Daily Kickoff
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the race taking shape for the GOP leadership of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, report on Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s comments yesterday at the Brookings Institution and sit down with Rep. Jake Auchincloss for a wide-ranging interview covering the war in Gaza, President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s recent primary defeat. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.
What We’re Watching
- We’re continuing to keep an eye on the fallout over the weekend incident in Antalya, Turkey, where airport employees refused to refuel an El Al plane that had to make an emergency landing at the airport following an in-air medical incident. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod yesterday that the incident was “disturbing,” but “should come as no surprise considering Turkish President Erdogan is supporting Hamas terrorists in their pursuit against Israel and has aligned himself with Israel’s adversaries in the region that wish to see its downfall.”
- At Jerusalem’s Mt. Herzl this evening, Dr. Miriam Adelson and United Hatzalah will inaugurate a new fleet of 76 emergency vehicles and pay tribute to fallen soldiers and medics who died in the line of duty.
What You Should Know
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) had a yearslong relationship with the Menachem Begin Heritage Center. So it was fitting that the Jerusalem center played host to the Jewish statesman’s family and longtime friends as they paid tribute before a packed audience to Lieberman, three months after his death, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports from Jerusalem.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, who made a surprise appearance at the event, recalled his first meeting with the Connecticut legislator and one-time vice presidential candidate. In the 1980s, Lew recalled, he had been an aide to then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA), and accompanied O’Neill to a dinner in Connecticut, where he was seated next to Lieberman — ostensibly, Lew suggested, “so it would be easy to serve the two salmon dinners” to the only attendees who kept kosher.
Lew, whose relationship with Lieberman traversed the professional into the personal as their children grew up together in Washington, and later as the two men moved to Riverdale, N.Y., said that “Joe Lieberman was the rare public figure who was the same in public and private, sincere and respectful, principled and compassionate. Since we, on occasion, did not share the same policy perspective, I can also say he listened to views contrary to his own. He reflected on them. He would not dismiss alternative views, though he would not budge on deeply held beliefs.”
Natan Sharansky, the former refusenik and former longtime head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, praised Lieberman’s “moral clarity,” pointing out that Lieberman nearly appeared as the vice presidential candidate on the GOP ticket just eight years after he was the vice presidential nominee on the Democratic line. “What we know is that in politics, people [can be] among the leaders of one party, and then the next election they’re among the leaders of the other party, and it’s [because they change] their views, all of them. But Joe wouldn’t change his views — it was the parties that were changing their views.”
Lieberman’s daughter, Hani Lowenstein, reflected on her father’s connection to Israel. “Every experience in Israel was just wonderful when you were with my dad, whether it be grabbing some food at a local cafe, or walking through the Old City to get to the Kotel — that walk took a very long time because he was stopped. If there were tourists, he was stopped the whole way there,” she said to laughter from the audience. “He loved the miracle that was and is the State of Israel and the vibrancy of life here. He so enjoyed every moment spent with children, grandchildren and friends. On a political level, I don’t believe he ever felt any sort of dialectical tension between being a patriotic American and an ardent Zionist. The concept of dual loyalty cannot be found in the Lieberman dictionary, because he saw the interests of the U.S. and Israel as being intertwined.”
Historian Gil Troy, who sat in conversation with the Begin Center’s Paul Gross, said that Lieberman’s “greatness came from understanding that politics isn’t just about winning that moment, or being in that moment, but transcending that moment.”
“One of the things I think we’re hearing,” Troy said, “is that Joe Lieberman didn’t just die at the age of 82. He was 248 years old, he lived an American life. And he was 3,500 years old,” the age of the Jewish people.
Q&A
Rep. Jake Auchincloss talks Netanyahu, Bowman, Biden and antisemitism

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), closing out his second term on Capitol Hill, has emerged as a prominent voice among younger members of the Democratic caucus, seen as a potential leader on key issues. Jewish Insider’s Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar and senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod sat down with Auchincloss, who is Jewish, for nearly an hour in his Capitol Hill office last week to discuss the state of the Democratic Party, the situation in the Middle East, antisemitism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming address to Congress and more.
Notable quotables: Auchincloss said he and other Democrats should walk out of Netanyahu’s congressional address if the prime minister criticizes President Joe Biden, urged Netanyahu to call for new elections and lay out a plan for postwar governance in Gaza, warned that Israel has an “under-30 problem” among Democrats and said that Democrats should look to Britain’s Labour Party as a warning on failing to fully combat antisemitism.