• Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman Al Saud is slated to meet today with Jewish leaders as he concludes a two-day trip to Washington. More below.
• The Saudi defense minister’s meetings with senior Trump administration officials are expected to focus on ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Iran as President Donald Trump continues to mull military action against the Islamic Republic. The U.S. sent a sixth warship to the Gulf this week as it shores up its military assets in the region.
• Trump is expected to announce his pick for Fed chair today, with advisors to the president saying he plans to nominate former Fed governor Kevin Warsh.
• The Alfalfa Club is holding its annual dinner in Washington tomorrow night. In a personal first, Trump, who skipped the dinners during his first term as well as last year, will attend the black-tie dinner.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

Jewish and pro-Israel organizations that have celebrated the Abraham Accords in recent years appear slow to recognize the role they could be playing within the Abrahamic coalition — particularly by leveraging their Washington clout and decades of experience engaging Congress — as countries in the accords face increasing criticism for their participation in the normalization framework.

In recent weeks, prominent Saudi social media figures and media outlets have amplified sharply critical and often inflammatory rhetoric aimed at countries that joined the Abraham Accords, particularly the United Arab Emirates, portraying normalization with Israel as a betrayal of regional interests and casting Abu Dhabi as a proxy for Israeli power.

Countries that joined the Abraham Accords do not have comparable grassroots advocacy in Washington, making the role of established Jewish and pro-Israel organizations potentially consequential to the broader normalization effort. Yet despite those long-standing relationships, the groups have mounted little effort to inform the conversation in Washington as the Abraham Accords and their signatories face growing attacks. This was evident from Jewish Insider’s reporting earlier in January, when pro-Israel lawmakers from both parties largely downplayed concerns about Saudi Arabia’s shift when asked for comment.

Several of the groups have voiced growing discomfort with the kingdom’s pivot away from what was perceived as its moderating force in the region. But their relatively cautious responses, particularly around Riyadh’s increasingly hostile posture toward Israel and traditional alliances, have also highlighted an awkward tension as they seek to maintain support for the long-sought but elusive goal of bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.

That dynamic has come into sharper focus as a few major Jewish and pro-Israel organizations prepare to attend a sensitive meeting in Washington on Friday with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, raising questions about how — or whether — the groups will more forcefully confront the growing rhetoric against the Abraham Accords.

Among the groups invited to the meeting were the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Zionist Organization of America, multiple sources familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider on Thursday, though it remains unclear which will attend. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies confirmed it would be attending a separate sit-down with the defense minister in the morning.

Notably, representatives from the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC weren’t set to attend, according to some sources familiar with the dynamics, hinting at some possible internal debate in the community regarding the wisdom of engaging with Saudi Arabia in spite of its troubling recent behavior. AIPAC declined to comment on the meeting when reached by JI on Thursday afternoon.

The AJC and ADL also declined to comment, and the Conference of Presidents did not respond to a request for comment. The Republican Jewish Coalition was invited to the meeting, one informed source told JI, but the group would not confirm its involvement.

The varying approaches suggest that Jewish organizations are strategically sensitive to alienating Saudi Arabia — as they hope for a change of heart on normalization with Israel. In turn, many groups haven’t directly confronted the antisemitic vitriol among influential figures in the kingdom.

Still, Abe Foxman, the former longtime national director of the ADL, stressed that efforts to court Saudi involvement in a diplomatic agreement with Israel need not obscure a broader commitment to strenuously denouncing the kingdom’s “anti-Israel expressions and antisemitism.” 

“As much as we may want Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, that hope and desire should not inhibit our ability to criticize” its recent policies, Foxman told JI on Tuesday. “I recall that during the years we pursued peace between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan, we did not refrain from being critical of their anti-Israel policies or their embrace of antisemitism.”

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

Technocrats in Gaza: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius expresses optimism about the ability of President Donald Trump’s newly created Board of Peace and the Palestinian technocratic committee that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza to effect positive change in the enclave. “The Board of Peace event looked to some like a Trump stunt, with its pay-to-play board and its AI renderings of a futuristic ‘New Gaza’ meant to invoke the wonders of Doha and Dubai. But there’s a real plan here, anchored in a U.N. resolution and backed by a burgeoning ‘Civil-Military Coordination Center,’ based just east of Gaza in Kiryat Gat and run by U.S. Central Command, that now includes troops from 20 countries. … What’s interesting about Trump’s plans for Gaza is that Israel doesn’t play a big role. The key partners are Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. That’s one reason right-wing Israelis have blasted the plan. But the premise of the plan is that Gaza isn’t Israel’s problem anymore, but Trump’s and the international community’s.” [WashPost]

The Haredi Way: Amid a wave of scrutiny following YouTuber Tyler Oliveira’s hostile video targeting the Hasidic town of Kiryas Joel, N.Y., Shtetl founder Naftuli Moster, who previously led a push calling for reforms in the Haredi yeshiva system, explains in The Wall Street Journal why he chose to send his children to a Jewish day school. “Education isn’t only about math and reading. It’s about belonging to a community that draws its strength from shared beliefs. This is something the Haredi world understands deeply — and something our broader culture has largely forgotten. While outliers in many respects, the Haredim and towns like Kiryas Joel reflect how humans have lived for thousands of years: having children, building families, forming larger tight-knit communities, passing on values, and caring for one another. Few groups in the U.S. have figured out how to build stable families and vibrant communal life better than the Haredi community has. … Few Haredim would oppose any group of Americans trying to build a community around shared values, traditions and faith. Most would applaud such an effort — and gladly offer advice.” [WSJ]

After the USAID Cuts: eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher does a deep dive into the ripple effects of the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID a year after funding was first frozen. “For Jewish organizations in the humanitarian aid and international development field, the past year has been particularly challenging, according to [OLAM CEO Dyonna] Ginsburg. ‘This is a compounding crisis, because many of these organizations…experienced funding cuts due to philanthropic shifts, Jewish philanthropy moving towards Israel or combating antisemitism and non-Jewish philanthropy distancing itself from Jewish or Israeli organizations doing this work,’ Ginsburg said. … Still, the international aid workers and organizations on the ground are resilient and adapting to the current landscape, [American Jewish World Service’ Shari] Turitz said. No AJWS partners have shuttered due to the cuts. ‘We are already seeing organizations coming together and saying, “What did we do before we had all this money? We need to go back to those first principles,”’ she said. [eJP]

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) officially launched her campaign for governor in Minnesota, aiming to succeed Gov. Tim Walz, who opted against a third bid for the seat amid a federal investigation into alleged widescale fraud in the state’s Somali community…

A new Emerson College poll found Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow leading the Democratic primary field in the state’s open Senate race; McMorrow, at 22%, is ahead of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), with 17%, followed by Abdul El-Sayed with 16%…

An Alabama man described by the Justice Department as a “Free Palestine radical” is facing federal charges of interstate stalking for allegedly planning to assassinate then-President Joe Biden during a 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta…

New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced the launch of a bipartisan task force to combat antisemitism; the body will be led by Councilmembers Eric Dinowitz and Inna Vernikov…

A group of Jewish artists is spearheading an effort to keep the government’s Wilbur J. Cohen Building, which contains frescos and other works by Jewish artists, from sale and potential demolition…

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher previews a new four-part PBS docuseries from Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the history of Black-Jewish relations in America…

The University of Texas is launching its Ackerman Program on Jewish and Western Civilization and Rosenthal-Levy Scholars program housed in the school’s School of Civic Leadership, beginning in the fall…

Apple acquired Aviad Maizels’ Q.ai facial-recognition startup in a valuation estimated to be $2 billion…

Israel returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians following the repatriation of Israeli hostage Ran Gvili’s remains earlier this week, marking the end of the exchange of bodies between Israel and Hamas in accordance with the October 2024 ceasefire agreement…

David Brooks is joining The Atlantic as a staff writer after 22 years at The New York Times; Brooks will also host a weekly video podcast for the publication…

President Donald Trump and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft greeted attendees from the presidential box at the Kennedy Center last night during a screening of Brett Ratner’s new documentary “Melania.”

Israeli singer, songwriter and music producer, Assaf Amdursky turns 55… 

FRIDAY: Chairman of The Cordish Companies, David S. Cordish turns 86… Artist, she paints brightly colored biblical narratives based upon her Torah study, Barbara “Willy” Mendes turns 78… Professor at the school of pharmacy of The Hebrew University, Meir Bialer turns 78… Teacher and communal leader, Judith Friedman Rosen turns 74… Broadcaster for MLB’s Oakland Athletics and author, Kenneth Louis Korach turns 74… Upton, Wyo., resident, Heather Graf… Former VP of corporate engagement at the Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation in New Hyde Park, NY, Lina Scacco… CEO of the Jewish National Fund, Russell F. Robinson turns 70… Member of the California state Senate from 2014-2019, now a member of the Nevada state Senate, Jeffrey Earle Stone turns 70… Philadelphia-area psychologist, Dr. Rachel Ginzberg… Managing partner of lobbying and law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Richard B. Benenson… Director of public relations for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Zalman Shmotkin turns 57… Associate professor in the electrical engineering department at Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Guy Gilboa turns 55… Publicist, manager and socialite, she runs an eponymous NYC PR and management firm, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Grubman turns 55… Special projects editor at The Week Junior, Bari Nan Cohen Rothchild… At-large member of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council, Evan M. Glass turns 49… Dallas resident, Gisele Marie Rogers… Managing director at Westbrook Global Advisory, Joshua M. Kram… Administrator of the EPA in the Trump 47 administration, Lee Zeldin turns 46… National correspondent for ABC News Radio, Steven Portnoy turns 45… Israeli actor, director and author, he is known for starring in “Shtisel” and as the host of the popular reality TV show, “The Voice Israel,” Michael Aloni turns 42… CEO at Harvesting Media and host of the “Kosher Money” podcast, Eli Langer… Media professional and communications strategist, Alyona Minkovski turns 40… Member of the Connecticut House of Representatives since 2019, he is the eldest son of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Matthew S. Blumenthal turns 40… Partner in Avalanche VC and strategic advisor at Array Education, Eric Scott Lavin… Deputy national security advisor to then VPOTUS Kamala Harris for her last three years in office, Rebecca Friedman Lissner turns 39… Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Kate Lynne Bock Love turns 38… Senior principal at Publicis Sapient, Max Delahanty… Professional ice hockey defenseman, he played on Team USA at the 2018 Winter Olympics and recently left EHC Red Bull München, Jonathon Blum turns 37… Principal at Blue Wolf Capital Partners, Jared Isenstein… Ice hockey forward for four seasons at Northeastern University, she is now playing in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Chelsey Goldberg turns 33… Digital marketing manager in South Florida, Alexa Smith…

SATURDAY: Israeli nuclear physicist and professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Igal Talmi turns 101… Scion of a leading rabbinic family in pre-World War II Poland, former assistant U.S. solicitor general, now a private attorney with an active Supreme Court practice focused on religious liberty issues, Nathan Lewin turns 90… Classical music composer as well as acclaimed movie score composer, Philip Glass turns 89… Associate professor emeritus of Talmud and rabbinics at The Jewish Theological Seminary, Mayer Elya Rabinowitz turns 87… Senior partner at Trombly & Singer, PLLC and an advisory board member of Tzedek DC, Kenneth M. Trombly turns 76… Chair emeritus of global management consultancy Bain & Company, Orit Gadiesh turns 75… Chief rabbi of Norway while also serving as a member of Knesset from 1999-2009, Michael Melchior turns 72… Founder and CEO of MikeWorldWide, a PR firm headquartered in East Rutherford, N.J., Michael W. Kempner turns 68… Former member of the Tennessee House of Representatives for 20 years, Matt Kisber turns 66… Founder and CEO of Oneg, Jeanie Milbauer… CEO at Gracie Capital, Daniel L. Nir… Dermatologist who served as the U.S. ambassador to Iceland from 2019-2021, he was a candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada in the 2024 election, Jeffrey Ross Gunter turns 65… Co-founder and senior chairman of Meridian Capital Group, Ralph Herzka turns 64… Organization of American States commissioner to monitor and combat antisemitism, Fernando Lottenberg turns 64… Neurosurgeon and chairman of the Rockland County (NY) Board of Health, Jeffrey Sable Oppenheim turns 64… Fourth-generation real estate developer, he is a founding partner of Redbrick LMD, Louis Myerberg Dubin turns 63… Classical cellist, her debut in Carnegie Hall was at 17, Ofra Harnoy turns 61… Host of NPR’s news quiz “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!,” his older brother is a rabbi, Peter Sagal turns 61… Canadian-born businessman, best known for founding American Apparel, Dov Charney turns 57… CEO of Tel Aviv’s Anu Museum of the Jewish People and former mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi turns 57… CEO of City Cast, he was previously CEO of Atlas Obscura and Slate, David Plotz turns 56… Actress best known for her role in the Showcase series “Lost Girl,” Anna Silk turns 52… CEO at Affiliated Monitoring, Daniel J. Oppenheim… Senior advisor at Orchestra, Michael Rabinowitz-Gold… SVP of insights and measurement at NBC Universal Media, Matthew Gottlieb… Film producer and founder of Annapurna Pictures, Megan Ellison turns 40… Singer, who won Israel’s “Kokhav Nolad” (A Star is Born) song contest in 2008, Israel Bar-On turns 37… General partner at NYC’s 25madison, Grant Silow… Israeli singer, songwriter and television actor, Eliad Nachum turns 36… Director of programs and strategy at the Kraft Group and affiliates, Clara Scheinmann… Associate at Covington & Burling, Eli Nachmany…

