• Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, Meta, UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress are convening a discussion at the U.N. today in New York focused on the role that technology can play in Holocaust preservation efforts.
• Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is hosting the second annual International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. Speakers at the two-day confab include Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, the Department of Justice’s Leo Terrell, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut.
• Elsewhere in Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will host the annual lecture of the Jabotinsky Institute at the President’s Residence tonight, delivered this year by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
• The IDF, acting on new information from Hamas, is conducting an operation in northern Gaza to locate the remains of Ran Gvili, who was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
• The Saudi Real Estate Future Forum kicks off today in Riyadh. Former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are slated to speak, as is far-right commentator Tucker Carlson.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV

Anti-Israel and antisemitic messages from Saudi regime mouthpieces and state-sanctioned media have increased in recent weeks, as Riyadh has pivoted away from a more moderate posture to an alignment with Islamist forces, such as Qatar and Turkey.

Over the weekend, prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri wrote an article in a Saudi news site attacking the United Arab Emirates, with whom Saudi Arabia has been at odds in recent weeks, as “an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world … in betrayal of God, His Messenger and the entire nation.” He also wrote that “Israel is on a path to a rapid downfall and the umma [community of Muslims] will remain, God willing.” The column, published after weeks of anti-Israel and antisemitic messaging from Saudi-backed channels, sparked an uproar from Western voices, including the Anti-Defamation League, which condemned “the increasing frequency and volume of prominent Saudi voices … using openly antisemitic dog whistles.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on the “Ask A Jew” podcast earlier this month that the Trump administration needs “to have a serious talk with” the Saudis. “I’m ringing the alarm; I’m breaking the glass,” he said. “I’m saying, listen, these guys are changing.”

In the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types … would be inciting against the Jews,” Abdul-Hussain said. “But this week, the [Saudi] state-owned media was inciting against the Zionist plan to partition the region and to divide the region. This is very new.” 

One possible reason for the turn in Saudi messaging is that Riyadh is “very afraid of Israel,” Edy Cohen, a research fellow at the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider, noting that it views recent Israeli actions as going against Saudi interests.

Cohen noted that “the Saudis and the Qataris led a campaign for Trump not to strike Iran. …[The Saudi leadership] heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] said the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy. Imagine Iran and Israel together … It’s their biggest nightmare.” Riyadh and Jerusalem are also at odds on Syria and Somaliland.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is in Washington today, where he’ll meet with Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo Carrasco and sign an agreement to renew relations between Jerusalem and La Paz.
• On Capitol Hill, B’nai B’rith International and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) are holding an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the U.N.’s “Zionism = Racism resolution.” Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), historian Gil Troy and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Ben Cohen are slated to speak, while Israeli President Isaac Herzog will deliver remarks by video.
• At the Washington National Cathedral tonight, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who was the target of an arson attack during Passover, and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who gained national prominence for his response to TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination in the state, will sit for a conversation about political violence.
• The Jewish Democratic Council of America is holding its annual Hanukkah party tonight in Washington.
• Yale’s Shabtai group is hosting an event on “The Future of Global Jewry” tonight, featuring Rabbi David Wolpe, Yale professor Paul Franks and Rabbi Shmully Hecht.
• The Jerusalem Post is convening its two-day Washington conference today.
• Abu Dhabi Finance Week continues today in the United Arab Emirates. Speakers today include Stephen Schwarzman, Harvey Schwartz and David Rubenstein.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS AND MATTHEW SHEA

Tucker Carlson, Rob Malley and Bill Gates walk into a Gulf hotel. 

It’s not the beginning of a joke, but rather, part of the speaker lineup at the Doha Forum over the weekend in Qatar.

As we’ve reported frequently over the last year, Doha has gone to great efforts to establish itself as a critical cog in the wheel of a functioning global society. Nowhere were the fruits of that labor on display more than at the two-day Doha Forum, held at the glitzy Sheraton Grand Doha Hotel.

Alongside traditional conference-circuit speakers — among them former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Microsoft founder Gates, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker and Heritage Foundation senior fellow Victoria Coates — were more controversial voices.

Those voices include Carlson as well as Malley, the former Iran envoy who was suspended and had his clearance revoked for his alleged mishandling of classified documents; and Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, which was a co-sponsor of the forum, who has in the past faced accusations of operating as an unregistered foreign agent for Iran.

In Doha, Carlson, a last-minute addition to the forum’s lineup, sat in conversation with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a 20-minute conversation that preceded a sit-down between Donald Trump Jr. and investor Omeed Malik.

When discussing efforts to rebuild Gaza, Carlson suggested that Qatar should refrain from helping “rebuild a region that has been destroyed by a country [Israel] that has also bombed” them. Carlson also mocked Americans and lawmakers who have called out Qatar as a “terror state” or terror “financier,” despite Doha’s well-documented involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood and harboring of Hamas. 

As one longtime attendee of the Forum wrote on X, “[N]ever has Qatar displayed its immense convening power more effectively than this year.”

In an era in which American political figures face blowback for appearing at conferences that also platform extremist voices — such as Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) appearance this fall at Arabcon, where other speakers downplayed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks — more mainstream speakers at the Doha Forum have faced a remarkably low amount of condemnation, and legitimized the conference and its organizers in the process.

That lack of condemnation underscores the degree to which Qatar’s strategy of infiltrating virtually every element of Western society — from media to sports to academia to government — has rendered it a powerful and at times dangerous force, and one that forces for Western values and democracy are unwilling to challenge or confront.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Tales from the Quad: In The Washington Post, former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, reflects on the semester he spent teaching at Harvard University. “Yes, you may still find the intellectual underpinnings of Harvard’s embarrassing anti-Israel encampments in some clubs and faculty lounges. You will also find a new president, an observant Jew, who is making sure that similar disruptions of campus life and blatant antisemitism do not reappear, even as serious conservative speakers show up again. … What I’ve experienced may be a natural return to Harvard’s more moderate bearings, following noisy displays of intolerance by campus agitators in recent years. Or it may be due to the Trump administration’s forceful executive orders and fiscal pressure. Either way (and it’s probably both), let’s take the win and learn the broader lesson.” [WashPost]

The MAGA Melee on Israel: Politico’s Ian Ward does a deep dive into the conservative movement’s debate over U.S. support for Israel. “Foreign policy calculations aside, though, [American Conservative editor Curt] Mills acknowledged that much of the swing against Israel is being driven by a visceral sense that the GOP cares more about Israeli priorities than it does about the interests of its own voters. ‘There’s still no wall on the southern border. We still haven’t brought all these factories back. They still have not deported 10 million people,’ Mills told me. ‘But you know what they have done? They’ve kicked people out of the country for pro-Palestinian speech and they’ve bombed Iran.’ That view is enough to qualify Mills as a radical within the conservative movement, but he told me that he sometimes feels like a moderate compared to some of the Gen-Z conservatives. ‘They’re hardcore,’ Mills told me. ‘Frankly, some of them are so radicalized that they are, like, openly sympathetic to Hamas, which [they see as] close to pure freedom fighters.’” [Politico]

President Donald Trump will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Dec. 29 at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., according to the Prime Minister’s Office, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports… 

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX), a co-chair of the House antisemitism task force, will not seek reelection in his newly redrawn Texas congressional district…

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is moving closer to launching a bid for governor of New York; Blakeman, a Republican, would face Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who announced her bid last month…

A New Jersey court ruled that former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is serving an 11-year sentence for bribery, is ineligible to hold public office or public employment in the state…

David Ellison’s Skydance Paramount is launching a $108 billion hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery following the announced sale of the company to Netflix; filings made public on Monday revealed that Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners and sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar were on board to provide financing for Skydance Paramount’s bid…

A high school in San Jose, Calif., is investigating an incident in which students formed a swastika with their bodies and posted the image to social media…

The hate crimes unit of the Toronto police department is investigating an incident at a senior living community over the weekend in which mezuzot around the complex were removed from doorposts…

Argentina’s DAIA, the umbrella organization for the country’s Jewish community, filed a formal complaint after a number of far-left legislators pledged allegiance to a “free Palestine” during a swearing-in ceremony last week…

The New York Times looks at Hamas’ efforts to reconstitute itself and reassert its power in areas of the Gaza Strip from which Israel has withdrawn, challenging efforts by the U.S. and other countries to remove the terror group from power and rebuild the enclave…

Egypt and Iran — both countries where homosexuality can face legal consequences — were assigned the specially designated “Pride Match” celebrating the LGBTQ community during next year’s World Cup; the match, which will be played in Seattle, had been designated by the local organizing committee for the distinction before countries were assigned matches…

Iranian media reports that the trial of a European dual national charged with spying on behalf of Israel during the 12-day June war has begun…

The Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament said in a Telegram channel that he had been summoned by Iranian security agencies in recent weeks over social media activity, including liking and sharing posts about Israel, of some of his constituents…

Pennsylvania State Budget Secretary Uri Monson will depart his role to serve as the executive director of the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System… 

Washington, D.C., philanthropist Shirley Schwalb Small, who served on the boards of the Kennedy Center and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, died at 94…

Social justice activist Cora Weiss died at 91…

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) swore in new members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council on Monday night in Washington. Among those sworn in were American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch, philanthropist Tila Falic, Sid Rosenberg, Siggy Flicker, Jonathan Burkan and Matthew Segal.

Film and television actor, Jaren Miles Lewison turns 25…

Retired diplomat who served as Israel’s ambassador to Russia, China and the U.K., Zvi Heifetz turns 69… Los Angeles investor and entrepreneur, she leads Saving Giving, Lisa Zola Greer… Former senior White House aide and deputy secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton and Obama administrations, now vice chair of the Brunswick Group, Neal S. Wolin turns 64… CEO at Alta Vista Partners and former COO of the New York Mets, Jeffrey Scott Wilpon turns 64… Persian-born author of four novels, she is a frequent lecturer on Iranian Jewish history and the topic of exile, Gina B. Nahai turns 64… Senior research fellow at the Cato Institute, Daniel “Dan” Greenberg turns 60… Foreign minister of Israel since 2024, Gideon Sa’ar (born Gideon Zarechansky) turns 59… Governor of Virginia since 2022, his term ends in mid-January, Glenn Allen Youngkin turns 59… U.S. senator (D-NY), Kirsten Gillibrand turns 59… Violinist and conductor, he is the music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Joshua David Bell turns 58… Singer-songwriter, music producer and founder of StaeFit workout apparel, Stacey Liane Levy Jackson turns 57… President of the National Democratic Institute and former State Department official, Tamara Cofman Wittes turns 56… Singer-songwriter and son of Bob Dylan, he rose to fame as the lead singer and primary songwriter for the rock band the Wallflowers, Jakob Dylan turns 56… Senior rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue, Rabbi Efrem Goldberg turns 51… Managing director at Finsbury / FGS Global and a board member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington until 2022, Eric Wachter… Award-winning screenwriter, film director and producer, Eliza Hittman turns 46… Actor, comedian and musician, best known for his role as Howard Wolowitz in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” Simon Helberg turns 45… 2015 graduate of Yale Law School, she is a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s immigration law unit’s youth project, Daniella Esther Rohr Adelsberg… Singer, songwriter and entertainer in the Orthodox pop music industry, Mordechai Shapiro turns 36… Digital director at the Abundance Institute, Shoshana Weissmann… Israeli fashion model, Dorit Revelis turns 24…

• U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz is in Israel today for meetings with senior officials. Waltz was in Amman, Jordan, over the weekend, where he and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas met with King Abdullah II to discuss humanitarian aid efforts. Waltz noted that he entered into Israel through the Allenby crossing, which had been briefly closed after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a September terror attack at the crossing. The U.S., Waltz said, was “working hard to keep this crossing open for humanitarian aid and commerce.”
  
