Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on Harvard Jewish leaders’ concerns about antisemitism on campus following the resignation of President Claudine Gay, and interview Brooklyn-born Israeli MK Moshe Roth about his efforts to reach English-speaking audiences. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ruti Munder, Samantha Vinograd and Richard Beckman.
Hamas was dealt its most significant blow since the start of the war with Israel with the targeted killing on Tuesday of Saleh Al-Arouri, the founder of the terror organization’s Al Qassam Brigades, in a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut. Six other Hamas members, including two military commanders, were killed in the strike, which came a day before the fourth anniversary of the targeted strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari sidestepped questions about Israel’s involvement in the strike, saying on Tuesday evening he is “not responding to what’s being voiced here and elsewhere,” adding, “we are focused on the fighting with Hamas.”
The West Bank-born Arouri — who acknowledged in an August interview with a Beirut-based publication over the summer that he was “living on borrowed time” — spent 15 years in an Israeli prison before his release in 2010 and deportation to Jordan. From the Hashemite Kingdom, Arouri went to Syria and then to Turkey, where he and other Hamas officials maintained close relations with Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Arouri relocated to Lebanon after being expelled from both Turkey, which had come under pressure from the U.S., and Qatar, which was trying to restore ties with Sunni Gulf states. From Beirut, he deepened ties between Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy that de facto controls Lebanon. A month prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, Arouri met with Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad; the group also convened after the attacks. Le Figaroreported last week that on the morning of Oct. 7, Arouri had called Nasrallah to notify him of the impending attack shortly before the Israel-Gaza border was breached. Arouri was filmed later that day alongside Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders celebrating the massacre.
Israel Policy Forum’s Michael Koplow called the assassination “a huge deal,” noting that after Oct. 7 organizer Yahya Sinwar, Arouri “would have been the most important Hamas leader for Israel to eliminate in order to handicap the group.” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Matthew Levitt and Hanin Ghadar wrote that Arouri’s death marked “a significant loss for Hamas,” citing the “critical role” he played “as one of the group’s primary and most effective liaisons to both Hezbollah and Iran.”
In 2014, Arouri masterminded the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli boys in the West Bank that led to that summer’s war — which prior to October had been the longest and most deadly military confrontation between Israel and Hamas in a decade. Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told us hours after the strike that as the head of the Qassam Brigades, Arouri “personified the notion that there is no firewall between the political and military so-called ‘wings’ of Hamas. He made it absolutely clear that there is no distinction.”
Schanzer, who has been tracking the Hamas official’s movements for more than a decade, described Arouri as “probably the most prominently aggressive Hamas leader over the years.”
“In other words,” Schanzer continued, “he’s the guy that has boasted of the violence that he has been responsible for. He’s been brash. And you knew this was going to come. You just knew it. The question is, did Hamas prepare for his departure in any real way?”
The other question, Schanzer said, is how Hezbollah, which has not engaged in a significant military confrontation with Israel since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, will respond to an attack deep within its territory. The Iran-backed group is “walking a fine line right now, they have to be careful,” Schanzer explained. “On the one hand, they want to respond. But on the other hand, the last thing they want is a wider war.”
At the time of Arouri’s death, the State Department was offering a $5 million reward as part of its Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the apprehension of the Qassam Brigades founder, determined by Foggy Bottom to be a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” Arouri was also featured in a deck of playing cards of Hamas figures produced by residents of Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hardest hit on Oct. 7, similar to the U.S.’ ‘most wanted’ playing card deck that featured images of members of Saddam Hussein’s government.
Tuesday’s strike is likely to affect efforts to secure the release of the 133 hostages remaining in Gaza. Arouri had been deeply involved in the Qatar-brokered negotiations that secured the release of more than 100 hostages in November. Hours after the attack, Hamas reportedly halted the latest round of talks.
seeing crimson
‘Root problem’ of antisemitism at Harvard remains after Gay resignation, Jewish leaders say
Following the abrupt resignation on Tuesday of Harvard President Claudine Gay, the focus for Jewish leaders turned to whether her move would have wider implications for the fight against antisemitism at the Ivy League university. Some were tentatively hopeful that her resignation would bring about change in the university’s much-criticized response to antisemitism, and others pessimistic that a change in leadership will root out the deeper problems facing Jewish students and faculty at Harvard, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Problem not solved: “Whatever your opinion about Gay’s decision to step aside and how that came about, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we pretend that this in any way moves us closer to resolving the root problems with the campus environment at Harvard,” Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told JI on Tuesday.
