Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Jewish staffers on Capitol Hill about the atmosphere in Washington in the wake of Oct. 7, and report on the newly created civil commission to address sexual violence during the Hamas terror attacks. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Maayan Zin, Gershon Baskin and Enes Kanter Freedom.
“Israel and Hamas reach tentative U.S.-brokered deal to pause conflict, free dozens of hostages.”
That was the headline of a Washington Post story published on Saturday evening that in the hours after its publication was circulated widely, reaching millions of internet users.
It was also not true. Shortly after publication, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson denied the report, saying that the parties “have not reached a deal yet, but we continue to work hard to get to a deal.”
The Washington Post’s original tweet was deleted, and the headline has been changed to “U.S. close to deal with Israel and Hamas to pause conflict, free some hostages.” A correction was attached to the top of the story, admitting that the earlier version, which was also sent out in a push alert, had “incorrectly characterized The Post’s reporting about the status of negotiations.”
The rush by media outlets to be first — rather than factual — has sowed deep distrust in media reporting from Israel and Gaza in the weeks since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. The broad circulation of the incorrect Washington Post report underscored the degree to which, as Mark Twain said, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
The ways in which misinformation can travel at lightning pace could also be seen in the reactions to a report about the Nova rave attack by Israeli news outlet Haaretz on Saturday, which said that “an IDF combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants.” The Haaretz report was widely disseminated on X, formerly Twitter, and other social media, and some used it to support a conspiracy theory spread in recent weeks that the Oct. 7 Hamas attack was a false flag, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
That conspiracy spread to the Palestinian Authority, whose Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued a statement claiming that Israel, not Hamas, was responsible for the massacre of 364 partygoers at the Nova rave, despite a clarification from Israeli Police that its report “does not provide any indication of civilian casualties as a result of Israeli aerial operations in the area.” The helicopter cited in the Haaretz report arrived after 11 a.m., hours after the massacre began, the police statement clarified.
The PA’s statement was sent to foreign ministries around the world and the United Nations, citing a “police investigation published in Israeli media” that the Foreign Ministry said “proved that Israeli helicopters bombed Israeli citizens who participated in the music festival on October 7, meaning that Israeli fighter jets caused extensive destruction in the area.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also claimed that Israel activated the “Hannibal Protocol…allowing the occupation’s police and military to kill everyone.” The “Hannibal Protocol” is a controversial IDF order, canceled in 2016, allowing soldiers to use any means necessary to prevent a soldier from being captured.
“Therefore, the ministry believes that the result of this investigation casts doubt on the Israeli reports regarding the destruction and killing that took place in that area,” the PA stated, despite the preponderance of evidence of mass murder by Hamas terrorists.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the PA’s statement “a complete reversal of truth,” and pointed out that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is a longtime Holocaust denier. Netanyahu also made clear that he does not see Abbas’ PA as having a role in governing post-war Gaza. “My goal is that the day after we destroy Hamas, any future civil administration in Gaza does not deny the massacre, does not educate its children to become terrorists, does not pay for terrorists and does not tell its children that their ultimate goal in life is to see the destruction and dissolution of the State of Israel,” he said, repeating remarks he made in a press conference the day before.
On Saturday, Netanyahu also said that “without this kind of revolution in the civil administration of Gaza, it is only a matter of time until Gaza returns to terror, and I cannot agree to that. There is another condition I have set for the day after, that the IDF have total freedom of action in the Gaza Strip against any threat. Only thus can we guarantee the demilitarization of Gaza.”
Washington, however, has repeated its call for “Gaza and the West Bank [to] be reunited under a single governance structure,” as President Joe Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend. Biden said that structure should be a “revitalized Palestinian Authority.” While Netanyahu’s statements would not allow for the current PA leadership to govern Gaza without significant changes, they do not rule out Israel’s support for some kind of Palestinian administration.
Despite debate in Jerusalem and Washington about the role of the Palestinian Authority in post-war Gaza, few have mentioned the degree to which Ramallah wants to be involved. Abbas told Secretary of State Tony Blinken earlier this month that he would only govern Gaza “within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
That and the atrocity-denying statement sent around the world indicate that the PA sees this as an opportunity to try to attack Israel on the diplomatic front. As a senior Israeli official told JI earlier this month: “The Palestinian Authority wants to destroy the Jewish state in stages and politically, and Hamas wants to do it violently and abruptly.”
workplace worries
‘A complete misunderstanding of how this job works’: Jewish Hill staffers push back on staff-level cease-fire protests

In recent weeks, high-profile public protests by some Democratic congressional staff — including anonymous letters and protests seeking to pressure lawmakers into supporting a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza — have captured media headlines, with the staffers involved saying they fear retribution for speaking out. But three Jewish Hill staffers who spoke to Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod last week told a different story. The staffers expressed concerns and frustrations with the public protests by fellow staff, which some described as inappropriate, as well as a work environment among Democratic staff that they said has suppressed and intimidated pro-Israel staffers.
Out of line: “The people we work for were the ones elected, and they’re the ones responsible to constituents,” one Jewish House staffer said. “No one voted for those staffers… [they] do not make policy, the representatives do. I think it is completely inappropriate to anonymously use your position as a staffer and think that gives you the right to make policy.”
Crossing the line: A second staffer said that they’d seen their peers on the Hill “engaged in some pretty direct antisemitism, even though they may not be aware of it,” including portraying comparing Jews and Israel to the Nazi regime. They said that the rhetoric they’ve seen around the conflict led them to believe that their peers have a “superficial commitment” to combating antisemitism only when it’s “politically convenient for them.”
Phone frenzy: Three staffers who spoke to JI said many of the anti-Israel calls their offices have received follow what seems to be the same script, and many come from repeat callers, day after day. One House staffer also said it’s not entirely surprising that they’re receiving more pro-Palestinian calls than pro-Israel ones — offices tend to receive a much higher volume of calls opposing lawmakers’ positions on any given issue than in support of them. The calls are also often deeply vitriolic and personally abusive, staffers said — much more so than the calls their offices usually receive on a range of subjects.