• Israeli President Isaac Herzog wraps up his two-day trip to New York today. Following last night’s keynote at Yeshiva University’s Hanukkah dinner (more below on that), he’ll address the American Zionist Movement’s Biennial National Assembly, which concludes today.
  
• Elsewhere in New York, Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin are slated to speak at Temple Emanu-El.
  
• Defense Tech Week begins today in Washington and runs through Friday.
  
• Hillel International’s annual General Assembly kicks off today in Boston.
  
• Abu Dhabi Finance Week kicks off today in the United Arab Emirates. Speakers today include Brevan Howard Asset Management’s Alan Howard, the Carlyle Group’s David Rubenstein and Bill Gates.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

The 2028 presidential race is still well over a year away from beginning in earnest. But if there’s any indication about whether Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, long considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, is seriously considering running, it’s that the moderate swing-state governor recently sat down for interviews for two major magazine features — in The Atlantic and The New Yorker — both published in the last week. 

Shapiro faced questions about his ambitions, his successes and failures and his take on the increasingly divisive and vitriolic nature of American politics. The two interviews also offer a fresh look at how Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in America, thinks about and practices Judaism from his perch in Harrisburg. 

When he ran for governor in 2022, his first major campaign ad featured footage of him and his family observing Shabbat. He told The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta that Friday night dinners are “still a sacrosanct moment for our family.” But he also shared that he and his family have lately attended synagogue services “far less than at any other point in our lives.”

Shapiro regularly invokes religion in public addresses, choosing to speak about “my faith” rather than more specifically referring to his Jewish faith. 

“I feel more connected to my faith today than at any other time in my life. Truly. And I probably pray more now than at any other time in my life. But my connection to an institution of prayer, or a sort of formal structure of that prayer, has dramatically decreased,” Shapiro shared. “The sort of ritualistic practices became less of a focus of the way we practice our faith — with the exception, of course, of Friday nights.” 

In conversation with The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Shapiro opened up about the arson attack on the governor’s residence in April, hours after his family had concluded their Passover Seder. At the October sentencing hearing for the assailant, Shapiro said for the first time that he may have been targeted, in part, for his Jewish faith. 

“The prosecutor felt it was important to introduce into evidence the bomber’s claims that he did that because of ‘what I did to the Palestinians,’ so clearly there was some motivation because of my faith,” Shapiro told The New Yorker, which reported that the dining room — now restored after being severely burned — features a small display of charred cups and dishes from the Seder, to remember that frightening evening. 

But Shapiro’s subsequent comments backed away from personally tagging an antisemitic motive on the perpetrator: “I think it is dangerous for you or anyone else to think about those who perpetrate these violent attacks as linear thinkers, meaning that they have a left-wing ideology or a right-wing ideology, or that they have a firm set of beliefs the way you might or I might. These are clearly irrational thinkers.”

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Tighten the Screws: In Time, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi calls for global pressure on Tehran to assist Iranians in their fight against the regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “The truth is, Iran is already in a transition. But transitions can move in many directions. The Iranian people have proved their courage. They have endured prisons, censorship, surveillance, bullets, and the loss of their children، yet they continue to fight. Not violently. Violence, whether imposed from outside or from within, is not the answer. What they ask for is not intervention, but recognition; not foreign armies, but international solidarity; not war, but peace. … Change in Iran requires global pressure to end human rights violations, gender apartheid, and executions; to free political and ideological prisoners; and to enable the functioning of civil society institutions. We need the international community to rethink its approach to ‘change’ in Iran, and lay the groundwork for a transition from authoritarianism to democracy.” [Time]

Right to Worship: In the New York Daily News, Ken Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, suggests that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s accusation that a recent synagogue event on immigration to Israel violated international law, gave a green light to violations of a law protecting access to places of worship. “As the leader of New York City, his words have heavy implications. In one sentence, a spokeswoman for Mamdani undermined the legitimacy of protected religious conduct. This gave protesters a greenlight for antisemitic conduct, sending them a signal that conduct against religious institutions can be morally or politically justified. But the law is not up to the interpretation of Mamdani. Politicians do not have the authority to determine which religious gatherings are protected by federal law. And this is a critical part of the story: a federal civil rights protection was not only ignored, it was challenged by a man who will soon be responsible for upholding it.” [NYDN]

Draft Dodging: In the Jerusalem Journal, Israeli Likud MK Dan Illouz explains why he broke ranks with his party over the recent Haredi draft bill that Illouz does not believe will not rectify the deeply divisive issue. “A fake solution is not unity – it is escapism. A pretend draft law that enshrines inequality instead of addressing it will not calm the public; it will deepen division. It will tell the serving public — the backbone of the Likud — that their burden is invisible. When our soldiers risk their lives, the least we owe them is honesty. Likud voters understand this. They know that without a fair and effective enlistment framework, Israel’s security — and social cohesion — will erode. They know that a country that cannot maintain a strong, broad army cannot survive in the Middle East. And they know that the path to long-term unity between secular, traditional, religious, and Haredi Israelis is not built on denial but on shared responsibility.” [JerusalemJournal]

White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff hosted trilateral talks in New York on Sunday between senior Israeli and Qatari officials, including Mossad chief David Barnea; the meeting is part of a broader effort to rebuild Israel’s relations in the region and make progress on the Abraham Accords…

The Trump administration is also looking to broker a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, who have not spoken since before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks…

Netanyahu, meanwhile, said during a press conference with visiting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that Israel and Hamas are “very shortly expected” to enter the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement… 

President Donald Trump tapped architect Shalom Baranes, who as a child immigrated from Italy with his Libyan-born parents to the U.S. through HIAS, to design the new White House ballroom; Baranes previously led the redesign of the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks, as well as Washington’s City Center complex and the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton…

Congress released its finalized version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes repeal of sanctions on Syria under the Caesar Civilian Protection Act, as well as repeal of the authorizations for use of military force in Iraq that allowed for the Iraq war and the Gulf War. Those measures are now nearly guaranteed to pass Congress…

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Dave McCormick (R-PA), as well as a group of 13 House members led by Rep. Dave Min (D-CA), introduced bills requiring reports on internet freedom in Iran…

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said in an interview with CBS News’ Lesley Stahl that the recent congressional vote on an antisemitism resolution — which she voted against — was “an exercise that they force on Congress” and that “we don’t have to get on our knees and [denounce antisemitism] over and over again”; when pressed by Stahl that a majority of legislators backed the resolution, Greene responded, “Most members of Congress take donations from AIPAC and I don’t”…

New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill tapped Shlomo Schorr, the legislative director of the New Jersey office of Agudath Israel of America, to serve on her transition team’s Interdisciplinary Advisory Task Force…

A spokesperson for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro suggested that Philadelphia’s main school district “needs to take very seriously” allegations of antisemitism, amid a congressional probe into the School District of Philadelphia’s handling of the issue…

PBS and WETA announced an upcoming four-part docuseries examining Black-Jewish relations; Henry Louis Gates Jr. is serving as the executive producer of the series, which will premiere in early February…

The Washington Post spotlights GOP megadonor Jeff Yass as he increasingly contributes to candidates backing school voucher programs…

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports on the Koum Family Foundation’s endowment of the Jan Koum Israel Studies Program at Stanford University, which was announced last month following a three-year pilot program… 

A Brazilian professor at Harvard Law School who was arrested by immigration authorities last week after he pleaded guilty to illegally shooting an air rifle near a Boston-area synagogue will voluntarily leave the United States…

The Real Deal looks at Alex Sapir’s dwindling portfolio and financial struggles, as the real estate developer and former owner of 11 Madison Avenue looks to sell off more of his properties following the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of his father, Tamir Sapir, who had owed more than $100 million in taxes…

Bloomberg interviews writer Salman Rushdie about his new collection of short stories, The Eleventh Hour, as well as Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and the 2022 assassination attempt that left Rushdie with severe injuries…

The U.S. deported more than four dozen Iranians as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s broader crackdown on illegal immigration… 

New York City Councilmember Chi Ossé dropped his primary challenge to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the House minority leader, after failing to get the backing of the NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America; Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whom Jeffries endorsed shortly before the November election, had personally lobbied the DSA against backing Ossé’s bid…

The New York Times considers the “canonization” of Hannah Arendt in the 21st century, as her writings have increasingly been adopted by modern-day political observers and repurposed to address current events…

The Wall Street Journal reviews Celeste Marcus’ Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art, the first English-language biography of the French Jewish painter, who died in Paris in 1943…

A senior law enforcement official in West Midlands, U.K., apologized to the Birmingham Jewish community for having told a committee investigating the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from a recent Aston Villa match that members of the Jewish community had supported a ban on the team’s fans…

Reuters reports on efforts by exiled former Syrian officials, including former intelligence chief Kamal Hassan and a cousin of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, to funnel millions of dollars to militants operating in the country in an effort to stage a revolt challenging the current government led by Ahmad al-Sharaa…

Famed architect Frank Gehry, born Frank Owen Goldberg, who has said the curved shape of many of his designs was inspired by the carp his maternal grandmother had in the bathtub as she made gefilte fish, died at 96…

Israeli President Isaac Herzog delivered the keynote address at Yeshiva University’s 101st annual Hanukkah Dinner on Sunday night in New York City.

During his speech, Herzog assailed New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whom he said “makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the Jewish democratic State of Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people.”

Referencing an event last month outside Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue in which a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators protested against a Nefesh B’ Nefesh event with chants of “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF,” Herzog said, “The incoming mayor’s response was to suggest that Jews who consider fulfilling [aliyah] are violating international law. In the face of such hatred, we must fight back fiercely and fearlessly.”

Read the full story from Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen in eJewishPhilanthropy here.

Tennis player, she won 22 singles titles, in 1968 and 1969 she was ranked No. 2 in the U.S., Julie Heldman turns 80… 

Founder and CEO of Top Rank, a boxing promotion company based in Las Vegas, Bob Arum turns 94… Film, stage and television actor, composer of film and theater music, John Rubinstein turns 79… Israeli folk singer, lyricist, composer and musical arranger, she has released more than 70 albums sold worldwide, winner of the Kinor David (David’s Harp) Prize, Chava Alberstein turns 78… Astrophysicist and senior scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Margaret Geller turns 78… Film director, producer and screenwriter, including box office successes such as “The Parent Trap” and “What Women Want,” Nancy Meyers turns 76… Canadian anthropologist and author of four books promoting Mussar, a Jewish ethical movement, Alan Morinis turns 76… Professor of human development at Cornell University, following high-ranking academic positions at the University of Wyoming, Oklahoma State, Tufts and Yale, Robert J. Sternberg turns 76… Writer, photographer and designer, founder of the Honey Sharp Gallery and Ganesh Café in the Berkshires, Honey Sharp… Bedford, Texas, resident, Douglas H. Bohannon… Senior executive producer of special events at ABC News until his retirement in early 2025, Marc Burstein… Emmy Award-winning sports commentator and journalist, Roy Firestone turns 72… Chairman of a nationwide insurance brokerage, Bruce P. Gendelman… Author of Toward a Meaningful Life, a book that has sold over 400,000 copies, he is the chairman of the Yiddish English weekly, The Algemeiner Journal, Rabbi Simon Jacobson turns 69… Retired administrative law judge at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Nadine Lewis turns 68… Rabbi, speaker and musician known as Rav Shmuel, for 21 years he led the Yeshiva program run by the IDT Corporation in Newark, N.J., Shmuel Skaist turns 61… Co-founder of three successful companies, including Office Tiger in 1999, CloudBlue in 2001, and Xometry in 2013, where he is CEO, Randy Altschuler turns 55… Attorney by training but in real life a social media blogger and author, she is the co-founder of TheLi.st, Rachel Sklar turns 53… CEO of Assemble, Aaron Kissel turns 51… Journalist and founder of the newsletter “Popular Information,” Judd Legum… President and CEO of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, Aaron Lerner turns 46… Actor and musician, Dov Yosef Tiefenbach turns 44… Actress, comedian and television writer, Joanna “Jo” Firestone turns 39… Co-founder and former chief scientist at OpenAI, in 2024 he co-founded Safe Superintelligence, Ilya Sutskever turns 39… Artist, Sophia Narrett… Venture capitalist in Israel, Alex Oppenheimer… Partner at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, Ali Krimmer…

• The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a vote today to advance legislation designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. More below.
• The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a vote this morning on advancing the nominations of Yehuda Kaploun and Tammy Bruce to be the State Department’s antisemitism envoy and deputy representative to the U.N., respectively.
• Jared Isaacman will face the Senate Commerce Committee today for a second hearing to be the administrator of NASA, eight months after his initial nomination was pulled during a spat between Elon Musk, who backed his nomination, and President Donald Trump.
• Elsewhere in Washington, SKDK is hosting a small gathering with the parents of slain Israeli Americans Omer Neutra and Itay Chen and their supporters.
• In Maryland, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington is hosting its annual “Lox and Legislators” event in Rockville this morning. Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Democratic Reps. April McClain Delaney and Glenn Ivey are slated to speak.
• In New York, Israel Policy Forum is honoring Bob Elman and Bob Sugarman this afternoon at the group’s annual gala. The event will also feature a discussion with Ambassador Michael Ratney, Elisa Ewers and Rachel Brandenburg on the future of U.S. leadership in the Middle East.
• White House Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus is in Israel this week for meetings with senior Israeli officials. Israeli media reported that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is expected to present Ortagus with recent findings indicating that Hezbollah is rearming itself in Lebanon in violation of a ceasefire agreement inked between Jerusalem and Beirut last year. 

