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REMEMBERING SHIMON: “World Leaders Issue Emotional Tributes to Shimon Peres” by Peter Baker: “President Obama, who awarded Mr. Peres the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, issued an unusually long and personal statement, recalling their conversations in detail and calling him “the essence of Israel itself.” “A light has gone out, but the hope he gave us will burn forever,” Mr. Obama said… Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited him in the hospital during the last two weeks. Former President Bill Clinton called the hospital for updates. Pope Francis prayed for his recovery, and Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, sent a personal note of praise.” [NYTimes; NBC] • Behind the Scenes With Shimon Peres [NYTimes]
World figures to attend funeral of Israel’s Shimon Peres: “The following world figures will attend Shimon Peres’ funeral in Jerusalem on Friday, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry: U.S. President Barack Obama, Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Britain’s Prince Charles, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Francois Hollande, German President Joachim Gauck, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.” [AP]
ABC News Liz Kreutz: “Clinton camp says reports Hillary Clinton will attend Shimon Peres’ funeral on Friday are incorrect.” [Twitter]
Angel Urena, Press Secretary for Bill Clinton, tweets: “President Clinton will travel to Israel to attend the services for President Shimon Peres.” [Twitter]
Elliott Abrams: “The last American founding father, James Madison, died in 1836, 60 years after independence had been declared. Today, in the 68th year of its independence, Israel experienced the loss of its own last founding father. Shimon Peres was the last statesman who had been a force in Israeli life from independence in 1948 through all of its wars and all of its peace treaties, and served as Israel’s president until 2014.” [CFR]
Sheera Frenkel on Peres as Israel’s statesman: “One of the last big, international events of Peres’ career was the birthday party the State of Israel held for Peres on his 90th birthday, less than a year before he left office. Among those attending were Bill Clinton, Robert DeNiro, and Sharon Stone. Barbara Streisand sang the Jewish prayer, Avinu Malkeinu, and President Barack Obama delivered a televised address. It was, according to many of the Israelis who attended the June 2013 event, the closest thing Israel had to celebrations befitting a king.” [BuzzFeed; NPR] • Shimon Peres witnessed Israel’s history, and shaped it [AP]
“Shimon Peres Gets Heartfelt Facebook Goodbye From Filipino Caregiver” by Naomi Zeveloff: “Ferdz Capacia, Shimon Peres’s Filipino caregiver, said goodbye to his “VIP boss” in a tender note on Facebook after Israel’s 9th president passed away on Wednesday morning.” [Forward] • Israeli history got into my car every morning, says Peres’s driver [YNet]
“Beloved abroad, polarizing at home, Peres was the peace-making face of Israel” by Raphael Ahren: “Ultimately respected as Israel’s elder statesman, Peres — who was prime minister and president but never won a popular vote — enjoyed a uniquely lengthy and turbulent political career.”[ToI]
COMING SOON: “Biden to Receive the WJC Herzl Award in November” by Jacob Kornbluh:“Biden will receive the World Jewish Congress’s Theodor Herzl Award at its annual gala on Wednesday, November 9th at New York’s Pierre Hotel. Recent recipients of the WJC Theodor Herzl Award include former Israeli President Shimon Peres, Elie Wiesel, former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz… The vice president will be introduced by Kissinger.” [JewishInsider]
“Pence to Headline Jewish Fundraiser for Trump in NYC” by Jacob Kornbluh: “The fundraising event will be headlined by vice presidential candidate Mike Pence, according to an invite obtained by Jewish Insider. Trump Victory Fund finance chair Lew Eisenberg, Trump’s finance chair Steven Mnuchin, Simona and Hart Haston, and RJC board member Marc Goldman are among those listed as co-hosts.” [JewishInsider]
Marc Goldman tells us: “I was pleased with the response. There’s a lot of people on the Republican Jewish Coalition and others, who are deeply concerned about another Democrat getting in. We expect to have very good turnout and raise a lot of money.”
