Daily Kickoff
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to Rep. Kathy Manning about calls within the Democratic caucus to suspend aid to Israel, and look at how the State Department’s granting of a visa to Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian to visit New York is being viewed on Capitol Hill. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Mohammed Soliman, Alex Edelman and Les Wexner.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Several university leaders begin cracking down on anti-Israel disruptions on campus; Is Biden losing his voice against rising antisemitism?; Israelis divided on merits of Gaza military pullback after six months of war. Print the latest edition here.
U.S. Embassy staff instructed to refrain from personal travel outside of the country’s major cities. Emails to parents suggesting their children take their notebooks home during the Passover recess in the event they can’t return to school after the holiday. People checking in with friends and colleagues, making sure they know the location of the nearest miklat — protected shelter.
At a time when most Jewish families around the world the world are preparing for Passover, Israelis are making other kinds of preparations: ensuring they and their families are prepared for a potential Iranian attack. The Wall Street Journal reported last night that Israel is gearing up for a potential Iranian attack in the coming days, citing U.S. intelligence reports that increasingly suggest the possibility of an Iranian attack within Israel’s borders.
The warnings come on the heels of a Thursday conversation between Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his German counterpart, in which Amir-Abdollahian said that Tehran plans to retaliate against Israel in a limited fashion following last week’s strike in Damascus that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials.
But concerns about an imminent attack are not dissuading Israeli diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the region. Israel and Indonesia took another small step towards establishing diplomatic relations this week in conjunction with the Asian archipelago state’s progress towards joining the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Jewish Insider senior political correspondent Lahav Harkov reports.
Israel had blocked Indonesia’s accession to the group of the world’s most advanced economies, arguing in a letter published in JI that there was no precedent for two countries without diplomatic relations being members of the organization. OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann committed to ensuring Indonesia would normalize ties with Israel, and Jerusalem said it would lift its veto.
An exchange of letters between Cormann and Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz this week, first published in Yediot Aharonot, confirmed JI’s earlier reporting. The OECD Council “formally agreed to a clear and explicit precondition that diplomatic relations must be established with all OECD members before any decision to issue an invitation to Indonesia to become a member,” Cormann wrote. Katz responded on Wednesday: “I am looking forward to a positive change in Indonesia’s policies in general, and vis a vis Israel in particular, notably renouncing its discriminatory policies toward Israel and to the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations.”
These steps come after Israel and Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, drafted an MOU in September announcing diplomatic relations, which they were set to sign in October. However, normalization was put to the side after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza, during which Indonesia has been a harsh critic of the Jewish state. The IDF raided the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, sparking outrage in Jakarta — although tunnels were later found below the hospital storing Hamas rockets and a car belonging to an Israeli hostage was found on the premises.
Two years ago, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told us in an off-record conversation — that he has since agreed to make public — that Indonesia would be the next country to normalize relations with Israel.
“As the largest Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia is playing a key role, signaling its willingness to engage in peaceful coexistence,” Daroff said this morning. “In addition to paving the way for broader cooperation in areas such as technology, trade, and tourism, the door is now more open to more engagement with Asia and the Muslim world.”
collegial concerns
Rep. Kathy Manning says calls for suspending Israel aid embolden Hamas
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod on Thursday that she’s worried that efforts and threats by her colleagues to suspend aid to Israel are making it less likely that Hamas will accept a deal to free the hostages, and that Hamas views such divisions between the U.S. and Israel as a victory — comments that echo sentiments expressed by other Democratic pro-Israel lawmakers in recent days.
Sign of success: Manning told JI in an interview that she’s “concerned” that “letters from some of my colleagues” about suspending aid to Israel “will be viewed by Hamas as a sign that they have succeeded, through the terrible humanitarian situation they’ve created in Gaza, which we know they expected and they exacerbate by continuing to hide underneath the civilians,” she said, referring to Hamas’ extensive network of tunnels.
Driving a wedge: “I am concerned that they now will see that they are driving a wedge between the United States and Israel,” she continued. “And why should they take a deal when, if they continue to allow the disaster to continue in Gaza — it’s doing their work for them.”
