Rick Santorum’s South Carolina team sent out a Chanukah message quoting … John. As in New Testament John. Via Hunter Walker’s Twitter feed.
Newt Gingrich fears an Iranian nuclear attack on U.S. soil, and the New York Times wonders if he’s trying to out-Santorum Santorum.
The Onion’s fictional Newt Gingrich wonders if his Florida Jewish outreach was, well just read.
Reuters reviews the potential legal woes of Gingrich’s main backer, Sheldon Adelson.
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Eric Alterman at The Nation says Adelson is proof positive anti-Semitism is dead, but a warning to the sardonically challenged: Alterman makes the case the way that a feminist might make the case that sexism in media is dead by noting the unremarkable success of Megyn Kelly.
Bill Clinton is called the first Jewish President at a celebration marking 100 years of the Arkansas Jewish Federation, and recommends two books that kind of prrove it, in a one-Jew-two-opinions kind of way: Shimon Peres‘ Ben Gurion, a Political Life and Peter Beinart‘s The Crisis of Zionism. (Washington Post.)
Hannah Rosenthal, the Obama administration envoy combating anti-Semitism, recounts her experience in Paris attending UNESCO’s colloqium promoting Holocaust education. Left unsaid, but significant: She attended a session at a body the United States is no longer funding because it effectively recognized Palestinian statehood. (Obama administration officials last year emphasized that the defunding did not mean that the United States would withdraw from such events.)
Nate Bloom, the tireless Jewish genealogist, figures out that Mitt Romney, a proud Mormon, and Zach Braff, a Jew who makes a living playing Jews, are related through a common ancestress — an accused Salem witch named Rebecca Nurse Towne. (InterfaithFamily.com)
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is outraged that Mormons continue to posthumously baptise Holocaust dead, noting such a baptism of its namesake’s parents as recently as last month, despite longstanding pledges from the church to end the practice.
Ben Smith at Politico says Jews may be warming to President Obama, based on the drop in complaints to Ed Koch about his endorsement of the president. Hizonner, endearingly, scribbles his replies in longhand on a printout of the email, and an assistant types in the reply. Facsimiles are at Smith’s BuzzFeed site (yes, he is the most tireless reporter in this city.)
Michele Bachmann, attending CPAC, the annual conservative political confab, tells Human Events it would be inappropriate to comment on whether Israel plans to attack Iran because she sits on the House Intelligence Committee. (Um, Yikes?).
She adds that Obama is "the most dangerous president" for Israel because by not imposing tough sanctions on Iran and reaching out to the Islamic Republic for dialogue:
The president gave Iran the luxury of time to develop a nuclear weapon.
Watch:
We’ve mentioned before that Obama has imposed sanctions tougher than any of his predecessors.
But the "Luxury of time" is a new and interesting meme.
Iran was likely seeking to develop nuclear weapons by the mid-1970s, and the Islamic revolution took place in 1979. Israel was pushing the West to contain the suspected weapons program at least since 1992, the pro-Israel community here has made stopping a nuclear Iran its top agenda item since the mid-1990s, and Congress has been acting since then as well. Finally, Israel has been talking about "points of no-return" at least since the early part of the last decade, and I first remember hearing the "all options are on the table" formulation enunciated by Condoleezza Rice in a meeting with Jewish leaders in 2006.
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