Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report from Sen. Joe Lieberman’s funeral in Connecticut on Friday, and look at how former President Donald Trump’s comments about Israel last week are playing in Republican Jewish circles. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Hagar Brodutch, José Andrés and Elizabeth Tsurkov.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will hold a virtual meeting with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi today over a potential Israeli incursion into Rafah; an in-person meeting could take place as soon as next week. The virtual meeting comes a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a delegation, led by Dermer and Hanegbi, to Washington to discuss the plans following the U.S.’ abstention on a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire.
In Jerusalem, tens of thousands of Israelis gathered yesterday for protests calling on the government to reach a cease-fire agreement that would free the remaining 134 hostages held in Gaza and also hold new elections ahead of schedule.
The four-day protest, which began yesterday, is the largest since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and start of the war. It comes amid discussions between U.S. and Israeli officials over a number of issues: Israel’s plans to conduct a large-scale military operation in Rafah, ongoing discussions with Egyptian and Qatari officials over a hostage deal and the delivery of aid to Gazans.
Netanyahu addressed the Israeli public last night before undergoing successful surgery for a hernia. Speaking at a press conference, Netanyahu said, “Calls for elections now during the war, a moment before victory, will paralyze Israel for at least six months; in my estimate, for eight months. They will paralyze the negotiations for the release of our hostages and in the end will lead to ending the war before achieving its goals and the first to commend this will be Hamas, and that says it all. I reiterate: I am committed to returning all of our hostages, women and men, civilians and soldiers, the living and the victims. I will not leave even one behind.”
Netanyahu also said that he has approved the IDF’s operational plan for Rafah. “The IDF is prepared for the evacuation of the civilian population and for the provision of humanitarian assistance,” he said. “This is the right thing both operationally and internationally. This will take time but it will be done. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there for one simple reason: There is no victory without entering Rafah and there is no victory without eliminating the Hamas battalions there. This is a fundamental part of the goals of the war, which also include returning all of our hostages.”
In response to questions posed during Sunday’s press conference, Netanyahu addressed growing concern among Haredi coalition members and the Haredi public over an effort to end their exemption from army service — a move that could potentially topple his government, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. The expiration of a measure enabling their exemption has left Netanyahu’s government scrambling to resolve the situation before the IDF starts conscripting full-time yeshiva students.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miaratold the government yesterday that the court’s ruling required it to act immediately upon the law’s expiration today. At the same time, the High Court of Justice, while not allowing the extension of the exemption law, gave the government another 30 days to report back with a proposed bill to resolve the problem.
Netanyahu expressed confidence that he would clear that hurdle, noting that he had been working with coalition partners on the issue for three months before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
“We started working and made significant progress… The Haredim went a long way. They agreed to things we didn’t expect, that they had never agreed to,” Netanyahu said.
Asked if he believes that all Israelis should serve, Netanyahu said: “I think that we need to act to promote equality, but I think there is a way to do it. We can try to hammer it in, as we did in the past, but it didn’t work…it didn’t lead Haredim to enlist… We need to advance equality in the spirit – not of total agreement, but with broad agreement.” Read more here.
top talker
Trump’s Israel interview divides Republican Jewish community
Former President Donald Trump has cast himself as the country’s most pro-Israel president, pointing to achievements such as negotiating the Abraham Accords and moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But recent comments Trump made about Israel’s conduct during the ongoing war in Gaza and its public relations failures, along with his relative silence on the war for more than five months, served as a reminder that a Trump second term could mean more unpredictability over Middle East policy than his reliably pro-Israel posture. The interview, which the former president gave last week to the right-leaning Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, drew a mixed reaction from Jewish Republicans and conservatives, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Compared to Biden: Fred Zeidman, a major Houston-based donor to Nikki Haley’s primary campaign who has now thrown his support behind Trump, acknowledged that Trump’s rhetoric represented a shift for him. But, Zeidman added, that language must be compared to President Joe Biden’s actions, including the White House’s decision last week not to veto the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution calling for a cease-fire. “It obviously concerns me. But again, that’s part of the reason that we’ve got to double our effort to show President Trump that we continue to be behind him, and he’s the one that we’re counting on,” Zeidman said. “President Trump has said a few things that aren’t as stridently in support as he has before. But there’s no comparison with what the Biden administration’s actually doing.”
‘Fodder for antisemites’: One Jewish Republican who was close to the Haley campaign said Trump’s comments about Israel’s dwindling global support and its poor PR game only help Israel’s detractors. “That is just fodder for antisemites and Israel’s enemies to grab onto and say, ‘Oh, Trump says Israel’s losing everyone,’” the Haley supporter said. “Trump’s silence, Trump’s refusal to offer a full-throated defense of Israel, I think is very, very unfortunate and hurts Israel.”