Hamas’ plan: Manning emphasized that Hamas “hold[s] the key” to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and that they are the only party interested in prolonging and worsening the humanitarian crisis. “It just seems obvious that their plan is to continue to encourage Israel to keep fighting so that they can build even more sympathy from the world,” she said. “And sadly, it’s easy to forget why the situation has developed the way it is.”
Warning: Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said in a statement that he warned Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat that “Israel is losing a world-wide public relations battle to baby killers” and that it “needs a new approach” because “the delegitimization effort poses a threat to the survival of the Jewish state.” He also warned Barkat that his approach to the West Bank and settlements is unviable and will not be acceptable to Arab governments.
tehran talk
State Department’s approval of Iran FM’s visa for U.N. visit splits senators
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has traveled to the U.S. — on visas granted by the State Department — twice since the Oct. 7 attacks perpetrated by Tehran’s proxy Hamas. Ahead of his third trip, slated for next week, some legislators on Capitol Hill are voicing concern over Foggy Bottom’s continued approval of Amir-Abdollahian’s visas, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Details: Iran’s mission to the U.N. confirmed this week that Amir-Abdollahian will be in New York on behalf of Tehran next Thursday for a U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel’s war in Gaza. The visit comes amid soaring tensions between Iran and Israel in the wake of a strike that killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials, including two generals, in Syria. Iran has vowed retribution against Israel, which it blames for the attacks.
Background: The U.S. has an agreement with the U.N. that requires the State Department to swiftly issue visas to all foreign diplomats traveling to New York for U.N. events. Those diplomats can seek permission to travel elsewhere in the country, though the U.S. is not required to accept those requests. The U.S. has denied entry to diplomats of foreign adversaries before through an exception in the host agreement relating to terrorism or foreign policy concerns and has the ability to do so for Amir-Abdollahian.
Giving Iran a platform: Asked about Amir-Abdollahian’s visa and inclusion by the U.N. in its upcoming event, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said he couldn’t “imagine why anybody would be involved with Iran. They’re the world’s largest underwriter of terror in the world, and I can’t imagine why anything that Iran can say about anything is relevant. I can’t imagine why you would platform that.”
Cost of hosting: A number of senators expressed apprehension at the idea of allowing Amir-Abdollahian into the U.S., but described it as an uncomfortable cost of keeping the United Nations on American soil. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told JI it’s “probably not” appropriate for the State Department to have granted the visa, though he noted that “maybe it’s a matter of diplomatic courtesy.” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “While I hate the thought of it, it’s probably the cost of having the U.N. here. But look, if we can stop this war that’s going to occur in the Middle East, if we can stop it before it gets started, the cost of a visa and the frustration that many of us feel is probably worth it.”
Read the full story here with additional quotes from Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Ted Budd (R-NC), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Mark Warner (D-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Peter Welch (D-VT).
california chaos
UC Berkeley condemns student antisemitic threats; school says it can’t disclose if it’s disciplining offenders
Days after the posting of a video that showed the dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school and his wife clashing with anti-Israel students at their home during what was meant to be a congratulatory graduation dinner, the university’s president condemned the incident as “antisemitic, threatening and not [a reflection of] the values of this university.” After the incident, in which a student gave an unauthorized speech about the plight of Palestinians at the home of law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, some students and local Jewish leaders are left wondering whether UC Berkeley will take disciplinary action, and are calling out the school’s leadership for a lack of transparency, eJewishphilanthropy’s Haley Cohen reports for Jewish Insider.
The incident: On Tuesday evening, several third-year law students were invited to attend one of three dinners celebrating their upcoming graduation at the Oakland home of Chemerinsky and his wife, law school professor Catherine Fisk. Held in the couple’s garden, the first dinner was disrupted when Malak Afaneh, a Palestinian American law student at the school who serves as co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, grabbed a microphone and started giving a speech about Gazans who have been killed amid Israel’s war with Hamas. As Chemerinsky and Fisk pleaded with Afaneh to leave their backyard, and eventually threatened to call the police, she continued calling for the university to divest from corporations with ties to Israel.
