Qatar’s split screen: Hamas onstage in Doha, minister at Super Bowl
Plus, the stakes of Bibi's upcoming White House visit
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington this week following the White House’s talks with Iran on Friday, and have the exclusive on a new report from the North American Values Institute on antisemitism in K-12 schools. We report on Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s praise for the Oct. 7 attacks at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, over the weekend, as Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin hosted his annual Super Bowl lunch that was attended by a senior Qatari official. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Yakir Gabay and Narges Mohammadi.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Vice President JD Vance is traveling to Armenia today as part of a two-country trip that will also include a stop in Azerbaijan later this week, in a last-minute trip first reported yesterday. Vance will not be in Washington during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, slated for Wednesday.
- Former Israeli hostage and musician Alon Ohel will play a one-night concert in Tel Aviv this evening. In videos shared by his loved ones during his more than two years in captivity, Ohel deftly played the piano, drawing widespread praise for his talent. He’ll be performing alongside a number of high-profile Israeli musicians, including Idan Amedi and Eviatar Banai for the performance, titled “Alon Ohel, Playing for Life.”
- The Religious Liberty Commission is holding its fifth hearing on issues related to antisemitism today at the Museum of the Bible. Speakers at the gathering, which begins this morning and runs through the mid-afternoon, include the Justice Department’s Leo Terrell, former Auburn men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl and former U.S. Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
Prince William is making his first official visit to Saudi Arabia this week. The trip comes as Riyadh hosts the World Defense Show, and as the U.K. works to establish Saudi Arabia as a partner in its next-generation Tempest fighter aircraft program. - Somali Defense Minister Ahmed Moallim Fiqi is also in Riyadh, where earlier in the day he inked a new defense cooperation agreement with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman. The Saudi official had met with Jewish leaders in Washington last month, during which he reiterated Riyadh’s opposition to Israel’s recent recognition of Somaliland.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to fly to Washington for a Wednesday White House meeting amid increasing concern in Jerusalem that the U.S. and Iran are headed towards a nuclear deal that does not meet Israel’s immediate security need — to drastically limit Iran’s ballistic missile program.
After the first round of indirect negotiations in Oman on Friday, President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that talks had been “very good” and that “Iran looks like it wants to make a deal very badly.”
Asked about Iran’s demand that the talks only be about nuclear weapons, Trump said, “That would be acceptable. One thing, right up front, no nuclear weapons. … They weren’t willing to do that [last year]; now they are willing to do much more.” That message contrasted with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s remarks from last week, that “in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things, and that includes the range of their ballistic missiles, that includes the sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region, that includes the nuclear program and that includes the treatment of their own people.”
Netanyahu announced the urgent meeting with Trump, less than two months after they last met at Mar-a-Lago, with a statement that said: “The Prime Minister believes any negotiations must include limitations on ballistic missiles and a halting of the support for the Iranian axis.”
For Israel, while the Iranian nuclear program may be the biggest threat, Operation Midnight Hammer did enough damage that the ballistic missiles are the more urgent concern, one that Iran has been threatening to use against Israel if the U.S. launches an attack.
Though Israel destroyed hundreds of missiles, launchers and production sites during the 12-Day war last June, most of Iran’s missiles remained intact. The prime minister presented the president with evidence during their December meeting that Iran has been working to rebuild its ballistic missile program and air defenses with help from China and Russia.
Any deal that does not include significant limitations on the range of Iran’s ballistic missiles will be woefully inadequate from Israel’s perspective. Plus, as Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday, Israel wants a deal that addresses Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed skepticism that the negotiations would bring about an acceptable agreement and noted the legal requirement to bring any such deal before Congress, writing on X: “I hope it can meet our national security objectives and the needs of the people of Iran through diplomacy. Given Iran’s behavior regarding deals, it could be a tough sell. However, I am open-minded, understanding [that] any agreement with the Islamic Republic and the United States must come to Congress for review and a vote.”
FROM CENTER STAGE
In Qatar, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal headlines Al Jazeera Forum focused on defaming Israel
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal addressed Qatar’s 17th Al Jazeera Forum on Sunday in Doha, at a conference that focused heavily on denigrating Israel, while featuring senior officials from Iran and Somalia. Mashaal applauded the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel as having “brought the Palestinian cause back to the forefront of the world” and said that Palestinians “take pride” in “resistance,” a euphemism for violence against Israelis. He called to “pursue Israel and establish that it is a pariah entity that is losing its international legitimacy,” noting the “changes in the elites, universities and social networks” against Israel, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.
