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 Ukraine, Jewish leaders mobilize to provide essentials to a community in crisis; Bennett warns Iran deal will create ‘more violent’ Mideast; Nides: Israel’s hands won’t be tied by deal with Iran; Maccabee Task Force director David Brog puts his chips on congressional run; Ro Khanna reflects on his first trip to Israel as a congressman; J Street endorses Casten over Newman in Illinois Democratic primary; and Israel-Bahrain cooperation on display in Munich. Print the latest edition here.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early Thursday morning, Jewish organizations around the world have begun mobilizing to provide aid and assistance to the more than 100 Jewish communities in the Eastern European nation. Despite weeks of unease and days of warnings, Thursday’s invasion, which came in the predawn darkness, took those in the country by surprise.
“Everyone’s talking about preparing for a war, but… it just came suddenly,” Rabbi Mayer Stambler told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss in a Zoom call yesterday from his home in Dnipropetrovsk in the central part of the country. “You know, you don’t really think it’s going to happen, you hope that diplomacy is gonna win. And 5:30 in the morning, to hear people bombing you… It’s unbelievable.”
Stambler is the chairman of the Chabad-affiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, which serves Jewish communities across the country.
When COVID-19 first hit Ukraine, Stambler oversaw the creation of support networks to provide ritual items and kosher food to families and individuals celebrating Jewish holidays in isolation. Two years later, the rabbi has been forced to mobilize those same volunteer networks — this time to provide basic necessities to Jewish community members, many of them elderly and homebound, around the embattled country.
“We didn’t just stay here with our families just to stay here. We feel responsible… We’re going to make sure to feed people,” Stambler said. “If we have to risk our lives to do it, we will do it. There’s no question about it.” Read more about Stambler’s efforts.
Israeli Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai announced a 10 million NIS ($3.1 million) aid package to help Ukraine’s Jewish community. The funds will go to support security assistance, food distribution, transportation efforts and absorption of refugees.
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Robert O’Brien: ‘Unclear’ if U.S. can confront two great-powers wars

Former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien
Appearing on Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien warned that the United States’ ability to fight two and a half wars — previously the standard for U.S. military preparedness — was in doubt.
Playing doubles: While the former top White House national security official in the Trump administration maintained that the U.S. could continue to deal with two major international crises at once, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and increasing Chinese encroachment in Taiwan, O’Brien questioned whether the U.S. could effectively deal with two great-power wars at once. “The old days of being able to fight, having a defense budget and having an Army, Navy, Air Force [and] Marine Corps strong enough to fight two and a half wars — which used to be our doctrine, that we could fight two full wars and a regional war at the same time — we’re now down to the capability to maybe fight one, one and a half or so,” he said.
New Munich? With negotiations in Vienna underway over a new nuclear deal with Iran, O’Brien criticized the Biden administration’s efforts to reach an agreement with the Iranian regime. In pointed terms, he called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), entered into under former President Barack Obama in 2015, “basically a religion” for Democrats who disagreed with the Trump administration’s decision to leave the agreement in 2018. “The Russians see us racing to appease Iran and willing to do anything to revive the JCPOA,” O’Brien added. “Maybe Vienna is going to replace Munich as the new symbol of appeasement.”
Invader beware: Calling the December 2019 NATO summit in London — in which Trump castigated other members for paying less than their promised share of the defense budget — the “best thing that’s ever happened” in strengthening the organization, O’Brien recommended the expansion of NATO to other European non-members. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is trying to weaken NATO and drive wedges into NATO, get on NATO’s border, push our advanced weapon systems out of Poland and Romania and the Czech Republic,” he explained. “Bringing in Sweden and Finland would be an utter defeat for Putin.”