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Tom BarrAnkara

Plus, Graham's Munich message to Riyadh: 'Knock it off'

(Photo by Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan (R) receives US Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack (L) in Ankara, Turkiye on November 14, 2025.

JI Staff

February 17, 2026

👋 Good Tuesday morning!

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover the weekend’s Munich Security Conference, including Sen. Chris Murphy and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s mainstage criticisms of Israel. We talk to lawmakers concerned about U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack as the diplomat expands his Middle East portfolio, and report on Illinois congressional candidate Daniel Biss’ defense of his decision, as mayor of Evanston, not to give police support to Northwestern as it sought to break up its anti-Israel encampment. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sen. Lindsey Graham, LeBron James and Dasha Zhukova.

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

The second round of U.S.-Iran nuclear talks are taking place today in Geneva, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi, whose country hosted the first round of talks earlier this month, again mediating between the American team, led by White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and the Iran team, led by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Witkoff and Kushner are also participating in Russia-Ukraine talks later today in Geneva.
The latest round of talks comes a day after Araghchi met in Geneva with International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi, and as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps begins military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz.
Representatives from members of the Trump administration’s Board of Peace are arriving in Washington this week ahead of a meeting of member states slated for Thursday. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will be representing Israel at the gathering. Over the weekend, Indonesia announced it would contribute thousands of troops to the international stabilization force in the Gaza Strip.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is holding its annual mission to Israel.
Israel’s Olympic bobsled team, led by AJ Edelman, continues trials today, after coming in last place at Monday’s first round.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MARC ROD

Taking the stage at the Munich Security Conference this weekend, two prominent progressive lawmakers rumored to be eyeing presidential runs in 2028, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), used the opportunity to bash Israel.

Criticism of Israel isn’t new for either lawmaker, but taking place on one of the most prominent foreign policy stages in the world, their remarks are a sign of the anti-Israel current that continues to course through the Democratic Party, particularly on its left flank.

Ocasio-Cortez, calling for the U.S. to condition aid to Israel, repeated accusations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.

“The United States has an obligation to uphold its own laws, particularly the Leahy laws,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to laws that require suspension of aid to military units engaged in war crimes. “And I think that personally, that the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza. And I think that we have thousands of women and children dead … that was completely avoidable.”

Adding insult to injury for some observers, Ocasio-Cortez leveled the accusations in Munich, the site of Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, which ultimately catalyzed his rise to power.

Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the conference was a foreign policy test for the congresswoman — one she ended up struggling to pass. Despite studying under the tutelage of Matt Duss, a former foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), she faced accusations that she remains unprepared to tackle global issues, accentuated by her stumbling response when asked whether the U.S. should come to the defense of Taiwan if it was attacked by China. (The New York Times headline: “Ocasio-Cortez Offers a Working Class Vision in Munich, with Some Stumbles”)

At the end of the weekend, Ocasio-Cortez griped that her gaffes and perceived presidential ambitions overshadowed the message she intended to deliver, denying that the trip had anything to do with a potential presidential run. Several congressional allies jumped in to back up Ocasio-Cortez.

Murphy, in a separate session, also continued the theme of Democrats’ Israel-bashing. He questioned the reality of the ceasefire in Gaza, emphasizing Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement while not mentioning Hamas’ continued violations.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

ENVOY ISSUES

Lawmakers alarmed by Barrack’s Turkey tilt in his Middle East diplomacy

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack speaks during the 2025 Concordia Annual Summit on September 24, 2025 in New York City. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Annual Summit)

Simmering frustrations among lawmakers with U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack — who also serves as special envoy to Syria and manages a wide remit in America’s Middle East policy — have recently broken into public view, as multiple lawmakers tell Jewish Insider they have concerns about the U.S. envoy’s expansive role, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

What they’re saying: A Republican senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told JI last week that Barrack’s role in U.S. policy in the region makes them “nervous.” The senator added, “He’s running a Turkish line, and there are very legit[imate] concerns” about his role and influence. A senior Senate Democrat involved in foreign policy issues also said he had concerns about Barrack, suggesting the envoy was pursuing personal business interests through his post. “Barrack is clearly knowledgeable about the region, he’s clearly energetic and engaged. But that’s the only good I can say. I have real concerns about his motives and the consequences of his action,” the Democratic senator said.

