Plus, U.S., Israeli officials skeptical over Hamas' pledged dissolution
(CJ Gunther/Getty Images)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner and his wife Amy Gertner wave to supporters as they arrive to Platner's Primary Election event on June 9, 2026 in Blue Hill, Maine.
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In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at the fallout from a new report that Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner sexually assaulted a former partner, and spotlight the South Florida congressional race in which Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is mounting a bid in a district historically represented by Black legislators. We report on an Israeli Democracy Institute survey that found confidence in President Donald Trump’s prioritization of Israel’s security needs at an all-time low, and look at a new psychology training program backed by the Academic Engagement Network that aims to combat antisemitism in mental health care. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Alejandro Mayorkas and President Emmanuel Macron.
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 on our 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 and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- President Donald Trump is slated to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan this afternoon, shortly after he lands in Turkey for the two-day NATO Ankara summit. The summit kicks off later today with representatives from all 32 NATO countries expected to attend.
- In addition to heads of state, a bipartisan congressional delegation comprised of Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) will also be attending the summit after stopping in Budapest, Hungary, where the lawmakers met on Monday with newly elected Prime Minister Péter Magyar.
- Iran is expected to be a primary topic of conversations on the sidelines of the convening. Before leaving for Ankara, Trump said that the U.S. would either reach an agreement with Tehran, or would “finish the job.” His comments came hours before Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck two ships — believed to be a Qatari tanker and a Saudi vessel carrying crude oil — transiting through the Strait of Hormuz near the coast of Oman.
- In Iran, officials from dozens of countries — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, China and Turkey — are taking part in the ongoing ceremonies around the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Absent from the funeral events are representatives from the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, both of which were heavily targeted by Iran during the recent war.
- Stateside, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Abdul El-Sayed will face off this evening in a head-to-head debate as the two vie for the Democratic nomination in the state’s open Senate race. The debate will be the first matchup between the two since state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped her bid over the weekend.
- Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel is in Israel this week ahead of a planned speech tomorrow at Tel Aviv University. Emanuel met on Monday with human rights lawyer Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who spearheaded the effort to document Hamas’ sexual violence during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
- Elsewhere in Israel, the three-day Contemporary Antisemitism conference kicks off today at the University of Haifa. Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the Biden administration’s antisemitism envoy, is slated to deliver the keynote address today.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS
When an ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner told Politico in a story published on Monday that the Maine Democratic Senate candidate had raped her in 2021 after entering her home while heavily intoxicated, she said she did so because the response to a recent New York Times report on Platner’s past dubious behavior had focused on discrediting Lyndsey Fifield, one of the women who featured prominently in the story over her ties to the GOP.
Jenny Racicot, a Democrat, hadn’t wanted to go public with the rape accusation (which she had shared off-record with the Times), in part because she and Platner were largely politically aligned. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Racicot told Politico. “My part of the story [in the NYT] was just a read-over,” Racicot said. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”
The unfolding situation in Maine reflects a broader trend in American politics in which immoral or questionable behavior by one’s peers is ignored or obfuscated to serve a perceived “greater good” of electing a political ally despite their failing moral standards.
In recent years, both major parties have increasingly tolerated conduct that would have once been considered disqualifying — even as the #MeToo movement briefly changed the nature of the discourse (see former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken as an example). Similar arguments have surfaced across political controversies over the last decade (including against President Donald Trump), with supporters of embattled candidates and officials insisting that policy positions outweigh personal conduct and dismissing allegations as politically motivated.
In a short span of time, the 2017 rallying cry of “Believe all women” gave way to “Believe women whose politics align with ours” — a mindset that extended to the widespread denial of Hamas’ sexual violence during the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and against the Israeli hostages kept in captivity in Gaza.
But yesterday’s Politico report, which prompted calls from Platner’s most prominent backers — including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) — for him to end his bid, may mark the point at which previous defenses of the Maine Democrat become politically untenable.
SORE SPOT
Wasserman Schultz’s reelection bid ignites tensions within Democratic Party
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) reelection race has turned into a local and national flashpoint following the Republican-led redistricting process in Florida, and risks driving a wedge in traditional Black-Jewish alliances in the state and the party. Wasserman Schultz is running in South Florida’s newly redrawn 20th Congressional District, a decision pitting the longtime Democratic leader and former Democratic National Committee chair against leaders who have criticized her for running in a seat historically represented by a Black lawmaker, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Redistricting ramifications: “The situation we’re in is the result of a deliberate decision by the Republican leadership in our state to target all three Jewish members of Congress from South Florida, to target the two African American members of Congress from South Florida and deliberately set something up that was going to result in, let’s say, tension between those two historically allied communities,” said Joe Geller, a former Florida House Democrat, who lives outside the district and is supporting Wasserman Schultz.
LOSING FAITH
Israeli confidence in Trump drops to new low amid Iran negotiations
The number of Israelis who believe President Donald Trump views Israel’s security as a central consideration has continued to plummet to record lows after Washington signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, according to a new survey from the Israel Democracy Institute. The June 2026 Israeli Voice Index, conducted between June 28 and July 1, found that 28% of respondents — including 26% of Jewish Israelis and 36% of Arab Israelis — believe Israel’s security is a key consideration for Trump, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
Survey says: Among Jewish Israelis, the figure dropped 15 percentage points from a month ago, when 41% of respondents said they felt Israeli security was a key consideration for Trump as his administration engaged in negotiations with Tehran. At the time, those findings marked the lowest levels of Israeli trust in Trump since the research center began tracking the metric when he was elected to a second term in November 2024.
DISARMAMENT DOUBTS
American and Israeli officials skeptical as Hamas pledges to hand over governing authority
American and Israeli officials expressed skepticism on Monday that Hamas would follow through with its pledge to dissolve its governing body that has ruled Gaza for over two decades after Hamas announced the dissolution of the “Emergency Committee,” the terrorist organization’s governing body, and the resignation of Mohammed al-Farra as the committee’s chief, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Matthew Shea report.
State of play: The terrorist group said that it was prepared to transfer authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee established under President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan and overseen by the Trump administration’s Board of Peace. The Board of Peace said that it was withholding judgment on the announcement, instead vowing to assess Hamas’ “actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar dismissed the move outright, saying that Hamas had agreed to give up governing control of the Gaza Strip in a largely symbolic overture while sidestepping disarmament calls.
DEAL DISPUTE
Israeli Ambassador Leiter says Israel, Lebanon agreement supersedes Iran MOU
Jerusalem and Beirut see their trilateral agreement signed with the U.S. last month as “superseding” the memorandum of understanding signed between the U.S. and Iran, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said on Monday. “Whether the United States does, you’ll have to ask the administration spokesman,” he added, speaking at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Conflicting clause: Leiter specifically referenced the first clause of the MOU, to which Israel and Lebanon were not parties, which called for an end in hostilities around the region, including Israel’s war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Leiter acknowledged that Iran — as well as mediating countries Pakistan and Qatar — views the MOU differently and believes it overrides the Israel-Lebanon framework deal.
WINGS CLIPPED
Netanyahu pushes back on Trump’s plan to sell F-35s, jet engines to Turkey
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s sale of jet engines and potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey on Monday, saying on “Fox & Friends” that such moves “will upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority” and “America’s posture” in the region, Jewish Insider’s Christina Sher reports.
Turkey talk: Netanyahu’s remarks came hours before President Donald Trump’s departure for a NATO summit in Turkey, on the sidelines of which Trump is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “I don’t think they should be given F-35s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu said, describing Turkey as “infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America.” He also pointed to recent comments by Erdoğan and Turkish ministers that Netanyahu characterized as “calling for the annihilation of Israel.”
EXCLUSIVE
New psychology training program aims to combat antisemitism in mental health care
Two leading psychologists are launching an initiative to help future clinicians better care for Jewish patients, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned, amid a surge of antisemitism in the mental health field that has left Jewish therapists and clients facing isolation and discrimination.
Pilot program: Created by Miri Bar-Halpern, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, and Dean McKay, a professor of psychology at Fordham University, the pilot program, announced on Tuesday, will roll out in doctoral psychology programs at universities across New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts through faculty workshops and curriculum development. The Academic Engagement Network, a network of faculty and staff countering antisemitism on campus, is supporting the effort.
