Dems’ new Mideast man — Jared Moskowitz
Plus, Omer Adam finds his love in Portofino
Add JewishInsider on GoogleGood Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at growing condemnation of antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker among moderate Democrats, report on the tapping of Rep. Jared Moskowitz to serve as the top Democratic official on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East subcommittee and cover a new poll that found that nearly half of Pennsylvania voters approve of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s approach to Israel. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Omer Adam, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Rabbi Mitchel Malkus.
Curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today’s Agenda
First in JI: In a letter sent to Attorney General Todd Blanche this morning, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is calling on the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act Unit to investigate whether Northwestern University’s long-standing ties to Qatar violate FARA. Read more here.
We’re keeping an eye on the situation at 10 Downing St., amid U.K. media reports that Prime Minister Andy Burnham could announce in the coming weeks a full ban on trading products from West Bank settlements.
Australia’s monthslong royal commission investigating antisemitism in the country — prompted by the December terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach — concluded today in Sydney after the panel heard from nearly 350 witnesses. Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, the director of Chabad of Bondi whose son-in-law was one of 15 people killed in the attack, was among the final witnesses to address the panel today.
One Thing To Know
analysis
Darline Graham, boosted by Trump backing, wins South Carolina Senate race
Boosted by an endorsement from President Donald Trump and a preelection rally from the state’s leading Republican figures, Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC) survived a challenge from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to win the GOP nomination for her late brother’s Senate seat.
“I continue to miss Lindsey every day, and there is still a big hole in my heart, but I know he’s looking down right now, very proud of all of everyone in this room,” Graham said in her victory speech Tuesday night.
Graham prevailed narrowly (52%-48%) despite facing serious questions about her experience and readiness for a full term in the Senate during the compressed campaign. She expressed ignorance about foreign policy in the race’s lone debate when asked about her thoughts about Taiwan’s security. She had also said she wouldn’t be as focused on foreign policy as her brother, whose hawkish national security record defined his political legacy.
The Big Reads
piker pile-on
More Democrats speak out against El-Sayed’s relationship with Hasan Piker
As more Democratic lawmakers join the chorus calling out influencer Hasan Piker over his comments that Jews’ support for Israel invites antisemitic violence, a growing number of moderate Democratic lawmakers — including Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Reps. Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Greg Stanton (D-AZ) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) — said that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s efforts to distance himself from Piker, a campaign surrogate, haven’t gone far enough, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. “It is disingenuous for El-Sayed to try to distance himself from Piker without specifically condemning, refuting or even just rejecting Piker’s hateful rhetoric,” Schneider said.
On the other hand: El-Sayed, meanwhile, doubled down on his anti-Israel rhetoric at an event in Dearborn on Tuesday, JI’s Matthew Kassel reports. While reiterating his opposition to antisemitism and appreciation for Judaism, El-Sayed said that his support for ending aid to Israel is “about making sure that in our foreign policy, we substantiate equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinian folk.”
on the hill
Moskowitz to take over as top Democrat on Middle East subcommittee
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) was named on Tuesday as the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East Subcommittee, succeeding Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Two sources familiar with the situation explained that, since Sherman, who took over as ranking member last year after Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s (D-FL) indictment, would have been unable to remain in the post next year owing to a rule that prohibits lawmakers from holding multiple subcommittee leadership roles, he decided to give up the position early to help support Moskowitz in his reelection race and to pass off the committee leadership to a pro-Israel successor.
survey says
New poll shows Pa. voters approve of Shapiro’s centrist, pro-Israel approach
A new poll found that nearly half of voters in Pennsylvania view Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat mulling a presidential bid in 2028, as “about right on support of Israel,” even as he has faced skepticism from the far left over his positions on the Jewish state, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. The results of The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University survey indicate that Shapiro, a popular centrist who led his Republican gubernatorial rival, Stacy Garrity, by 16 points in the poll, could be well positioned as he mulls a presidential campaign.
The Rundown
off the shelf
From Beirut to Riyadh, Assouline’s luxury book collection has yet to spotlight an Israeli city
threat thwarted
Man arrested for threatening to kill Rep. Randy Fine
On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.
