Daily Kickoff
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the challenges faced by Britain’s Labour party leader Keir Starmer amid increased pressure from anti-Israel forces within his party, and highlight Democratic candidates in a deep-blue Alabama House district courting AIPAC’s endorsement. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Ronen Tzur and Noah Kahan.
The Biden administration continues to offer mixed messaging as to how it views a potential Israeli invasion of Rafah, which Israeli leaders have described as imminent, reports Jewish Insider senior national correspondent Gabby Deutch.
The U.S. drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution stating that “under current circumstances, a major ground offensive into Rafah should not proceed,” according to a speech delivered by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Tuesday.
The White House, meanwhile, is offering slightly different language that leaves room for a possible Israeli operation.
“We do not support operations in Rafah under the current circumstances without a credible plan to deal with the safety and security of the people there,” John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said on Tuesday.
“We certainly support going after Hamas. We certainly support decapitating their network and eliminating the threat,” Kirby continued. “I did see comments by Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu that he ordered his military leaders to come up with such a plan.” But, Kirby added, he is “not aware” of any such plan having been completed.
The White House has similarly continued to resort to semanticson another key matter: whether the U.S. supports a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The U.S. on Tuesday vetoed a separate U.N. Security Council resolution, authored by Algeria, that called for an “immediate cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war. Thomas-Greenfield said it could imperil talks to release the hostages, and the State Department’s top spokesperson explained that “an unconditional cease-fire only benefits Hamas.”
The competing resolution drafted by the U.S. calls for a “temporary cease-fire in Gaza as soon as practicable,” premised on the release of all hostages, according to Thomas-Greenfield.
The language doesn’t reflect a change in policy — the goal she described, of a negotiated deal that would pause fighting for up to six weeks if all hostages are released, has been the U.S. position for weeks — but it is the first time the White House used the term “cease-fire.” Previously, administration officials had opted for phrases like “humanitarian pause” or “cessation of hostilities.”
White House officials denied that the change in language was meaningful. “It reflects what we’ve been doing all along. It hasn’t changed what we’ve been doing,” said Thomas-Greenfield.
But it comes as the White House faces growing pressure from progressives to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. And while the White House’s stated policy aims remain unchanged, the new language offers a small, symbolic concession to those on the activist left for whom “cease-fire now” has become a rallying cry, even if such a term is increasingly meaningless.
labour’s love lost
Keir Starmer facing the ghost of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour party
In the latest sign that the anti-Israel left in Britain is gaining momentum, Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s Labour party, has called for a full and permanent cease-fire in Gaza, a policy turnaround for the politician widely seen as the country’s next prime minister. Speaking in Glasgow at Scottish Labour’s conference on Sunday, Starmer won lengthy applause when he called for the fighting to “stop now” and called for a “cease-fire that lasts.” The Labour leader’s speech, in which he also warned Israel against an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, came just days ahead of a vote in the House of Commons, led by the Scottish National Party (SNP), for an immediate cease-fire. Members of the Scottish wing of the Labour party had also been backing such calls, Lianne Kolirin reports for Jewish Insider.
Fueled by fear? In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ murderous attacks on Oct. 7, Starmer was unequivocal in his support for Israel. He received a standing ovation at the Labour party conference in Liverpool that same weekend, when he forcefully condemned the attacks. The following month he called for a “humanitarian pause,” and asked his party to abstain on a previous SNP motion to back a cease-fire. But the issue was proving divisive, leading 56 Labour MPs to rebel over the vote and prompting many resignations from front-bench politicians. Some political observers feel Starmer’s hardening position is, in part, fueled by fear of losing Muslim votes — particularly with a general election drawing closer.
‘Night and day’: Starmer became Labour party leader in 2020 after his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, lost in a landslide to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. One of his key pledges on taking over was to rid the party of the antisemitism it had become associated with under Corbyn. “It’s ludicrous to suggest that — as [Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak and other Tories have — that the party hasn’t changed since Corbyn’s leadership,” Mike Katz, chairman of Jewish Labour Movement, told JI. “The difference is like night and day. Keir has shown a deep personal commitment on tackling antisemitism. Just last week marked a year since the EHRC took Labour out of special measures, following its unprecedented, damning report into Labour antisemitism.”
alabama intrigue
Leading Alabama Democratic candidates openly pulling for AIPAC endorsement
Multiple leading Democratic candidates in a newly drawn Alabama House district are openly vying for an endorsement from AIPAC — a pattern that runs counter to efforts from the progressive left to cast the group as a conservative influence at odds with the Democratic base, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Going deeper: One leading candidate in the race professed to have received an endorsement that AIPAC said it hadn’t issued, while another is publicly making a pitch for the group’s support. The seat, Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, was redrawn as a Black opportunity district for the 2024 cycle, giving Democrats a strong chance of picking up the seat and attracting a slew of congressional hopefuls.
