DNC’s Big Easy target: AIPAC
Plus, no Modi-Ani for Mamdani
Add JewishInsider on Google👋 Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we break down two new polls on American Jewish support for the war in Iran, and report on the Democratic National Committee’s upcoming vote on a resolution condemning AIPAC and Israel. We talk to Sen. Elissa Slotkin about the role of the government in responding to antisemitic attacks, and talk to experts about the Trump administration’s options vis-a-vis a ground operation in Iran. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Amb. Charles Kushner, Betsy Berns Korn and Matthew Bronfman.
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
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine are holding a press conference on the war in Iran at 8 a.m. ET.
- New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is meeting this morning in New York with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
- Elsewhere in New York, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) — on the one-year anniversary of his 25-hour record-breaking speech on the Senate floor — is speaking at Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-El tonight about his new book, Stand.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S JOSH KRAUSHAAR
Two new polls of Jewish voters released this week show broad opposition to the U.S. military action against Iran, with support for the operation highest among those who are the most connected to Israel and those who are most affiliated with Jewish institutions.
A Mellman Group poll on behalf of the Jewish Electoral Institute (JEI) found that 32% of Jewish voters back the current military action against Iran, while 55% disapprove and 13% remain undecided. Support tracked closely along partisan lines, with 83% of Republicans, 49% of independents and 13% of Democrats approving the war.
Among those who said they were very connected to Israel, the poll found nearly two-thirds of Jewish respondents supportive, with just 27% opposed. But among those only “somewhat” connected to Israel, 58% said they disapprove of the war with just 25% approving. Nearly all of those Jewish respondents unconnected to Israel said they disapprove of the military action against Iran.
SINGLED OUT
DNC committee to consider resolutions condemning AIPAC, Israel
The Democratic National Committee’s resolutions committee is set to consider resolutions condemning AIPAC and Israel at its upcoming meeting next week in New Orleans — a sign of the continued and growing discord in the party over Middle East policy. It’s unclear how great of a chance the resolutions stand of passing in their current form, but they are emerging as the AIPAC brand has been tarnished inside the Democratic Party, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What it says: “The use of massive outside spending to support or oppose candidates based on their positions regarding international conflicts or foreign governments raises concerns about undue influence over democratic debate and policymaking, potentially constraining elected officials’ ability to represent the views of their constituents including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spending approximately $14 million in a single Illinois Democratic primary,” the resolution, obtained by JI, reads.
COMMUNITY TIGHTROPE
In Michigan Senate primary, McMorrow balances Jewish fears and Arab outreach after attack
In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow appears to be trying to carve out a lane between her opponents Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), a moderate pro-Israel stalwart, and public health official Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left candidate. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in a coffee shop near Detroit last week, McMorrow described herself as someone tuned in to the fears of Jewish Michiganders who is also trying to be a bridge-builder to the state’s large Arab community.
Reaching out: Last week, following the attack on Temple Israel earlier this month, McMorrow said, “I made it a point to reach out and talk to not only members in Temple Israel and leaders in the Jewish community, but also leaders out of the Muslim community, particularly over in Dearborn. What I heard independently from both groups is we need to figure out a way out of this, that there is so much hurt and there is so much pain, and this is not sustainable. There is a desire to bring the heat down, but we have to recognize as leaders, we need to create open doors for people to work through their trauma.”
SECURITY MINDED
Slotkin warns U.S. lacks funding to combat antisemitic extremism after Temple Israel attack
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) proposed ways for Congress and the federal government to better respond to the threat of violent, antisemitic extremism, during an interview with Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in her Capitol Hill office last week. But even as she discussed ways to take action, she spoke with alarm about the growing prevalence of antisemitism on both sides of the aisle, which she described as out of control. And she was clearly shaken by an attack that was potentially inches away from being much worse.
