Daily Kickoff
Good Monday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria will affect regional dynamics and report on the omission of the Antisemitism Awareness Act from the national defense budget released over the weekend. We cover Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s opposition to recent legislation banning arms sales to Israel and talk to Democratic senators about the selection of Yechiel Leiter to be Israel’s ambassador to Washington. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gov. Kathy Hochul, Christopher Landau and Eyal Shani.
What We’re Watching
- Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) is being sworn in to the Senate today — and will be taking his oath on a Maimonides Mishneh Torah printed in Italy in 1490.
- Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be director of national intelligence, is on Capitol Hill today to make her case to Senate Republicans.
- The two-day BitcoinMENA conference kicked off this morning in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Steve Witkoff, the incoming Trump administration’s Middle East advisor, spoke earlier today, while Eric Trump is slated to give a keynote address tomorrow.
- U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is in Saudi Arabia this afternoon for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Earlier today, he was in the United Arab Emirates for a meeting with Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
What You Should Know
Both President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cautiously welcomed the historic opportunity presented by the rapid fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime yesterday, while President-elect Donald Trump made clear a day earlier that “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”
“It’s a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country,” Biden said yesterday from the White House. “It’s also a moment of risk and uncertainty. As we all turn to the question of what comes next, the United States will work with our partners and the stakeholders in Syria to help them seize an opportunity to manage the risk.” The U.S. launched weekend strikes in Syria targeting ISIS infrastructure, in an effort, U.S. Central Command said in a statement, to “ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
But with little more than a month left before Biden leaves office, Trump’s response is the more consequential one. “Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote on X on Saturday.
In new comments on Sunday, Trump attributed Assad’s downfall to Russia — where Assad and his family have been granted asylum — and President Vladimir Putin. “Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. “There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine … a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.”
“Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success,” Trump added.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu welcomed opportunities for peaceful relations with the new forces in Syria, while having instructed the army to take over strategic positions abandoned by the Syrian army, “to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.”
Along the Israel-Syria border, Israeli forces from the elite Shaldag Unit seized the highest point of Mount Hermon on the Syrian side to prevent rebels from threatening Israel. Troops also took up additional positions in the buffer zone to stop rebels from attacking U.N. peacekeepers maintaining the Israel-Syria 1974 cease-fire.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said this morning that Israeli forces struck chemical weapons depots and other strategic military systems in Syria so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of bad actors.
Dina Lisnyansky, an expert on Middle Eastern geopolitics at Shalem College, told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov that “Israel is now looking at all of these [rebel] groups that are varied ethnically, politically, socially and culturally to see if we can make arrangements with them. Some of them are already reaching out to Israel. The Druze say they don’t want a war with Israel, they want stability in the region. The Kurds have had ties with Israel the whole time and can cooperate over many shared interests and understandings.”
Lisnyansky and Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the Misgav Institute for National Security, told JI that Assad’s fall marked the elimination of another branch of Iran’s “axis of resistance” to Israel.
Iran “invested many years and resources and energy in creating proxies, and one by one they’re falling – Hamas, Hezbollah and now Assad’s Syria,” Lisnyansky said. “It doesn’t have much left in the region.”
Kuperwasser said that taken together, the events have culminated in “the fall of the Iranian axis of evil.” He told JI, “This is a major blow to Hezbollah, worse than what we did to them in recent months.” Other branches of the Iranian axis, in Iraq and Yemen, will likely be destabilized by Assad’s fall, and “the Iranians will try to tighten ranks,” Kuperwasser said. Read the full story here.
Stateside, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley credited Assad’s fall to “the strength of Israel,” in remarks at the Tikvah Fund Jewish Leadership Conference in Manhattan yesterday. Haley warned that the lightning-fast rebel takeover of Syria is “a net positive for Israel,” but that could change, as “every hour going forward is going to mean something.” Read the full story here.
