Daily Kickoff
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we spotlight the far-right “Squad” that could serve as a foil to GOP efforts to pass legislation on Israel and antisemitism, and talk to Brianna Wu about the state of the Democratic Party post-election. We report on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s call for pressure on Hamas’ backers and look at how hostage families are responding to unverified reports on negotiations. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gabriel Scheinmann, Justin Trudeau and Idan Amedi.
What We’re Watching
- We’re monitoring ongoing cease-fire and hostage-release negotiations. More below.
- CES kicks off today in Las Vegas.
- The House of Representatives is slated to vote this week on legislation sanctioning the International Criminal Court for its issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
What You Should Know
It’s been a particularly tumultuous few days for the families of hostages held in Gaza, starting with the release of a video of Liri Albag on Saturday, which was both cause for distress due to her forlorn state, but also relief that she is still alive, Jewish Insider Israel Editor Tamara Zieve reports.
The 459-day nightmare the hostages and their relatives have been living saw new turmoil along with a glimmer of hope for some on Sunday, when a Saudi newspaper published a list of 34 hostages it claimed would be released in the first phase of a cease-fire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas — but that Hamas did not know, or would not say, who on the list is alive.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office swiftly put out a statement saying that the list had not been provided to Israel by Hamas. In an additional statement yesterday, the PMO noted that it was the same list originally given by Israel to mediators in July last year. “As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” the office said.
Both the video of Albag and the publication of the list spurred protests, on top of the weekly Saturday night demonstrations, with hostages’ families pleading for the return of all 100 remaining hostages.
“My father, a Holocaust survivor, is looking at the selekzia lists when his grandson, who was kidnapped on state soil, is not on the list and the State of Israel is leaving soldiers behind,” Anat Angrest, mother of hostage Matan Angrest, a soldier who was kidnapped while on duty, told Channel 12. “The soldiers are not included in this list.” Also included on the list was Yair Horn, who was taken hostage alongside his younger brother Eitan — who was not on the list.
The families worry that this deal could be the last deal, and any hostages not on the list, described by hostage Nimrod Cohen’s brother Yotam as a “Schindler’s List” created by the Israeli government, will remain in captivity forever.
“This morning was one of the most difficult mornings that we had as families of hostages and people of Israel, when three people were murdered inside Israel,” Meirav Leshem Gonen, whose daughter Romi was kidnapped from the Nova festival, said yesterday evening, referring to a terror attack in the West Bank. “We also saw some of the lists that we wanted to see, as if we can choose between one hostage and another,” Gonen said in a statement issued from the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters in Tel Aviv.
“I call to you, President Trump — you are the most powerful and strongest leader. I ask you to continue supporting the strongest country in the Middle East,” Gonen continued. “We choose to continue. Support us and make sure that the first hostage will come out — and also the last one. Because they all deserve to have their freedom back. And the families of the hostages that already were murdered are also entitled to have their closure. We ask you: please don’t let any hostage stay behind. Please make sure all hostages are coming back home. Please make sure that you are standing with us — do whatever is needed to bring them back.”
For his part, the president-elect repeated his threat that “there will be hell to pay,” if the hostages are not released before he takes office, during an interview yesterday with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Taking a jab at outgoing President Joe Biden’s warning to Israel’s adversaries shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks, Trump said, “It won’t be the word ‘don’t.’ You know, I heard the word ‘don’t.’ You can add that into it, but that would just be a small part of it. No, there will be hell to pay. Those hostages have to get out. They have to get out now.”
As that window of time rapidly closes, negotiations continue in Doha, Qatar, with mediators working to close the gaps between the demands of Hamas and Israel.
