Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover Israel’s strike against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the weekend. We interview Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and profile New Hampshire congressional candidate Maggie Goodlander. We also report on the “Uncommitted” movement’s efforts to push a speaker who equated Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees and cover former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster’s new book. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ambassador Jeff Flake, Mira Resnick and Dr. Howard Krein.
What We’re Watching
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown is in Israel today for meetings with Israeli officials. Brown’s trip to the region was scheduled prior to Israel’s strike on Hezbollah missile launchers in Lebanon over the weekend.
- We’re keeping an eye on a possible further response from Hezbollah to the weekend strike, which was intended to stop an imminent Hezbollah attack on Israeli targets. More below.
- Following the end of the latest round of cease-fire and hostage-release talks in Cairo, lower-level teams will remain in Egypt this week to continue discussions with Qatari, Egyptian and American negotiators.
- Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani is in Tehran today, where he is expected to update Iranian officials on the progress of cease-fire talks and press for Iran to hold off on any attacks against Israel.
- Former President Donald Trump is expected to attack Vice President Kamala Harris over the Biden administration’s pullout from Afghanistan, which occurred three years ago this week. Trump will visit Arlington National Cemetery today before traveling to Michigan to deliver remarks at a conference organized by the National Guard Association of the United States.
What You Should Know
Tensions are running high across the Middle East following a series of strikes early Sunday morning by the Israeli Air Force targeting roughly 100 missile launchpads across southern Lebanon. The IDF said the strikes were meant “to thwart an imminent threat” from Hezbollah against Israeli communities — a retaliation for Israel’s assassination of senior Hezbollah official Fuad Shukr in Beirut last month.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech later Sunday that the group targeted specific sites in and around Tel Aviv, including the Defense Ministry headquarters and the Glilot IDF intelligence base outside the city.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah intended to “keep the Iron Dome busy” with hundreds of rockets and drones while it attacked Glilot and another unnamed military base.
Hezbollah said it fired 320 rockets, some of which reached as far south as Akko. Israeli Naval Petty Officer First Class David Moshe Ben Shitrit, 21, was killed aboard a patrol boat by shrapnel after an Iron Dome interceptor stopped a Hezbollah drone, and extensive property damage was reported in northern Israel. Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport paused outgoing flights and redirected incoming flights to Cyprus and Eilat, resuming normal operations within two hours. Israel’s Homefront Command implemented restrictions around large indoor and outdoor gatherings and closed beaches as far south as Tel Aviv, lifting the more stringent rules in most areas hours after the attack.
But the terror group’s bark was worse than its bite, with the limited damage in Israel falling well short of the sort of mass-casualty event Nasrallah had envisioned, and is not likely to deter Israel from attacking similar threats — or carrying out high-level assassinations of Hezbollah officials. Sky News Arabia’s Nadim Koteich suggested that Hezbollah’s strikes in Israel were “a significant failure,” noting that “if Israel had the chance to strike Nasrallah tomorrow, knowing the retaliation would be like today’s, they’d do it in a heartbeat.”
Israeli officials briefed their U.S. counterparts ahead of the strike. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett said President Joe Biden was “closely monitoring” the events and “at his direction, senior U.S. officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts. We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability.”
A Pentagon readout following a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Austin “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s defense against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday that the strikes may be the start of a broader campaign against Hezbollah.
The attack on Hezbollah’s missile launchers “is not the end of the story,” Netanyahu said. “Three weeks ago, we eliminated [Hezbollah’s] chief of staff and today we prevented its planned attack. [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah in Beirut and [Iranian Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei in Tehran need to know that this is an additional step on the way to changing the situation in the north and to safely bring our residents back home.”
The thwarted Hezbollah attack came after Hamas announced that it rejected the latest cease-fire and hostage negotiation efforts; Iran and Hezbollah had said they would hold off on their retaliation for Shukr’s assassination while talks were ongoing.
