Bill de Blasio, Yuh-Line Niou

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, now mounting his first House bid in the redrawn 10th Congressional District, spoke out against a Democratic primary rival, state Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou, who has expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. “The vast majority of us who are Democrats, the vast majority of us who are progressives, don’t agree with her,” de Blasio told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. “We support the State of Israel. We oppose BDS.”

Rapid response: De Blasio was responding to an interview, published by JI on Monday, in which Niou endorsed the BDS movement for what appears to have been the first time since she assumed office in 2017. “I believe in the right to protest as a fundamental tenet of western democracy, so I do support BDS,” said Niou, who, along with de Blasio, is among at least seven leading candidates in the hotly contested race for an open House seat encompassing Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.

‘It’s not gray at all’: “I don’t know how anyone could be unclear on BDS,” de Blasio elaborated. “It’s a movement that is working against the State of Israel. It’s working against a healthy economy for the people of Israel. It’s working against one of the underpinnings of a future peace, which would be prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians alike. To me, it’s not gray at all. If you care about Israel and if you care about peace, oppose BDS. I’ve been doing that, energetically, for years.”

Broader backlash: Niou is the only Democrat in the race who has publicly supported the BDS movement, which holds only fringe support within the House. Since her comments were published, she has faced criticism from a range of elected officials including freshman Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), the Bronx congressman who identifies as a pro-Israel progressive. “BDS is not merely a ‘protest,’” he wrote on Twitter. “It takes the sinister position that Israel should no longer exist as a Jewish state. It’s an eliminationist movement at its core, one that should itself be protested by any public official professing a concern for peace.”

Read the full story here.

Bonus: New York State Assemblymember Brian Cunningham announced he was withdrawing his endorsement of Niou over her support of the BDS movement.

At the height of his fame, Jason Kander was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party and a lock for higher office — maybe even the White House. After an oh-so-close defeat in the 2016 Missouri Senate race to incumbent Republican Roy Blunt, Kander spent the next few years fueling 2020 presidential primary speculation with trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. But just as quickly as it began, the dream faded. In 2018, Kander declined to run for president, then unexpectedly ended a campaign for Kansas City mayor, announcing a need to address symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. The next day he checked into a Veterans Affairs hospital, where the Afghanistan veteran was placed on suicide watch.

Seeking help: “That day felt just like utter defeat. I had been building something for a decade and I knew what the rest of the world didn’t know,” Kander, who details his struggles in a new book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD, recalled during a recent interview on Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” “I just remember feeling like a failure, and scared because I didn’t know what my future held, not just from a career perspective, but from a personal perspective,” he said. “I had no idea if I could get better. I knew that I was trading in the only thing in my life that was going well, my career, for the chance at getting better, having no idea if I could.”

Just meetings: For years the seeming normality of his service experience kept Kander from recognizing the trauma he faced. “I was an intelligence officer who took meetings with people who we suspected of being bad guys pretending to be good guys and I thought, ‘That’s not war, I just went to meetings,’” he explained, adding that he believed his lack of live-fire experience meant he “didn’t earn PTSD.”

‘Most dangerous place on the planet’: “Now, cut to 11 years later, somebody at the VA sits me down and says, ‘OK, let me get this straight: You were in the most dangerous place on the planet, you were practically by yourself, just you and a translator, you were vulnerable as all as all heck for hours at a time. And you were in meetings with people who might want to kill you and nobody knew where you were, so nobody was coming to save you.’ And I’m like, ‘yeah’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s combat and it’s really traumatic.’”

Extending a hand: Since the end of his tour in the Army Reserves in 2007, Kander has rebuilt his life with an eye toward his past experience. He currently serves as president for national expansion at Veterans Community Project, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that supports homeless veterans by providing housing, social and health services. “We have an 85% success rate of getting people from homelessness to being successfully housed and staying there, which is about twice of what is considered really good for the world of transitional housing out of homelessness,” Kander added proudly.

Read the full story and listen to the full podcast here.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas talks to reporters at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah in June.

For the first time, a United Nations committee focused on addressing torture will scrutinize the actions of the Palestinian Authority and its treatment of those under its care. The U.N. Committee against Torture (CAT) — a subsidiary of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) — convenes today in Geneva, where it will investigate instances of enforced disappearances, violent interrogations and the holding of the remains of Israeli soldiers, among other issues, Jewish Insider’s Matan Kogen reports.

What to expect: CAT, which holds broad powers to probe incidents of torture and cruel treatment, is expected to review reports submitted by American, Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, including Human Rights Watch, the Palestinian Coalition Against Torture, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Clinic on International Human Rights and others.

Session prep: In preparation for this session and in accordance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (from which CAT derives its authority), the Palestinian Authority (PA) was required to submit a report of its current adherence to the convention.

Alternative report: As the human rights NGO U.N. Watch notes in its alternative report on torture in the Palestinian state — which CAT will also consider — aside from initially placing blame for Gaza’s dire economic problems upon Hamas, the Palestinian report makes no mention of the treatment by Hamas’ or the PA of those within its territory, including Gaza. Instead, the Palestinian report is focused largely on calling out Israel for any ill treatment. The report also omits Palestinian human rights abuses. “Regrettably, the Palestinians’ own report to the U.N. committee seeks to waste its time by attacking Israel, omitting critical information about their own record, when the review is supposed to be about the Palestinians,” said U.N. Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer.

Read the full story here.