Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we have an update on Rep. Marc Molinaro’s demand for the FAA to make public its guidance to U.S. airlines on travel to Israel, a look at Jordanian sentiment against Israel amid the backdrop of last week’s terror attack at the Allenby Crossing and a report on the broadening of the focus of tomorrow’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes beyond antisemitism. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Josh Harris, Alex Edelman and Elsa Morante.
What We’re Watching
- White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein is in Israel today for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials.
- The Capital Jewish Museum is hosting its inaugural gala tonight in Washington, honoring Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Myrna Cardin, Josh and Marjorie Harris and violin virtuoso Pinchas Zuckerman.
What You Should Know
The Houthis’ long-range missile strike on central Israel early Sunday marked a significant escalation in the tensions between Israel and the Yemen-based terror group. The Iran-backed militia said the weapon was a “new hypersonic missile”; the IDF had been monitoring the missile since shortly after its launch, but an interceptor fired at the weapon when it reached Israeli territory failed to destroy it.
Addressing the attack at the beginning of the Israeli government meeting yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “They should know that we exact a high price for any attempt to attack us. Whoever needs a reminder of this, is invited to visit the port of Hodeida,” referring to the Yemeni port Israel struck in July in response to a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv.
“Whoever attacks us will not evade our strike,” Netanyahu continued. “Hamas is already learning this through our determined action, which will bring about its destruction and the release of all of our hostages.”
In an overnight phone call between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the latter “emphasized that the Houthis pose a regional threat,” according to an Israeli readout of the conversation.
The Houthi strike is expected to raise renewed calls in Washington for the White House to redesignate the group as a Foreign Terror Organization.
A similar incident in Julyprompted calls from lawmakers to reimpose the designation. In 2021, one of the first actions the Biden administration took was to remove the Iran-backed group’s FTO status.
In April, the House passed legislation to redesignate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization on a bipartisan basis. The legislation has not moved forward in the Senate.
In February, the Biden administration’s Yemen envoy, Tim Lenderking, said that the administration was open to reinstating the designation.
Sunday’s strike comes amid a broader push by the Houthis to entrench themselves across the region. The New York Timesreported over the weekend that both the Houthis and Hamas had set up offices in Iraq, an indication that both groups feel emboldened to expand their operations, underscoring the extent to which Iran’s proxies in the region are still able to freely operate.
The attack, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote, “underscores that the Houthis are undeterred by American denunciations and pinprick responses to their assault on commercial shipping in the Red Sea region.”
Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider last night that “the lesson for the White House from this Houthi strike is that American deterrence is collapsing even further in the Middle East.”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran has built the Houthis into yet another Iran-backed terror army capable of threatening American interests and partners — shutting down critical waterways that damage American economic security and threatening the overall security of key American partners like Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt,” Dubowitz added. “How long before our allies look to China for more reliable security guarantees against the Islamic Republic’s aggression and before we lose the Middle East to Beijing?”
jordanian jeopardy
Is Jordan reaching its boiling point?
As the first anniversary of Israel’s war with Hamas approaches, anger in neighboring Jordan appears to be spiking, even as the country’s leader, King Abdullah II, works to find a balance between public sentiment and maintaining a three-decade-old peace agreement with the Jewish state. Nearly two-thirds of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian heritage and many more identify closely with the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The tension looked set to boil over last week when a Jordanian national shot and killed three Israeli civilians. Fury at Israel was also on display last Wednesday when an Islamist party campaigning on an anti-Israel platform significantly increased its share of seats in the legislature in the country’s parliamentary elections, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports.
Balancing act: “The relationship between the king and the Israeli government is not good but the strategic needs on both sides are greater,” Ronni Shaked, a researcher on Arab affairs at the Truman Institute at Hebrew University, told JI in an interview. “There is a problem in Jordan, the king must find a balance between the anger on the streets and maintaining the relationship with Israel,” Shaked said, describing how Abdullah had adopted policies that allowed his people to express their frustrations at Israel while at the same time clamping down on violence and terror that could spill across the border.
travel limbo
FAA failing to respond to Molinaro inquiry over suspension of flights to Israel
The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to respond to Rep. Marc Molinaro’s (R-NY) inquiry about what guidance it has given to U.S. airlines amid their ongoing suspension of flights to Israel, he told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs. Molinaro, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, gave FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker until Sept. 6 to respond to his questions about whether the agency had in any way instructed or encouraged U.S. airlines to suspend flights to the Jewish state, either temporarily or indefinitely. Molinaro said he has yet to hear back.
No answers: “With no answers and Jewish travelers left in limbo, there’s a growing perception that the FAA and DOT are getting involved in anti-Israel politics. They fear this is a boycott,” Molinaro told JI in a statement. An FAA spokesperson told JI that the agency would “respond directly” to the congressman. Molinaro wrote a letter to Whitaker last month asking for the agency to provide its official and unofficial communications with the airlines and the International Civil Aviation Organization “in the past two months.” Molinaro also asked how the agency worked “to ensure that political matters do not influence the decision-making process of the FAA.”