Tipping point: The tipping point for Gay may have been allegations of plagiarism in her academic work, dating back to her graduate thesis, that emerged in recent weeks. Those accusations followed a disastrous performance on Capitol Hill in which Gay refused to say definitively that calling for the genocide of Jews violates the school’s code of conduct.
Not consulted: In November, Gay created a group to advise administrators on how to combat antisemitism on campus. One person familiar with the group’s proceedings told JI that the group has met once or twice a week for the past two months. But Gay did not consult the group, which included several university administrators, author Dara Horn and Harvard Divinity School visiting scholar Rabbi David Wolpe, before she testified on Capitol Hill. Wolpe resigned from the group after Gay’s appearance. Despite the frequent meetings of the advisory group, the university has not announced any new actions against antisemitism. The person familiar with the group’s work said there are no future plans to meet, and that its members have not been told what the university’s next actions on antisemitism will be — if any.
Bonus: In a lengthy post on X early this morning, billionaire investor and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman zoomed out on the issues surrounding antisemitism and DEI at Harvard. “There is a lot more work to be done to fix Harvard than just replacing its president. That said, the selection of Harvard’s next president is a critically important task, and the individuals principally responsible for that decision do not have a good track record for doing so based on their recent history, nor have they done a good job managing the other problems which I have identified above… The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done. Then new [Harvard] Corporation board members should be identified who bring true diversity, viewpoint and otherwise, to the board.” In his concluding remarks, Ackman said, “Harvard must once again become a meritocratic institution which does not discriminate for or against faculty or students based on their skin color, and where diversity is understood in its broadest form so that students can learn in an environment which welcomes diverse viewpoints from faculty and students from truly diverse backgrounds and experiences.”
Q&A
The Hasidic Knesset member from Brooklyn speaking out against U.S. antisemitism
In late December, a Knesset member from the Ashkenazi-Haredi United Torah Judaism bloc approached the podium in his usual Hasidic garb, a long black coat and a black kippah, and asked for permission to address the parliament “in a foreign language” — something usually reserved for when foreign leaders address the legislature. MK Moshe Roth proceeded to address “my fellow Jews” in English inflected with the part-New York, part-Yiddish accent that would be familiar to anyone who has spent time in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where Roth grew up. “On the other end of the world, there is another war raging, an onslaught of blind hatred … this hatred known as antisemitism is shamefully running rampant in the civilized streets of other countries … [and] voiced in universities which used to be prestigious. We know you carry the burden of this terrible phenomenon,” Roth added. “I call upon you from our eternal holy city of Jerusalem: Stand strong…Now is the time to stand together and look out for each other.” Roth, a Bnei Brak resident who marks a year in the Knesset this month, spoke with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov last week about his mission to serve “klal Yisrael,” the entire Jewish people.
Addressing the Diaspora: “Antisemitism is an international issue,” Roth said. “The ones who are getting the brunt of it and carrying that burden are not in Israel. We in Israel have a different kind of war. Antisemitism is the war of the Jews living in the free world, of students on campuses and people at work. I felt it was important to talk to them. Therefore, I addressed my words to my fellow Jews. I think it is important for there to be continuous communication between Israeli political leaders and the Diaspora.”
A unique task: “You know, my mother tongue is Yiddish,” Roth noted. “Coming from Brooklyn, English wouldn’t have helped me with anything. But at a certain point, I put my mind to learning. Right now, the most important thing that I can be a part of and put my skills to use is being part of hasbara [literally “explaining” – public relations]. There’s no English word for hasbara, because the only one asked to explain itself is Israel. I am trying my best at this.”
Doing his part: “I meet with delegations from foreign parliaments visiting the Knesset, and when they hear me speak, it adds a traditional, Jewish worldwide effect,” Roth told JI. “In a certain sense, I have many generations speaking through me. I also think that looking religious only adds to the seriousness of what I have to say. I do interviews with international media, not only in the West. I had an interesting one with Indian media. Since they also have a lot of issues with radical Islam, they loved to hear somebody speak about that. It felt close to home for them. That was an interesting experience, to see all of us in the free world have the same threat in common. We have a group of MKs who speak foreign languages and we work together.”
online antisemitism
Nonprofit tracking online antisemitism with AI tools details cyber aftermath of Israel-Hamas war
One of the newest companies monitoring antisemitism online is CyberWell, an AI-backed nonprofit that’s home to the first open source database of anti-Jewish digital hate. CyberWell’s executive director and founder, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, started the company about 18 months ago after growing increasingly concerned by the rapid migration of conspiracy theories and “violent antisemitism” from darker internet channels to mainstream social media. “It’s very difficult to be Jewish, openly online today,” Cohen Montemayor said during an interview with Jewish Insider’s Tori Bergel last month at a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan. “We’re experiencing an unprecedented wave of hate.”
