Daily Kickoff
REPORT: @DannyNis – “Top Iranian nuclear scientist reportedly among two killed thus far in explosion in Parchin nuclear facility near Tehran today” [Twitter]
IRAN TALKS: “Iran Orders Elite Troops: Lay Off U.S. Forces in Iraq” by Eli Lake: “Pay no attention to the Shi’ite militias threatening to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The elite Iranian forces backing those militias have been ordered not to attack the Americans. U.S. intelligence officials tell The Daily Beast that the apparent Iranian decision not to target American troops inside Iraq reflects Iran’s desire to strike a nuclear bargain with the United States and the rest of the international community before the current negotiations expire at the end of November.” [DailyBeast] • Iran frees wife of Post’s Tehran correspondent, but he remains in custody [WashPost] • Israeli Navy intercepts weapons-building material bound for Gaza as Hamas bids to rearm [JPost]
—BREYER AT NATS GAME: “Perhaps most impressive was Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 76, who arrived four innings late because of Yom Kippur but refused to leave as the hours dragged on and the ballpark grew cold. While other shivering fans mobbed souvenir shops to buy sweatshirts and other warm gear, Justice Breyer proudly pointed out his excellent preparation: layers of clothes, including a dark green winter jacket and leather gloves. Justice Breyer was accompanied by his bow-tied younger brother, Charles R. Breyer, a Federal District Court judge in San Francisco.” [NYT]
LISA SPIES ON MLB FUNDRAISING: The Nationals may be down 0-2 against the Giants but they have already won the pennant in America’s other favorite pastime: fundraising. Federal candidates, parties and PACs have spent at least $245,000 on Nationals tickets, gear, and box seats during this election cycle.” What’s the secret to their success? The games this season “‘last significantly longer and you can sort of come and go,’ Jewish GOP fundraiser Lisa Spies said of baseball’s appeal to donors. ‘It’s a more relaxed environment. You can sit and chat during the game.’” [Politico]
ZUCKER PROFILES: “Jeff Zucker Has Endured Cancer, Hollywood, and Being TV’s Wunderkind. So Why Not Take on CNN?” by Gabriel Sherman: “All these months since his diagnosis, he seemed careworn and a little fatalistic. “Honestly, it’s just ridiculous. I did something to piss God off a long time ago. That guy has tested me a lot.” In broadcast television, few have experienced higher highs, and lower lows, than Jeff Zucker. He was just 26 when he started as executive producer of Today in 1992, and he quickly turned the show into a ratings machine. By the time he was 40, Zucker was the CEO of NBC Universal. It was the fastest ascent up the executive ranks in television history.” [NYMag] • NYTimes: “How Jeff Zucker Is Seeking to Reshape CNN” [NYT]
SUNDAY SHOWS: “In an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Netanyahu said he does not accept restrictions on where Jews could live, and said that Jerusalem’s Arabs and Jews should be able to buy homes wherever they want. He said he was “baffled” by the American condemnation. “It’s against the American values. And it doesn’t bode well for peace,” he said. “The idea that we’d have this ethnic purification as a condition for peace, I think it’s anti-peace.” [AP]
2016 WATCH: Rubio – “Obama’s criticism of Israeli settlements is ‘deplorable’ [TheHill]
CLINTON’S BIG12: 12 families, many of whom are Jewish have given to every Clinton campaign and charity over the past 22 years. Of one — “There was the time Hillary called her from the 2008 Democratic National Convention to ask how Stern’s hip surgery went. Or the time she called to ask after one of her sons when he was in the hospital. She’s saved all the letters, including the one Hillary sent to her mother on her 90th birthday. And she recalls one particularly special evening in January 2000, when Stern was honored by the Israel Policy Forum. President Clinton’s term was coming to end and his speech to the group would be his last major address to a Jewish audience. Many of his top foreign policy aides attended but Clinton sat with her family. “He addressed my mother and said, ‘you know, your daughter is pretty good. She might have a future in this business,’” she recalled. “Of course, my mother was flying.” [Bloomberg]
MAZAL TOV: Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel emails – “We’re so happy to introduce you to Judah Aryeh. Born 8 days ago, weighing in at 8 lbs 11oz. Everyone’s healthy and Rosie is enjoying big sisterhood! – Josh & Ilana”
TORONTO MAYORAL BEAT: “Mayoral candidate Doug Ford drew fire from audience and opponents after refusing to address his brother’s anti-Semitic comments at Sunday night’s debate. Ari Goldkind, a lesser-known mayoral candidate, responded to a question about preventing anti-Semitism by taking aim at slurs made by Toronto mayor Rob Ford earlier this year. The debate, which took place at Anne and Max Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto, was sponsored by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and broadcast on CP24. “We cannot have a mayor like that, because that is where it starts,” said Goldkind. Doug Ford refused to respond directly to Goldkind’s comments, as Rob Ford sat silently in the audience. “I’m not going to address your comment,” Doug Ford said. “You know something, my doctor, my Jewish doctor, my Jewish dentist, my Jewish lawyer, my Jewish accountant…” As the crowd booed loudly, Ford added, “Our family has the utmost respect for the Jewish community, and we look forward to working with the Jewish community, as we have for the last four years.”” [HuffPost]
SWASTIKAS AT EMORY: “Offensive graffiti — including swastikas — was found early Sunday morning on the Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter house at Emory University, the university confirmed to Business Insider Sunday. AEPi is a national traditionally Jewish fraternity, and the swastikas and other graffiti were spray painted on the house shortly after the end of Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days in Judaism. Emory campus police is investigating the offensive graffiti and has increased patrols around the area of the fraternity house, according to the university.” [BI]
BILL MAHER, BEN AFFLECK ON ISLAM: “In case you missed it, the two—both committed and thoughtful liberals—got into it on the question of whether Western liberals can or should criticize Islam. Mentioning freedom of speech and equal rights, Maher said: “These are liberal principles that liberals applaud for, but then when you say in the Muslim world, this is what’s lacking, then they get upset.” Sam Harris, the atheist author, agreed with Maher and said, “The crucial point of confusion is that we have been sold this meme of Islamophobia where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry towards Muslims as people. That is intellectually ridiculous.” Affleck, as if on cue, challenged Harris: “Are you the person who understands the officially codified doctrine of Islam?” And then: “So you’re saying that Islamophobia is not a real thing?” Right after, Affleck said that such criticisms of Islam were “gross” and “racist” and “like saying [to Maher] ‘you’re a shifty Jew.’” [DB]
#RALLYFORISRAEL: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Deputy Ambassador for Israel Reuven Azar, students from Liberty University and others rallied for Israel in DC yesterday on Capitol Hill.
