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Daybreak: Le BHL

Plus Bibi warns he won’t negotiate with Hamas, and more

by
Marc Tracy
December 27, 2011
Lévy in 1978. ( Richard Melloul/Sygma/Corbis/NY Mag)
Lévy in 1978. ( Richard Melloul/Sygma/Corbis/NY Mag)

• In 2011, Bernard-Henri Lévy finally got to be a part of history. [NY Mag]

• Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged that he would not negotiate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority currently plan. (Of course, he’s not negotiating with the Palestinian government that doesn’t include Hamas, either.) [Haaretz]

• Turkey may insist on poor relations with Israel as the Knesset debates whether to commemorate the Armenian genocide. (Of course, Turkey already insists on poor relations with Israel.) [NYT]

• Are policy-makers reckoning with the potential radioactive consequences of bombing Iranian reactors (and possibly seeing Israel’s bombed in retaliation)? [NYT]

• It’s being treated as a scoop, but it’s not really news that, as his former senior aide says, Rep. Ron Paul is genuinely anti-Israel. [Haaretz]

• Netanyahu appears to be forcing the closure of an independent television station that isn’t right-wing and has also reported embarrassing details about him and his family. [NYT]

• Do I need to tell you that Don Blanquito, Brazil’s newest funk sensation, is an L.A. Jewish kid named Alex Cutler? [NYT]

• Imagine if the White House had termites and no hot water. Israel is real estate. [JPost]

• A judge dismissed two students’ lawsuit alleging that Berkeley did not adequately protect them from anti-Semitism during a campus “Apartheid Week.” [JTA/Forward]

Matt Damon and (half-Jewish) Scarlett Johansson take a Hanukkah quiz. It gets very real a little after the two-minute mark.

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