Daily Kickoff
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we travel to Kibbutz Be’eri in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, and talk to American Jewish leaders about their meeting last month with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the wake of his anti-Israel comments. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Richard Fishman, Sen. Josh Hawley and Maya Wertheimer.
In a prime-time address to Israelis last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged, for the first time since Oct. 7, some culpability in the Hamas terror attacks in which more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.
“I bow my head before all of the families that have been devastated,” the prime minister said. “I know that their lives will never be the same. I send them a heartfelt, loving and consoling embrace from the entire nation.”
“Everyone will need to provide answers, myself included,” Netanyahu said. “But all of this will happen only after the war.”
Netanyahu said that the army was “preparing for a ground invasion,” amid reports that such a military incursion has been delayed at the request of President Joe Biden. Overnight, the IDF launched a ground raid into the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, which it said in a message on Telegram was done “as part of preparations for the next stages of combat.”
Former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who now sits in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, rejected reports that a ground operation was delayed at Washington’s request, saying earlier today that Israel is “making decisions only based on our own interests.”
In Washington, Biden addressed the mounting casualty count in the war, noting that he had “no confidence” that Palestinian officials were presenting accurate statistics. “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed,” Biden said. “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
The president’s comments are in line with what NSC Coordinator John Kirby has been relaying this week in briefings with Washington’s press corps. That Gaza’s Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, Kirby said at a White House press briefing on Tuesday, “needs to be factored into anything that they put out publicly.”
Meanwhile, Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi made waves on Wednesday with a post on X praising Qatar, saying that the Gulf nation “is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions.”
Hanegbi said the diplomatic efforts of Doha, which provides sanctuary to top Hamas brass — including Ismail Haniyeh, who has lived in Qatar since 2016 — were “crucial at this time.”
The tweet was met with swift backlash, including from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who in a Hebrew-language post called Qatar “the enemy itself,” citing its support for Hamas.
“He who does not distinguish between an enemy and a lover will not be able to destroy the enemy,” Bennett wrote. “Confusion does not lead to victory.”
Yaakov Katz, the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post,said Hanegbi’s comments were “the price Israel needs to pay so Qatar continues to work for the release of hostages.”
And in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian arrived last night for meetings related to the Israel-Hamas war. The visit comes as The Wall Street Journal reports that hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists received specialized training in Iran from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force last month, ahead of the Oct. 7 attacks.
Yesterday afternoon, JI Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar sat down with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. general in both Iraq and Afghanistan, to discuss Israel’s looming ground war against Hamas and the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Watch the entire interview from JI’s new “Inside the Newsroom” series here.
campus concerns
DeSantis crackdown on pro-Hamas rallies could be model for elected officials

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order banning the group Students for Justice in Palestine at state universities has touched off a debate over whether such a move will pass legal scrutiny. But several legal scholars who spoke to JI said the DeSantis action was designed to pass constitutional muster, while a leader of a pro-Israel campus group said it could become a model for elected officials to use against terrorist-sympathizing groups on campus across the country, Haley Cohen reports for Jewish Insider.
Upping the pressure: Dozens of national Jewish groups and campus organizations have called on universities to withdraw their recognition and funding for groups affiliated with National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). Most of the group’s chapters, which commonly go by the name Students for Justice in Palestine but have other names on some campuses, have celebrated or defended Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel.
Florida move: “Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” the state university system’s chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, wrote in a memo on Tuesday to university leaders. The move marks the first time a state has outlawed SJP.
Dershowitz’s take: Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard University Law School professor emeritus who has represented high-profile clients such as O.J. Simpson, told JI the measure would likely survive a First Amendment challenge as long as the university does not “apply a double standard.” “A single standard must prevail on university campuses,” Dershowitz continued. “Student groups that support Hamas should be treated the way a student group that supported the Ku Klux Klan or supported the rape of women, or the killing of gays should be treated.”
Elsewhere: A bipartisan group of seven House members who are all alumni of The George Washington University wrote to the school’s president on Wednesday condemning a display on campus on Tuesday night, in which student protesters projected anti-Israel slogans on the side of a university library, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.