Daily Kickoff
BREAKING: IDF Troops Come Under Fire On Egyptian Border: “IDF troops came under fire on the Israeli-Egyptian border on Wednesday afternoon. Two soldiers were wounded when terrorists from Sinai fired gunfire and an anti-tank missile at an IDF patrol. “We have large forces in the area to make sure there is no infiltration into Israel,” a senior military source said, and noted that at present there is no indication terrorists have managed to infiltrate from Sinai.” [YNet]
FIRST LOOK: “DID ISRAEL AVERT A HAMAS MASSACRE?” by Adam Ciralsky. “The story behind the Gaza tunnel plot, from Israeli intelligence officials—and Hamas leader Khalid Mishal: “What once may have sounded like rejected scenes from a remake of Poltergeist, now strike Israelis in the north as harbingers, especially after this summer’s Gaza war, which laid bare a complex of subterranean tunnels that had been dug under Israel’s southwestern border with the Gaza Strip—an area ruled by Hamas, a party whose credo calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
The threat, indeed, is all too plausible to Israeli intelligence officials, who agreed to share with Vanity Fair the backstory of how earlier this year they may have narrowly averted their nation’s own 9/11. The alleged plan of attack (as pieced together by defense and security professionals through electronic intercepts, informants, interrogations of Hamas operatives, as well as computers and satellite imagery obtained from Hamas compounds during the war) was chilling: a surprise assault in which scores of heavily armed Hamas insurgents were supposedly set to emerge from more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and proceed to kill as many Israelis as possible.” [Vanity Fair] — Q&A with Hamas’s Mishal on the Gaza War, Tunnels, and ISIS [VanityFair]
Kerry call status quo between Israel, Palestinians ‘unsustainable’: “The current situation, the status quo, is unsustainable,” he said at a joint news conference on Wednesday with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin. He added that it was necessary to find a way to negotiate and said the U.S. would continue with these efforts: “Obviously we understand the urgency of it,” he said. [Reuters] — Bennett: “Israelis are turning their backs on the two-state solution in the wake of the recent war with Hamas and it is now time to think about “new models” instead of an independent Palestinian state” [FinancialTimes] — Dore Gold on Israel’s Defensible Borders in the Age of IS [Mosaic]
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“Now that I’m not and I’m not in a particular business, and I haven’t found this place that’s, ‘OK, this is my next career ladder.’ The world doesn’t look that way to me,” he says. “It’s more like a series of kind of turns, and I’m going to try and navigate them each time and try to the best I can.”
What is clear is whether in or out of the spotlight, Weiner still doesn’t hold back his well-known sarcasm and biting humor — as I find out after I thank him for his time and mention the possibility of talking again. “I like hanging out with you, but you’re a one-coffee interview,” Weiner says and ducks out to Seventh Avenue. [Politico]
REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP: Ukrainian Billionaire Leonard Blavatnik Just Paid $80M for NYC’s Priciest Co-op [Curbed] • Gary Barnett reveals how he won the Ring Portfolio [RealDeal] • CFPB delays renovation of its pricey headquarters, adding millions more to cost — “The developer of the temporary property is Neil G. Bluhm, a long time personal friend of President Obama who hosted the president’s 49th birthday party at his Chicago-area home. Bluhm is a major campaign bundler for Obama, raising between $250,000 and $500,000 for the president’s 2008 campaign and more than $500,000 in 2012.” [Washington Examiner]
STARTUP NATION: 23andMe and Israel’s MyHeritage partner to combine DNA and family trees [Reuters] • Sony buys stakes in Israeli telenovela channels [Haaretz] • Israel’s ThetaRay turns to maths to detect cyber threats [Reuters]
STARTUP SPOTLIGHT — Jill Abramson announces startup plans : “Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson announced on Monday night she is in the beginning stages of a startup aimed at offering “real money” to journalists for long-term projects.
Speaking with New York Times media columnist David Carr at a WBUR event at Boston University, Abramson revealed that she’s been working with Steven Brill on the startup. Abramson was an early contributor to Brill’s magazine American Lawyer, and spent nearly a decade as a writer there.
“We are actually pitching a startup that will be, not unsurprisingly, very ambitious, killer journalism,” Abramson said Monday night, according to WBUR. “We’re talking to some investors who are sounding very interested, and we are going to do great stories and offer great journalists actual money that they can live on to write something wonderful for us.” [Politico]
TALK OF OUR NATION: Wolf Blitzer Explores His Jewish Roots on CNN [Tablet] • World Jewish Congress says it no longer supports allowing suspected Nazi war criminals to receive Social Security benefits [AP] • Jerusalem Stone May Answer Jewish Revolt Questions [AP]
JEWISH TECH: The Yarmulke Comes To 3-D Printing [NPR]
TRANSITIONS: FDD Welcomes Oren Kessler as new Deputy Director of Research [FDD]
DESSERT: Milk Street Cafe Expands: “For the first time since opening in 1981, Milk Street Cafe has undergone renovations. The lunch spot, which began as a vegetarian restaurant, has expanded from standard cafe fare to include a bakery, sushi counter, and meat. The overhaul to Downtown Boston’s only kosher eatery was just completed.” [BostonGlobe]
BIRTHDAYS: Frank Lowy turns 84…