Peak promotion: The Hamas leader, who resides in Doha, also hailed Qatar’s “honorable role in the [Palestinian] cause.” Hamas is designated by the U.S., European Union and other countries as a terrorist organization, and Mashaal is wanted in the U.S. for terrorism, murder conspiracy and sanctions evasion relating to his role in planning the Oct. 7 attacks. Mashaal was listed on the conference’s program and list of speakers in versions of the Al Jazeera Forum website archived by independent researcher Eitan Fischberger, but as of Sunday, Mashaal was no longer listed. At the same time, the Al Jazeera Forum X account extensively promoted Mashaal, with 19 posts about the terror leader’s remarks. The account featured two posts about conference keynote speaker Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of Iran.
Elsewhere at the Forum: Another speaker was Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur who has been sanctioned by the U.S. for “infringement on the sovereignty” of Israel and the U.S. by pursuing International Criminal Court prosecutions of citizens of both countries, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio described her actions last year. Albanese claimed in her remarks, delivered via video, that Israel had committed a premeditated genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and that all of humanity “now has a common enemy” in Israel.
DOHA DISSONANCE
As speakers in Doha brand Israel as humanity’s ‘common enemy,’ Michael Rubin hosts Qatari minister at Super Bowl lunch
As the Al Jazeera Forum took place in Doha, Qatari minister Nasser Al-Khelaifi was being feted by Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin at another high-profile convening — Super Bowl weekend, taking place in Santa Clara, Calif. Al-Khelaifi is the chairman of Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), one of the Qatari sovereign wealth funds that invests heavily in international sports and entertainment. Among his other titles, Al-Khelaifi is also a board member of the Qatar Investment Authority, a minister of state and the president of the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club in France and the Qatar Tennis Foundation.
Flourishing friendship: Rubin posted a picture with Al-Khelaifi from his annual Super Bowl luncheon on Instagram with the caption, “Incredible lunch with amazing people across sports, business, and culture.” Rubin and Al-Khelaifi have developed a friendship in recent years, including a long-term partnership between Fanatics and Paris Saint-Germain. Rubin posted a photo with Al-Khelaifi at the F1 Qatar Grand Prix last November, where he called the Qatari minister his “brother” and said, “What you did for both the city of Paris and country of Qatar is truly amazing.”
STICKING BY THE STICKY NOTE
Amid criticism, Kraft’s anti-hate group defends Super Bowl ad against antisemitism
The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate’s widely watched Super Bowl ad last night designed to combat antisemitism instead sparked a heated divide within the Jewish community over the effectiveness of its message, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. Titled “Sticky Note,” the ad from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s group featured a Jewish student being harassed by his high school classmates because of his religion, with bullies placing a “dirty Jew” sticker on his backpack. In a show of allyship, a Black classmate puts a blue square over the note. “Do not listen to that,” he tells his Jewish classmate. “I know how it feels.”
Target audience: A chorus of commentators criticized the advertisement, which is part of a $15 million media campaign that will also include ad spots during the Winter Olympics, for depicting Jews as victims in need of protection from non-Jews and for avoiding the reality that the source of many antisemitic incidents in schools stem from hostility toward or hatred of Israel. But the leader of Kraft’s group told JI that the ad wasn’t trying to appeal to a Jewish audience. Instead, Blue Square Alliance President Adam Katz told JI that with more than 100 million viewers, the Super Bowl provides an opportunity to reach an audience that is “unengaged — and in many cases uninformed — about antisemitism … We’re very focused on this audience that’s lacking awareness, empathy and motivation to act,” he said.
MEJIA MOMENTUM
Will Democrats rally behind progressive socialist Mejia as she vies to represent wealthy N.J. district?
With progressive activist Analilia Mejia’s expected victory in the special election Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, attention is now turning to the upcoming April special election and the June regular election primary as the last chances for moderates and pro-Israel groups to defeat her, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Looking ahead: “June is potentially irresistible for the other candidates who ran … if any of these candidates could get a one-on-one shot at making it in June,” Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said. But unless the field can consolidate, Rasmussen said, it’s hard to see how the result would be any different in June. He said former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who closely trails Mejia, would have the strongest shot at defeating her head-to-head, while former Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way might have a tougher battle.
UDP’s outlook: “The outcome in NJ-11 was an anticipated possibility, and our focus remains on who will serve the next full term in Congress,” UDP spokesperson Patrick Dorton said in a statement on Friday. “UDP will be closely monitoring dozens of primary races, including the June NJ-11 primary, to help ensure pro-Israel candidates are elected to Congress.”
EXCLUSIVE
New report warns about the rise of activists smuggling in antisemitic content in K-12 schools
Political activists seeking to push extremist perspectives into the classroom are behind a nationwide acceleration of antisemitic content in K-12 classrooms, with increasingly active movements targeting school boards, district leadership and teacher organizations, according to a report published Monday by the North American Values Institute, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Findings: The group’s 58-page report, “When the Classroom Turns Hostile: A Strategic Response to Extremism and Antisemitism in K-12 Education,” shared exclusively with JI, found that in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, what it described as radical ideological frameworks have dominated key education institutions across the country. Ideologies such as “oppressor-oppressed” are common in schools of education, accreditation bodies, teacher unions and district bureaucracies, all of which shape classroom materials.
