Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Tuesday morning!
Ed note: In an effort to bring you, the readers, closer to what our team is seeing and hearing, on occasion we’ll be handing over the pen to individual reporters to lead off the Daily Kickoff. First up, Jewish Insider’s Jerusalem correspondent Ruth Eglash, who accompanied Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on his first trip to Germany as prime minister.
Hi there, it’s Ruth Marks Eglash, Jewish Insider‘s Jerusalem correspondent. Yesterday, I flew aboard Israeli Prime Minister Lapid’s plane, returning from a whirlwind 24 hours in Germany, where the prime minister met with top German officials, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Lapid’s primary goal on the trip was to reaffirm Israel’s opposition to a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, but the Israelis added a level of gravitas to the visit by including five Holocaust survivors in the delegation.
Speaking last night to the Israeli press accompanying the delegation, Lapid, himself the son of a Holocaust survivor, said that “visiting Germany as the prime minister of Israel is very different to visiting any other country in the world.”
Those optics were on full display from the moment the Israeli delegation touched down in Berlin. Exiting the plane, Lapid walked arm-in-arm with one of the survivors, who had experienced Nazi atrocities as a child in Ukraine and froze at the sight of the German military honor guard.
Lapid’s emotional response to being in Germany for an official visit as the prime minister of the world’s only Jewish state was captured again on Monday when the delegation, accompanied by Scholz, visited the historic Wannsee Villa, just outside of Berlin. Despite the villa’s serene setting, the location, infamous for being the site where the Nazi leadership met in 1942 to finalize the “Final Solution,” brought tears to the eyes of some of the survivors, who shared their chilling personal stories with Scholz.
Lapid, too, was visibly moved as he listened to each of the elderly survivors’ recollections of their horrific experiences and painful losses during World War II. Lapid himself recalled to the chancellor his own father’s story about witnessing his father — Lapid’s grandfather, Dr. Bela Lampel — being taken away by German soldiers. He never saw him again. Lampel died in a concentration camp, but Lapid’s father, Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, became a well-known politician and government minister in Israel.
Writing in the visitors book at Wannsee, Lapid noted: “Here, at the place where the Nazis convened and decided on the final solution to the Jewish people, I stand as Prime Minister of the Jewish state and say: “Am Ysrael Chai” – the nation of Israel lives.”
The delegation headed from Wannsee straight to the airport, arriving back in Israel late on Monday night. A look of triumph — and relief — over what was a significant and powerful visit to Germany, was clear in the eyes of the survivors, and the relatives accompanying them, as they shuffled off the plane.
Read more below on Lapid’s trip to Israel and follow @reglash for regular updates from Jerusalem.
In the U.S. today, we’re watching the final primaries of the 2022 midterms. In Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, Seth Magaziner is expected to pick up the Democratic nomination, which will set him up against former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who is facing no primary opposition. Below, JI’s Matthew Kassel looks at the situation in New Hampshire, where a leading Republican running in the state’s primary to challenge Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) is facing blowback for accepting the endorsement of a lawmaker who has drawn the ire of the state’s Jewish community.
accords anniversary
Kushner, Trump admin alums commemorate Abraham Accords anniversary

Jared Kushner, former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, and Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), participate in a discussion hosted by AFPI and The Abraham Accords Peace Institute, in Washington D.C., on Monday, September 12, 2022.
A who’s who of former Trump administration officials and a coterie of diplomats gathered in a Washington, D.C., downtown office suite on Monday to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. The event was jointly hosted by the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a nonpartisan organization working to build multilateral ties between Accords member nations, and the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. Speakers praised former President Donald Trump for his accomplishments in the Middle East and bemoaned the media for not giving him adequate credit for the Abraham Accords.
New administration: “We knew that we had an amazing opportunity,” keynote speaker and former Trump senior advisor Jared Kushner said of the normalization deals that he helped negotiate with Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. He blamed “Trump derangement syndrome” for the Biden administration’s early tepid response to the Abraham Accords. “The current administration, it took them a year to really call it by its name,” he added, “and I think now they’ve embraced it, because they see how good it is, and that was because it’s been enduring in the region.”
In the game: The only speaker at the event who had never served in government was Bruce Pearl, the Jewish head coach of the Auburn men’s basketball team, who just returned from taking his players on a trip to Israel. Pearl participated in a panel discussion with former top national security officials. “I’m working on taking college basketball teams next year to UAE, to Dubai, and play some games there, and then get on a plane and go to Tel Aviv and play some games there, and create the Abraham Accords Cup and have it be something that is just normal,” Pearl said to applause. “Bringing ESPN alongside us and just see, yes, this is how it is now, and this is how it can be in the future.”
Who’s who: Diplomats in attendance included Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba, Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. Motaz Zahran, Finnish Ambassador to the U.S. Mikko Hautala, Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. László Szabó and Romanian Ambassador to the U.S. Andrei Muraru. Other attendees included Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) Rabbi Levi Shemtov, former Trump administration advisor and Abraham Accords negotiator Avi Berkowitz, former USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick, former Defense Department senior official and director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center William Wechsler and Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration and chair of AFPI.