Shimon Peres at the Waldorf

++Shimon Peres, the 91-year old former President of Israel, was honored at a Gala For Israel the other night. This event received extensive coverage in Israel because the event brought forth some of the new Israeli celebrities with the older pioneers.

++This was a welcome change from Bibi's antics and a reminder of the best of Israel. Peres took a very different view of Iran than Bibi and he also tried to tamp down the calls for European Jewry to make an exodus to Israel, messages you don't hear much in the States. Shimon Peres is perversely upbeat about the future in the Middle East. He saw the Arab Spring as being beneficial and the rise of a new generation capable of making peace. But he always had that dimension to him. It's why President Obama awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

++Today the Prime Minister of Denmark and President Obama together promised to fight the new anti-semiticism in Europe and terrorism. 

++If you can say a cool story came from the Holocaust, it had to be the evacuation of the Danish Jews under the noses of the Nazi occupiers. It was a moment of national pride and honor that the Danish people themselves ,knowing of the Nazis plans for their fellow countrymen, risked life and limb to smuggle them all out of the country in private boats. 

++That's why over 30,000 marched today in Copenhagen in denunciation of the killings at the Free Speech seminar and the synagogue.