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S marc rod

Qatar, whose ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have drawn scrutiny in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, is doubling down on a charm offensive focused on a handful of GOP lawmakers and conservative social media influencers, all while hosting two of the most established brands in American news. 

A group of House Republicans visited Qatar during the House’s Thanksgiving recess last week, including Reps. Laurel Lee (R-FL), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ), Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and Lance Gooden (R-TX). The trip occurred just before the House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to vote on legislation that classifies the entire Muslim Brotherhood organization globally as a terrorist group.

A group of conservative social media influencers also visited Qatar over Thanksgiving, posting glowing dispatches lauding the country and its role in hosting a U.S. military base. 

Rob Smith, one of the invited guests, posted credulously about Qatar on his Instagram feed after the trip, “I wasn’t aware of a great deal of things about Qatar, only misperceptions and half-truths I’d read about online. When the opportunity was presented to me, with full authority and autonomy to ask the tough questions of the officials I’d be meeting with, I decided to risk any potential criticism and to travel and experience it for myself.”

Meanwhile, numerous prominent celebrities — including comedian Kevin Hart, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and tennis star Novak Djokovic — gathered in Doha over the weekend for the 2025 Formula One Qatar Grand Prix.

And this week, the country is hosting the Doha Forum, a conference co-sponsored by CNN. Those attending the conference include several Trump administration officials and ambassadors, politicians and philanthropists, alongside Israel-bashing officials such as former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, sanctioned U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese and former Iran envoy Rob Malley.

Others on the guest list include: Donald Trump Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz, the Heritage Foundation’s Victoria Coates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour and other officials, leaders and analysts from around the world.

Also this week, The Wall Street Journal is hosting a technology conference in Doha, featuring business leaders and celebrities, hosted by various Journal reporters. As JI’s Matthew Kassel reports (see more below), the summit is raising ethical questions surrounding the paper’s deepening business ties with Qatar — even as the Journal’s conservative editorial page has slammed the Gulf monarchy as a financial and diplomatic sponsor of Hamas. 

Each of these events comes at a time when Qatar’s complicated public reputation in the United States is becoming a flashpoint, particularly inside the conservative movement.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

The Instagram Mayor: The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Carlton spotlights San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s embrace of social media as a means to boost the city’s standing after being elected on a platform of revitalizing the Bay Area, which for years had been plagued by economic and safety issues. “The 47-year-old Levi Strauss heir has become ubiquitous on the city’s social-media scene. He posts musings every day from his wanderings around San Francisco, some on somber topics like ongoing drug use but most are upbeat — even a bit hokey. … Social media, he added, is his way of telling San Franciscans — and the world — how the city is progressing. ‘It’s about being unfiltered, speaking directly to the people of San Francisco,’ the mayor said as he walked along the city’s waterfront last month after one of many stops, holding an umbrella against a cold, light rain.” [WSJ]

Having Hurwitz’s Back: In the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Jarrod Bernstein, Shelley Greenspan and Chanan Weissman, all former White House Jewish liaisons, defend former White House speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz amid a deluge of online criticism over a misleadingly edited video clip in which Hurwitz discussed how Holocaust education has impacted conversations about the Israel-Hamas war. “What followed was a torrent of outrage from people who claimed Sarah was arguing that we shouldn’t teach Holocaust education because doing so makes young people think the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is a genocide. Others claimed she was saying that genocide only matters when it’s perpetrated against Jews. Such sentiments would obviously be obscene, and we were shocked that people would attribute them to Sarah, someone who just published a book in which she expressed profound anguish about the unbearable deaths of civilians in Gaza. … Sarah was also conveying that, contrary to the impression young people get on social media, what happened in Gaza is not analogous to the Holocaust. It was a devastating war that does not fit neatly into a simplistic frame of oppressor versus oppressed. That black and white paradigm disregards the complex challenges that continue to stymie a resolution to this heartbreaking conflict.” [JTA]

Spotlight Shapiro: The Atlantic‘s Tim Alberta profiles Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, amid speculation that the moderate Democrat could mount a presidential bid in 2028. “For a man with such an established public profile—years as a congressional aide, decades in various elected offices, a network as extensive as that of any Democrat in office today—Shapiro remains something of a mystery, a man whose real views and motives are widely debated but ill-defined. In conversations with dozens of people who know the governor, a certain irony is inescapable. Shapiro seems to believe that he is uniquely equipped to run for president and repair the Democratic Party’s deficit of trust and authenticity. Any such campaign, however, would expose deficits of his own.” [TheAtlantic]

The State Department’s Jacob Helberg said that the U.S. is looking to lock in agreements with eight countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, that will strengthen supply chains for computer chips and minerals critical to the production of AI technology; the White House is hosting the first meeting with officials from the countries on Dec. 12…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed openness to a U.S.-brokered security deal with Damascus involving southern Syria, with the caveat that Syria respects the buffer zone between the countries…

Republican Matt Van Epps defeated Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn by nine points in the special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District…

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) ruled out a primary challenge to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), announcing on Tuesday that she’ll run for reelection in Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District…

James Solomon won Jersey City’s runoff election for mayor, besting former Gov. Jim McGreevey…

Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Claudia Tenney (R-NY) wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging him to work to secure the release of Kamran Hekmati, an American-Iranian dual citizen and member of the Persian Jewish community arrested in Iran earlier this year for having visited Israel 13 years ago…

The New York Young Republican Club is slated to honor far-right Alternative for Germany senior official Markus Frohnmaier at its upcoming annual gala…

A new offer from David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly has backing from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi; Paramount made the higher, second-round bid for the entire company, while Netflix and Comcast submitted bids for only Warner Bros.’ studios and streaming business… 

Philanthropists Michael and Susan Dell are donating $6.25 billion to back the creation of seed investment accounts for children in the U.S. as part of the “Trump accounts” program…

The family of Holocaust survivor Erno Spiegel donated the pen he used to falsify records to save dozens of sets of twins who were subject to medical experiments at Auschwitz…

OneTable laid off 25% of its employees as it undertakes a “planned, strategic shift” in its staffing…

The U.K.’s independent advisor on antisemitism told Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee that U.K. police altered evidence it used to justify banning Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending a recent soccer match against Aston Villa…

U.K. Attorney General Richard Hermer urged Nigel Farage to apologize to former classmates over what they claimed were repeated antisemitic and racist insults from the Reform UK leader during his teenage years… 

Israel is finalizing the handover of its Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile defense system to Germany, marking, at $4.2 billion, Jerusalem’s largest defense export deal…

Israeli officials said that remains transferred from Hamas to Red Cross officials on Tuesday do not match either of the remaining two hostages in Gaza…

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is slated to reopen in the coming days, allowing access out of the enclave to Palestinians who have been approved by Israeli security officials…

Lockheed Martin, together with Israel’s Industrial Cooperation Authority, signed an extension this week for the Umbrella Industrial Cooperation Agreement (UICA) through the end of 2029. The ceremony was led by Israeli Minister of Economy Nir Barkat (center left), Lockheed Martin Chief Operating Officer Frank St. John (center right), Lockheed Martin Israel Chief Executive Tal Galor (right), the ministry’s Head of Industry Division Nurit Tsur-Rabino and Head of Industrial Cooperation Authority Division Yazeed Sheick-Yousif.

Professional tennis player with a WTA doubles ranking that reached as high as 21, Sharon Fichman turns 35…

Close associate of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and influential leader within Chabad, Rabbi Chaim Yehuda “Yudel” Krinsky turns 92… Founder of a successful wedding gown business and a lifestyle coach, Sandy Stackler… 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winner for his book on Arabs and Jews in Israel, he was a long-serving foreign correspondent and Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, David K. Shipler turns 83… Member of the New York State Assembly since 1994, Jeffrey Dinowitz turns 71… Former Argentine minister of foreign affairs, Gerardo Werthein turns 70… Miami-based criminal defense attorney whose clients have included O.J. Simpson and Charlie Sheen, Yale Lance Galanter turns 69… Painter and art teacher residing in Maryland, her teaching career started in Petach Tikva, Heidi Praff… Former editorial page editor at USA Today, William “Bill” Sternberg… Former member of the House of Representatives (D-NC) until January, now chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, Kathy Manning turns 69… British publicist, music manager and former tabloid journalist, Rob Goldstone turns 65… President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2023, Sally A. Kornbluth turns 65… Aerospace and technology executive, entertainment attorney and media mogul, Jon F. Vein turns 62… Former member of the Knesset for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Eli Avidar turns 61… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California, she won Adam Schiff’s House seat in 2025, Democrat Laura Friedman turns 59… First VP at Adat Ari El Congregation in Valley Village, Calif., Malinda Wozniak Marcus… Cellist and associate professor at McGill University, Matt Haimovitz turns 55… SVP of strategic initiatives at NBC News until 2024, now a communications consultant, Alison “Ali” Weisberg Zelenko… Associate professor of Jewish history and chair of Jewish studies at Yeshiva University, Joshua M. Karlip, Ph.D. turns 54… French journalist, author, television and radio personality, Marie Drucker turns 51… Emmy and Grammy Award-winning comedian and actress, she discovered her Eritrean Jewish roots as an adult, Tiffany Haddish turns 46… Financial trader and founder of XTX Markets, Alex Gerko turns 46… CEO of Solar One, he was a member of the New York City Council through 2021, Stephen T. Levin turns 44… Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, Rachel Sarah Bloomekatz turns 43… Hasidic singer, his music videos have 120 million views on YouTube, Benzion Hakohen “Benny” Friedman turns 41… Founding partner and head of business strategy at Triadic, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Edelman… 

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

ESPN college football commentator Paul Finebaum has decided not to enter the Republican primary to replace former Auburn football coach and outgoing Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), AL.com reports, after he told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs last week that he was weighing a bid.