Worthy Reads
Speaking From the Grave: The Wall Street Journal’s Saleh al-Batati and Benoit Faucon report on the messages being signaled by Iran’s leaders during funeral proceedings for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “A delegation from the Palestinian militia Hamas received a verse praising believers ‘who have remained true to the covenant they made with God.’ … The Iranians picked a quote [for Saudi Arabia’s delegation] referring to the Battle of Badr, in which the Prophet Muhammad’s followers defeated a much larger force through what was interpreted as a divine intervention. ‘There has already been a sign for you in the two armies that met,’ the verse said. ‘One was fighting in the cause of Allah and the other of disbelievers.’” [WSJ]
Guide For the Perplexed: In The New York Times, Nicholas Lemann posits how American Jewry can emerge from what he describes as a “collective identity crisis” amid increasing antisemitism and anti-Zionism. “My own advice for the perplexed among liberal American Jews would be, first, participate actively in the religious life of the community. That will connect you deeply to your people, back through time and everywhere in the world in the present. Second, and inextricably linked, study the Torah and the other essential texts. … Our patriarchs and matriarchs were all deeply flawed people, and the consistent failings of our people were collective as well as individual. Understanding that makes for a much better vantage point from which to contemplate the situation of Israel today than being subjected to litmus tests about Zionism from people who don’t understand how deeply embedded it is in most Jewish hearts.” [NYTimes]
Word on the Street
Explosions — reportedly caused by explosive devices — were heard in Damascus on Tuesday as French President Emmanuel Macron met with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the presidential palace; the French president’s office said Macron was safe and his trip was continuing, while Syrian media reported that 18 people, including four police officers, were wounded in the incident…
An Iranian soccer federation official boasted that “the whole world is dancing to celebrate politics’ humiliating defeat by football” in response to the U.S.‘ World Cup loss on Monday to Belgium, after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he did a “happy dance” after Iran was eliminated earlier in the tournament…
In a Substack post, Democratic Majority for Israel President Brian Romick breaks down what he calls Vice President JD Vance’s “troubling rhetoric” about Israel…
A member of Washington state’s Human Rights Commission resigned following the release of video taken at a meeting last year in which he suggested during debate over an antisemitism resolution that Jewish people were “always crying” and raised concerns that the resolution’s passage would be “an open door for them to now continue to demand”…
Jewish students at Columbia University who reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the school over its handling of antisemitism filed a lawsuit against attorney Marc Kasowitz, alleging that the lawyer, who had represented dozens of students, netted more than half of the settlement’s payout, totaling some $6.4 million, in legal fees after telling plaintiffs that a third party would be covering the fees…
The Israeli-inspired café Tatte is opening its first location in New York’s Flatiron District; read our interview with Tatte founder Tzurit Or here…
Two British men who filmed themselves shouting antisemitic slurs at a Jewish man in the London neighborhood of Clapton Common and posted the video to social media were given suspended sentences after pleading to religiously aggravated intentional harassment…
Police in the western Australian city of Albany are investigating an incident in which swastikas and antisemitic messages were spraypainted on an Anzac memorial…
In response to the Israeli government’s rejection of a High Court ruling against the creation of an alternative television broadcast regulator, the court warned that “principle of the rule of law is undermined, and social order disintegrates” without compliance with the court’s rulings…
Former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is joining Harvard’s Institute of Politics as a resident fellow beginning in the fall semester…
Pic of the Day
Germany Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (left), visiting Israel this week, signed an agreement with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar upping Berlin’s annual contribution to Yad Vashem from €1 million to €5 million through 2030.
Birthdays
Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer, Akiva Goldsman turns 64…
Retired president of The Seeing Eye, the world’s premier guide dog school for the blind, Kenneth Rosenthal turns 88… Early collaborator on object-oriented computer programming in the 1970s, Adele Goldberg turns 81… Michigan-based real estate developer, he served as U.S. ambassador to Slovakia during the Bush 43 administration, Ronald N. Weiser turns 81… Cardiologist and former president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jews, Richard Prasquier turns 81… Board member of the Israel Policy Forum, he spent 27 years as a bankruptcy attorney at Cooley LLP, Lawrence C. Gottlieb turns 79… Israeli business mogul with vast holdings in energy (Delek Group) and real estate (El-Ad Group), Yitzhak Tshuva turns 78… Former president of Hebrew University and a past member of the Knesset, Menachem Ben-Sasson turns 75… Co-founder and CEO of the biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Leonard Steven Schleifer turns 74… Pioneer of Israeli punk rock, nicknamed “HaMeshuga,” Rami Fortis turns 72… USAID official for 28 years until 2008, he now consults internationally on Rule of Law issues, Richard Gold… President of The Lapin Group, Avrum Lapin… Co-rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein turns 65… Former president of the United Synagogue in the U.K., Michael Howard Goldstein turns 63… President of HIAS since 2013, he first joined the immigration group in 1989 as a caseworker in Rome, Mark Hetfield turns 59… Comic book creator and a cappella singer, he published the Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel, Jordan B. Gorfinkel turns 59… Chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, David Jeremiah Barron turns 59… Television and film actor, Robin Weigert turns 57… Azerbaijani-born businessman, he is a VP of the Russian Jewish Congress and the president of the International Charity Foundation of Mountain Jews, German Zakharyayev turns 55… Chief communications officer for Democratic Majority for Israel, Rachel Rosen… Consultant and project manager for nonprofits, Amy Handman… Head coach of the Florida Gators men’s basketball team that won the NCAA national championship in 2025, Todd Raymond Golden turns 41… WNBA player, she played on Israeli teams for six seasons, Alysha Angelica Clark turns 39… Ethiopian-born Israeli actor, she is active in the protest movement for social justice, Netsanet Mekonnen turns 38… Prime Video analytics expert on “Thursday Night Football,” Sam Schwartzstein turns 37… Olympic sports sailor, she competed for Israel in both the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, Gil Cohen turns 34… Originally a figure skater and later a pairs skater, now an active competitive pairs skater competing for France, Megan Wessenberg turns 28… U.S. editor at Jewish Insider, Danielle Cohen-Kanik… Shalom Klein…
Black leaders in the district have failed to unite behind a single challenger, leaving the Jewish congresswoman favored in a plurality race but potentially vulnerable down the road
Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) reelection race has turned into a local and national flashpoint following the Republican-led redistricting process in Florida, and risks driving a wedge in traditional Black-Jewish alliances in the state and the party.
Wasserman Schultz is running in South Florida’s newly redrawn 20th Congressional District, a decision pitting the longtime Democratic leader and former Democratic National Committee chair against leaders who have criticized her for running in a seat historically represented by a Black lawmaker.
Yet, Wasserman Schultz also maintains dedicated supporters in the district and her home state at large, especially within the Jewish community.
“I have spent my whole adult life fighting for Broward County, and I want to continue the fight to make life more affordable for the families in CD20 who are stretched to the breaking point by the Trump MAGA agenda,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement to Jewish Insider.
“And as I meet with voters throughout District 20, the overwhelming response is that voters know my record of standing up for them and delivering billions in local funding for Broward parks, clean water and transit and other projects and all the jobs that come with them,” she continued. “Voters also know that I’ve always spoken out for them and they want me to keep up the critical fight against Trump’s high-cost, corrupt agenda.”
Despite repeatedly expressing support for all Democratic incumbents, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has so far declined to endorse Wasserman Schultz for reelection.
“As I’ve indicated relative to the congresswoman, she’s had an extraordinary career,” Jeffries told reporters last week. “She’s a valuable member of the House Democratic caucus, and I’m looking forward to having more to say about that when we are closer to the Florida Democratic primary.”
Black leaders in the area brought together various candidates running against Wasserman Schultz in an effort to consolidate around a single candidate, but ultimately failed to do so, leaving a divided field opposing the longtime legislator.
Democratic leaders in and around the district lamented the situation that the redistricting process, that effectively erased Wasserman Schultz’s previous district, has created, accusing the GOP both of trying to gerrymander seats for its own gain as well as create racial divisions in the Democratic Party.
“The situation we’re in is the result of a deliberate decision by the Republican leadership in our state to target all three Jewish members of Congress from South Florida, to target the two African American members of Congress from South Florida and deliberately set something up that was going to result in, let’s say, tension between those two historically allied communities,” said Joe Geller, a former Florida House Democrat, who lives outside the district and is supporting Wasserman Schultz.
Geller argued that the redistricting explicitly violates the Florida state constitution, which bans the drawing of districts based purely on partisanship, arguing that the recent Supreme Court decision allowing for racial gerrymandering doesn’t override that provision.
“This was done deliberately by enemies of both communities to create dissension between traditional allies,” Geller continued. “It’s cynical, it’s illegal and it’s disgusting.”
He said that state courts should immediately halt the redistricting and require that the election be run under the previous lines until the issue can be litigated further, claiming that Republicans had timed the redrawing specifically in order to try to avoid judicial review.