SUNDAY: Retired Israeli educator, she is the only sibling of Yitzhak Rabin, Rachel Rabin turns 101… Executive vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm I. Hoenlein turns 82… Mediator and arbitrator, he is a past president of the Beverly Hills Bar Association, Howard S. Fredman turns 82… Academy Award-winning producer and motion picture executive, Zvi Howard Rosenman turns 81… Midtown Manhattan physician, affiliated with Lenox Hill Hospital, specializing in nephrology and internal medicine, Mark H. Gardenswartz, MD… Laureate conductor of Orchestra 914 from 2002-2018, and author in 1994 of The Jewish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Jews of All Time, Michael Jeffrey Shapiro turns 75… Far Rockaway, N.Y., resident, Maurice Lazar… President and part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he was previously president of the Atlanta Braves and then the Washington Nationals, Stan Kasten turns 74… Publisher of Baltimore Jewish Life, Jeff Cohn… Recently retired after 18 years as the CEO of the Charleston (S.C.) Jewish Federation, Judi Corsaro… Born in Derbent in southern Russia, now living in Albany, N.Y., he is an artist whose oil on canvas paintings have many Jewish themes, Israel Tsvaygenbaum turns 65… Director for policy and government affairs at AIPAC, David Gillette… 25-year veteran of the Israeli foreign service, now a scholar-in-residence at American University in Washington, Dan Arbell… EVP and chief program officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Becky Sobelman-Stern… One of Israel’s top soccer players of all time, successful on both Israeli and European teams, Eli Ohana turns 62… Co-founder of Brilliant Detroit (helping children out of poverty), Carolyn Bellinson… Actor, comedian, director, writer and producer, Pauly Shore turns 58… Voting rights and election law attorney, he advises the DNC, DSCC, DCCC and the DGA, Marc E. Elias turns 57… CEO of Momentum, Tara Brown… Managing director of Pickwick Capital Partners, Ari Raskas… Canadian actress, her stepfather is a rabbi, Rachelle Lefevre turns 47… Experimental jazz guitarist, bassist, oud player and composer, Yoshie Fruchter turns 44… Venezuelan journalist, writer and TV and radio presenter, Shirley Varnagy Bronfenmajer turns 44… Libertarian political activist, radio host and author, Adam Charles Kokesh turns 44… Comedian, writer, actress and illustrator, best known for co-creating and co-starring in the Comedy Central series “Broad City,” Abbi Jacobson turns 42… General manager and head of public affairs at Semafor, Andrew Friedman… Sportscaster and sports reporter who covers the New York Mets for SNY, Steven N. Gelbs turns 39… VP of government and industry relations at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Stephanie Beth Cohen… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CA-51) since 2021, Sara Josephine Jacobs turns 37… Ob-Gyn physician in Atlanta, she is married to U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Alisha Sara Kramer turns 36… Israel-based director of growth marketing at SchoolStatus, David Aryeh Leshaw… Television and movie actress and model, Julia Garner turns 32…

• President Donald Trump is meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio this morning, followed by a lunch between the president and Vice President JD Vance. Trump will meet in the afternoon with oil and gas executives to discuss the situation in Venezuela.
• Jacob Helberg, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, is traveling to the Middle East through next weekend. He’s slated to meet with senior officials in Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the UAE, he’ll lead the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-UAE Economic Policy Dialogue.
• We’re continuing to monitor the situation in Iran, where protests escalated last night as the regime cut off internet and international phone calls, limiting the amount of information that could leave the Islamic Republic. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a video address that Trump’s hands were “stained with the blood of Iranians” for having voiced support for the protesters.
• Ongoing current events coincide with the long-delayed release of the third season of the Israeli series “Tehran,” which drops today on Apple TV in the U.S.
• Tomorrow, Rabbi David Wolpe will sit in conversation with the Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt at Los Angeles’ Sinai Temple, where Wolpe is the Max Webb Rabbi Emeritus.
• Awards season kicks off on Sunday night with the Golden Globes. Up for Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay is “Marty Supreme,” based on the life of table tennis player Martin Reisman (with star Timothée Chalamet nominated for Best Actor). “It Was Just An Accident,” a thriller by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (who also received nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay), and “The Voice Of Hind Rajab,” about a young Palestinian girl who died during the Israel-Hamas war, are both nominated for Best Film in a non-English language. Adam Brody was nominated for Best Actor for his starring role in the TV show “Nobody Wants This,” and Jason Isaacs was nominated for his “White Lotus” performance in the Best Supporting Actor category. Comics Sarah Silverman and Brett Goldstein are both nominated for their stand-up specials.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW SHEA

The United States, Israel and their regional allies are watching closely as sustained unrest in Iran puts renewed pressure on the regime at a moment of economic strain, international isolation and lingering fallout from the 12-day war with Israel last June.

Recent demonstrations have spread across all 31 of Iran’s provinces, fueled by public anger over a collapsing economy, inflation exceeding 40% and aggressive crackdowns by security forces. Economic pressure — intensified by costly proxy wars and United Nations sanctions — have sent Iran’s currency into a sharp decline.

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the regime’s “unwillingness to be responsive to its people’s basic demands and rights,” is also a factor. Adding that Tehran has a “clear preference to spend the country’s resources on military projects like its proxies, missiles and nuclear program instead of its citizens’ well-being.”

More than 400 demonstrations took place this week alone, with at least 743 recorded over the past month, according to a tracker from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The death toll has reached at least 38, with more than 2,200 arrests reported. The demonstrations are the largest since April 2025 and among the most sustained since late 2022 as videos continue to circulate online of Iranians flooding the streets, burning regime flags and lighting fire to statues of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ruhe said that uprisings by the Iranian people against the regime are not uncommon. “In 2009 it was political corruption, when the regime clearly stole the presidential election to get [former President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad reelected,” he said. “In 2017-18 it was economic and foreign policy issues, for instance Iranians being killed in the Syrian civil war and the regime’s lavish spending on its proxies instead of at home. In 2022 it was social and cultural issues, namely hijab enforcement.”

But experts say what is unfolding now could be more significant than protests of the past, expressing to Jewish Insider that recent developments could pose an unprecedented challenge to a regime already under strain. 

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

Softer Touch on Protesters: In The Wall Street Journal, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh posit that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian are taking a less hard-line approach to the protests sweeping the country. “The government hopes a softer touch will cause the marchers to be satisfied with making their point. If not, the emollients favored by [Parliament Speaker Mohammad] Qalibaf and Pezeshkian will likely give way to the severity favored by the supreme leader and encouraged by Mr. Trump’s provocative challenge. For at least a century, the Iranian public has sought meaningful political participation while central governments resisted. With the exception of the 1979 revolution, the regimes prevailed. But Iranians have never remained satisfied with national bargains in which they forfeit political rights for economic dividends or social emancipation.” [WSJ]

Clash in the Gulf: In Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch looks at the dynamics between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as the countries clash in a number of theaters, including Yemen and Somalia. “[After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks,] the UAE maintained its relations with Israel, positioning itself as the key Arab interlocutor for a post-Hamas Gaza and hoping to claim vindication for its strategy of tight alignment with Israel and Washington. Saudi Arabia, with a much more challenging domestic environment and its own ambitions for regional leadership, reverted to its traditional position of conditioning normalization with Israel on a credible path toward a Palestinian state. Unstated, but well understood, was that Riyadh never had any intention of joining an Abu Dhabi-led initiative. The crystallization of a divide between Saudi Arabia and the Emirati-Israeli alliance would force everyone in the region to take sides — something smaller states usually prefer to avoid. Most of the other Gulf states, such as Egypt, seem to be falling in line with Saudi Arabia. The competition could inflame civil wars, just as it did a decade earlier.” [FP]

Five Senate Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Susan Collins (R-ME), Todd Young (R-IN) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — voted with Democrats in favor of a war powers resolution limiting further military action in Venezuela without congressional approval… 

Bloomberg reports on the White House’s exclusion of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from the planning of the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this month due to Gabbard’s past opposition to U.S. military action in Venezuela…

Massad Boulos, the Trump administration’s senior advisor on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, said that the U.S. will make an announcement about the Muslim Brotherhood in the coming days…

Politico looks at the wave of far-left Democrats critical of Israel who are who are mounting congressional bids, deepening divisions within the party and raising concerns that far-left candidates focused on Israel will drain campaign resources and damage eventual candidates’ efforts to win in the general election…

The Cooper Union settled a lawsuit brought forth by 10 Jewish students at the school who had been trapped in the New York university’s library for 20 minutes while anti-Israel students protested outside in an October 2023 incident …

Four former University of Rochester students pleaded guilty to intentionally damaging university property for their roles in posting “Wanted” posters accusing faculty and staff members of committing war crimes in Gaza; the students were expelled weeks after they were arrested…

New Jersey State Police are investigating an incident that took place on the New Jersey Turnpike on Wednesday in which a rock was thrown through a school bus window, fracturing the skull of an 8-year-old girl…

Approximately 30% of the workforce across the six locations of New York City eatery Breads Bakery is unionizing and making demands of the shop’s Israeli owners — including “a redistribution of profits, safer working conditions, more respect and an end to this company’s support of the genocide happening in Palestine”…

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a royal commission investigating antisemitism, following the terror attack targeting a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach last month…

The board of the Adelaide Writers’ Week festival in Australia disinvited anti-Israel activist and writer Randa Abdel-Fattah, saying her participation in the event would “not be culturally sensitive” during what the board described as an “unprecedented time so soon after Bondi”; Abdel-Fattah’s disinvitation prompted the withdrawal of several participants who had been slated to speak at the festival…

Politico breaks down the significance of the U.S.-brokered meeting between senior Israeli and Syrian officials in Paris this week, during which the parties agreed to create communications channels to more effectively coordinate on security, diplomatic and commercial issues…

The United Arab Emirates ceased funding scholarships for citizens who plan to study in the U.K.; the cut comes amid frustration from Emirati officials over London’s refusal to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization…

A new report from TRM Labs found that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used two U.K.-based cryptocurrency exchanges to move approximately $1 billion over the last three years…

The Wall Street Journal does a deep dive into a shadow fleet with ties to Russia, Iran, China and Venezuela that moves oil around the world in violation of international sanctions…

Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Syrian-born man who tackled and disarmed one of the two gunmen in the Bondi Beach terrorist attack in Sydney that killed 15 people, visited Capitol Hill on Thursday, his arm still in a sling after being shot twice.

“What I want to say for the whole world around everywhere, in America, Australia, England, everywhere in the world, we must stand by each other and stay united, and peace for everyone. That’s my message,” al-Ahmed told Jewish Insider in between meetings with officials including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Al-Ahmed was accompanied by Rabbi Yehoram Ulman (second from left), a Chabad leader in Sydney whose son-in-law was killed in the attack, and Rabbi Levi Shemtov (far left), the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch. Al-Ahmed and Ulman also met jointly with Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA).

Actor with a recurring role in “Sex and the City” and author of two books on his recovery from acute myeloid leukemia, Evan Handler turns 65 on Saturday… 

FRIDAY: Law professor at Georgetown University, Peter Edelman turns 88… Former member of the Swiss Federal Council and president of the Swiss Confederation in 1999, she is the first woman to ever hold this position, Ruth Dreifuss turns 86… Rabbi emeritus of Kehilath Israel Synagogue in Overland Park, Kan., Herbert Jay Mandl turns 81… Vice chairman of Gilbert Global Equity Partners, Steven Kotler… Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times for 40 years, she is now a lecturer and senior research scholar at Yale Law School Linda Greenhouse turns 79… Retired MLB umpire, he worked in 3,392 major league games in his 26-year career, his family name was Sklarz, Al Clark turns 78… Presidential historian, spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, and university lecturer, Alvin S. Felzenberg turns 77… Composer, singer, radio show host, and author, he has released seven albums under the name “Country Yossi,” Yossi Toiv turns 77… Actress, singer and songwriter, she is the half-sister of Barbra Streisand, Roslyn Kind turns 75… Australian author of more than 40 books of children’s and young adult fiction, including a five-book series about a 10-year-old Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Poland, Morris Gleitzman turns 73… Former governor of the Bank of Israel from 2013 to 2018, Karnit Flug turns 71… International president of the Rabbinical Assembly, he is the rabbi of Beth El Synagogue in East Windsor, N.J., Rabbi Jay M. Kornsgold turns 61… Dean of the Bar-Ilan University law school, Michal Alberstein turns 57… Investment banker, Joel Darren Plasco turns 55… Justice of the High Court of Australia, James Joshua Edelman turns 52… Russian-born American novelist, journalist and literary translator, Keith A. Gessen turns 51… Filmmaker, she is the second lady of New York State, Lacey Schwartz Delgado turns 49… NFL insider and reporter for the NFL Network, Ian Rapoport turns 46… Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance and founder of Skydance Media, David Ellison turns 43… Israeli actress and model, best known for her role as Nurit in “Fauda,” Rona-Lee Shimon turns 43… Director of development and community relations at Manhattan Day School, Allison Liebman Rubin… Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer at The New Yorker, Ben Taub turns 35… Enterprise account executive at Built, Madeline Peterson… Television and film actress, Nicola Anne Peltz Beckham turns 31…

SATURDAY: Physician and medical researcher, Bernard Salomon Lewinsky turns 83… Editor and publisher of Denver’s Intermountain Jewish News, historian and teacher of the Mussar movement, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg turns 80… President of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston for 30 years, now a professor at Brandeis, Barry Shrage turns 79… Former President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Baron David Edmond Neuberger turns 78… Musician, singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band Steely Dan, Donald Fagen turns 78… World-renowned Israeli cellist, he has over 50 recordings on the Deutsche Grammophon label with many top orchestras, Mischa Maisky turns 78… U.S. senator (R-MO) from 2011-2023, Roy Blunt turns 76… Long-time editor at Bantam Books, Simon & Schuster and Crown Publishers, Sydny Weinberg Miner… Retired executive director at Beta Alpha Psi, the international honor society for accounting students, Hadassah (Dassie) Baum… Founder and CEO at Los Angeles-based Quantifiable Media and Tel Aviv-based Accords Consulting, Rose Kemps… Fellow for Religious Freedom at the Forum, Richard Thomas Foltin… Professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, he taught his last class in December 2024, Jonathan D. Sarna turns 71… President and CEO of the Nellis Management Company and past president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, Mark A. Levitt turns 70… Majority owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Joe Lacob turns 70… Member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism party, Uri Maklev turns 69… U.S. senator (D-MD), Chris Van Hollen turns 67… Member of the U.K.’s House of Lords and advisor to the government on antisemitism, Baron John Mann turns 66… Theatrical producer, playwright and director, Ari Roth turns 65… Vice chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples, Beth Ellen Wolff… Author and journalist best known for his novels Gangster Nation, Gangsterland and Living Dead Girl, Tod Goldberg turns 55… Member of the Knesset for Likud, Galit Distel-Atbaryan turns 55… Film director and screenwriter, Joe Nussbaum turns 53… Caryn Beth Lazaroff Gold… Private equity executive and unofficial troubleshooter for the Trump administration, Jared Kushner turns 45… Communications manager for Ford Motor Company, Adam David Weissmann… Former spokesperson on terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury, Morgan Aubrey Finkelstein… Israeli rapper, singer and songwriter, Michael Swissa turns 30… Andrew Tobin… Debbie Seiden…

