Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning!
Ed. note: In celebration of Sukkot, the Daily Kickoff will return on Thursday.
Dozens of nations will boycott Durban IV, a banner United Nations General Assembly event taking place Wednesday in New York to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Durban World Conference on Racism. Israel and the U.S. walked out of the initial conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001, protesting antisemitic overtones and a final draft document singling out Israel by equating Zionism with racism.
Twenty countries — the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Israel, France, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, Romania, New Zealand, Slovenia and Slovakia — have already announced they will not attend the event. Israeli media reported that an additional 11 states were also planning to pull out from the conference but had yet to issue official statements.
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. and U.N. Gilad Erdantweeted Monday that he was working to ensure that as many nations as possible understood that the original Durban Conference, as well as the follow-up events, were “fundamentally rotten.” “31 countries will boycott the shameful event marking this antisemitic conference, more than twice the number of countries that have boycotted in the past,” he wrote in Hebrew.
Former Staten Island Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) is reportedly planning a bid to retake the seat currently held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY). The redrawing of New York’s congressional districts could shake up the makeup of the district, which Malliotakis took by six percentage points over Rose in 2020.
And in Ohio, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, announced he will not seek a third term in 2022. Gonzalez was facing a primary challenge from former Trump administration staffer Max Miller.
The House Rules Committee will meet today to decide which of the hundreds of proposed NDAA amendments will receive floor consideration later this week. More than a dozen of them relate to Israel and Iran.
exclusive
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan donate $1.3 million to Jewish groups

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg attend the 2020 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at NASA Ames Research Center on November 03, 2019, in Mountain View, California.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $1.3 million to 11 Jewish organizations in a sign of their deepening connection with the Jewish community, Helen Chernikoff reports for eJewishPhilanthropy and Jewish Insider.
Learning and giving: The couple has also been meeting with rabbis, historians and scholars to learn more about Judaism and the Jewish community, a spokesperson for the Chan-Zuckerberg family office told eJP. “Mark and Priscilla have made some personal commitments in the past, but these new grants reinforce their interest in learning and deepening their connections with the community,” the spokesperson said. Eleven organizations, most of which serve families and young people in the couple’s San Francisco Bay area community, received the funding, which comes not from the couple’s foundation — the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) — but through their family office.
Act local: They include three schools: Contra Costa Jewish Day School in Lafayette, Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto and the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, as well as three California summer camps: URJ Camp Newman, Camp Ramah in California and Camp Tawonga. The local Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Jewish Community Relations Council, in addition to the Oshman Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, received support, as did two national organizations — OneTable, which helps young Jews host Shabbat dinners, and PJ Library, which provides free Jewish books to families.
Fighting antisemitism: “Mark and Priscilla are proud to support the important work each of these organizations does in building communities, education, celebrating traditions and faith, and giving people a voice — especially in fighting antisemitism,” the spokesperson said. The couple’s public philanthropic vehicle is CZI, founded in 2015 with $95 million in proceeds from a sale of Zuckerberg’s Facebook shares. CZI underwent a major overhaul in January when Zuckerberg and Chan launched a new, $350 million group focused on criminal justice reform. When the couple launched CZI, they also pledged 99% of their Facebook fortune to philanthropic causes, estimated to amount to $45 billion over the span of their lifetimes.