Oy, say can you see?
Plus, debating who won the war
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how American Jewish thought leaders are reflecting on the country’s semiquincentennial, and report on Rep. Shri Thanedar’s serious primary challenge from a far-left state legislator in Michigan. We spotlight a new report on antisemitism in the human rights nonprofit sector, and cover the launch of Hussain Abdul-Hussain’s book, The Arab Case for Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin, Katie Roof and Eliya Cohen and Ziv Abud.
Ed. note: In commemoration of Independence Day, the next edition of the Daily Kickoff will arrive on Monday, July 6. Happy America 250!
We have also launched a new on-demand Live Briefing that you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.
For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s special Independence Day edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Serving faith and nation: The rabbis bringing light to U.S. troops on Europe’s front line; The single best diaspora experience’: Jewish leaders mark America’s 250th with open letter; and How Jews reinvented themselves — and America. Print the latest edition here.
What We’re Watching
- U.S.-Iran talks that wrapped up in Doha on Wednesday are likely to resume next week, following funeral ceremonies for former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that will begin this weekend.
- Americans will celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial with events around the U.S. through the weekend. President Donald Trump is slated to speak tomorrow at Mount Rushmore.
- In Washington, Jacob Helberg, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, and Trump administration antisemitism envoy Yehuda Kaploun will host a Shabbat dinner tomorrow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. More below on how the Jewish community will commemorate the anniversary.
- In New York on Saturday, former Israeli hostage Alon Ohel will play the piano alongside Five For Fighting singer John Ondrasik on the USS Nimitz as part of the International Naval Review 250.
- Bar-Ilan University’s two-week pilot leadership institute concludes today. Read more about the initiative here.
- Christians United For Israel’s annual summit kicks off on Sunday in Washington. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, former Israeli hostage Yair Horn and Judge Roy Altman are among those slated to speak.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH
In the run-up to America’s 250th anniversary, the Jewish community finds itself navigating a best-of-times, worst-of-times, head-spinning paradox — standing nervously between the promise of an ideal America and the peril of today’s America.
In conversation after conversation, Jewish thinkers who spoke to Jewish Insider about this unique moment expressed fear and concern about the increasingly precarious situation facing American Jews in one breath. In the next, they spoke glowingly about the gifts this country’s democracy has given to the Jews who live here.
Despite this deep ambivalence, or perhaps because of it, the Jewish community is all-in on the 250th.
We interviewed nearly two dozen rabbis, writers, historians and Jewish leaders from across the political and religious spectrum ahead of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We wanted to know how they’re thinking about July Fourth at a time when antisemitism is rising and trust in American democracy is plummeting.
The conversations reveal a shared sense of hope in the American project — and a belief that this semiquincentennial celebration presents a rare opportunity for American Jews to hold their heads high and reflect on what this democracy, even if flawed, has given them.
And we looked at how American Jews are celebrating the country’s birthday: with a Shomer Shabbat barbecue, an English-only day at a Jewish sleepaway camp, an all-night Torah study, a Talmudic-level close read of America’s founding documents.
”An anniversary is a good occasion to put things in historic perspective. As bad as things may feel in the moment, they’re still pretty great relative to the bulk of not even just Jewish history, but also American Jewish history,” Atlantic writer Franklin Foer told JI. “All the ways in which Jewish values and American values are not just compatible, but overlap and extend one another, is something that I think is really important to cultivate within American Jewry and within American Jewish education.”
Read the full story from JI’s Gabby Deutch here, with comments from figures including author Dara Horn, former Treasury Secretary and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Florida Rabbi Efrem Goldberg and Shalom Hartman Institute President Yehuda Kurtzer.
