Daily Kickoff
Good Friday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the House Education and the Workforce Committee report on antisemitism at Harvard, and interview Silicon Valley executive Jacob Helberg about his recent donation to former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign after supporting President Joe Biden in 2020. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Eylon Levy, Joel Eisdorfer and Maxine Dexter.
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: Speaking in Doha, Bridgewater’s Israeli-born CEO says Middle East ‘setting itself up for next tech wave’; Druze Israelis remain on Lebanon border: ‘We’ll die defending our land if we have to’; Paying homage to Israel’s fallen female soldiers.Print the latest edition here.
The Washington Post’s news coverage of the Biden administration’s Israel policy and university crackdowns on anti-Israel encampments on campus have lately been colored by an obsession that wealthy Jewish donors are the main force driving leaders’ decisions, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
The supposedly straight news reporting all but ignores the antisemitism that was present at many of the encampments in the first place and fails to grapple with the reality of public opinion — that a sizable majority of the American public, according to polls, support Israel and oppose the anti-Israel campus activism.
The most recent storycasts a sinister light on mainstream Jewish advocacy, as a group of mostly Jewish business leaders, philanthropists and communal leaders communicated on a WhatsApp channel to push for New York City Mayor Eric Adams to send the NYPD to clear the increasingly disruptive campus takeover by anti-Israel activists. At the time of the conversation cited by the paper on April 26, coverage of the antisemitic nature of a number of the protests had been reported for days (including here at JI).
Far from being able to impact the chaotic situation at Columbia University, Jewish leaders and Columbia’s Jewish students were exasperated that the school wasn’t enforcing its own code of conduct against the protesters’ rule-breaking. The frustration hit a fever pitch after anti-Israel activists broke into Hamilton Hall and took over the campus building, without any immediate recourse from city or university officials.
But in the eyes of the Washington Post, “the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.”
The story drew the wrath of New York City Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy. “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said in a statement. Read more from JI’s Emily Jacobs on the Washington Post controversy here.
It’s not the first time this week that the paper’s news pages posited that wealthy Jewish donors are behind American leaders’ decision-making. A story this week about the Biden administration’s agreement to send $1 billion in military assistance to Israel was punctuated by this gratuitous hot take in the third paragraph:
“The decision underscores the administration’s reluctance to defy pro-Israel donors in the Democratic Party who criticized Biden’s decision last week to withhold the shipment,” reporter John Hudson wrote.
It’s unusual for a reporter to pin blame on pro-Israel donors in a straight news story, especially given that bipartisan support for Israel has been long-standing, as a result of widespread public support from voters. Just last month, the vast majority of lawmakers from both parties voted to approve military aid for Israel — in a show of bipartisan consensus dealing with threats from Iran, Russia and China. Advocacy groups can’t magically create public consensus if there’s not already a groundswell of organic public support for their cause.
These stories are only the most recent examples of the Washington Post facing scrutiny over its coverage of Israel and antisemitism. A recent story about the StopAntisemitism watchdog group euphemized the site’s documenting episodes of antisemitism as simply people who “criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza.”
The Atlantic ran an essay this month excoriating the paper for “whitewashing Hamas and the murders it committed as ‘criticism’ of Israel” and for “fail[ing] to explain Hamas’s aims — which include the complete destruction of Israel by any means, including the mass murder of innocent civilians.”
Earlier this year, JI reported that the Washington Post had made some egregious errors in its Middle East coverage, and was forced to write a lengthy editor’s note last December admitting numerous mistakes with a front-page story on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian infants.
We’re following news out of Iran this week that the Islamic republic plans to execute a young Jewish man, which a source in contact with the Iranian Jewish community confirmed to JI on Friday. There have been mixed reports about the planned date for the execution, which may take place as soon as Saturday, but JI can confirm that it had yet to happen as of Friday morning. The 20-year-old Jewish man, whose Hebrew name is Arvin Netanel ben Sonia, “is going to be executed due to act of self defence against a muslim man who attacked him with knife but was killed himself,” Ben Sabti, an Iran researcher at The Institute for National Security Studies, posted on X. His family reportedly offered to pay damages to the deceased’s family, as permitted under Iranian law, but they refused to accept it. Iran is currently home to over 8,000 Jews, a number that dwindled from over 60,000 at the start of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.
crimson concerns
Harvard repeatedly and continuously sidelined and ignored antisemitism working group, House committee finds

A new report released on Thursday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce suggests that Harvard University continuously and repeatedly sidelined its Antisemitism Working Group and its recommendations, a situation that at one point prompted a majority of the working group’s members to threaten to resign en masse, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The report, based on internal communications and notes as well as a transcribed interview with advisory group member Dara Horn, details the work of the first of two antisemitism task forces the school has launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Sidelined: The House committee, investigating campus antisemitism, found that the working group provided recommendations to Harvard’s leadership in mid-December, which went largely unaddressed, that the working group identified severe antisemitic harassment and marginalization of Israeli students and that Harvard’s senior leadership sidelined the working group — including failing to consult with the group before the former Harvard president testified to the committee.
Unresponsive: The report highlights a series of incidents of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus for which the school could not point to any specific response or disciplinary action it had taken. It says that the working group itself found a similar pattern of unaddressed antisemitic harassment. It also outlines a messy and unclear process for transitioning from the working group into the school’s new Antisemitism Task Force.
Smokescreen: “The Committee’s report proves that former President Gay and Harvard’s leadership propped up the university’s Antisemitism Advisory Group all for show,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a statement. “Not only did the AAG find that antisemitism was a major issue on campus, it offered several recommendations on how to combat the problem — none of which were ever implemented with any real vigor.”