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Regarding Iron Dome funding, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod on Capitol Hill yesterday: “Talk to Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. We have complete support on our side to [pass by unanimous consent],” when asked about his plans for passing the stalled $1 billion supplement to replenish the Iron Dome missile-defense system.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told reporters earlier in the day that he was not sure of leadership’s strategy, which — barring a reversal or compromise from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — could involve moving for a free-standing vote on the Senate floor or folding the funding into another bill, a move that caused issues in the initial House of Representatives process.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid addressed The Jewish Federations of North America on Tuesday — his first major meeting with a U.S. Jewish group since assuming his current role — where he highlighted Israel’s relationship with the U.S. Jewish community.
Speaking virtually at JFNA’s Leadership Lab, a component of its annual General Assembly, Lapid slammed the previous government’s approach, referring to comments made by former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer regarding outreach to Evangelicals — the former ambassador described evangelical Christians as the “backbone of Israel’s support in the United States.” Interviewed by JFNA Chair Mark Wilf, Lapid stressed that “the most important relation we have is with American Jewry.”
Lapidwill be in Washington from Oct. 12-14 for high-level meetings with administration officials, the foreign minister’s office confirmed to JI.
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayancondemned an antisemitic graffiti attack at the site of the former Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The graffiti, which was discovered on former barracks, was revealed Tuesday by Israel’s Holocaust Memorial and Museum, which manages the site, Reuters reported.
Dayan, who is currently in Ukraine to mark the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, said: “We are very saddened by the attack on Auschwitz, the authentic location where over a million Jews were murdered, and strongly condemn the willful vandalism of the barracks there with antisemitic and Holocaust denial inscriptions. This incident, at such a major and significant site of the atrocities of the Holocaust, constitutes an attack not only on the memory of the victims, but also on the survivors and any person with a conscience. It is also yet another painful reminder that more must be done to raise awareness about the Holocaust and to educate the public and the younger generation regarding the dangers of antisemitism and Holocaust denial and distortion.”
gulf goals
Ahead of D.C. visit, top Bahraini official engages New York Jewish leaders

Bahraini Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Sheikh Abdulla Al Khalifa
Bahraini Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Sheikh Abdulla Al Khalifa met with Jewish leaders in New York on Monday and Tuesday as part of the Gulf nation’s efforts to facilitate people-to-people engagement with the Jewish community following last year’s Abraham Accords, Jewish Insider‘s Melissa Weiss reports.
‘Warm peace’ strategy: The series of meetings, which included sit-downs with New York-area rabbis, the leadership of UJA-Federation of New York, Yeshiva University students and faculty and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, saw Al Khalifa share his government’s hope for what Bahraini and Emirati leaders have described as a “warm peace,” both with Israel and the global Jewish community. “I think…that engaging with American Jewry, with world Jewry, is part of the ‘warm peace’ strategy,” Al Khalifa, who holds Bahrain’s Israel portfolio and became the highest ranking Bahraini to visit the Jewish state last August, told JI in an interview in a midtown Manhattan hotel on Tuesday morning in between meetings. “It’s not ‘the undersecretary is here in passing.’”
Grassroots effort: The meetings left an impression on attendees, many of whom had not previously had deep engagement with Bahrain but were optimistic about future people-to-people efforts. “I think it showed an interest in a very low-level, grassroots manner, which you typically don’t see. I think typically countries make peace and everyone moves on,” Rabbi Daniel Sherman of the West Side Institutional Synagogue, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper West Side, told JI. “I think there was a real effort for a grassroots relationship for Jews and the Bahraini community and obviously Israel in a much more authentic way.”
Positive step: UJA-Federation CEO Eric Goldstein said the “warm peace” concept “requires not simply country-to-country sorts of activities but very much people-to-people initiatives from an economic perspective, from an interfaith religious dialogue perspective, from student-to-student perspective, that it requires the communities to learn each other. And I think he sees not only Israelis, but American Jews, as critical to that process.”
Ongoing work: Al Khalifa told JI the Bahraini government was “very grateful for the Trump administration for their support” in facilitating the Abraham Accords, and “also very much appreciative to the Biden administration, who will continue to support Bahrain and developing the ties with Israel.” He was hopeful that the success of the Abraham Accords would encourage other Arab countries to enter into similar agreements. “The entire world is looking today and asking… ‘What are the fruits that have been built by countries and people of the region?’” Al Khalifa said. “I think, through the processes that we have undertaken through the past 12 months with our counterparts in Israel, [it] is very much encouraging and [is] setting the foundation for cooperation on many different fronts.”