Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Friday morning!
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent JI stories, including: In the Florida 20 special election, one candidate declares opposition to Iron Dome funding; A Black Muslim candidate in Florida’s 20th casts herself as a strong supporter of Israel; Sounding a diverse tune at the opening of Dubai Expo’s Israeli Pavilion; How reporting on the Middle East prepared one journalist to cover Facebook; Fernando Lottenberg takes on antisemitism across the Western Hemisphere; David Friedman aims to boost Muslim tourism to Jerusalem; and Andrew Yang marches forward. Print the latest edition here.
The U.S. rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday, three years after the Trump administration withdrew from the body, a move it attributed at the time to the council’s bias against Israel and selection of human rights abusers to serve as council members.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haleycalled the move “embarrassing” and “dangerous,” adding, “If President Biden truly cared about human rights, he would keep us far away from the cesspool that is the U.N. Human Rights Council.”
Secretary of State Tony Blinken and current U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield both pledged to take on the council’s “disproportionate attention on Israel,” in statements released on Thursday.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid wrapped up his visit to Washington on Thursday, summarizing it as “three days of optimism, hope and cooperation.” His final day of the trip included meetings with AIPAC and leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations as well as Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will attend COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which begins on Oct. 31, his office announced on Friday. Bennett met with climate experts last August, who urged him to set a more ambitious target for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Israel.
During the conference, the prime minister will present Israeli initiatives in the field of climate change and will hold meetings with foreign leaders. He will be accompanied by Energy Minister Karin Elharar and Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg, Bennett’s office said.
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and U.N. Gilad Erdan touted the ties between Israel and Indiana that led to groundbreaking yesterday of the Mammoth Solar Project in Knox, Ind., JI’s Jacob Miller reports.
The collaboration between the Hoosier State and Doral Renewables will result in the construction of the largest planned solar field in the U.S. — capable of powering 170,000 households annually.
Erdan was in Indiana yesterday for the groundbreaking. “If our relationship is the Indy 500, then we are only on the first lap,” he said.
declaring independence
Andrew Yang marches forward

Andrew Yang, New York City mayoral candidate takes a selfie with a guest as he visits Morningside Park during the first annual Juneteenth Festival in Harlem, on June 19, 2021 in New York City.
Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur and former presidential longshot, said his experience navigating the fraught politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last spring as a Democratic candidate for New York City mayor — when escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza coincided with an uptick in antisemitic incidents — informed his decision to launch a third party that he hopes will act as a moderating force in American politics, he told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel in an interview.
‘A natural response’: Yang, who recently registered as an independent after decades as a Democrat, recently revealed that he was starting the Forward Party in an effort to reshape what he views as an entrenched political system in thrall to various forms of extremism and groupthink. The announcement appears in the final chapter of his eponymously titled new book, Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, published by Crown. “I believe the Forward Party is, in many ways, a natural response to many of the concerns of the Jewish community,” Yang told JI.
False narrative: Yang described a “strong narrative” among some progressive Democrats “that tries to separate everyone into either oppressor or oppressed… In this narrative, the people of Israel are the oppressors, and what’s interesting is that when you have conversations with other people in other contexts, you could make the case that Jews are actually historically the most oppressed people in the history of the world.” Yang indicated that he had “encountered people who very much held” that view when his mayoral campaign overlapped with the conflict between Israel and Hamas. As violence intensified last May, Yang weighed in with a supportive statement for the Jewish state — and found himself subject to intense scrutiny.
Targeted communities: Yang, who is Taiwanese-American, believes that Jews and Asians in particular represent a natural coalition for the Forward Party amid a rise in hate crimes against both groups. “A lot of this stuff I discovered during the mayoral [campaign],” he said. “I didn’t realize how tied together the Jewish community is with my community and the survival of the system… Jews and Asians are kind of in a similar boat in terms of, like, we need a functioning system of integrity to stand the test of time or else our communities are among those that will be targeted.” Yang recalled attending a rally against anti-Asian hate when he was running for mayor that helped clarify why he now believes forming a third party is necessary. “People started chanting ‘defund the police,’” he told JI. “I said to a friend at the time, ‘If someone thinks that defunding the police would be a good thing for Asians, they need to have their head examined.’”
Dem disenchantment: As he embarks on his latest political project, Yang said he has spoken with Jewish supporters who are disenchanted by the Democratic Party. “They’ve expressed a number of concerns that have made them excited about the Forward Party,” he told JI. “Number one, they see that there is a strain within the Democratic Party that will make support for Israel more and more contentious moving forward — a stream that does, unfortunately, include antisemitism.” The other element, he said, “is that they see that right now the system is not designed for success, and it’s subject to very negative and authoritarian impulses.”