Endorsement snafu: Anthony Daniels, the minority leader in the Alabama House of Representatives and the top fundraising Democrat for the 2nd District, promoted an endorsement from AIPAC on his campaign website that AIPAC says it never issued. The endorsement has since been removed from Daniels’ website. Richard Merritt, a spokesperson for Daniels campaign told JI, “We were informed that it was not a sole endorsement, so we removed their name from our website. We are thankful for the ongoing support from AIPAC.”
Joining the fray: Meanwhile, another prominent candidate in the race, state Rep. Napoleon Bracy, was eager to burnish his own pro-Israel credentials when asked about the snafu, highlighting the “special bond” between the U.S. and Israel and calling Israel a “cornerstone” of the U.S.’ Middle East security policy. Bracy also openly made a pitch for AIPAC’s support: “Our campaign is in the best position to continuously support AIPAC as a grassroots organization fueled by the people’s agenda.”
Tzur-is
Controversial strategist Ronen Tzur departs helm of hostages forum
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu articulated the goals of the war against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks, he said they were to topple Hamas and free the hostages. It was unclear if both could be achieved and which should be prioritized. More than four months later, as over 130 hostages languish in Gaza, the Israeli public is divided on what the war’s central goal should be. Now, the Hostages’ Families Forum, the central group advocating on behalf of the hostages, whose relatives have been divided over tactics, is facing a leadership vacuum, following the departure of founder and head Ronen Tzur, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
Background: In Israel, Tzur is a well-known political strategist and crisis communications expert known for orchestrating negative campaigns against Netanyahu. He briefly served as a Knesset member in the Labor party in 2006, and more recently advised war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz when he entered politics in 2019, as well as Malka Leifer, ahead of her extradition to Australia to face charges that she molested students as a school principal. Tzur founded a movement dedicated to protesting against the government’s judicial reform proposal, and spearheaded a campaign titled “How to Defeat the Bibi-ist Terrorism,” a reference to the Hebrew title of a book on terrorism edited by Netanyahu.
Call for consensus: Tzur initiated the establishment of the volunteer-based Hostages’ Families Forum in the days following the Oct. 7 attack — many of the leading figures in the forum worked with him in different capacities before the war. Forty-five hostage families signed onto a petition calling for Tzur’s ouster, citing his polarizing personality and a sense that key government figures did not want to work with him. “In order for a deal to be approved at this point in time, we need consensus more than ever,” the petition reads. “One of the most important factors in creating public consensus is to operate under a head of the forum who is not painted in one political color or another, whether it is his fault or not.” Tzur presented his departure as a resignation by choice following a meeting with hostages’ families on Sunday.
Survey says: An Israeli Democracy Institute survey found that 55% of Israelis believe that an “absolute victory” to Israel’s war against Hamas is unlikely. A minority of Jewish Israelis (37%) support a political agreement to end the war. The poll also found that 63% of Jewish Israelis oppose the establishment of an “independent and demilitarized” Palestinian state.
peoplehood parliament
In the Knesset, U.S. Jewish leaders decry rising antisemitism, hail Israel ties
There have been 44 physical antisemitic attacks against Jewish college students since Oct. 7, more than occurred in the previous 10 years combined, Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told an Israeli Knesset committee on Tuesday, during a meeting between Israeli parliamentarians and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
Campus chaos: “It is truly a catastrophe at this point,” Lehman said, noting that the total number of antisemitic incidents on campuses since Oct. 7 has surpassed the 1,000 mark. Lehman said Hillel, working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, has been using “every legal channel available” to combat antisemitism on campus, including “lobbying aggressively with the United States government to make sure that they are enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”
Diaspora role: The meeting of the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee and the Conference of Presidents focused both on the struggles of the American Jewish community — specifically rising antisemitism in general and on college campuses in particular — and on the strong ties between U.S. Jewry and Israel. “We thank you, our dear guests, for your mobilization and many generous contributions to the State of Israel. It was very important for us. I think one of the most touching moments of this war was to see the whole Jewish people together, and I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you,” committee chair MK Oded Forer, of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said at the start of the session.