SUNDAY: Psychologist and the author of 27 books, he lectures at NYU, Michael Eigen turns 90… Retired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago, author of 40 books on jurisprudence and economics, Richard Posner turns 87… Violinist and music teacher, Shmuel Ashkenasi turns 85… Film, television and theater director, best known for his TV series “Full House” and “Family Matters” and his films “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and “Fat Albert,” Joel Zwick turns 84… Las Vegas resident, Stephen Norman Needleman… Economist and professor of banking at Columbia University, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Frederic Stanley “Rick” Mishkin turns 75… Noted gardener and florist, Lynn Blitzer… Professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he is the author of five books, Dr. Jerome E. Groopman turns 74… Former member of the Canadian House of Commons, Susan Kadis turns 73… Former director general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Avi Gil turns 71… CEO of Sense Education, an AI company, Seth Haberman turns 66… Attorney, author, speaker and activist, Brian Cuban turns 65… Partner at Magnolia Marketing LLC, Alan Franco… Rabbi at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto (BAYT), Rabbi Daniel Korobkin turns 62… Former National Hockey League player for 12 seasons with the Vancouver Canucks, Calgary Flames and San Jose Sharks, Ronald “Ronnie” Stern turns 59… Actress, socialite and reality television personality, Kyle Richards Umansky turns 57… Defensive tackle in the Canadian Football League for 12 seasons, he is a co-owner at Vera’s Burger Shack based in Vancouver, B.C., Noah Cantor turns 55… Film, stage and television actress, Amanda Peet turns 54… Hockey coach, he is a former goaltender with the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes, he also played in six other leagues, Josh Tordjman turns 41… Member of the Knesset for the Democrats party, Naama Lazimi turns 40… Executive chef and restaurateur, Yehuda Sichel… VP and head of strategic partnerships at Penzer Family Office, Michal (Mickey) Penzer… French-American actress, Flora Cross turns 33… Director of football strategy and assistant quarterbacks coach for the Baltimore Ravens, Daniel Stern turns 32… Founder when she was just 12 years old of Nannies by Noa, Noa Mintz turns 25…

• White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is meeting in Miami today with senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey to discuss the continued implementation of the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty are slated to attend the meeting, the first convening at such a senior level since the ceasefire went into effect in October. The meeting comes as The Wall Street Journal reports on the challenges — namely Hamas’ refusal to disarm — facing the Trump administration as it attempts to implement the second phase of the agreement.
  
• Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest continues today in Phoenix, Ariz. Former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov will take the main stage today (more below), as well as Heritage Foundation CEO Kevin Roberts, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Erika Kirk, Steve Bannon, Vivek Ramaswamy, Megyn Kelly and James O’Keefe.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

In recent weeks, James Fishback, a 30-year-old Republican investor who last month launched a long-shot campaign for governor of Florida, has drawn online attention for a series of incendiary social media posts attacking Israel and invoking antisemitic tropes.

In addition to praising followers of the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, comments for which he has refused to apologize, Fishback has promoted a range of extreme anti-Israel positions, including in a recent campaign ad vowing to defend those who accuse the Jewish state of genocide. He has taken repeated aim at the pro-Israel organization AIPAC, which he calls a “foreign lobbying group,” saying its supporters are “slaves” and that his own “allegiance is to America.”

“I’ll be the first to admit that I fell for the ‘Israel is our greatest ally’ scam and the lie that criticizing Israel is ‘antisemitic,’” he wrote in a social media post this week. “It wasn’t until I was offered a paid trip to Israel this summer (which I never took) that I realized how cringe and pathetic the propaganda was.”

In using such inflammatory rhetoric, Fishback, a political newcomer, is likely seeking to channel the views among a younger audience of far-right voters increasingly fueling anti-Israel as well as antisemitic sentiment in the GOP, which has recently forced the party to confront a growing schism within its ranks over its ideological direction.

But while Fishback has sought to cast next year’s Republican primary as “very clearly a two-person race” between him and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) — the pro-Israel GOP front-runner now dominating the polls while reporting a $40 million fundraising advantage — political operatives in both parties are skeptical his insurgent bid will ultimately amount to any sort of meaningful on-the-ground traction even as he continues to provoke controversy from behind the screen.

“Social media is the only reason anyone has heard of Fishback, and 20 years ago no one would even be talking about him,” Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida, told Jewish Insider. “Unless he stumbles into a pile of cash, it’s hard for me to see this being more than just an effort to get clicks.”

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

• Some 2,000 Jewish communal leaders, philanthropists and nonprofit officials from North America, Israel and beyond will gather in Washington on Sunday for the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly. The opening plenary will include former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, authors Sarah Hurwitz and Micah Goodman, CNN contributor Scott Jennings and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City. Read more here from eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim and Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch.
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams is traveling to Israel today for a five-day trip where he plans to meet with government officials and economic development and high-tech leaders.
• The Texas Tribune Festival, taking place this week in Austin, continues today with speakers including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Democratic Texas Senate candidates James Talarico and Rep. Colin Allred, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), comedian John Mulaney, former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Tomorrow, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) are slated to speak.
• MSNBC is launching its rebrand tomorrow as MS NOW, part of its separation from NBCUniversal, with dozens of veteran journalists recruited as part of its expanded newsroom.
• On Sunday, the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will present its fourth annual New York Jewish Book Festival. 

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Given the GOP’s sturdy 53-seat majority in the Senate, combined with the increasing rarity of split-ticket voters, the Republican Party’s hold on the upper chamber looked nearly guaranteed, with a map featuring very few true swing-state pickup opportunities for the Democrats.

Indeed, the unlikely pathway for Democrats to win back control of the Senate in 2026 runs through states that have been reliably Republican in recent years — Ohio, Iowa, Texas, Florida and Alaska. To win back a majority, the party would need to win at least two of these red-state races, reversing the yearslong Democratic drought in many of these states — along with winning GOP-held seats in battleground Maine and North Carolina, which is far from assured.

But given the dominant Democratic outcomes from the off-year elections, there’s been renewed attention to the possibility of some red-state upsets in 2026. Already, political strategists from both parties are mulling over which seats are the most likely to get competitive, in preparation for an unpredictable midterm election.

On paper, Ohio looks like it’s the best opportunity for Democrats to play offense. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a populist, battle-tested Democrat won three statewide elections in Ohio even as the state trended in a more conservative direction. He eventually lost in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) by five points, but ran well ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ double-digit defeat in the state.

With the national environment tilting back in the Democrats’ favor, Brown is seeking a comeback against appointed Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), Ohio’s former lieutenant governor. A September poll of the race conducted by the respected Democratic firm Hart Research found Brown narrowly ahead over Husted, 48-45%. Among independents, Brown held a substantial 25-point lead (56-31%).

Of all the five “reach” states for Democrats, Ohio was the closest in the presidential race, with President Donald Trump winning by 11 points. That should make it the best opportunity for Democrats to win a third seat — even as it underscores how many Trump voters Democrats will need to convert in order to win.

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

MBS in the Oval: Jason Greenblatt, Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration, writes in Newsweek that the upcoming White House visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a “pivotal moment for U.S.–Saudi relations and the future of the Middle East.” “Together, [the U.S. and Saudi Arabia] safeguard the Red Sea and Arabian (Persian) Gulf, counter drone and missile attacks from Iran-backed militias and help prevent nuclear proliferation. A formal defense pact — linking U.S. technology and intelligence with Saudi reach and resources — would cement this cooperation for the long-term. It would show that Riyadh is ready to share the burden of regional security and that Washington remains a reliable ally. … For Israel, a secure and forward-looking Saudi Arabia is especially significant. It reduces tensions and opens the door to deeper cooperation in intelligence, missile defense and maritime security. For the rest of the region, it helps maintain balance and sustain diplomatic and economic progress. When the U.S.–Saudi partnership is strong, the entire region benefits.” [Newsweek]

Tending Your Garden: Conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen argues that conservatives must “keep our own house in order” and reject figures like neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes to constitute an effective opposition to the political left. “As for the argument that we should focus our attention on the left, we can’t effectively oppose the left if we don’t keep our own house in order. Conservatives can’t complain that Democrats call us fascists if we let actual fascists into our movement. If we want to persuade the American people to support our cause, then we need to be clear about what conservatism stands for — and what it does not. That requires we keep out Nazis, along with their enablers. These cranks want to hijack the MAGA movement for their own vile purposes. We need to stop them from doing so. There can and should be vigorous debate among different factions inside the conservative tent. But we must draw a line somewhere — and it should be self-evident that fascism is over that line. If conservatives can’t agree on that, then we will end up like the left — beholden to antisemites in our midst.” [WaPo]

Fever Pitch: Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz draws the connection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism through antisemitic rhetoric used by protesters at last week’s soccer match in Birmingham, England, between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv. “The fact is, however, that if the prime, or in most cases the only, focus of your human rights activism is to target Israel — if you don’t take to the streets in support, for instance, of Gazans being murdered by Hamas, or masses being slaughtered in Sudan or any other of the world’s innumerable combat zones, and, needless to say, would not dream of taking a placard onto the streets in support of Jews and other Israelis being slaughtered by Hamas — then, that’s antisemitism. … The ‘If you see a Zionist, call the anti-terror hotline’ slogan does more than equate Zionism with terrorism; it seeks to legitimize the targeting of all who live in and love Israel, by branding us all terrorists. Its dissemination, largely unremarked upon, its malevolent, incendiary rebranding of Zionism as a force of evil, crosses yet another red line in the international effort to achieve Israel’s demise. And it will doubtless reappear along with ever more vicious anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and, yes, antisemitic words. And deeds.” [TOI]

Israel is seeking a new 20-year memorandum of understanding with the U.S. when the current 10-year one expires in 2028, U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios, including new propositions meant to emphasize U.S.-Israel cooperation and make the deal more attractive to the “America First” GOP…

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that Israel “prefer[s] that Turkey not receive F-35 [fighter jets]s from the U.S,” but said that “there’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised” if Saudi Arabia were to acquire them…

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations philanthropic organization gave the left-wing media organization Drop Site News $250,000 last year, the Washington Free Beacon reports, for it to establish a Middle East desk to “bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism”; over the past year, Drop Site has repeatedly produced anti-Israel coverage, including a series of interviews with Hamas leaders to provide “deeper insight” into the terror group’s decision to launch the Oct. 7 terror attacks…

A group of 25 Senate Republicans led by Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) urged the State Department to “ensure that [the U.N. Relief and Works Agency] play[s] no role in any efforts to stabilize, govern, and rebuild Gaza,” given UNRWA’s ties to terrorism, and urged the U.S. to work instead with trusted international and regional partners and NGOs…

Indonesia’s defense minister said the country has trained up 20,000 troops for health and construction-related tasks as part of the proposed international stabilization force for postwar Gaza…

The body of Meny Godard, who was killed and kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri by Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, was returned to Israel on Thursday night…

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was hospitalized after suffering a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up” and subsequent fall and face injuries, but is doing well, his spokesperson reported…

The anti-Israel IMEMU Policy Project organization is running an ad targeting Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who is visiting New Hampshire today, criticizing him for appearing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year and for voting against blocking arms sales to Israel…

A federal jury recently convicted a neo-Nazi for hate crimes after he mailed antisemitic threats to Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch, the state’s only Jewish legislator, and Rabbi Elizabeth Bahar of Temple Beth Israel after both women publicly supported the passage of legislation codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…

Puck profiles Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, Vice President JD Vance’s longtime friend and Pentagon reformer, as he navigates Washington politics while building a reputation as a rising star…

The New York Times reports that Pakistan spent millions on Trump‑linked lobbyists — including his former business partners and bodyguard — in a high-stakes effort to influence U.S. policy…

Venture capitalist Elad Gil has doubled the target size of his new fund to nearly $3 billion, which, if successful, would be the largest known fund raised by a solo general partner, according to the Information…

Harriet Schleifer, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was elected to the board of directors of Democratic Majority for Israel, the group announced…

Some 400 people gathered on Wednesday evening at a private estate in Beverly Hills, Calif., for the American Friends of Magen David Adom gala, celebrating the work of MDA — Israel’s national emergency services organization. Actor, singer and writer Jonah Platt hosted the evening’s program, which honored Elizabeth Goldhirsh-Yellin with the Humanitarian Award for her leadership and commitment to the cause of saving lives in Israel. An ambulance was dedicated in memory of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, the two Israeli Embassy staffers who were killed in a terror attack in May outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Their parents, Nancy and Robert Milgrim and Ruth and Daniel Lischinsky, delivered remarks honoring their children. A second ambulance was dedicated in memory of Sami Liber, a member of the Brentwood community. Carla and Rodney Liber, Sami’s parents, honored her with remarks. 

Pictured, from left: Platt, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. and MDA’s Global President Gilad Erdan, AFMDA CEO Catherine Reed and MDA Director-General Eli Bin.  

