Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman gained national prominence as a whistleblower who helped spark former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. Now, as a congressional candidate, Vindman says he’d use his background as a war crimes prosecutor to train a critical eye on Israel’s operations in Gaza, emphasizing the need for thorough scrutiny of any potential wrongdoing, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Vindman is one of nine Democrats running for the seat of Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who is leaving Congress to pursue a gubernatorial campaign. Republicans, who landed a top recruit for the race, also plan on targeting the swing Northern Virginia district.

Looking closely: In an interview with JI, Vindman cited his experience as a war crimes prosecutor and investigator as a “unique” asset when it comes to his “nuanced” approach to Middle East policymaking. While he calls himself a supporter of Israel, he also said that he would be “highly surprised” if some Israeli soldiers hadn’t engaged in misconduct during operations in Gaza to take out Hamas — something he described as essentially inevitable in war, including by U.S. troops. But he said he hasn’t seen any evidence of systemic violations.

Elaborating: Vindman said, “As a responsible international actor, [Israel] has an obligation to conduct operations in accordance with the law of war and international criminal law,” which bans targeting civilians and civilian objects, mandates that it only attack lawful targets, requires it to distinguish between civilian and military targets and be proportionate in its attacks. “They have a right to self-defense, but they don’t get a free pass to do whatever they want,” he reiterated later in his conversation with JI. “I look at this from a perspective of supporting the Jewish state and Israel, but also as a strong supporter, [I] have to make sure… we hold them to that same standard that we would abide by.”

Read the full story here.

When the White House released its long-awaited national strategy to combat antisemitism last spring, Jewish leaders were puzzled by the inclusion of the Council of American-Islamic Relations as one of the organizations primed to take up the fight. The State Department’s antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lipstadt, urged patience at the time, despite the Muslim civil rights group’s long record of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish statements. But on Wednesday, in an interview with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen for Jewish Insider on the sidelines of the Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now summit in Manhattan, Lipstadt said “they’ve failed… [and] have no place in the fight against antisemitism.”

No place: Lipstadt’s comments come in the wake of a series of statements by CAIR leaders praising Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks — including from its executive director, Nihad Awad, who said in November that he was “happy to see” the attack, which he characterized as “self-defense.” “We gave CAIR a chance and they have proven that they have no place in the fight against antisemitism — if anything we have to fight those kinds of attitudes,” Lipstadt told JI. 

Larger context: Lipstadt’s remit is global, but with antisemitism dramatically rising in the U.S. in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas, her focus has shifted to include domestic hate towards Jews. She emphasized that the two are not mutually exclusive. She said she balances both by “talking about [domestic antisemitism] in the context of international antisemitism.”

Read the full interview here.

More from the conference: Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner addressed the gathering yesterday. Watch his remarks here.

The year 2014 — the last large-scale IDF ground operation in Gaza — has been on the minds of many Israelis since the war in Gaza began in October. A decade later, many of the key players in Washington and Jerusalem are the same with different titles. The year 2014 was also when Ari Harow was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff. When Harow wrote his new book, My Brother’s Keeper: Netanyahu, Obama, & the Year of Terror & Conflict that Changed the Middle East Forever, he didn’t know how much of the events nearly a decade earlier would reverberate at the time of its publication in late January. Harow has spent much of the past decade fighting legal charges against him, became a state witness in a corruption case against Netanyahu, and at the end of January was convicted on one count of fraud and breach of trust as part of a plea deal. Harow spoke with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov about his time in Netanyahu’s office, what the lessons of 2014 tell us about 2023-2024 and Netanyahu’s view on hostage negotiations.

Nightmares played out: “About a week or 10 days [after the Oct. 7 attack] it suddenly hit me that, wow, what I wrote about is really…the same players, same actors, same scenarios, but [now it’s] obviously on a much larger scale,” Harow said. “The nightmare scenarios I wrote about in the book are the nightmare scenarios that actually took place. That also shows that, when we talk about the intelligence failure, it’s not that we didn’t imagine the [Oct. 7] scenario – I outline it. It was discussed in 2014, [terrorists] crossing the border, taking over kibbutzes, killing people, taking hostages, etc. When it actually took place, it was eerie to go back and look at the book.”

Bibi’s rationale on the Shalit deal: “From a policy perspective, Netanyahu was a founding and leading voice [discussing] how to deal with terrorists,” Harow said. “He was the father of not negotiating with terrorists, and that was always his stance in previous deals that took place. When it came to the Shalit deal – this was not something that he shared publicly – but he told me that his rationale to even contemplate that type of deal was Iran. If we at some point decided to attack Iran’s nuclear capabilities, he wanted to give the pilots and soldiers the confidence that Israel would do everything in their power to bring them home, so that they could go out on their missions without any worries at heart, and therefore he was going to pay a price.” 