Black box: “When you don’t take [immediate] action, people have permission to continue escalating their tactics,” Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, told JI. “What we are seeing is inaction on the administration’s part, and we know whenever a student is investigated, it goes into a black box and we don’t learn what happened,” Gregory said. “Are they going to be reprimanded or expelled? That information is not public so there’s no transparency for Jewish students, faculty and community members and that also looks like complete inaction in terms of holding someone accountable.”
speaking from experience
Virginia congressional candidate Derrick Anderson says his military experience shapes his Middle East policy
Derrick Anderson, a retired Green Beret now running as a Republican for Congress in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, has a unique personal insight into the current crisis in the Middle East. During his time in the military, he served in Israel and some of its neighboring countries, and he said he has comrades still under fire in the region from Iranian proxy groups, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Aid to Israel: Anderson told JI in an interview last week that Congress needs to be “moving quickly… right now” to provide additional aid to the Jewish state in its war against Hamas. “When people are letting politics muddy up the ability to support our most staunch ally in the Middle East, it’s infuriating to me,” he said. He reiterated, when pressed on whether he’d support passing aid to Ukraine and the Palestinians packaged with Israel aid, “We could get an aid package together right now and send it to Israel right now… people are muddying it up with all these other things.”
Background: Anderson was deployed to the Middle East, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and Bahrain, around the time that ISIS was asserting itself across the region. During that time, he trained with Israeli Defense Forces special operations personnel in Israel, and later in the U.S. He said that IDF personnel had shown him around the country, including Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza border and terrorist tunnel systems, and he heard rocket fire in southern Israel.
Countering Iran: Anderson called for both tougher enforcement of sanctions and a more aggressive approach in responding to Iranian proxy attacks on U.S. forces. “My guys that I’ve spoken to on the ground said that the targets that [the U.S. was] targeting were not actually real targets, they were soft targets,” Anderson said. “Their responses were lackluster at best. I’m not necessarily saying that we have to go into Iran specifically, but there’s plenty of target-rich environments… that the Biden administration could have taken advantage of.”
Worthy Reads
Temperature Check:The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood reflects on Israeli attitudes toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing dismal approval ratings as the Israel-Hamas war continues without significant progress on releasing the hostages. “Back then [during last year’s judicial reform protests], the crowds chanted against Netanyahu because they thought he was dragging Israel toward authoritarianism. Now he and his supporters are jeered, hissed at, and reviled not for what they might do tomorrow but for their catastrophic incompetence right now, and for allegedly preserving their own power at the expense of Israeli life. Many Israelis have been horrified by the deaths of Palestinian civilians, but in the protests, I heard relatively few voices expressing that concern (and none who mourned the dead Hamas combatants). The crowds had chosen their villain. Netanyahu had made everything worse, they said. He presided over the original intelligence failure of October 7 — an error that, all by itself, makes him the worst leader in Israel’s history. He is, according to his critics, running not a government but an anti-government, so stocked with nobodies and incompetents that it is almost as if Israel has no government at all. His every move since October has been marked by indecision and cynicism. In lieu of statesmanship and productive diplomacy (Netanyahu was once considered at least a capable manager of Israel’s international relations), they see empty pronouncements of resolve, and an unseemly terror at the possibility of upsetting his coalition and watching his government crumble.” [TheAtlantic]
Pushed-Out Progressives: In Tablet, Allison Tombros Korman, a former senior staffer at the DC Abortion Fund, explains the decision behind her departure from what she had considered to be her “dream job” due to the organization’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war. “This experience broke my heart. I’ve spoken with many Jews who are also broken-hearted as they feel pushed out of progressive spaces, specifically abortion funds and other reproductive health organizations. We feel betrayed by and disappointed in our movement for failing to live the values it purports to embody. The erasure of our history as a people that has struggled to survive and the erasure of our current lived experiences is nothing short of devastating. Jews are not asking progressive movements, causes, or individuals to condone or celebrate Israel’s response to Oct. 7. We are not asking for them to identify solely with our suffering. We are asking that if they insist on wading into this conflict, they do so in a way that recognizes our humanity.” [Tablet]