After 15 seasons in the NBA, he became an owner and player for Hapoel Jerusalem and led the team to an Israeli League championship, Amar’e Yehoshafat Stoudemire turns 43 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Cellist, Natalia Gutman turns 83… Former professional bodybuilder who played for two seasons with the New York Jets, Mike Katz turns 81… Los Angeles businessman, community leader and political activist, Stanley Treitel… Retired member of the U.K.’s House of Lords, Baron Jeremy Beecham turns 81… Former British Labour party MP who resigned in 2019 in protest of Jeremy Corbyn, Dame Louise Joyce Ellman turns 80… Television director and producer, her neurotic text messages to her daughter are the subject of the CrazyJewishMom Instagram page, Kim Friedman turns 76… Editor-at-large for Bloomberg View, Jonathan I. Landman turns 73… Former Democratic member of the New York state Assembly from Brooklyn, his 22-year term was completed at the end of 2022, Steven H. Cymbrowitz turns 72… U.S. secretary of state during the last four years of the Bush 43 administration, now on the faculty of Stanford University and the director of the Hoover Institution, Condoleezza Rice turns 71… Senior advisor to President Barack Obama throughout his eight-year term in the White House, she is now CEO of the Obama Foundation, Valerie Jarrett turns 69… Detroit-based communications consultant, Cynthia Shaw… President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Laurie L. Patton turns 64… Partner at the Santa Monica-based law firm of Murphy Rosen, Edward A. Klein… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of political science at George Washington University, Sarah A. Binder… Vice chairman of The Atlantic and managing director of media at Emerson Collective, Peter T. Lattman… and his twin brother, SVP at Forman Mills, Brian Lattman, both turn 55… Businessman with interests in real estate, gambling software, payments processing and digital advertising, Teddy Sagi turns 54… Member of the Colorado House of Representatives until last year when she became a Colorado state senator, Dafna Michaelson Jenet turns 53… Former deputy national security advisor for President Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes turns 48… Head of public policy and government affairs for Lime, Joshua Meltzer… Actress and comedian best known for her eight years as a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” Vanessa Bayer turns 44… Senior advisor at Clarion Strategies, Jacob Freedman turns 43… Rabbi of the Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue in Indonesia, Yaakov Baruch turns 43… Israeli conductor and pianist, he is a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Nimrod David Pfeffer turns 41… Executive director of the One Percent Foundation, Lana Talya Volftsun Fern… Actress and producer, she is a daughter of Bette Midler, Sophie von Haselberg turns 39… First baseman and second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball, he played for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Spencer Elliott Horwitz turns 28…

SATURDAY: Author of dozens of children’s books and young adult fiction, frequent NPR guest, Daniel Pinkwater turns 84… Pianist and conductor, formerly music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim turns 83… Boca Raton, Fla., resident, Stephen Wolff… Former Chairman and CEO of Film and Music Entertainment, Lawrence (Larry) Lotman… NYC-based consultant for nonprofit organizations, Perry Davis turns 77… Retired immigration and nationality attorney in Southern California, Michael D. Ullman… Past president of Gratz College in Melrose Park, Pa., he is the author or editor of more than 50 books, Paul Finkelman turns 76… Executive vice president at Aish and former executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museums of Tolerance, Rabbi Meyer H. May turns 73… Executive producer and director of television programs, including “Friends,” one of the most popular TV programs of all time, Kevin S. Bright turns 71… Member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Meir Cohen turns 70… Partner in Toronto-based accounting firm Fuller Landau, he is a past president of Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto Congregation (BAYT), Jeffrey M. Brown… Senior project manager at T-Mobile, Michael A. Lewine… Member of the Florida House of Representatives, Michael Alan Gottlieb turns 57… Former member of Knesset for the Likud party, Nava Boker turns 55… Founder and chairman of Perilune Capital and co-founder of Harspring Capital Management, Carey Robinson Wolchok… Mortgage executive, Joshua Shein… CEO of the Riverdale Y in the Bronx until 2022, she is now a leadership coach, Deann Forman… As a 12-year-old baseball fan in Yankee Stadium, he interfered with a ball batted by Derek Jeter in the 1996 ALCS that was ruled to be a game-tying home run, Jeffrey Maier turns 42… Professional golfer, he won the gold medal at the 2013 Maccabiah Games, Ben Silverman turns 38… Deputy Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press, Zeke Miller… Press secretary for Maine Gov. Janet Mills, Ben Goodman… Talent Acquisition Partner at Engine, Alison Borowsky… Recent graduate at Harvard Law School, now serving as judicial law clerk for a federal judge in California, Micah Rosen… Military legislative assistant in Rep. Wesley Bell’s (D-MO) office, Ethan Sorcher…

SUNDAY: Justice on the Supreme Court of Canada until he retired in 2013, Morris Jacob Fish turns 87… Professor of mathematics and statistics at Concordia University in Montreal, Abraham J. Boyarsky, Ph.D. turns 79… Milwaukee-based founder and co-managing director of A.B. Data, Ltd, he is the past chair of the Pincus Fund for Jewish Education, Bruce A. Arbit turns 71… Director of programs at IKAR, Susan Brooks… Writer and producer for television and film, Jeff Pinkner turns 61… CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Jewish Policy Center, Matt Brooks turns 60… TV producer and president of Keshet Studios, Peter Traugott turns 55… Former senior vice president at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Rabbi Justus Baird turns 53… Israeli singer-songwriter, author and travel documentarian, known professionally as “Passerby,” Gilad Segev turns 51… Author of several novels, he was the science fiction and fantasy book columnist for The Washington Post until 2022, Lavie Tidhar turns 49… SVP at The D. E. Shaw Group, he was previously a special assistant to President Obama for energy and economic policy, Michael A. Levi turns 48… 1994 Olympic gold medalist in figure skating, she first discovered that she was Jewish when she was 25 years old, Oksana Baiul turns 48… Stage, film and television actress, Margalit Ruth “Maggie” Gyllenhaal turns 48… Israeli actress, model, film producer and TV host, Adi Ezroni turns 47… VP at Jetro Restaurant Depot, he is a former NFL placekicker and punter, Hayden Scott Epstein turns 45… Snowboarder for the U.S. Olympic team in 2014 and 2022, he competes in the halfpipe, Taylor Gold turns 32… Chief of staff at Lightricks, Aaron Kalman…

• On Sunday, the Zionist Organization of America will hold its annual gala, where it will present awards to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; Leo Terrell, head of the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force; Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon; and philanthropists Irit and Jonathan Tratt. 
• Stefanik will be announcing her campaign for New York governor today, setting up a battle against Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat. Stefanik, who led the fight against campus antisemitism in Congress, is expected to make democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City a major attack line against Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani in the mayoral race.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

Former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, who turns 95 today, isn’t necessarily a household name — but is one of the more consequential figures in Jewish political history, as the first Holocaust survivor elected to Congress and one of the most prominent Jewish Republicans during a golden period of Jewish representation on Capitol Hill.

Boschwitz now holds the distinction of being the oldest living elected senator, and remains active in political and business life from his home in Plymouth, Minn. He spoke on the phone to Jewish Insider this week about his life story, legacy and thoughts about our current political moment.

Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1930. On the day that Hitler took power in 1933, Boschwitz’s father came home and told his family they would be leaving Germany forever. He arrived in the United States in 1935 with his family, completed college at the age of 19, started a retail lumber business and quickly made a career in business and, later, politics. 

He was elected as a Republican to the Senate in 1978, scoring an upset against the state’s former Gov. Wendell Anderson. He served there for 12 years, eventually losing reelection in 1990 to Democrat Paul Wellstone.

“When I came to the Senate, I was really the first Jewish conservative that many of my colleagues really met. They hadn’t met many Jewish Republicans at all. I think we had a hand in building some of the pro-Israel feelings now,” Boschwitz told JI. (During the 1980s, four other Jewish GOP senators would end up serving alongside him.)

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

The GOP Battle Over Bigotry: Author Jamie Kirchick argues in The Washington Post that the fight on the right over Tucker Carlson is a microcosm of deeper moral and ideological fault lines in the GOP.  “Carlson’s promotion of [neo-Nazi Nick] Fuentes was a signal moment in the former Fox News star’s moral atrophy. It also has forced an overdue reckoning on the American right. For far too long, the problem of antisemitism has been allowed to fester there because too many conservatives have been reluctant to speak out against its chief propagator … Stalinists and Holocaust deniers like Fuentes are perfectly entitled to spew their nonsense on street corners, through self-published manifestos or in online livestreams. What they are not entitled to is the imprimatur of purportedly respectable institutions whose reputations hinge upon the voices they choose to amplify.” [WashPost]

Teshuva at Heritage: William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, calls on the Heritage Foundation, a place he called a “second home,” to engage in “repentance” in the Washington Times. “Heritage’s decision to defend Mr. Carlson marks a dangerous turning point. An organization that once modeled moral seriousness now tolerates moral confusion. The one that built its reputation on defending Western civilization now aligns itself with those who undermine it. … It pains me to say it, but a relationship that began for me over four decades ago now stands on the edge of breaking. If Heritage cannot right its ship, that long relationship will end. Institutions that trade moral clarity for populist rage do not endure. … Mr. Roberts and Heritage must decide whether they still believe in moral clarity. They can stand for decency, admit error and reaffirm that antisemitism never belongs in conservative thought. Or they can let their silence define them as collaborators in decline.” [WashingtonTimes]

The Mamdani Doctrine: Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, writes in The Free Press about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s worldview. “I grew up amid the lingering echoes of decolonization, which continue to mold perceptions of justice and power, albeit less overtly than in the West. From high school onward, Third World rhetoric permeated everyday discourse on climate change, Palestine, or inequality. The issues evolve, but the lens persists — a moral binary logic that divides the powerful from the powerless. … What Mamdani represents is not a new movement but a continuation of this sensibility. His stances on housing, policing, and Palestine project global anti-imperial archetypes onto contemporary New York City politics. The landlord morphs into the colonizer, the tenant into the colonized. The New York City Police Department becomes the occupier. The city’s streets serve as metaphorical battlegrounds in the decolonization process. Mamdani’s movement transcends socialism, unmoored from class or ownership, and eludes Islamism, unbound by theocratic aims. Here, Islam serves as an emblem of subjugation with universal resonance, a faith recast as resistance against Western dominance.” [FreePress]

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an interview with Semafor, revealed he had a “healthy dialogue” with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the wake of Mamdani’s win where the two “agreed to disagree” on some issues. Shapiro also commented on the ongoing “conservative infighting over antisemitism”: “I don’t share a lot in common ideologically or on the issues with Sen. [Ted] Cruz,” but Cruz “did the right thing by speaking out against [Nick] Fuentes and [Tucker] Carlson and the Heritage Foundation and others”…

In another interview with Puck, Shapiro commented on the shifting opinions on Israel in the Democratic Party: “I don’t pay attention to shifting political winds. I try and do what I think is right, and say what I believe. … I believe in Israel, but I don’t like the direction that it’s going under Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership”…

Two top advisors to Mamdani, Ali Najmi and Elle Bisgaard-Church, attended a Somos reception in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Thursday hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council and UJA-Federation of New York. “We are here to represent the transition with the Jewish community, and we’re so happy to be here,” Najmi, a Mamdani confidante who serves as chief counsel to the mayor-elect’s transition team, told JI’s Matthew Kassel. “We see so many good friends and old friends, and we’re so looking forward to our new friends, and the food was great here”…

Spotted at the JCRC-UJA Federation event: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Brad Lander, Alex Bores, Lincoln Restler, Kalman Yeger, Mark Treyger, Micah Lasher, Michael Miller, Leon Goldenberg, Josh Mehlman, Sara Forman, Jason Koppel, Yeruchim Silber, Menashe Shapiro, Joel Eisdorfer, Jacob Eisdorfer, Daniel Rosenthal, Hindy Poupko, Mercedes Narcisse, Sandy Nurse, Eddie Gibbs, Thomas DiNapoli, Noam Gilboord…

Federal prosecutors are conducting a corruption investigation into a foreign trip taken by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel E. Bowser with members of her staff that was paid for by Qatar, The New York Times reports…

A new course on “Gender, Reproduction, and Genocide” in Gaza was introduced at Princeton University, taught by a scholar who was briefly arrested for incitement while teaching at Hebrew University in Jerusalem for her inflammatory rhetoric about Israel, which has included calling for the end of the Jewish state…

The Israeli government has hired firms to conduct public diplomacy campaigns, including outreach to evangelical Christians and boosting search results on AI services like ChatGPT, Haaretz reports. The firms and experts hired seem to indicate a focus on amplifying pro-Israel messages among the American right… 

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted on Thursday to advance legislation eliminating loopholes used by museums and other stakeholders to continue possessing Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover since the end of World War II. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked during the vote that their names be added as co-sponsors to the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, led by Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)…

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) introduced the Ideologically Motivated Violence Accountability Act, which would provide sentencing enhancements for crimes committed “wholly or in part because of the victim’s actual or perceived political or religious beliefs, affiliation, expression, or activity” or to “make a public statement concerning any political or religious belief, practice, institution, group, ideology, event or public figure”…

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), a Senate candidate, and Del. James Moylan (R-Guam) introduced a bill requiring a “whole-of-government strategy to interrupt cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and North Korea”…

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer is expected to step down from his position next week, with Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter taking over some of his responsibilities regarding ties with the Trump administration…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions today against members of Hezbollah’s “finance team” who “oversee the movement of funds from Iran” in an effort to support the Lebanese government’s moves to disarm the terror group…

The University of Maryland, College Park student government unanimously passed two resolutions hostile towards Israel on Wednesday night, including one that called for the school to ban members of the Israel Defense Forces from speaking on campus, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

Pope Leo XIV met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday at the Vatican and the two discussed “an urgent need to provide assistance to the civilian population in Gaza and to end the conflict by pursuing a two-State solution,” according to a statement by the Holy See…

A covert operation reportedly carried out by Qatar sought to find evidence tying the woman who made sexual abuse allegations against Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to Israel; according to documents obtained by The Guardian, no such connection was found…

Two 19-year-olds from Montclair, N.J., were arrested on Tuesday on accusations of participating in an ISIS-inspired terror group, with one allegedly planning a Boston-bombing-style attack…

French police arrested four protesters who repeatedly disrupted an Israel Philharmonic Orchestra concert in Paris on Thursday…

British authorities arrested 11 people amid protests surrounding Wednesday’s highly politicized soccer match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Birmingham, after police banned Maccabi fans from attending the game. Aston Villa won 2-0…

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced a 70-year-old Iranian American Jewish man from New York to two years in prison for traveling to Israel 13 years ago to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah…

Former Vice President Mike Pence announced his forthcoming book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience, will be released June 2, 2026…

Ye, formerly Kanye West, met with Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, an influential Orthodox rabbi who serves as the chief rabbi of Morocco, to apologize for his repeated extreme antisemitic remarks. “I feel really blessed to sit here and take accountability. I was dealing with various issues. I was dealing with bipolar also, so I would take the ideas I had and forget about the protection of the people around me and myself”…

The Wall Street Journal interviews Ruth Porat, the Jewish chief investment officer and president of Google and its parent company, Alphabet…

The Financial Times details the unraveling of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious megacity project, The Line, now with a significantly reduced vision, due to finance and physical constraints…

Singapore announced it will replace its fleet of Hermes 450 drones, used by the Singapore Air Force for 20 years, with the Hermes 900 model, produced by Israel’s Elbit Systems. Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in separate meetings in Jerusalem on Thursday focused on boosting ties between the two countries…

FIFA announced the creation of a FIFA Peace Prize which will “recognize exceptional actions for peace,” which it intends to present to its recipient, rumored to be President Donald Trump, at the World Cup draw in Washington on Dec. 5…

Israeli American citizen Capt. Omer Neutra was laid to rest this morning at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv after his body was returned to Israel from Gaza on Sunday. Neutra was killed and kidnapped in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. The 21-year-old Long Island native, an IDF tank commander, was among the first soldiers to respond to the attack, serving near the community of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. 

