Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on President Joe Biden’s first hours in Israel today, and have the scoop on former Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn’s bid for Congress. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Yossi Klein Halevi, Daniel Magerman and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl.
President Joe Biden arrived in Israel this morning. Biden was previously slated to travel on to Jordan for a summit with regional leaders, but Jordanian King Abdullah II, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi canceled their participation following a deadly explosion at a hospital in Gaza that is believed to have resulted from a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket.
Speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv this morning, Biden said he “was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza,” adding that, “based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you, but there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot — we’ve got to overcome a lot of things.” The IDF has since published intercepted communications from Hamas indicating that the explosion resulted from a misfired rocket from Gaza. More below.
A day before his sit-down with Biden, Netanyahu, meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was in Israel on a solidarity trip, said, “Hamas are the new Nazis.”
“The savagery we witnessed perpetrated by the Hamas murderers coming out of Gaza were the worst crimes committed against Jews since the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said, calling on the Western world to unite against Hamas as it did to defeat the Nazis and ISIS. Scholz noted Germany’s “responsibility coming from the Holocaust, which requires us to protect Israel’s existence and security.”
French President Emmanuel Macron is also planning a visit to Israel. Hebrew press reported that the visit would take place in the coming days, but the French Embassy in Israel told Jewish Insider that he would only come when there is a “useful agenda and concrete actions to promote.” Macron seeks to “avoid regional escalation, secure humanitarian access for Gaza civilians and to work with relevant parties on the ‘day after,'” meaning a plan for the coastal enclave when the war ends.
Earlier this week, Macron demanded the “immediate and unconditional release” of French-Israeli citizen Mia Schem, 21, who Hamas took hostage at the Nova music festival. The terrorist group released a video of Schem in captivity on Monday.
Meanwhile in the U.S., a bipartisan group of 69 former senators and representatives, led by Reps. Steve Israel (D-NY), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Cheri Bustos (D-IL), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Elaine Luria (D-VA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), is coming together to form the Former Members of Congress for Israel, to help build and maintain support for Israel during its war with Hamas.
Israel, the former congressman, told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod that the group aims to use the influence that former members have in their districts and with national and global policymakers to “advocate for continued support for Israel in the difficult weeks and months ahead,” through bipartisan op-eds, joint bipartisan appearances, individual meetings, connecting lawmakers with policy experts and other avenues.
The precise form of their efforts will be at the discretion of the individual members involved, but Israel emphasized that conversations with former constituents will be particularly critical. “It’s going to be harder for many people to support Israel when the military battle gets tougher,” he said. “We’ve been here before… the terrorists strike, the world sympathizes. Israel responds, the world criticizes. We cannot afford a replay of that.”
Participants include former Reps. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who are both running for seats in Congress in 2024. Read the full membership list here.
gaza war: day 12
IDF provides evidence hospital blast was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket

The Israeli Defense Forces shared drone footage and a recording on Wednesday saying it was proof that an explosion at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday night was caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired and landed within the Gaza Strip, next to the hospital. According to unverified Hamas reports, hundreds of people were killed in the blast, sparking protests across the region and prompting Jordan to cancel a scheduled meeting with President Joe Biden, who was slated to visit the Hashemite Kingdom after his stop in Israel on Wednesday, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports.
Timing: “Islamic Jihad was responsible for the strike on the hospital,” IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a press conference on Wednesday morning. Hagari recounted how a barrage of rockets were fired into Israel’s territory around 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday, including towards Tel Aviv. Around 10 of those rockets were fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hagari said, and around 7 p.m. there were reports of an explosion at the hospital.
Media response: “Hamas checked what happened, they understood it was a rocket shot by Islamic Jihad and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” said Hagari, criticizing international media outlets that rushed to lay the blame on Israel, some of which have yet to change their headlines.
Evidence: Hagari shared aerial footage of the hospital, noting that the damage was in the parking lot, not on the hospital itself, and suggesting that the high number of casualties was inflated by Hamas. In addition, Hagari said, there were two independent videos showing the failed launch and its fall in the compound, as well as a recording of communication between Hamas terrorists. Hagari shared the recording with journalists, in which two Hamas terrorists can be heard recognizing that the rocket had hit inside Gaza, next to the hospital. Hagari translated the recording in real-time, relaying that the two men recorded were discussing how the shrapnel from the strike did not belong to Israeli munitions.