Hours after the strike, Israeli negotiators traveled to Cairo for continued talks. Hamas reiterated its refusal to take part in the talks, despite sending representatives to Cairo. Netanyahu’s office emphasized on Saturday that he opposes any IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, rebutting some reports that he agreed to a partial retreat in a call with Biden.
war watch
Iranian, Houthi attacks still to come, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah warns
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned the threat of a regional war still loomed, as Iran and its Houthi proxies plan to retaliate against Israel for the assassinations of Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
View from Washington: Robert Satloff, the executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote that after Israel thwarted Hezbollah’s major attack plans, “the ball is back in Hezbollah’s (ahem, Tehran’s) court. With some speechifying that talks big but says nothing, and with no further targeting deep inside Israel, this episode can pass.” Satloff also noted the “considerable restraint” of Israel’s leaders in undertaking targeted and preemptive attacks rather than a major operation against Hezbollah, “a function both of some cooler heads among certain Israeli leaders and cautionary words from” Biden.
mountain mensch
Talking Talmud with Colorado’s Jewish attorney general
Why was 2018 different from all other years? Mah nishtanah? November 2018 marked the first time that Colorado elected a Jewish official to a statewide office In fact, Coloradans elected two: Jared Polis as governor. Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch sat down with Weiser in Chicago last week during the Democratic National Convention.
Hillel vs. Shammai: Weiser, an antitrust attorney who was previously the dean of the University of Colorado Law School, grew up in New York, where he learned to read Torah from his father. He considers himself a “student of Torah wisdom.” “One of the great lessons about Talmudic learning is you’ve got two opinions — famously, Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai — and often the answer is not, ‘You’re right and you’re wrong.’ It’s, ‘You’re both right.’ And how do you integrate what’s right about two different perspectives is an essential element of Talmudic wisdom, and that’s something I take with me,” said Weiser. “It’s so important to listen, because when someone sees something different than you, that’s a chance to learn. So that learning has informed how I approach public life, public policy and my public service.”
the granite candidate
Maggie Goodlander hopes to bring her foreign policy experience to Congress
Maggie Goodlander, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Biden administration now running to replace retiring Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH), says she wants to “find a way to build back the bipartisan super majority that has been so important to American foreign policy” if she’s elected to Congress. “I know from my own experience the critical role that Congress plays in American foreign policy,” Goodlander told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs in an interview last week. “My goal would be to find a way to build back the bipartisan super majority that has been so important to American foreign policy and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Background: Goodlander is married to White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, whom she met at the annual Munich Security Conference during the Obama administration. He was working for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time, while she was working for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). She has a lengthy resume working for both Democrats and Republicans in Washington. Most recently, she served as a senior advisor at the White House, leading Biden’s “Unity Agenda” before announcing her bid for Kuster’s seat in May.
On Israel: She defended Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, noting that the country is facing a security threat that must be addressed. “Oct. 7 was the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It’s an unimaginably difficult situation in which Israel finds itself. Your question is, how has Israel done in prosecuting the war? I’d start by saying that war is hell, and we’re seeing that every day on display,” Goodlander said.
book shelf
McMaster showcases his disagreements with Netanyahu in new memoir
Prior to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster — who served as former President Donald Trump’s national security adviser — believed that Israeli leaders were too credulous in building relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to constrain Iran’s influence in neighboring Syria, he recounts in a new memoir, an advance copy of which was obtained by Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.
Chatting with Bibi: McMaster conveyed his concerns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a brief exchange on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, he writes, claiming that Putin was “using a ‘bait and switch’” by dangling a “promise to curtail Iran’s presence and influence in Syria while actually enabling Iran’s proxies on” Israel’s borders. “Netanyahu smiled and said he had better return to his seat,” McMaster says in his memoir, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, which will be published on Tuesday. The Israeli prime minister, he observes, “would not abandon his delusional view of Putin’s intentions until after the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks.”
speaker saga
Rejected DNC speaker championed by Uncommitted movement has long anti-Israel track record
The “Uncommitted” movement that failed to get a representative to speak on stage at the Democratic National Convention last week had pushed at least one potential speaker — Palestinian-American Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman — who downplayed the significance of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and, in her proposed remarks, compared Israeli hostages being held in Gaza to Palestinian detainees, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
In her record: In her proposed remarks to Democratic delegates, Romman would have called to “free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages.” On Oct. 7, Romman issued a statement that didn’t mention Hamas, instead referring to “ongoing violence surrounding the Gaza strip.” She has also declined to support a two-state solution and suggested she supports a one-state outcome. In the Georgia state legislature, she has also been a vocal opponent of pro-Israel legislation.