Gunning for Permits: In The Free Press, Matti Friedman explains why he — and thousands of other Israelis — have gotten gun permits in the months since the Oct. 7 terror attacks. “For the average Israeli, guns are simply a tool for protection against the Arab violence that has shaped this society over the last century. Like the army, they’re a necessary evil. … It was around this time that my friends began applying for gun permits, including a psychologist, a radio journalist, a specialist in medieval Jewish history, and a professor of Greek philosophy. And it was around this time that I, like other people I know, found myself calculating angles of fire inside my own home. What can I hit from the stairs? Could the front door stop a bullet? Whatever the outcome in the Gaza war, it was clear that we had already suffered some kind of spiritual defeat. In Israel, guns are less a matter of personal liberty, as in America, than of communal defense — which is logical, I suppose, in a country whose ethos was forged not by frontier individualists but by socialist kibbutzniks.” [FreePress]
Two-State Case: In Foreign Affairs, Ami Ayalon, the former director of the Shin Bet, suggests that a two-state solution is the only means through which Hamas will be defeated. “Israel needs to win back the narrative if it is to win the wider war. Making a convincing case is not about choosing different words — it requires Israel to change its approach. The country’s leaders have failed to outline political objectives for the war, and at this point, continued fighting will not bring the Israeli and Palestinian peoples closer to long-term peace. Israel must now launch a diplomatic track that revives the ultimate goal of a two-state solution, and it needs new leadership to do so. Only by demonstrating its commitment to a negotiated settlement can Israel reclaim the support it needs from partners in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, which has been undercut by the past six months of war in Gaza. … Even if Israel prevails on the battlefield, Hamas’s ideology will not disappear. The group will be truly defeated only when it loses the support of the Palestinian people. For that to happen, they must have reason to believe in a diplomatic process that will bring about the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” [ForeignAffairs]
Around the Web
Signing On: Nineteen House members signed a letter led by Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY), Chris Pappas (D-NH) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) expressing support for the Cyprus-led maritime humanitarian corridor into Gaza and supporting a temporary pause in fighting linked to a hostage deal. The letter had one GOP signatory, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY).
IHRA Action: Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) introduced the Define to Defeat Act, which would require the federal government to utilize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in civil rights law, anti-discrimination training materials and instructions to federal court juries as relevant.
Dem Divides: Far-left Democratic activists are gearing up for a fight over contentious topics in the Democratic Party platform, including the Israel-Hamas war, ahead of this summer’s Democratic National Convention.
Rise of a Provocateur: The New York Times profiles internet provocateur Jackson Hinkle — and finds that much of the false and misleading content he has posted about Israel since Oct. 7 has been amplified by malign and potentially state-sponsored actors.
Quiet Influence: The National Interest spotlights Mohammed Soliman, director of the Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program at the Middle East Institute, whose insights “are increasingly playing a role in shaping the U.S. government’s foreign policy in an increasingly fractured and multipolar geopolitical environment.”
Look at Les: Forbes looks at how Les Wexner, who has maintained a low profile since he was publicly linked to Jeffrey Epstein, quietly oversaw a $20 billion effort to bring two Intel semiconductor factories to rural Ohio.
On Hold: Harvard’s student government indefinitely postponed all upcoming and future referenda, effectively freezing efforts by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee to push a campus-wide referendum targeting Israel that was already underway.
NPR Noise: The New York Times reports on the internal and external fallout from an NPR editor’s essay in The Free Press that called out the media company for bias on a range of social and political issues.
Funny Guy: Vanity Fair interviews comedian Alex Edelman about the end of the run of his “Just for Us” one-man play, and his next project, which will focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Coming Soon: The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will open a new permanent exhibit, “Hollywoodland,” that spotlights the contributions of Jewish immigrants to the building of the film industry; the show comes three years after the museum faced criticism for omitting content about Hollywood’s Jewish founders from the original museum.
Sounding Off: The European Broadcast Union condemned the “harassment” of Eurovision performers who have rejected calls to withdraw from the annual contest over the inclusion of Israel.
