
Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images
President Donald Trump and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani both attended the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 Final match on Sunday between Chelsea FC and Paris Saint-Germain, the latter of which is owned by Al Thani, at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the two leaders were reportedly planning to meet.
Bishara Bahbah, the national chair of Arab Americans for Trump who is facilitating talks between Hamas and Israel for the Trump administration, said ahead of the match that the two leaders planned to meet to discuss ceasefire and hostage-relief efforts.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
School may be out of session for the summer, but officials from Georgetown University, the University of California, Berkeley and the City University of New York will be in the hot seat this week when they testify on Tuesday before the House Education and Workforce Committee.
This is not the first time that university officials have appeared in front of Congress to account for the situations on their campuses, but this week’s hearing aims to focus on more than just the anti-Israel activism that has permeated many campuses since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza to focus on root issues, including foreign funding in higher education as well as faculty anti-Israel organizing efforts.

Rod Lamkey, Jr./AP
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin defended himself on Friday amid criticism that his response to a question about New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan did not sufficiently express his own view that the phrase should be condemned.
“The right-wing lie machine is at it again. That’s not what I said in this interview. I’ve never supported or condoned the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’, a phrase which is reckless and dangerous, as it can been [sic] seen as a green light to terror, and it should be unequivocally condemned,” Martin wrote in a response on X to the Washington Free Beacon.

K180 Studios
As summer heats up, Jewish adults looking for an escape from the fraught state of world Jewry may find themselves reflecting on a seemingly simpler time — getting competitive over color war or gaga ball and singing Debbie Friedman songs around a campfire at Jewish sleepaway camp.
That sense of nostalgia for one’s Jewish summer camp years is doled out liberally in “The Floaters,” a new film that centers on the fictional Camp Daveed and a group of outsider teens called the floaters.

Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images for One Fair Wage
Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, spent Friday calling Jewish leaders, seeking to reassure them that he does not condone the phrase “globalize the intifada,” two sources with knowledge of the meetings told Jewish Insider. Among the leaders he called were senior officials at the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The meetings came shortly after a clip of Martin discussing New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani went viral online. PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz asked Martin to respond to concerns from Jewish colleagues that Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” was “very disturbing, potentially dangerous” — and asked Martin outright whether he agreed.

Kevin Carter/Getty Images
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, passed out of committee this week, includes provisions aimed at furthering coordinated air and missile defense efforts in the Middle East.
Moves to strengthen military cooperation among the U.S., Israel and Arab countries have been part of several recent NDAAs, starting with the DEFEND Act, which first pushed for coordinated air and missile defense efforts in 2022, as an outgrowth of the Abraham Accords.

WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The American Jewish Committee called for a “swift political response” following the raising of plaques at the Jedwabne memorial site in Poland which falsely accuse Jews of being responsible for Soviets killing Poles during the pogrom that occurred there 84 years ago this week.
At least 340 Jews were burned alive by their Polish neighbors in the massacre at Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. Marking the anniversary of the attack on Thursday, right-wing activist Wojciech Sumliński and his supporters illegally placed plaques in English and Polish several yards from the memorial, offering a revisionist account of what happened at the site.

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Since Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor, there’s been a fascinating disconnect between the polls showing Mamdani still vulnerable in the general election and the sclerosis among political leaders unable to make the tough decisions on whether to rally behind an alternative in a bid to stop the socialist candidate from becoming the next mayor.
There hasn’t been much good polling since the primary, but the most recent general election surveys all paint a picture of Mamdani leading the race with a plurality, but far below what a typical Democratic nominee should be receiving after a stunning, come-from-behind defeat of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Subscribe now to
the Daily Kickoff
The politics and business news you need to stay up to date, delivered each morning in a must-read newsletter.
I’ve been finding the morning blast from JI very useful for all my Jewish news needs.