NEW CHAPTER
Abdul-Hussain: My journey from anti-Israel to pro-Israel is a model for the Arab world
At a launch event for his book, The Arab Case for Israel, on Tuesday, writer and researcher Hussain Abdul-Hussain argued that the path to peace in the Middle East begins with Arabs reexamining long-held assumptions about Israel, drawing on his own transformation from believing anti-Israel propaganda to an advocate for the Jewish state, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Sharing his journey: Speaking days after Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement, Abdul-Hussain said the Lebanese people can follow in his footsteps, as the country remains divided between a faction that promotes the Iranian narrative that Israel “only understands the language of war and force,” and those seeking to reclaim the country’s sovereignty. “My story is the story of an average person who was told something and when he dug up the story it turned out to be something else,” Abdul-Hussain, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told some 50 attendees — a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims — at the event in Manhattan.
WORKPLACE WORRIES
Human rights orgs have routinely ignored complaints of antisemitism for years, per new report
The human rights nonprofit sector has systematically ignored or suppressed employee complaints of antisemitism for years, according to a new report published on Wednesday by EiGHT, an organization based in Israel that was created after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks to provide oversight of humanitarian NGOs, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Conclusions: The 63-page report was submitted to Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which was formed after the Bondi Beach terror attack last December, as well as several United Nations bodies. It draws on interviews with more than 70 current and former employees of organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and Greenpeace. It alleges that the organizations’ biased treatment of Israel contributed to a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli employees.
Exclusive: As the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary this weekend, a new study by the Combat Antisemitism Movement reveals a stark reality for American Jews: 57% reported experiencing antisemitism — frequently manifesting online — in the past year, JI’s Haley Cohen reports.
FRIENDLY FISSURE
Israeli Defense Ministry head urges Israelis to understand U.S. perspective amid MOU negotiations
The director general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Baram, urged Israelis on Wednesday to understand Washington’s perspective as the U.S. and Israel negotiate the next memorandum of understanding, cautioning against judging American policy through a purely “provincial lens,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
What he said: “What some in Israel perceive as weakness or folly, an apparent disregard for every warning sign on the ground, is viewed in Washington as cold, calculated and clear-eyed risk management in an era of shifting global attention,” he said at the annual Herzliya Conference at Reichman University. “For us, Iran is an existential threat; for the United States, it is a chronic regional challenge, while China and the Indo-Pacific theater remain the core concern,” Baram said. “We think Tehran, they think Taiwan.”
WAR GAMES
Who won the U.S.-Iran war? Dubowitz, Sadjadpour, Ghattas debate
Top Middle East analysts — including the Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour and Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Dubowitz — offered starkly different takes on whether the United States or Iran has emerged in a stronger strategic position following the recent U.S.-Iran conflict, yet shared a deeply critical view of the preliminary memorandum of understanding brokered between Washington and Tehran, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Opposing perspectives: Speaking on Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado during a panel discussion moderated by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Sadjadpour argued that Tehran successfully leveraged the crisis to its advantage. “I think the biggest advantage they now have is controlling the Strait of Hormuz. They want to try to turn it, if not into the Panama Canal, at least have administrative control over it,” he said. Dubowitz countered that Tehran has actually suffered an unprecedented, devastating strategic and military defeat, saying, “The United States of America is winning, Israel is winning and the Islamic Republic of Iran is losing.”
MICHIGAN MATTERS
Rep. Shri Thanedar faces serious challenge from far-left state legislator
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) is facing a serious primary threat from state Rep. Donavan McKinney, a left-wing challenger backed by several anti-Israel groups including Justice Democrats and TrackAIPAC. Those groups are riding high, coming off of a recent wave of congressional primary victories, which they say point to a desire for a leftward shift in the Democratic Party and, in particular, rejection of support for Israel and pro-Israel groups among the Democratic base. Thanedar is one of their next top targets, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Israel record: Thanedar is one of the few Democrats who has gotten more supportive of Israel during his tenure in Congress, even as the party has become more hostile to the Jewish state. As a state legislator in 2021, he co-sponsored a resolution calling for a halt in U.S. aid to Israel, which described Israel as an “apartheid state” and accused it of “countless human rights violations.” After comfortably winning the contested 2022 primary, Thanedar met with supporters of Israel and traveled to the Jewish state, ultimately reinventing himself as a strong pro-Israel voice and picking up support from the Jewish community. That stance has since cost him support among progressives.