MENTORSHIP MOVES
AOC under Matt Duss’ foreign policy tutelage as she makes 2028 moves
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has been receiving briefings from Matt Duss, an outspoken critic of the U.S.-Israel alliance and former foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), as she prepares for a high-profile appearance at the Munich Security Conference this week, The New York Times reported on Friday. Duss, who is now executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, a left-wing think tank, has long been a prominent detractor of U.S. relations with Israel, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Duss’ record: He has called for blocking aid to Israel and has expressed opposition to renewing the 10-year memorandum of understanding, which is set to expire in 2028 and currently provides $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel annually. He has also cast doubt on the Abraham Accords, accusing the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries of using “racist logic” that is “premised on the perpetual repression of Palestinians” and helping to fuel Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. Duss has frequently called Israel’s resulting war in Gaza a genocide. “I don’t think a Democrat can be nominated in ‘28 without acknowledging that it is a genocide,” Duss suggested in an interview with The Financial Times last September.
Worthy Reads
Baker’s Recipe: Politico’s Diana Nerozzi and Ian Ward profile the Trump administration’s Andy Baker, whose “fingerprints are evident on some of the Trump administration’s most norm-shattering postures,” including Vice President JD Vance’s address at last year’s Munich Security Conference and the White House’s National Security Strategy. “Behind the scenes, the seldom-pictured and extremely private deputy national security adviser has emerged as a key figure in Vance’s orbit, shaping both the vice president’s foreign policy thinking and some of the White House’s most consequential national security decisions — especially its increasingly confrontational stance toward America’s allies in Europe. … With Vance emerging as a leading candidate to secure the 2028 Republican nomination, Baker, a self-described ‘realist’ who is skeptical of traditional American alliances and U.S. military intervention abroad, is expected to play an even more important role in shaping the future of the GOP’s foreign policy.” [Politico]
Harassed at Haverford: In The Free Press, Haviv Rettig Gur recounts his recent experience as a guest speaker at Haverford College, where his talk was disrupted by anti-Israel student protesters. “It was the strangest thing: The more I treated them like neglected children hungry for knowledge, the more likely they were to respond in healthy and productive ways. I didn’t meet violent illiberal radicals that evening at Haverford; I met children playing at violent illiberal radicalism. I met young people starved for wisdom and authority who had been told that their every emotional kink and outburst was valid and unassailable truth. … In the end, we managed to have an honest exchange of ideas, but it felt as though we had to buck everything their campus culture had taught them in order to reach that point. I met a real hunger for depth and understanding among young people who’d been told in a hundred different ways that their unexamined emotions were wisdom enough.” [FreePress]
The Two Elites: The Financial Times’ Janan Ganesh observes the “fatally interlocking” relationship between the private and public elite, against the backdrop of the resignation of former U.K. Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. “Most people do not find money — or the main ways of making money, such as banking — intrinsically interesting. This might be less true in societies that are new to wealth. But it holds in the established western cities. There, the self-made often discover too late that all their work and risk-taking has brought them less social status than expected. A minor magazine editor outranks them at a party. A hand-to-mouth actor is more welcome at Soho House. A bureaucrat can affect their business. Most rich people don’t mind. Even those who do tend to react maturely, perhaps sponsoring the arts for some reflected glory or buying a media outlet. But some will cross the line in seeking to be near the beau monde. Which consists of whom? Artists, intellectuals, politicians, even the occasional journalist: the public rather than private 1 per cent. Their value in social settings is high. Their income might not be.” [FT]
Word on the Street
The Pentagon is cutting its graduate-level programmatic and fellowship partnerships with Harvard, alleging that the school is imparting “globalist and radical ideologies” amid ongoing tensions between the school and the Trump administration…
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch named Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the Rev. A.R. Bernard co-heads of the department’s chaplaincy unit, where they will jointly oversee a team of 10 chaplains; Dolan and Bernard, who respectively represent Catholic and Black churches, succeed Rabbi Alvin Kass, who died last year after six decades with the NYPD…
The New York Times looks at how conspiracy theories about the U.S.S. Liberty incident, in which Israel mistakenly fired on a U.S. naval ship during the Six-Day War, are spreading in far-right circles and are being promoted by Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens…
The Washington Post profiles American Conservative editor Curt Mills as the “avatar of a new right” works to shape the future of a post-Trump Republican Party; the “the No. 1 item on Mills’s agenda,” the Post reports, “is pushing back against Trump on U.S. support for Israel’s retaliation against Hamas after the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and agitating for a hard turn away from America’s 80-year bond with the Jewish state”…