President Donald Trump submitted his administration’s nuclear accord with Saudi Arabia to Congress for review; the agreement, a senior White House official told The Wall Street Journal, remains contingent on Riyadh’s normalization of ties with Israel…
The Secret Service confirmed that Iranian state media aired a video threatening the life of Barron Trump; the video is the first from Iran that appeared to target the president’s youngest son…
An American law enforcement official told Newsmax that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s son Yair was the target of a recent Iranian assassination plot, days after the prime minister indicated that one of his sons had been targeted by the Islamic Republic…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly told several counterparts from allied countries that the U.S. plans to halt strikes targeting Iran “for the time being” as the Trump administration pursues other avenues, including economic sanctions, to pressure the Islamic Republic…
CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow on Tuesday to meet with senior officials, marking his first known trip to Russia since assuming the role days into the second Trump administration…
The New York Times does a deep dive into the Army’s leadership vacuum following a series of high-level dismissals and staff purges by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, finding that the number of four-star Army generals has dropped by 50% since Hegseth took the helm of the Pentagon…
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) led six Senate Democrats and 34 House Democrats on a letter calling on Rubio to work to release from Israeli custody Sama Safi, a U.S. citizen arrested in June by Israeli authorities who accused Safi and other Birzeit University students of activities supporting terrorism…
An official from the Trump administration’s Board of Peace called for a halt to “all militant activity in Gaza … including the flying of kites”; the warning came after a series of kites were flown out of the enclave and into southern Israeli communities, renewing concerns that the kites could be connected to incendiary devices as they had been in the past…
Reps. Greg Meeks (D-NY) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) demanded answers from the Trump administration about the structure and funding plans for the Board of Peace, how it will function and what Trump’s role in leading the organization will be…
In an Instagram post featuring a photo of Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd’s “Knotted Gun” sculpture outside the United Nations, Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, wrote, “Barrels do not knot themselves. It takes hands, and the will to use them. #Peace requires hard work. It is won slowly, through negotiations that run for months and rarely end exactly as anyone wanted. Then it rests on commitments that must be kept every day, usually without praise and without credit. No one applauds an obligation honoured. Only the broken ones are noticed”…
New York magazine profiles Fight Agency co-founder Rebecca Katz, whose clients have included Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), finding that Katz “doesn’t much want to talk about what has gone wrong with some of her candidates. She thinks October 7 had something to do with it in two cases — it pushed Fetterman right and Bowman further left while also making the latter less responsive to the concerns of his constituents”…
Following the failed primary campaigns of several far-right, antisemitic candidates in Florida, The New York Times’ Yair Rosenberg explores how the “campaigns exposed the continued mainstreaming of anti-Jewish ideas and unsettled one of the largest Jewish populations in the country”…
New York magazine Editor-in-Chief David Haskell invited 14 Sephardic and Mizrahi organizations to meet next month after the groups collectively sent an open letter to the magazine’s leadership regarding its recent edition focused on Southwest Asian and North African culture in New York City; the magazine’s “Habibi City” package had been met with extensive criticism from Jewish community leaders over the magazine’s erasure of Middle Eastern Jewish culture as well as its description of the Jewish state as the “land mass currently called Israel”…
Call Your Mother is opening a shop in Coral Gables, Fla., as the Washington-area bagel chain expands to the Sunshine State…
The Atlantic’s Timothy Ryback considers the fate of Nazi sympathizer Max Naumann, a Jewish German who defended the actions of the Reich even as the Nazi regime increasingly cracked down on Jews in the country…
A Sydney man convicted of vandalism for scrawling anti-Israel graffiti on a car and setting another vehicle on fire was denied parole for a second time after the parole authority of New South Wales determined the man, who has a Hezbollah tattoo on his neck, was an adherent of “extremist ideology of antisemitic character”…