GOP SQUAD
A look at the right-wing lawmakers that could constrain pro-Israel legislation in the new Congress
As House Republicans enter the new congressional session with just one vote to spare on party-line legislation, even a small number of defectors could have significant sway over what kind of legislation relating to antisemitism or Israel could make it to the House floor or pass out of the lower chamber. In the previous Congress, a group of nine GOP lawmakers repeatedly voted against legislation on those two subjects — particularly when it came to additional aid for Israel without other funding cuts and legislation involving the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. Their views could help shape the kinds of bills that are able to make it to the House floor during the upcoming term, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Key player: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is the most notorious of the GOP’s right-wing rebels, emerging as the only Republican who refused to support House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in this last week’s leadership election. In the previous Congress, Massie was the only Republican to vote against legislation describing anti-Zionism as antisemitism; blocking sanctions relief for Iran; redesignating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization; making it easier to strip nonprofit status from charities supporting terrorism; blocking funding for Iran; condemning terrorist groups’ use of human shields; condemning the slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ as antisemitic; condemning support for terrorism at U.S. universities; standing with Israel after Oct. 7, supporting Israel’s right to exist; eliminating sunsets on Iran sanctions; and condemning Iran’s April 2024 attack on Israel.
Q&A
Why Brianna Wu left the far-left
Democratic activist Brianna Wu has been a darling of the progressive left for the last decade, after a coordinated attack on the video game developer by Gamergate supporters sparked her activism in politics. But on Oct. 7, 2023, she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed last year, the Rebellion PAC co-founder’s “progressive fever started breaking” as she watched friends and colleagues deny and defend Hamas’ atrocities across southern Israel. Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss talked to Wu shortly after the discovery of mass graves containing the remains of upwards of 100,000 Syrians outside of Damascus — and the muted response to the atrocities — for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the future of the progressive movement in Democratic politics, ideological shifts among the party’s movers and shakers, and how Israel could improve its public image.
Narrative need: “Israel is failing to tell a story about itself that is reaching anyone but Jews, and it’s just the truth,” Wu said. “This is what I find so frustrating. I protested the Iraq War. That’s what got me into progressive politics. I had friends die in the Iraq war, but every American seems to have taken the lesson from that that intervention in the world or dealing with these terrorists is always bad, and Israel has extremely disproven that assertion over the last few months. You see this with the fall of Hezbollah, and to an extent what’s happening in Syria right now. You see Iran on the back foot, finally, for the first time in a decade, and Israel is on a beautiful path forward that shows that when you’re strong and you engage the world’s threats, you actually can make the world more stable. … So we desperately need Israel to do what it did in 1948, which was to be proactive, to help the rest of the world understand your values and what was at stake, and to get buy-in from your partners, and you’re just failing to do that.”
leveraging their ties
Pressure on Hamas backers ‘key’ to hostages release, Israeli official says
Pressure on Hamas’ backers is needed to reach a cease-fire and hostage-release deal, Foreign Ministry Director-General Eden Bar Tal said in a press briefing on Tuesday, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
What he said: “The key to the conclusion of this deal is with those who have leverage on Hamas,” Bar Tal said, without specifically mentioning Qatar, which until recently housed a number of senior Hamas officials. “That should be the address for the international community, to address those countries and ask them to act now.” Bar Tal added, “The few countries with special relations with Hamas that are acting as mediators should be putting pressure on Hamas in order to conclude the deal now.”
caracas incarcerations
Venezuela says it arrested Israeli amid detentions of foreigners
Venezuela announced on Monday that it arrested at least one Israeli “mercenary,” amid reports of dozens of arrests of foreigners in the South American country in recent weeks, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. Venezuelan Interior and Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello said that Venezuela arrested “125 mercenaries,” listing 16 nationalities of those detained, including Israel.