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
Worthy Reads
Harvard Tarred: In The New York Times, Anemona Hartocollis spotlights a recent summit of university presidents, where “the talk was about Harvard and its plummeting reputation.” “Many of the presidents attending the summit saw the erosion of Harvard’s brand as a problem not only for the school, but also by extension for the entire enterprise of higher education. If Harvard could not protect itself, then what about every other institution? Could Harvard’s leadership find an effective response? There was a hint of a more assertive approach by Harvard on Monday, when the university announced that it was investigating ‘deeply offensive antisemitic tropes’ posted on social media by pro-Palestinian student and faculty groups. The groups had posted or reposted material containing an old cartoon of a puppeteer, his hand marked by a dollar sign inside a Star of David, lynching Muhammad Ali and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Harvard took the action at a time when the House Committee on Education and the Workforce has begun to scrutinize its record on antisemitism. On Friday, the committee issued subpoenas to Harvard’s interim president, the head of the school’s governing board and its investment manager, in a wide-ranging hunt for documents relating to the university’s handling of campus antisemitism claims.” [NYTimes]
Noah (Kahan’s) Musical Arc:The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich profiles musician Noah Kahan, who on early tours, sometimes introduced himself as “the Jewish Ed Sheeran” — “a good line, but also an apt description of his entire vibe. Kahan’s first few releases are lightly catchy indie pop — the sort of thing that might play at a reasonable volume while a dental hygienist scrapes gunk off your molars. In 2018, he performed his single ‘Hurt Somebody’ on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,’ and a version with Julia Michaels later went gold in the U.S…But it wasn’t until ‘Stick Season’ that Kahan finally found a sound — folksy, drunken, depraved, a little neurotic — that felt singular. He wrote the title track at an Airbnb in Los Angeles while he was in town for a recording session…The song opened something up for Kahan. ‘It’s very clearly about Vermont. It’s very clearly about transitions, and feeling stuck, or left behind. Suddenly, all these other songs I’d written came into view in a different way. That’s when I felt like I had an album.’ Kahan’s songs tend to unfold in the strange liminal space between late adolescence and adulthood, but they also nod to the strange liminal space that was 2020 through 2022, when it felt as though the only responsible choice was to stay tethered to one’s sofa, mired in a kind of arrested development (‘Doc told me to travel, but there’s COVID on the planes,’ Kahan sings on ‘Stick Season’).” [TheNewYorker]
Spinoza’s Moment: In The New York Times, Ian Buruma, author of Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah, opines that Spinoza’s philosophy is as pertinent as ever. “Living now as we do in a time of book-banning, intellectual intolerance, religious bigotry and populist demagoguery, his radical advocacy of freedom still seems fresh and urgent… In the universities, too, Spinoza did not think that the religious approach to truth could be abolished. The answer was to separate religious knowledge from science. There was room for both, without one encroaching on the turf of the other. In our own time, we see demagogues inciting the masses with irrational and hateful fantasies. We see universities torn by ideological struggles that make free inquiry increasingly difficult. Once again there is a conflict between the scientific and the ideological approaches to truth. For example, the notion in some progressive circles that the teaching of mathematics is a form of toxic white supremacy and must be pressed into the service of correcting racial injustices, is, as some people might put it, problematic.” [NYTimes]
Around the Web
Super Tuesday Planning: Nikki Haley announced she will be continuing to compete in the Republican presidential primary — past this Saturday’s South Carolina primary. “I feel no need to kiss the ring…I have no fear of Trump’s retribution. I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern,” she said Tuesday.
Curious Comparison: Former President Donald Trump continued to compare his legal problems to the plight of the murdered Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, in an interview Thursday night on Fox News.
In the Middle: Former CNN commentator John Avlon, a centrist columnist, announced a campaign for Congress running as a Democrat against Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) on eastern Long Island.
Ritchie Bolts: Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has left the Democratic Party’s Congressional Progressive Caucus over its response to Israel’s war with Hamas.
Saban’s Support: Israeli-American mogul Haim Saban rejected concerns about President Joe Biden’s age as “Bullsh–t!” in comments to TheWrap, ahead of a fundraiser held at his home for the president last night.
Seeing Crimson: Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, strongly condemned an antisemitic image posted by two pro-Palestinian groups in a statement to university affiliates. “The University will review the situation to better understand who was responsible for the posting and to determine what further steps are warranted,” Garber said.