“Donald Trump Raises $18 Million in Debate-Timed Fundraising Push” by Rebecca Ballhaus : “Steven Mnuchin, Mr. Trump’s national finance chairman, said about a third of the money came from donors who made online contributions, which tend to be smaller in size. The rest came from a “National Call Day” the campaign held at Trump Tower on Tuesday, during which it summoned more than 100 top fundraisers to call donors. Among the top fundraisers who made calls were New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, hedge-fund executive Anthony Scaramucci, financier Roy Bailey, former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks, investor Ray Washburne, and RNC finance chairman Lew Eisenberg.” [WSJ]
“Secret money to boost Trump” by Kenneth Vogel and Alex Isenstadt: “Todd Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, has raised $30 million for a pair of pro-Trump groups and has discussed a $70 million goal before Election Day, according to three Republican fundraisers familiar with the effort. Ricketts’ pitch to these donors focuses on the fact that one of the pro-Trump groups he’s fronting can accept unlimited checks while keeping its donors’ names secret… Adelson “thought very highly of Todd, and Todd is very involved here,” said an operative familiar with the fundraising effort.” [Politico]
“Ivanka Trump visits ‘war torn‘ Chicago Wednesday, for campaign cash” by Natasha Korecki: “Trump supporters are hoping to raise some $2 million for the Trump campaign from the combined four stops in Illinois. “You’ve got a lot of people supporting him in Illinois,” said Ron Gidwitz, who heads Trump’s Illinois fundraising. “People are really optimistic.” Gidwitz declined to disclose the location of Ivanka Trump’s Chicago event but said she and her father were not expected to appear together at any of the events.” [Politico]
Jared Kushner writes about Ivanka in Variety: “If you know Ivanka, you have not been surprised to see her emerge during this crazy campaign season as a leader advocating for serious policies to support American women and their families — these are issues she has been championing for years. It took real courage for Ivanka to stand before 35 million Americans, including many who had not previously focused on these issues before, to help advance substantive policies that will dramatically improve U.S. law in favor of all women, parents and children. Grace under pressure is what she does best and I could not be more proud of her.” [Variety]
“Comcast, labor unions were top funders of Democratic convention festivities” by Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy: “Philadelphia-
“Why Donald Trump Is Likely To Get the Orthodox Jewish Vote” by Armin Rosen: “For many Orthodox voters, concern over Trump is unlikely to override a pre-existing tendency to vote for Republican candidates. Additionally, a September poll of Yeshiva University students found 37 percent support for Trump, compared to 27 percent for Clinton… Richard Roberts, the vice-chair of Trump’s Israel Advisory Committee, claimed that there is “overwhelming support for Trump in the Orthodox community,” but said that he is “not aware of any targeting of the Orthodox Jewish community by the campaign” when asked about specific outreach efforts. David Algaze, a Queens-based Orthodox rabbi, told me that he is the co-chair of a “rabbis for Trump”-type group, but it is yet to announce its membership publicly. [Tablet]
“Richard Haass Faults Trump for Already Damaging NATO” by David Wallis: “Even if he doesn’t win, it sent a message that what people thought was unthinkable was now thinkable. My hunch is he raised these things because if he were to win it would give him leverage in getting allies to ante up more. Trump is very focused on calculating what he sees as the direct costs: “We spend this much on defense what have you.” But he’s not calculating the benefits.” [Observer]
ON THE GROUND: “How Israel’s Iron Grip Makes a Third Intifada Brutally Difficult” by David Wainer: “Israel’s grip on the territory, underpinned by granular surveillance methods that eavesdrop on phone calls and read text messages, is far more extensive than in previous decades. Based on high-tech monitoring methods, combined with human intelligence that includes a discreet but fertile cooperation with Palestinian security services, multiple raids occur nightly, according to a senior military official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to army protocol.” [Bloomberg]
“The head of Hezbollah has found someone he hates even more than Israelis” by Jennifer Williams: “Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of a group that has been fighting Israel for decades, declared on Tuesday that “Wahhabism is more evil than Israel,” Lebanon’s Al Akhbar newspaper reported. Wahhabism is the ultra-fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam that Saudi Arabia’s government promotes and that strongly influences the ideology of Sunni jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.” [Vox]
Mark Dubowitz, Annie Fixler: “The U.S. Is Helping Iran Fund Chaos in the Middle East: The White House refuses to acknowledge the obvious: The nuclear deal has already led the United States to fund terrorists, sectarian warfare, and chaos in the Middle East.” [ForeignPolicy]
BUSINESS BRIEFS: Caesars strikes deal to end main unit’s costly bankruptcy [Reuters] • Adelson begins PR campaign to sell stadium [KTNV] • It’s Paul Singer Versus Citigroup in High-Stakes Bankruptcy Feud [Bloomberg]