Journalist and pioneering podcaster, he is the creator and host of “How I Built This” and “Wisdom from the Top,” Guy Raz turns 50 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Neuropsychiatrist, a 1944 graduate of Yeshivah of Flatbush and 2000 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Eric Kandel turns 96…Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, he later served on the boards of AIPAC and JINSA, Rudy Boschwitz turns 95… MIT professor in electrical engineering and computer science, Barbara Liskov turns 86… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, he was the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Donald Kohn turns 83… University professor at Harvard, expert on Shakespeare, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Stephen Greenblatt turns 82… Founding president of Santa Monica, Calif., synagogue, Kehilat Maarav, and senior partner in the West Los Angeles law firm of Selvin & Weiner, Beryl Weiner turns 82… Past international president of the FJMC International (formerly the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs), Thomas “Tom” Sudow turns 73… Entrepreneur, bar owner and television personality, Jonathan “Jon” Peter Taffer turns 71… Constituent affairs representative and community liaison for Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Laurie Tobias Cohen… Volunteer coordinator for the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, Marcy Meyers… President and CEO of the Boston-based Jewish Alliance for Law & Social Action, Cindy Rowe… Funeral director at Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Michael R. Holub… Director, writer and showrunner of the legal drama series “Suits,” Aaron Thomas Korsh turns 59… Former professional racing driver, now CEO of McLaren Racing, Zakary Challen Brown turns 54… Chairman and CEO of luxury apparel company Canada Goose, Dani Reiss turns 52… European casino owner, art collector and CEO of Vestar Group, Leon Tsoukernik turns 52… Deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Aryeh Yitzhak King turns 52… Founder and director of Eden Village Camp, an environmental Jewish summer camp based in New York, Yoni Stadlin… and his twin brother, rabbi, wilderness guide, experiential educator and artist, Pesach Stadlin, both turn 47… EVP of communications at NBC Universal, Jennifer B. Friedman… Reporter for Sportico focused on the business of college sports, Daniel Libit… Baseball outfielder, he won two minor league batting titles, Brian Horwitz turns 43… Consultant for family foundations, he holds two graduate degrees in Nursing, Avi Zenilman… Northeast regional deputy director at AIPAC, Alexa Jordan Silverman… National political reporter at Politico, Elena Schneider… Founder and CEO emeritus at Swipe Out Hunger, Rachel Sumekh… Toronto-native, he is the founder and CEO of Count Me In, a global youth empowerment organization, Shane Feldman… Co-founder and CEO at Moneta Labs Limited, Tomer Aharonovitch…

SATURDAY: U.S. attorney for New Jersey, then a U.S. District Court judge, now a criminal defense attorney, Herbert Jay Stern turns 89… Actress, comedian and writer, she played the recurring role of Doris Klompus on “Seinfeld,” her solo theater shows include “Yenta Unplugged” and “The Yenta Cometh,” Annie Korzen turns 87… French heiress, pediatrician, businesswoman and philanthropist, Léone-Noëlle Meyer turns 86… Former CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, he was a senior White House aide to President Bill Clinton, Ira C. Magaziner turns 78… Leader of the Sephardic baal teshuva movement in Israel, Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak turns 72… Senior managing director and global head of government relations for Blackstone, Wayne Berman turns 69… COO at Forsight, Michael Sosebee… Emirati businessman, developer of the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai Mall, Mohamed Alabbar turns 69… Health-care executive, venture capitalist and real estate developer, Daniel E. Straus turns 69… Financial consultant at Retirement Benefits Consulting, Michelle Feinberg Silverstein… Israel’s former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant turns 67…  Television producer, she is the co-author of Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In, Helen Vivian “Nell” Scovell turns 65… NYC area attorney, Charles “Chesky” Wertman… Principal at Lore Strategies, Laurie Moskowitz… Popular Israeli female vocalist in the Mizrahi music genre, Zehava Ben turns 57… Board member at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Allison Gingold… Sports journalist for TelevisaUnivision Deportes Network, he was born in Ashkelon, Israel, and has covered both the World Cup and the Summer Olympics, David Moshé Faitelson turns 57… Professional poker player and fashion designer, Beth Shak turns 56… Founder of Ayecha, Yavilah McCoy turns 53… Congregational rabbi in Paris and co-leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France, Delphine Horvilleur turns 51… Kyiv-born CEO of Gold Star Financial Group including sports management, mortgage lending, publishing, film production and venture capital, Daniel Milstein turns 50… Israeli singer, Lior Narkis turns 49… Senior Director for Global Policy and Defense Cooperation at Saronic Technologies, Mira Kogen Resnick turns 43… Canadian entrepreneur and president of Shopify, Harley Finkelstein turns 42… Director of high school affairs at the American Jewish Committee, Aaron Bregman… Principal at Bayit Consulting, he is active in both the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and the Israel Policy Forum, Roei Eisenberg turns 38… Film and television actor, Jared Kusnitz turns 37…Consultant on media, strategic communications, branding and podcast production, Alana Weiner… Student at Johns Hopkins University in the Class of 2026, Cameron Elizabeth Fields…

SUNDAY: Israeli novelist and playwright, she is the mother of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Shulamit Lapid turns 91… British businessman and philanthropist, formerly chairman of Lloyds Bank, a major U.K. bank, Sir Maurice Victor Blank turns 83… Professional baseball manager in the minor leagues and college, he managed Team Israel in 2016 and 2017, Jerry Weinstein turns 82… Israeli war hero and longtime past member of the Knesset, Zevulun Orlev turns 80… Principal of Los Angeles-based PR and public affairs firm Cerrell Associates, Hal Dash… San Diego-based media developer, Daniel Ajzen… Mitchell Bedell… Founder of the Etz Chaim Center of Jewish Studies in Baltimore, Rabbi Shlomo Porter turns 76… Former deputy national security advisor for President Donald Trump, Charles Martin Kupperman turns 75… Former U.S. senator (D-OH) and current candidate for the U.S. Senate, Sherrod Brown turns 73… Senior producer at NBC Nightly News, Joel Seidman… Political consultant and fundraiser, founder of “No Labels,” Nancy Jacobson turns 63… Executive director of Los Angeles-based Remember Us: The Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project, Samara Hutman… Professor of journalism and media studies at Fordham University, Amy Beth Aronson turns 63… Partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, Douglas C. Gessner… Partner at Covington & Burling specializing in export controls and sanctions, he was previously the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration during the Bush 43 administration, Peter Lichtenbaum turns 60… Chairman and CEO of Sky Harbour, he is an American-born Israeli fighter pilot and author of a 2018 book on the future of Judaism, Tal Keinan turns 56… Grammy Award-winning record producer specializing in comedy, Dan Schlissel turns 55… Founding CEO of OneTable, she retired as CEO in 2024, Aliza Kline… Associate justice of the Michigan Supreme Court since 2015, despite being legally blind since birth as a result of retinitis pigmentosa, Richard H. Bernstein turns 51… Israeli singer and actress, Maya Bouskilla turns 48… Co-founder and executive director of the States Project, he was elected the youngest member of the New York state Senate in 2008, serving until 2017, Daniel Squadron turns 46… COO at Orchestra, a PR and communications firm, David Levine… Singer, songwriter and rapper, Ari Benjamin Lesser turns 39… Army JAG officer, Matthew Adam McCoy…

• The Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit kicks off today in Las Vegas. Attending the conference? Keep an eye out for JI’s Matthew Kassel.
• In Detroit, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is hosting its annual dinner on Sunday evening. This year’s featured speakers are Detroit Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
• The IISS Manama Dialogue kicked off in Bahrain earlier today. Speakers at the weekend-long confab include U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and senior Emirati official Anwar Gargash.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit kicks off tonight at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas with much to celebrate. 

President Donald Trump’s recently brokered ceasefire and hostage-release agreement is certain to be among the administration’s accomplishments touted by a range of high-profile speakers including Cabinet officials, congressional leaders, pundits and media figures. 

The RJC is also celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and the proceedings will feature “content about where we came from and where we are today,” said Sam Markstein, the group’s national political director.

“It’s come a long way from its humble beginnings,” Markstein told Jewish Insider in an interview on Thursday.

Hanging over the three-day conference, however, is the specter of rising antisemitism on the party’s far right, an issue that Markstein said the RJC does not intend to avoid.

It’s a particularly timely, and urgent, subject as the RJC prepares to convene days after Tucker Carlson hosted the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes on his podcast for a friendly interview. Carlson has faced backlash for not only inviting Fuentes onto his show but for failing to challenge any of his viciously antisemitic views — including admiration for Adolf Hitler and Holocaust denial.

During the interview, Carlson himself also expressed his disdain for Christian Zionists including Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, whom he accused of being “seized by this brain virus.” (More below on the Heritage Foundation’s defense of Carlson and the subsequent response from the RJC.)

Huckabee, for his part, is slated to give remarks, via livestream, during the RJC’s confab. Other outspoken critics of Carlson’s antisemitic turn, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Fox News host Mark Levin, will also be in attendance. 

The summit will also feature House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, among others. The four Jewish Republicans serving in the House are joining as well: Reps. Craig Goldman (R-TX), Randy Fine (R-FL), Max Miller (R-OH) and David Kustoff (R-TN).

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

Battering Rahm: The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker profiles former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel as he mulls a 2028 presidential bid. “The case against Rahm Emanuel, according to critics: He’s not progressive enough. His only ideology is winning. He’s more of a tactician, less of a principal (though he’s long exuded main-character energy). He’s too short (he claims 5 foot 8) or too old, at least for voters who want to get away from septuagenarian presidents (he’ll be 69 on Inauguration Day 2029). He has a problem with Black voters, stemming from his mayorship (more on that in a bit). He’s too Jewish; his middle name is Israel, though he has called Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘collective punishment’ of Gazans morally and politically ‘bankrupt’ and previously confronted the prime minister over Israeli settlements (Haaretz reported that Netanyahu dubbed Emanuel a ‘self-hating Jew,’ though the prime minister has denied this).” [TheAtlantic]

Losing Our Voice: In The Washington Post, Ilan Berman, the senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, raises concerns about the Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media and its sub-agencies and outlets. “And the situation is significantly worse at present: China, Russia and Iran are ramping up informational activities in places where the United States is now noticeably absent, like Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. … The Trump administration is not even acknowledging this trend, far less ramping up a strategy to counter it. Nine months in, the White House remains focused simply on dismantling USAGM and its functions. There is little evidence that any administration official has thought deeply about how to best promote core U.S. information priorities: honestly telling America’s story and explaining its priorities and policies while effectively countering the distortions and falsehoods being spread by others.” [WashPost]

The U.S. plans to present a plan in the coming weeks for an international stabilization force in Gaza, with U.S. Central Command taking the lead in drafting the plan…

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is planning to launch her bid for governor, challenging New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, soon after next Tuesday’s elections…

The Senate confirmed Rebecca Taibleson to a seat on a federal appeals court; Taibleson’s nomination had initially faced resistance from conservative groups over her and her husband’s donations to some Democrats as well as the Milwaukee Jewish Community Foundation…

Vanity Fair spotlights political strategist Morris Katz, who is a key advisor to both New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner…

Maryland state Sen. Dalya Attar was indicted on federal extortion and conspiracy charges in connection with allegations that Attar was involved in an effort to place tracking devices and record two political opponents without their knowledge… 

Hamas returned the remains of Israeli hostages Amiram Cooper and Sahar Baruch; both men, residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz and Kibbutz Be’eri, respectively, were alive when taken hostage and died in captivity…

Doron Ben-David, Itzik Cohen, Marina Maximilian and Daniella Pick Tarantino are starring in “Frequency of Fear,” a thriller about Israel’s 2024 pager operation against Hezbollah that is currently in post-production…

Israel offered safe passage to Hamas members in the Israeli-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip to parts of the enclave still under the terror group’s control…

Several hundred thousand Haredi demonstrators in Jerusalem protested efforts to enforce a Haredi draft law that attempted to enlist some 80,000 members of the Haredi community…

The U.K. sanctioned Iranian businessman Aliakbar Ansari, citing the banker’s fiscal support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…

The International Olympic Committee and Saudi Arabia nixed a 12-year deal for Riyadh to host the Esports Olympics; the cancellation comes weeks after the Saudi sovereign wealth fund inked a $55 billion deal to acquire Electronic Arts…

Al-Qaida is nearing a full takeover of Mali, amid the terror group’s push through western Africa; a U.N. report published over the summer found that jihadists affiliated with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin looked to Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who previously led an al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, as a model…

Rabbi Meyer May is joining Aish Global as executive vice president after 47 years as the executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; May will remain on as a special counsel to the CEO of the SWC…

Taiwanese singer Na Tang, a co-founder, with her husband, of the Jeffrey D. Schwartz NaTang Jewish Taiwan Cultural Association, died at 59…

Former Israeli hostage Bar Kupershtein and his father, Tal, participated in a tefillin ceremony this morning at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

Tal Kupershtein, who lost his voice and ability to walk following a stroke five years ago, relearned to speak in an effort to advocate for his son, who spent more than two years in Hamas captivity.