Sharp uptick: The company reported an 86% rise in antisemitic content across all platforms post-Oct. 7. CyberWell monitors for antisemitism in both English and Arabic, using the 11 categories detailed in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism to determine a positive incident. Of the five main social media platforms CyberWell operates within — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X, formerly known as Twitter — Facebook saw the highest rise in antisemitism after Oct. 7, with a 193% increase while X increased by 81% (although Cohen Montemayor described X as having a “higher level of baseline antisemitism because they don’t remove hate speech.”)
Denial campaign: At the same time, Cohen Montemayor has also noticed a rise in denial of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre across the board. Social media platforms don’t currently include the denial of the events of Oct. 7 in their hate speech policies, which CyberWell is lobbying to fix. “I predict that this denial campaign will literally be the reincarnation of Holocaust denial. Only now it’s not going to be limited to academia, it’s going to be on algorithmically empowered machines,” she said.
Worthy Reads
What’s Wrong with the Academy:New York Times columnist Bret Stephens reflects on the aftermath of Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation. “How did someone with a scholarly record as thin as hers — she has not written a single book, has published only 11 journal articles in the past 26 years and made no seminal contributions to her field — reach the pinnacle of American academia? The answer, I think, is this: Where there used to be a pinnacle, there’s now a crater. It was created when the social-justice model of higher education, currently centered on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and heavily invested in the administrative side of the university — blew up the excellence model, centered on the ideal of intellectual merit and chiefly concerned with knowledge, discovery and the free and vigorous contest of ideas.” [NYTimes]
Race on Campus: The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols writes that Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation was the right decision, even if some of her accusers have acted in bad faith. “Some of Gay’s defenders, especially in academia, have nevertheless taken the bait from right-wingers who always wanted to make Gay’s very existence as Harvard’s president into a larger debate about diversity and race on campus. Gay herself, in her resignation letter, speaks of racist attacks against her. (Gay has been subjected to harassment and threats since the moment she appeared on the Hill — and likely a lot earlier — and certainly before anyone had even bothered to look at her published work.) But none of that is relevant to the charges themselves. Look, there is a term for the particular kind of plagiarism discovered by racists and other bad people: Plagiarism.” [TheAtlantic]
Hawkish on the Houthis: In Foreign Policy, Steven Cook, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues for a tougher line toward the Houthis. “If the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and its environs, it is going to have to take the fight directly to the Houthis. There is precedent for this. Everyone remembers that in 1987, the United States agreed to reflag Kuwaiti tankers and provided U.S. naval escorts for those tankers after they came under near-constant harassment from Iranian forces in the region. What many forget is that, in parallel, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered several military operations to destroy Iran’s ability to disrupt freedom of navigation in the Gulf. One can understand why Biden has been reluctant to take a similar step so far. The president has the responsibility to use the United States’ awesome force judiciously. But to compel actors not to act — to deter them — sometimes requires a country to not just brandish its military forces but actually use them.” [ForeignPolicy]
Mohammad (My Jailer) and Me: In The New York Times, freed Israeli hostage Ruti Munder, whose husband remains in Gaza, reflects on her experiences in captivity, during which she was held in a Gazan hospital. “Mohammad’s broken Hebrew contrasted with the fluent Hebrew that the Gazan businessmen had once spoken in my home. I can imagine that he might have been one of their sons and picked it up from them. I long for a world where he would have been able to build a business of his own, live in dignity and speak fluently with his Israeli neighbors with mutual respect. In that world, I do not believe he would have joined a terrorist group that sent him to watch over a kidnapped grandmother who wished him no harm. Mohammad told me that had it not been for Hamas, he would have had no money or opportunities. It was not quite an apology, more of an explanation, but the bitter irony is that because of Hamas, we both now have nothing.” [NYTimes]
Around the Web
Huge Haul: Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announced raising $24 million for her presidential campaign in the final three months of 2023, more than double the fundraising total of any previous quarter. The campaign has banked $14.5 million cash-on-hand across her three campaign committees at the beginning of the new year.
Flight Delay: Secretary of State Tony Blinken postponed his Mideast trip, and now plans to travel to the region next week.
Hospital Hideout: U.S. intelligence declassified on Tuesday indicates that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital as a command center, held some hostages in the medical facility and destroyed evidence ahead of the IDF’s operation there.