Stepping Down: Walter Johnson, the Harvard professor who guided the groups Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine has stepped down from his faculty adviser role after the groups were widely condemned for posting an antisemitic image.
Wheels Down in TLV: EasyJet, KLM, Iberia, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic announced they will resume flights to Israel in March and April.
Seeking China’s Help: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan urged his Chinese counterpart to persuade his government to step in and demand Hamas release hostage Noa Argamani, whose mother, Liora Argamani, is a native of Wuhan, China, and has terminal cancer.
Bourkoff’s Bucks: Aryeh Bourkoff’s media advisory firm and merchant bank, LionTree, raised more than $1 billion last year, reportedly with some Saudi backing, in a new fund to support investments across media, entertainment, tech and gaming.
Hazard of the Job: The Washington Post spotlights Raw Story reporter Jordan Green, whose front yard was visited by neo-Nazis, attempting to intimidate him as he prepared to publish an investigation into them.
Dark Comedy:The Economist spotlights the response of Israel’s satire show “Eretz Nehederet” (A Wonderful Country) to Oct. 7 and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.
Clear Path: The IDF is expanding a road through central Gaza to facilitate secure Israeli military movement across the Strip even after most troops pull out, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Medical Care: Qatar said yesterday that Hamas confirmed that Israeli hostages have begun receiving medication that was delivered over one month ago to Gaza.
Emergency Aid: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency breaks down the $14 billion earmarked for emergency aid for Israel as part of a $95 billion foreign aid bill.
Strong Defense: U.S. officials are expected to defend Israel at the International Court of Justice today as part of the six-day hearing on the legality of Israel’s control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Syria Strike: Israeli warplanes allegedly fired missiles at an apartment building in a Damascus suburb this morning, killing two civilians, according to Syrian state media.
Pic of the Day
Aviva Siegel (right), who was released from Hamas captivity in November, addressed leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem yesterday, as part of a panel focusing on the sexual crimes and gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas. Also on the panel was Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, head of the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children (left); and Orit Sulitzeneau, executive director of The Association of Rape Crises Centers in Israel.
Birthdays
NYT best-selling novelist, writer-in-residence in the graduate creative writing program at NYU, Jonathan Safran Foer turns 47…
Holocaust survivor and author of a book on systemic hate, he was the developer of the L’Ermitage Beverly Hills in 1976, Severyn Ashkenazy turns 88… Co-founder of Dreamworks and noted collector of American artists’ work, David Geffen turns 81… Dean of Yeshiva Bais Yosef Novarodok in Brooklyn, Rabbi Mordechai Jofen turns 74… Monica Oakes Agor… Vice-chairman of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, Arn Herschel Tellem turns 70… Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is the director of a fiscal and monetary policy group at the Brookings Institution, David Meyer Wessel turns 70… Chairman of the KABR Group, a New Jersey based real estate investment firm, Kenneth D. Pasternak turns 70… President of Yale University since 2013, Peter Salovey (family name was Soloveitchik) turns 66… Fitness personality, he develops businesses through the “Body by Jake” brand, Jake Steinfeld turns 66… Owner of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns until 2012, he also owned Aston Villa F.C. of the English Premier League until 2016, Randolph David “Randy” Lerner turns 62… Former member of the Knesset for the Kadima and Hatnuah parties, Orit Zuaretz turns 57… Executive director of Advancing American Freedom, Paul Teller turns 53… Reality television star Jonathan Cheban turns 50… Former Chicago Cubs player, Adam Greenberg turns 43… Emergency medical physician at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Dr. Miriam Fischer Wachter… Former member of the Florida House of Representatives for six years, now in private law practice, Katie Edwards-Walpole turns 43… French actress, Mélanie Laurent turns 41… Director of strategic philanthropy for the northeast region of American Friends of Magen David Adom, Samuel Konig… Rochester, N.Y., resident, Joshua Futerman… Pitcher for the Israeli team at the 2017 World Baseball Classic qualifier, he is now a sales associate at Stryker, Brad Goldberg turns 34… Israeli judoka, she won a team bronze medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Shira Rishony turns 33… Director of campus support and action implementation at Hillel International, Reuben Berman… Rhythmic gymnast who competed in the 2012 Olympics in London as a member of the Israeli team, Polina Zakaluzny turns 32… Monsey, N.Y., resident, Efrayim Katz… Former professional tennis player, Noah Rubin turns 28… Associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, Jay S. Schaefer…
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