Soft targets: “I think it could have been one of the worst mass killing events in U.S. history were it not for the private security that happens to be very top-notch there, and everyone doing their jobs almost perfectly,” Slotkin said of the attack on Temple Israel, a Reform synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Mich. “I think it just has contributed to a feeling for many inside the state that the very things that make Jewish life valuable are becoming the soft targets.”
Terror ties: The FBI determined that the attack on Temple Israel was “a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community and the largest Jewish temple in Michigan,” officials said on Monday, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
decision time
Trump at a crossroads on Iran: Will he or won’t he send in troops?
The Trump administration’s conflicting posturing on the war in Iran — insisting on the one hand that a diplomatic deal is within reach while also threatening to escalate strikes and potentially deploy ground troops — has left experts and former administration officials uncertain about President Donald Trump’s next move, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea and Emily Jacobs report. In recent days, the U.S. has amassed over 3,500 more troops in the Middle East, including deploying the USS Tripoli aircraft carrier, which hosts around 2,500 Marines.
Options open: Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy under the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told JI that the president’s decision to move more troops to the region and not exclude ground operations from future military plans is an effort to “keep his options open.” Abrams said, “The massing of ground forces near Iran is both preparation for their possible use and a means of pressuring Iran to make concessions in the negotiations. There is no way of knowing what Trump will do if the negotiations fail.”
WHACK-A-MOLE
Meta removes antisemitic AI account ‘Rabbi Goldman’ after backlash
An AI-generated Instagram account, which featured a fake Orthodox rabbi spreading antisemitic conspiracies to its more than 1.4 million followers, was taken offline over the weekend following major backlash from Jewish groups and one Democratic lawmaker — yet several similar, hate-peddling accounts have emerged with little to no public action from Meta, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Rabble-rousing ‘rabbis’: An account called “Rabbi Goldman” “uses fake, AI-created authority figures to spread hate” in “a troubling and growing tactic,” according to a report published last week by Combat Antisemitism Movement. Several new Rabbi Goldman accounts started posting similar videos within the past two weeks — two already have followings of 18,500 and 10,000. Both remain active on Instagram and their bios state, “only Backup account for @rabbigoldman” and “old account got banned.” The CAM report identified 12 AI-generated “rabbis” with a combined following of 2.1 million Instagram users, all of which promote classic antisemitic stereotypes.
news to me
Jewish comic Modi drops out of ‘Downtown Seder’ after learning of Mamdani’s attendance
Israeli-American comedian Modi Rosenfeld, known simply as “Modi,” pulled out of a Passover-themed benefit last night after his manager revealed that the entertainer had been “blindsided” with the news that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would participate in the Lower Manhattan event, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.
Pulling out: Quoting JI’s initial report on the mayor’s scheduled involvement in the 33rd Annual “Downtown Seder” at impresario Michael Dorf’s venue City Winery, Rosenfeld’s official Instagram account announced the Tel Aviv-born, Long Island-reared performer had withdrawn from the event. “We were not told Mamdani was participating in this event until today,” the post read. “Modi will no longer be attending.”