Rabbi Mitchel Malkus, former head of school at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, is now the executive vice president at Legacy Heritage Foundation…
Worthy Reads
Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
Squeeze Play: In The Washington Post, Ludovic Hood, who served decades in the Foreign Service before joining the Hudson Institute earlier this year, praised the Trump administration’s recently announced economic sanctions on Iran. “Twenty years of experience as an American diplomat has made me realize that no amount of diplomatic ingenuity can contain Iran. The United States should keep pushing until it gets the best outcome for American interests, the region and the Iranian people: the shattering of the illegitimate regime in Tehran. … Iran’s rulers have shown time and again they will not accede to an arrangement that constrains their hegemonic aspirations.” [WashPost]
The Crumbling of Qatar: The Atlantic’s Shane Harris considers the relationship between Doha and Washington as Qatar, which gifted President Donald Trump a luxury jet earlier this year, finds itself in the crosshairs of the administration’s war with Iran. “In Trump, the Qataris had met a man who could not be bought. He could be paid, and expected to be. But the security the Qataris hoped for turned out to be a protection racket. … The lifeblood of [Doha]’s ambitions, plans, and influence is drying up. And Qatar’s global strategy, premised on so many contradictory bets, is crumbling.” [TheAtlantic]
Dolly’s Parting Gift: In eJewishPhilanthropy, The Bronfman Fellowship’s Laura Liebman reflects on the ethos of Dolly Parton following the singer and philanthropist’s death on Tuesday. “When American Jewish life can feel defined by fear, division and questions about who belongs, Dolly reminded me that there is another model: Know who you are, holding fast to your values and where you come from; and be brave enough to try something new, give generously and keep the tent wide enough for people who see the world differently.” [eJP]
Picture of the Day
Israeli singer Omer Adam married Milan native Sacha Israelovich on Monday in a small, family-only civil marriage ceremony in Portofino, Italy. The couple will hold a larger religious ceremony today at a former 13th-century abbey for a few hundred attendees, which will include gender-segregated seating at the chuppah in accordance with the request of Hasidic singer Motty Steinmetz, who will perform for the couple.
Birthdays
Rami Matan Even-Esh, rapper known professionally as Kosha Dillz, turns 45
Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth Jacob of Atlanta, turns 99
Alan Siegel, CEO of Siegelvision, a brand identity consultancy, he is also the co-founder and chairman emeritus of global brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale, turns 88
Martin J. Portnoy, president of You Save On Meds
Ron Huldai, mayor of Tel Aviv since 1998, turns 82
Irving Slosberg, former Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives, turns 79
Jay Caplan, sales representative for ADT Security
Avner Eisenberg, vaudeville performer, clown, mime, juggler and sleight of hand magician, known by his stage name “Avner the Eccentric,” turns 78
Jane August, co-owner of Rochester, N.Y.-based August Moon Imports and World Tae Kwon Do Center
Roger Karoutchi, member of the French Senate, turns 75
Freada Kapor Klein, venture capitalist, social policy researcher and philanthropist, turns 74
Robert J. Fisher, director of Gap, a retail chain founded by his parents, turns 72
Michael J. Bloomfield, EVP and managing director of The Mellman Group
Julian Epstein, CEO of LawMedia Group (LMG Inc.), turns 65
Doug Korn, founder and managing partner of Victor Capital Partners, turns 64
Stephen Dubner, journalist and co-author of the Freakonomics series, turns 63
Shelly L. Hettleman, member of the Maryland Senate since 2020, turns 62
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America until 2021, turns 57
Perry Wallack, former CFO at Cornerstone OnDemand
Lorne Abony, managing partner of Austin-based Texas Venture Partners, turns 57
Robert Sacks, managing partner of RNS Strategies based in Portland, Ore.
Steve Malter, professor at the Olin Business School of Washington University in St. Louis, turns 53
Samantha Eisner, deputy general counsel at ICANN, the coordinator of the internet’s naming system
Ariel Maurice “Ari” Ratner, co-founder and CEO of Danari Global, a strategic communications and policy advisory firm
Yanni Hufnagel, founder and CEO of The Lemon Perfect Company, maker of the enhanced water brand Lemon Perfect, turns 44
Meirav Cohen, member of the Knesset for Yesh Atid, she served in the previous government as minister for social equality and minorities, turns 43
Rob Cantor, singer-songwriter, vocalist, guitarist and co-writer for the indie rock band Tally Hall, turns 43
Brielle Joy Applebaum, principal and founder of Inspire Capital and Development
John Train
Carrie Shapiro
Please log in if you already have a subscription, or subscribe to access the latest updates.
Continue with Google
Continue with Apple