Daily Kickoff
TOP TALKER: “Netanyahu moves to lower tensions over Jerusalem holy site” by Jeffrey Heller: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has banned Israeli cabinet ministers and legislators from visiting a sensitive Jerusalem holy site where rising tensions have spilled over into a wave of Palestinian attacks. After a right-wing outcry, Netanyahu’s office clarified that the ban on politicians’ visits to al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City would also include Arab parliamentarians. It said in a statement that the move was aimed at “cooling things down around the Temple Mount.” [Reuters; AP; WSJ]
“Hillary: Mideast Peace Almost Impossible” by Jacob Kornbluh: “Appearing at a campaign event in Mount Vernon, Iowa, on Wednesday, Clinton said a lasting peace settlement is out of reach until Israel and the Palestinians “know what happens in Syria and whether Jordan will remain stable.” [JI; MSNBC]
2016 WATCH: “Wall Street Ignores Summer of Trump” by Zachary Mider: “In their midtown offices and Upper East Side townhouses, Wall Street financiers are sizing up presidential candidates and laying their bets, often with the same dispassionate arithmetic they use to identify a stock that’s on its way up. “They have no ideology, they don’t care,” said Julian Gingold, a stockbroker at UBS Group. “They want to be with the winner and be invited to the White House.” [Bloomberg]
LongRead: “The Populist Prophet: Bernie Sanders has spent decades attacking inequality. Now the country is listening.” by Margaret Talbot: “Sanders did say that two aspects of his upbringing had exerted a lasting influence. One was coming from a family that never had much money. And the other was growing up Jewish—less for the religious content than for the sense it imbued in him that politics mattered.” [NewYorker] • “How a team of Obama veterans — Scott Goodstein and Arun Chaudhary — helped Bernie Sanders pull in a record number of donations” [Yahoo]
“How Hillary Clinton’s Loyal Confidants Could Cost Her the Election” by Sarah Ellison: “Mandy Grunwald, a senior adviser for communications, has perhaps the longest relationship with the Clintons of anyone in the current campaign. During a victory press conference the day after Clinton won the ‘92 election, Grunwald was the only female adviser onstage, in the shoulder pads and sneakers of the era. She advised Hillary during the Whitewater investigation and during her 2008 presidential campaign. Her sister, a novelist, once wrote about Grunwald in Glamour magazine: “She was older. Braver. Taller. Meaner. Stronger.” Though never far from the Clintons, Grunwald has amassed an impressive array of other clients, including Senator Elizabeth Warren. It was in fact Grunwald’s appointment to Clinton’s campaign that signaled Warren’s decisive move not to run in this election.” [VanityFair]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: “Israeli Billionaire Ofer’s Zim Said to Hire Barclays, BofA for IPO” [Bloomberg]• “Sumner Redstone Took a Mental Competency Test Last Month” [HollywoodReporter; WSJ] • “Stockbridge to buy out Sam Nazarian’s stake in SLS Las Vegas” [LATimes] • “Heirs to the Schron: Cammeby’s eyes development push as sons take more control” [RealDeal] • “Moshe Silagi Sells 24-Property Portfolio For $224 Million” [WSJ] • “Harris Rosen to Orange County leaders, on resort taxes: ‘Keep it simple, stupid'” [BizJournals] • “How the Bloomberg Terminal Made History–And Stays Ever Relevant” [FastCompany] • “Potentially game-changing oil reserves discovered in Israel” [FoxNews] • “RunZoo game aims to foster Mideast peace through kids” [CNet]
SPOTLIGHT: “How Two Guys Lost God and Found $40 Million” by Zeke Faux: “Zeines stopped his religious education and enrolled at Kingsborough Community College. There he met Hurwitz. Even though they’d grown up only minutes apart, they’d never crossed paths, because Hurwitz’s family followed a different rabbi. Zeines looked up to his new friend, who was two years older, 4 inches taller, and had seen the world—or at least more of it than he had. On a Birthright trip to Israel, Zeines got the nickname Bugsy, because he and Hurwitz were as tight as gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky.” [Businessweek]