Wasserman Schultz, throughout her time in Congress, has been a fierce and vocal advocate for Israel and for the Jewish community, breaking at times with her party on the issue. She’s currently a co-chair of the Abraham Accords caucus, was a co-founder of the Congressional Jewish Caucus and is one of the most prominent Jewish leaders inside the Democratic caucus.
Mitch Ceasar, a former chair of the Broward County Democratic Party, predicted that, given challengers’ failure to unite behind a single candidate, Wasserman Schultz should still be favored to win the seat with a plurality of the vote.
Wasserman Schultz faced pressure to run in another neighboring district, but, observers on the ground acknowledged, that seat would have been tougher for Democrats to win.
Polling released in early June showed Wasserman Schultz leading with around 39% support, followed most closely by self-described democratic socialist Elijah Manley at 21% and former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness at 15%.
The polling found Wasserman Schultz would trail either of them, or rapper and free speech activist Luther Campbell, in a head-to-head race, though it’s now too late for any candidate to withdraw from the ballot.
A poll by Wasserman Schultz’s campaign released around the same time found her leading all of the other candidates combined, at 52%, with near-universal name recognition and 80% favorability across the district.
Manley’s candidacy is causing consternation among members of the Jewish community, due to the anti-Israel stance he has staked out over the course of the campaign, which includes an endorsement from the antisemitic group TrackAIPAC. Prior to his congressional bid, he described supporters of Israel as cultish and accused pro-Israel Americans of “meddling in our country’s affairs.” He said in 2020 he was in the process of converting to Judaism.
Manley has picked up support from the Florida Democratic Progressive Caucus and the president of the Democratic Black Caucus — though the caucus as a whole did not offer an endorsement.
He has also offered other fringe views, including describing police unions as “terrorist organizations.”
Ceasar noted that, while Manley has gained attention and support, he’s also a perennial candidate for office whose past runs have been unsuccessful. He also mounted a failed bid for the Socialist Party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
Ceasar also said that the other candidates in the race, including Holness, Campbell and former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) — the latter of whom resigned from Congress earlier this year and is facing federal criminal corruption charges — have taken more pro-Israel stances.
Wasserman Schultz has long enjoyed strong support from — and spoken proudly of — the Jewish community in the district, joking at times at Jewish community events about representing the large Jewish retiree population.
Ceasar said that there is still a Jewish bloc in the district, but the demographics even in traditionally Jewish parts of the area have been changing, with a growing minority retiree population — though he said that political stances of the two communities are fairly similar.
Cherfilus-McCormick, whose corruption trial isn’t slated to begin until after the election, remains something of a wild card, Ceasar noted. Holness, he said, has posted strong performances in the district in the past. Ceasar said he was somewhat surprised by Campbell’s candidacy, given that he has stronger roots in a neighboring district, which is also an open seat.
Richard Stark, who chairs the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, which is remaining formally neutral in the race, said that Wasserman Schultz has been a strong and aggressive campaigner going back to her first campaigns for political office — “she worked hard, she campaigned, walked door to door and she got that support, and chances are she’ll do the same thing now.”
Speaking in a personal capacity, Stark said Wasserman Schultz is also popular and well-known for delivering results for various communities she represents. He speculated that, given her stature in the state, Republicans particularly hoped to see her pushed out of Congress.
“She’s a star within the Democratic Party, for the most part. It’s really a shame that we have to have a race like that,” Stark said. “She’s looking for the best that she can do for the United States of America and for the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Mark Winer, Stark’s predecessor as the Jewish Caucus chair, said that Wasserman Schultz is “the most important Democratic politician in Florida, over many, many, many years” who has had “phenomenal influence beyond her district and beyond the Congress” and is a “real force within the district.”
Winer said it’s a “real question for the future whether she’ll get reelected — it’s tough — but she is a formidable politician, she really knows how to do retail politics.”
Winer and Stark traced some of the hostility toward Wasserman Schultz, particularly among progressives, to her role as DNC chair in 2016. Progressives continue to accuse the congresswoman of putting her thumb on the scale for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she campaigned against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the presidential campaign.
Looking further ahead, even if Wasserman Schultz ends up winning with a plurality of the vote against a divided opposition, that could signal vulnerability in a future primary election against a more unified opposition effort. But, Ceasar emphasized, “human nature always makes that difficult.”
The two pro-Israel and one anti-Israel lawmakers join the panel which features outspoken voices on both sides of the Israel policy debate
Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Congress/U.S. House Office of Photography
Reps. Wesley Bell (D-MO), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Mark Pocan (D-WI)
House Democrats are set to name Reps. Wesley Bell (D-MO), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Mark Pocan (D-WI) to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jewish Insider has learned.
Bell and Wasserman Schultz are both strong supporters of Israel, while Pocan is an outspoken critic, joining a panel that features outspoken voices on both sides of the Israel policy debate. None of the three offices responded to requests for comment.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), a Jewish Republican and strong supporter of Israel, also recently joined the panel.
Wasserman Schultz is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee who has long been deeply involved in foreign policy issues, particularly in support of Israel. She is also a co-chair of the House Abraham Accords Caucus.
Bell, first elected in 2024, also serves on the House Armed Services Committee. Bell defeated anti-Israel former Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) with support from the Jewish and pro-Israel communities both in St. Louis and nationally, and faces a primary challenge from her this year.
Pocan has long been among the most vocal critics of Israel in the House. He was a lead sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act when it was first introduced a year ago, and voted against supplemental aid to Israel in 2024. He also frequently sparred with AIPAC on social media, at times invoking antisemitic tropes accusing Israel and its supporters of relishing in the deaths of civilians and children.
The top House Democrat’s decision not to fully endorse the congresswoman was highly unusual, as he later said he ‘stand[s] behind every single House Democratic incumbent’
Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) speaks during his weekly press conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on March 19, 2026.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) declined to fully back Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) on Tuesday, when asked at a press conference about her run in Florida’s 20th Congressional District, which has historically been represented by a Black lawmaker.
“Everybody has a right to run where they see fit,” Jeffries said. “They’ve got to go make their case to the people that they hope to represent moving forward, and that’s what I’ve communicated directly to Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz.”
Some Black Democrats in the state have condemned Wasserman Schultz for choosing to run in the 20th District after her current district was redrawn. But given that she is a member of House leadership, a longtime Democratic congresswoman and an incumbent, it’s highly unusual for Jeffries not to offer his full support to Wasserman Schultz, as he traditionally has done for incumbents of all stripes and affiliations.
Jeffries said that Wasserman Schultz has a “strong track record of accomplishment in Congress,” but also said that Florida’s redistricting was a deliberate effort to undermine Black representation.
“I think we all recognize the sensitivities of the moment in terms of an unprecedented, Jim Crow-like assault on Black political representation that has been unleashed by the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision to gut the Voting Rights Act,” Jeffries said. “And that’s an environment that all of us need to be sensitive to as we move forward.”
Jeffries’ decision not to offer his full support to Wasserman Schultz was also notable given that he said, moments later when asked about far-left challengers to other incumbents, “I stand behind every single House Democratic incumbent, whether they’re a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus … a New Dem or Blue Dog, and I’m going to continue to do that, and then we’ll see what happens at the end of the day, in terms of what the voters decide.”
Wasserman Schultz maintained in a statement that she’d be the best advocate for the district.
“I’m thankful for the strong and broad support I’ve received all over CD20. I’ll continue to talk with Broward voters and make my case that I’ll be the most effective representative for this whole community, and as always, I’m not taking any support for granted,” she said.
Four Black candidates running in the seat met behind closed doors on Monday to discuss unifying around one candidate to take down Wasserman Schultz, the Miami Herald reported on Tuesday.
Her decision has sparked frustration from Black Florida Democrats, who say that the seat should be represented by a Black lawmaker
Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) announced Friday that she plans to run in Florida’s 20th Congressional District, which has been represented by a Black lawmaker for more than three decades, after her current district was redrawn by Florida Republicans in an effort to secure more seats in the House.
The decision will pit her against scandal-plagued former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), who is running again for the seat despite recently resigning ahead of an anticipated expulsion effort, progressive activist Elijah Manley and others running primary challenges against Cherfilus-McCormick.
Her decision has also sparked frustration from Black Florida Democrats, who say that the seat should be represented by a Black lawmaker.
In an announcement statement, Wasserman Schultz and her supporters emphasized Wasserman Schultz’s experience and seniority in the House as a key asset for the community.
“We cannot let Trump destroy Broward County’s power. Having somebody with that experience right now in these turbulent times is so important. … I’ll use all my seniority and clout in Washington to continue to make our lives more affordable and make Broward a safer, less expensive place to live, raise a family, and retire,” she said. “Some people do a lot of talking. I work hard to deliver results.”