Rare Rebuke: The State Department slammed Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for their comments calling for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be resettled outside the enclave.
Intel Meeting: A bipartisan delegation from the Senate Intelligence Committee arrived in Israel today for meetings with top officials as part of a three-country tour that also includes stops in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Under the Radar: Washington and Doha quietly reached an agreement extending the U.S. military presence in Qatar for another decade.
New Charges: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is facing additional federal charges alleging that he publicly praised Qatar in exchange for watches valued between $10,000-$25,000.
Lawler Targeted: Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-NY) district office was tagged with anti-Israel graffiti, the second time in the last week that a member of New York’s congressional delegation has had an office vandalized.
Torres’ Take: Responding to the projection of the words “Zionism is Racism” on Yankee Stadium, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) wrote on X last night, “The notion of Zionism as racism is and has always been a lie. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, who, against improbable odds, have overcome millennia of antisemitism in the form of exile, expulsions, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. To single out Jewish self-determination as racist is itself racist.”
War Criticism: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that Israel should “Stop bombing Gaza. Resume the cease-fire. Work toward a permanent peace,” and argued that Israel “needs leadership that will bring the hostages home, not wage months of war.” Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reiterated his opposition to additional military aid to Israel.
Wolverine Wave: Michigan state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat, is expected to announce her bid for the seat of retiring Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI). The district is one of the biggest House battlegrounds for 2024.
Emergency Meeting: The U.N. Security Council is calling an emergency meeting regarding attacks originating in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.
Buenos Aires Bust: The Argentine Federal Police arrested three men from Syria and Lebanon suspected of planning a terrorist attack at the Pan American Maccabi Games in Buenos Aires.
This Year in Tel Aviv: Palantir Technologies announced plans to hold its first board meeting of 2024 in Tel Aviv later this month.
Mess at The Messenger: Richard Beckman, president of The Messenger, announced his departure from the struggling media outlet, which is laying off two dozen employees from a 300-person team.
Kyrie Complaint: A Utah rabbi said he and three other rabbis holding signs reading “I’m a Jew and I’m proud” at Monday’s game between the Utah Jazz and the Dallas Mavericks were made to put down their signs after Mavericks star Kyrie Irving objected to them.
ICJ Challenge: Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said Israel plans to challenge South Africa’s recent complaint to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Innovation Nation: The head of the Israel Innovation Authority said the country will do “whatever it takes” to protect tech startups struggling in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Transition: Samantha Vinograd, previously the assistant secretary for counterterrorism, threat prevention and law enforcement policy at the Department of Homeland Security, is joining Brunswick Group as a partner and geopolitical lead. h/t Playbook
Pic of the Day
Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate David McCormick visited Kfar Aza, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border that was hit hard by the Oct. 7 massacre, with his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, on Tuesday.
Birthdays
Israeli basketball player on the Washington Wizards, he was a first-round pick in the 2020 NBA draft, Deni Avdija turns 23…
Former Treasury secretary under President Carter, CEO of Burroughs Corporation and Unisys, followed by 17 years as director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, W. Michael Blumenthal turns 98… Computer scientist and computational theorist, he is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Manning Karp turns 89… Professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, Kenneth Prager, M.D. turns 81… CNN legal analyst, he was formerly a Watergate prosecutor and later a member of the 9/11 Commission, Richard Ben-Veniste turns 81… Former legal affairs reporter at The New York Times and contributing editor at Vanity Fair, David Margolick turns 72… Scion of the eponymous vacuum cleaner company and tax attorney, he served as the U.S. ambassador to Finland during the Obama administration, Bruce James Oreck turns 71… Professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine, Ralph R. Isberg turns 69… Justice of the Ontario Superior Court and former national president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Edward M. Morgan turns 69… Italian actor and comedian, known professionally as Gioele Dix, David Ottolenghi turns 68… Director of the Year-in-Israel program at HUC-JIR, Reuven Greenvald… Former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica, S. Fitzgerald Haney turns 55… Managing director and senior partner in the NYC office of the Boston Consulting Group, Neal Zuckerman… Senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News after 17 years at The Los Angeles Times, Noam Naftali Levey… Attorney in Minneapolis and former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Jeremy N. Kalin turns 49… President at Kiosite, LLC, Michael Novack… Founder and president of Golden Strategies, Jenna Golden… Executive director at Groundwork Action, Igor Volsky… Former child actor who starred in “Home Alone 3,” he is now a planning assistant for the City of Los Angeles, Alexander David Linz turns 35… Team leader at Tel Aviv-based EverC, Alana Aliza Herbst…
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