Daily Kickoff
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we take a deep dive into the internal politics roiling College Democrats of America as it takes a position in support of campus anti-Israel protests, and report on efforts by European nations to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: April Delaney, Sen. Bill Cassidy and Hannah Einbinder.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a ceremony at the White House this afternoon.
A new lawsuit filed by victims and survivors of the Oct. 7 attack seeks to prove that there are direct ties between Hamas and the groups helping to organize and stoke anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses throughout the U.S.
The suit, filed against American Muslims for Palestine, National Students for Justice in Palestine and affiliated groups, alleges that, in organizing and distributing anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activity and materials, the groups were responding to calls from Hamas for mass mobilization in the West and thereby were providing material support, via public relations and propaganda, for terrorism in violation of U.S. law.
“Those groups that began promoting and facilitating anti-Israel protests immediately following the Hamas massacre on Oct 7 — weeks before Israeli forces entered Gaza — appear to have answered Hamas’ call for mass mobilization. Recall the template fliers featuring militants on hand gliders of the kind Hamas used on Oct 7. This is an important case,” Matthew Levitt, the director of the Jeanette and Eli Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Jewish Insider.
If the plaintiffs are able to successfully argue that AMP and NSJP are providing support for terrorism, it could open the door for both civil and criminal penalties for the groups. The litigation will likely be time-consuming, and a resolution could be years away.
AMP is also the subject of an ongoing lawsuit by the family of Daniel Boim, who was killed in a terror attack in the West Bank in 2004. That suit seeks to prove that AMP is an alter ego of U.S. charities previously found to have provided funding to Hamas, and the organization is attempting to avoid sanctions awarded to the Boim family in a prior case.
The new suit, organized by a major U.S. law firm (Greenberg Traurig), takes those claims a step further in seeking to tie AMP directly to Hamas.
Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has publicly outlined links among AMP, SJP and those shuttered organizations, highlighting crossovers in staffing and leadership. Schanzer questioned at a congressional hearing last year whether they are “providing support for Hamas under a different name.”
But even as the pressure mounts on the anti-Israel groups, severaluniversitypresidents are taking the path of appeasing anti-Israel organizers instead of confronting them — an approach epitomized by Northwestern University’s administration. After seven Jewish members of Northwestern University’s antisemitism advisory committee stepped down, the university faced further pushback from Jewish community advocates. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut and Rachel Garbow Monroe, president and CEO of the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, sent a letter to the university expressing “dismay and disgust” at the school’s handling of antisemitism and calling for “an immediate change.” (All three are Northwestern alumni.) The committee announced last night that it was disbanding, citing the mass resignations.
April McClain Delaney, a Northwestern trustee and a Democratic congressional candidate in Maryland, weighed in on the campus situation for the first time in a statement to JI, although she did not specifically mention Northwestern or any events happening there.
“It is my strong belief that antisemitism on college campuses cannot be tolerated in any way and that the demonstrations at colleges across the country have veered disturbingly and dangerously into antisemitism,” she said. “It is the responsibility of political leaders, law enforcement and university presidents to ensure that Jewish students are able to pursue their studies without fear or harassment and that they work together to restore peaceful environments where students can continue their academic pursuits.”
Delaney is running in a crowded primary to represent Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, which is an open seat since Rep. David Trone (D-MD) is running for Senate. The seat was represented by Delaney’s husband, John Delaney, from 2013 to 2019. Among Delaney’s eight competitors are Joe Vogel, a Gen-Z state delegate with strong ties to the Jewish community.
In other political news: This week, we reported that embattled Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) was holding a fundraiser Thursday night with left-wing Jewish figures — including New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — who have been hostile towards Israel and deferential to the anti-Israel and antisemitic protests taking place on college campuses.
There’s another guest that headlined the Bowman fundraiser on the Upper West Side: Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke, who was featured as one of the more notorious anti-Israel faculty members on campus during the House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing focused on antisemitism at Columbia University last month.
Franke, who is on the school’s executive committee for the Center for Palestine Studies, signed a letter characterizing the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks as an example of the group’s “right to resist.” She was criticized at the hearing for a radio interview where she said “all Israeli students who served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.”
At the April hearing, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said senior university officials had spoken to Franke about her remarks, and that she was encouraged to apologize. (She hasn’t, only claiming that her comments were misinterpreted.)
student strike
Inside the College Democrats’ antisemitism problem

As anti-Israel encampments on college campuses sprung up at dozens of universities last week, the national leadership of the College Democrats of America (CDA) asked the group’s Jewish and Muslim caucuses to draft a statement condemning the antisemitism that was quickly appearing among some protesters. The byzantine process that followed would lead the College Democrats’ top Jewish leader to accuse the influential organization of ignoring antisemitism at campus protests to further a one-sided, anti-Israel agenda, after the organization’s leadership nixed a more inclusive statement that had been created by the top Jewish and Muslim activists in the group, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Third time’s the charm: Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., got to work writing a statement about antisemitism with Hasan Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair and a senior at Wake Forest University. After two drafts — one with a sole focus on antisemitism, and another that condemned antisemitism while also offering support for peaceful protests, according to documents shared with JI — the group instead authored another statement without Bell.
Far-out language: The statement that was ultimately released by the College Democrats on Tuesday ignored the middle path proposed by Bell and Pyarali. Instead, the statement described “heroic actions on the part of students around the country to protest and sit in for an end to the war in Palestine and the release of the hostages.” It called Israel’s war against Hamas “destructive, genocidal, and unjust,” language that Bell had never seen and that diverged sharply from President Joe Biden’s position. An Instagram post with the statement touted the endorsement of Pyarali and the Muslim caucus, with no mention of the Jewish caucus — except a comment on the post from the Jewish caucus’ own Instagram account, saying, “Protect Jewish students, do better.”
Hurtful moment: “It’s a hurtful thing, not only to not feel heard, but also to know that the organization you’re in doesn’t believe that the antisemitism is happening and doesn’t care enough about it to even include the factual things that we’ve seen on video,” Bell told JI. “At this point, I’ve kind of just decided that it’s worth speaking out about, even if it means that I need to move away from College Democrats of America.”
Party ties: The College Democrats statement is notable because the group touts itself as the official collegiate arm of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s campaign apparatus. The group endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, and in the past it has served as a crucial tool for reaching young people in an election year, even as the organization has drifted far to the left of the national party in recent years. Spokespeople for the DNC and the Biden campaign declined to comment when asked if they support the message adopted by College Democrats.
Read the full story here.
Cancellation call: A group of University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Social Work students has threatened to protest the school’s May 17 graduation over the scheduled keynote speaker, Sen. Ben Cardin, (D-MD), the state’s senior senator and a pro-Israel stalwart, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen reports for JI.