Shalom

Over in England, Israelis Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres were left off of a list of Nobel Peace Laureates published by The Guardian to accompany a story about President Barack Obama's award. Co-winners Anwar Sadat and Yasser Arafat appeared on the list.

A "technical issue", they claimed, when caught by The Telegraph and others. Those are the restrained responses; others are less charitable.

Oy vay

The Telegraph claimed last week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes from a Jewish family. The 'evidence' supposedly comes from the identification he's holding in the accompanying picture.

Both items are mostly only suitable for late-night TV jokes and blogger outrage, though I'll pass on Ahmadiniejad. I don't think his Holocaust denial is very funny.

Though it's no big thing to me, Revolutionary Iran evidently has other ideas. According to the story:

During this year's presidential debate on television he was goaded to admit that his name had changed but he ignored the jibe.

However Mehdi Khazali, an internet blogger, who called for an investigation of Mr Ahmadinejad's roots was arrested this summer.

"It's not something we'd talk about," said Ron Gidor, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London.