Wasserman Schultz has served in Congress for more than 20 years, and is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, a member of House Democratic leadership and a former Democratic National Committee chairwoman. She one of several pro-Israel Democrats, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Darren Soto (D-FL) and Kathy Castor (D-FL), who have had their districts redrawn by redistricting in the state.
Wasserman Schultz has long prided herself on representing a heavily Jewish constituency, joking to Jewish audiences about the number of Jewish retirees in her district.
State Sen. Shevrin Jones, the incoming Florida Democratic Senate leader, expressed disappointment with Wasserman Schultz’s decision while calling her a friend. He said in a statement he’s spoken to her about the issue and emphasized that “Black representation is a non-negotiable for me.”
“Everyone deserves to have a seat at the table to ensure our communities are represented by those with their same lived experience. This is not about Debbie because she has shown she can lead; that’s not the argument nor should it be the fight, at least not mine,” Jones said. “My fight is for Black representation, and I am in the business of expanding it, not diminishing it.”
In a joint statement, the Florida Legislative Black Caucus also criticized Wasserman Schultz’s decision.
“Congresswman Wasserman Schultz’s decision to pursue reelection in this historically Black district, despite explicit requests from the Black community to seek candidacy in a neighboring district, is disheartening,” the statement reads. “Building trust with Black leaders and constituents should be paramount for anyone seeking to represent a majority-Black district. Unfortunately, the actions taken by Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz suggest a failure to prioritize these essential values, perpetuating a narrative of performative allyship rather than meaningful connection.”
Manley condemned Wasserman Schultz as a carpetbagger and compared her to Florida Republicans who redrew the state’s congressional districts.
Wasserman Schultz told Politico she had engaged with more than 100 community leaders in the district, many of them Black, before making her decision, again emphasizing the need for an experienced lawmaker.
Other candidates in the race include Luther Campbell, a musician and free speech advocate, physician Rudolph Moise and former Broward County Mayor Dale Holness.
‘Lives are at stake. This is not pretend. These enemies of the Jewish people are not playing games,’ Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said
Marc Rod
From left to right: Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), AJC CEO Ted Deutch, Laura Gillen (D-NY), Wesley Bell (D-MO), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), Dec. 16, 2025
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, multiple Jewish lawmakers emphasized that the Sunday terror attack in which 15 people were killed at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, came after warnings from the Australian Jewish community, and Jewish communities around the world, about the rising violent threats they face — warnings that have often gone ignored, the lawmakers said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said that Australian Jews and others around the world have been warning “for far too long” about the “alarming, explosive rise in violent antisemitism.”
“That threat, those warnings, have fallen on deaf ears, and we are living with those consequences now,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I hope that this tragedy is the wake-up call that world leaders need to truly stand up and protect their Jewish communities from antisemitism, whether that manifests online or in person.”
She said that leaders around the world “must do better.”
“Lives are at stake. This is not pretend. These enemies of the Jewish people are not playing games. They mean to end our existence as a people,” she continued. “We will not allow that. Our allies and friends must help us make sure that never happens.”
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), a co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, emphasized that the attack was “not predicted” but “it was predictable.”
“For too long, the Jewish community in Australia was saying to the authorities, saying to the government, ‘Antisemitism is a cancer eating away at the soul of the nation, and it’s going to result in the death of Jews in the land,’ and that’s what we saw on Sunday,” Schneider continued.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) emphasized that Australia’s special envoy for antisemitism had in July offered a plan to combat antisemitism, but the plan had not been fully implemented by the Australian government.
The briefing was hosted by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) and the American Jewish Committee.
Gottheimer said that the public outcry he had seen since the Sydney massacre “is a sign to me that there is a recognition that we can do something if we stand together.”
“We should all be going after the root of the rising scourge of antisemitic hate around the world,” he added. “We must stand up to our foreign adversaries like the government of Iran, and the terrorist organizations that they support, for driving this hatred and violence for the Jewish people.”
Lawler said that the lawmakers had gathered “united in a bipartisan way to say that we will not tolerate this. We will not accept this as the norm that our Jewish brothers and sisters have to live in fear of being murdered while practicing their faith.”
AJC CEO Ted Deutch, who previously represented a South Florida House district, urged lawmakers to act promptly to confirm Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun as the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and to provide adequate funding for the office, to strongly condemn the attack, to publicly stand with the Jewish community and to investigate foreign-backed antisemitism and influence operations targeting Jews globally.
“In the U.S. and with our allies, we’ve got to take concrete steps to strengthen our intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation, protect our communities, to preserve democratic stability and to prevent massacres like the one that happened on Bondi Beach,” Deutch continued.
William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said, “If there was ever any doubt that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are one and the same, the attacks since Oct. 7 erase it. Jews are being targeted not for policy, but for presence. Not for politics, but for being Jewish, visible and alive.”
Marina Rosenberg, the Anti-Defamation League’s vice president of international affairs, said that she and a global coalition of Jewish leaders had visited Australia just days before the massacre to “sound the alarm on the dangers of surging antisemitism, calling on officials to act before it was too late. Tragically, for our brothers and sisters in Australia, it is too late.”
Rosenberg also emphasized that the attack is part of a “global pattern targeting Jewish communities,” not an isolated incident. She said that Congress must boost security funding for religious institutions and confirm Kaploun.
Other lawmakers who attended the briefing included Reps. Tim Burchett (R-TN), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Jonathan Jackson (D-OH), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Grace Meng (D-NY), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Wesley Bell (D-MO), Joe Wilson (R-SC) and George Latimer (D-NY).
To mark the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, the Jewish Insider team asked leading thinkers and practitioners to reflect on how that day has changed the world. Here, we look at how Oct. 7 changed Israel’s relations with the world
NEW YORK — October 13, 2023: The Israeli flag flies outside the United Nations following Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Speaking to the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus, the congresswoman said Israel is ‘only interested in living in peace with their neighbors’
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)
Speaking to members of the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus over Zoom on Wednesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused the Trump administration of not working in good faith to combat antisemitism, discussed recent Democratic National Committee votes on Israel and offered a strong defense of Israel against a growing chorus of critics.
Wasserman Schultz argued that a series of moves by the Trump administration — attempting to place new conditions on Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding, gutting the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and eliminating Justice Department programs focused on hate crimes — show that the administration’s focus on antisemitism isn’t genuine.
“None of that makes us safer, and all of it demonstrates that they don’t really care about taking care of our community. They aren’t concerned about antisemitism, they are concerned about maintaining power,” she said. “Let’s not let our community members believe the rhetoric and the BS.”
Highlighting the administration’s moves on NSGP funding, Wasserman Schultz noted the long freeze in reimbursements from the program, and said that the administration had also tried to demand that all NSGP recipients cooperate with immigration enforcement authorities and eliminate any diversity, equity and inclusion programs to make them eligible for funding.
She said that advocates had worked to ensure that the immigration demands were dropped, but said that “the DEI part is still being litigated.”
She said that universities largely “deserve the criticism and deserve to be investigated by an Office of Civil Rights that would be robustly funded. But if Trump cared about that, he wouldn’t have cut their budget in half and fired half their employees.”
The former Democratic National Committee chair also spoke about the recent DNC debate over a pair of Israel-related resolutions. One, which called for an arms embargo on Israel, was defeated, while one calling for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and humanitarian aid passed the Resolutions Committee but was then withdrawn.
“They moved past the issue, but there were many of us that had to work very hard to communicate our deep concern and opposition” to the resolution calling for an arms embargo, Wasserman Schultz said. “Thankfully, because our party does support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and because our party does believe that Israel should remain a Jewish and democratic state, that resolution was defeated.”
Addressing criticisms of Israel more broadly, Wasserman Schultz affirmed that she is a Zionist and emphasized that Hamas, by carrying out the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, was responsible for starting the war and could end it by releasing the hostages.
“Israel … are not aggressors. They don’t engage in land acquisition. They are only interested in living in peace with their neighbors,” she said. “The wars that have occurred across the millennia have almost exclusively, and certainly in modern times exclusively, been initiated by outside terrorist groups or other countries invading Israel.”
Wasserman Schultz emphasized the need for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the end of Hamas as a security threat to Israel and a menace to the Palestinian people.
She blamed Hamas for the issues with humanitarian aid distribution, given the group’s theft of aid and the threat it poses to those who distribute it. “If they continue to be obstructionist and prevent humanitarian aid from getting to their own people, then they will continue to struggle.”
Wasserman Schultz said that “propaganda … is being used to make Israel look like they are the evil aggressors and oppressors,” calling it “outrageous.” She called out media photos featuring emaciated children, many of whom were revealed to have congenital diseases, as proof of mass starvation in Gaza as one example of such a phenomenon.