Finebaum said he was “appreciative of my bosses at ESPN for allowing me to explore this opportunity. But it’s time for me to devote my full attention to something everyone in Alabama can agree upon — our love of college football”…

Also staying out of the fray, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), a member of the Squad, has decided not to challenge Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), instead seeking reelection to her own House seat, she said in a statement. If she had run, Pressley would have been a formidable primary opponent to both Markey and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who is also in the race, as all three have staked out anti-Israel positions…

After AIPAC bought a series of digital ads on Instagram and Facebook targeting Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) for his comments claiming Israel committed genocide in Gaza, Khanna released a video statement today saying AIPAC wants to “prevent me from having a seat at the table in the leadership of our country”…

Asked about Tucker Carlson’s interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes at the Israel Hayom summit in Manhattan today, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, said, “The antidote to speech that you don’t like is more speech. It isn’t shutting down speech. And so, I don’t agree with a single word that Nick Fuentes says or has to say, and the decision of whether or not to platform that person is one for my friend and former client, Tucker Carlson”…

Dhillon also called New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani an “antisemitic demagogue,” diverging from President Donald Trump, who held a friendly Oval Office meeting with Mamdani last month, and said that, under the incoming mayor’s administration, the Justice Department would be “responding with law enforcement, to the extent that the city of New York fails to protect Jews”…

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke on stage about her experiences with students in her class at Columbia University, where she teaches about international relations, following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks: “When you would try to talk to [the students] to engage in some kind of reasonable discussion, it was very difficult because they did not know history, they had very little context and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda”…

Abroad, after Trump pushed Israel yesterday to maintain a “strong and true dialogue” with Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today while visiting Israeli soldiers who were wounded in southern Syria, “In good spirit and understanding, an agreement can be reached with the Syrians, but we will stand by our principles.”

He said Israel’s requirements for such an agreement would be the demilitarization of a buffer zone in southern Syria and that the Syrian Druze community be guaranteed protection by the government…

Israeli media reports that Israel plans to present Morgan Ortagus, U.S. deputy special envoy to the Middle East, who is visiting the country today, with intelligence proving Hezbollah is rearming in southern Lebanon…

An Israeli delegation visited Germany this week to begin the handover of an Arrow 3 missile defense system, which Berlin purchased in 2023 for $3.5 billion, Israel’s largest arms deal to date. The system is set to be deployed tomorrow in Germany, the first country outside of Israel to operate it, in an effort to bolster European air defenses against Russia…

The chief of the West Midlands Police force in the U.K. admitted in a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday that the report presented to the Aston Villa soccer club that led fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team to be banned from attending a game in Birmingham, England, last month included false and fabricated information.

The report referenced a November 2023 match between Maccabi and the West Ham soccer team that never took place, and claimed that Maccabi fans had harassed and assaulted Muslim communities during a match in Amsterdam, which Dutch law enforcement said did not occur…

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar engaged in a public spat with Irish Ambassador to Israel Sonya McGuinness at a Foreign Ministry event in Jerusalem today over the Dublin City Council’s shelved vote to remove former Israeli President Chaim Herzog’s name from a public park. 

In a brief back and forth, Sa’ar accused the city council of only walking back its “antisemitic proposed decision” after international uproar and said, “There’s nothing in your system right now that can defend you from that virus of antisemitism except [for] external pressure and exposing the antisemitic nature of this government of Ireland … We will continue to expose you until you will understand that you cannot deceive the world”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in tomorrow’s Jewish Insider for reporting on recent efforts by Iran International, an independent Persian-language broadcaster, to bring the voices of U.S. policymakers to Iranian citizens.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will vote on the nominations of Yehuda Kaploun to be special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and Tammy Bruce to be U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N. Meanwhile, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will hold a nomination hearing for Jared Isaacman to become head of NASA.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a vote to designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood globally as a foreign terror organization. 

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington will hold its “Lox & Legislators” Maryland Legislative Breakfast tomorrow morning, including appearances by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Reps. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and April McClain Delaney (D-MD) and Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich.

The Israel Policy Forum will host its annual benefit in Manhattan honoring board members Bob Elman, former president of the American Jewish Committee, and Bob Sugarman, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and of the Anti-Defamation League.

• In Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District today, Republican Matt Van Epps and Democrat Aftyn Behn face off in the special election to replace Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), who resigned over the summer. More below.
• In Washington, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates is holding its annual National Day celebration.
• Elsewhere in Washington, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is hosting the premiere of “The Last Twins,” a documentary about the efforts of Erno “Zvi” Spiegel, a Hungarian Jewish man and prisoner at Auschwitz who protected twins imprisoned at the concentration camp.
• Israel Hayom is holding its first New York summit today in Manhattan. Speakers include the Israeli daily’s publisher Dr. Miriam Adelson, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams, U.S. Special Envoy for Hostage Response Adam Boehler, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, TWG Global managing partner and former Biden administration senior official Amos Hochstein, the Justice Department’s Harmeet Dhillon and former hostages Guy Gilboa Dallal and Evyatar David.
• The Combat Antisemitism Movement is holding its 2025 North American Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism in New Orleans.
• In Miami, Art Basel kicks off today and runs through the weekend.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Today’s special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District — covering parts of Nashville, its conservative suburbs and rural counties in middle Tennessee — was expected to be a sleepy affair, given that the district backed President Donald Trump with 60% of the vote in 2024. The state’s aggressively partisan redistricting in 2021 was intended to guarantee GOP dominance of the state’s congressional delegation, leaving just one Democratic district in Memphis.

But in a sign that Trump’s growing unpopularity is creating unforeseen problems for Republicans in conservative constituencies, the race between Republican military veteran Matt Van Epps, a former state Cabinet secretary, and Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn is highly competitive. 

The fact that polls show the race tightening — with one Emerson College poll showing Van Epps in a statistical tie with Behn — is a sign of just how treacherous the political landscape has become for Republicans. Gallup’s latest survey found Trump with a 36% job approval, close to an all-time low throughout his two terms in office.  

If Republicans are nervous about holding a seat that Trump won by 22 points, there’s a growing likelihood of a blue wave that would give Democrats comfortable control of the House and an outside shot at a Senate majority. (One useful benchmark: Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) carried the 7th District by just two points in her 2018 Senate race, the last election year when Democrats rode a wave to win back the House.)

The fact that Republicans are struggling to make the case that the unapologetically progressive Behn holds views out of step with the conservative district on everything from anti-police rhetoric to antipathy towards her home city of Nashville to a record of hostility against Israel is also a sign of how nationalized our politics have become. In today’s tribal world, candidate quality and specific policy views mean a lot less than the overall political mood (vibes) and the popularity of the president.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Target on Their Backs: The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells spotlights the rise in political violence targeting U.S. officials on both sides of the aisle, including the Passover firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion targeting Gov. Josh Shapiro. “[Cody] Balmer had pleaded guilty in mid-October, not just to arson and terrorism but to attempted murder. But Shapiro was still reluctant to focus on his attacker. ‘The prosecutor felt it was important to introduce into evidence the bomber’s claims that he did that because of “what I did to the Palestinians,” so clearly there was some motivation because of my faith,’ Shapiro said. ‘But I think it is dangerous for you or anyone else to think about those who perpetrate these violent attacks as linear thinkers, meaning that they have a left-wing ideology or a right-wing ideology, or that they have a firm set of beliefs the way you might or I might. These are clearly irrational thinkers. And I think that’s true of others who have claimed lives, whether it’s [Minnesota] Speaker [Melissa] Hortman’s or Charlie Kirk’s.’” [NewYorker]

Bearing Arms: The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reports on Germany’s moves to rebuild its offensive military capabilities amid concerns over increased Russian aggression on the Continent and moves by Washington toward neo-isolationism. “[Colonel Dennis] Krüger told me about traveling to Tel Aviv to fine-tune a missile-defense system purchased from the Israelis that can intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles in space. … For decades, Germany has been a top exporter of arms to Israel, its commitment to the security of the Jewish state a legacy of the Holocaust. Arrow 3, the largest defense deal in Israeli history, reverses that logic by making Israel a guarantor of German safety. Krüger said that work on the weapons system turned representatives from the two militaries into a ‘family,’ and that they built camaraderie when his staff waited out missile attacks in Tel Aviv’s belowground shelters with their Israeli counterparts. The weapons acquisition from Israel is ‘one next step,’ Krüger said, ‘in overcoming our history.’” [TheAtlantic]

Following a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump called on Jerusalem to “maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria” and warned Israel to avoid scenarios “that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State”…

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, the U.S.’ Syria envoy, met in Damascus on Monday with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in an effort to calm tensions between Syria and Israel following weekend clashes…

Politico looks at concerns among Republican Jewish donors over increasing antisemitism on the right…

Sam Altman’s OpenAI is taking an ownership stake in Josh Kushner’s Thrive Holdings and will integrate its AI tools into Thrive’s companies, which were acquired with an eye toward consolidating them and incorporating AI into their processes; Thrive had previously invested billions of dollars in OpenAI… 

Private equity firm Apax Partners acquired Israeli online marketplace Yad2 for $950 million…

Harvard hired a recent divinity school graduate who was filmed in late 2023 assaulting a Jewish student at a “die-in” at the Cambridge campus…

The New York Times spotlights Eli Zabar’s egg salad sandwich…

Israeli filmmaker Rachel Elitzur interviews religious Jewish couples about their first night of marriage in her short documentary “The First Night”…

The Norwegian government is struggling to reach a consensus on issues regarding oil drilling and Oslo’s sovereign wealth fund’s investments in Israel in its draft budget for the coming year ahead of a vote scheduled for Friday…

A synagogue and memorial in Rome to a 2-year-old Jewish victim of terror were vandalizedearlier this week, drawing condemnations from the city’s Jewish community and Italy’s foreign minister, who called the vandalism “unacceptable”…

Colombia expelled more than two dozen members of the Lev Tahor sect, including 17 children, after a raid on the hotel in which they were staying…

Israel’s Iron Beam system, which intercepts missiles with lasers, will be delivered to the IDF for initial operational use at the end of the month, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Daniel Gold, head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Research and Development Directorate, said at the International DefenseTech Summit at Tel Aviv University on Monday, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports… 

Iran sentenced award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi to a year in prison in absentia; Panahi, whose “It Was Just an Accident” won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, is currently in the U.S. promoting the film…

The Sudanese Armed Forces offered Russia a 25-year naval base deal along the East African coast that, if Moscow accepts, would be its first position in Africa…

Apollo Global Management CEO and UJA-Federation of New York Board Chair Marc Rowan was honored with the Gustave L. Levy Award last night at the 50th UJA-Federation Wall Street Dinner in Manhattan.

Referencing New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s comments regarding the recent protests outside an aliyah event at the Park East Synagogue, Rowan declared Mamdani an “enemy” of the Jewish community, vowing that his organization would “call him out.” 

Read more from eJewishPhilantropy’s Nira Dayanim here.

