Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Friday morning!
Tomorrow marks 20 years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. President Joe Biden will travel to New York this evening ahead of commemorative events on Saturday at the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Lahav Harkov recounts her commute to school in Manhattan from Deal, N.J. on September 11, 2001. “I had never taken the subway on my own before, and I apologetically told my mother I was still nervous…. When I asked my mom to ride the subway with me, she called her first meeting of the day and said she’d be late. It was supposed to be in the World Trade Center.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog recalled in a Facebook post where he was when he first heard about the attacks. “I was at work at a Tel Aviv law firm at the time,” he wrote, “I remember watching the news with horror. Coming from a country where for the past few years, buses, cafés, and restaurants had been blown up by suicide bombers with a murderous ideology, claiming the lives of so many Israelis, the scenes looked familiar — yet the scale and magnitude were unprecedented.”
He added, “Tomorrow marks twenty years since the terrible 9/11 attacks. Israel will stand forever with the United States, our greatest ally. We remember the thousands of victims, we embrace the orphans and widows, the bereaved parents, friends, and families, and also the survivors, and we salute the brave men and women who ran into the flames and rubble in the hope of saving human lives.”
Israel security forces are on high alert today after Palestinians called for a “day of rage“ in a show of solidarity with six security prisoners who escaped from an Israeli jail earlier this week and who are still on the loose. Demonstrators are also protesting measures taken by Israeli authorities in other jails affecting thousands of Palestinian security prisoners. A Palestine Liberation Organization official said various Palestinian factions would confront IDF troops at friction points throughout the territory, Haaretz reported.
Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with military commanders on Friday morning and assessed that everything was being done to find the six prisoners. “We will eventually lay our hands on them,” he said in a statement.
california dreaming
Jewish vote could prove decisive in California recall election

California Gov. Gavin Newsom makes a statement against his recall while meeting with Latino leaders at Hecho en Mexico restaurant in East Los Angeles.
With just four days remaining until California’s high-stakes gubernatorial recall election on Tuesday, Jewish activists on both sides of the aisle are ramping up voter outreach initiatives as the race enters its final stretch, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Details: Jewish Democrats at the state and national levels, including local lawmakers, community organizers and pro-Israel advocates, are particularly engaged in efforts to ensure that the majority of Californians vote against removing Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. Competing to replace the 53-year-old Democrat are no fewer than 46 challengers — most notably the Republican frontrunner, Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host who has vowed to rescind statewide mask and vaccine mandates.
Critical vote: The Jewish vote, Democratic activists and political experts say, could prove decisive for Newsom in what is expected to be a low-turnout special election that some polls have indicated may be competitive — even as Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by a significant margin in California. “Jews vote, they largely vote for Democrats, and they strongly oppose right-wing extremists,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Thursday. “There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish voters in California, and they are absolutely critical to defeating this recall.”
Drumming up support: The Jewish caucus — members of which have, along with the Anti-Defamation League, raised concerns over the rhetoric of recall leaders who have compared Newsom’s pandemic mandates to Nazi Germany — is also rallying behind the governor. Last week, it participated in a joint phone bank with a group of ethnic caucuses in the state legislature who support Newsom, and individual members have engaged in their own personal outreach efforts ahead of the recall.
Community outreach: “The governor has been a strong ally to the Jewish community,” said Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, citing Newsom’s efforts to procure funding for nonprofit security grants as well as his opposition to the initial draft of a controversial ethnic studies curriculum that excluded lesson plans about antisemitism, among other things. For his part, Elder has actively engaged in Jewish outreach efforts. Earlier this week, he toured a Jewish deli in Northridge and, last month, spoke at a campaign event hosted by the political advocacy arm of the Jewish Republican Alliance, JRA Nation, which has endorsed him.
Rare election: Newsom, who was elected to his first term in 2018, is facing only the second recall in state history. In 2003, the Democratic incumbent, former Gov. Gray Davis, was ousted by Republican challenger Arnold Schwarzenegger. Until not too long ago, it looked as if Newsom — who fought back an avalanche of bad press last November when he was photographed dining at a swanky French restaurant in Napa Valley in defiance of his own pandemic protocols — might suffer the same fate, as polling suggested he was at risk of losing his seat. But the recall effort appears to have lost some momentum, and surveys now largely show that voters are in favor of keeping Newsom in office — particularly as Elder has come under scrutiny in recent weeks thanks to a litany of past public statements in which he made offensive comments about women, as well as an allegation that he once brandished a gun at his ex-fiancée while under the influence of marijuana.