“We know as Jewish people that, at the end of the day, we’re very easy to blame. It is really like a reflexive, default position for far too many people. It’s embedded, it’s in societal norms,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is happening regularly and we have to make sure that we are really fighting back.”
She said that criticism of Israel isn’t inherently antisemitic, but that the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” are clear calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of the Jewish people, and that “that is a very serious form of antisemitism. That shouldn’t be open for debate.”
Plus, Rubio, Cruz talk Trump Iran policy
REBECCA DROKE/AFP via Getty Images
Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey speaks ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign rally outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 4, 2024.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we break down a new Anti-Defamation League report on antisemitism at independent K-12 schools, and report on Corey O’Connor’s victory yesterday in Pittsburgh’s mayoral primary. We report on the increasing pressure on Israel over its conduct in Gaza, cover Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first appearance on Capitol Hill since being confirmed, and highlight remarks made by Sens. Ted Cruz and John Fetterman to NORPAC members. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Lishay Lavi Miran, Sen. Andy Kim, and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Dan Goldman.
What We’re Watching
- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Donald Trump will meet at the White House today, with new trade agreements on the agenda amid strained ties between the two countries.
- The Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Jewish Federations of North America will host the Annual Jewish American Heritage Month Congressional Breakfast on Capitol Hill today, with a keynote address from Bruce Pearl, head coach of the Auburn men’s basketball team.
- The House Appropriations Committee will hold separate budget hearings with testimony from Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- The House Foreign Affairs Committee will also hold a hearing with Rubio on “Fiscal Year 2026 State Department Posture: Protecting American Interests.”
- The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on “The State of Higher Education” with witnesses including Dr. Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute; Dr. Michael Lindsay, president of Taylor University; Dr. Mark Brown, president of Tuskegee University; Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center; and Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of the Austin Community College District.
- The Qatar Economic Forum continues today in Doha, with speakers including Donald Trump Jr.; Steve Mnuchin, former U.S. treasury secretary; Mark Attanasio, principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers; John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg; and Hassan Al-Thawadi, former secretary general at Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S hALEY COHEN
A new Anti-Defamation League report puts a spotlight on episodes of antisemitism in K-12 non-Jewish independent schools, a trend that doesn’t get as much attention as the higher-profile incidents on college campuses but is affecting Jewish students in critical ways.
The study found antisemitic incidents in independent schools down 26% in 2024, compared to 2023, but still up significantly since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. There were only 494 documented incidents of antisemitism in independent schools in 2022; that number has nearly doubled to 860 in 2024.
A quarter of surveyed parents said their children experienced/witnessed antisemitic symbols (such as swastikas) in school.
The research was conducted through four focus groups and a survey of 369 parents of Jewish children in independent K-12 schools across 21 states. The ADL told Jewish Insider‘s Haley Cohen it selected independent schools to evaluate since they operate outside of the oversight of public education and therefore have greater autonomy in shaping their curricula, policies and disciplinary procedures.
In addition to expressing concern over antisemitic symbols, nearly one-third of parents reported anti-Jewish and anti-Israel curricula featuring more prominently in their children’s classrooms since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. They’re also deeply dissatisfied with administrators’ responses to antisemitism: Of the parents surveyed who were aware of antisemitism in their child’s school, 34% said the school’s response was either “somewhat” or “very” inadequate.
One bit of encouraging news: A sizable majority of students at these schools (64%) said they felt “very comfortable” showing their Jewish identity at schools, with only 8% feeling somewhat or very uncomfortable with doing so. But there were isolated episodes of student discomfort, including one parent saying their son avoided wearing a Star of David necklace.
Another notable trend: Many independent school parents voiced concern that diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks do not include Jewish identity and antisemitism. They view the exclusion as a fundamental flaw of the programming rather than an oversight and described a pattern in which Jewish identity was omitted altogether from DEI conversations or misrepresented to perpetuate bias.
And parents are voting with their feet: There’s been an increase in Jewish day school enrollment in recent years.
But for those Jewish students who remain in independent schools, the ADL said it’s launching a new initiative to hold schools accountable and support families. “These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, said. “By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop.”
GAINEY’S GOODBYE
O’Connor ousts Gainey in heated Pittsburgh mayoral primary
Corey O’Connor prevailed in his bid to oust Mayor Ed Gainey of Pittsburgh in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the activist left in a city where progressives had until recently been ascendant. O’Connor, the Allegheny County controller and a centrist challenger, defeated Gainey, the first-term incumbent aligned with the far left, by a significant six-point margin, 53-47%, on Tuesday evening with most of the vote counted, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Victory post: “We built this campaign with and for the people of this city, neighborhood by neighborhood,” O’Connor said in a social media post on Tuesday night. “I’m proud to be your Democratic nominee for Mayor. I’m ready to get to work, and I’m grateful to have you with me as we take the next steps forward, together.”
WAITING FOR OMRI
An Israeli mom’s NYC mission to free husband from Hamas captivity
Every morning, Lishay Lavi Miran’s toddler daughters ask her the same two questions: Why is daddy still in Gaza and when is daddy coming home? In a desperate attempt to provide answers, Miran spent the past week in New York City — her first time in the U.S. — advocating for the release of her husband, Omri Miran, who was kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and has remained in Hamas captivity for nearly 600 days. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen during her visit to the states, which concluded on Tuesday, Miran said that her message to the American Jewish community is that its advocacy efforts have provided a “warming sense of hope.”
Now and then: The family received the first sign of life from Omri in April when Hamas terrorists published a video in which he is seen walking through a tunnel in Gaza. The video was released right around his 48th birthday. “It was difficult to see him in those conditions,” Miran told JI during her visit to the states, which concluded on Tuesday. The “exhausted” man in the video was a contrast to the guy known for having “the biggest smile in the world and spark in his eyes,” as Miran describes her husband.
foreign policy in focus
Rubio: Iranian proxy terrorism hasn’t been part of negotiations with Iran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in his first appearance on Capitol Hill since being confirmed as secretary of state that Iran’s support for regional terrorist proxies has not been part of the ongoing talks between the Iranian government and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, which Rubio said have been focused wholly on Iran’s nuclear program and enrichment capabilities. At the same time, Rubio insisted that any sanctions related to terrorist activity and weapons proliferation would remain in place if such issues are not part of the nuclear deal, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What this means: Rubio’s comments indicate the deal might still be subject to what some critics in the United States and the region described as a key flaw of the original nuclear deal — that it failed to address other malign activity by the regime. One U.S. lawmaker who traveled to the Middle East recently said that U.S. partners in Israel and the Arab world had argued that any deal must include non-nuclear provocations. Rubio added that sanctions will remain in place until a deal is reached, and that European partners are working separately on re-implementing snapback sanctions, potentially by October of this year, when such sanctions expire. He also said that Iran cannot have any level of nuclear enrichment under a nuclear deal, as it would inevitably provide a pathway for Iran to enrich to weapons-grade levels.
Read the full story here with Rubio’s additional remarks on Iran, Gaza and Syria.
TED TALK
Ted Cruz expresses concern about influence of some Trump officials on Iran policy
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Tuesday that he is concerned about the views of some of the officials in the White House shaping President Donald Trump’s Iran policy, marking the most critical comments yet from the hawkish senator about Trump’s approach to Iran. He urged members of NORPAC, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, to raise the issue in their meetings with anyone in the Trump administration, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
What he said: “We need clarity with the Trump administration, and as NORPAC talks to the administration, I would say, I worry there are voices in the administration that are not eager to hold up the president’s red line of dismantlement,” Cruz said at NORPAC’s annual Washington lobbying mission, referring to mixed messaging from some U.S. officials on the acceptable contours of a potential new nuclear agreement with Iran.
Also during NORPAC’s mission: Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is facing attacks from the media and fellow lawmakers in the Democratic Party, hit back at members of his own party. Speaking to members of NORPAC, Fetterman offered some of his sharpest criticism yet of the Democratic Party’s approach to Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. “Israel and your community deserves much better from my party,” Fetterman said, earning loud applause.
RELATIONSHIP RUPTURE
Foreign Minister David Lammy announces suspension of U.K.-Israel free trade agreement
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced that Britain has suspended negotiations with Israel on a new free trade agreement and will be “reviewing cooperation,” a day after the U.K., France and Canada threatened to take “concrete actions” and impose sanctions on Israel over its policies on humanitarian aid in Gaza and settlement activity in the West Bank, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen and Lahav Harkov report.
