Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we interview Egyptian author Dalia Ziada, who fled the country after criticizing Cairo’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war, and look at the special election race shaping up in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Reps. Dan Goldman and Becca Balint, Sen. Dan Sullivan and Chen Goldstein-Almog.
Israelis emerged from a weekend of shock, anger and mourning after IDF soldiers shot and killed three hostages in Gaza on Friday, Jewish Insider Senior Political Correspondent Lahav Harkov reports. The incident led the Israeli government to consider re-entering negotiations to release the remaining 129 Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, with Mossad head David Barnea meeting with Qatar’s prime minister on Friday night.
Having either escaped captivity or been abandoned by their captors in Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya, Israeli hostages Yotam Haim, Samer Talalka and Alon Shamriz emerged shirtless from a building, with one holding a makeshift white flag, according to the initial IDF investigation. A soldier, who believed the situation was a trap by Hamas, yelled “terrorists,” and opened fire, killing two of the hostages. The third was wounded and fled.
When the shooting stopped, according to the IDF assessment, he yelled “help” in Hebrew and came out of the building where he was hiding, at which point another soldier shot and killed him. The bodies were brought back to Israel to be identified, where they were found to be Israeli hostages.
The words “SOS,” “save us” and “3 hostages,” were written on another building nearby using food on bedsheets that were hung out of windows. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said the matter would be further investigated.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy made clear on Sunday that the soldiers’ behavior violated Israel’s rules of engagement. “If you see someone with a white flag, do you shoot them? Absolutely not. That is not the IDF,” Halevy told soldiers in Gaza. “Even if someone fought us, if he puts down his weapon and raises his hands, we capture him. We don’t shoot him.”
The IDF’s admission that its soldiers killed three hostages immediately sparked protests, a rare occurrence on a Friday night. “Hostages Square,” the Tel Aviv site where the families and their supporters gather daily, was moved from a short distance away to the area in front of the Kirya, the Defense Ministry and IDF high command’s headquarters in central Tel Aviv.
The government’s response has been to give Mossad chief David Barnea the green light to re-enter negotiations via Qatar to free the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza, an Israeli diplomatic source told JI. Any deal would have to start where the last one left off, releasing children and women first. CIA Director Bill Burns will meet today in Warsaw with Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a press conference on Saturday night that the news that the hostages were killed “broke my heart — it broke the entire nation’s heart” and that he is “haunted by one thought: ‘what would have happened if we did something differently.’” Still, the prime minister expressed determination, at the press conference and at a cabinet meeting the following day, that Israel would continue fighting.
“I appreciate U.S. support for Israel very much,” Netanyahu said. “I repeat to our friends: We are determined more than ever to continue to the end, until we destroy Hamas, until we bring back all of our hostages, until we ensure that in Gaza there will be no one educating for terrorism, funding terrorism and directing terrorism.”
That was the message Netanyahu said he conveyed to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who said during a trip to Israel last week that the IDF needs to end the phase of intense fighting in Gaza and move to more scaled-down and precise warfare. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. arrived in Israel on Sunday to relay the same message and emphasize the importance of civilian safety.
Other friends of Israel took the message further than Washington, with U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock penning an article in The Sunday Times calling for “a sustainable cease-fire,” underscoring President Joe Biden’s statement last week that Israel is starting to lose support from Europe for its war.
Stateside, Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, DMFI PAC, is releasing its first round of House endorsements for the 2024 cycle, backing a record 81 incumbents seeking reelection in contests across the country. Among the most notable endorsees are Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Bill Foster (D-IL) and Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), who are each facing primary challenges from Israel critics, in DMFI PAC’s assessment.
The group, which has indicated that it will be spending heavily next year, has yet to confirm whether it will support any challengers now vying to unseat a range of Squad members, even as it has all but officially endorsed at least one candidate, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who is running against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). Last week, DMFI PAC circulated a fundraising email urging supporters to contribute to Latimer’s campaign.
truth teller
For one acclaimed Egyptian author and activist, speaking out against Hamas has come with a price

Like many others in the Middle East, when Dalia Ziada, an acclaimed Egyptian author and civil rights activist, woke up to the news of fighting between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7, she thought it was just another round of clashes between the old foes, who for 16 years have regularly exchanged tit-for-tat rockets and airstrikes. At least that was how it was being reported in the Arabic media in her home country, Ziada, 41, told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash in an interview last week.
A different version of events: Two days later, however, the longtime participant in interfaith programs between Jews and Muslims was invited to join a video conference call organized by Israel’s Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs. The presentation included the screening of footage from Israeli CCTV cameras and bodycam images filmed by Hamas terrorists themselves as they carried out barbaric atrocities against Israeli civilian communities and revelers at a mass music festival.
Exposing the truth: “As soon as I finished watching, I decided I had to tell the truth,” stated Ziada. With some 88,000 followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Ziada wrote a post taking Egyptian media to task for whitewashing Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7. “I wrote ‘our media is lying, here is the truth, here is what happened,’” she recalled.
On air: Ziada, who has a reputation as a well-respected commentator on regional issues, was then invited by the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies to speak about the reaction in Egypt to Hamas’ attack and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza. She recorded two podcasts with senior researcher Ofir Winter – one in English and one in Arabic. While she condemned “every drop of blood that is shed, whether Palestinian or Israel,” Ziada also noted that she fully supported Israel’s efforts to eliminate Hamas.
Driven out: Before Ziada realized it, she was being attacked not only online but also in person, with radical Islamists calling to take “revenge” against her for her comments. Extremist Salafists and other supporters of Hamas filed a criminal complaint against her with Egypt’s state prosecutor. Other Islamist extremists supporters visited her mother’s home in an attempt to “hunt” her down amid accusations that she was with a Zionist spy and sympathizer. When Ziada tried to argue that she had committed no crime and that Egypt has a decades-old peace agreement with Israel, the authorities, she said, shrugged, a non-committal response that prompted her decision to avoid potential arrest and flee the country.