CAMPAIGN CONTROVERSY
DSA candidate for Wisconsin governor appears with streamer who called Jews ‘demonic’
Francesca Hong, a Democratic Socialists of America-affiliated candidate for governor of Wisconsin, appeared on Monday on the Twitch stream of Mike Beyer, known by his online handle “Mike From PA,” a fringe far-left influencer who has espoused open antisemitism. Beyer was suspended from Twitch last year for comments in which he said that “Jewish is not an ethnicity” and Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What she said: Amid scrutiny of his interview with Hong, Beyer blamed an organized conspiracy trying to slander “grassroots politicians like they are getting direct orders from [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.” Later on Monday, Hong also appeared on antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker’s Twitch show. Asked about the two appearances, Allison Geyer, a spokesperson for Hong’s campaign said, “Rep. Hong has been clear throughout this campaign that antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, transphobia, and all forms of dehumanization have no place in Wisconsin politics or in the movement we are building.”
Worthy Reads
Zionism, From the Beginning: In The New York Times, Rabbi Ari Berman, the president of Yeshiva University, weighs in on the debate over the “profound misunderstanding” of the definition of Zionism. “While the modern state of Israel was founded on the ashes of the Holocaust and served as a safe haven for refugees, Zionism always aspired to be more than simply an answer to or refuge from antisemitism. It was a means of allowing Jews to live to their greatest potential, unfettered by the restrictive, often brutal, experiences of living in foreign lands. Zionism is thus an answer to a 3,800-year-old yearning, not only a response to a modern crisis.” [NYTimes]
What the DSA Really Wants: The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait does a deep dive into the ideological shift undertaken by the Democratic Socialists of America. “The organization is still called democratic socialists, of course, but the term does not necessarily mean ‘liberal democracy’ as Americans have traditionally defined it. … The DSA’s long-term strategy is to exploit the Democratic Party’s ballot access and reservoir of voters to build its following, and then, after it gains enough power, break off to form its own party, after which the husk of the old Democratic Party would wither and die.” [TheAtlantic]
Finding Patriotism at a Summer Camp: The Free Press’ U.K.-based digital editor, Josh Kaplan, reflects on his experiences as a counselor at an American Jewish summer camp in upstate New York ahead of the U.S.’ semiquincentennial. “Spending every waking moment surrounded by people who speak your language and have very little else in common with you is remarkably eye-opening. You learn why they believe things that a European never would — like, they believe they were born in the best country in the world. And you learn that even if they have conflicted thoughts about their country’s politics and government, they still love the idea of America, its pageantry, and the flag.” [FreePress]
Word on the Street
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) urged the administration, in any sanctions relief for or negotiation with Iran, to address Iran’s support for terrorism and statutorily required compensation for victims of Iran-backed terrorism which amounts to billions of dollars…
The Free Press interviews Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) about his “Promise to America” pledge as the moderate Long Island Democrat works to restore the party’s base amid a series of Democratic Socialists of America wins in primaries and local elections around the country…
The Detroit News endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the Democratic primary for the state’s open Senate race…
Politico looks at the challenges facing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as he eyes the House speakership amid the far left’s ascendance — and two years before a state redistricting effort that could affect some of the Democratic Socialists of America’s recent gains, in which he is expected to play a significant role…
Far-left activist Darializa Avila Chevalier, who last week won the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District, confirmed her relationship with attorney Ramzi Kassem, the chief counsel to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, saying the two met outside an immigration detention center…
A California man who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2023 death of Paul Kessler at dueling pro- and anti-Israel rallies in California was sentenced to one year in jail; Kessler fell and hit his head in a confrontation with Loay Alnaji and died the following day…
Michelle Greenberg-Kobrin, who served as dean of students at Columbia Law School, was named Columbia’s Jewish life liaison, a position created following the school’s 2025 settlement with the Trump administration…