Read the full story here.

on the hill

Tlaib, Squad push resolution labeling Palestinian Arabs the ‘indigenous inhabitants’ of Israel

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s resolution has been cosponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Betty McCollum, Marie Newman, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) questions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as she testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Marc Rod

May 18, 2022

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and a handful of progressive Democrats introduced a resolution on Monday referring to Palestinian Arabs as the “indigenous inhabitants” of Israel and endorsing Palestinian right of return, one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

The resolution seeks to set as U.S. policy recognition of the “Nakba” — the term, translating to “catastrophe,” that Palestinians use to refer to the mass Palestinian exodus that accompanied the foundation of Israel — and accept as a settled issue Palestinian refugees’ right of return to inside Israel’s borders. It also refers to Palestinians as the “indigenous population” of the region, but does not acknowledge Jewish history in the region.

The legislation accuses Israel of having “depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities” during its 1948 War of Independence and characterizes ongoing Israeli “expropriation of Palestinian land and… dispossession of the Palestinian people,” including Israeli settlements, as part of an ongoing Nakba. In a statement announcing the legislation, Tlaib accused Israel of “ongoing ethnic cleansing.”

Tlaib’s resolution has been cosponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Neither Tlaib nor any of the cosponsors responded to a question from Jewish Insider about whether they viewed Jews as also being “indigenous” to the region.

Newman is currently facing a primary challenger, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), who is backed by various pro-Israel groups, including J Street, which had endorsed Newman in 2020. Bowman has faced criticism from the Democratic Socialists of America over his positions on Israel, including voting for supplemental Iron Dome funding and traveling to the Jewish state last year. He has since removed himself as a cosponsor of legislation supporting the Abraham Accords.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) blasted Tlaib’s resolution as “predicated on a demonstrably false historical narrative… predictably failing to mention the hundreds of attacks on Jewish communities in the British mandate of Palestine by Palestinian militias.”

Sherman noted that the resolution “omits” that Israel was attacked by eight Arab states in 1948, that the 1948 war began with attacks by Arab forces seeking “a war of annihilation” against Jewish militants and civilians, that “not a single Jew was left alive in the portion of the British mandate controlled by Arab armies, that no Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem for two decades and that 800,000 Jews were expelled from neighboring Arab countries.”

“Thankfully, the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress and in the House Foreign Affairs Committee understand that the historical narrative in Congresswoman Tlaib’s resolution is an outrageous falsehood and thus this bill isn’t likely to be passed or even considered,” Sherman added.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) agreed that the resolution has no “hope of moving forward,” claiming the resolution seeks to “rewrite history and question Israel’s right to exist.”

“It’s unfortunate that this histrionic and invidious resolution was introduced now, particularly, as we see continued progress in efforts to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors in the region,” Gottheimer added. “Divisive efforts like this only set back our fight against terror and the advancement of democracy in the region.”

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who advised multiple secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said that the legislation asks Congress to “wade into the intricacies and volatility of some of the most combustible issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and essentially recognize a narrative.”

“This legislation is packed with landmines and traps,” Miller continued. “The whole issue of right of return is an issue that for years in negotiations we realized was the most combustible, most complicated, and the one which we had the least chance of resolving…. That’s the third rail of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”

Miller emphasized that the legislation has no prospect of seeing widespread support in “any Congress that I can imagine.”

He described the legislation as “designed basically to support what the framers regard as an unrecognized, underreported and unacknowledged narrative in the American political scene of the Palestinians.” He added that the “Palestinian narrative has never been adequately explored or acknowledged” in U.S. politics and argued that “there was a way perhaps to go about this which would have recognized both Israeli independence and the Nakba being intertwined.”

Some Republicans seized on the legislation.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) called it “the latest in a long line of antisemitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voiced in the Democratic Party.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) called it “disgusting anti-Semitism.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said “the continued anti-Semitism from radical socialists in the House is horrific.” The three Republicans also sought to tie House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the initiative, demanding that she condemn the move.

Back Again

Jon Ossoff is back on the campaign trail

Ossoff said he could play 'a constructive role in supporting negotiations' between Israel and Palestinians

AP Photo/David Goldman

Jon Ossoff is seen here in 2017 conceding his Senate race in Atlanta to Republican Karen Handel.