Founding partner at Lanx Management, former president of AIPAC and past chairman of the Orthodox Union, Howard E. (Tzvi) Friedman turns 60…

FRIDAY: Actor with a lengthy career in film, television and theatre, Ron Rifkin turns 86… British historian, born in Baghdad, emeritus professor of International Relations at Oxford, Avraham “Avi” Shlaim turns 80… CEO of Feld Entertainment, which operates the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Disney on Ice, Kenneth Feld turns 77… Co-founder and co-chairman of Heritage Auctions, James L. Halperin turns 73… Author, historian and writer-at-large for the U.K.-based Prospect Magazine, Sam Tanenhaus turns 70… Staff writer for The New Yorker, her 1998 book was made into the award-winning movie “Adaptation,” Susan Orlean turns 70… Managing partner of Arel Capital, Richard G. Leibovitch turns 62… PAC director at AIPAC, Marilyn Rosenthal… British lawyer who has served as CEO of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and COO of World ORT, Marc Jonathan (Jon) Benjamin turns 61… Former MLB pitcher, now a managing director at Rockefeller Capital Management in Boca Raton, Fla., Steven Allen Rosenberg turns 61… Director of development for Foundation for Jewish Camp until this past April, he defined his role as a “gelt-shlepper,” Corey Cutler… Chief brand and innovation officer of Ralph Lauren, David Lauren turns 54… Founder and CEO of MercadoLibre, the eBay and Amazon of Latin America, Marcos Eduardo Galperin turns 54… Film, television and theater actor, Assaf Cohen turns 53… Film and television director and producer, Ruben Fleischer turns 51… Professor, attorney, author, political columnist and poet, Seth Abramson turns 49…Member of the California State Assembly since 2016, Marc Berman turns 45… Actor Eddie Kaye Thomas turns 45… CEO at Clarasight, he is the founder of Pencils of Promise, Adam Braun… Rabbi and outreach coordinator at the Leffell Lower School in White Plains, N.Y., she is the founder of Midrash Manicures, combining Jewish education and creative nail art, Yael Buechler turns 40… Global strategy and capability development contractor at PwC, Spencer Herbst… Director of institutional advancement at Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh, Masha Shollar… Wheelchair basketball player and social media personality, Peter Berry turns 24…

SATURDAY: French economic and social theorist, he is the author of The Economic History of the Jewish People, Jacques Attali turns 82… Rabbi-in-residence of Baltimore’s 3,500-member Beth Tfiloh Congregation after more than 43 years as senior rabbi, Mitchell Wohlberg turns 81… Pioneering investor in the personal computing industry, founder of Lotus and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mitch Kapor turns 75… Founding rabbi, now emeritus, at Beit T’Shuvah, a nonprofit Jewish addiction treatment center and synagogue community in Los Angeles, Mark Borovitz turns 74… Retired management analyst at the U.S. Department of Energy, Les Novitsky… Serial entrepreneur, Warren B. Kanders turns 68… Philanthropist and Canadian real estate developer living in Israel, Sylvan Adams turns 67… Special assistant to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Pinchus Hikind… President of an eponymous auctioneering firm specializing in the appraisal and sale of antique Judaica, Jonathan Greenstein turns 58… CEO at AIPAC, Elliot Brandt… Actress, best known for her roles on “All My Children” and “General Hospital,” Alla Korot turns 55… Principal at Calabasas, Calif.-based CRC-Commercial Realty Consultants, Brian Weisberg… Israeli director, screenwriter and actress, Dikla Elkaslassy turns 46… Member of the Knesset, she is the first Ethiopian-born woman to hold a Knesset seat and the first to serve as a government minister, Pnina Tamano-Shata turns 44… Associate in the D.C. office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Clare F. Steinberg… Israeli video blogger, journalist and business executive, Idan Matalon turns 37… Chief advancement officer at The Leffell School in Westchester County (N.Y.), Annie Peck Watman… Reporter for CNN, Marshall J. Cohen… Associate at Katten Muchin Rosenman, Mitchell Caminer… Pitcher for Team Israel, Gabe Cramer turns 31… Derek Brody… Actor since childhood, Max Burkholder turns 28… 

SUNDAY: Former NASA astronaut who made five flights in the space shuttle and is currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, he was one of NASA’s first two Jewish astronauts, Jeffrey A. Hoffman turns 81… County Executive of Montgomery County, Md., Marc Elrich turns 76… Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink turns 73… Former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party and vice chair of the DNC, Susan Wolf Turnbull turns 73… Professor emerita of Jewish studies at the University of Virginia, Vanessa L. Ochs turns 72… Research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Alan D. Abbey… CNN special correspondent, Jamie Sue Gangel turns 70… Former head of school for 29 years at Weizmann Day School in Los Angeles, Lisa Feldman… Professor of Jewish history at UCLA and immediate past president of the board of the New Israel Fund, David N. Myers turns 65… Deputy commissioner of Maine’s Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, Joan F. Cohen turns 63… Financial planner at Grant Arthur & Associates Wealth Services, he is the author of a book on the complicity of Lithuania in the Holocaust, Grant Arthur Gochin… President of global content at Viva Creative, Thomas Joseph (Joe) Talbott… Marc Solomon… Head of U.S. public policy at Workday, John Sampson turns 59… Actor, director and producer, best known for playing Ross Geller in the sitcom “Friends,” David Schwimmer turns 59… Assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Justice Department during the Trump administration, now a partner at Latham & Watkins, Makan Delrahim turns 56… Professor of economics at MIT, she won a MacArthur “Genius” fellowship in 2018, Amy Nadya Finkelstein turns 52… Founder and CEO of Spring Hills Senior Communities, Alexander C. Markowits… Journalist and bestselling author, he is the publisher of The Lever and a columnist at The Guardian, David Sirota turns 50… U.S. executive vice president of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation, Michael Cohen… Former member of the Knesset for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Alexander Kushnir turns 47… Deputy editor of “The Morning Newsletter” at The New York Times, Adam B. Kushner turns 45… President and CEO of Birthright Israel Foundation, Elias Saratovsky turns 45…Marc B. Rosen…Former director of government relations at the Israel Policy Forum, now a staffer on Capitol Hill, Aaron Weinberg… Two-time Emmy Award-winning video producer, now working as a messaging editor for The New York Times, Celeste B. Lavin turns 35…

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues his visit to Israel. Rubio met on Thursday evening with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is slated to meet with other senior officials today.
• Early voting begins tomorrow in New York City’s mayoral election.
• And in Florida, the Jewish National Fund’s annual Global Conference for Israel continues through the weekend.
• In Israel, Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, putting Israelis six hours — instead of seven — ahead of the East Coast for the next week.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

As polls show Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) with a narrow lead in the run-up to New Jersey’s gubernatorial election, less than two weeks away, the Democratic lawmaker has stepped up her efforts to court the state’s sizable Jewish community — whose support could make the difference in what is expected to be a close race.

In recent weeks, Sherrill has previewed a plan of action to counter antisemitism in a webinar led by Jewish Democrats, joined calls for the state’s largest teachers’ union to fire an editor of its magazine over antisemitic and pro-Hamas social media comments and met with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Lakewood who represent an influential voting bloc. 

The moderate congresswoman, who has held a northern New Jersey House seat since 2019, has condemned her Republican rival, Jack Ciattarelli, for appearing onstage at an event last weekend just after a Muslim affairs advisor had said he was “not taking money from Jews,” a remark Sherrill called “blatant antisemitism” from her opponent’s “inner circle.”

In addition to attending a Jewish event with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) late last month in Bergen County, Sherrill is also expected to join Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and other Democratic leaders for a fundraiser on Saturday hosted at the home of Shawn Klein, the Jewish deputy mayor of Livingston, in northeastern New Jersey.

The increased engagement and attention to Jewish issues comes as Sherrill finds herself in a tightening race against Ciattarelli, who came close to unseating term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in 2021 and was trailing by just five points in a poll released Thursday. The state’s significant Jewish population could help tip the scales for either candidate — with Ciattarelli depending on particularly robust turnout from the Orthodox community.

Her engagement otherwise comes as she has faced lingering reservations from some Jewish leaders in the state who believe she embraced a more critical approach to Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, including early calls for a pause in fighting in Gaza.

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

Foreign Policy Pivot: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius looks at what he describes as the “misallocation of priorities” in the Trump administration, amid growing Russian intransigence and Washington’s pivot away from Europe. “The FBI’s most experienced national security agents have been purged; cyber defenses at several agencies have been slashed; scores of veteran CIA analysts and operations officers have quit or been forced out; alliances with friendly intelligence services have weakened. … Intelligence cooperation is close to hardwired among the U.S., Britain and the other three English-speaking ‘Five Eyes’ partners. But even some of the Five Eyes services are moderating what they tell Washington, U.S. intelligence officials believe. What worries intelligence veterans is that Trump is balking at countering a real Russian drive to subjugate Ukraine and sabotage NATO — and focusing instead on military strikes against drug cartels and [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro.” [WashPost]

‘Laugh-Washing’ in Saudi?: In The Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney responds to pushback against comedians performing at the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival over the country’s human rights record. “It is a conservative nation with a legal system that has yet to catch up with the country’s modern and global ambitions. Spend some time there and you will see the dissonance: an explosion of creative expression even while political speech is curtailed. … But life for Saudis is undeniably better than it was a few years ago, especially for women, who have more control over their lives than at any point since the founding of the modern Saudi state. In my experience, average Saudis care more about their country’s current transformation than its shortcomings. Most foreign visitors to Saudi Arabia I met, particularly those who remember it from a decade ago, say the country seems happier, healthier and more energized. For the Saudi leadership, those are more important gauges of success than the judgments of foreigners who know little of their kingdom and, in the Saudi view, hold their country to someone else’s standards and someone else’s values.” [WSJ]

In his recently published interview with Time magazine, President Donald Trump suggested he could lean on Israel to release imprisoned Palestinian senior official Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences for his role in terror attacks that have killed Israelis…

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which suspended its aid distribution efforts in Gaza following the implementation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, is in discussions with U.S. and Israeli officials about a potential role in a postwar Gaza…

The Wall Street Journal reports on Hamas’ efforts to fight its dismantlement — one of the key points of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war…

Trump‘s run-in last month at a Washington restaurant with members of the radical Code Pink group prompted conversations between administration officials and Secret Service over the president’s security…

Politico looks at the influx of high-profile Democratic surrogates to Virginia and New Jersey ahead of both states’ gubernatorial elections, amid a broader debate over the future direction of the party…

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner hired a new campaign manager and in-house attorney and is having staff sign non-disclosure agreements following the departure of his previous campaign manager amid controversy over Platner’s tattoo of a Nazi symbol and recently uncovered homophobic Reddit posts…

A poll from the University of New Hampshire that was fielded amid Platner’s controversies showed the hard-left Democrat leading Gov. Janet Mills, who entered the race last week, by 34 points…

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped his reelection bid last month, endorsed former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting an independent bid after falling short in the primary; the endorsement came two days before the start of early voting…

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared at a fundraiser for Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in Monsey, N.Y., on Thursday evening, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports… 

The editor of Portland, Ore., newspaper The Jewish Review said his outlet was blocked from attending a recent virtual press conference, organized by the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, on Israel; Rockne Roll, the only staff member of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland-owned publication, said he was removed from the press conference and not allowed to reenter…

Former Harvard President Larry Summers clashed with university administrators during the removal of an anti-Israel installation on the Cambridge campus…

University of Michigan police arrested three individuals — who were not affiliated with the university — for resisting and obstructing police, disorderly conduct and other charges during a protest outside an on-campus event hosted by the campus’ chapter of Students Supporting Israel…

The New York Times profiles Israeli-American mentalist Oz Pearlman…

The Trump administration is facing increasing pressure to secure the release of a Palestinian-American teenager who was arrested in the West Bank in February and charged with throwing rocks at soldiers…

Former Israeli hostage Eliya Cohen, who was released earlier this year after more than 500 days in captivity, got engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Ziv Aboud, who survived the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival; Cohen had previously said he would not propose until hostages Alon Ohel and Elkana Bohbot, who were released from captivity last week, were freed…

Israel’s “Eretz Nehederet” sketch comedy show parodied the relationship between President Donald Trump and senior Israeli officials…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the resurgence of the Islamic State in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime and the U.S.’ lessening troop presence in the country…

Michael Smuss, the last surviving fighter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, died at 99…

Manhattan restaurateur Shelly Fireman, who popularized Italian-American cuisine in his restaurants, which included Bond 45 and Cafe Fiorello, died at 93…

Well-wishers welcomed former Israel hostage Alon Ohel back to his home in northern Israel today after he was released from hospital. During the two years that Ohel was held by Hamas in Gaza, his eye injury, caused by shrapnel on Oct. 7, 2023, when he was abducted from the Nova music festival, was left untreated.

Staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, her 2019 novel Fleishman Is In Trouble hit the best-seller lists, Taffy Brodesser-Akner turns 50 on Sunday… 

FRIDAY: Genealogist who specializes in the research of Jewish roots in Poland and the former Soviet Union, Miriam Weiner turns 83… Writer and adjunct instructor at Queensborough Community College, Ira Greenfest… Stock market analyst who has published books and appears regularly on CNBC and Bloomberg TV, Charles Biderman turns 79… Retired Pentagon official, Judy Gleklen Kopff… Financial planner and president of Laredo, Texas-based International Asset Management, Joseph Rothstein… Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Southern California since 1997, Brad Sherman turns 71… Retired executive editor of The Washington Post, Martin “Marty” Baron turns 71… Chattanooga, Tenn.-based billionaire and CEO of Mohawk Industries, the world’s largest flooring company, Jeffrey S. Lorberbaum turns 71… U.S. senator (R-SD), Mike Rounds turns 71… U.S. senator (D-OR), Jeff Merkley turns 69… Program director at the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Alan Divack… Co-founder and former CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio (now Sirius XM Radio), he made aliyah in 2002, David Margolese turns 68… Producer of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Henry Schuster… Russian-Ukrainian businessman, he is a supporter of Jewish initiatives in Europe and a co-founder of the Genesis Prize, German Khan turns 64… Professor and chair of politics at the University of Hull in the U.K. for 18 years until this past June, Raphael Cohen-Almagor turns 64… Political correspondent for The New York Times and author of (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump, Jonathan Weisman… Russian businessman and former owner of the Premier League’s Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich turns 59… Co-founder of the Ira Sohn Conference Foundation, focused on pediatric cancer research and care, Evan Sohn… Political communications consultant, Tovah Ravitz Meehan… Israeli author and editor of science fiction and fantasy, Vered Tochterman turns 55… Businesswoman, model, actress and television personality, she has appeared on more than 250 magazine covers, Caprice Bourret turns 54… Fashion designer, Zac Posen turns 45… Founding partner of Be Clear Communications, Matt Lehrich… Rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor, born to a Jewish mother in Toronto, he celebrated his bar mitzvah, Aubrey Drake Graham now known as Drake turns 39… Executive director at Flatbush Community Fund, Yitzy Weinberg… Director of community engagement at Friends of the IDF, Yehuda Joel Friedman…