What we’re reading: “The War on Terror Had an Unexpected Outcome” by Hassan Hassan in The New York Times… “The Syrian Regime Collapsed Gradually — And Then Suddenly” by The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum… “Assad’s Fall Shows Russia, Iran and Hamas Made a Bad Bet” by Bloomberg’s Hal Brands … “After Assad, much promise — and risk and uncertainty” by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius… “Assad’s Downfall Marks a New Realignment in the Middle East” by The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov…
AAA STALEMATE
Schumer’s bid to add Antisemitism Awareness Act to NDAA defense bill fails
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) bid to add the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act has been blocked by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), making it increasingly unlikely that the bill will pass Congress this year, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
The latest: Schumer requested that the legislation be included in the compromise version of the NDAA to be voted on by both the House and Senate. But Johnson refused the request, arguing that it may be outside the purview of the NDAA and that Schumer should call a stand-alone Senate floor vote. Despite weeks of negotiations, neither congressional leader budged on his position, and a final compromise bill was released on Saturday evening without the AAA included. The news leaves the AAA’s passage this year increasingly unlikely, though some are holding out hope that it will be added to an end-of-year funding package. Senate leaders are not expected to dedicate floor time to a stand-alone vote on the AAA.
Read the full story here.
ENVOY ISSUES
Several Democratic senators express concerns about incoming Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter
Some Democratic senators are not enthused about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Yechiel Leiter as Israel’s next ambassador to the United States, citing Leiter’s pro-settlement policies and past ties to the Jewish Defense League, a group the U.S. later designated as a terrorist organization. Their comments suggest that Leiter could face a rocky relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill as he works to represent Israel to Congress, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.
Critical sentiment: Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who recently voted in favor of blocking arms transfers to Israel, said the decision to appoint Leiter served as an example of Netanyahu placing a wedge between the U.S. and Israel. “I think the Netanyahu government is going in the wrong direction, and this is another manifestation of that. We have always been able to credibly make the case that America’s interest and Israel’s interest are aligned, but these guys are making it more and more difficult,” Schatz said.
Read the full story here with additional comments from Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
SCOOP
Duckworth lambastes Israeli government, but dismisses Sanders’ resolutions as ineffectual
In a letter to constituents who reached out to her office about last month’s Senate votes on resolutions that would have blocked some shipments of U.S. aid to Israel, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) lambasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government while also arguing that the resolutions would have done nothing to actually address issues on the ground, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What she said: Duckworth wrote that she is “disgusted with the extreme Netanyahu government’s brutal prosecution of its war in Gaza, its callous failure to prioritize securing the release of all remaining hostages and its outrageous refusal to act with urgency and seriousness to alleviate a dire humanitarian crisis.” But, she continued, she was concerned that the resolutions, if they passed, could have subjected U.S. troops in the region to greater threat from Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis, and would have done nothing to actually change Israeli government behavior.
Read the full story here.
FIGHTING HATE
Gov. Hochul kicks off first annual convening against antisemitism
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul hosted the inaugural Anti-Hate in Education Center Convening on Antisemitism on Thursday at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, an event that’s slated to take place annually. The formation of the Anti-Hate in Education Center was first announced by Hochul in September 2023. At the time, the announcement made New York State the first in the nation to respond to President Joe Biden’s national strategy to counter antisemitism, which had been released earlier that year, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Shared space: At Thursday’s event, Hochul unveiled the education center’s new name, the New York State Center for Educational Civil Discourse, and explained that its goal is to create a space for education leaders, “people from different faiths,” to share strategies to combat antisemitism in New York State through education. The center is a partnership with The City University of New York, the State University of New York, New York State Education Department and the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities.