moving on up
Mira Resnick, advocate of strong U.S.-Israel relationship, tapped for key State Department role
Mira Resnick, a longtime standby in Washington foreign policy circles who has overseen U.S. arms transfers at the State Department since the start of the Biden administration, will move into a new position overseeing Washington’s handling of Israeli-Palestinian issues and the Persian Gulf, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Resume reading: As the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel/Palestinian Affairs and Arabian Peninsula Affairs, Resnick will handle two crucial Middle East portfolios usually helmed by two different people. She comes to the role after three and a half years as deputy assistant secretary of state for regional security, where she managed foreign arms sales, and shepherded the Biden administration’s military assistance to Ukraine and Israel after Russia’s invasion and after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. “The U.S.-Israel relationship was a private focus in my household because of my Jewish background, but also because we were just a politically aware family,” she told The Hill in 2023.
Worthy Reads
Sneaking Sinwar: The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, Julian Barnes and Adam Goldman look at how Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has managed to evade the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza. “The United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and Israel established channels to share information about the location of Mr. Sinwar and other top Hamas commanders, and the hostages. ‘We’ve devoted considerable effort and resources to the Israelis for the hunt for the top leadership, particularly Sinwar,’ said Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser. ‘We’ve had people in Israel sitting in the room with the Israelis working this problem set. And obviously we have a lot of experience hunting high-value targets.’ In particular, the Americans have deployed ground-penetrating radar to help map the hundreds of miles of tunnels they believe are under Gaza, with new imagery combined with Israeli intelligence gathered from captured Hamas fighters and troves of documents to build out a more complete picture of the tunnel network.” [NYTimes]
Strike Strategy:The Wall Street Journal editorial board opines on Israel’s weekend strike on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, aimed at blunting a planned offensive by the Iran-backed terror group against Israeli military and civilian targets. “The knee-jerk response from the global left is to condemn Israel for ‘escalation.’ But in greatly reducing the damage from Hezbollah’s attack, the Israeli strike limited the escalation. Big hits on Israel could have set off a far more destructive war. The dog that didn’t bark is Iran. Hezbollah’s masters may have given the order, but they shrank from joining directly, which is Israel’s larger concern. Tehran sees the surge of U.S. forces to the region, and it should know that it, too, can be pre-empted, embarrassed or worse. Hezbollah attacked from southern Lebanon, and Israel kept to that turf as well. For now there are still rules to the game, even as they shift and pressure grows to do more. Will Hezbollah keep taking losses? Will Israel remain under a sword of Damocles? Israel has the right to defeat Hezbollah, not merely defend itself.” [WSJ]
Brooklyn Boycott: In the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Rabbi Andy Bachman reflects on the cancellation of an event at a Brooklyn bookstore that he was set to moderate — which was abruptly nixed when a store manager discovered Bachman was a Zionist. “There is a story that the historian George Mosse’s students used to tell about the 1960s anti-war protests in Madison, Wisconsin. A number of George’s students were on the New Left and they were angry with him that he — a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany — was not taking more forceful public stands against the war. Protesting in front of his house one morning and chanting that he was supporting a fascist regime, George stood out on his drive in bathrobe and pajamas engaging with his students over precisely which kind of fascism was he being accused of supporting? Liberal or conservative? German or Italian or French or Soviet or Spanish? Words and the movements they represent matter. ‘This course is designed to rid you of your slogans,’ George famously taught us. The driveway seminar became legend. Oh to have the chance to engage this bookstore censor over which particular Zionism she was objecting to. Cultural? Socialist? Liberal? Revisionist? Religious? How much richer our night would have been.” [JTA]
Word on the Street
Former President Donald Trump indicated he may not participate in the scheduled September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris…