Actress best known for playing Special Agent Kensi Blye in 277 episodes of CBS’ “NCIS Los Angeles,” Daniela Ruah turns 42… 

Former director of the Mossad and then head of the Israeli National Security Council, Efraim Halevy turns 91… Professor of rabbinic literature at Yeshiva University’s Gruss Institute in Jerusalem, Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff turns 88… Real estate executive and founder of the Sunshine Group, she was an EVP of The Trump Organization until 1985, Louise Mintz Sunshine turns 85… Sociologist and human rights activist, Jack Nusan Porter turns 81… Partner at Personal Healthcare LLC, Pincus Zagelbaum… Former drummer for a rock band in France followed by a career in contemporary Jewish spiritual music in Brooklyn, Isaac “Jacky” Bitton turns 78… EVP at Rubenstein Communications, Nancy Haberman… Author of more than 15 volumes of poetry, he is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Bob Perelman turns 78… French historian, professor at Sorbonne Paris North University and author of 30 books on the history of North Africa, Benjamin Stora turns 75… Retired associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Barbara A. Lenk turns 75… Professor emerita at Montana State University, she was a member of the Montana House of Representatives and a board member of Bozeman’s Congregation Beth Shalom, Dr. Franke Wilmer turns 75… Canadian fashion designer and entrepreneur, he is best known for launching the Club Monaco and Joe Fresh brands, Joe Mimran turns 73… Partner in the Madison, Wis., law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, she is a class action and labor law attorney, Sarah Siskind… Rabbi of Baltimore’s Congregation Ohel Moshe, Rabbi Zvi Teichman… Celebrity physician and author of diet books, he is the president of the Nutritional Research Foundation, Joel Fuhrman turns 72… Advertising account executive at the Los Angeles Daily Journal Corporation, Lanna Solnit… Cleveland resident, Joseph Schlaiser… Emmy Award-winning actress, Rena Sofer turns 57… Publisher and CEO of The Forward, Rachel Fishman Feddersen… Identical twin sisters, known as The AstroTwins, they are magazine columnists and authors of four books on astrology, Tali Edut and Ophira Edut turn 53… Lecturer of political science at Yale, she was formerly a White House staffer, Eleanor L. Schiff turns 49… Television writer and producer, Murray Selig Miller turns 49… Former member of the Knesset and then Israel’s ambassador to the U.K., Tzipi Hotovely turns 47… Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation, Annie Fixler… Managing director with Alvarez & Marsal in Atlanta, she was a sabre fencer at the 2004 Summer Olympics, Emily Jacobson Edwards turns 40… Actor, best known for playing Trevor in the coming-of-age film “Eighth Grade,” Fred Hechinger turns 26…

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone today to discuss the Gaza ceasefire and expanding peace agreements, and Trump invited Netanyahu for another visit to the White House “in the near future,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office…

The readout did not mention any discussion of Syria, despite Trump posting on social media this morning that “it is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State.” He said Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa “is working diligently to make sure good things happen, and that both Syria and Israel will have a long and prosperous relationship together.”

Trump did not denounce any specific Israeli actions, though the comment came just days after the IDF clashed with gunmen during an arrest operation in southern Syria, which Syrian state media said killed 13. Israeli media reported today that the Trump administration is frustrated with Israel over its continuing military action in Syria and the issue is expected to feature prominently in Netanyahu’s next White House visit…

On the Hill, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to discuss and vote on Wednesday on legislation that aims to classify the entire Muslim Brotherhood globally as a terrorist group, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

The legislation may go further than the Trump administration’s recently announced efforts on the issue, which do not directly aim to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood in its entirety, but rather focus on its branches…

Israel’s Iron Beam system, which intercepts missiles with lasers, will be delivered to the IDF for initial use at the end of the month, JI’s Lahav Harkov reports.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Daniel Gold, head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Research and Development Directorate, who made the announcement at the International DefenseTech Summit at Tel Aviv University today, said “the Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield.”

The use of the laser system will drastically lower the costs of missile defense, with each use of the Iron Beam costing around $3, as opposed to about $50,000 per Iron Dome interceptor. As such, it will cost significantly less for Israel to intercept a rocket than it costs for its enemies to produce them, at $5,000-$10,000…

On the campaign trail, former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who is challenging Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) to reclaim her former seat in Congress, posed for a photo with Guy Christensen, an anti-Israel influencer who defended the Capital Jewish Museum shooting, in which two Israeli Embassy employees were killed, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

The influencer posted a photo last week from what appears to be a recent American Muslims for Palestine conference — Christensen is wearing an AMP lanyard and speaker badge — alongside a smiling Bush, with the caption “We’re coming for you AIPAC”…

Evanston, Ill. Mayor Daniel Biss, a Democrat, who is currently running for Congress to replace retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), denounced the agreement reached between Northwestern University and the Trump administration to restore the university’s federal funding in a statement today. 

“As a Jewish person, I am disturbed by the Trump administration’s disingenuous use of the very serious crisis of antisemitism to justify its actions. Of course, we know that this administration isn’t actually concerned about antisemitism — in fact, this administration has proven to be filled with overt Nazi sympathizers,” Biss wrote.

Jewish leaders associated with the school told JI’s Haley Cohen that they are cautiously optimistic that the deal — which, among other stipulations, ends the university’s 2024 agreement with anti-Israel student protesters — will improve campus climate for Jewish students…

Meanwhile, a Harvard student who was charged with assaulting an Israeli peer during an October 2023 “die-in” on university campus shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks was hired by the university in August as a graduate teaching fellow, the Washington Free Beacon reports…

In a New Yorker feature on rising political violence, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro discusses his understanding of what motivated the alleged attacker who firebombed the governor’s residence last Passover. “The prosecutor felt it was important to introduce into evidence the bomber’s claims that he did that because of ‘what I did to the Palestinians,’ so clearly there was some motivation because of my [Jewish] faith,” the Democratic governor said. 

“But I think it is dangerous for you or anyone else to think about those who perpetrate these violent attacks as linear thinkers, meaning that they have a left-wing ideology or a right-wing ideology, or that they have a firm set of beliefs the way you might or I might. These are clearly irrational thinkers.”

Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) also recounts in the piece his experience being intimidated by a group of protesters staging a sit-in outside of his home in October 2024, recalling “that he and his family spent the day trying to get the protesters to leave, working with both local authorities and the Capitol Police, but they ‘would not move.’ His son was in the final stages of practicing for his bar mitzvah; that evening, he recited the Torah while the protesters chanted pro-Palestinian slogans outside”… 

No stranger to threats of political violence, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said today three of his New York offices were targeted with bomb threats in emails with the subject line “MAGA”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in tomorrow’s Jewish Insider for a preview of the special election taking place tomorrow in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District. 

Israel Hayom is hosting a conference in New York City tomorrow featuring American and Israeli officials and public figures, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams; Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon; former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz; Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA); Strauss Group Chair Ofra Strauss; and Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, as well as released hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal.

The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates will hold a celebration marking the country’s 54th National Day at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington.

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that Israel “prefer[s] that Turkey not receive F-35s from the U.S.,” breaking with Washington over the move that President Donald Trump indicated he was open to during a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in September. 

But Leiter dismissed concerns around Saudi Arabia potentially acquiring F-35s, which is currently under negotiation ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House next week. “There’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised,” he said. Leiter has recently become Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main conduit in Washington after the resignation of Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer…

Israel is seeking a new 20-year memorandum of understanding with the U.S. when the current one expires in 2028, U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios, double the length of past agreements.

New Israeli propositions, including redirecting some of the funds towards joint U.S.-Israeli R&D rather than direct military aid, are reportedly designed to make the lengthy deal more attractive to Trump as well as the GOP, which has grown weary of foreign aid…

Trump told MBS in a phone call last month that he expects to see progress made on Israel-Saudi normalization now that the ceasefire in Gaza is in force, U.S. officials also told Axios, which MBS said he was “willing to work on”…

Israel and White House advisor Jared Kushner are preparing contingency plans in case Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan doesn’t come to fruition, Israeli media reports. The IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told Israeli Security Cabinet officials that the IDF will soon present its alternative…

Meanwhile in the U.S., the Democratic primary for the seat of retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in New York’s 12th Congressional District, which has one of the largest Jewish constituencies in the country, gets more crowded by the day. 

Shortly after the entry of JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, into the race, Erik Bottcher, a Democratic city councilman and LGBTQ activist, told The New York Times he’s jumping in (and that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state). There are rumors that Lincoln Project co-founder George Conway is eyeing a bid, as well. 

Among the many other candidates are longtime Nadler aide Micah Lasher, who today got the endorsement of Comptroller-elect Mark Levine; state Assemblyman Alex Bores; and gun control activist Cameron Kasky, who posted yesterday on social media, “If you are a Democrat running in 2026 and do not fully support an arms embargo to the State of Israel … Stop wasting everybody’s time”…

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded to his opponent, socialist Katie Wilson, today after last night’s ballot drop made it mathematically impossible for him to prevail.

Though the moderate Harrell led in the polls for the week following Election Day, Wilson eventually gained ground and now leads him by a 0.7% margin — just shy of 2,000 votes. With only several hundred votes left to be counted, The Seattle Times said the race is “on pace to be the closest in modern Seattle politics.”

Wilson joins New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, as well as progressive challengers who prevailed in several Seattle City Council races, as evidence of the far left’s growing popularity in major U.S. cities. However, their small (or razor thin, in Wilson’s case) margins of victory and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s win over his DSA-aligned opponent are proof the fringe still lacks a mandate in the Democratic Party…

Former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) announced raising more than $500,000 in the first 24 hours after the launch of her comeback bid for her seat in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.

The Jewish, pro-Israel Navy veteran sent out a fundraising email this afternoon with the subject line “Chutzpah,” saying the “Yiddish term that means guts or courage … runs in my family” and she’s “not afraid of a little mishigas”…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was hospitalized today after suffering a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and subsequent fall and face injuries, but is doing well, his spokesperson reported. His scheduled discussion this evening with UJA-Federation of New York about his new book has been cancelled…

The New York Times profiles Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and his path from leading a small Catholic college to helming the prominent think tank and sparking controversy among conservatives over his embrace of Tucker Carlson. 

Roberts claimed as part of his defense over releasing the controversial video during a staff meeting last week, “I actually don’t have time to consume a lot of news. I consume a lot of sports,” and “I didn’t know much about this [Nick] Fuentes guy. I still don’t.” 

“‘Who could believe that the head of a think tank doesn’t think?’ said Charles Jacobs, the president of the Jewish Leadership Project, which resigned from a Heritage Foundation task force meant to fight antisemitism after Mr. Roberts’ video was released”…

Joining the list of Heritage resignations, Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason’s Scalia Law School and a prominent pro-Israel advocate, announced he is resigning as a Heritage visiting fellow today “based on [his] considered judgment” of Roberts’ video and “subsequent commentary”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for a preview of President Donald Trump’s meeting next week with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is traveling to Israel tomorrow for a five-day trip where he plans to meet with government officials and economic development and high-tech leaders.

The Texas Tribune Festival, taking place this week in Austin, continues tomorrow with speakers including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Democratic Texas Senate candidates James Talarico and Rep. Colin Allred, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), comedian John Mulaney, former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. On Saturday, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are slated to speak.

MSNBC is launching its rebrand on Saturday as MS NOW, part of its separation from NBCUniversal, with dozens of veteran journalists recruited as part of its expanded newsroom.

On Sunday, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will present its fourth annual New York Jewish Book Festival. 

Sunday evening, the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly kicks off in Washington, with an opening plenary including former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, authors Sarah Hurwitz and Micah Goodman, CNN contributor Scott Jennings and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City.

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

U.S. and Saudi officials are working to finalize a defense pact between the two countries ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington next week, Axios reports. The agreement would reportedly contain similar guarantees to those Qatar received from the U.S. last month, with the Saudis also looking to purchase a weapons package that would include F-35 fighter jets. 

The Trump administration also told the Saudis that it would like to see progress made on Saudi-Israel normalization, U.S. officials said. The negotiations on these deals quietly brought White House advisor Jared Kushner to Riyadh over the weekend and the Saudi defense minister to the U.S. earlier this week…

Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide and Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, announced that he is switching his candidacy to now run for the House in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) has said he will not seek reelection. 

Wood joined his fellow Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner in vowing not to accept support from AIPAC, saying in an interview last week, “There’s a tremendous amount of distrust right now among Democratic primary voters that the money that AIPAC has put into our political system has affected our priorities when it comes to foreign aid to Israel”…

Another shifting race is New York’s 17th Congressional District, where Jessica Reinmann, a Democratic nonprofit executive who was challenging Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), dropped out of the Democratic primary today and endorsed Cait Conley.

An Army veteran with extensive counterterrorism experience in the Middle East, Conley told Jewish Insider in April about her commitment to Israel’s security and concerns around threats posed by Iran.