Bargaining chips?: Venezuela has detained as many as 50 foreigners, including several Americans in recent months, The Wall Street Journalreported. The motivation is to use them as bargaining chips to negotiate with the Trump administration for the release of Venezuelans from American prisons, according to the paper. Iran has used similar tactics, imprisoning foreign nationals and dual citizens as a way to exact concessions from their countries of residence.
book shelf
New memoir tells story of Jewish defiance, espionage, resistance
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks — and as antisemitism spiked worldwide in the months that followed — Gabriel Scheinmann found comfort in his grandfather’s Holocaust survival story. Now, amid the recent release of his grandfather’s memoir-like biography, I Am André: German Jew, French Resistance Fighter, British Spy, Scheinmann said he hopes an “unusual story of Jewish defiance, a real-life story of espionage, courage and resistance,” as he calls it, will resonate with Jewish and non-Jewish readers in a post-Oct. 7 world. “It’s a story about being a fighter, being a warrior, not just merely being a victim. That is a timeless story but in particular resonates over the last 15 months,” Scheinmann, executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society, told Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen.
Now and then: The book, based on a memoir that André Joseph Scheinmann wrote in the 1990s about his experiences, was written by Diana Mara Henry, a photojournalist and friend of the family who spent three decades poring over military records and piecing together André’s story. Her research included hundreds of hours of interviews with André and other Holocaust survivors who knew him. Spanning nearly 500 pages, the book was published in London in October. “A couple of steps in André’s story are more relevant today than ever since the conflagration of World War II,” Henry said at a book launch event. “André comes to show us what some can do under the most ambiguous circumstances to define and act on world events.”
reconstruction efforts
A mountaintop kibbutz, battered by Hezbollah missiles, eyes a lengthy — and costly — rebuilding path
The anti-tank guided missile came through the kitchen window, sparking a fire that burned so hot that it melted the glass in the windows and took 48 hours to go out. (The inhabitants of the house had long since been ordered to evacuate by the time the missile hit.) The flames did not reach the children’s bedroom and even some of the plastic toys inside did not melt, but the intense heat blackened the walls and left everything inside — a stuffed Mickey Mouse, stacks of board games, a wooden crib — covered in a thin layer of soot, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports from Kibbutz Manara in northern Israel.
Ghost town: Despite the cease-fire, the kibbutz was still a ghost town when eJP visited the community on Dec. 25. The only people there were the community’s leaders, members of its security team and residents stopping by to pick up items that they had left behind. “On Oct. 7, we had some 275 residents — from age zero to Rachel Rabin, who is the oldest of us,” Naor Shamia, the community’s security chief, told eJP. (Rabin, a famed educator and sister of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, turns 100 on Feb. 1.) According to Shamia, of the 154 housing units on Kibbutz Manara — which straddles the Ramim Ridge, overlooking the Lebanese town of Mais al-Jabal on one side of the community and the Israeli town of Kiryat Shemona on the other — 110 of them — more than 70% — have been damaged in some way.
Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.
Worthy Reads
What Bibi Gave Biden: The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Joe Biden a parting “gift” in the form of Israel’s efforts to degrade Iran and its proxies across the region. “Mr. Biden opposed almost all these actions. Even so, he benefits from the Middle East that is beginning to emerge from Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions. Hamas has been devastated. So has Hezbollah. The Assad regime in Syria is no more, with the Israelis destroying most of Syria’s strategic-weapons stockpiles lest they fall into the hands of radical jihadists linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State. … Some on Team Biden now admit the obvious. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the New York Times: ‘Whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel, and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages.’ The result of Mr. Netanyahu’s war policy is a Middle East that is much more hopeful on Mr. Biden’s way out than it was on his way in. The weakening of Iran, the crippling of Hamas and Hezbollah, and Iran’s loss of its client state in Syria have upset the status quo for the better.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
The United Arab Emirates is in talks with the U.S. and Israel about the formation of a postwar provisional government in the Gaza Strip, potentially overseen by Washington and Abu Dhabi, until a reformed Palestinian Authority could assume an administrative role in the enclave…