Immigration officials detained a Cuban national who had been living in the U.S. for more than a decade and working as what federal authorities described as a “foreign subversive” for Cuba’s “premier influence and intelligence front group”; Carlos Antonio Lloga Dominguez is alleged to be working with the U.S.-sanctioned Cuban Institute of Friendship With the People that brought far-left antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker and CodePink’s Medea Benjamin to Cuba earlier this year…
Qualcomm is acquiring Israeli cybersecurity company SAM Seamless Network in a deal estimated to be worth more than $150 million…
Former Israeli hostage Eliya Cohen and his fiancee, Nova music festival survivor Ziv Abud, held their henna ceremony on Wednesday night ahead of their wedding next month…
Archeologists discovered a cave believed to have been used by early human ancestors who predate the Neanderthals some 400,000 years ago outside the northern Israeli town of Fureidis…
The Wall Street Journal spotlights the United Arab Emirates’ efforts to recover from the economic and physical damage caused by ongoing Iranian attacks earlier this year…
Bloomberg reports that the UAE has returned to its prewar levels of oil exports, quietly sending ships through the Strait of Hormuz undetected and using a pipeline to bypass the area…
The U.S. is resuming some shipments of money to Iraq after suspending the payments for several months in an effort to pressure Baghdad to distance itself from Iran…
Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa appointed 70 legislators to the country’s parliament, with the 210-member body set to meet for the first time on Monday…
The Information’s Katie Roof is joining Business Insider as editor at large and will additionally join the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network as a global reporter…
Arno Rosenfeld is joining Haaretz as Washington correspondent, working with newly named U.S. Bureau Chief Ben Samuels…
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced the death of board member Richard Cravatts…
Pic of the Day
Former Israeli hostage Daniella Gilboa released a new single on Wednesday, a year and a half after her release from Hamas captivity in Gaza. In an Instagram post, Gilboa said that she wrote the song, “Bye to Worries,” when she was 17, together with her boyfriend, Roy Dadon, when “we still didn’t understand where life would take us, out of innocence and true love for music, and certainly I didn’t think I would sing this song to myself in my darkest moments when everything was taken from me.”
Birthdays
Inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of the E Street Band, Roy J. Bittan turns 77…
Director emerita of Hebrew studies at HUC-JIR, she sits on the board of Lashon Academy, Rivka Dori… Nobel laureate in medicine in 2004, he is a professor at Columbia University and a molecular biologist, Richard Axel turns 80… Co-creator of the “Seinfeld” television series and creator of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” comedian and producer, Larry David turns 79… Swedish author and screenwriter, she wrote a novel about Jewish children who escaped the Holocaust, Annika Thor turns 76… Former CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, she also served as a State Department’s special envoy on antisemitism, Hannah Rosenthal turns 75… Montclair, N.J.-based philanthropic consultant, Aaron Issar Back, Ph.D…. Israeli Druze politician who serves as a member of Knesset for the New Hope party, Akram Hasson turns 67… Maryland state senator since 2015, Cheryl C. Kagan turns 65… Founder and head of business development of AQR Capital Management, David G. Kabiller turns 63… Member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism alliance, Ya’akov Asher turns 61… Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Peter E. Baker turns 59… Reading specialist at Wayne Thomas School in Highland Park, Ill., Stephanie Rubin… Co-founder, president and dean at Mechon Hadar in Manhattan, Shai Held, Ph.D. turns 55… Executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer turns 54… Global industry editor for health and pharma at Thomson Reuters, Michele Gershberg… Music video and film director, Alma Har’el turns 51… Motivational speaker, media personality and EVP at RXR Realty, Charlie Harary turns 49… Author of fiction and nonfiction on a variety of Jewish topics, Elisa Albert turns 48… Israeli journalist, TV anchor and popular lecturer, Sivan Rahav-Meir turns 45… Member of Congress (R-NY) who is stepping down after this term, Elise Stefanik turns 42… Actor, singer and producer, she appeared in her first films as a 14-year-old, Ashley Tisdale turns 41… Actor and internet personality, Barbara Dunkelman turns 37… Actor, singer and songwriter, she played a lead role in the 2019 ABC series “Emergence,” Alexa Swinton turns 17..
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