Worthy Reads
Rahm’s Remedy: In The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who is mulling a 2028 presidential bid, argues that Democrats should maximize their potential takeovers of the House and Senate in this year’s midterm elections to put forward a positive agenda in an effort to win back the White House in 2028. “Many presume we will use the power from winning the House and possibly the Senate primarily for retribution and vindictiveness. The implication is that we will tie up the White House, and the Trump administration more generally, in an endless series of investigations. Democrats should play against type, defying the expectation that we’ll embrace gotcha politics. No doubt it’s a target-rich environment. But an excessive focus on Trumpian slime will undermine efforts to promote our positive agenda.” [WSJ]
Seeking Scientists: The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick spotlights former CIA operative Kevin Chalker, who claims to have played a key role in U.S. efforts to obtain information about Iran’s nuclear program. “Chalker was asked to come up with a plan to recruit other scientists, and began by reading old cable traffic about how the agency had handled Soviet defectors in the John le Carré days. … Cumulatively, Chalker’s defectors contributed to what several former senior officials told me had been a dramatic leap forward in the U.S. government’s understanding of Iran’s nuclear ambitions in those years. The consequences were manifold.” [NewYorker]
Power of Prayer: Bloomberg’s Ethan Bronner looks at the increasing number of young Israelis who have become more religious since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing wars in the region. “The scene of combat soldiers expressing pious fervor, captured on cellphones and shared widely on social media, would have been unimaginable a decade or two ago, when the infantry still leaned heavily toward secular rather than observant conscripts. ‘The real result of October 7 is Jews becoming more Jewish, people reclaiming their identity,’ says Sivan Rahav-Meir, a popular television news personality.” [Bloomberg]
The Politics of Giving: In The New York Times, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark pushes back on recent criticism from Silicon Valley of the Giving Pledge over complaints that some who sign the pledge have committed their money to left-wing groups. “The truth is that pledge signers can give their money to whichever charitable causes they want. I don’t understand the critics’ logic, but politics and that sort of criticism have never really made much sense to me. I really am a nerd. … I don’t get into fights over what’s woke and what’s not. Because I don’t know the answer, nor do I care. I use the money I made to help people who are trying to make life better for all of us humans.” [NYTimes]
Word on the Street
Washington’s Gulf allies, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have reportedly been pushing the White House to continue its fight against the regime in Iran; the countries, which also include Bahrain and Kuwait, are lobbying for a change in Iranian leadership before the end of Western military operations in the country, while Oman and Qatar are pushing a quick diplomatic resolution…
The push from the Gulf comes as President Donald Trump has reportedly told staffers that he was willing to end military operations without Iran fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz…
The U.S. used 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs to strike a weapons depot overnight in the Iranian city of Isfahan…
An Iranian drone struck a Kuwaiti oil tanker off the coast of Dubai early Tuesday morning, starting a fire on board the fully laden vessel…
NYU closed its Abu Dhabi campus until further notice after Iran threatened over the weekend to attack outposts of American universities in the Gulf…
The Financial Times looks at efforts by Iranian and Iran-linked hackers, many of whom are tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, to break into U.S. and Israeli tech systems…
Twenty-five Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) urged the Senate Armed Services Committee to investigate the alleged U.S. bombing of an Iranian girls’ school adjacent to an IRGC base…
Jewish Israelis’ support for the war against Iran dropped by 15 points from the first week of the war, according to a poll released by the Israel Democracy Institute on Monday, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports…
Politico reports on deepening concerns over social media posts from Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, praising Hamas and using racist language — including from progressive allies of the mayor, who has defended his wife as a “private person” despite her residence in Gracie Mansion and use of taxpayer funds for police detail and government staff…
A federal grand jury indicted six people on hate crime charges in connection with the 2024 assault of a Jewish student at the University of Pittsburgh…
U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner met in Paris with Israeli pastry chef Tal Spiegel, who with his French business partner is offering kosher pastries at their ABRA Patisserie in the city’s 4th arrondissement…
Canada’s New Democrats party elected former journalist Avi Lewis, who is Jewish and anti-Zionist, as its new leader…
Sysco is acquiring 94-year-old Jewish businessman and philanthropist Nathan Kirsh‘s Jetro Restaurant Depot in a $29.1 billion deal…
The Knesset passed a controversial law on Monday allowing — and in some cases requiring — courts to impose the death penalty on terrorists found guilty of murder; opponents swiftly challenged the legislation in court, with appeals arguing that its designations are vague and discriminatory, Jewish Insider‘s Lahav Harkov reports…
Israel’s Shin Bet said it foiled a West Bank terror plot being directed by a Hamas operative in Turkey who was freed in one of last year’s deals that saw the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners…
Former Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy was nominated to be the next secretary-general of the Arab League; Fahmy’s nomination is expected to be endorsed at the next Arab summit meeting and assume the role in July…
Betsy Berns Korn was nominated to serve a second yearlong term as chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, effective June 1; Matthew Bronfman was nominated to be the Conference’s chair-elect…
Edward Kaplan, the former longtime head of the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission, died at 87…
Pic of the Day
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul participated in a mock Seder organized by Teach NYC earlier this week at Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn. Joining Hochul were Teach Coalition CEO Sydney Altfield, Rabbi Yahel Tsaidi and Yeshivah of Flatbush Executive Vice President Rabbi Jeffery Rothman.