SATURDAY: Senior U.S. District Court judge based in Brooklyn, appointed by President Reagan, Judge Edward R. Korman turns 83… Former chief policy and strategy officer of Oscar Insurance, following stints as a Supreme Court clerk, White House counsel, chancellor of the NYC schools and EVP at News Corporation, Joel Klein turns 79… Board chair of the Israel Policy Forum from 2016 until 2023, she also serves as president of the Goldman Environmental Foundation, Susie Gelman turns 71… President of Dallas-based SPR Ventures, he serves on the boards of Texas Capital Bancshares and Cinemark, Steven Rosenberg… Acting deputy secretary of state during the latter part of the Biden administration, her family name was Nudelman, Victoria Jane Nuland turns 64… Television personality and author of 16 books, Bruce Feiler turns 61… Voice actress and singer, best known for voicing Asajj Ventress in “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Nika Futterman turns 56… Actor, he is currently starring on the CBS show “The Equalizer,” Adam Charles Goldberg turns 55… Television screenwriter, showrunner, executive producer and director, best known for running the television medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy,” Krista Vernoff turns 54… Actress, she has appeared as various characters on the FX anthology series “American Horror Story,” Leslie Erin Grossman turns 54… State Department official, she is married to Rep. Brad Sherman, Lisa Nicola Kaplan… Physician, author and public speaker on health issues, Michael Herschel Greger, MD turns 53… Sharon Iancu… Rapper and songwriter, known professionally as The Alchemist, Daniel Alan Maman turns 48… Director of the Chabad House at Princeton University, Rabbi Eitan Yaakov Webb… Singer and songwriter who competed in the ninth season of “American Idol” (2010), Vered “Didi” Benami turns 39… Singer and model, she has released three albums and toured internationally, Hannah Cohen turns 39… Program officer at San Francisco’s Koret Foundation, Rachel Elana Schonwetter… Director of community relations at the Baltimore Jewish Council, Josh Sherman… Musician, known professionally by the mononym “Grandson,” Jordan Edward Benjamin turns 32… Budding public intellectual, Cole S. Aronson turns 29… Executive director of FairTest, Harry Feder…

SUNDAY: Former chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the first woman to serve in that position, Deborah Tobias Poritz turns 89… South African judge who led the 2009 U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict of that year, Richard Goldstone turns 87… Veteran Israeli war correspondent, winner of the 2018 Israel Prize, Ron Ben-Yishai turns 82… Actress best known as one of “Charlie’s Angels,” she now develops and markets her own brands of clothing and perfume, Jaclyn Smith (family name was Kupferschmidt) turns 80… Chiropractor in White Plains, N.Y., Leonard Linder, DC… Certified life coach and hypnotherapist, Evie Sullivan… CEO at MDI Real Estate Services in Grand Blanc, Mich., Gary Hurand… Former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton turns 78… Media critic at The Baltimore Sun, assistant professor at Goucher College and the author of The Jews of Prime Time, David Lee Zurawik turns 76… Aventura, Fla., resident, Cecilia Kleiman… Illustrator and graphic memoirist, he is an emeritus professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Martin Lemelman turns 75… Rabbi of Congregation K.I.N.S. and Dean of Ida Crown Jewish Academy, both in Chicago, he is a past president of the Rabbinical Council of America, Leonard Matanky, Ph.D. turns 67… Senior counsel in the antitrust division of the USDOJ, Perry Howard Apelbaum turns 67… Director of communications at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jeffrey Rubin… Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Stacy Madeleine Schiff turns 64… Cultural commentator and mathematician, Eric Ross Weinstein turns 60… Founding partner and president of Global Strategy Group, Jefrey Pollock… Screenwriter, director, producer and editor, Jessica Sharzer turns 53… Canadian-born television and film actor, David Julian Hirsh turns 52… Author and broadcast journalist for NBC, Katherine Bear Tur turns 42… Figure skater who won a 2006 Olympic silver medal, plus three World Championship medals and the 2006 U.S. Championship, Alexandra Pauline “Sasha” Cohen turns 41… Executive director of product management at Politico, Danielle Feldman… Head coach for the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, he is the youngest head coach in the NHL and the league’s first Jewish head coach in over 30 years, Ryan Warsofsky turns 38… Journalist for The Wall Street Journal, recently freed after being unlawfully detained in a Russian prison, Evan Gershkovich turns 34… Tel Aviv resident, Dr. Alberto Calo…

• We’re continuing to monitor ceasefire and hostage-release efforts in Israel and Gaza following the Israeli Cabinet’s vote overnight to approve the Trump administration’s 20-point plan to end the war. The ceasefire went into effect at 5 a.m. ET. Israel began its withdrawal from parts of the enclave this morning.
  
• Earlier today, the IDF warned Gazans not to approach the areas of the Strip where troops are still stationed, while Hamas announced its police officers would enter areas from which the IDF withdrew. Within Israel, officials are notifying families of terror victims whose Palestinian assailants are being released as part of the agreement.
  
• In a filmed statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “all of the hostages will be home in the coming days…Two years ago, Simchat Torah turned into a day of national grief. This Simchat Torah will become a day of national joy.”
  
• President Donald Trump is expected to travel to Israel, and potentially also to Egypt, later this weekend, arriving in Israel early Monday morning. Trump is slated to speak at the Knesset on Monday, making him the fourth U.S. president in history to give such an address. He’ll join White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who arrived in Israel last night.
  
• In the U.S., C-SPAN will debut its new “Ceasefire” program tonight. The show’s first guests include former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Faiz Shakir, a senior advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

The newly brokered ceasefire and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas was met on Thursday with a notable lack of enthusiasm from the most outspoken Democratic detractors of Israel in Congress — even as they have vocally advocated for ending the war in Gaza. 

While the deal drew accolades across the political spectrum, from left-wing Israel detractors such as Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) to MAGA stalwarts, some of the most high-profile members of the far-left Squad and other ideologically aligned lawmakers remained silent well after the first phase of the agreement was finalized Wednesday or offered only grudging praise for the long-awaited development that could lead to an end to the war.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Summer Lee (D-PA) and Greg Casar (D-TX), chair of the House Progressive Caucus, did not respond to requests for comment from Jewish Insider and had not weighed in publicly on the deal as of Thursday night, despite widespread reaction to the agreement on Capitol Hill.

In statements to social media, Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Delia Ramirez (D-IL) briefly voiced hope that the deal would hold but reiterated their accusation that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza and called for increased accountability in the conflict, without referring to Hamas’ involvement.

Like Omar, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made no mention of the hostages in his own response to the deal, which also expressed hope that the agreement would, “as soon as possible,” help end “this horrific war.”

The relatively muted comments — or lack thereof — underscore how anti-Israel lawmakers are reluctant to praise a major diplomatic breakthrough brokered by President Donald Trump — even as it aligns with their interests in ultimately ending the two-year war in Gaza.

They also highlight how the broader pro-Palestinian movement, whose extreme rhetoric has increasingly signaled support for Hamas as a “resistance” group righteously opposing occupation, has grown captive to a narrow and uncompromising conception of the war that attributes blame for the conflict exclusively to Israel while largely dismissing the suffering of the hostages.

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

How the Deal Was Done: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius examines how President Donald Trump spearheaded the effort to bring the Israel-Hamas war to an end after many failed starts. “The blustering, go-it-alone president did it in an unlikely way: by listening to others and organizing a coalition that, by the end, included all major Arab and European nations, as well as Israel and Hamas. … He decided it was time for peace — and that he wouldn’t tolerate any more foot-dragging from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas. Today, the battlefield is finally quiet. Trump’s peace plan could fall apart, obviously. This is the Middle East. Key details like disarmament of Hamas aren’t yet resolved. But in achieving his ceasefire, Trump demonstrated skills and used tactics that showed more flexibility and cooperation than are typical of him. He listened to expert advice and changed some of his views. He engaged in subtle secret diplomacy, especially with Qatar.” [WashPost]

Split Screen: In The Free Press, Gaza-born researcher and writer Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who lost dozens of relatives in the Israel-Hamas war, looks at the ideological gap between Palestinians in Gaza and supporters of the cause in the West. “Those who decided to spend the second anniversary of the attacks of October 7 ‘flooding the streets’ should instead take a step back and think about how they can actually be helpful to the people of Gaza and beyond. … One of the first steps to freeing Palestinians from the horrors of war is to free them from the ‘Free Palestine Movement’ in the diaspora and Western world. The unholy alliance between the far left, far right, and Islamist hooligans who normalize Hamas’s narrative is harmful first and foremost to the Palestinian people. Legitimate critique of Israeli policies is not the same as calls for jihadi violence and antisemitic rhetoric, which have become the norm in the toxic Israel and Palestine discourse that desperately requires level heads to prevail and radical pragmatism to be adopted across the board.” [FreePress]

Media Shift: Puck’s Dylan Byers considers the backlash to Skydance’s acquisition of Bari Weiss’ Free Press and installation of Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News. “It’s difficult, frankly, to see these reports as anything other than supporting evidence for Bari’s evergreen thesis about media bias — a desire to amplify the preferred narrative, rather than do the actual reporting. There may also be some envy at play, too. Most legacy media journalists who launch Substacks with bold mission statements about speaking the truth end up publishing uninspired partisan analysis and doing video chats with Steve Schmidt every week. Bari went out and built a nine-figure business. In the days since her start, I’ve surveyed at least 15 CBS News sources across the organizations and, in addition to the very real uncertainty around how this is going to work and what it will mean for specific people’s jobs, the overwhelming response has been excitement, cautious optimism, and relief.” [Puck]

The Trump administration is taking a multi-agency approach to its crackdown on far-left groups with alleged ties to “domestic terror networks”; among the groups being investigated are the anti-Israel activist groups IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace…

Paul Ingrassia, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, faced sexual harassment accusations, since retracted, from a lower-ranking female colleague who stayed in a hotel room with Ingrassia after he had, unbeknownst to her, canceled her room reservation…

The New York Times looks at the role that Jared Kushner, who had planned to stay out of government in the second Trump administration, played in the effort to reach a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, while Politico does a deep dive into how Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the White House’s special envoy, moved the deal across the finish line…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions on a Chinese oil refinery that handles nearly 10% of China’s crude oil imports over its facilitation of Iranian oil distribution in violation of sanctions…

A new Quinnipiac survey of the New York City mayoral race conducted following Mayor Eric Adams’ departure from the race has Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani leading former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 13 points; Mamdani had previously led Cuomo by 22 points in a Quinnipiac poll taken in early September, prior to Adams dropping out…

The New York Times profiles comedian Modi Rosenfeld, dubbed the “Orthodox Ellen DeGeneres” by fellow comic Alex Edelman for his routines that blend his Jewish background and LGBTQ identity…

The Financial Times reports on the “uncertain moment” that the World Economic Forum finds itself in following the departure of its founder, Klaus Schwab, and as “[m]ultilateralism is in retreat, protectionism is on the rise, and great-power rivalry … is remaking global governance”…

CNN spotlights Jewish families who chose to immigrate to Israel — or leave the country — following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks…

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was announced as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize…

Indonesia denied visas to Israeli gymnasts who planned to travel to the Southeast Asian country for the World Artistic Gymnastics, costing the Israeli team its spot in the world championship…

German-born anti-apartheid activist and journalist Ruth Weiss, who escaped Nazi Europe as a child when her family settled in South Africa, died at 101…

Israeli President Isaac Herzog (center) met on Thursday with Jared Kushner and White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in Jerusalem shortly after their arrival from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where they met with negotiators to finalize an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war.

Physician, philanthropist and the majority owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, Dr. Miriam Adelson turns 80… 

FRIDAY: Professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, he has argued 36 cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, Laurence Tribe turns 84… Past chairman and CEO of KB Home, a nationwide home-builder known until 2001 as Kaufman & Broad, Bruce Karatz turns 80… Former director of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel in The Hague, promoting a positive view of Israel within Dutch society, Ronald Maurice (Ronny) Naftaniel turns 77… Former member of the Knesset for 30-years on behalf of three political parties, he has served in six ministerial roles, Meir Sheetrit turns 77… Long-time IDF Chaplain, Yedidya Atlas… Award-winning writer and photographer based in Albuquerque, N.M., Diane Joy Schmidt… Vocalist and songwriter best known as the lead singer of Van Halen, he is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, David Lee Roth turns 71… Co-chairman and chief investment officer of Oaktree Capital Management, Bruce Karsh turns 70… Former NASA astronaut who flew on five Space Shuttle missions, he has held many positions at NASA including chief scientist, John M. Grunsfeld turns 67… Shareholder at the Bethesda, Md., law firm of Selzer Gurvitch, Neil Gurvitch… Dean of Harvard Law School, John C. P. Goldberg turns 64… Founder and principal of Los Angeles-based real estate firm, Freeman Group, Rodney Freeman… Governmental relations and strategic communications principal at BMWL Public Affairs, Sam Lauter… Head of School at de Toledo High School, a Jewish school in Northern Los Angeles County, Mark H. Shpall… Governor of California since 2019, Gavin Newsom turns 58… Concert pianist and composer, Evgeny Kissin turns 54… Israeli comedian and actor, twice voted as the funniest Israeli, Asi Cohen turns 51… Chief rabbi of Vienna and of the Austrian Armed Forces, Schlomo Elieser Hofmeister turns 50… Israel resident and op-ed contributor for The New York Times, he is the author of four acclaimed books, Matti Friedman turns 48… Former two-time White House Jewish Liaison, now the director of Maimonides Fund’s Sapir Institute, Chanan Weissman… President of Ian Sugar Strategies, Ian Sugar… Head of U.S. government relations and corporate affairs at Glencore, Seth Levey… VP in the Chicago office of Goldman Sachs, Avi Davidoff… Rabbi of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J., Elliot Schrier turns 36… North American campus director at CAMERA, Hali Haber Spiegel… Winner of Israel’s National Bible Quiz as a teen and then a soldier in the IDF’s Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, he is a son of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Avner Netanyahu turns 31… U.S. correspondent at Israel Hayom and deputy director at Jewish Virtual Library, Or Shaked…