Upping the pressure: Lammy, speaking to British lawmakers in the House of Commons on Tuesday, said the “Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary,” describing the lack of humanitarian aid entering Gaza as “intolerable” and “abominable.” He said that Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the U.K., has been summoned to the U.K. Foreign Office, where Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer will tell her that “the 11-week block on aid to Gaza has been cruel and indefensible” and that “dismissing concerns of friends and partners … must stop.” Lammy also announced that the British government will impose sanctions on three individuals and four entities with ties to settlements in the West Bank, which the U.K., France and Canada called “illegal” in their joint statement.
Meanwhile in Brussels: The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said that Brussels will review whether Israel is violating the human rights clause of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which governs the high-level political and economic ties between the sides. Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp proposed the review with the backing of 17 of 27 EU members; however, a policy change would require unanimity within the bloc.
And from the Vatican: Pope Leo XIV appealed this morning “to allow the entry of dignified humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, whose heartbreaking price is paid by the children, elderly, and the sick.
kim’s call
Sen. Andy Kim urges Homeland Security Secretary Noem to protect Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for clarification of her department’s plans regarding the Nonprofit Security Grant Program as the Trump administration considers cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. Kim and Noem engaged on the issue while the latter was testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Kim, the top Democrat on the HSGAC subcommittee that oversees FEMA, urged Noem to ensure NSGP funding is not reduced or eliminated outright as part of President Donald Trump’s push to abolish FEMA, citing the program’s success rate with New Jersey synagogues amid rising antisemitism.
Making the case: “I think that there’s very strong bipartisanship here in Congress, especially the Senate, to protect the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. It is literally the best tool that people in New Jersey are telling me is needed to be able to counter antisemitism. I can’t tell you the number of synagogues and temples that are lined up to try to get this type of funding. In fact, you know, given the rise of antisemitism that we have in our country right now, we should be surging resources, not cutting,” Kim said.
Worthy Reads
A Tale of Two New York City’s: New York magazine’s E. Alex Jung writes about the stark contrast between Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary. “Their respective campaigns are striking foils: Cuomo, who at 67 would become the oldest incoming mayor of New York City ever, has stayed out of the public eye while racking up endorsements from major labor unions. When he does appear, he’s working the Black church circuit. He knows that the path to the Democratic nomination has historically gone through Black and Latino voters, mostly in Southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn. In one simulation, Cuomo is winning those communities by 91 percent and 72 percent by the final round, respectively. To the ire of white liberals, he has a broad multi-racial coalition. While Mamdani is seemingly everywhere in the city, running from protests to rallies to galas, his base is largely white college-educated Brooklynites, with much of his early efforts going toward activating South Asian and Muslim voters, who have traditionally been ignored. ‘Zohran is Cuomo’s wet-dream opponent,’ says one anti-Cuomo Democratic strategist. ‘Supported by online kids, on the record for “defund,” on the record about Palestine, and little support in Black or Latino communities.’” [NYMag]
Sam (A)I Am: In a New Yorker review of two new books on Sam Altman and the future of AI, Benjamin Wallace-Wells considers the OpenAI founder’s Midwestern Jewish roots. “Within the world of tech founders, Altman might have seemed a pretty trustworthy candidate. He emerged from his twenties not just very influential and very rich (which isn’t unusual in Silicon Valley) but with his moral reputation basically intact (which is). Reared in a St. Louis suburb in a Reform Jewish household, the eldest of four children of a real-estate developer and a dermatologist, he had been identified early on as a kind of polymathic whiz kid at John Burroughs, a local prep school. “His personality kind of reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell,” the school’s head, Andy Abbott, tells [Keach] Hagey [author of The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI, and the Race to Invent the Future]. ‘He can talk about anything and it’s really interesting’ — computers, politics, Faulkner, human rights.” [NewYorker]
Under African Skies: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior director Elaine Dezenski and senior research analyst Max Meizlish offer a warning about South Africa’s anti-American activity in the run-up to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with Trump today. “South Africa isn’t an innocent, neutral party. It is playing both sides — courting the West while deepening its ties to China, Russia and Iran. Its leaders speak the language of nonalignment, but their actions tell a different story: They’ve welcomed Hamas and Hezbollah officials, hosted sanctioned Russian warships and worked with entities tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … South Africa’s conduct is not just inconsistent with American values — it’s increasingly incompatible with US national security. Under Ramaphosa, the ANC has intensified its lawfare campaign against Israel at the International Court of Justice, ramped up efforts to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, and embraced Beijing’s narrative on global governance by joining the China-led BRICS group. The ANC’s historical alignment with authoritarian powers is no secret — but today, it’s backed by real material support. That should concern every serious policymaker in Washington.” [NYPost]
The Illiberal Left, and Right: The Liberal Patriot’s executive editor, John Halpin, considers the future of American liberalism. “Instead of pragmatic, universal solutions to the problems of working- and middle-class Americans, Democrats after Obama went off on extreme ideological tangents and illiberal fads from structural racism and transgender ideology to decriminalization and open borders to the socialist ‘Green New Deal’ and other radical climate policies. Notably, all of these illiberal ‘ideas’ produced significant public backlash from a wide array of American voters and are now in the process of being dismantled or disregarded. On the Republican side, the traditional party of Reagan has basically discarded all its past social and economic liberal commitments in favor of Trump’s peculiar blend of command-and-control tariff and trade policies, unrestrained executive authority, withdrawal from global allies and international security arrangements, and the use of governmental legal and bureaucratic authority to attack and prosecute perceived enemies. ‘Postliberal’ ideas that explicitly reject individualism as the foundation of American life are now dominant in a party that feels the need ‘to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,’ according to Vice President JD Vance.” [LiberalPatriot]
Word on the Street
President Donald Trump is reportedly frustrated by the continuing war in Gaza and has instructed his aides to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “wrap it up,” White House officials told Axios…
Netanyahu’s office announced yesterday that the senior members of the ceasefire and hostage-release negotiating team had been recalled from Doha, Qatar, while the working echelon would continue the talks. The PMO statement stressed that Israel had agreed to the U.S. proposal but that Hamas “is continuing to cling to its refusal”…
In an interview published today in The National, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security advisor, says of Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu, “It’s not that the balance of power has changed, just the weight and emphasis on who can deliver” …
CNN, citing intelligence from “multiple US officials,” reported that Israel has been making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, though they stressed it remains unclear if Israeli leaders have made a final decision to do so. In reaction to the story, former Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Nadav Pollak wrote on X: “The only surprising part in [the story] is that US officials leaked the fact they monitor Israeli communications.”…
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that, “I do not think nuclear talks with the U.S. will be successful” and warned, “They should not try to talk nonsense. It is a big mistake to say that we will not allow Iran to enrich. No one is waiting for permission from this or that.”…
Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will move forward on construction of a Golden Dome missile defense system. Trump began calling for a U.S. missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome after watching Israel deflect missiles and drones amid Iran’s attacks in 2024…
Democrat Sam Sutton won a special election for a New York state Senate seat, which the GOP had hoped to flip after Trump received 77% of the vote in the district in November. The district encompasses several heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, and Sutton is a leader of its Sephardic community…
The New York Times confirmed reporting that Trump, through the Pentagon, White House military office and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, had initially approached the Qataris about purchasing the luxury Boeing 747 jet for use as Air Force One, rather than it being offered as a gift…
Newly released emails reveal that Joe Kent, chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, pressured analysts to revise an intelligence assessment to align with Trump’s claim that Venezuela’s government controls a criminal gang…
Elon Musk told attendees at the Qatar Economic Forum that he doesn’t plan to spend money on elections in the future. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) clashed in a heated exchange during a Senate hearing Tuesday. “I regret voting for you for secretary of state,” Van Hollen said. “Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded…
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) sought unanimous consent to call up a resolution pushing the administration to work to resume U.S. aid to Gaza, which is sponsored by nearly all Senate Democrats. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) blocked the effort…
The United Arab Emirates said yesterday that it will send urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and his Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke on the phone…
The U.S. and Turkey released a joint statement on the U.S.-Turkey Syria Working Group’s most recent meeting held in Washington, which included discussions on “shared priorities in Syria, including sanctions relief according to President Trump’s directive and combatting terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”…
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sent a letter to Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone expressing their concern that CBS News may be engaging in “improper conduct” and violating anti-bribery law in its effort to settle a lawsuit with Trump that will potentially block Paramount’s intended merger with Skydance…
Trump called Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) a “grandstander” who “should be voted out of office” over Massie’s opposition to his budget bill. Massie, a longtime opponent of aid to Israel and legislation to combat antisemitism, is mulling a statewide run for Senate or governor in Kentucky…
Speaking at a congressional hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Tuesday, AJC CEO Ted Deutch urged the U.S. to remain engaged in international bodies including the U.N., UNESCO and OSCE and called for Congress to confirm Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun to the role of special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and provide $3 million in funding for the office…
New York Times reporter Joseph Bernstein chronicled the life of his father, a “Nazi hunter” with the U.S. Department of Justice in the ‘80s, who was killed in the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988, and his struggle to find meaning in the resulting decades-long investigation that ultimately led to the currently delayed trial of a Libyan man accused of planting the bomb on behalf of dictator Muammar Gaddafi…
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer eulogized his mother, Yaffa Dermer, who died last Sunday at the age of 89. Ron said, “We don’t choose our parents. They are chosen for us. So I thank Hashem for blessing me to have been raised by such an extraordinary mother and teacher. … Over the years, I have had the privilege to serve in prominent positions and hold prestigious titles. But the greatest honor of my life has been to be Yaffa’s son.”…
Eva Wyner, previously deputy director of Jewish affairs for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, is now serving as the governor’s director of Jewish affairs…
Arthur Maserjian, previously chief of staff at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, is now the senior director of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Center for Combating Antisemitism…
Eric B. Stillman was hired to serve as the next president and CEO of the Florida Holocaust Museum, which will reopen on Sept. 9 following an extensive renovation; Stillman succeeds Mike Igel, who has led the organization as its interim CEO for the past year…
Pic of the Day
Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) addressed an Anti-Defamation League reception celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month yesterday in Washington.