Misunderstood: But in more partisan GOP circles, Jewish Republican officials insist Trump is giving Israel the space it needs to defeat Hamas — and is only concerned about the timetable. In the Israel Hayom interview, Trump called the Oct. 7 attack “horrible” and said he “would act very much the same way as you did. You would have to be crazy not to.” But, he added, Israel needs to improve its public relations, “because right now they’re in ruin.” Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks told JI: “Everybody is just misreading this. There’s nothing interesting at all about it. Basically, he’s giving Israel a blank check to do what it needs to finish the job. All he’s saying is that the longer this goes on, public opinion continues to turn against them, so hurry up.”
last goodbye
‘An angel among men’: Family, colleagues remember Lieberman at Stamford synagogue
On a sunny, brisk spring morning, hundreds of people arrived at Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, Conn., on Friday to pay their respects to Sen. Joe Lieberman, who died last Wednesday at 82. Thirty minutes before the funeral was scheduled to begin, a line of well-wishers waiting to enter the building zigzagged through the synagogue’s parking lot, past Israeli and American flags that had been lowered to half-mast to honor the longtime Connecticut senator. By the time everyone was seated, the cavernous sanctuary in the synagogue where Lieberman grew up — his grandparents had settled in Stamford after immigrating to America from Eastern Europe — was filled to standing-room-only capacity. “It’s like Yom Kippur here,” one attendee whispered to a friend, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Warmth, decency, integrity: Many in the room were Jewish, but not all; rabbis who spoke, as well as Lieberman’s children, made sure to translate the Hebrew phrases they used in their eulogies. Each speaker praised Lieberman’s fundamental decency and integrity, the warmth he showed to every person he encountered. When Rabbi Daniel Cohen, the senior rabbi at Agudath Sholom, asked who in the room could count Lieberman as a friend, nearly every hand went up.
‘Soul like a flame’: “No matter how much we say about Senator Joseph Lieberman, it will never be enough to capture the fact that he was an angel among men,” Cohen said. “His soul is like a flame this morning, and we are feeling his light. I pray that when we rise in a number of minutes, we could rise not only in body but in spirit.”
Faith and public service: The long list of speakers who offered heartfelt remembrances of the senator and vice presidential candidate reflected Lieberman’s lifelong commitment to both his faith and public service. Where his children quoted Jewish teachings and compared their father to Yosef HaTzadik, Joseph the Righteous in the Torah, his former running mate, Al Gore, quoted the Declaration of Independence and a series of letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as guides for maintaining civility during times of political conflict. Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), who served alongside Lieberman in the Senate for two decades, joked that he was Lieberman’s Shabbos goy and Lieberman was his altar boy.
problematic posts
Rep. Gonzales’ right-wing GOP challenger posted videos featuring Nazi imagery, songs, jokes
Brandon Herrera, a 28-year-old Republican congressional candidate challenging Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) in next month’s GOP runoff has, as recently as 2022, posted YouTube videos replete with imagery, music and jokes about the Nazi regime and the Holocaust and was also active for years with a Sons of Confederate Veterans group in North Carolina, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Holocaust jokes: Herrera is a prolific YouTuber, also known as the AK Guy, with more than 3 million subscribers, primarily posting videos about guns. In one video from 2022, he shows off the MP-40, a submachine gun developed in and widely used by Nazi Germany. He refers to it, seemingly jokingly, as “the original ghetto blaster” — apparently alluding to the Nazis’ killing of Jews.
In the video: The video, which appears to take a sarcastic tone, includes a montage of Hererra and an associate firing the weapon, goose-stepping and showing off other Nazi weaponry, set to the song “Erika,” which was popularized as a Nazi marching song and which has seen frequent use in modern neo-Nazi and far-right propaganda. The montage culminates with Hererra’s associate, wearing a camouflage outfit with colors resembling a pattern used by the Waffen SS, beginning a Hitler salute, before being stopped by Herrera, seemingly in jest.
