Good Friday morning!

As Joe Biden nears a decision on his running mate, left-wing activists are lobbying against picking former National Security Advisor and “hawk” Susan Rice.

A Foreign Policyreport claims that Biden personally intervened to ensure that the word “occupation” was not included in the Israel plank of the Democratic Party platform. 

Yesterday, President Donald Trump said during a visit to Ohio that Biden is “following the radical left agenda… [he wants to] hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God.” 

Trump administration officials are reportedly holding back from presenting the president with military options amid fears that he might take action on Iran or North Korea ahead of the election. 

Former U.S. Ambassador to JapanBill Hagerty won the Republican primary for Senate in Tennessee yesterday, beating political newcomer Dr. Manny Sethi 51%-39%. 

Renowned scholar Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who translated the Talmud into accessible Hebrew, died in Jerusalem this morning at age 83. 

Check outJewish Insider’s latest ‘Jewish Nielsen’ report to see which webcasts people tuned into over the past week.

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Transition

Elliott Abrams replaces Brian Hook as the administration’s Iran envoy

Several years after he was initially rejected for a top State Department post, Elliott Abrams has been tapped as the Trump administration’s lead diplomat on Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the appointment after reports emerged that Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative on Iran, was leaving his post. The transition comes weeks ahead of the October expiration of the U.N. arms embargo on Iran.

Background: Abrams served as assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, during which he was involved in the Iran-Contra affair. He was later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. He also served on the National Security Council during President George W. Bush’s second term. Before his appointment to the Trump administration, Abrams served as a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was seriously considered for the deputy secretary of state position at the beginning of the Trump administration, but was blocked by then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. He ultimately joined the administration in January 2019 as the State Department’s special representative for Venezuela.

High praise: Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration official, called Abrams “one of the smartest and most capable U.S. government officials in history.” Goldberg told Jewish Insider’s Jacob Kornbluh that Abrams “knows the Iran portfolio well and has deep relationships throughout the Middle East.” The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations welcomed the appointment, calling Abrams a “strong advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Nazee Moinian, an Iranian native and a former consultant to the Council on Foreign Relations, described Abrams as “a seasoned diplomat whose political views have not drastically changed over the years even as geopolitical circumstances have.”

Alternative view: Ned Price, who served as a National Security Council spokesperson in the Obama administration, told JI that Hook’s departure “speaks to the abject failure” of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran. “Tehran and its proxies are emboldened, Iran has accelerated elements of its nuclear program, and there is no better deal in sight.” Price, who is now head of policy and communications at National Security Action, an organization of former Obama administration officials and policy experts opposed to the Trump administration’s foreign policy, said the decision to tap Abrams for the role indicates “that the administration has not diagnosed or even reckoned with its profound failure.” 

The Israel file: Hook, who had a close relationship with Jared Kushner, was also a member of the team that drafted the administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan released earlier this year. Sources told JI that it is still unclear what role Abrams will play in the matter, as the administration continues to consider its next steps in implementing the Trump peace deal.

Read more here. 

Bonus: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) toldThe New York Times that “the window on a replacement” for the nuclear deal with Iran “is probably closing before the election.” However, he added, “after the election, it is a win-win proposal.”

PUBLISHING POWER

How ‘Mishpacha’ guided readers through the coronavirus

Eli Paley, the publisher ofMishpacha magazine, a popular global haredi weekly in Hebrew and English, has felt an elevated sense of duty in recent months, as the coronavirus has devastated ultra-Orthodox communities in both New York and Israel. Paley spoke to Jewish Insider’s Amy Spiro about the publication’s mission and how it approached the ongoing crisis. 

Middle man: “Part of our role as a publication was really to try to be the middleman to express the sense of urgency to our readership,” he told Jewish Insider in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Jerusalem. “To bridge the gap and to bring the story to our readers who are missing the direct knowledge through the [mainstream] media.” As the pandemic stretched on, Paley — who is also the founder and chairman of the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs — worked tirelessly to both counter the anti-government attitudes among some haredim in Israel and to work with the government to provide a better understanding of the unique needs of the ultra-Orthodox community during the crisis. 

Courage to criticize:The magazine, he said, does not hold back from reporting on stories that expose and criticize behavior in the haredi world, including a recent cover story about yeshivas in Israel that were instructing students not to get tested for COVID-19, so that the results couldn’t be used to justify closures or lockdowns. “Our role as a publication is much more than just reporting, it’s also creating an awareness and creating a discussion,” he said, “and also having the courage to criticize when we see behavior in our own society that is not responsible or appropriate.” The editors and writers on staff, Paley said, “really identify with the mission of serving the community. It’s not just about doing good journalism or entertainment. People have the sense of doing a public service.” 

Female faces:Mishpacha has been around more than 30 years, and just over 16 years in English. As a rule, neither magazine — in line with the majority of haredi publications — prints photos of women. But in 2016, the week before the U.S. presidential election, the English magazine bent its rules, printing an outline of Hillary Clinton’s face on its cover. And last year, Mishpacha launched a revamped website, only in English, that made a conscious choice to include photos of women, despite the policy in print. 