Ben Jacobs

October 6, 2019

Before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, there was Jon Ossoff. In the spring of 2017, the lanky then-30-year-old became the face of “the resistance” almost by accident.

The Georgia Democrat ran in the first special election of the Trump administration. The race was treated as a key barometer of public opinion. It became the most expensive special election in American history, attracting roughly $55 million in spending by both sides in a traditionally Republican district in suburban Atlanta.

Ossoff almost won the district outright in the first round of voting, falling just short of the 50% necessary for victory, before being narrowly defeated by Republican Karen Handel in a runoff.

Two years after that loss, Ossoff is now mounting his second bid for elected office and has thrown his hat in the ring to challenge incumbent Republican David Perdue for the United States Senate.

In an interview with Jewish Insider, Ossoff framed his run as a crusade against Washington corruption and an extension of his career as an investigative journalist who had a colleague murdered while investigating a scandal in African soccer.

The message is an extension of how the Georgia Democrat initially sold himself to voters in 2017 before shifting his focus to non-partisan issues including government waste and turning Atlanta into “the Silicon Valley of the South.” But it takes an added edge during the ongoing impeachment crisis in Washington. (Ossoff has come out in favor of an impeachment inquiry).

Ossoff told Jewish Insider, “my first act in the Senate will be to co-sponsor a constitutional amendment to repeal the Citizens United decision. He denounced a political system awash in “dark money and secret anonymous political spending” and described Perdue as “the embodiment of Washington corruption.”

On foreign policy, the Democrat denounced the 2018 decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the Iran deal, calling it “a reckless and thoughtless mistake by withdrawing unilaterally from the nuclear deal.” In Ossoff’s view, “it has put Iran back on path towards nuclear weapons development with no clear diplomatic strategy and escalated chances of war in the Gulf. There are no clear off ramps for either side as tensions continue to escalate and it has been deeply irresponsible.”

A former legislative assistant for longtime Georgia Democratic congressman Hank Johnson, Ossoff argued that the United States should “recommit to a multilateral approach to Iran nuclear program… to restrict uranium enrichment and ensure that there are penetrating IAEA and international inspections of their nuclear facilities.” He added, “the proliferation of nuclear weapons anywhere is a threat to people anywhere, and in the Senate preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon will be a top priority.

When asked if Iran possessing a nuclear weapon would present an existential threat to the United States, Ossoff answered, “any adversarial power that has nuclear weapons and ability to deliver them either via ICBM or by trafficking nuclear technologies to non-state actors poses a critical threat to us and an existential threat to allies in Middle East and Europe.”

He also strongly criticized the Saudi regime under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Our alliance with Saudi Arabia has compromised us ethically and has compromised our foreign policy,” said Ossoff. “We should cease supporting the Saudi war in Yemen and distance ourselves from regime that executes political dissidents, executes people for their sexuality and that brutally murders journalists.”

Ossoff, who is hoping to be only the second Jewish American from the South directly elected to Senate, told JI his “Jewish heritage has influenced my worldview profoundly… My relatives who are Holocaust survivors, my ancestors who fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, I think I have a heightened awareness of dangers of authoritarianism and antisemitism.”

He argued that, if elected, he could play “a constructive role in supporting negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians as “a Jewish-American United States senator with a strong background in foreign policy and defense policy.”

However, Ossoff was “deeply pessimistic that any of the parties including the United States are serious about pursuing [a two-state solution].” In his view, “the two-state solution is on life support.”

Ossoff argued for a stronger emphasis on human rights in U.S. foreign policy. “Foreign policy is rightly about balancing values and interests and America throughout its history has too often, in my view, neglected its values in support of perceived interests,” said the Georgia Democrat. However, he noted, “there are U.S. officials around the world and throughout our history who have come to the aid of those facing persecution because they rightly understand that is a core part of national identity.”

Ossoff, who raised $800,000 in the three weeks after declaring his candidacy in mid-September, still has to win the Democratic nomination for the opportunity to run against Perdue next year. He will face more than half a dozen other candidates including Teresa Tomlinson, the former mayor of Columbus, Georgia, in the May primary.

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