PRO-PAL ACTIVIST OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE: “Federal prosecutors are publicly accusing a Palestinian-American activist of an ‘almost certainly criminal’ effort to derail the trial of a colleague accused of naturalization fraud for failing to disclose a terrorism conviction in Israel more than four decades ago. In a motion filed Friday in connection with the upcoming trial of Rasmea Odeh, prosecutors accuse activist Hatem Abudayyeh of the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network and other demonstrators of mounting protests aimed at swaying a yet-to-be named jury in Odeh’s case. The motion asks that the names of jurors not be made public or revealed to the defendant or her lawyers and that the jury be assembled off-site to avoid encountering the protesters.” [Politico]
STARTUP NATION: U.S. firm buys Israeli startup MobileSpaces for $100M [Haaretz] • Israel approves $4B privatization plan for next three years [Reuters] • Musk’s Tesla D Intrigue Piques Interest of Israel’s Mobileye [Bloomberg] • China’s Bright Food gets 3-month extension on Israel’s Tnuva acquisition [Reuters] • Israel Missing Out as IPOs Bypass Bourse, Lawamker Margalit Says [Bloomberg]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: Martin Selig has big plans for Seattle [DJC] • Sheldon Adelson interested in building a casino in Chris Christie’s New Jersey [GamingToday] • “Even If His Newspaper Investments Don’t Work Out, Aaron Kushner Is A Hero For Trying” [Forbes]
TOP TALKER: “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Being Jewish” by Steven I. Weiss in the Atlantic: “Why we make the religious decisions we do is terrain familiar to scads of psychologists, sociologists, and clergy. It has only in recent decades come to scrutinized by economists. Economists? What can economists tell us about religion? A lot, as it turns out. A new book by George Washington University professor Carmel Chiswick, Judaism in Transition: How Economic Choices Shape Religious Tradition, is a pioneering work in this new area of study. Chiswick is a labor economist, and that turns out to be crucial here because of the field’s focus on scarcity, and especially the scarcity of time.” [Atlantic]
TALK OF THE TOWN: LA Mayor Eric Garcetti studies Talmud ‘to connect with ethics’: “Garcetti is the son of Mexcian-American former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti (who oversaw the prosecution of O.J. Simpson). While his father’s side of the family traces its roots back to Spain and Italy, his mother is the granddaughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. Nicknamed the “kosher burrito,” Garcetti happily embraces his diverse background and since taking office has made a decision to study Torah and Talmud with IKAR’s Rabbi Sharon Brous twice a week.” [TOI]
BOOK REVIEW — NUCLEAR IRAN BY JEREMY BERNSTEIN: “Nuclear Iran” is part scientific primer, part history with a dash of policy analysis. Here the reader can come to grips—as best as we nonscientific souls can—with the math behind the concept of critical mass in nuclear fission. There he offers a brief but illuminating portrait of Gernot Zippe, the eccentric Austrian-German engineer, captured by the Soviets during World War II, who pioneered the centrifuge model later sold by the Pakistani proliferator A.Q. Khan to North Korea and Iran. Mr. Bernstein also details the history of the Iranian nuclear program, beginning with its origins under the Shah. Letting the facts speak for themselves, Mr. Bernstein makes it very hard to maintain that the mullahs have peaceful intentions.” [WSJ]
SPORTS BLINK: “Speaking ahead of a preseason debut game against Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, Cleveland Cavaliers star player LeBron James suggested he’d be interested in visiting Israel if given the chance.” [TOI] • “Maccabi Tel Aviv was there in Cleveland, all right, but that didn’t make much of a difference to their hosts, who sailed through to a 107-80 victory in the exhibition game that pitted them against their new coach’s old team.” [Haaretz]
TALK OF OUR NATION: “Etrog are tricky to grow, especially with the unblemished skin desirable for Sukkot ceremonies. In Israel’s muggy lowlands, 77-year-old Arieh Antman has been growing etrogs for decades. It’s a hassle, he says. Trees bear fruit for less than a decade, the crop must be sprayed with pesticides twice daily. And the leaves, with sharp, serrated edges, must be tied back so none might brush and blemish the skin. But he sticks with it, in part because he finds the whole cycle beautiful. One tree can have blossoms, green leaves and fruit all at the same time.” [NPR] • TSA on Sukkot Travel [TSA]
LONGREADS: THE EMPIRE OF EDGE: ” How a doctor, a trader, and the billionaire Steven A. Cohen got entangled in a vast financial scandal.” [New Yorker] • How the FBI tried to bust up the Jewish mob on Yom Kippur — and blew it by smoking a cigarette” [Tablet/Vox]