STARTUP NATION: “Google and Israel May Be Heading to the Moon” by Jeffrey Kluger:“Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, along with representatives of Google and SpaceIL, a nonprofit Israeli space engineering company, announced that SpaceIL is the first of 16 contestants in Google’s Lunar XPrize competition to formalize its plans to land a private spacecraft on the moon before the end of 2017.” [Time; TheVerge]
“Out of Work Arab Women, Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men Weigh on Israel” by Alisa Odenheimer: “Some economies are plagued by shrinking populations that are eroding their workforces. In Israel, the problem is two of the fastest-growing parts of the population are stay-at-home wives and full-time Torah scholars. Unless the government succeeds in luring these groups taking jobs at a faster pace, their unemployment will impact negatively on growth, Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug has said.” [Bloomberg]
The Luxe Factor: Israel has always been a place of pilgrimage—for history, faith, politics, and partying. But now that first-rate hotels, globally celebrated chefs, and forward-looking design are on the rise, can the country establish itself as a destination for more urbane pleasures? — “It seems a fitting epigraph for a country that straddles so many disparate impulses, one that still hasn’t figured out how to spell lox on a breakfast menu but claims more than 200 boutique wineries. Mazel tov!” [Travel&Leisure]
United Airlines to launch Tel Aviv-San Francisco flights: “United will conduct three weekly flights to San Francisco using Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 passenger jets. This model, considered one of the world’s most advanced, has 252 seats, including 48 in business class and 88 in upgraded tourist class. The plane also offers a satellite-based WiFi hookup and electrical sockets.” [Globes]
Happening Today: The Israel Collaboration Network (ICON) hosts their second annual conference today in Palo Alto. Featured speakers include Peter Thiel, Adi Tatarko & Oren Zeev. [IconSV]
Start-Up Nation Central Names Eugene Kandel CEO: “Eugene is truly unique. He has been a practitioner of economic strategy at the most senior policymaking levels, he has relationships throughout Israel’s technology community, and he is widely respected by business and government leaders in foreign capitals,” said Paul Singer, co-founder and board member of Start-Up Nation Central.” [NewsWire; SNC]
SCENE LAST NIGHT: Dan Senor and Campbell Brown hosted a party for Seth Siegel’s new book Let There Be Water in NYC. Senor interviewed Siegel and joked how Paris Hilton’s endorsement tweetcaused the book to jump to #4 on the LA Times best seller list and #16 on the NYT’s science list.
–Spotted: Paul Singer, George Rohr, Mark Gerson, Malcolm Hoenlein, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, Federal Judge Jesse Furman, NYC water chief Steve Lawitts, UJA President Alisa Doctoroff and Google’s Dan Doctoroff, Consul Gen. Ido Aharoni, JNF’s Russell Robinson, Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, CNBC’s Jason Gewirtz, Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt, WSJ’s Bari Weiss, Daily Beast’s John Avlon.
WSJ Review: “How to Make a Desert Bloom” by Allysia Finley: “The British believed that Palestine could hold no more than two million people without going thirsty. There are now more than 12 million.” [WSJ]
SPORTS BLINK: “The New York Mets MVP? It Might Be Bernie Madoff” by Tom Van Riper: “Bernie Madoff, with whom Mets’ owner Fred Wilpon had a sizeable chunk of money invested, had been busted as a Ponzi schemer. Suddenly the Mets’ $800 million ballpark and $135 million roster were little more than expensive ornaments that had the team living beyond its means. Major League Baseball would help out with a loan, and Wilpon would sell some minority shares in the team to raise cash, but changes would have to be made. The big market Mets would have to become small market, at least for a while. Big payroll was out, rebuilding was in.” [Forbes]
DESSERT: ‘Pastrami on Rye’ — “A few things become clear while reading Ted Merwin’s affable dive into the culture and history of the Jewish deli. The most obvious is that many of us feel the needle on our personal-heritage meter moving out of the “-ish” and into the “Jew” on hitting the steamy redolence of garlic at the threshold of a good deli.” [NYTimes; TabletMag]
BIRTHDAYS: Four Seasons founder Isadore ‘Issy’ Sharp turns 84… AIPAC’s Jonathan Kessler… Leah Koenig… Agustin Estrada… Yesterday: Jeffrey Berenson… Sam Schear… Daniel Mael… Arie Lipnick…
