US President Barack Obama has appointed Sam Kaplan, who is Jewish, as the new American ambassador to Morocco. Kaplan, a Minneapolis attorney, was a key fundraiser for Obama's 2008 election campaign. Israeli officials said the appointment was not likely to raise any eyebrows in Morocco, both because the country had already had a Jewish US ambassador in the past and because King Mohammad VI had appointed a prominent Jewish leader, Serge Berdugo, as an ambassador-at-large.
Moreover, Obama is planning to send a US ambassador back to Syria for the first time in four years, according to a CNN report. "It's in our interests to have an ambassador in Syria," a senior US official told CNN."We have been having more and more discussions, and we need to have someone there to engage."
