Daily Kickoff
On The Hill: “US Congress passes rare law targeting boycotts of Israel” by Michael Wilner: “Four decades have passed since Congress last agreed on a law pushing back against boycotts of Israel worldwide. That streak was broken by the Senate Wednesday, at a moment perhaps prescient, as European capitals consider new measures to highlight and punish Israel’s continued “occupation” of the West Bank. TPA, which passed through the Senate and landed on the president’s desk, includes roughly 150 trade negotiating objectives… One of those objectives is to push back against efforts within the EU to sponsor the growing BDS movement against Israel.” [JPost; ToI] • “Rep. Peter Roskam’s Anti-BDS Provisions Headed to President’s Desk” [PressRelease]
Oren RoundUp: “What Michael Oren doesn’t get about our special relationship with Israel.” [ForeignPolicy] • “‘Why all the fuss over Oren’s criticism of Obama, when Indyk slams Netanyahu all the time?'” [JPost] • “Ex-U.S. envoy Daniel Kurtzer blasts Oren’s ‘astounding’ Obama criticism” [Haaretz] • “Michael Oren, You Hardly Know Us at All” [Forward] • “Oren: Obama Policy Has Hardened Israeli Leaders Against Peace Process” [Algemeiner] • “Did Obama ‘Abandon Israel’?” [NewYorker] • “How Michael Oren Got Blasted by Inside-the-Beltway Noise Machine” [Forward]
IRAN TALKS: “Ex-Advisers Warn Obama That Iran Nuclear Deal ‘May Fall Short’ of Standards” by David E. Sanger: “Five former members of President Obama’s inner circle of Iran advisers have written an open letter expressing concern that a pending accord to stem Iran’s nuclear program “may fall short of meeting the administration’s own standard of a ‘good’ agreement” and laying out a series of minimum requirements that Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal.” [NYTimes; WSJ] The five — Dennis B. Ross, David H. Petraeus, Robert Einhorn, Gary Samore, Gen. James E. Cartwright. Norm Eisen, President Obama’s former Ambassador to the Czech Republic, also signed. [Letter] • “U.S. lawmakers step up warnings against ‘weak’ Iran deal” [Reuters; Bloomberg]
“How Russia Could Make or Break the Iran Deal” by Colum Lynch, John Hudson: “There are few things in international diplomacy that Russia values more than its U.N. Security Council veto. It has wielded it to limit Western action from Georgia to Syria to Ukraine. But the success of the historic nuclear talks with Iran may hinge on Moscow’s willingness to voluntarily yield that power. The United States and its European partners are pressing a proposal that would curtail Russia’s ability to block the U.N. Security Council’s ability to reimpose — or “snap back” — its sanctions on Iran if it breaches an accord.” [ForeignPolicy]
Ops: “Obama Ignores the Tehran-Terror Connection” by Robert M. Morgenthau [WSJ] • “The Iran Deal Proves That Peace Is Possible” by Trita Parsi [ForeignPolicy] • “The U.S. shouldn’t be swayed by Mr. Khamenei’s nuclear threats” by the Washington Post Editorial Board [WashPost] • “Ayatollah Khamenei’s Fateful Choice” by the NYTimes Editorial Board [NYTimes]
“Clinton Defense Chief: Iran Deal Could Spark Proliferation” by Josh Rogin: “Gulf Arab powers are likely to respond to President Barack Obama’s pending nuclear deal with Iran by developing their own nuclear programs, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said Wednesday. He said they don’t trust either the Iranians or the United States to protect their interests.” [BloombergView]
2016 WATCH: “Hillary Clinton Hires The Strategist Who Broke Her 2008 Campaign” by Ben Smith: “A campaign official confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Jeff Berman has joined the campaign as a consultant, and has quietly been working for Clinton since her launch earlier this month. Berman’s name may not ring bells even for fairly obsessive political junkies — he’s not an MSNBC regular, doesn’t much talk to reporters, and has spent most of his professional life in private legal practice.” [BuzzFeed] • Ben Smith’s 08 story on “The Obama campaign’s ‘unsung hero'” [Politico]