Bonus:The Free Press’ Jay Solomon asks if U.S. airlines are playing into Iran’s hands by refusing to fly to Israel — and reports on the role that aviation unions are playing in the decision-making process.
hate crimes hearing
Republicans criticize Senate Democrats for broadening focus of hate crimes hearing
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the rise in hate crimes this week will not focus exclusively on domestic antisemitism despite GOP efforts within the committee to secure a hearing exclusively on the topic. Tuesday’s hearing is a first for the Senate since Oct. 7 and the proceedings are not shaping up as a bipartisan effort. Judiciary Committee Republicans have been urging Democrats for months to convene a hearing on how the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses is violating the civil rights of Jewish students — similar to their House GOP counterparts’ hearings with embattled university presidents earlier in the year, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.
Republican plea: Led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), every Republican on the panel sent a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who chairs the committee, in May to request he hold a hearing “on the civil rights violations of Jewish students” and “the proliferation of terrorist ideology — two issues that fall squarely within this Committee’s purview.” Democrats opted to organize a hearing on the “rise in hate incidents across the country, particularly targeting the Jewish, Arab, and Muslim communities” since Oct. 7, which Republicans ultimately objected to. Both sides will not have an equal number of witnesses as a result. Democrats will have two witnesses while Republicans will have one.
boycott blowback
American Association of University of Professors under fire for reversing opposition to academic boycotts
Just weeks after the American Association of University Professors reversed course and dropped its longtime opposition to academic boycotts, faculty members on several campuses, days into the new academic year, have started implementing aspects of a boycott of Israel by not assigning articles written by Israeli scholars, refusing to invite Israeli academics to conferences or declining to write study abroad letters for students wishing to spend a semester in Israel. Critics accuse the AAUP of deserting its commitment to academic freedom — and although the policy does not mention Israel — particularly concerned are pro-Israel campus leaders who say the change will be used to promote the boycott of the Jewish state and as a result have negative consequences for Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen reports for Jewish Insider.
‘Wrong move’: The policy change is “not just speech and words,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told JI, outlining various steps she said are already being taken on some campuses. “There has been wall-to-wall condemnation from academics and organizations that aren’t even [necessarily] in the pro-Israel space, they are just in the academic freedom space,” Elman said, adding that “this is the wrong move for a storied organization.” The AAUP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JI regarding the criticism.
Worthy Reads
Not So Alone: In the New York Post, Natan Sharansky reflects on the isolation felt by many in the Jewish community as he cites the writings of Bernard-Henri Lévy, who recently published a book about Israel’s standing in the world. “But Lévy is neither gloomy nor bitter. He knows — like his great fellow countryman, Albert Camus — that doing the right thing is often a sadly solitary task, but that anyone who stands up and fights is never truly alone. There are always others watching. Maybe, like I had once been, they’re imprisoned by the perpetrators of evil and cannot stand up and join the battle. Maybe they’ve been swept up by a collective inflammation, succumbing to fashionable trends without thinking about their grim consequences. Maybe they’re not paying attention, or, at least not yet. But Lévy knows, and I know, that these people are out there, and that, at one point or another, they, too, will step up and fight. It won’t happen overnight. Don’t expect the masked zealots on campus, for example, to shake off their keffiyehs tomorrow, apologize and stand with the Jews as we resist the rise of a movement no less murderous and no less hateful than the Nazis. If there’s one thing you learn in the gulag, it’s that justice is served, but it takes its time. And yet, it always comes.” [NYPost]
Trump and TV: In The New York Times, TV executive Michael Hirschorn considers how the emergence of the reality television genre gave rise to former President Donald Trump. “Mr. Trump clearly understands how to operate in this particular version of the upside down, collaborating with his audience to create shareable moments that are full of in-jokes and provocations, perpetual-motion meme machines. How could he say all those outrageous things? Doesn’t he know people are going to be shocked? Well, of course, he says them specifically because people will be shocked. He has succeeded in making himself the most most-hated man in America, and the rewards, at least until this moment, have been huge. If reality television began as a crude simulacrum of real life, today the opposite can feel true — that actual life is approximating reality television, and we’ve all been conscripted as cast members. We have arrived at the final stage of the genre’s cultural logic: people with no connection whatsoever to the genre living as if they are reality stars. The contagion has leaked from the lab. We are in a period of unchecked community spread.” [NYTimes]
Normalization Slowdown: In the Arab News,’ Jonathan Gornall looks at how the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war have affected efforts for Israel to further normalize relations with Arab countries. “‘I’m not sure I would describe the accords as being on life support,’ said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs). ‘They are actually weathering this very difficult storm of the Gaza war. That is certainly putting the leadership and the decision-making in the UAE and Bahrain under a microscope, and of course that poses difficult domestic dynamics for these leaders to navigate.’ … As for the Israelis, ‘normalization with Saudi Arabia is not on the cards for now, partly because obviously the Israeli leadership has different priorities right now, and after Oct. 7, the price of normalization became higher. And I think the Israeli leadership is calculating that if they wait this out — and perhaps over-anticipating that the Saudis will still be there, which could be a miscalculation — the price that they have to pay for normalization will go down again.” [ArabNews]