Families Fight: CNN interviews the relatives of Oct. 7 victims whose bodies are still being held in Gaza.
Fallen Soldiers: The Wall Street Journal spotlights the deaths of Israeli soldiers from religious and Bedouin communities.
Regrouping: In Newsweek, Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, calls for the creation of a civilian-led group to oversee Israel’s national security and intelligence work, citing the failures of Oct. 7.
Undercover Operation: The Iranian journalist hospitalized after an attack in London said that he was the target of a scheme in which a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ cyberwarfare unit posed as an Israeli reporter to try to arrange an interview.
AMIA Ruling: An Argentinian court ruled that Iran directed the 1992 terror attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the city; the ruling also implicated Hezbollah in the attacks, which collectively killed 114 people.
Wine of the Week
JI’s wine columnist Yitz Applbaum reviews the Nana Estate Tethys 2021 and Kingsmark 2021 Cabernet:
As promised last week, I will introduce two Passover wines from wineries I have only recently discovered. One is from the Negev Desert and the other from the lush vineyards of Napa Valley.
The Nana Estate Tethys 2021 is predominantly cabernet sauvignon with a touch of petit verdot and petit syrah. It is perfect for the second cup. A touch of red pepper on the open gives way to a charcoal mid-palate and the finish has strong overtones of sweet cantaloupe.
The Kingsmark 2021 Cabernet was gifted to me by my friend Robert, and it seems like it will stay on my palate for a long time. This new winery is the brainchild of two great wine personalities, Maayan Koschitsky and Philippe Melka, who have crafted a brilliant masterpiece of Napa cabernet. The opening salvo is of ripe cherries, which immediately garners your full attention. Then the mid-palate earthiness comes as a very pleasant surprise, and the finish is a bombastic combination of mushrooms, plums and a bit of jam. This wine should be enjoyed alongside a côte de boeuf. The bottle should be left to breathe for at least an hour, and should last well into the next decade.
Pic of the Day
Released Israeli hostage Liat Beinin Atzili speaks at a pre-Passover event held on Thursday in the dining hall of Kibbutz Nir Oz calling for the release of the remaining 133 hostages. Beinin Atzili, a U.S.-Israeli dual citizen, was released in the November deal. Her husband, Aviv Atzili, was killed on Oct. 7.
Birthdays
Bench coach for the New York Yankees, he was also bench coach for Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic in 2023, Brad Ausmus turns 55 on Sunday…
FRIDAY: Senior U.S. District Court judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, Judge Alan Neil Bloch turns 92… Founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel, Pastor John Charles Hagee turns 84… National correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning,” Rita Braver turns 76… Attorney and bestselling novelist, Scott Turow turns 75… Television producer, he serves as chairman of the Liverpool Football Club and the Boston Red Sox, Thomas Charles Werner turns 74… SVP at UJA Federation of New York, Stuart Tauber… Fashion designer, he is a co-founder of the Guess clothing and accessory brand, Paul Marciano turns 72… West Bloomfield, Mich., resident, Ron Mitnick… Washington, D.C., attorney, Norman B. “Norm” Antin… Chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews since 2014, she was appointed to the House of Lords in 2021, Baroness Joanna Merron turns 65… U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer turns 63… Twin brothers, both real estate agents starring in the Netflix original series “Selling Sunset,” Jason and Brett Oppenheim both turn 47… Actress, director and writer, Jordana Spiro turns 47… Realtor focused on the Boston area, Ilya Jacob Rasner… President at National Student Legal Defense Network, Aaron Ament… California State senator, Henry I. Stern turns 42… Member of the Seattle City Council, Daniel Aaron Strauss turns 38… Comedian, writer and actress, best known for co-creating and co-starring in the Comedy Central series “Broad City,” Ilana Glazer turns 37… Israeli actress known for her lead role in the 2012 film “Fill the Void,” Hadas Yaron turns 34… Actor, he starred as Big Red in the Disney series “High School Musical,” Larry Saperstein turns 26…