“Marco Rubio is playing to win the Sheldon Adelson Primary” by James Hohmann: “The Florida senator, who has relentlessly sought the billionaire casino mogul’s backing for 2016, co-sponsored a bill yesterday afternoon to ban online gaming. It is not only Adelson’s top legislative priority, it could significantly boost his company’s bottom line. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another presidential hopeful who has assiduously courted Adelson over their shared hawkishness on foreign policy, is the lead Republican author on the legislation for a second year in a row.” [WashPost]
“Talking with Rick Perry about Iran” by Jennifer Rubin: ““I’m really concerned he doesn’t care what’s in the deal as long as he gets a deal.” He ticks off his own demands: “Suspend enrichment. Full access to all facilities, including military facilities. If not, there is no deal. They need to end their ICBM program. That’s not even on the table. If not to deliver a nuclear missile, why do you have [an ICBM] program?” And, Perry says, Iran will need to end support for terrorism.” [WashPost]
TOP TALKER: “In Hostage-Terrorist Policy Shift, Obama Admits Failures” by Julie Hirschfeld Davis: “President Obama said Wednesday that his administration had too often failed the families of American hostages held overseas by groups like the Islamic State, announcing a policy overhaul that will publicly state for the first time that the United States government can communicate and negotiate with hostage takers.” [NYTimes]
LongRead: “Operation Hannibal: Here’s how Israel deals with hostages. The results aren’t pretty” by Dan Ephron: “To the military in the United States and around the world, Israel serves as a kind of laboratory for battle tactics, especially those involving counterinsurgency. Its wars with guerrilla groups like Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—four in the past nine years—are pored over for the lessons they hold and the questions they raise. The story of Hadar Goldin raises one question in particular: How far should a modern military go to prevent one of its own from being captured?”
“Israel has its own technology, of course, but it supplements those tools with a tactic the army revived in the aftermath of the Shalit ordeal—code word Hannibal—that calls for a massive use of force when a soldier is captured. Now, nearly a year later, Israeli military lawyers are trying to determine if the Hannibal procedure led soldiers to commit a war crime. The lawyers have a particularly delicate task. Ordering a criminal investigation would put them at odds with the institution they serve. Not ordering one might open the door to a probe by the International Criminal Court.” [PoliticoMag]
Ops: “Think U.N. Gaza ‘War Crimes’ Report Is Biased? Read It First.” by J.J. Goldberg [Forward] • “What to Make of the UN’s Special Commission Report on Gaza?” by Benjamin Wittes, Yishai Schwartz[LawFare] • WSJ Editorial: “The U.N.’s Israel Inquisition” [WSJ]
REAL ESTATE ROUNDUP: “Mitchell Hochberg Is Giving New York a Lightstone Touch” [Observer] • “Tel Aviv’s Norman named best boutique hotel in the world” [Haaretz] • “Melohn Properties’ new retail complex with movie theater coming to Charleston waterfront” [SiLive] • “Larry Silverstein and Isaac Tshuva team up for One West End” [NewsWire] • “Investor Arthur Shapolsky in contract for $50M East Village site” [RealDeal] • “Sam Zell Sells Off Mies van der Rohe’s Illinois Center for $375M” [Curbed] • “The 20 biggest power players in New York City real estate” [NYPost]
SILICON VALLEY 100: 8. Marc Benioff; 9. Stewart Butterfield; 10. Aaron Levie 16. Art Levinson; 19. Mark Zuckerberg; 20. Ben Silbermann; 23. Larry Page; 34. Mark Pincus; 42. Larry Ellison and Safra Catz; 62. Ben Rubin; 78. Sam Altman; 90. Liz Wessel and JJ Fliegelman; 92. Or Arbel. [BusinessInsider]
STARTUP NATION: “Check Point Battles to Stay at Front Line in War Against Hackers” by Orr Hirschauge: “Since its founding just over two decades ago, the Israeli firm has grown to dominate the $6-billion-a-year business of selling enterprise network firewalls—digital perimeters aimed at keeping out viruses, thieves and hackers. But now Check Point is on the defensive itself, as clients look for more innovative ways to protect themselves against today’s frequent and more sophisticated cyberattacks.” [WSJ] • “Tel Aviv-based Yotpo Raises An Additional $15M, Adds Former GoDaddy CEO To Board” [TechCrunch]