With her background in national security, Conley is viewed as having the strongest profile to win back the swing seat for the party, according to Democratic sources familiar with the race.…

The Wall Street Journal reports on financial gains made by U.S. businesses over the two-year Israel-Hamas war; out of the $32 billion of military-related sales the U.S. has greenlit to Israel since October 2023, $19.3 billion is through contracts with Boeing, Lockheed Martin has secured $743 million, Caterpillar secured $295 million, and more…

An Israeli-founded AI cybersecurity company, Tenzai, founded just six months ago, came out of stealth yesterday with a $75 million seed round. Its technology, which finds hackable vulnerabilities in code, drew support from major venture capital firms including Greylock Partners, Lux Capital and Battery Ventures…

Israel reopened the Zikim border crossing into Gaza today to facilitate increased food and humanitarian aid flow, as part of its compliance with the ongoing ceasefire agreement with Hamas…

After being heckled by anti-Israel protesters at a podcast taping earlier this week, former Vice President Kamala Harris paused the conversation to tell the audience: “A lot of what this process has been for me has been about reflection. Look, we should’ve done more as an administration. We should’ve spoken publicly about our criticism of the way that Netanyahu and his government were executing this war.”

“We had more levers in terms of leverage that we did not use. … But let’s be very clear, that the inhuman nature of what has happened to the Palestinian people in Gaza, the innocent civilians, the extent of hunger, famine, suffering, death, is something that we must acknowledge,” Harris continued…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for reporting on the status of the Muslim Brotherhood under Israeli law.

The U.S. House is expected to approve a spending package to reopen the government this evening, which would fund the government through Jan. 30.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is holding a hearing tomorrow morning on religious freedom in Syria during the country’s transition out of dictatorship.

The DP World Tour golf championship kicks off in Dubai, UAE, tomorrow.

• The International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries begins today in New York City, bringing together 6,200 rabbis from 111 countries.
• Former First Lady Michelle Obama will appear at Washington’s Sixth & I Synagogue this evening to discuss her forthcoming book, The Look.
• Finance industry executives — including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan and Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman — were invited to dinner at the White House with President Donald Trump this evening. 

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Beware the law of unintended consequences: President Donald Trump’s zeal to aggressively redraw maps in GOP-friendly states is looking like it will bring less of a political advantage to Republicans than originally expected.  

Indeed, if the overall political environment remains in the Democrats’ favor — which would be consistent with the historical precedent of the opposition party gaining seats in the first midterm election of a new president — the House is likely to flip back to the Democrats’ control in 2027.

Here’s the lowdown: California’s referendum on redistricting, which passed overwhelmingly on Election Day, will allow Democrats to gain as many as five seats with a new, more-partisan map — with three Republican-held seats (of GOP Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley and Ken Calvert) all but guaranteed to flip.

That should offset the expected GOP gains in Texas, which started the whole redistricting gamesmanship off with a partisan redraw that guarantees Republicans to pick up at least three Democratic-held seats, with the hope that Republicans can win two additional seats that became more favorable to them.

But there’s a catch with the Texas map. Two of the redrawn districts — the seats of Democratic Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar — are in predominantly Hispanic areas along the U.S.-Mexico border that swung dramatically to Trump in 2024, but had a long tradition of voting Democratic before then. If Democrats rebound with Hispanic voters — as happened in New Jersey and Virginia on Election Day — and the national environment remains rough for Republicans, it’s not hard to see the two Democratic incumbents hanging on.

Adding another wrinkle to the GOP’s redistricting plans: A Utah judge rejected the preferred map drawn by Republican state lawmakers, and selected a new map that would guarantee a Democratic district in Salt Lake City. That would automatically flip one seat to the Democrats, given that the state’s current delegation is made up of four Republicans, all in solidly Republican districts. 

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

Hate on the Right, Then and Now: The New York Times’ Bret Stephens draws comparisons between today’s rising trend of antisemitism within the GOP to past iterations of antisemitic ideology on the right. “The MAGA movement is not antisemitic. But many of its core convictions are antisemitic-adjacent — that is, they have a habit of leading in an anti-Jewish direction. Opposition to free trade, or to a welcoming immigration policy, or to international law that crimps national sovereignty, are legitimate, if often wrongheaded, political positions. But they have a way of melding with hoary stereotypes about ‘the International Jew; working across borders against the interests of so-called real Americans.” [NYTimes]

After Mamdani, Healing Divisions: Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, senior rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, reflects in the Forward about how the New York City Jewish community must unite in the aftermath of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory. “For me, personally, the fact that about a third of New York City’s Jewish voters checked the box for Mamdani is totally bewildering. I am not unaware of the bigger political trends, the shortcomings of the other candidates, or the systemic challenges our city faces; I understand why Mamdani won. But for me, his anti-Zionist rhetoric and his intent to shut down research and economic partnerships between Israel and New York — to name but a few of his promises that would negatively impact our community — not only disqualified him from receiving my vote, but were a meaningful enough concern that I chose to publicly urge Jews and their allies to vote against him as well. And yet, it would seem that what was self-evident to me was not so self-evident to a sizeable percentage of my kinfolk. … We need to learn to walk together again. If, as I have repeatedly claimed, ahavat yisrael — love of the Jewish people — is my North Star, then it is a principle I must uphold even and especially when it is uncomfortable to do so. It is a love that must extend to Jews whose views I neither share nor understand.” [Forward]

Takeover on the Quad: John Ellis, professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, argues in The Wall Street Journal for placing universities in a “receivership” to address the dominance of left-wing ideology in higher education. “The discrepancy between what we fund the campuses for and what they are doing is enormous. Promotion of knowledge and understanding has given way to inculcation of a poisonous fringe ideology. Students are encouraged to despise their society and kept ignorant of anything that might make them think otherwise. … The only viable solution is to place schools in ‘receivership,’ a well-established procedure to reform ailing college departments. A new chairman is imposed on a department with a free hand to make whatever appointments he thinks necessary to restore the department to health. By action of lawmakers or trustees, a new president can be imposed on a campus with a mandate to return the school to its proper mission by appointing subordinate administrators, especially deans, committed to reform.” [WSJ]

Investing in the Jewish Future: In Sapir, Jordan Chandler Hirsch argues that the Jewish people should establish a sovereign wealth fund to secure long-term communal and national resilience. “A wealth fund would allow the Jewish community to invite allies and skeptics alike into mutually beneficial investments. It could help key players solve their problems and achieve their goals, thereby securing support for ours. Skeptics who distrust our institutionalism might respect our show of independence. Anti-establishment forces might welcome Jewish capital that strengthens their projects. Most important, a wealth fund could transform both our psychology and our posture — from supplicants seeking protection into partners offering opportunity. Despite its corporate veneer, a wealth fund would not merely reproduce institutionalism. If shtadlanut sought seats at the institutional table, a wealth fund would build its own table and invite others in.” [SAPIR] 

President Donald Trump sent a letter to Israeli President Isaac Herzog calling on him to “fully pardon” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing the corruption case against him as “a political, unjustified prosecution.” Herzog’s office put out a statement saying that while he “holds President Trump in the highest regard … anyone seeking a Presidential pardon must submit a formal request in accordance with the established procedures”…

Following a joint meeting in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced the creation of a joint committee “for the consolidation of the state of Palestine,” which will work towards drafting a “constitution” for such a state…

Iran has smuggled advanced armaments to terror groups in the West Bank over several months, the Washington Free Beacon reports, including rockets, explosive drones, anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, hoping to use it as another launch pad in addition to Gaza to attack Israel…

Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) met with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the Capitol on Tuesday. A person familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider that Van Hollen had “reiterated his support for the lifting of the Caesar sanctions while also stressing his long-held position that the U.S. must ensure that the Government of Syria complies with the six conditions included in the amendment he and Senator Graham added to the NDAA”…

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) urged the State Department to take action to ensure the release of Kamran Hekmati, an Iranian-American dual citizen and Suozzi constituent imprisoned in Iran. “This is about more than one man. It’s about defending the basic rights of American citizens abroad and standing up to regimes that traffic in hostage diplomacy,” Suozzi said…

Rep. Gabe Amo (D-RI) led 125 House Democrats in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio seeking “clarity on your plan to ensure desperately needed humanitarian aid reaches Palestinian civilians in Gaza” and urging that aid be distributed through “reputable international institutions”…

Saudi Arabia is set to host a U.S.-Saudi investment summit at the Kennedy Center in Washington next Wednesday, a day after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman‘s visit to the White House…

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) met with Malcolm Jallow, an anti-Israel left-wing member of the Swedish parliament who has espoused antisemitic views and has associations with pro-Hamas individuals…

The New York Times speaks to Iranians deported back to Iran by the Trump administration in the first U.S.-chartered deportation flight to the country in September…

The New York Times profiles Jack Schlossberg, grandson of President John F. Kennedy, who is preparing to run for Congress in New York’s 12th Congressional District…

After receiving backlash for canceling planned shows in Israel as a result of pressure by the BDS movement, British comedian John Cleese said he was only postponing the shows “following advice about safety.” The “Monty Python” actor, who has a history of anti-Israel commentary on social media, claimed he is “hugely fond of Israeli audiences”…

Argentine President Javier Milei met with Rabbi David Yosef, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel; Isaac Sacca, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Argentina; and Eyal Sela, the Israeli ambassador to Argentina… 

Israeli authorities arrested four suspects after dozens of settlers launched an arson attack in the Palestinian villages of Bei Lid and Deir Sharaf in the West Bank….

Israeli actress Gal Gadot won Israel’s Genesis Prize, sometimes called the “Jewish Nobel,” for her outspoken support of Israel in Hollywood since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. Gadot said she will donate the $1 million award to organizations “that will help Israel heal”… 

Israeli pop star Noa Kirel and soccer player Daniel Peretz tied the knot on Tuesday in an A-lister affair in Jaffa: spotted at the nuptials were Israeli celebrities Eden Daniel Gabay, Idan Raichel, Eran Zahavi, Reef Neeman, Ron Bitton, Ron Aluf and Mor Hamami…

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recently toured a site in Saudi Arabia for a possible Universal theme park location, raising speculation that he might bring in Saudi funds for a potential Comcast bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery…

Wonderful, an Israeli AI startup, has secured $100 million in a Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, with backing from Insight Partners, IVP, Bessemer and Vine Ventures…

Shulem Lemmer shared on social media “The March Medley” he performed together in June with the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion, featuring Gur’s “Shir Hamaalos” and Modzitz’s “Ein Kitzvah,” at the 2025 MDA Chassidut B’Class concert in the Caesarea amphitheater.

