Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Tuesday morning!
The expectation of a quiet long weekend was shattered on Saturday morning, when a British national took four hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. What ensued was an 11-hour standoff between federal agents and the gunman, who was calling for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman serving 86 years in a Texas federal prison on terrorism charges.
Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel traveled to Colleyville this weekend to speak to congregants and community members about the aftermath of the attack.
We also spoke to Imam Abdullah Antepli, who following the attack made an impassioned plea on Twitter for the Muslim community in the U.S. to rethink antisemitism in their midst on a special episode of JI’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” Listen to the episode here, and read more below.
JI’s Gabby Deutch talked to a senior Biden administration official who worked closely on the national response to the standoff about what Saturday was like in the White House — and the need for a “careful calibration” of informing and comforting the public amid an armed hostage situation.
Three civilians were killed and six others injured yesterday in an explosion in Abu Dhabi. The Iran-backed Houthis claimed responsibility for the drone strikes, which came as a senior Houthi leader was visiting Tehran. The UAE on Monday asked the U.S. to re-designate the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a terrorist organization, a senior Emirati official told Axios.
podcast playback
In the aftermath of Colleyville attack, Imam Abdullah Antepli has a message for fellow Muslims

Imam Abdullah Antepli
Following the hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday, Imam Abdullah Antepli issued a blunt wake-up call to his own community. In a tweet thread on Sunday afternoon, Antepli, an associate professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, urged the North American Muslim community to “have the morally required tough conversations about those ‘…polite Zionists are our enemies…’” rhetoric espoused by some Muslim thought leaders in recent months. On Monday, Antepli joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” to elaborate on his comments and to send a message of solidarity to the Jewish community.
Sending love: “Well, first of all, my deepest condolences and love and sympathy and prayers of strength and resilience to Jewish communities, not only in the Dallas area, but globally,” Antepli remarked. “I can only imagine the shock waves of fear and terror and anxiety [that] has enveloped hearts and minds of many of my Jewish brothers and sisters.”
Promoting hatred: Explaining his Twitter post, Antepli noted, “I love my community” before adding, “But this community is increasingly becoming vulnerable towards various forms of subtle and unsubtle antisemitism in the name of pro-Palestinian activism.” Antepli said that he himself identifies as pro-Palestinian — it’s “one of the very few labels I feel comfortable putting on myself.” Antepli faulted what he described as “many bad faith actors” who “are taking and desecrating Palestinian suffering, solidarity with the Palestinians, and in the name of their suffering, are promoting irresponsibly, antisemitism, anti-Jewish hatred, and they are trafficking in the good old antisemitism that the Jewish community and others have suffered for the last two millennia.”
Calling it out: In his tweets on Sunday, Antepli referenced recent comments by Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) San Francisco chapter in which she called “Zionist synagogues,” Hillels and the Anti-Defamation League “enemies.” Shortly after her comments became public, Billoo announced she was going on sabbatical. “If this is not antisemitic and if this is not flaming the fans of antisemitism, what is? And here, a few weeks later, we are having these kinds of incidents.” Antepli told podcast hosts Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg. “It is a moral call. The Muslim community has all they need to activate the Golden Rule and empathy, because we are facing a similar kind of hatred.”
Sleeping majority: Antepli added that groups such as CAIR and American Muslims for Palestine “don’t represent the Muslim community. They represent 10% of the Muslim community.” The challenge, Antepli argues, is “they are the only products in the market; they are the only public voices and faces in the American discourse.” Antepli expressed his frustration with the silent majority. “As angry as I am at CAIR or these irresponsible, hateful people, I am more angry with the 90% of the sleeping, inactive American Muslim majority. Enough is enough.”