STARTUP NATION: “Ehud Barak bets big on emergency app Reporty” by Dennis Mitzner:“With Barak’s help the app company has raised $5.15 million as it seeks to leverage both his portfolio and his political acumen in its push into a crowded market. Reporty, like almost all successful Israeli startups, it seems, has its origins in one of the IDF’s intelligence units, the Central Collection Unit of the Intelligence Corps (the Israeli equivalent of NSA). The app, while more in the communication, rather than in the security vertical is currently only available to download in Israel. The app has been downloaded over 100,000 times during a pilot program which began in early 2016.” [TechCrunch]
SPOTLIGHT: “From Israel via London, an online gambling scam traps thousands” by Tova Cohen and Luke Baker: “In early 2013, a young Israeli businessman registered a web domain in London for a company called NRGbinary.com. The online options trading website offered clients the opportunity to make large amounts of money from simple bets on the movement of financial markets, stocks and commodities. While it was initially registered in Britain, NRGbinary was run from Israel and sold its products to clients in the Middle East, Canada and South Africa.” [Reuters]
“Anti-Defamation League Declares Pepe the Frog a Hate Symbol” by Sarah Begley: “Images of the frog, variously portrayed with a Hitler-like moustache, wearing a yarmulke or a Klan hood, have proliferated in recent weeks in hateful messages aimed at Jewish and other users on Twitter,” the ADL wrote in a statement. “Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users,” wrote ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt. Earlier this year, the ADL added the (((echo))) symbol to its Hate on Display database, noting that members of the alt-right movement were using it to single out Jewish users, particularly journalists, on social media. ” [TIME]
LongRead: “Dov Charney’s Next Act” by Lauren Sherman: “Dov Charney is back, with a new company and plenty to say about the state of the fashion industry. But can he shoot down the albatross of his past? Charney speaks exclusively to BoF about what went wrong at American Apparel, his attempts to wrestle back control of the company he built and what he plans to do next.” [BusinessOfFashion]
PROFILE: “Meet Vic Berger, the Genius Behind This Election’s Dopest Viral Videos” by Brian Raftery: “Berger has covered the conventions for Super Deluxe, and got national attention for a prank in which he promised to tattoo the name of Jeb Bush—whose campaign was a sort of semi-obsession for Berger—on his neck… Berger’s own ambitions are slightly less grand: Mostly, he wants the election to end, and for Trump to go away. “At some point in the last three months, I stopped finding him funny, because he’s been so hateful,” Berger says. He’s hoping that, after November, he can turn back from politics a bit and refocus on the equally weird worlds of terrifying televangelists, tortured game-show hosts, and condescending celebrity chefs.” [Wired]
MEDIA WATCH: “New Yorker Editor David Remnick Praises BuzzFeed’s ‘Ambitious Work’ Under Ben Smith: Ben is BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, and he is politically astute and personally intelligent; that is, he is experienced in the world and he is warm and nimble with people. Smith and his colleagues have been particularly good at hiring a young, smart, funny, and diverse staff, and I readily admit that, in a larcenous editorial spirit, I am always looking to see who is coming along.” [Variety]
SPORTS BLINK: “Documentary director Maya Zinshtein’s debut feature explores Israeli society through the prism of FC Beitar, a Jerusalem soccer team that has to deal with the arrival of two Muslim players. Beitar Jerusalem FC has traditionally been much more than a soccer club. As suggested early on in Zinshtein’s film, local and national politicians have used their professed support of the club to rally its enormous fanbase, composed of very loyal and often also very vocal supporters, before elections. This knowledge is key to an understanding of the disaster that was the 2012-13 season. In 2008, Russian oligarch Arcadi Gaydamak was hoping to become the new mayor of Jerusalem. His ownership of Beitar, secured a few years earlier, could potentially have been used as a campaigning tool but Gaydamak finally received just a few percent of the votes. Zinshtein’s on-camera interviews with the oligarch, who barely seems to speak any Hebrew, are chilling to behold, as the man has no problems in admitting what his plans were.” [HollywoodReporter]
DESSERT: “The rebirth of the Jewish deli” by Kara Baskin: “People are getting older. If we don’t do something now, when are we going to do it? We need to work on revitalizing this cuisine in tandem with the older generation,” says Yoskowitz. “We’re very deferential to the older generation. We’re in some ways reclaiming these foods. But it’s about really honoring them.” [BostonGlobe]
BIRTHDAYS: Sociologist whose focus is on world affairs, who serves as a senior research scholar at Yale University, Immanuel Wallerstein turns 86… International Emmy award winning Scottish television producer and executive who also served as General Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Sir Jeremy Isaacs turns 84… Physician and theoretical biologist, a former MacArthur Fellow, Stuart Kauffman turns 77… Gabi Remz (h/t Playbook)… Former President of Warner Home Video, consultant on digital media technology, and trustee of the University of Pennsylvania, Warren Lieberfarb turns 73… New York Times-bestselling author Ben Greenman turns 47…