

Plus Jew-school advances to championship, the AIPAC Three, and more

by
Marc Tracy
March 02, 2012
Jerusalem snowed in.(Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)
Jerusalem snowed in.(Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Check The Scroll Sunday for a special blogging-from-AIPAC edition.

• The current siege of Homs, Syria, has prompted unpleasant memories of the 1982 massacre in Hama by the new boss’s father. [WP]

• Iran appeared to be doing its international financial transactions via a Dubai bank … until the U.S. Treasury found out about it. [WSJ]

• Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan will visit Tehran one week after a nuclear summit in late March. Hrmm. [Haaretz]

• Houston’s Beren Academy won their game this afternoon. They play for the state championship tomorrow night—after sundown, of course. [Houston Chronicle]

• AIPAC has refused conference credentials to three journalists, including Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss (profiled by Michelle Goldberg). [JTA]

• Supreme Leader Khamanei’s attitude toward the West continues to make a diplomatic deal on Iran’s nuclear program unlikely. [Reuters]

• Jim Gerstein, a J Street-affiliated pollster (profiled by Allison Hoffman) finds that Jews are not going to significantly abandon President Obama at the voting booth. [Politico]

• How gas prices play a role in the U.S. posture toward Iran. [FP]

• The trailer for this new Emergency Committee for Israel movie might be dropping an Obama-is-a-Muslim dog-whistle in the final seconds. You be the judge. [ECI YouTube]

• Since 2000, when the program started, Taglit-Birthright has contributed more than half a billion dollars to the Israeli economy. [JTA]

• Ahmadinejad-related shenanigans at the Columbia University College Republicans. [Bwog]

• Yossi Klein Halevi argues it is unreasonable, both historically and ethically, to expect Israel to fully trust the Obama administration on Iran. [TNR]

• Shmuel Rosner asks: “Why are so many Americans preoccupied with my country?” [FP]

• The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference is this weekend! Here is my dispatch from last year’s. [Tablet Magazine]

• Books on Hank Greenberg and the Philadelphia SPHAs prompt a musing on Jews in sports. [Hartford Courant]

• From an email: “Secular Humanist Jewish Circle Joins Society for Humanistic Judaism.” No link necessary; there’s no way I could have made that up.

Lou Reed turned 70 today. Elizabeth Wurtzel celebrated his 69th last year.

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