The American Historical Association passed a nonbinding resolution, 428-88, denouncing Israel’s “scholasticide” in Gaza; the resolution did not mention Hamas’ use of schools as weapons-storage facilities…
Police in the Boston suburb of Beverly arrested a man accused of making threats against the Jewish community; illegal weapons and Nazi paraphernalia were found in the man’s residence…
President Joe Biden signed into law legislation giving Washington, D.C., control of RFK Stadium; Washington Commanders’ owners Josh Harris, Mark Ein and Mitchell Rales (the latter of whom was spotted wearing a blue square pin from Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism) attended the signing in the Oval Office on Monday…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights billionaire entrepreneur Ron Shaich’s annual tradition of writing a “premortem” rather than a list of New Year’s resolutions; past premortems have included a vow to “study Judaism and learn Hebrew to deepen his spirituality”…
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation, effective following the selection of a new leader of his ruling Liberal party…
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned an act of antisemitic vandalism on a car in Sydney as police in New South Wales investigate the incident…
Australia’s ice hockey federation canceled an upcoming tournament, citing security concerns; Australian media reported that the cancellation was due concerns around the the planned participation of an Israeli team…
French President Emmanuel Macron cautioned that Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium are nearing the point of no return and that France, the U.K. and Germany should consider reimposing sanctions in the absence of progress on nuclear talks…
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps nearly doubled the number of drills its forces have conducted this winter ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump…
Iran has pulled a majority of its Syria-based forces out of the country following the collapse of the Assad regime…
White House envoy Amos Hochstein said that Israel will pull out of southern Lebanon in accordance with the 60-day cease-fire agreed to by Hezbollah and Israel in November…
Jake Turx is joining Mishpacha Magazine as the publication’s White House correspondent…
Henny Eman, the first prime minister of Aruba, died at 76…
Theater director Mel Shapiro died at 89…
Song of the Day
Israeli singer Idan Amedi’s song ‘Lehitraot’ (See You) dropped on YouTube, part of his new album “Superman,” released yesterday, almost exactly a year after he was seriously injured while serving in reserve duty in the Gaza Strip. In an Instagram post, Amedi said he wrote the album “in his most painful moments, both physically and mentally.”
Birthdays
Music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he will become the chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic at the start of the 2026-2027 season, Lahav Shani turns 36…
Former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Michael Moskow turns 87… U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan since 1994, he assumed senior status in 2023, Judge Paul D. Borman turns 86… Pulitzer Prize-winning sports reporter, columnist and writer, Ira Berkow turns 85… Co-founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine and co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jann Wenner turns 79… Scottsdale, Ariz., resident, Bruce Robert Dorfman… Retired president of the University of South Florida System, a position she held for 19 years, Judy Genshaft turns 77… Senior U.S. District Court judge in Miami, Joan A. Lenard turns 73… Former brigadier general and chief rabbi of the IDF until 2016, then minister of Jerusalem affairs, Rafael “Rafi” Peretz turns 69… Former CEO of Glencore, Ivan Glasenberg turns 68… Dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills, starting in 2011 he assumed control of his family’s nationwide real estate operations, Dr. Ezra Kest… Documentary filmmaker with a focus on social justice and Jewish history, Roberta Grossman turns 66… One of the heirs to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, Anthony Pritzker turns 64… U.S. senator (R-SD), he became the Senate majority leader four days ago, John Thune turns 64… U.S. senator (R-KY), Rand Paul turns 62… Managing director and senior relationship manager at Bank of America, she serves as the chair of the Jewish Funders Network, Zoya Raynes… Actress and model, Lauren Cohan turns 43… Executive director of Keep Our Republic and author of Paths of the Righteous, Ari Mittleman… Concord, N.H.-based public affairs consultant, Holly Shulman… Executive director of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos, Calif., Jeremy Ragent… Drummer and founding member of The Groggers, a pop punk band from Queens, Nechemia “Chemy” Soibelman turns 34… Reporter on Haredi and Knesset affairs for Walla News, Yaki Adamker… Author of five books and host of the history podcast “Noble Blood,” Dana Schwartz turns 32… National chair of Israel Policy Forum Atid and senior account executive at Vizio, Jonathan Kamel… Baseball pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, the first Israeli player ever drafted by an MLB team, his great-uncle is Haim Saban, Dean Kremer turns 29…
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