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: White House to name Shelley Greenspan new Jewish liaison; The two candidates vying to succeed Boris Johnson; Senate Republicans demand answers on suspected Iranian activity in Argentina; Larry Summers: Donate to community college over the Ivy League; In surprise announcement, Milwaukee Bucks exec Alex Lasry ends Senate bid in Wisconsin; Inside Glenn Ivey’s victory over Donna Edwards; St. Louis Jewish groups host Cori Bush amid scrutiny of congresswoman’s ties to antisemitic activist; Department of Education to open investigation into USC over antisemitism allegations; and Israeli tech startup Wilco closes experience gap for aspiring software engineers. Print the latest edition here.
A former special rapporteur on the U.N. Human Rights Council came under fire this week for antisemitic comments made during an interview with anti-Israel publication Mondoweiss. Miloon Kothari told the outlet that he “would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations. Because… the Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine UN mechanisms.” He made the additional claim that “the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs” largely controlled social media.
Kothari is a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Israel, which was created last year in the wake of an 11-day conflict between Israel and terror groups in Gaza. Many members of Congress opposed the COI’s formation, citing it as biased against Israel, and even introduced legislation to disband the commission, whose mandate is open-ended, in the form of the COI Elimination Act.
U.S. Ambassador to the UNHRC Michèle Taylor and State Department Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt said in a joint statement, “The United States is in solidarity with the Government of Israel and the Israeli people. We categorically reject antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, including the comments by Mr. Kothari, which are outrageous, inappropriate, and corrosive.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) mirrored their sentiments in a statement to Jewish Insider, saying, “The antisemitic comments made by a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Israel are outrageous and deeply offensive. This is yet another example of the Commission’s anti-Israel bias, and why this open-ended inquiry must be halted and disbanded.”
COI Chair Navi Pillay sent a letter Thursday to UNHRC President Federico Villegas alleging Kothari’s comments were “deliberately taken out of context.” In the letter, Pillay wrote that the Commission of Inquiry “does not question the status or United Nations membership of either of the concerned states of its mandate.”
She further claimed that Kothari’s “Jewish lobby” comment was misquoted, saying, “The Commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual Commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three Commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference.”
State Department spokesperson Ned Price joined the chorus of criticisms provoked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s warning earlier this week that Europeans should not “become peoples of mixed race.” Speaking at the daily press briefing, Price said that Orbán’s comments “are not reflective of the shared values that tether the United States to Hungary, that serve as the foundation between the relationship between our two peoples, and that serve as a basis for the relationship between the United States and our other allies, whether it’s in Europe or the Indo-Pacific, or elsewhere.”
Ira Forman, who served as special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism during the second Obama term, told us, “It’s fascinating how the Orbán regime responds to charges of antisemitism. They rarely address specific examples. Rather they keep repeating that they have a zero-tolerance policy toward antisemitism. That’s a nice sound bite but when a parliamentarian called Jews a national security risk to the nation the Orbán government refused to censure the legislator or use existing law to prosecute. It has also been possible for the paramilitary-like Magyar Garda units to continue to assemble and march, to intimidate Jews and Roma, despite a formal legal ban.”
“Even worse,” Forman, whose op-ed last week about Orbán provoked a response from Hungarian politician Zoltán Kovács earlier this week, added, “Orbán and his representatives sometimes flat-out lie. In 2012 Elie Wiesel’s returned a 2004 Hungarian state award because the Orbán government whitewashed the Hungarian role in the murder of 75% of Hungarian Jewry and because the government was rehabilitating an antisemitic author and the self-avowed antisemite and Hungarian head of state during the Hungarian Holocaust, Miklós Horthy. In response to these facts Mr. Zoltán Kovács, the international spokesman for Hungary, claimed there is not “a single public square or street in Hungary bearing the name of Miklós Horthy.’ Simple Google searches reveal there are numerous streets, squares, statues, busts, memorials and plaques honoring Horthy throughout the country, including a plaque at the Defense Ministry’s Military History Institute and Museum in Budapest.”
race to the finish
In Arizona Democratic primary, Daniel Hernandez hopes to pull ahead

Daniel Hernandez
In several Democratic primary campaigns across the country, candidates’ positions on Israel have become a dividing issue as pro-Israel PACs boost their preferred contenders. Daniel Hernandez, an Arizona state representative running for Congress in a district centered around Tucson, has largely avoided that dynamic ahead of the state’s Tuesday primary, reports Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.
From the voters: “Other than one of our early opponents trying to make it an issue where they basically made it seem like I was a paid spokesperson [for Israel], we haven’t really had it come up,” Hernandez told JI on Thursday, referring to a candidate who has since dropped out of the race. “Occasionally you’ll get a voter, especially somebody who is upset because I got the endorsement from AIPAC or Democratic Majority for Israel or Pro-Israel America. But that is such a small amount.”
Spending on Israel: This week, DMFI spent $75,000 to boost Hernandez and oppose former Arizona state senator and environmental law professor Kirsten Engel. The more liberal J Street PAC has not endorsed a candidate in the race.
Total toss-up: Polling in the race has been limited; the only publicly released poll, which was conducted by Hernandez’s campaign, showed him leading Engel by 16% as of early June, with 42% of likely voters saying they were undecided. “It’s two strong candidates. I think Engel looks to potentially have the edge, but it could go either way,” said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic political consultant who works with campaigns in Arizona, but he acknowledged “it may just still be a very close race.”
Changing dynamics: The redrawn 6th District encompasses much of the area currently represented by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), who is not running for reelection. But the winner of Tuesday’s primary will face a tough general election campaign, as the seat was made significantly less Democratic in the redistricting process. The Cook Political Report rates it as a “leans Republican” seat.