The New York Times reviews Allegra Goodman’s This Is Not About Us, a collection of short but intertwined stories about generations of a fictional large Jewish family…
Israeli Olympic bobsled captain AJ Edelman said the apartment where the Israeli team had been staying in Milan ahead of the Olympic Games had been robbed; among the items taken, Edelman said, were thousands of dollars in cash as well as some of the team’s passports…
The Australian state of Queensland introduced a series of hate speech reforms that include the banning of the public use of such slogans as “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea”; the move was undertaken in response to the December terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach…
Israeli President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog visited the site of the Bondi attack earlier today as part of a four-day visit to the country that will also include stops in Melbourne and Canberra…
Israeli carrier El Al was fined $39 million by the country’s Competition Authority over its price-gauging of tickets after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and through May 2024, finding that El Al raised prices on routes — a majority of which were only being served by the airline due to security concerns that resulted in widespread route suspensions — by between 16-31%…
Ynet profiles Israeli real estate investor Yakir Gabay, who was named to the executive board of the Trump administration’s Board of Peace…
The families of Druze children killed in a Hezbollah strike on a soccer field in the Israeli town of Majdal Shams in July 2024 are suing the terror organization for 80 million shekels ($25 million); 12 children were killed and dozens injured in the attack…
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a series of measures that will allow Israeli authorities to exert more control in the West Bank, with far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who backed the expansion, saying, “we will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state”…
Iran sentenced activist Narges Mohammadi, who had been imprisoned since her arrest in December and had begun a hunger strike, to seven years in prison…
The new sentence against Mohammadi comes as Iranian security forces arrested four senior politicians affiliated with the country’s reformist parties…
Israeli music icon Matti Caspi died at 76…
Pic of the Day
Attendees of the International Conference of Shluchot in Brooklyn, N.Y., posed for the annual “class photo” outside the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters over the weekend. Some 4,500 women representing more than 100 countries traveled to New York for the annual gathering.
Birthdays
Sports announcer for NBA, NFL and college basketball games on CBS, TNT and TBS, as well as Brooklyn Nets games on the YES Network, Ian Eagle turns 57…
Grammy Award-winning songwriter of over 150 hits including “Somewhere Out There” from the movie “An American Tail,” in partnership with his late wife Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann (born Barry Imberman) turns 87… Singer-songwriter, she wrote 118 songs that made it to the Top 100 between 1955 and 1999 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Carole King (born Carol Klein) turns 84… Professor of economics at Columbia University, Nobel laureate in 2001, former SVP and chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz turns 83… Three-time Tony Award and three-time Emmy Award-winning actress, Judith Light turns 77… Professor of history and modern Jewish studies at UCSD, Deborah Hertz turns 77… Israeli singer mostly in the Mizrahi music tradition, he has released over 30 albums, Shimi Tavori (born Shimshon Tawili) turns 73… Former governor of Virginia, chair of the DNC, chair of two Clinton presidential campaigns (Bill’s in 1996, Hillary’s in 2008), Terry McAuliffe, a/k/a “the Macker,” turns 69… Creator of the HBO series “The Wire” (2002-2008) and NBC’s series “Homicide: Life on the Street” (1993-1999), winner of a 2010 MacArthur genius fellowship, David Simon turns 66… Theoretical physics professor at Columbia University since 1996, author of multiple books written for the general public such as Icarus at the Edge of Time, Brian Greene turns 63… Isaac Lieberman… Managing director with the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, he was the lieutenant governor and then attorney general of Delaware, Matthew P. Denn turns 60… Play-by-play announcer for ESPN’s men’s college basketball and for the Toronto Blue Jays, Dan Shulman turns 59… British broadcasting executive who is currently chief content officer at the U.K.’s Channel 4, Ian Katz turns 58… President of the K-12 education portfolio at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Julie Mikuta… Assistant adjunct professor of journalism at UCLA, she was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Los Angeles Times for 16 years, Abigail Helaine “Abbe” Goldman turns 56… Managing director of AlTi Tiedemann Global, Jeffrey L. Zlot… Charleston, S.C., resident, Ellen Miriam Brandwein… Television and film actress, Margarita Levieva turns 46… Member of the Minnesota state Senate since 2011, Jeremy R. Miller turns 43… Senior director of public policy and strategy for Christians United for Israel Action Fund, Boris Zilberman… Director of development for Ben-Gurion University, Jason Pressberg… Member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (D-182) since 2023, Benjamin R. Waxman turns 41… Managing partner of Precision Infrastructure Management, Thomas Szold… Brazilian chess grandmaster, André Diamant turns 36… Associate director at Merck Research Laboratories, Carly Abenstein Myar… Israeli judoka, he competed for Israel at the 2020 and 2024 Summer Olympics, Baruch Shmailov turns 32… Offensive tackle for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, Jake Curhan turns 28…
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