Vance goes Barack to the future
Plus, Tirana points the finger at Tehran
👋 Good Friday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we have the latest on the scrapped U.S.-Iran talks that had been slated to begin this weekend in Switzerland and on the overnight attack by Hezbollah, in violation of the just-signed memorandum of understanding, in which four Israeli soldiers were killed. We look at how Vice President JD Vance’s rhetoric around the MOU mirrors how Obama administration officials talked about the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and look at the divide among Jewish communal groups over the potential merger of the State Department’s antisemitism and Holocaust affairs offices. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, Yoav Gallant and Hillary Clinton.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: A Lebanese Zionist’s longshot bid to reshape the Middle East; ‘The single best diaspora experience’: Jewish leaders mark America’s 250th with open letter; and Ivanka Trump unveils Meta initiative to distribute AI glasses to visually impaired veterans. Print the latest edition here.
What We’re Watching
- Four Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah attack on an IDF tank in southern Lebanon overnight and five others injured in an additional attack in violation of the newly implemented memorandum of understanding, prompting dozens of retaliatory Israeli strikes in the area. The incident, which was the deadliest attack on Israeli troops by Hezbollah in months, came hours after Vice President JD Vance assailed Israeli government officials — one of whom, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, warned that the Iranian-backed group would exploit the diplomacy between Tehran and Washington to attack Israel — for their opposition to the deal. Read more here.
- The escalation comes as Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) circulate a resolution among lawmakers condemning Hezbollah for its “repeated violations of ceasefire agreements” through its attacks against Israel and calling for the terrorist group to be disarmed, Jewish Insider‘s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs have learned.
- Vance had been scheduled to travel today to Switzerland, where he was set to begin talks with Iran, following the signing this week of the MOU between the countries. But the trip was scrapped overnight, with a White House spokesperson saying that “the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”
- Elsewhere in Washington, Bill Pulte, the Trump administration’s housing-finance regulator, takes over as interim director of national intelligence today, days after President Donald Trump postponed DNI nominee Jay Clayton’s confirmation hearing, drawing the ire of senators from both sides of the aisle concerned over Pulte’s potential access to classified documents.
- FII Priority Europe wraps up today in Rome. On the main stage yesterday, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama blasted Iran for stoking protests in the Balkan nation tied to efforts by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to develop a new real estate project in the country. More below.
- In New York, the Jewish Food Society’s Great Nosh will take place on Sunday on Governors Island.
- The Jewish News Syndicate’s annual policy summit begins on Sunday in Jerusalem.
- Also Sunday, Orthodox Union Advocacy’s annual Attorneys Conference kicks off in Washington.
- We’ll also be keeping an eye on Colombia on Sunday, where far-right attorney Abelardo de la Espriella and far-left activist Iván Cepeda, backed by current President Gustavo Petro, will face off in a presidential runoff. De la Espriella, who has the endorsement of Trump, has also gotten support from Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, with whom he met last year in Argentina. After the votes from the first round of voting were tallied, Sa’ar posted a photo of the two and congratulated de la Espriella.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH GILI COHEN
The long love affair between Israelis and President Donald Trump, on the rocks over the last few weeks as the U.S. and Iran hammered out an end to the war, appears to be over, with humiliations mounting for Jerusalem. “I call all the shots,” not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said earlier this month. More recently, the Israeli leader’s bombing campaign in Beirut was “vicious,” Trump said. And perhaps most humiliating of all, Trump suggested that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa could better take care of Hezbollah than the IDF.
The Israeli public — the spurned lover who once hailed the U.S. president with billboards hung in the center of Tel Aviv reading “Thank you God & Donald Trump” — is not taking it well. Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog told JI, “President Trump, who has been a hero to many Israelis, is now openly criticized from within the Israeli government, including Netanyahu’s close circle.”
And this criticism is not only expressed behind closed doors. Channel 14, the popular right-wing outlet that promotes Netanyahu, has been criticizing Trump resolutely, with some of its anchors publicly cursing Vice President JD Vance and the president’s close advisors, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
It was not always this way. For most of the time since Trump reentered the White House in January 2025, he has been popular in Israel, with polls consistently showing high ratings for the American president.
For Israelis, Trump is the one who brokered the hostage-release agreement with Hamas; Trump is the one who made the strikes in Iran and the bombing of the nuclear enrichment facilities in Fordow and Natanz a reality; and Trump is the one who established the Abraham Accords and is willing to expand them, giving Israelis the chance to sunbathe in the UAE, and perhaps in other countries in the Gulf in the near future. And although some won’t admit it, many Israelis also like his tendency to speak very bluntly, and crudely: a president born in Queens, full of Israeli chutzpah.
NEW DEAL, SAME LYRICS
‘What is your alternative?’ — How Vance’s rhetoric to sell new Iran deal echoes Obama’s

As Vice President JD Vance takes on the role of chief defender of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding and forthcoming talks, he has begun to sound a lot like someone whom the Trump administration has lately spent a lot of time attacking: former President Barack Obama, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. Vance and President Donald Trump have both made clear that they view the MOU as fundamentally different from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Sounds familiar: But as the White House faces criticism from hawkish members of the Republican Party, the language Vance is using to defend the burgeoning deal closely resembles the arguments made by Obama 11 years ago. “If you think this is a bad deal, what is your alternative?” Vance said in an interview this week with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. Flashback to a 2015 press conference at the White House soon after the JCPOA was announced. “I’m hearing a lot of talking points being repeated about ‘this is a bad deal,’” Obama said. “What I haven’t heard is, what is your preferred alternative?”
Read the full story here and watch a side-by-side video comparison here.
Bonus: In The Washington Post, the Hudson Institute’s Douglas Feith, who served in the George W. Bush administration, posits that Vance’s defense of the agreement resembles “the standard reassurance Western leaders over the past century have offered when they make deals of this kind with bad actors — but it has generally proved hollow.”










































































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