Tough decisions:“I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but this is the standard in haredi media today,” Paley told JI. “If I want to be relevant to our core readership, in order to be effective — not in order to sell more magazines — if I want to really be a voice that will be heard and appreciated and taken seriously, I have to choose my battles.” The magazine even passed up an opportunity for an exclusive interview with Clinton in 2016 because she conditioned it on printing her photo. But as the election approached, Mishpacha’s rabbinic oversight board “started talking to gedolei haposkim [leading rabbinic arbiters] and rabbonim in America about what we should do,” Paley said. The rabbis who were consulted, he recounted, told the magazine there was no halachic prohibition on printing photos of women at all. “They said, ‘no question that if Hillary is going to be elected, you have to put her picture in the magazine, including the cover,” he said. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Read the full interview here.

Campus beat

USC vows to counter hate after Jewish student government leader resigns

The student government vice president at the University of Southern California resigned this week, alleging she was the subject of antisemitic harassment over her support for Israel. In response, the university administration said it is launching a new educational initiative to counter on-campus hate, reports Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss.

Toxic conditions: “As you may know, our Vice President of Undergraduate Student Government, Rose Ritch, resigned yesterday from her position in student government,” wrote USC President Carol Folt in a letter sent Thursday evening. “In her heartbreaking resignation letter, Rose described the intense pressure and toxic conditions that led to her decision — specifically the anti-Semitic attacks on her character and the online harassment she endured because of her Jewish and Zionist identities.” In the statement, Folt announced the launch of a new initiative by the USC Shoah Foundation to provide educational programs and antiracist and anti-hate for-credit courses.

Online hate: Ritch, who is Jewish, told JI that the online harassment began earlier this year during her campaign for student government vice president. “From there, it just kind of greenlighted a lot of students to say some pretty horrific things on social media messages, text messages,” Ritch told JI. “Most of it was entirely isolated onto Instagram, a little bit on Twitter as well.” In a series of messages in one Instagram screenshot — included in a complaint✎ EditSign sent to the university by the Louis D. Brandeis Center — a resident assistant on USC’s campus, Shaden Awad, wrote: “Even if all the orgs on campus that r Jewish r also Zionist That’s not an excuse For you to join That’s still blood on ur hands.”

Cancel culture: In her statement of resignation✎ EditSign Wednesday night, Ritch listed “cancel culture” and a campus environment that made it inhospitable for a pro-Israel student leader to hold office as her reasons for stepping down from the post she had held since the spring. “Because I also openly identify as a Zionist, a supporter of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, I have been accused by a group of students of being unsuitable as a student leader,” the statement read. “I have been told that my support for Israel has made me complicit in racism, and that, by association, I am racist.”

Read more here.

Worthy Reads

💸 Deep Thinking:Bloomberg reporters Shahien Nasiripour and Hema Parmar take a closer look at why some top Wall Street donors have scaled down political donations to the Trump reelection campaign but haven’t opened their wallets to boost Joe Biden, and why Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman remains committed to Trump this cycle. [Bloomberg] 

📊 Crunching Numbers: Tablet’s Sean Cooper explores the “American blindness” that has resulted from “the rise of data-driven political journalism,” perfectly epitomized by the near-universal wrong predictions about the 2016 election. Four years later, he argues, little appears to have changed. [Tablet]

🇮🇱 Top Op: In Foreign Policy, Sigurd Neubauer posits that Israel has become an “unlikely peacemaker” in the Middle East amid tensions between Qatar and other Gulf countries. “Israel has shown that it can help uphold the balance of power within the Gulf… that is progress that all interested parties should want to double down on.” [FP]

Around the Web

🎖️ Calling it Quits: Air Force Gen. David L. Goldfein, who was passed over to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2018 amid a feud between President Donald Trump and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, has announced his retirement. 

🎤 On Record: Former Treasury Secretary and current Biden advisor Larry Summers ruled out taking a job in a possible future Biden administration. 

🤐 Yellow Card:NAACP national leadership condemned its Philadelphia chapter head Rodney Muhammad for posting an antisemitic meme on Facebook, but stopped short of firing him. 

⚠️ Red Flag: World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder warned in an interview with The Jewish Chronicle that nationalistic trends in Israel and talk of annexation could lead to increased global antisemitism. 

💱 Big Deal: Dan Loeb’s Third Point is merging with the majority Chinese-owned Sirius Group, as Loeb also builds up his positions in Alibaba and JD.com.

📈 Cash In: Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert’s wealth soared to $34 billion as his parent company, Rocket Companies, rose 26% in its first day of public trading. 

🏫 Education:Delaware will require middle and high schools to teach the Holocaust after a bill was signed into law by Gov. John Carne last month. 

💉 Speeding Up: The Israel Institute of Biological Research, overseen by the Defense Ministry, will begin human trials for a possible COVID-19 vaccine as early as October.

🏭 Sea of Opportunity:Delek Drilling CEO Yossi Abu tellsReuters that Chevron’s entry into Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field can turn it into a global supplier. 

📫 Inbox: Natan Sharansky wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal defending the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center against charges it is a “Holocaust Disneyland.” 

⚾ Sports Blink: Oakland A’s coach Ryan Christenson is under fire for making a Nazi salute after a game last night, something he apologized for doing “unintentionally.”

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