Daily Kickoff
👋 Good Wednesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the White House’s rollout of its antisemitism strategy and how officials appear to be steering clear of the Jewish state, and spotlight the Republican Senate primary in Montana following the entry of businessman and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Michael McCaul, Asher Fredman and Shira Haas.
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said yesterday in a virtual event with the Jewish Democratic Council of America that President Joe Biden “has been very clear” with top advisors about his interest in pursuing Saudi-Israeli normalization. “I think ultimately the president has to be willing to expend some political capital to try to see if there’s an opportunity to get this done,” Nides said. “It would be a game-changer, no question about it.”
Nides also insisted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive an invitation to the White House. “I have no doubt that he’ll be coming. I don’t know when — that will be the decision of the White House — but ultimately he’ll be coming, and the president and prime minister have a very, very strong relationship.”
Nides predicted that the Israeli governing coalition will not implement the entire judicial reform proposal unilaterally, which he said would prompt a “dramatic” reaction in Israel. “In my humble view, this was never the prime minister’s major objective in becoming the prime minister. Now his coalition partners have a different objective, but I think he himself, he wants to do big things, he wants to focus on Iran, he wants to focus on normalizing with Saudi Arabia,” Nides added.
This morning in Colorado, attendees at the Aspen Ideas Festival will hear from panelists debating the business world’s approach to environmental, social and corporate governance, more commonly known as ESG. The session comes days after BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told attendees at the confab that he was “ashamed” to be a part of the debate over ESG, which, he said, has become politically “weaponized.” Fink tried to distance himself from the term itself, saying, “I’m not going to use the word ESG because it’s been misused by the far left and the far right.”
This afternoon, the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, who was imprisoned in Iran for a year and a half and charged with espionage, will speak on a panel on hostage diplomacy alongside Roger Carstens, the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, among others.
antisemitism ante
In rollout of antisemitism strategy, the White House steers clear of the Jewish state

In a Tuesday Aspen Ideas Festival event touting the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall condemned the neo-Nazis who flew swastika flags outside synagogues in Georgia last weekend and criticized former President Donald Trump for his comments after the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. The nearly hour-long conversation did not mention or touch on one issue that, despite its appearance in the 60-page strategy, has been absent from White House public messaging on the document: Israel, and the ways that anti-Zionism can translate into antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Strategy roundtable: After the Aspen panel, Emhoff and Sherwood-Randall participated in a roundtable with faith leaders, philanthropists and activists about the White House strategy. One participant told JI that while Emhoff and Sherwood-Randall did not speak about Israel, multiple attendees mentioned anti-Zionism, particularly as it plays out among college and high school students.
Unanswered question: In an interview last week with JI, a senior White House official who worked on the strategy declined to share how matters related to anti-Zionism would be handled in the strategy’s implementation in the coming year. “How long is the report? There’s a lot in there on all of this,” said the official. “We refer you to the text.”
No comment: The White House official also did not say whether it was concerned about, or aware of, a May incident at the City University of New York Law School in which a student commencement speaker attacked Israel and Zionism. The official pointed to a letter that the U.S. Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights sent to college administrators across the country last month, alerting them to “nationwide rise in reports of antisemitic harassment, including in schools.”