Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Monday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s address to the J Street National Conference, and cover a new initiative by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Sagol family to train municipal officials across Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Tamara Cofman Wittes, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre CEO Ahmed Bin Sulayem.
The White House will host Jewish leaders for a roundtable discussion about antisemitism on Wednesday, according to an invitation obtained by Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch. The invitation, which says that unnamed “senior White House officials” will be in attendance, was sent by White House Jewish Liaison Shelley Greenspan.
The agenda, according to the invitation, will include a discussion of the Biden-Harris administration’s work on combating antisemitism and “how we can best work with your organizations to confront the rise of antisemitism.” The meeting is meant to be a follow-up to the United We Stand summit that the White House hosted in September, one person with knowledge of the meeting told JI. Read more here.
On Friday, President Joe Bidenissued a tweet specifically addressing antisemitism and Holocaust denial, days after Kanye West, who legally changed his name to Ye, appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show and praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler. “I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides,” Biden tweeted.
Hours later, Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted, “Praising Hitler and denying the Holocaust is vile, appalling, and must be condemned. Our Administration will continue to stand up against antisemitism and the epidemic of hate.”
Also on Friday, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who posted his own tweet on antisemitism, spoke about his concerns during a fireside chat at the NewDEAL Leaders conference in Washington. “It’s painful,” Emhoff said, according to excerpts of the conversation obtained from a White House official. “It hurts.”
“So I don’t want it to feel normal,” Emhoff, who is Jewish, continued. “I don’t want people to think, ‘Well, it’s just words, it’s just Kanye.’ No — this matters. This is important. We have to all step up and speak out about this as leaders in your communities. So as long as I have this microphone, I’m going to keep speaking up, speaking out, and again, not just about antisemitism but about hatred and bringing everyone else together. This is not OK. It’s not OK. We cannot be silent. We gotta push back. We gotta speak up. And we cannot make this normal. We cannot.”
Emhoff also addressed the responsibility he’s felt as the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president. “And coming in as Second Gentleman, I thought being the first man in this role would be the headline, and it was. But like, the one thing was being the first Jewish person of any of the four. There’s never been a Jew married to a president, or vice president, or has been president or vice president. As it turns out that has become a very big deal in the Jewish community and in other communities that aren’t represented. And I felt it was very important to kind of take that on, accept that responsibility, and really lean into it. And live openly as a Jew as I had in my normal life but do it in this public life, which meant Passover, virtual Passover, live Passover, mezuzahs on the doors, menorahs.”
Conversations about increasing antisemitism continued through the weekend. Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu weighed in during an appearance on “Meet the Press” yesterday, telling host Chuck Todd that antisemitism is “the oldest disease” that has “accompanied our history with horrific results over the centuries, and it’s not going to go away.”
“I think free societies have to take a consistent position to condemn antisemitism, to stand up against it, and to do so consistently,” Netanyahu added. “What is driving it is one of the unfortunate effects of the internet age…is polarization. In the case of antisemitism, it’s the melding, the fusion of the antisemitism from the extreme radical left with the extreme radical right.” Watch the full interview here.
heard yesterday
Blinken: U.S. will gauge new Israeli gov’t ‘by the policies it pursues rather than individual personalities’

Secretary of State Tony Blinken addressed J Street’s National Conference on Sunday, delivering a 30-minute speech that laid out the Biden administration’s commitment to a two-state solution, Israel’s security and expanding the Abraham Accords and included the most detailed comments yet on how the administration will deal with the new right-wing Israeli government, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Respect democracy: “We fully respect the democratic choice of the Israeli people. We again congratulate Bibi Netanyahu,” Blinken said. He pledged to “gauge the government by the policies it pursues rather than individual personalities,” and also expressed a commitment to support “core democratic principles, including respect for the rights of the LGBT community and the equal administration of justice for all citizens of Israel.”
Diplomacy first: Blinken’s wide-ranging address, the keynote of Sunday’s programming at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, underscored the Biden administration’s preference for diplomacy in the Middle East — in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and stopping Iran’s nuclear program. He expressed support for the women-led protests in Iran but did not describe a change in U.S. policy vis-a-vis nuclear negotiations. “The regime’s actions have only deepened our conviction that Iran must never be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon,” said Blinken. “We continue to believe that the best way to ensure this is through diplomacy.”
Horizon of hope: Blinken received the most applause when discussing the two-state solution, long a cornerstone of J Street’s advocacy and U.S. policy. “Anything that takes us away from two states is detrimental to Israel’s long-term security and its long-term identity,” said Blinken. “The prospects of a two-state solution feel remote” at the moment, he added, so Washington’s goal is “preserving a horizon of hope.”
Different approach: J Street, a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, celebrated President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. But the advocacy group and the Biden administration differ in their approach to some Israel-related issues. Blinken praised the Abraham Accords, the 2020 Trump-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan. J Street has only tepidly embraced the Accords, and Blinken’s comments on pursuing normalization were met with little applause.