Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) is scheduled to give remarks at a fundraising banquet for a leading Muslim advocacy group on Saturday alongside several speakers who have made antisemitic and homophobic comments, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Age-old trope: The freshman Squad member, a vocal critic of Israel who represents the Pittsburgh area, is among four speakers invited to appear at an event this weekend hosted by the Philadelphia branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), according to an online flier. One of the speakers, Ibrahim Jaaber, an author and former professional basketball player, has called Israelis “demons” who lie to “cover their horns.”

Glorifying Oct. 7: Another speaker, Nadirah Pierre, a stand-up comedian, appeared to rejoice over the Hamas attack hours after it had occurred. “May Allah destroy them even worse than they have tried to destroy others!” she said. Yasir Fahmy, an Islamic scholar who is slated to deliver the keynote speech at the CAIR event, has condemned Zionism as a “sick, sadistic cult” and railed against gay and transgender people for what he has denounced as a “destructive” lifestyle.

Primary problems: A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to a request for comment regarding her participation in the CAIR event. In recent days, Lee has drawn criticism from a top primary challenger, Bhavini Patel, for accepting campaign donations from pro-Palestinian activists who have made antisemitic remarks about Israel, most notably CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, who has celebrated Hamas’ attacks. His comments were condemned by the White House in December.

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The father of Rose Lubin, a 21-year-old Atlanta native and lone soldier in the Israel Defense Forces who was killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem in November, announced a campaign for the Georgia state Senate last week. David Lubin is taking on incumbent state Sen. Sally Harrell, a Democrat with whom he developed a relationship after she honored Rose by authoring a resolution in her memory. But the Lubins’ relationship with Harrell deteriorated after she delivered a Senate floor speech in January arguing against passage of a bill that would define antisemitism in state law in order to aid law enforcement and other public officials, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Community connection: Lubin, a general contractor who has never been involved in politics before, is pitching himself as a more moderate alternative willing to listen to the district’s Jewish community and take their concerns seriously at a time of mounting grief and fear. “If she’s this disconnected with a group of Jewish people that are under threat,” Lubin told JI on Friday, “then what is she doing with other stuff? That’s where I really felt I’ve got to do something, not just for the Jewish community, but for other communities as well.” 

Opposition explained: The antisemitism bill passed with near-unanimous support, but Harrell did not cast a vote after giving a speech explaining her opposition to it. First, she said she worries the bill — which utilizes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — impinges on Georgians’ free speech. (Some on the left take issue with IHRA designating some anti-Zionist rhetoric as antisemitic.) Her larger concern, though, appeared to be with the optics of passing a bill that defines antisemitism and not Islamophobia, even though no similar Islamophobia bill had been introduced.

Daughter’s inspiration: Lubin’s decision to enter the race, as a complete newcomer to politics, comes less than three months before Georgia’s May 21 primary. “The people that I talked to said, ‘David, if anyone can stand up to this, it’s going to be you, with your current situation, who you are, what you stand for, what you represent, who has a chance.’ We talked about that as a family,” Lubin said. “My daughter, she lived that way every day. And it inspired me.” 

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Kurt Campbell took office this month as the deputy secretary of state — the No. 2 job at the State Department — launching the foreign policy veteran into the heart of multiple global crises, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Campbell’s decades-long career across several presidential administrations has taken him across the spectrum of federal government agencies, including stints at the Defense Department, State Department, Treasury, National Security Council and U.S. Navy. He’s also served at a series of influential nongovernmental institutions, including as a founder of the Center for a New American Security. 

Asia focus: But Campbell — most recently the national security council coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, known colloquially as the Asia czar — has, for years, focused on Asia and the Indo-Pacific, making him less of a known quantity to some longtime Middle East hands than some of his predecessors.

Looking back: William Wechsler, the senior director of the Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, told JI he first met Campbell in the Pentagon during the Clinton administration, when Campbell was assigned to create a new Plans and Analysis group. Wechsler, who worked under Campbell, described him as “one of the sharpest and smartest people that I’ve worked for. He’s a real big thinker… Kurt likes to get deep on the portfolio.”

Campbell’s approach: He added that Campbell held “very traditional views about the importance of American power and the role that America plays” and “a real commitment to long-standing American allies like Israel.” He said he’d expect Campbell to be fully supportive of President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel and other issues in the region.

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When local elections are held in Israel every five years, the campaigns are usually inescapable, with posters and billboards seemingly everywhere, frequent campaign events, constant text messages to potential voters and kids on street corners and at shopping centers, handing out flyers and stickers with their parents’ faces on them. The top issues often include parking spots, traffic, school amenities and bus routes — and in some cases, corruption. A wartime campaign, however, is a much more staid affair. The top-of-mind issues have changed drastically, and the challenges are compounded for candidates who have been serving in IDF reserve duty for a significant portion of the last four months, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.

Gush Etzion: Yaron Rosenthal is running to be the head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, leading the settlement bloc adjacent to Jerusalem that includes Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, where he grew up and resides today. He spent most of the past four months serving in a reconnaissance platoon in the IDF Paratroopers’ Brigade in Khan Younis, Gaza. “Like many other reservists, I was called up on Oct. 7,” Rosenthal told JI. “When I got there, I was told that everyone running in the elections is exempt from duty, but I said that I wouldn’t leave.I knew I’d pay a price [in the election] because I disappeared from Gush Etzion for four months, after leading a campaign…but I agreed to pay that price because we educate our children to contribute to the collective. I cannot look my brothers, children and friends in the eye after talking about this value all my life if, in the moment of truth, I don’t do it,” he said.

Jerusalem: Noa Shalom, 26, is running for a seat on Jerusalem’s City Council, with the Hitorerut (“Awakening”) list, meant to represent the capital’s pluralistic, Zionist young people. When the war broke out, Shalom and Hitorerut “set up the ‘civilian war room’ in Jerusalem, one of the biggest [volunteer efforts] in the country,” she recounted to JI. “We provided every kind of service – rides, supplies, food for soldiers, mental health, babysitters for families. I was one of the founders and worked very intensely for the first 10 days, and then I was called for reserve duty.” Shalom, an officer in the elite IDF Intelligence Unit 8200, returned from reserve duty last month after over two months of service. About half of the Hitorerut list did reserve duty in recent months, and some have yet to return. 

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A group of progressive Senate Democrats sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday excoriating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and expressing reservations about the administration’s reported plans to transfer additional weapons to Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The letter was signed by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM).

Requests: They accused Netanyahu of pursuing “one overriding objective — keeping himself and his extremist right-wing government in power,” rather than returning the hostages. The lawmakers also called on the administration to “use all the tools at its disposal to stop any major military operation” in Rafah and reiterated calls for additional humanitarian aid to Gaza. They dismissed media and Israeli government reports of Hamas’ theft of international aid as “the Netanyahu government’s assertions.”

Aid in question: They further requested information from the administration about “credible reports” that Israel may be committing “serious violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law,” and how the administration has determined that the Israeli government has not “restricted, directly or indirectly” the provision of U.S. humanitarian assistance. Both conditions, under pre-existing law, would be grounds for cutting off U.S. military assistance to Israel.

Language used: In most instances, the letter refers to the “Netanyahu government” or “Netanyahu coalition” — instead of Israel — a formulation that has become increasingly common among left-wing lawmakers to distance themselves from the U.S. ally without directly condemning Israel as a nation. The language sidesteps Israeli polling showing that there is overwhelming support in Israel for the military campaign in Gaza, and that key opposition parties also support it.

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