Confederate involvement: Herrera, who also owns a Fayetteville, N.C.-based gun manufacturing company, has also been a member, over the course of numerous years, of the Fayetteville chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. In 2014, he filmed a video for the SCV chapter to welcome and advertise to new members and appears in pictures, including in full Confederate uniform, as recently as 2019.
held in iraq
Sister of kidnapped Russian-Israeli Princeton student, urges Biden admin to pressure Iraq
The sister of Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Russian-Israeli doctoral student at Princeton University who was kidnapped a year ago in Iraq by an Iranian-backed militia group, is urging the Biden administration to pressure the Iraqi government to secure Tsurkov’s release, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Background: Tsurkov was kidnapped in Baghdad while working on research for her doctoral thesis in March 2023; her abductors are believed to be part of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group in Iraq which has been blamed for the recent attack in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members. The group is separate from Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Pushing for action: Emma Tsurkov’s call for the Biden administration to push the Iraqi government to secure her sister’s release comes ahead of a visit to Washington by the Iraqi prime minister later this month. Emma Tsurkov noted, in an interview with JI last week, that Kataib Hezbollah holds an official role in the Iraqi government and thereby benefits from U.S. funding.
Money angle: She said that Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani’s visit, which he has been seeking for years, provides a “unique leverage point” for the U.S. government to apply pressure. “The idea that my tax dollars and yours and everyone else’s in the U.S. is going to pay the salaries of the people holding her just keeps me up at night into this rage and frustration,” she continued. “I just frankly do not believe the Iraqis are doing everything they can… They just don’t care.”
Worthy Reads
Morris’ Move: The Wall Street Journal’s Elliot Kaufman interviews Israeli historian Benny Morris about Israeli-Palestinian relations and his shift to the center. “Mr. Morris prefers to see the Palestinian movement on its own terms. Thomas Friedman’s writing in The New York Times about the Palestinian ‘dream of independence in their homeland in a state next to Israel’ earns a chuckle. ‘I think the Palestinians regard the Zionist enterprise and the state of Israel which emerged from it as illegitimate, a robber state,’ Mr. Morris says, ‘and that the Jews have no right to it. This, I think, all Palestinians believe.’ The real conflict ‘boils down to whether the Jews were right and had the right to come here and settle here and establish a sovereign state,’ he says. ‘It’s not so much about Israeli behavior at any given point in time.’ Mr. Morris made his name exposing the dark side of Israel’s founding, but at the end of the day, ‘I’m a Zionist — I use the word,’ he says. ‘I believe that the Jews had a right to establish a state here. The Arabs had a right because they were indigenous here, and the Jews had a right because they were here many, many years before the Arabs and always looked to this land as theirs.’” [WSJ]
Hate on the Continent: In Politico, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the chair of the European Jewish Association, warns that pledges across the continent to combat antisemitism need to be backed up by government action. “So, what’s happening in the real world? Police departments are hamstrung in the face of openly antisemitic protests, unsure, and therefore unable, to stop public manifestations of hate. The courts, too, seem to have little to no framework available when it comes to prosecuting the antizionists and antisemites who have made our collective Jewish life here in Europe hell. The result? Jew haters are emboldened because they can act with impunity. Today, the number one cost for Jewish communities is security. Jews are largely on their own, footing the bill for private security and equipment — funds that could be used for Sunday schooling, community development or holiday celebrations. I should also add here that the EU just put out a call for funding the security of Jewish institutions, but the bloc’s bureaucracy is often so cumbersome that — as one prominent rabbi put it — ‘it’s like asking someone to fill out a lengthy insurance form while your house is on fire.’” [Politico]
Around the Web
Weapons Shipment: Senior Biden administration officials confirmed that the U.S. is sending a new weapons package to Israel — part of a transfer previously approved by Congress before the Israel-Hamas war but not implemented.
Pier Review: Experts and former military officials are raising concerns about the Biden administration’s plan to construct a pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver aid to the enclave, warning that the endeavor poses significant security risks to American troops.
Army Exit: The IDF said that it had completed its operation in Gaza’s Shifa Hospital and has exited the complex.
Foreign Green on the Green: Eight House Republicans, led by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), introduced a bill requiring universities to provide disclosures of any funding or contracts with Iran, China, Russia or North Korea.
Raskin Razzed: A lecture given by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) at the University of Maryland last week was disrupted by anti-Israel protesters who accused the Jewish legislator of being “complicit in genocide.”
Base Blues: CNN spotlights progressive Jewish lawmakers who are being challenged by their traditional bases over their positions on the Israel-Hamas war.
Easter Protest: Anti-Israel protesters disrupted Easter Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
Shul Vandalized: A synagogue in the Philadelphia suburb of Wynnewood, Pa., was vandalized with a swastika; police are investigating the incident.
Application Attrition: Harvard saw a 5% drop in applications this year, following months in which the school faced criticism for its handling of antisemitism on campus.
