Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how the Biden administration’s Israel policy is boosting support in Pennsylvania, and talk to Noa Tishby and Emmanuel Acho about a new book they will publish in April about antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Miguel Cardona and Abe Foxman.
Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana was on the Hill yesterday at the height of the drama around aid to Israel, Jewish Insider’s senior political correspondent Lahav Harkov reports.
Ohana, who is leading a Knesset delegation to Washington, was accompanied to a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) by hostages’ relatives: Eitan Gonen, father of Romi, Zvika and Efrat Mor; the parents of Eitan and founders of “Tikva Forum,” a hawkish hostages’ families group; Ali Alziadne, whose brother Youssef and nephew Hamza are still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza; and Thomas Hand, whose 9-year-old daughter Emily was released from captivity.
Gonen said that he “vowed that I will go anywhere and shout from every platform to bring about the release of my daughter Romi together with all the hostages. These meetings on Capitol Hill are important to keep the issue on the international agenda… [The hostages] are out of time. Their medical and mental situation is unbearable.”
Johnson accepted an invitation from Ohana to visit the Knesset. The House speaker said that Hamas’ attack “was an attack on our shared values,” and that “the U.S. and Israel are in a civilizational war against enemies of freedom itself… When Israel is threatened, freedom itself is threatened.”
“The Jewish people deserve to live in safety and freedom in their ancient homeland. We are proud to stand with you,” Johnson added, according to a readout from the Knesset.
Ohana said that the Knesset delegation, which included Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein, as well as opposition lawmakers Idan Roll (Yesh Atid) and Efrat Rayten (Labor), was “united and committed to bringing back all the hostages.”
“Our countries share the same threats by dark forces in the world — the Ayatollah regime,” Ohana said. “Iran cannot leave this war the same as it entered it.”
The delegation also met with the Biden administration’s envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) plan to host the delegation in a special event today calling for the release of the hostages.
Ohana’s meetings on the Hill came hours after an assessment from the IDF that one-fifth of the hostages — some 32 individuals — were determined to have died in Hamas captivity, or to have been killed and their bodies being brought to Gaza. The IDF confirmed their deaths and said that families have been notified.
The number is the most concrete assessment of the hostage crisis to date, and comes amid a swell of support in Israel for the government to prioritize the hostages’ releases.
Reuters reports that Hamas released its own proposal for a phased hostage release, following negotiations over the last several weeks that have not borne fruit. According to the terms proposed by the terror group, some 1,500 Palestinian prisoners would be released — one-third of whom are serving life sentences.
An IDI poll released this week found that a slim majority of Israelis — 51% — believe the government’s first priority should be to secure the hostages’ freedom. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed said that destroying Hamas — the stated top goal of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — should be the main objective.
But whether Israel will have military support from the U.S. to accomplish its goal remains an open question after the House failed on Tuesday evening to pass a stand-alone Israel aid bill amid opposition from many Democrats and a handful of Republicans. Meanwhile, senators declared their bipartisan compromise legislation on the border — which Republicans had said was necessary to advance foreign aid — to be dead, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The demise of both the House and the Senate’s bills will force Congress back to the drawing board to piece together a new plan to advance aid to Israel, potentially seeking to advance a smaller package including funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Johnson said on Tuesday afternoon that he planned to move the Israel funding bill through the House Rules Committee next week if it failed, to allow for a second House vote requiring only a simple majority for passage. But that plan doesn’t appear to be viable, given that the three right-wing Republicans on the committee — Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) — all voted against the Israel-only bill. Assuming no lawmakers on the committee flip their votes, the bill would not have the votes to pass the Rules Committee.

keystone votes
Why Biden’s pro-Israel support has bolstered his standing in must-win Pennsylvania

Shortly after hundreds of Hamas terrorists launched the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, President Joe Biden delivered an emotional address pledging to stand by Israel in responding to the massacre. The months since have brought devastating fallout, both in the Middle East and here in the U.S., where antisemitism has exploded and civil unrest has erupted over the war. Some Muslim Americans and young left-wing activists are threatening to sit out the 2024 presidential election or vote for third-party candidates over their opposition to Biden’s support for Israel. While that scenario has sparked serious concern among Democrats in Michigan, which has the nation’s largest proportion of Arab-American residents, Democrats in Pennsylvania — the biggest battleground state and a must-win for Biden in November — view the political ramifications of the Israel-Hamas war differently, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
State leaders: Pennsylvania’s Democratic leaders, from Gov. Josh Shapiro to Sens. John Fetterman and Bob Casey, have emerged as strong supporters of Israel and close allies of the state’s Jewish community since Oct. 7. (In another sign of Pennsylvania voters’ support for Israel, Republican Dave McCormick is running against Casey by arguing he has a stronger pro-Israel record — and making a recent visit to the Jewish state.)
Jewish voters matter: With the fourth-largest Jewish population in the country, Pennsylvania is one of just a handful of states where Jewish voters can have a decisive impact on election results. A 2021 study found that the state has 299,000 Jewish adults, about 3% of Pennsylvania’s voting population. In 2020, Biden beat Donald Trump in the state by roughly 1.2%, or 81,000 votes.
Political repercussions: If Biden had changed his strategy and ceded to the demands of anti-Israel voices on the party’s left, some Pennsylvania Democrats argue he likely would still have faced political consequences — just from a different direction. “If you go down that alternate route, and say, ‘Biden would have reacted the way some on the left want him to react,’ there’s no question that he would have paid a political price for that as well. It just would have been with, say, Jewish moderates in places like suburban Philadelphia or Long Island,” said one top Pennsylvania Democratic elected official.
Read the full story here.