Birthdays
Northern California-based comedian, he celebrated his bar mitzvah at 52 years old in Israel, Josh Kornbluth turns 66…
Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, he was previously a comedian, actor and writer, Al Franken turns 74… VP of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, Ralph Lewin turns 72… Guitarist and composer, Marc Ribot turns 71… EVP of American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, Ron Solomon… Chief rabbi of Mitzpe Jericho and dean of Hara’ayon Hayehudi yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer turns 70… CEO of the Boston-based hedge fund Baupost Group, Seth Klarman turns 68… Legal analyst at CNN, Jeffrey Toobin turns 65… Founder and former co-owner of City & State NY, Thomas Allon turns 63… Director of antisemitism education and associate director of the Israel Action Program, both at Hillel International, Tina Malka… Actress, artist and playwright, Lisa Edelstein turns 59… Former head of Dewey Square’s sports business practice, now a freelance writer, Frederic J. Frommer… Author and journalist, she was a reporter with The New York Times for eight years, Amy Waldman turns 56… U.S. cyclist at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she is now the executive director of the New England Mountain Bike Association, Nicole Freedman turns 53… President and CEO of the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Darin McKeever… University chaplain for NYU, Rabbi Yehuda Sarna turns 47… Founder of Agora Global Advisory, Brandon Pollak… EVP and chief legal officer at Sinclair Broadcast Group, David Gibber… Professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, Scott Joel Aaronson turns 44… President of Mo Digital, Mosheh Oinounou… International fashion model for Versace, Sharon Ganish turns 42… Partner at CreoStrat, Steve Miller… Windsurfer who represented Israel in the Olympics (Beijing 2008 and Rio 2016), she is now a SW delivery lead at SolarEdge, Maayan Davidovich turns 37… Player on the USC team that won the 2016 NCAA National Soccer Championship, she is now an associate in the LA office of Foley & Lardner, Savannah Levin turns 30… Comedian, actress and writer, known for starring in the HBO Max series “Hacks,” Hannah Marie Einbinder turns 30… Deputy director at the Yael Foundation, Naomi Kovitz…
BIRTHWEEK: (was Monday): Alex Shapero…
‘It was made very clear to us it was not enough to just negotiate over their nuclear ambitions, that in their weakened state, you could not separate Iran's malignancy when it comes to all of their activity,’ she said
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) speaks during a press conference on new legislation to support Holocaust education nationwide at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 27, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Arab and Israeli leaders are insisting that any U.S. deal with Iran also include provisions to address Iran’s other malign activities in the region, including support for terrorist proxies, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told Jewish Insider following a trip earlier this month to meet with Israeli and Arab leaders in the Middle East.
Wasserman Schultz traveled with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) to the Middle East for the third time since Oct. 7, 2023, visiting Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan.
“There was a very clear urgency that the leaders we spoke to had to make sure that we … don’t let Iran up from their very weakened state. They’ve been badly pummeled and had significant defeats,” Wasserman Schultz told JI last week. “The consensus across the region, no matter where we went, was that we needed to make sure that continued and that we prevented them from achieving their nuclear weapons goals and that we particularly prevented them from continuing their support for terrorist activity.”
She said that notion was raised by multiple leaders without prompting from the U.S. lawmakers.
She said that “across the board” the leaders shared her view that any deal with Iran must “include defanging them — and that was a term that was used repeatedly, defanging them — and stopping them from continuing to terrorize” the region.
“It was made very clear to us it was not enough to just negotiate over their nuclear ambitions, that in their weakened state, you could not separate Iran’s malignancy when it comes to all of their activity — particularly if they got any relief from sanctions,” she said.
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, the lead negotiator for the U.S. in talks with Iran, suggested in a recent Fox News interview that the U.S. would consider allowing Iran to retain its enrichment capacity as part of a deal — a statement he later walked back — while Wasserman Schultz and Ernst were in the region. The outline Witkoff provided on Fox appeared to many to be equivalent to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action which Trump withdrew from in his first term.
Wasserman Schultz called it “incredibly hypocritical” for officials from the new Trump administration, such as Witkoff, to endorse terms of a deal similar to the JCPOA. Wasserman Schultz ultimately voted for the JCPOA in 2015 and calls it “the most difficult vote I’ve cast in all the years I’ve been in Congress.”
She called on Witkoff and the American negotiators to seek a deal stronger than the original JCPOA, making her the latest pro-Israel Democrat to raise concerns about the potential terms of a new deal with Iran.
She said she’s “frustrated and concerned … and even angry” that the administration seems to be going “from pillar to post. Their discussions seem like they’re happening on quicksand and I have seen nothing that looks different than the agreement that [Trump] pulled out of.”
With Iran significantly weaker and more vulnerable than it was in 2015, Wasserman Schultz said the U.S. must seize the opportunity to push for a more comprehensive deal to prevent Iranian terrorist activity and stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
If the U.S. does return to a deal similar to the JCPOA, Wasserman Schultz said that the ultimate result of Trump’s withdrawal from the original deal would have been allowing Iran to get “perilously close to a nuclear weapon” and removing the option to strengthen the original agreement through further negotiations.
Wasserman Schultz said that she told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who aggressively opposed the 2015 deal, that she expected he would offer “the same howling pushback that occurred back during the Obama years when those negotiations were taking place” if Trump moves toward a deal similar to the JCPOA.
Wasserman Schultz and Ernst also discussed the ongoing war with Hamas in their meeting with Netanyahu. Compared to previous meetings, Wasserman Schultz said she believed that the prime minister and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer outlined more comprehensive and specific strategies to achieve the release of the remaining hostages being held in Gaza.
“I probably have met with him five or six times over the course of the last year and a half there in Israel and in the U.S.,” Wasserman Schultz explained. “I was glad to see that they had varying approaches in terms of their negotiations and strategy with the ceasefire and hostage deals that they’re discussing. I was glad to see that and hear for the first time Dermer — and Netanyahu too — talk about the various options that they had, as opposed to it being a more minimalist conversation.”
Wasserman Schultz said she and Ernst had also spoken to Arab leaders about their proposals for post-war Gaza and achieving Saudi-Israeli normalization. She said the Arab leaders had been “very clear-eyed” about the difficulties of finding credible Palestinian leadership able to help move toward an eventual Palestinian state, but said they believed it was possible.
“I came away feeling like there could be some progress made. But it was clear that as a result of the war in Gaza, the signs of progress that we had hoped for when we were in Saudi Arabia on the night of Oct. 6 [2023] [were] further away at the moment than [they were] then,” Wasserman Schultz said.
But she added that the countries which have normalized relations with Israel are not retreating from those agreements and remain committed to them, highlighting as one example of the progress made that she was able to attend a Seder on the first night of Passover in Abu Dhabi.
Some lawmakers have honed in on threats to colleges and universities’ federal funding, but pulling funding requires a yearslong litigation process under current federal statute
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Catherine Lhamon, nominee to be assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, testifies during a Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing in Dirksen Building on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, told lawmakers on Friday that existing federal law and procedures make it unlikely that any schools will lose their federal funding over antisemitic activity on their college campuses in the near term.
Some lawmakers have honed in on threats to colleges and universities’ federal funding as a method of pressuring or penalizing them over their failure to protect Jewish students. But Lhamon explained at a roundtable with congressional Democrats that pulling funding requires a yearslong litigation process under current federal statute.