Birthdays
Emmy Award-winning writer and producer (“24,” “Homeland” and “Tyrant”), Howard Gordon turns 65…
Music producer, band leader of the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert turns 91… New York Times best-selling novelist, poet and social activist, Marge Piercy turns 90… Democratic congressman from Massachusetts for 32 years, named co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, Barnett “Barney” Frank turns 86… U.S. senator for 48 years until 2023, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) turns 86… Former syndicated talk radio host on 400+ stations and conservative political commentator under the name Michael Savage, Michael Alan Weiner turns 84… U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-ME) turns 82… Comedian, actor and professional poker player, he played the named teacher in the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” Gabe Kaplan turns 81… Retired professor of special education at Long Island University, Joel E. Mittler… Emmy Award-winning movie and television actress, best known for her role in the sitcom “Cheers” for 11 seasons, Rhea Jo Perlman turns 78… Russian ice dancing coach and former competitive ice dancer, now living in Stamford, Conn., Natalia Dubova turns 78… Chairman of Apple, Inc. since 2011 and CEO of Calico (an Alphabet R&D biotech venture), Arthur D. Levinson turns 76… New Jersey attorney, Steven L. Sacks-Wilner… Scottsdale, Ariz., resident, David L. Freedman… Chairman of Danaher Corporation, he owns a 20% stake in the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, Steven M. Rales turns 75… Israeli singer and songwriter, Ehud Banai turns 73… Former deputy chairman at the Jewish Agency for Israel, David Breakstone, Ph.D. turns 73… Author and advertising executive, Joseph Alden Reiman turns 73… President at the Detroit-based Nemer Property Group, Larry Nemer… Rabbi of Kehillas Ohr Somayach and lecturer at Ohr Somayach Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz turns 72… Equestrian and 10-time American Grand Prix Association Rider of the Year, she is a 2009 inductee into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Margie Goldstein-Engle turns 68… Founding director of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and national campaign director of the West Coast and Mountain States for the Jewish National Fund, Rick Hirschhaut turns 66… Consultant for synagogues and teacher at Bruriah High School in Elizabeth, N.J., Judah E. Isaacs… Two-term mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., until 2021, he is now administrator of the Rural Utilities Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Andy Berke turns 58… Former child actor, now an attorney and celebrity brand consultant, Josh Saviano turns 50… Rabbi of the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Turkey, Menachem Mendel Chitrik turns 49… Chief legal correspondent at MS NOW, Ari Naftali Melber turns 46… Former footballer for Beitar Jerusalem, who has also played for Chelsea, Manchester City and West Ham United in the English Premier League, Tal Ben Haim turns 44… Internet entrepreneur who is the co-founder and former CMO of Tinder, Justin Mateen turns 40… British-French journalist and author, he was a political advisor to the U.K. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Ben Judah turns 38… Jerusalem-born, 2010 contestant on “America’s Next Top Model,” she went on to join the IDF, Esther Petrack turns 34… Agency partnerships lead at Samsung, Howie Keenan… Ice hockey defenseman for the Washington Capitals, Jakob Chychrun turns 28… Talmudic scholar, Avigdor Neuberger… John Jacobson…
Recent Daily Kickoff Newsletters
Please log in if you already have a subscription, or subscribe to access the latest updates.
Continue with Google
Continue with Apple