Rabbi of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest, Hungary, Róbert Frölich turns 60… 

Co-founder and dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky turns 101… Professor emerita of history at Columbia University and expert on Japan, Carol Gluck turns 84… Author and senior fellow at USC’s Annenberg School, Morley Winograd turns 83… Accountant and former PwC partner in Phoenix, Steven M. Scheiner, CPA… Former New York state senator, he is a descendant of Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the former Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Stephen M. Saland turns 82… Sportscaster for “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video, after more than 50 years at NBC and ABC, Al Michaels turns 81… U.S. senator (D-RI), Jack Reed turns 76… Attorney in Brooklyn, Bernard C. Wachsman… Member of the New York state Assembly since 2006, her district includes Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Linda B. Rosenthal turns 68… Author of young-adult fiction and winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Challenger Deep, Neal Shusterman turns 63… Author, journalist and former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton, Naomi Rebekah Wolf turns 63… University of Chicago professor, he won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics, Michael Kremer turns 61… Mayor of Oakland, Calif., until 2023, Elizabeth Beckman “Libby” Schaaf turns 60… Partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, Sanford E. “Sandy” Perl turns 60… White House chief of staff for the last two years of the Biden administration, Jeffrey Zients turns 59… British journalist and political correspondent for BBC News, Joanne “Jo” Coburn turns 58… Hasidic lecturer with many thousands of followers, Rabbi Avraham Elimelech Biderman turns 58… SVP and general manager of MLB’s Minnesota Twins from 2016 until 2024, Thad Levine turns 54… Member of the Knesset until 2019 for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Robert Ilatov turns 54… Restaurant critic and food writer for the Boston Globe, Devra First turns 53… Israeli fashion model and actress, Nina Brosh turns 50… Former member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism party, Eliyahu Hasid turns 49… Campus support director at Hillel International, Aviva Zucker Snyder… Actress best known for her roles on “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” Kelly Kruger turns 44… Co-founder of Purple Acorn, Dave Weinberg… Assistant professor of Jewish studies at Oberlin College, Matthew D. Berkman turns 41… Director of strategic talent initiatives at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Spencer F. Lucker… New Jersey-based primary care physician known as Doctor Mike, he is an internet celebrity on YouTube and Instagram, Mikhail Varshavski turns 36… Activist in the fight against antisemitism throughout the U.S., Adela Cojab turns 29… Catcher in the Washington Nationals organization, Cameron J. Stubbs turns 29…

• Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa will visit the White House today, becoming the first Syrian head of state to do so. More below.
• White House advisor Jared Kushner met today in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Aryeh Lightstone, senior advisor to White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
• Columbia University’s School of International and Political Affairs is hosting a discussion on the slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s legacy, 30 years after his assassination. Speakers include former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Columbia’s acting President Claire Shipman and SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo.
• The Anti-Defamation League’s annual Concert Against Hate is taking place this evening and will honor Marion Ein Lewin, Holocaust survivor, health policy leader, advocate and educator; Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund; Wesley Seidner, a senior at Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Va.; and Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Emily jacobs and marc rod

The firebombing of a hostage-release march in Boulder, Colo., this summer triggered a wave of calls from lawmakers — particularly Republicans — for action to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.

Legislation to that effect was introduced in both the Senate and House in July, taking a new approach to designating the group as compared to previous legislative efforts that had stalled over the course of the last decade.

The legislation would require the imposition of sanctions on the Muslim Brotherhood, making it illegal to provide support to the group, making its members and affiliates inadmissible to the United States and blocking transactions involving assets held by Muslim Brotherhood members in U.S. financial institutions.

There were also calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for the Trump administration to investigate the group and take action to designate it through executive authorities. The secretary of state has the authority to designate a group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and the White House could issue an executive order on the subject.

But so far, none of those efforts have come to fruition. The Senate bill currently sits at 11 co-sponsors, having recently picked up Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) as its first Democratic supporter, while the House bill has 19 co-sponsors from both parties — below the levels of support previous iterations of the bill had amassed.

Fetterman’s co-sponsorship could help the bill receive consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the panel often only considers legislation with bipartisan support. A source familiar with the matter tells JI that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the bill’s co-sponsor in the Senate and a member of the committee, is pushing for the panel to mark up the bill at their next business meeting. 

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

What Mamdani Could Do: Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and Ari Hoffnung, ADL’s senior advisor on corporate advocacy who served as deputy comptroller of New York City, lay out how Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani could “weaponize” city funds to “carry out his anti-Zionist agenda,” in the New York Post. “His most consequential lever is the city’s $300 billion pension system: The mayor appoints trustees across each of the five pension boards. Mamdani or his appointees could pressure the boards to divest from companies linked to Israel, including major firms like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Lockheed Martin, all long targeted by BDS activists. … Procurement represents another powerful lever. Many of the companies targeted by the BDS movement — Dell, Microsoft, Motorola and others — are deeply embedded in the infrastructure that keeps New York running. The city holds contracts worth about $400 million with Dell, $300 million with Motorola and $100 million with Microsoft — covering everything from laptops in the schools to police and emergency communications. Walking away from those partnerships under the banner of ‘human rights’ might make for good headlines but would dramatically punish our nation’s largest city: disrupting services, inflating costs and compromising public safety.” [NYPost]

The New New Antisemitism: In Tablet, David Reaboi examines how speakers and attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 40th anniversary leadership summit grappled with the issue of growing antisemitism on the right. “The confusion on display wasn’t unique to the RJC; it reflects a broader failure of imagination across Jewish institutional life. For decades, antisemitism was something safely external: a pathology of the far left, the campus fringe, or hostile regimes abroad. What’s emerging now is different. The new antisemitism speaks the language of patriotism, faith, and anti-elitism; it arrives disguised as cultural critique. It’s a theory of how the world works. To an audience conditioned by cable news, it sounds insightful rather than bigoted. Inside the ballroom, there was no framework for understanding this shift. Politicians could condemn hate, but they couldn’t recognize it when it wore their party’s colors.” [Tablet]

The Right’s Heritage: In his “Commonplace” Substack, Oren Cass warns that the infamous video by Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes is a symptom of a larger problem endangering the conservative movement. “What’s a little monarchism, race science, and misogyny among friends? In theory, to quote Roberts, ‘when we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate.’ But in practice, as his next sentence clarifies, ‘we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the Left.’ And only the Left. Vile ideas on the Right see little challenge — wouldn’t want to ‘sow division,’ after all, like the Jews, sorry, like that venomous coalition of globalists serving another country’s agenda. When you spend enough time in the fever swamp, even if you think you’re just hanging out on the bank, that is how you find yourself talking.” [Commonplace]

Cornell University agreed to conduct “annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry” as part of an agreement it reached with the Trump administration on Friday, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports… 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, the new executive chairman of Israeli spyware company NSO Group, hopes to use his ties to the Trump administration to help rebuild the company’s U.S. business, he told The Wall Street Journal, after the Biden administration placed the company on an export-prohibition list in 2021…

Michael Blake, the New York assemblyman mounting a primary challenge against Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), scrubbed posts showing his support for AIPAC and participation at the group’s events from his social media accounts. Blake’s campaign has been attacking Torres for the congressman’s support of Israel and ties to AIPAC despite his own prior support and ties…

Mexican security agencies foiled a plot last summer by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, U.S. and Israeli security officials revealed…

The Wall Street Journal chronicles the rise and fall of Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, through his redirecting of the organization’s policy priorities and current controversy over his defense of Tucker Carlson. The story noted that Roberts encouraged employees working on Ukraine policy to watch Carlson’s monologues, which were rife with conspiracy theories about the war, to delete past tweets in support of Ukraine aid and to write papers reflecting the new, more isolationist policy that he had embraced…

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into the anti-Israel activist group Code Pink for acting as an unregistered foreign agent of the Chinese government and providing “material support to foreign terrorist organizations,” the Washington Free Beacon reports…

The Free Press publishes an excerpt from Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) memoir, Unfettered, which will be released tomorrow, in which he reflects on the deep depression he fell into following his stroke… 

The Wall Street Journal introduces key players in New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inner circle, some of whom are “in line for key roles in his administration”…

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani says he’s seeking to distance his country from both Iranian and U.S. influence, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of Iraq’s Tuesday election where he’s seeking a second term…

Reporting from the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Politico‘s Sam Sutton explores the “cross-pollination between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia’s political and commercial enterprises,” and the rise of top-down capitalism in both countries…

Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, and Deborah Turness, head of BBC News, resigned on the heels of the publication of an internal report accusing the British national broadcaster of bias, including in its coverage of the war in Gaza and the way it edited a speech by President Donald Trump…

The New York Times spotlights the continuing isolation of Israeli academics even after the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel…

The head of Germany’s Jewish community has warned about potential risks to the Jewish community due to rising support for the far-right party Alternative for Germany in the country’s eastern states…

Ruby and Hagit Chen salute their son Itay’s grave at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv at his funeral on Sunday. Itay Chen, an American Israeli IDF soldier who was 19, served in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 75th Battalion and was killed in battle with terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, and kidnapped to Gaza. His body was returned to Israel last Tuesday.

Actress and producer, Zoey Francis Chaya Thompson Deutch turns 31…

Manager of the Decatur, Ga.-based Connect Hearing, Murray Kurtzberg… One of the four deans of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., Rabbi Yerucham Olshin turns 82… Professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he is a co-founder of Nebraska Jewish Historical Society, Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D. turns 82… Energy consultant, president and CEO of K Street Alternative Energy Strategies, LLC, Howard Marks turns 81… Former executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, now the executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, Raphael J. Sonenshein, Ph.D. turns 76… Israeli journalist, Elli Wohlgelernter turns 72… Chief administrative officer at the Legacy Heritage Fund, Elaine Weitzman… ESPN’s longest-tenured “SportsCenter” anchor, Linda Cohn turns 66… Rabbi at Temple Beth Kodesh in Boynton Beach, Fla., Michael C. Simon… Professor at Bar-Ilan University, Adam Ferziger turns 61… Senior rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, Ken Chasen turns 60… Former MLB right-fielder for 14 seasons, he founded Greenfly, a software firm for sports and entertainment organizations, Shawn Green turns 53… National security editor at The Washington Post, Benjamin Pauker… President of Democratic Majority for Israel, Brian Paul Romick turns 49… Co-founder in 2004 of Yelp, where he remains the CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman turns 48… Executive director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, Shira Menashe Ruderman… Chief investigative reporter at ABC News, Josh Margolin turns 46… Senior advisor on the public health team at Bloomberg Philanthropies, Jean B. Weinberg… YouTube personality, he came to fame as a child actor on Nickelodeon, Josh Peck turns 39… 

Editor’s note: Daniel Naroditsky, whom we featured in the “Birthdays” section of Friday’s Daily Kickoff, died on Oct. 20. We apologize for the error. 

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

President Donald Trump continued to voice his frustration today with Hamas’ ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, including a recent ceasefire violation where Hamas terrorists shot an anti-tank missile at IDF machinery and killed two soldiers, though he stopped short of calling for action against the terror group. 

At a bilateral lunch at the White House with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Trump told reporters, “We made a deal with Hamas that they’re going to be very good, they’re going to behave, they’re going to be nice and if they’re not, we’re going to go in — we’re going to eradicate them if we have to, they’ll be eradicated.” 

Trump claimed the violence was committed by rogue members of the terror group: “I don’t believe it was the leadership — they had some rebellion in there among themselves — and they killed some people, a lot of people.” 

Despite his phrasing, Trump emphasized that the U.S. will not send troops into Gaza. “We don’t need to [have U.S. boots on the ground] because we have many countries, as you know, signed on to this deal,” he said. “We had countries calling me when they saw some of the killing with Hamas, saying, ‘We’d love to go in and take care of the situation ourselves.’ In addition, Israel would go in in two minutes if I asked them to go in. … But right now we haven’t said that. We’re going to give it a little chance and hopefully there will be a little less violence”…

Trump advisors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in Israel to help shore up the ceasefire, reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their meeting today not to take any action that could risk the first phase of the agreement, Israeli media reports, despite the recent violations by Hamas…

Netanyahu appointed Israeli-American businessman Michael Eisenberg as his representative to the U.S.-led international body monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire, according to Israeli media. Eisenberg previously helped establish the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Vice President JD Vance, set to land in Israel tomorrow, is expected to visit the monitoring body’s command center…

The Trump administration’s nominee for ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, former Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), is also in Israel this week on a trip focused on “religious freedom, unity and resilience after the release of hostages.” Yesterday, he met with American hostage families and today visited Yad Vashem and the Western Wall…

The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said today it was handing over the remains of a hostage held in Gaza to IDF troops. The army announced the casket is now in Israel and headed for identification…

Meanwhile in the U.S., Politico reports that Paul Ingrassia, the Trump administration’s nominee to head the Office of Special Counsel, said on a text chain of Republican operatives last year that he has “a Nazi streak” in him “from time to time” and that all holidays commemorating Black communities “need to be eviscerated.”

Ingrassia, who has a history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, including calling the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel a “psyop,” is scheduled receive a confirmation hearing in the Senate on Thursday…

The Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit against Northwestern alleging that the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by adopting time, place and manner restrictions on student protest and requiring students to watch an antisemitism training video, Jewish Insider‘s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.

