Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan, Maryland’s former governor, about concerns over the Biden administration’s shift on Israel policy, and interview Westchester County Executive George Latimer about his first-quarter fundraising haul as he challenges Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff, Dr. Miriam Adelson, Princess Reema Bandar al-Saud and Larry David.
More than 12,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to data released by the Israeli Defense Forces yesterday as Israel marked six months since the terror group’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, Jewish Insider’s senior correspondent Ruth Marks Eglash reports.
The updated assessment comes as Israel withdraws most of its brigades from southern Gaza, citing “tactical reasons.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his weekly cabinet meeting yesterday that the army is still planning to go into Rafah, where top Hamas leadership is believed to be hiding. The pullback is part of the army’s strategy to regroup ahead of a Rafah incursion. The Rafah operation, according to a Sunday release from Israel’s Defense Ministry, “will finalize the dismantling of Hamas as a military authority in Gaza.” Read the full story here.
Based on intelligence gathered from apprehended Hamas terrorists — the IDF said some 4,600 have been captured since the start of the war — the army was able to locate and recover the body of slain hostage Elad Katzir, who appeared in two hostage videos in December and January and is believed to have been killed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Katzir’s father was killed on Oct. 7; his mother was taken hostage and released in November.
The IDF now puts the number of hostages in Gaza at 133, a number that includes four young men — two of whom were killed in clashes with Hamas terrorists before their bodies were taken to the enclave — who were taken hostage years prior to the Oct. 7 attacks. Several dozen are believed to have been killed on Oct. 7 or since then. In The New York Times, Gershon Baskin, who served as a negotiator during the 2011 talks that freed Gilad Shalit in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian terrorists, including Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, considers what Israel could do to secure the release of the remaining hostages.
Communities around the U.S. marked the six months with rallies focused on calling for the release of the hostages. Thousands gathered at a rally outside the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, where current and former Israeli and U.S. officials, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), called for their release.
Meanwhile, Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid is in Washington this week for meetings with top U.S. officials including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Lapid will also meet with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), as well as Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), the latter of whom chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Questions about Israel’s next moves in Gaza — as well as U.S. support — will be front and center this week on Capitol Hill as lawmakers return to Washington following the Easter recess. Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee will meet tomorrow for a hearing on the Pentagon’s upcoming budget, while the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing hours later on the USAID budget. The SFRC, House Appropriations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee will convene Wednesday and Thursday for similar hearings on USAID’s budget.
policy priorities
Larry Hogan: Democrats will lose Jewish voters due to White House pressure on Israel

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, says he’s “very concerned” about backsliding support for Israel among Democrats, accusing the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers of caving to “pressure from the far-left base of their party” at the expense of “an awful lot of Jewish support,” Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Senate plans: JI sat for an interview with Hogan on Sunday at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore’s annual block party, where he huddled with Jewish leaders to mark six months since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and spoke with locals about his Senate bid. In an interview during the event, Hogan said that one of his leading policy priorities in the Senate “is being a champion for Israel” amid waning support from the Democratic Party.
Democratic digs: “I’m very concerned about it. When you have people like one of our senators here in Maryland, Chris Van Hollen, and [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-NY] taking positions that I never would have imagined,” Hogan told JI. “I’m concerned about the rise in antisemitism and I’m concerned about what were traditionally good allies and supporters turning their backs [on them] because of pressure from the far-left base of their party. It’s very frustrating, and I think it’s a mistake.”
Hogan’s warning: The Republican former two-term governor of Maryland also surmised that President Joe Biden’s escalating rhetoric on Israel could hurt him in November despite the tone shift being an effort to stem the bleeding of Arab American support. “I think he’s definitely feeling the pressure. There’s stories about people in the White House screaming at each other and everywhere they go they have protesters yelling at them. They’re definitely reacting, which is what they usually do. They cave to pressure, they show weakness,” Hogan said. “I think it’s going to hurt him drastically. I mean, he’s caving to the pressure from the Palestinian community because he was losing votes in Michigan, but he’s losing an awful lot of Jewish support now.”
Elsewhere: The editorial board of the Baltimore Jewish Timescriticized Van Hollen’s “relentless attacks against Israel” and said the “time when we counted Van Hollen as a challenging but reliable friend of the Jewish community and the state of Israel” is “gone,” adding, “we face the uncomfortable reality that Chris Van Hollen is not our friend.”