In the Hot Seat: Interim Harvard President Alan Garber was grilled by Muslim students at a university-sponsored iftar meal over what they alleged is lack of support from administrators.
Playing His Cards Right: Bloomberglooks at how Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin positioned himself at the center of the collectibles and memorabilia industry.
A Daughter’s Final Gift: CNN’s Bianna Golodryga talked toThe Atlantic‘s David Frum about his daughter, Miranda, following her death last month — his daughter’s dog, Ringo, a central focus in Frum’s recent column about Miranda, sat for the interview.
Across the Pond: U.K. police are investigating a stabbing attack that injured Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati, an anchor on the U.K.-based Iran International, which has been targeted by the regime in Tehran.
Berlin Blinks: The New York Timeslooks at Germany’s shifting rhetoric toward Israel amid increasing political pressure to temper its support for the Jewish state.
PIJ Promise: The head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad met in Tehran with Iran’s foreign minister over the weekend; during the visit, Ziad al-Nakhalah vowed victory over Israel, telling journalists, “I promise you that we will be the victors in the war.”
Food Aid: The Wall Street Journal spotlights chef José Andrés’ work to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Eylon’s Ordeal: The Times of Israelinterviewed former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy about his time in and departure from the Prime Minister’s Office.
Captivity Chronicle: In an interview with The Daily Mail, former Israeli hostage Hagar Brodutch recounts her time in Hamas captivity, including being transported between locations in ambulances and being kept in families’ homes.
Stabbing attack: Three people were seriously wounded in a suspected terror attack Sunday night at a mall in Gan Yavne, in south-central Israel.
View From Riyadh: The Financial Timeslooks at how the Israel-Hamas war is being viewed in Saudi Arabia, where Riyadh must manage both domestic support for the Palestinians alongside a desire to move forward with normalization with Israel.
Blow to Erdogan: Turkey’s major opposition party saw a number of victories in elections held over the weekend, including in Istanbul, delivering a setback to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Remembering: Hollywood executive Paula Weinstein died at 78. Poet Neeli Cherkovski, whose works focused on the Beat generation and the Beatniks whose biographies he wrote, died at 78. New Jersey Democratic politico Peter Shapiro died at 71. Sculptor Richard Serra died at 85. Philanthropist and biotechnologist Joseph Walder died at 73.
Pic of the Day
Israeli demonstrators on Sunday placed large symbolic ballot boxes outside the Knesset in Jerusalem as part of their call for early elections.
Birthdays
Singer-songwriter best known as the original lead guitarist for Sha Na Na and as the youngest person, at age 18, to play on the main stage at Woodstock in 1969, Henry Gross turns 73…
Physicist and 1997 Nobel Prize laureate, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji turns 91… Psychotherapist in South Florida, Annie Schlachet Garfield, LCSW… Former member of the Knesset for the Likud party, he is a nephew of Moshe Dayan, Uzi Dayan turns 76… Former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel and current Sephardic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar turns 76… Adjunct research professor at Boston University noted for her studies in relation to parrots, Irene Maxine Pepperberg, Ph.D. turns 75… Former president and CEO of the Michigan League for Public Policy, she was previously a Democratic member of the Michigan Senate, Gilda Z. Jacobs turns 75… Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S. since 2006, Justice Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. turns 74… Professor at SUNY New Paltz, Nancy Kassop turns 74… Producer and director for film and television including the “Men in Black” trilogy, Barry Sonnenfeld turns 71… Lecturer at Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism, he is a columnist for Straus Media, Jonathan P. Friedman… Six-term former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida, he is the founder of the Ben Gamla Charter School in Florida and now lives in Ra’anana, Israel, Peter Deutsch turns 67… President of HealthSource Distributors, Jerry L. Wolasky… Author of over 200 children’s books, Mark Shulman turns 62… Former member of the Knesset for the Kadima party, she made aliyah from the Soviet Union in 1979, Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich turns 60… VP of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and a leader of the Jewish community of Kyiv, Alexander (Aaron) Levin turns 56… Lawyer turned political thriller novelist, Brad Meltzer turns 54… Israeli writer, speaker and blogger, Daniel Ravner turns 48… Senior policy adviser to VPOTUS, she was the COO at J Street, Jessica “Jess” Smith turns 47… Venture capitalist and former four-year star basketball player at the University of Maryland including a national championship (2006), she was drafted by the WNBA but played mostly in Israel, Shay Doron… Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton, Noah L. Schwartz… Former deputy White House communications director in the Trump administration, now on the staff of Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Julia Aviva Hahn turns 33… Ronald Lippman…
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