Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Monday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Rep. Katie Porter about her recent trip to Israel, and report from the Harvard Arab Conference. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gil Troy, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Elly Schlein. In celebration of the holiday of Purim this evening and tomorrow, the next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Wednesday morning. Purim Sameach!
On July 23, 2014, an El Al plane carrying former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg touched down at Ben Gurion Airport. What on any other occasion would have been cause for little note — or, perhaps, a mention in Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff — made international news. The plane carrying the former mayor was one of a limited number of aircraft landing at Israel’s main airport following an FAA order prohibiting U.S. aircraft from landing there in response to elevated concerns about Hamas rockets being fired toward the area.
Israel at the time was several weeks into a deadly conflict with Hamas. Bloomberg was making the trip, he wrote this weekend in a New York Times op-ed, “to stand with Israel against Hamas, by highlighting the safety of travel to Israel and urging the Obama administration to reverse course.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was there to greet Bloomberg on the tarmac, the New Yorker recalled: “[Netanyahu] thanked me for my support, and I thanked him for Israel’s support of New York City and the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks.”
Bloomberg, who would later mount a short-lived bid for the presidency, cited his relationship with Netanyahu, and the U.S.-Israel relationship, in this weekend’s New York Times piece headlined “Israel Is Courting Disaster,” published less than a day after protesters — estimated to be around 150,000, the largest weekly demonstration to date — gathered in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the Israeli government’s proposed reforms. “Close allies bound together by shared values stand together in times of need — not only to support each other but to reaffirm the inviolable obligations we have to defend those values. And that is why I am standing up again now,” Bloomberg wrote.
In an essay that appeared to be written as much to Netanyahu as the Times’ readership, Bloomberg extolled the ways in which Netanyahu has grown Israel’s economy, praising “the extraordinary rise in Israel’s economic standing over the last generation” as potentially being Netanyahu’s “greatest achievement.”
“It’s fair to say that no prime minister has done more to transform its economy into a global powerhouse,” Bloomberg wrote. “Yet unless he changes course, Mr. Netanyahu risks throwing all that progress — and his own hard-earned legacy — away. The economic damage could make the cost being paid by the United Kingdom for Brexit look like bubkes.” Read the full op-ed here.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken is scheduled to meet with Israeli Strategic Minister Ron Dermer this afternoon in Washington. The meeting comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Israel for meetings with top Israeli officials.
trip talk
Porter describes ‘constructive exchange’ between Democratic delegation and Netanyahu

In keeping with a background in academia, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), a former law professor known for her rigorous interrogations at congressional hearings and who recently announced a run for U.S. Senate, made sure to study up before her first trip to Israel last month. To improve her understanding of the region, Porter, a Democrat from Orange County, drew in particular on her connections within the Jewish community, she said, reading Noa Tishby’s book about Israel that a friend had recommended, consulting with a rabbi whose synagogue is located in her hometown of Irvine and reaching out to local AIPAC officials for a briefing on Middle East policy, among other things. “I recognize that I am relatively new to this issue,” Portershe said in an interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel on Wednesday. “I tried to take a multifaceted approach and make sure that I was getting the most I could out of this particular trip,” she explained, “which I hope will be the first of many.”
Doing her homework: The pre-visit preparations paid off, Porter recalled, when the delegation, which was sponsored by J Street, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “It was actually funny in that there was a moment in that conversation with the prime minister where he was talking about Likud and LGBTQ members of Likud and he was saying, ‘I bet nobody knew that,’” Porter explained, referring to Netanyahu’s political party. “I raised my hand and I was like, ‘I knew! I knew!’ because I had gotten that additional briefing before I went.”
Cautious approach: The 49-year-old consumer protection advocate, who flipped a swing district in her first bid for elective office five years ago, believes that such engagement underscores a broader message she is hoping to impart as one of three Democrats now vying for an open seat in California’s closely watched Senate race. “I am respectful about how I engage and I’m careful about how I build opinions,” Porter explained. “What you see with my relationship with the Jewish American diaspora and with the pro-Israel community is very consistent with how I’ve been able to flip my district and how I would think about representing California in the Senate.”
Audience with Bibi: That sentiment was perhaps best exemplified by the meeting with Netanyahu, whose right-wing governing coalition is promoting a controversial judicial overhaul that has sparked mass protests across Israel. In the U.S., a growing number of Democratic leaders and advocacy groups, including J Street, have expressed opposition to the coalition’s efforts. Porter said that she herself had requested an audience with Netanyahu when, in late January, she first met with Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., for a conversation “focused on ways to enhance Israel’s outreach to the progressive community in the U.S.” and “new avenues for cooperation,” as he wrote on social media.
Positive impression: Porter described a largely constructive exchange when the group of 15 Democratic House members was welcomed by Netanyahu late last month. Not only was the prime minister “extremely generous both with his time and with his thoughts,” but the group was “really able to have an interactive dialogue with him,” she said. “I was extremely impressed with his willingness to kind of grapple with us at some of the toughest issues that Israel’s facing, everything from judicial reform — an issue that we’re having questions and discussions about right now within the Democratic Party here in the United States — to issues about the West Bank and about settlements.”
Read the full interview here.