Word on the Street
Former President Donald Trump was the target of a failed attempted assassination at his Trump International Golf Club; police apprehended a 58-year-old man who had a history of criticizing the former president, including over the U.S.’ 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran…
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) met with Holocaust survivor and philanthropist Jerry Wartski…
President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken hosted back-to-back receptions last night celebrating the 200th anniversary of Blair House, the president’s official guest house…
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) cut ties with a fundraiser with links to Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine…
The San Francisco Unified School District canceled an upcoming staff workshop on antisemitism after pushback from far-left activists concerned that the American Jewish Committee, which had been named by the Biden administration last year as a key organization involved in combating antisemitism, was leading the training…
Police in Ann Arbor, Mich., are investigating a bias-motivated assault against a Jewish student at the University of Michigan…
The Washington Post interviews Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris about the challenges he faced in his first year overseeing the team…
The Wall Street Journal reports on an effort by Elon Musk to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to oust a county prosecutor in Texas who had received support from George Soros…
Among those to take home Emmys at last night’s awards: Alex Edelman for outstanding writing for a variety special for “Just For Us” and Ebon Moss-Bachrach for supporting actor in a comedy series for “The Bear”…
In the Financial Times, Nilanjana Roy reflects on the writings of Italian-Jewish author Elsa Morante on the 50th anniversary of the release of Morante’s La Storia (History)…
The U.K.’s Jewish Chronicle ended its relationship with freelancer Elon Perry after an internal investigation found that Perry had misrepresented parts of his background and fabricated claims in his reporting of the Israel-Hamas war…
Officials in the U.K. are cracking down on a company owned by Hossein Shamkhani, amid concerns that the oil kingpin is moving both Russian and Iranian oil around the globe…
The New York Times does a deep dive into how Hamas uses heavy — and at times lethal — force to maintain control over Gaza…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied reports that he is planning on firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with former Justice Minister Gideon Saar…
The IDF concluded that three Israeli hostages who were determined to have died after being taken to Gaza were killed during an Israeli strike targeting a senior Hamas official in northern Gaza…
The Washington Post looks at the role of UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force on Israel’s border with Lebanon, amid growing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah…
American and British security officials are raising concerns that Russia and Iran are sharing critical information and nuclear technology…
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is slated to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in Russia; representatives from Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates are expected at the October convening…
“Screamin’” Scott Simon, keyboardist for Sha Na Na, died at 75…
Pic of the Day
Actress Gal Gadot joined Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday for the virtual launch of his “Voice of the People” initiative, a new effort meant to combat rising antisemitism and promote global Jewish unity.
Israeli soccer player Daniel Lifshitz, whose grandparents were taken hostage from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, spoke at the launch. “My grandfather fought in four wars and founded Nir Oz to protect Israel,” he said. “Now he’s being held hostage in Gaza, but I feel it’s my mission to bring everyone home. Peace itself is being held hostage.”
Birthdays
Award-winning illusionist, known professionally as David Copperfield, David Seth Kotkin turns 68…
Argentinian physician and author, Esther Katzen Vilar turns 89… Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives for multiple terms, in 2015 she became the president of Plaza Health Network, Elaine Bloom turns 87… NYC-based real estate investor and the founder of Cammeby’s International Group, Rubin “Rubie” Schron turns 86… Defense policy advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43, Richard Perle turns 83… Montebello, Calif., resident, Jon Olesen… Pompano Beach, Fla., resident, Shari Goldberg… Israeli playwright and screenwriter, Motti Lerner turns 75… Sheriff of Nantucket County, Mass., James A. Perelman turns 74… Founder and CEO of OurCrowd, Jonathan Medved turns 69… Fern Wallach… Anthropology professor at Cornell, his work centers on Jewish communities and culture, Jonathan Boyarin turns 68… Director of stakeholder engagement at the National Council of Jewish Women, Dan Kohl turns 59… President and rabbinic head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Riverdale, N.Y., Rabbi Dov Linzer turns 58… Writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine, Jason Zengerle… Israeli windsurfer, he won bronze in Atlanta 1996 and gold in Athens 2004, Israel’s first Olympic gold medalist, Gal Fridman turns 49… Mayor of Kiryat Motzkin, Tzvi (Tziki) Avisar turns 46… VP of public affairs and corporate marketing at Meta / Facebook, Josh Ginsberg… President of basketball operations for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, Koby Altman turns 42… National field director at the Israel on Campus Coalition, Lauren Morgan Suriel… VP of customer success at Simplified, Suzy Goldenkranz… Actor, best known for starring in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” Daren Maxwell Kagasoff turns 37… NYC-based wealth reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Rachel Louise Ensign… Israeli actress who played the lead role in Apple TV’s spy thriller “Tehran,” Niv Sultan turns 32… Winner of an Olympic bronze medal for Israel in taekwondo at the 2020 Games, Avishag Semberg turns 23…
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