Meta took down a number of WhatsApp accounts that were part of an Iranian hacker ring that attempted to pose as tech support account targeting individuals linked to Trump and President Joe Biden…
Politico interviewed outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Jeff Flake about his time in Ankara…
Harvard University will expand its kosher offerings beginning in the fall semester; the move was one recommendation offered by a task force set up by the school to address antisemitism on campus…
Columbia University is bracing for renewed anti-Israel protests as classes resume for the fall semester; members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest disrupted the school’s convocation event over the weekend…
NYU updated its code of conduct to recognize instances of anti-Zionism as forms of antisemitism in line with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964…
Town & Country magazine spotlights Dr. Howard Krein, the Jewish son-in-law of President Joe Biden who has largely stayed out of the public eye…
The New York Times does a deep dive into the history of Costco; the store’s concept for wholesale shopping was pioneered by Bronx lawyer Sol Price…
The New York Post interviewed Richie “Yechiel” Taylor, who as deputy chief of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau is the highest-ranking Orthodox Jew in the NYPD…
The New Yorker reviews “Between the Temples,” a new film starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane about a synagogue cantor and a congregant planning a later-in-life bat mitzvah…
Authorities in France are investigating an explosion outside of a synagogue in southern France; a suspect was captured on film leaving the premises wearing a Palestinian flag…
Politico previews an upcoming decision by the G7’s global Financial Action Task Force, which is expected to add Lebanon to its “gray list” over concerns regarding money-laundering and other financial crimes…
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vowed a “measured” and “well-calculated” response to Israel for its strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the weekend…
Actress Mitzi McCall, who with her husband Charlie Brill made — and bombed — their “Ed Sullivan Show” debut the same night as The Beatles, died at 93…
Poet and author Hettie Jones died at 90…
Pic of the Day
A family in Akko, Israel, inspected the damage caused by a rocket fired by Hezbollah in Lebanon in the coastal Israeli town early Sunday morning.
Birthdays
Mayor of Tel Aviv since 1998, Ron Huldai turns 80…
Rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Jacob of Atlanta, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman turns 97… CEO of Siegelvision, he is also the founder and chairman emeritus of global brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale, Alan Siegel turns 86… Owner of You Save On Meds, Martin J. Portnoy… Partner at the D.C. law firm of Williams & Connolly, Robert B. Barnett turns 78… Former Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, Irving Slosberg turns 77… Sales representative for ADT Security, Jay Caplan… Vaudeville performer, clown, mime, juggler and sleight of hand magician, known by his stage name “Avner the Eccentric,” Avner Eisenberg turns 76… Co-owner of Rochester, N.Y.-based August Moon Imports and World Tae Kwon Do Center, Jane August… Venture capitalist, social policy researcher and philanthropist, Freada Kapor Klein turns 72… Board chair of Gap, a retail chain founded by his parents, Robert J. Fisher turns 70… EVP and managing director of polling and consulting at The Mellman Group, Michael J. Bloomfield… Journalist and co-author of the Freakonomics series, Stephen J. Dubner turns 61… Member of the Maryland Senate since 2020, Michelle “Shelly” Laskin Hettleman turns 60… President of NARAL Pro-Choice America for eight years until 2021, Ilyse Hogue turns 55… CFO at Cornerstone OnDemand, Perry Wallack… Managing partner of Texas Venture Partners, Lorne Abony turns 55… Managing partner of RNS Strategies, Robert Sacks… Professor at the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis, Steven Malter turns 51… Deputy general counsel at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the coordinator of the Internet’s naming system), Samantha Eisner… Co-founder and CEO of Danari Global, Ariel Maurice (“Ari”) Ratner… Rapper, known professionally as Kosha Dillz, Rami Matan Even-Esh turns 43… Founder and CEO of The Lemon Perfect Company, maker of the enhanced water brand Lemon Perfect, Yanni Hufnagel turns 42… Member of the Knesset for Yesh Atid, she served in the previous government as minister for social equality and minorities, Meirav Cohen turns 41… Principal and founder of Inspire Capital and Development, Brielle Joy Applebaum… John Train… Carrie Shapiro…
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