Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Friday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we spotlight Esther Panitch, Georgia’s only Jewish state legislator, and interview former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who is leading Virginia’s push to address antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Rosa DeLauro, former Rep. Lee Zeldin and Rabbi David Wolpe.
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 Jewish Insider, eJewishPhilanthropy and The Circuit stories, including: Torres, Lawler push for a U.S. Abraham Accords ambassador; Following U.S. citizen’s killing in West Bank, Cotton plans to reintroduce Taylor Force Act follow-up; Israel’s new diaspora affairs minister readies for battle against BDS movement; After visiting Israel, Welch says Netanyahu ‘oblivious’ to threat in West Bank; Saudis aim to show cultural change with Warhol exhibition at desert arts site; Dictionary[dot]com changes antisemitism spelling away from ‘anti-Semitism’; Atra — formerly the Center for Rabbinic Innovation — seeks to support rabbis in a changing world; and From Cleveland to Jerusalem, tech startup drives auto sales. Print the latest edition here.
The Investopia x Salt 2023 conference taking place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, this week has drawn more than 2,000 investors to rub shoulders with an array of Emirati cabinet ministers, sovereign wealth fund chiefs and Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of SkyBridge Capital, who briefly served as White House communications director under former President Donald Trump, The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger reports from the Hilton Hotel on Yas Island.
The two-day, invitation-only meeting is happening at the island that serves as a playground for Emiratis and international visitors, with malls, roller coasters and water parks. The island is home to the Yas Marina Circuit racetrack, which is typically jam-packed with Formula 1 fans and celebrities when it hosts the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix towards the end of each year.
Opening the conference yesterday, UAE Economy Minister Abdulla Bin Touq hailed the UAE’s record $599 billion in foreign trade last year, briefly paid homage to the Abraham Accords with Israel and expressed hope for progress in addressing global warming when his country hosts the COP28 U.N. climate conference later this year. “We might have conflicts in other areas, but we all come together on this topic.”
Scaramucci, whose firm co-sponsors the investment conference with the UAE government, greeted the audience and gave a shout-out to Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, who blasted off yesterday for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. The tiny Gulf nation is enjoying a bout of space fever over its orbiting native son. Along the Yas Island waterfront, conference participants strolling in the pleasantly warm nighttime air snapped photos of each other posing under the arms of 14-foot astronaut statues placed along the cafe-filled promenade.
The Circuit will have a full report on the conference in its Monday morning edition. Sign up for the Weekly Circuit newsletter here.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said yesterday that the State Department would “take a close look at all proposals” that might help pursue expanded Israeli-Arab normalization, when asked by Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod about a bipartisan bill introduced earlier this week to create an ambassador-level special envoy post for the Abraham Accords. “If something makes sense, if something would allow us to be even more effective in that project, we wouldn’t hesitate to pursue it.”
Price also emphasized that the Accords have “high-level attention” in the State Department and the White House, adding that the administration is a “stalwart supporter” of the Abraham Accords and “consistently raise the possibility” of improved relations with Israel in discussions with Arab and Muslim majority countries, “and, in some cases, encouraging countries to pursue that path of normalization is something we unambiguously support.” Watch Price’s full remarks on the Abraham Accords here.
Price declined to discuss Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotritch’s reported plans to visit the U.S. next week, including whether the U.S. would revoke the minister’s visa — as some liberal groups have advocated — in response to his comment that Israel should “wipe out” a Palestinian town. “We don’t speak to individual visa records nor, as a general matter, to a particular individual’s eligibility for a U.S. visa,” Price said.
White House spokespeoplesaidyesterday that no administration officials are scheduled to meet with Smotrich. Certain Jewish groups are reportedly scheduled to meet with the minister, including the Orthodox Union.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) announced earlier this week that he is launching a new political action committee to help candidates target first-time Republican voters, including within the Jewish community, after his relatively strong performance in New York’s gubernatorial election.
In a statement to Jewish Insider, Zeldin, a Jewish Republican from Long Island, said that his group, the Leadership America Needs PAC, “will actively support Jewish Republican candidates and others who will robustly message to and engage the Jewish community.”
“To build additional support within the Jewish community, we can’t just say we are against antisemitism. We must also take strong and decisive steps to actively combat this raw hate,” Zeldin explained. “More must be done to educate others on what it means to be Jewish, oppose BDS, defend yeshiva education and actively strengthen the U.S.-Israel alliance.”
podcast playback
Former Acting AG Jeffrey Rosen on Virginia’s commission to fight antisemitism

When Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin took office on Jan. 15, 2022, his state was witnessing a significant spike in antisemitism — 2021 saw a 64% increase in antisemitic incidents over 2019, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In one of his first moves as governor, he established the commonwealth’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism. To chair the new panel, Youngkin, a Republican, tapped former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen, who in addition to having worked under both Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush, briefly held the position of acting attorney general in the Trump administration after William Barr’s resignation, a role he held on Jan. 6, 2021. During this week’s episode of Jewish Insider’s podcast, Rosen sat down with co-hosts Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein to discuss the commission and his time in the Justice Department.
Commission chat: It’s my favorite holiday of the year — Passover — so I’m going to go ahead and ask you the Passover question about this commission: Mah nishtanah halailah hazeh? Why is this commission different than all other commissions? “Great question, because by definition all commissions have certain commonalities, that they’re focused on the same problem. I think what was different on this one was [that] its mandate was both broader than at least most — I haven’t done a comprehensive survey of all the commissions and study groups that have ever been, but it had a very broad mandate to cover education, law enforcement, legislative options, data reporting, so it was it was very broad. The membership was intentionally gathered to be able to cover a wide spectrum.”
Breaking it down: “Let’s start with the scope of the problem, because there’s lots of talk that antisemitism is a problem. Yes, true, and lots of effort to call attention to it and occasionally the incidents… But at least from the commission report, I would identify five aspects of the antisemitism problem that need to be well understood. One, of course, is the sheer volume, the fact that the number of reported incidents has been increasing for about a decade now and was an all-time high last year. That one I think has got some attention, but then there’s four other aspects that I think are not sufficiently appreciated. One is that many of the incidents are occurring at schools and colleges, especially colleges. And I think that that ought to appall people, but also it surprises them sometimes that this would be going on in higher education, where we think of people being educated and enlightened, and yet, big increases.”
Using the tools: “The saying that is regularly and correctly pointed out, is, “the Justice Department investigates crimes, not people.” We don’t have, nor do we want a society where the prosecutors and the law enforcement tools of the state are used to target people and then find some crime with which to pursue them. It’s the other way. There has to be some indication of wrongdoing that is potentially a violation of laws. And so that means that the tools of law enforcement have to have some rules of the road that take that balance into account, on the one hand trying to prevent actual crimes, or redress crimes if they’ve occurred, but on the other hand, not just targeting people. Because history tells us, not just in the United States, but all around the globe, that using the powers of the state in a targeted way at groups can have some unwelcome consequences. But, that doesn’t mean that these groups, particularly the extremist groups that have violent intentions, can’t be policed, it just means there’s some rules for the road for that.”