SATURDAY: Resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., she spied on the Nazis for the French Free Forces in the latter days of World War II, Marthe Cohn turns 104… Curator and then director of the Louvre until 2001, he is the son-in-law of the late Alain de Rothschild, Pierre Rosenberg turns 88… Geneticist and 1985 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Michael Stuart Brown turns 83… Author and the former CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Gloria Feldt turns 82… Managing director at Tiedemann Advisors, Robert D. “Bob” Hormats turns 81… Retired member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CA) after 10 terms, Susan Carol Alpert Davis turns 80… VP of the New Israel Fund, Paul Egerman… Actor who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Vincent in the television series “Beauty and the Beast,” Ron Perlman turns 74… Longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and the bandleader for Conan O’Brien on “The Tonight Show,” Max Weinberg turns 73… Partner in Uplands Real Estate Partners, Deborah Ratner Salzberg… Former member of the U.K. Parliament until 2005, she served as the U.K.’s first ever minister of state for asylum and immigration under then-PM Tony Blair, Barbara Margolis Roche turns 70… Co-founder of Highbridge Capital Management and a founding board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, Glenn Dubin turns 67… Author of six books and co-host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman turns 67… U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) turns 64… Former orthopedic surgeon, he was the Democratic nominee for the 2020 U.S. Senate election in Alaska, Alan Stuart Gross turns 62… Youngest-ever Federal Reserve governor where he served until 2011, he is now a visiting fellow in economics at the Hoover Institution, Kevin Warsh turns 54… Guitarist and founding member of the rock group “Staind,” he has also enjoyed a successful solo career in country music, Aaron Lewis turns 52… Co-founder and managing partner of Alliance Consumer Growth, Josh Goldin turns 46… CEO and executive director of D.C.-based Sixth & I, Heather Moran… Staff writer at Tablet magazine, Armin Rosen… Director of government affairs at CUFI, Alexandria Paolozzi… Venture investor at Venrock, Morgan Hitzig… Director of development at the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, Lauren Epstein… Aharon Lipnitzky…
SUNDAY:Anne Monk… Former securities and exchange commissioner, including a four-month stint as SEC Chair, Elisse B. Walter turns 74… Israeli news editor and analyst who retired in 2020 from the Haaretz newspaper, Chemi Shalev turns 71… Media executive, who with her family are majority owners of Viacom and CBS through Paramount Global, Shari Redstone turns 70… Co-founder, co-chairman and co-CEO at Canyon Partners, LLC, Mitchell Julis turns 69… Film, television and theater producer, his credits include the widely acclaimed 2016 film “La La Land,” Marc Platt turns 67… Birmingham, Ala.-based post denominational rabbi, known on social media as “Deep South Rabbi,” Barry Altmark… Founder of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics and author of nine books about makeup and beauty, Bobbi Brown turns 67… Border czar for the first few months of the Biden administration, she is the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Roberta S. Jacobson turns 64… Los Angeles-based freelance editor and writer, Robin Heinz Bratslavsky… SVP of news and executive editorial director for CNN’s Washington bureau, Adam Levine… Emmy Award-winning actress best known for the title role on the WB series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Sarah Michelle Gellar Prinze turns 47… Journalist, professor and author of four books, Sasha Issenberg turns 44… Co-founder and president of Statt, a venture-backed AI/ML enterprise software platform, Steve Glickman… Principal at Bnei Akiva Schools of Toronto, Hillel David Rapp… French entrepreneur, he is the president of CRIF, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions since 2022, Yonathan Arfi turns 44… Founder and CEO of Charity Bids, Israel “Yummy” Schachter… Award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer, Rachel Swirsky turns 42… Co-founder and co-CEO of BurnAlong, a Tivity Health company, he is the co-author of the NYT bestseller The Black Banners, Daniel Freedman… Classical cellist, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2022, Alisa Weilerstein turns 42… Former baseball first baseman who played in the MLB, Japanese and Mexican leagues, Joshua S. Whitesell turns 42… Documentary filmmaker, Nicholas Ma… Washington-based technology policy reporter at Axios, Ashley Gold… Isaac Hasson… Graphic designer, Casey Tepper… Yitzchak Tendler… Jon Fine… Moriah Elbaz…
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