Worthy Reads
Khamenei’s Catastrophe: The Atlantic’s Eliot Cohen suggests that Iran is the “biggest loser” in the series of events that has played out in the Middle East over the last 14 months. “Decades of patient work assembling proxy movements throughout the Middle East, specifically but not exclusively focused on Israel, have collapsed. Hamas was never a cat’s paw of Tehran, but it received weapons and training from Iran, and coordinated with Hezbollah, a far more formidable force, and one much more tightly aligned with, if not always entirely controlled by, Iran. Hezbollah had helped turn the tide of battle that had flowed against the Assad regime from 2012 onwards. … Iran is a strong state, in the sense that its people are deeply rooted in a shared history and culture, but it has a relatively weak military. It has invested heavily in proxy warfare with notable success, including against the United States in Iraq. But with the defeats of Hamas and Hezbollah, and with the collapse of the Assad regime, Iran has suffered irrecoverable losses. It no longer has a land route to Lebanon; it has lost its most disciplined, well-armed, and effective proxies; and it failed in its two attempts to attack Israel directly while losing its main air defenses in a retaliatory strike.” [TheAtlantic]
Which Marco Rubio?: In The New York Times, Daniel Drezner considers what foreign policy positions Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) might take if confirmed as secretary of state. “The question to ask, however, is which Marco Rubio will show up at Foggy Bottom if he gets the job next year. Will he be a hawkish, open-markets, democracy-promoting optimist or a more inward-looking, antiglobalist pessimist? Either scenario is plausible because Mr. Rubio’s worldview has, to use the argot of the Beltway, evolved over the years. As populist nationalism consumed the Republican Party, Mr. Rubio shifted to accommodate Mr. Trump’s worldview. His hawkishness has mostly persisted while his embrace of globalization curdled. Even a cursory look at Mr. Rubio’s political evolution over the years suggests that his ultimate success will not hinge on his deep and genuine knowledge of world politics but rather his ability to position himself at the dead center of the G.O.P.’s fractured ideological spectrum.” [NYTimes]
Word on the Street
President-elect Donald Trump met with French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris over the weekend…
Trump announced former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau as his selection for deputy secretary of state…
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the head of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s downfall was “a blow to Iran, a blow to Russia”…
The mother of journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, said that “vetted” sources had indicated that her son was alive and being “treated well”; President Joe Biden confirmed Debra Tice’s comments and said the U.S. was working to pinpoint Tice’s location…
Jewish groups in Ohio are pushing state lawmakers to vote in favor of a bill that would adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…
Eyal Shani opened a new branch of his Malka restaurant in West Palm Beach, Fla., last night…
Australian officials are investigating an arson at a Melbourne synagogue last week as a terrorist incident; Canberra also announced the creation of an antisemitism task force in response to the attack…
Hamas documents obtained by the IDF during its operations in Gaza indicate that at least two dozen UNRWA educational employees, a majority of whom were senior administrators, were members of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades…
Satellite images published by the Institute for Science and International Security of an Iranian nuclear site damaged by the Israeli Air Force’s October strike indicate that Iran tried to hide sensitive debris at the site…
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran is “dramatically” speeding up its enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade levels…
A new U.S. intelligence report indicates a growing risk of Iran building nuclear weapons…
Pic of the Day
Thousands of people in London rallied on Sunday against antisemitism during a demonstration.
Birthdays
Singer-songwriter and son of Bob Dylan, he rose to fame as the lead singer and primary songwriter for the rock band the Wallflowers, Jakob Dylan turns 55…
Retired diplomat who served as Israel’s ambassador to Russia, China and the U.K., Zvi Heifetz turns 68… Los Angeles investor and entrepreneur, she is the founder of CaregiversDirect and Beverly Hills Egg Donation, and a past president of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, Lisa Greer… Former senior White House aide and deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Clinton and Obama administrations, now vice-chair of the Brunswick Group, Neal S. Wolin turns 63… CEO at Alta Vista Partners and former COO of the New York Mets, Jeffrey Scott Wilpon turns 63… General counsel to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Daniel “Dan” Greenberg turns 59… Foreign minister of Israel, Gideon Sa’ar turns 58… Governor of Virginia since 2022, Glenn Allen Youngkin turns 58… U.S. senator (D-NY), Kirsten Gillibrand turns 58… Singer-songwriter, music producer and founder of StaeFit workout apparel, Stacey Liane Levy Jackson turns 56… President of the National Democratic Institute and former State Department official, Tamara Cofman Wittes turns 55… Senior rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue, Rabbi Efrem Goldberg turns 50… Managing director at Finsbury / FGS Global, Eric Wachter… Award-winning screenwriter, film director and producer, Eliza Hittman turns 45… Actor, comedian and musician, best known for his role as Howard Wolowitz in the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” Simon Helberg turns 44… Staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, Daniella Rohr Adelsberg… Singer, songwriter and entertainer in the Orthodox pop music industry, Mordechai Shapiro turns 35… Digital director and policy fellow for the R Street Institute, Shoshana Weissmann… Film and television actor, Jaren Miles Lewison turns 24… Israeli fashion model, Dorit Revelis turns 23…
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