Among other allegations, the suit, filed in federal court in Illinois, claims Northwestern violated students’ rights by requiring them to agree to the school’s code of conduct, which now incorporates the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, as well as mandatory bias training that includes a video on antisemitism created in collaboration with the Jewish United Fund, the city’s Jewish federation…

Dartmouth College joined five other universities in rejecting the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence” over the weekend. With a deadline of today, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas at Austin and Vanderbilt University are the only schools offered early access to the compact that have yet to respond publicly…

John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council under the Biden administration, is set to become director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics on Nov. 15, according to Axios…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for reporting on the U.K. Jewish community’s reaction to rising antisemitism in the country after the Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue and reflections from a 21-year-old Argentinian activist who was awarded with a trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for her work in tolerance.

This evening, Aish is hosting former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in conversation with Elisha Wiesel on “the future of New York City” about the upcoming mayoral elections. 

Tomorrow, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control will hold a hearing on Hezbollah’s drug trafficking activities in Latin America.

Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman will appear at 92NY in New York City tomorrow evening to discuss “the state of Judaism on campus.”

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Hamas continues to delay its return of the deceased hostages in Gaza, citing difficulty in locating and unearthing them. The terror group has so far returned nine out of the 28 bodies it holds, though Israel told mediators yesterday that it believes Hamas knows the whereabouts of at least six other bodies, Arab officials told The Wall Street Journal. Israel shared some of its own intelligence on their locations today and is convening an international task force, including Egypt and Turkey, to work on recovering the rest of the remains…

Hamas is also continuing its campaign to execute its rivals in the enclave; President Donald Trump posted this afternoon on Truth Social, “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them”…

Israel took credit for the death of Houthi Chief of Staff Muhammad al-Ghamari, announced by the terror group today, as a result of an Israeli strike on Houthi leadership in Yemen in August. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that al-Ghamari has “joined his comrades from the thwarted axis of evil in the depths of hell”…

Meanwhile on the campaign trial, New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani refused to say that Hamas should disarm on a Wednesday appearance on Fox News, instead asserting, “I don’t really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety, and the fact that anything has to abide by international law. That applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, applies to anyone you could ask me about.”

In response, Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY), a Long Island swing district Democrat who has remained vocally opposed to Mamdani’s candidacy, said on social media, “Pro-Hamas Zohran is unfit to hold any office in the United States”…

Despite maintaining his anti-Israel positions, Mamdani continued his outreach to Jewish leaders in the city over the holiday of Sukkot, including meeting with representatives of the Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg as well as with leadership at Reform Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, The New York Times reports. 

The conversations have not assuaged communal concerns over his potential mayoralty, with at least one meeting ending with Mamdani and “some attendees ‘totally apart from one another’ on key issues.”

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, a progressive Reform leader and senior rabbi at Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, likewise was unpersuaded in a video and statement he released today, telling Mamdani, “I do not speak for all Jews, but I do represent the views of the large majority of the NY Jewish community, which is increasingly concerned about your statements about Israel and the Jewish people”…

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), mounting a primary challenge to Israel critic Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), said today that he is returning political donations he has received from AIPAC and will reject the group’s support going forward, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. 

AIPAC said in a statement that Moulton “is abandoning his friends to grab a headline, capitulating to the extremes rather than standing on conviction. His statement comes after years of him repeatedly asking for our endorsement and is a clear message to AIPAC members in Massachusetts, and millions of pro-Israel Democrats nationwide, that he rejects their support and will not stand with them.”

Moulton’s changed stance on accepting support from AIPAC is yet another sign of how even more-moderate Democrats are facing pressure from the party’s activist base to distance themselves from embracing Israel… 

CNN unearthed since-deleted social media comments from Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has made opposition to Israel and AIPAC a central focus of his campaign, on a range of far-left issues, including calling himself a communist, saying he’s “disgusted” with America and repeatedly disparaging police officers. “I can honestly say that that is me just being an a**hole on the Internet,” Platner said about the posts…

Claudia Milne, senior vice president for standards and practices at CBS News, announced today that she is stepping down from her position, the first executive to do so since Free Press founder Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief of the outlet. 

Milne oversaw the standards department during a period of perceived anti-Israel bias by the news organization, including when the department instructed CBS employees not to refer to Jerusalem as being in Israel (reported on by The Free Press)…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for reporting on the New York City mayoral debate and an appearance by Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and antisemitism envoy nominee Yehuda Kaploun at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, both taking place this evening.

On Sunday evening, Americans for Ben-Gurion University will hold a benefit in New York City featuring a performance by comedian Alex Edelman and honoring special guest Sasha Troufanov, who was held hostage by Hamas for almost 500 days.

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

President Donald Trump heaped praise on the leaders of Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Indonesia at a Cabinet meeting at the White House today, lauding them as key parties responsible for getting Israel and Hamas to agree to the first phase of his peace plan for the region, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.

Trump also confirmed in his remarks that his team is organizing a Mideast trip for him to commemorate the deal, which would include stops in Egypt and Israel, where he’s been invited to address the Knesset.

The president said he is planning to depart from Washington on Sunday and hopes to time his trip to be there when the remaining hostages are released, which he said will happen on Monday or Tuesday. That’s later than some reports which speculated they could be returned to Israel as soon as this weekend… 

Israeli and Hamas negotiators signed the final draft of phase one of the deal in Egypt today, and the Israeli Cabinet is now meeting to vote to approve it.

Former Mideast envoy Jared Kushner and current envoy Steve Witkoff joined the Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, coming off of negotiations in Egypt and having already met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The deal is expected to be approved, despite statements from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that their parties will oppose it. The meeting, as well as an earlier Security Cabinet briefing, were delayed after Ben-Gvir demanded to retain a veto on the release of specific Palestinian prisoners in the exchange, according to Israeli media…

Preparations are underway for Trump’s brief visit, with the Knesset lit up today in red, white and blue and the King David Hotel reportedly getting ready to boot out guests staying in the luxury lodgings for Sukkot to accommodate the president and his entourage…

Anti-Israel Democratic lawmakers offered tepid support for the deal throughout the day, while reiterating their strident criticisms of Israel, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) didn’t explicitly praise the deal but said he hopes it will lead to the end of a “horrific war.” He made no mention of the Israeli hostages set to be released, but asserted one-tenth of the Gazan population was killed or injured during the war. Read more reactions from lawmakers here…

Joining the pack, New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani told a local radio station today that he hopes the deal is “lasting” and “brings peace” but that it shouldn’t erase “Hamas’ horrific war crime on Oct. 7 … and the Israeli government’s horrific war crimes since then”…

The Atlantic Council’s Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who grew up in Gaza, writes in The Free Press about the “self-styled peace activists” in the West denouncing the peace deal as a “colonial attempt to continue the genocide” who have “little understanding or interest in how dealmaking works.”

“One of the first steps to freeing Palestinians from the horrors of war is to free them from the ‘Free Palestine Movement’ in the diaspora and Western world. The unholy alliance between the far left, far right, and Islamist hooligans who normalize Hamas’s narrative is harmful first and foremost to the Palestinian people,” Alkhatib argues…

In her first week as editor-in-chief of CBS News, The Free Press founder Bari Weiss reportedly told staff today that former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton, Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo have agreed to appear on a Middle East roundtable on the network…

The New York Times profiles Jewish stand-up comedian Mordechi Rosenfeld, known as Modi, who has a “personal mantra that guides his comedy: ‘Moshiach energy’ … For Mr. Rosenfeld, the slogan reflects a Messianic idea inspired by the last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox movement, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Mr. Rosenfeld interprets it as a mandate to pour positive energy into the world to help bring the Messiah”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for reporting on the Senate’s agreement, which had been stalled for weeks, to move toward passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act today.

Tomorrow, NOTUS will host a virtual event on “Mapping the New Global Order” with former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Jason Crow (D-CO).

Over the weekend, we’ll be keeping an eye on President Donald Trump’s travels to the region and engagement with Israeli officials, as well as developments in the hostage-release process.

In observance of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, we’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Thursday. Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom!

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

There has been a whirlwind of political activity in Israel today, starting with the bombshell news that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to ask the Security Cabinet to approve an expansion of Israel’s war in Gaza, which would see the IDF control all of the enclave.

The move will have reverberations throughout Jerusalem and Washington, from Netanyahu’s own government to hostage families, Capitol Hill and the White House. Officials on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. have been pushing hard for a comprehensive ceasefire and an end to the war — including Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who was in Israel just days ago at the behest of President Donald Trump. Stay tuned to Jewish Insider for how this will play out in the coming days…

In other headlines coming out of Israel, the Cabinet voted unanimously this morning to oust Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, with whom the current government has been at odds since it was formed, accusing her of political bias.

Shortly after the vote, the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction temporarily blocking the firing and ordering the government to continue abiding by Baharav-Miara’s legal opinions until the court issues a final ruling. 

It’s the first time an Israeli government has ever voted to oust the AG, and with some Cabinet ministers already boycotting her and pushing back on the court’s decision, Israel could be edging toward a constitutional crisis.

Meanwhile, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein was officially pushed out of his chairmanship of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee today, over coalition disagreements on a Haredi conscription bill. He was replaced by Boaz Bismuth, also from Likud, whom the party hopes will be more amenable to reducing sanctions on Haredim who dodge the draft. Israeli voters across a large swath of the political spectrum, including the Likud base, are on Edelstein’s side of the debate…

Getting a front-row seat to these developments, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) trip to Israel with a House Republican delegation continues today. The group visited the town of Ariel, making Johnson the highest-ranking elected federal official to visit a West Bank settlement. While there, Johnson told a meeting of senior Yesha Council officials that “Judea and Samaria are the front lines of the State of Israel and must remain an integral part of it,” and stopped by Ariel University…

Also in Israel this week are two delegations of freshman House members, one from each caucus, organized by the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation. The Democratic trip is led by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the former House majority leader, and Rep. Pete Aguilar, (D-CA), the caucus chair…

Back at home, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations CEO William C. Daroff met with Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby at the Pentagon today. Though Colby had faced criticism around his nomination from pro-Israel circles for his calls to scale back U.S. involvement in the Middle East, Daroff told JI that Colby “expressed a clear and serious understanding of U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East, including the vital importance of deterring Iran, preventing regional adversaries from gaining dominance, and sustaining Israel’s security following the Twelve Day War.” Daroff said he was “encouraged by [Colby’s] principled and grounded approach”…

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said in grant notices made public Friday that states must guarantee they will not engage in boycotts of Israeli companies in order to qualify for a tranche of more than $1.9 billion in natural disaster preparedness grants…

Software analytics giant Palantir topped $1 billion in revenue for the first time, it shared in an earnings report today. The company has secured several large contracts with the Trump administration, including an agreement announced last week for $10 billion over the next decade with the U.S. Army…

Veteran Democratic political strategist Howard Wolfson, an outspoken supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, appeared on Daniel Gordis’ “Israel from the Inside” podcast today with the message that “the war for hearts and minds” in U.S. support for Israel “has been lost.” The former communications director of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Wolfson said that he’s “clanging the alarm bell as loudly as I can and hoping that the Israeli public and the decision-makers in Israel understand how far Israel has fallen in public approval in the United States and what the implications of that are.”

“Israel is getting absolutely decimated” in information warfare, Wolfson continued. “And that may not be fair, it may not be accurate, but I think those questions of fairness and accuracy, they’ve become largely irrelevant. It’s not about fairness and accuracy. It’s about effectiveness and about impact.”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider this week for a dive into the lessons learned from Israel’s disengagement from Gaza 20 years ago this month, an analysis of what a new poll of New York City Jewish voters means for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral prospects and a look into the latest fundraising figures from pro-Israel campaign groups.

Tomorrow morning, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will meet with American Jewish leaders in New York, JI has learned, and then head to a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the situation of the hostages held in Gaza. Sa’ar prompted the special session after videos of two hostages — Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski — were released by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, showing the two men looking haggard and severely emaciated.