Before seeking to revoke funding, Lhamon said that her department, the Office of Civil Rights, must first investigate and communicate a finding that the subject of an investigation has violated civil rights law, at which point she’s required to give schools the opportunity to voluntarily come into compliance.
If a school refuses, then the DOJ can take the matter to an administrative law judge. If the judge rules that the school is in violation, the subject can still appeal the ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only at the end of that process — which Lhamon acknowledged could take years — can funds actually be revoked, Lhamon said.
But, she added, most schools will agree to voluntarily take action — OCR is currently taking a discrimination case, related to disability issues, to a judge for the first time in 27 years.
Lhamon also acknowledged another gap in her office’s enforcement ability — she does not have the authority to require schools to dismiss problematic faculty.
Addressing the antisemitism that has pervaded campuses across the country over the past 11 months, Lhamon described herself as “shocked” by the comments she hears from school leaders professing to be unaware of their responsibilities to protect Jewish students from discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a situation she described as unacceptable.
“We are seeing kids assaulted. We are seeing kids stopped from going to class,” Lhamon said. “These are not close calls about whether a university should be responding to them, and yet our universities are treating them like there’s maybe something they don’t need to do, or there’s a byzantine process that a student needs to follow before they can get a university response. That’s not the law.”
Lhamon’s presentation to the lawmakers focused heavily on her office’s need for additional funding; she said that Congress “has never” provided sufficient funding.
The lawmakers who attended the event, Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Grace Meng (D-NY), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Wiley Nickel (D-NC) and Kim Schrier (D-WA), are supporting a Goldman-sponsored bill that pushes for increased funding for OCR.
Lhamon said her office has around 400 investigative staff, the same number it has since the Bush administration. Complaints, especially in the wake of Oct. 7, have surged, however, from 6,000 per year to 19,201 in 2023, a record it is set to easily surpass this year, with around 24,000 so far.
Four hundred of those complaints were related to discrimination based on shared ancestry or national origin, some of those being antisemitism complaints. OCR currently has 162 such cases under investigation and many more go unreported, Lhamon said.
“I cannot manage that complaint volume with the staff that I have,” Lhamon emphasized, warning that talented and experienced investigators could leave the office. “Our staff are now carrying about 51 cases per person, and you cannot do civil rights work effectively with a caseload that is that high.”
Lhamon said that staff shortages are causing cases to drag on, leaving students to wait, in some cases until after they’ve graduated, for their cases to be resolved.
“That’s not protecting civil rights in the way Congress intended,” Lhamon said.
Lhamon said that the administration’s requested budget increase would allow the office to add 77 new investigators. She said that the ideal target would be 20 or fewer active cases per investigator. But it appears unlikely that Congress will fulfill the administration’s request.
“We don’t have any more efficiencies we can bring to this problem,” Lhamon added. Some lawmakers have argued the case backlog is an issue of improper procedures or prioritization at OCR.
She explained that there is a low bar to opening a formal investigation, which includes extensive document requests and interviews and often surfaces additional instances of examples of discrimination.
Even once cases are resolved, OCR staff are responsible for continued monitoring of schools that have settled with the office. For instance, schools entering into agreements relating to antisemitism are now being required to report every complaint of antisemitism they receive to OCR, so that federal officials can monitor how the schools respond.
Pressed by lawmakers on why her office does not provide specific detail about the nature of the shared ancestry cases it is investigating — such as how many relate to antisemitism — Lhamon said that most antisemitism cases ultimately grow to involve other areas of discrimination as well.
“Here’s maybe an ugly answer to that, but if a university is not handling antisemitism, it’s also not handling anti-Islam,” Lhamon said. “What we’re finding is, if a school doesn’t know or isn’t fulfilling its obligations under Title VI, it’s not doing it for people in general.”
Lhamon also lamented what she characterized as a failure on behalf of schools to take steps to inform students of the rights and protections they are entitled to and how to report cases of discrimination.
She offered, as an example, that she frequently sees information sheets inside bathrooms on campuses about how students can report sexual harassment and sex discrimination, but not similar information sheets about other forms of discrimination.
Lhamon suggested Congress could consider legal changes to address such gaps.
Bipartisan letter argued that not removing the presidents from their positions would constitute an ‘endorsement’ and ‘act of complicity’ in the presidents’ ‘antisemitic posture’
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Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University and Liz Magill, president of University of Pennsylvania, testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 05, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Seventy-four House lawmakers wrote to the boards of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania on Friday demanding that they immediately fire their presidents in response to widely criticized congressional testimony they delivered on antisemitism on their campuses earlier this week.
The presidents of the three schools have come under increasing scrutiny this week amid growing speculation that their jobs could be on the line following their refusal to say earlier this week that calls for Jewish genocide would violate their schools’ codes of conduct.
“Testimony provided by presidents of your institutions showed a complete absence of moral clarity and illuminated the problematic double standards and dehumanization of the Jewish communities that your university presidents enabled,” the letter reads. “Given this moment of crisis, we demand that your boards immediately remove each of these presidents from their positions and that you provide an actionable plan” to ensure the safety of the Jewish community on campus.
“Anything less,” than the steps they requested, the lawmakers continued, “will be seen as your endorsement… and an act of complicity in their antisemitic posture.”
The letter was led by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who questioned the presidents on the genocide issue, and Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL). Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is the only other Democrat who signed the letter; the rest are Republicans.
The lawmakers said that the testimony makes it “hard to imagine” any Jewish or Israeli person feeling safe on their campuses when the presidents “could not say that calls for the genocide of Jews would have clear consequences on your campus.”
It adds that subsequent social media statements seeking to clarify or walk back those comments “offered little clarification on your campus’ true commitment to protecting vulnerable students in this moment of crisis,” describing them instead as “desperate attempts to try and save their jobs” and “too little too late.”
Shortly before the Stefanik-Moskowitz letter was released, a group of thirteen House Democrats wrote to the boards of the three schools urging them to re-examine their codes of conduct to make clear that calls for the genocide of Jews are not acceptable.
This second letter, led by Reps. Kathy Manning (D-NC), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) and Susan Wild (D-PA), includes similar language to the bipartisan letter regarding the presidents’ testimony and how it would make Jewish campus members feel unsafe, but stops short of directly calling for the presidents to be fired.
The lawmakers wrote that they felt “compelled to ask” if the presidents’ responses “align with the values and policies of your respective institutions.”
“The presidents’ unwillingness to answer questions clearly or fully acknowledge appalling and unacceptable behavior — behavior that would not have been tolerated against other groups — illuminated the problematic double standards and dehumanization of the Jewish communities at your universities,” the letter continues. “The lack of moral clarity these presidents displayed is simply unacceptable.”
The lawmakers requested that the schools update their policies to “ensure that they protect students from hate” and describe their plans for protecting Jewish and Israeli community members.
“There is no context in which calls for the genocide of Jews is acceptable rhetoric,” the letter reads. “While Harvard and Penn subsequently issued clarifying statements which were appreciated, their failure to unequivocally condemn calls for the systematic murder of Jews during the public hearing is deeply alarming and stands in stark contrast to the principles we expect leaders of top academic institutions to uphold.”
The letter notes that federal civil rights law prohibits discrimination against Jews on campus, and that criminal law bans hate crimes, violence and incitement to violence.
“Students and faculty who threaten, harass, or incite violence towards Jews must be held accountable for their actions,” the lawmakers wrote. “If calls for genocide of the Jewish people are not in violation of your universities’ policies, then it is time for you to reexamine your policies and codes of conduct.”
Signatories to the Democratic letter include Manning, Wild, Auchincloss, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Grace Meng (D-NY), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).
All of the signatories to the Democratic letter are either Jewish or deeply involved with Jewish community issues on the Hill.
Earlier this week, a third letter by six House Republicans from Pennsylvania — Reps. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), alongside Congressmen John Joyce, M.D. (R-PA), Mike Kelly (R-PA), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Dan Meuser (R-PA) — called for University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill specifically to be fired.
By Jacob Kornbluh & JI Staff
By Jacob Kornbluh & JI Staff
DAY 5: Netanyahu: It’s Going To Take Time: “We are here in the midst of a complex operation. We need to be prepared for the possibility that it may take time. This is a serious event and there will be serious consequences. We are working together in a considered, responsible and very determined manner.” Netanyahu urged the international community to decry the kidnapping: “I expect all responsible elements in the international community – some of whom rush to condemn us for any construction in this place or for enclosing a balcony in Gilo – to strongly condemn this reprehensible and deplorable act of abducting three youths.” After 5 days and without mentioning Hamas, the EU finally released a statement: “We condemn in the strongest terms the abduction of 3 Israeli students in the West Bank and call for their immediate release.” [Statement] (more…)
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