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Daily Briefing

Friday, June 5, 2009

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Featured Stories Will pro-Israel groups miss Ahmadinejad? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen here addressing the Durban Review Conference in Geneva on April 20, 2009, is up for re-election June 12. (Michael J. Jordan) With Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad standing for reelection later this month, Jewish groups face an interesting question: Would they be worse off if they didn't have the Holocaust-denying leader to kick around anymore? Read more » Obama at Buchenwald The text and video from President Obama's visit to Buchenwald. Read more » Op-Ed: Obama has it wrong on linkage President Obama's thinking is feckless when he says that solving the Palestinian-Israel problem will help in dealing with the Iranian threat, writes the head of a pro-Israel think tank. Read more » Op-Ed: 'Tough love' for Israel would pain pro-Israel peace camp The United States must insist that Israel freeze all settlement building, author and activist Dan Fleshler says, but he's hoping it won't take "tough love" because of the hurt it would cause. Read more » Editors' Picks In case you're wondering about Obama's speech... Jewish groups continue to weigh in: They all liked Obama's affirmation of the "unbreakable" bonds between the United States and Israel, and his denunciation of Holocaust denial. But there was also wide disappointment with the portion of the speech on Iran, which was seen as not forceful enough in proclaiming U.S. opposition to the Iranian regime acquiring nuclear weapons. Steal this post! The decline of Jewish newspapers is being accelerated by the rise of Jewish news aggregation Web sites which steal content from more prominent sources, robbing them of desperately needed licensing fees and revenue-generating traffic. And JTA's director of digital media, Daniel Sieradski, has something to say about it -- and plenty of rabbis to back him up! Should we spend money on Jews or on helping others? The president of the American Jewish World Service, Ruth Messinger, reopens the debate with her speech at the ordination ceremony of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Playing Madoff The producers of "Madoff: Made Off With America," the unofficial story of the Bernard Madoff scandal, have cast Paul Cohen, a Jersey City, N.J., resident and newspaper advertising executive, for the lead role, according to the Forward. Dear Reform movement In an open letter, movement leaders spell out the grand bargain that the severely-scaled-back-and-$6-million-poorer Union for Reform Judaism is offering its member congregations. 20 years of change Roger Cohen writes that nothing has changed in the Mideast in 20 years. He missed Israel's withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, an intifada, the creation of a militarized Palestinian state, some peace deals and a sea change in Israeli public opinion, writes JTA Managing Editor Uriel Heilman. Breaking News President Barack Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp site, calling it "the ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers. President Obama emphasized that he expects the Palestinians to live up to their commitments. A Palestinian protesting Israel's West Bank security fence was killed. Europe's court of human rights is hearing a case filed by a Jew and a Roma against a law that bars minorities from running for the Bosnian presidency. One of the country's largest Orthodox yeshivas is suffering a swine flu outbreak. Israel emphasized its security needs in praising President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. Egypt reportedly has reconvened prisoner-exchange talks between Israel and Hamas. A White House official who has been handling Jewish affairs has been named the chief of staff for Michelle Obama. The head of a United Nations team investigating possible Israeli and Hamas war crimes said that Israel is not cooperating with his committee. A Jewish official asked the Organization of American States to investigate recent anti-Semitism in Venezuela.