Read the full interview here.

Since before she can even remember, Eve Rosenbaum, the assistant general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, has been faithfully committed to her hometown baseball team, having attended her first Orioles game at Memorial Stadium in 1990, when she was just 9 weeks old. Like many long-suffering Baltimore baseball fans, however, Rosenbaum, 34, has never seen her team win the World Series or even advance to the championship. The Orioles last claimed the trophy more than four decades ago, in 1983. Now, as the Orioles gear up for a highly anticipated new season boasting one of their strongest rosters in recent memory, Rosenbaum, in her fifth year with the club, can be credited with helping to instill a renewed if unfamiliar sense of mounting excitement with just a few weeks until Opening Day. “The team last year was good enough and our players are only going to continue to mature and get better,” Rosenbaum told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel in a recent interview, “so I’m definitely excited for the season coming up.”

Great expectations: Speaking from Sarasota, Fla., where the Orioles are now midway through spring training, Rosenbaum noted that expectations are especially high this year as the players ride the momentum from a 101-win season in 2023 that took them all the way to the American League Division Series — a remarkable turnaround for a team that had long been stuck in last place. “There’s a different vibe at spring training this year,” she told JI. In the past, “sometimes it would kind of be like, ‘OK, we’re just trying to get through the season,’ and then it’s like, ‘OK, we’re trying to figure out who’s an interesting player or who might stick around.’” 

Talent on the field: This year, on the other hand, “it’s like, ‘We’re here, we’re legit, people have to take us seriously,’” she said. “I think the talent we’re going to put on the field is going to be a super exciting collection of players.” Most notably, that collection now includes Corbin Burnes, the Cy Young-winning pitcher whom the Orioles acquired from the Milwaukee Brewers last month in a blockbuster trade that is likely to boost Baltimore’s odds of advancing to the World Series. 

Read the full interview here.

A group of 24 Jewish lawmakers condemned the United Nations on Wednesday for its long delay in issuing a report on sexual violence committed by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, even as they described its conclusions as “welcome,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Criticism: The lawmakers called the report “long-overdue” and said they “are appalled that it took the United Nations nearly five months to believe evidence that includes graphic, horrifying photographs and videos taken immediately after the attack and statements from released hostages, eyewitnesses, first responders, law enforcement, and trauma experts.”

Who signed: The statement was organized by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Kathy Manning (D-NC). The additional signatories spanned the political spectrum from progressives to Republicans. They included nearly all Jewish House members: Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Becca Balint (D-VT), Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Mike Levin (D-CA), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Max Miller (R-OH), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Dean Phillips (D-MN), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Susan Wild (D-PA).

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere in Washington: The House passed a package of several 2024 appropriations bills on Wednesday, including provisions directing the secretary of commerce to continue supporting the administration’s antisemitism strategy and directing the Department of Justice to issue a report, within 60 days, on its plans to implement the strategy. “The unprecedented rise in antisemitism in the United States since Hamas’s October 7th massacre in Israel is deeply disturbing and requires swift action,” Manning, a co-chair of the House antisemitism task force, told JI. “That is why I welcome the inclusion of key provisions requiring the Departments of Justice and Commerce to enforce the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism and report progress to Congress.”

Before the current war in Gaza, calls to place conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel were largely the purview of the far-left fringe. But amid Israel’s military campaign to root out Hamas, with a mounting civilian death toll and worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, the effort has become increasingly common among Democrats. And as the rhetoric has shifted, the left wing’s position has also moved further, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. After having successfully pressed the White House to implement new, global conditions on foreign arms sales, some on the left are calling for the U.S. to threaten to or immediately suspend military aid to Israel entirely. 

New Letter: Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) led 34 House Democrats on a letter warning against an Israeli invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, arguing that such an operation would likely violate U.S. arms sales policy. “As contemplated by the Administration’s policy, a ground invasion that runs counter to the specific principles outlined in NSM-20 should not be supported by U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance,” the letter reads, referring to the new arms sales policy issued by the administration placing human rights and humanitarian aid-related conditions on arms sales to all U.S. allies.

Shut down: Some progressive Senate Democrats have staked out similar positions. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also said aid should be cut off in the event of a Rafah invasion. Sens. Peter Welch (D-VT), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have said military assistance needs to be cut off immediately unless Israel increases humanitarian aid access in Gaza. They argued that Israel’s alleged obstruction of aid already violates existing arms sales restrictions.

Read the full story here.

TikTok Ban: The Jewish Federations of North America is urging the House Energy and Commerce Committee to approve a bill today seeking to ban or force the sale of TikTok by its China-based parent company. JFNA described TikTok as “the worst offender by far” in driving antisemitism on social media. “There is no one answer to the rise in antisemitism, but… [the bill] is a very important step that Congress can take today,” JFNA leadership said.