TALK OF OUR NATION: “How the Talmud Became a Best-Seller in South Korea” by Ross Arbes: “About an hour’s drive north of Seoul, in the Gwangju Mountains, nearly fifty South Korean children pore over a book. The text is an unlikely choice: the Talmud, the fifteen-hundred-year-old book of Jewish laws. The students are not Jewish, nor are their teachers, and they have no interest in converting. Most have never met a Jew before. But, according to the founder of their school, the students enrolled with the goal of receiving a “Jewish education” in addition to a Korean one.” [NewYorker]
“The Untouched Remains of a Pre-Holocaust Jewish Schoolhouse” by Madison Johnson: “Slovakian photographer Yuri Dojc, 69, insists that he doesn’t believe in miracles, and doesn’t consider himself a particularly religious man. Nonetheless, he describes his Last Folio project as the result of a series of “miracles” that began with his father’s funeral, where he met Mrs. Vajnorska, an Auschwitz survivor who became Dojc’s “second mother.” She showed him around Slovakia and introduced him to other survivors, whom he photographed. That, in turn, led to his discovery in 2006 of an abandoned Jewish schoolhouse, synagogue, and ritual bath in eastern Slovakia that had remained largely undisturbed since the day in 1942 when everyone was deported to concentration camps.” [NewRepublic]
“Translating Seinfeld: Translator Sabine Sebastian tried to bring Seinfeld to Germans, yada yada yada, it flopped” by Jennifer Armstrong: “Jokes are the hardest things to translate into another language, another culture, another world. Seinfeld’s Jewish references posed a unique challenge: as Sebastian explained, “The Germans have a certain you-know-what with the Jewish.” Her editor was worried about some of Seinfeld’s Jewish jokes. “We better not say it like that,” she remembered her editor saying, “because the Germans may be offended.” She added later, recalling the incident to me, “They should be offended, in my understanding. They did it!” [TheVerge]
SPORTS BLINK: “Warriors Co-Owner Peter Guber Talks Hollywood vs. Sports, Says Obama “Didn’t Understand” Sony Hack” by Andy Lewis: “Late in the afternoon June 19, Peter Guber bounced into his Mandalay Entertainment office on Wilshire Boulevard with a big smile and his voice hoarse from yelling. The former Sony studio chief has reinvented himself as a sports owner and investor, and less than two hours earlier he had the “surreal” experience of being on the Golden State Warriors victory bus with star Stephen Curry as it was cheered in Oakland by about 1 million fans celebrating the team’s first NBA title since 1975. In the five years since Guber, partner Joe Lacob and other investors paid $450 million for the Warriors, they have turned the team from perennial losers into a model franchise.” [HollywoodReporter]
STATE VISIT: “Mariah Carey to visit Israel with James Packer: Renowned American singer Mariah Carey will be making a quick visit to Israel this weekend with Australian businessman James Packer, whom she is dating, the Israeli press reported on Wednesday. If the visit is successful, a concert may be planned in the future, Carey’s associates said.” [YNet; ToI]
DESSERT: “Kosher Halal Chili Is Uniting Nottingham’s Jewish and Muslim Communities” by Michael Segalov: “It’s three o’clock when I jump off my bike at The Bridge Centre, a community centre in Nottingham’s Hyson Green area. I’m spending the afternoon with Salaam Shalom Kitchen, a new project that aims to bring together Nottingham’s Jewish and Muslim communities through the preparation of food. “Both the Jewish and Muslim communities face prejudice from parts of our society,” Azam tells me, when I ask why he volunteers there. “Preparing food gives you a chance to get talking to other people, you interact and get to know each other. Food brings people together.” [Munchies.Vice]
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