SATURDAY: Professor emeritus of history at UCLA, winner of both a Pulitzer Prize and the Israel Prize, he won a MacArthur Genius fellowship in 1999, Saul Friedländer turns 93… Former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted then VPOTUS Spiro T. Agnew in 1974, he is the author of four novels, Ronald S. Liebman turns 82… Israeli novelist and documentary filmmaker, Amos Gitai turns 75… U.S. senator (D-WA), Patty Murray turns 75… Senior circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Barry G. Silverman turns 74… Past president and then board chair of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Md., Helane Leibowitz Goldstein turns 72… Israeli ambassador to Germany, he has also been Israel’s ambassador to both the U.K. and the U.N., Ron Prosor turns 67… NYC-based philanthropist, Shari L. Aronson… Former EVP at JFNA, now CEO at the Vancouver, B.C.-based Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation, Mark Gurvis turns 66… Owner of Sababa Travel, Sharon Kleiman Rockman… Los Angeles-based real estate agent, Peter Turman… President and CEO of NYC-based real estate firm Tishman Speyer, Rob Speyer turns 56… CEO of Focus at 50, helping Israeli companies break into the U.S. market, Asher Epstein… Director of development for Yad Vashem UK Foundation, Joshua E. London turns 50… Executive director of the StandWithUs Israel office in Jerusalem, Michael Dickson turns 48… Member of the Council of the District of Columbia since 2015, Brianne Nadeau turns 45… Political journalist, opinion commentator and satirist, Jamie Weinstein turns 42…SUNDAY: Long-time baseball reporter for The New York Times, he is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Murray Chass turns 87… U.S. Ambassador to Italy during the Trump 45 administration, he is a co-founder of private equity firm Granite Capital International, Lewis Eisenberg turns 83… Long-time Fox News anchor, more recently at CNN from 2021 to 2024, Chris Wallace turns 78… Retired CEO of Wakefield, Mass.-based CAST, a nonprofit whose mission is to transform education for students with disabilities, Linda Gerstle… Pediatrician and medical ethicist, John D. Lantos, MD turns 71… Dermatologist in Los Angeles, Lamar Albert Nelson, MD… First female rabbi ordained in Conservative Judaism, Amy Eilberg turns 71… Co-founder of Ares Management, he is the owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, Tony Ressler turns 65… Deputy director of the National Economic Council during the first 17 months of the Biden administration, now a distinguished professor at Northeastern University, Seth D. Harris turns 63… Former executive director of Start-Up Nation Central until 2022, now a strategic adviser to Israeli start-ups including Remilk, Wendy Singer… Editor of The Wall Street Journal‘s Weekend Review section, Gary Rosen… Managing director at Goldman Sachs, he recently completed 31 years at the firm, Raanan Agus… Los Angeles-based trial attorney for many high-profile clients, Babak “Bobby” Samini turns 55… Producer, actress and screenwriter, Alexandra Brandy Smothers… Former member of the Knesset, she now serves as the co-chair of the Green Movement of Israel, Yael Cohen Paran turns 52… Computer programmer, creator of the BitTorrent protocol and founder of Chia cryptocurrency, Bram Cohen turns 50… Only son and heir-apparent of the current Rebbe of the Belz chasidic dynasty, Rabbi Aharon Mordechai Rokeach turns 50… Israeli actress, model and television anchor, Miri Bohadana turns 48… Reporter and host of “The Daily” at The New York Times, Michael Barbaro… Member of the Florida Senate until 2024, Lauren Book turns 41… Freelance journalist, Rosie Gray turns 36… Argentine fashion model and artist, Naomi Preizler turns 34… Pitcher for Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics and 2023 World Baseball Classic, he is the founder of Stadium Custom Kicks, Alex Katz turns 31… October 7 hostage, she was rescued by the IDF in June 2024, Noa Argamani turns 28…

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the U.N. General Assembly at 9 a.m. ET. Netanyahu met with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner yesterday in New York.
• The U.N. Security Council is set to vote later today on a Russia– and China-led resolution delaying the implementation of snapback sanctions on Iran.
• The traveling Nova exhibition opens today in Boston.
• In London, center-left officials, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are gathering for the Global Progress Action Summit.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have much to respond to when he stands in front of the United Nations General Assembly’s green marble wall today: a cascade of Palestinian state recognitions by Western countries, a flotilla of activists, influencers and parliamentarians — protected by Spanish and Italian naval ships — and accusations of genocide leveled from the UNGA stage.

On the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to “tell our truth — citizens of Israel, the truth of IDF soldiers, of our state.”

“I will condemn those leaders who, instead of condemning the murderers, rapists and burners of children, want to give them a state in the heart of Israel. This will not happen,” Netanyahu said ahead of his departure from Israel.

Netanyahu also plans on attacking what he perceives as the moral bankruptcy of countries he sees as rewarding the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attack and casting Israel as a villain. His arrival in New York was accompanied by an advertising campaign launched by his office on billboards and trucks driving around Turtle Bay and Times Square with the message “Remember October 7.” The signs also feature a QR code that leads to a site depicting the atrocities of that day.

“The goal of the campaign is to remind world leaders and the public about the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and the unbelievable brutality of the terrorist organization that continues to hold 48 hostages in captivity in Gaza,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Ahead of the speech, Wing of Zion — Israel’s version of Air Force One — took a route that is hundreds of kilometers longer than usual, apparently to avoid the airspace of countries that might act on the International Criminal Court’s warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest. Wing of Zion flew from Israel over the Mediterranean to Greek and Italian airspace, and then continued crossing over the Mediterranean until it reached the Atlantic Ocean.

The route was longer than the one he took to the U.S. in July, which overpassed France. A French diplomatic source said that Jerusalem asked Paris for authorization to fly over its airspace, which it provided, but the plane took another route anyway.

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

Eye on Gaza Aid: In The Washington Post, Ken Isaacs, the vice president of programs and government relations at Samaritan’s Purse, reflects on his recent visit to Gaza and observation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s work. “I arrived in Gaza a skeptic of GHF but left an advocate. Simply put, the common portrayal of this organization radically distorts reality. I observed GHF’s relief operations firsthand. What I saw was not a textbook distribution — because no textbook exists for a war zone such as Gaza, where terrorist combatants hide among civilians. Instead, I saw GHF using unconventional means to successfully deliver food to civilians on a staggering scale under nearly impossible circumstances. It wasn’t perfect, but it was good. … What is needed: less ideology and more courage; less bureaucratic sclerosis and more moral clarity. Don’t let the pursuit of humanitarian perfection become the enemy of the practical good.” [WashPost]

Bibi Facing the Lions: Bloomberg’s Ethan Bronner gives historical context for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.N. General Assembly taking place this morning. “For the past decade, as Israel also became richer and more powerful, the Palestinian issue seemed almost to disappear for many. Palestinians were divided and despondent, and Arab powers increased their links to Israeli defense and high-tech industries, paying lip service to Palestinian sovereignty. … For many around the world, [Oct. 7] was proof that the Palestinian issue won’t be buried, that the oppressed will eventually burst with rage. They expected Israel to retaliate but then for it to negotiate a joint future. Israelis saw things differently. The assault, involving the killing and kidnapping of children and the abuse of women, combined with a pile-on from militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, which included the use of ballistic missiles and was backed by billions of dollars from Iran, drove for them a stake into the heart of a Palestinian state where, they feared, radicalism could flourish and produce another Oct. 7.” [Bloomberg]

A Friend in Jakarta: In The Wall Street Journal, Haisam Hassanein reflects on Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, in which he said that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must recognize and address Israel’s security concerns. “Why now? Mr. Subianto is a former general with pragmatic instincts. He knows that in a world fractured by Russia’s war in Ukraine, Middle East upheaval and U.S.-China rivalry, stability demands fresh thinking. He also knows Indonesia can’t become a global leader while clinging to outdated slogans. … Critics in Jakarta and elsewhere will accuse him of betraying the Palestinian cause. In truth, his statement reflects a hard reality: Palestinians won’t win independence by denying Israelis’ right to security, just as Israelis can’t win peace by ignoring Palestinian aspirations. Progress requires mutual legitimacy. Mr. Subianto’s speech was a rare reminder of that balance.” [WSJ]

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is summoning hundreds of generals and military officials stationed around the world to Virginia next week…

El0n Musk’s xAI inked an agreement with the General Services Administration to provide federal agencies with access to the artificial intelligence chatbot…

A group of 30 House Democrats urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to leverage a joint statement from the Arab League this summer, which called for Hamas’ disarmament and removal of power, the release of hostages and a path toward a two-state solution, as a potential diplomatic breakthrough for the region, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The lawmakers also condemned the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state recently undertaken by several close U.S. allies…

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who met in Washington last month with President Donald Trump, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, is reportedly seeking a role in Trump’s postwar plan for Gaza…

The Justice Department is pressing federal prosecutors to investigate George Soros’ Open Society Foundations…

In The Wall Street Journal, Tikvah Fund President and CEO Eric Cohen explains how the organization will use its recent grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the largest in the endowment’s history, to counter antisemitism…

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft will sell 8% of the football team, which he purchased for $172 million in 1994, to Sixth Street Partners and Dean Metropoulos, in a deal that values the franchise at $9 billion… 

Microsoft ended the access given to the IDF’s Unit 8200 to its Azure cloud platform, alleging the IDF violated the company’s terms of service by storing surveillance information in the cloud; the termination comes after protests at Microsoft’s headquarters, including a sit-in in the office of President Brad Smith…

A California man was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison for a series of firebombings and arson attacks in the Bay Area that he said were inspired by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks…

Gene Simmons, Lisa Edelstein and Mayim Bialik were among the more than 1,200 artists and media industry names who signed onto a letter opposing a recent call by other Hollywood boldfaced names to boycott Israeli film institutions…

The UEFA Europa League is slated to vote next week on banning Israel’s national soccer team…

The European Broadcasting Union will hold a vote in November on expelling Israel from the Eurovision Song Contest…

Israeli authorities arrested a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who previously lived in Morocco on charges of spying for Iran after he was approached by operatives from Tehran earlier this year…

Newly obtained satellite photos indicate that Iran likely carried out an undeclared missile test last week…

New York Times puzzle creator Mel Taub died at 97…

Hostage family members attended the American Jewish Committee’s annual Global Jewish Diplomacy Reception at Manhattan’s Harmonie Club last night on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, some of whom offered staunch criticism of the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports for Jewish Insider.

Hockey reporter for Sportsnet and as an insider for the NHL Network, Elliotte Friedman turns 55 on Saturday…

FRIDAY: Stage, film and television actor, he is best known as “The Most Interesting Man in the World” appearing in Dos Equis beer commercials, Jonathan Goldsmith turns 87… CEO of Israel Longhorn Project, dedicated to bringing Texas longhorn cattle to Israel, Robin Rosenblatt turns 77… Five Towns (N.Y.) resident, Barry Mandel… Former chairman and CEO of the French engineering conglomerate Alstom, he is the son of Holocaust survivors, Patrick Kron turns 72… Senior political advisor to President Bill Clinton during his second term and co-author of a New York Times best-seller on the future of politics in the U.S., Doug Sosnik turns 69… Chairman of Huntington National Bank and chairman of Jewish Federations of North America, Gary H. Torgow turns 69… Teaneck-resident with a Jersey City dental practice, Paul Lustiger, DDS… Historian, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Kagan turns 67… Chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), Mark Isakowitz turns 59… Professional poker player with four World Series of Poker bracelets, his lifetime winnings exceed $13.9 million, Josh Arieh turns 51… Men’s basketball head coach at the University of Nevada Las Vegas starting this year, he was the 2017 ACC Coach of the Year, Josh Pastner turns 48… CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, David G. Greenfield turns 47… Former communications director for New York Gov. David Paterson, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), she now heads a NYC based PR firm, Risa Beth Heller turns 46… Television host and producer, in 2020 he came in second on “Dancing with the Stars,” Yaniv “Nev” Schulman turns 41… NYC-based senior editor of global digital video programming at Bloomberg LP, Henry Seltzer… Associate director of policy and government affairs at AIPAC, Joshua Nason… Joanna Weiss DiMarco turns 35… Senior director of development at Tamid Group, Alec Deer… Director of strategic initiatives at the National Black Empowerment Council, Marvel Joseph…

SATURDAY: Co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons, Arthur M. Blank turns 83… Of counsel, business litigator at the Jaszczuk law firm, Stephen J. Landes turns 80… Board member of the Milken Family Foundation, Ellen Sandler… Chairman of the Victoria Beckham fashion brand, Ralph Toledano turns 74… Longtime Washington correspondent, he is the author of books on Israel’s defense, intelligence and diplomatic services, Dan Raviv turns 71… President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond until 2017, he was a recent chair of the Richmond Jewish Foundation, Jeffrey M. Lacker turns 70… President of public relations firm BGR (Barbour, Griffith & Rogers), Jeffrey H. Birnbaum turns 69… Member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 until earlier this year, he is married to a Minneapolis rabbi, Marcia A. Zimmerman, Frank Hornstein turns 66… Comedian and author, he used to be a frequent guest on both Letterman and Conan O’Brien, Marc Maron turns 62… Chief rabbi of France since 2014, Rabbi Haïm Korsia turns 62… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2005, she was chairperson of the DNC until 2016, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) turns 59… Literary and film publicist based in Israel, she is also the publisher of Intelligentsia Books, Judy Tashbook Safern… President and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Michael Balaban turns 59… President of NBC News Editorial, Rebecca Blumenstein turns 59… Rabbi and kabbalist, Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto turns 52… Israel’s special envoy for innovation, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum turns 52… Author of four books on North Africa and the Middle East and president of The Center for Peace Communications, Joseph Braude… Musician, actress, writer, director and comedian, Carrie Rachel Brownstein turns 51… State Treasurer of Ohio from 2011 until 2019, Josh Mandel turns 48… Architect, entrepreneur and author, Marc Kushner turns 48… Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the D.C. suburbs, Daniel Isaac Helmer turns 44… SVP and rabbi-in-residence at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Rori Picker Neiss… Advisory manager for cyber and strategic risk at Deloitte, she was previously a Hebrew teacher and coordinator of Jewish programs at Zeta Beta Tau, Alexa Wertman Brown… Actor best known for his role as Geoff Schwartz in 161 episodes of ABC’s “The Goldbergs,” Sam Lerner turns 33…

SUNDAY: International Emmy Award-winning Scottish television producer, Sir Jeremy Israel Isaacs turns 93… Former governor of Vermont (the first Jewish woman elected to govern any state), she was also the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, Madeleine May Kunin turns 92… Physician and theoretical biologist, he was a 1987 MacArthur genius fellow, Stuart Kauffman turns 86… Former president of Warner Home Video, Warren Lieberfarb turns 82… French businessman who, with his brother, own the controlling interest in the House of Chanel and several famous vineyards, Alain Wertheimer turns 77… Real estate agent in New York’s Hudson Valley, Jerry Weiss… Teaneck, N.J.-based real estate attorney, Gary E. Miller… Physician and U.S. senator (R-LA), Bill Cassidy turns 68… Pediatrician and author of the book Winning A Debate with An Israel Hater about the fight against BDS, Dr. Michael Harris… Best-selling author of more than 25 books, he is also a magazine journalist, Ben Greenman turns 56… President and CEO of the JCC Association of North America, Barak Hermann… Area director for San Diego and Orange counties for AIPAC, Elliott Nahmias… Winner of four Olympic gold medals in swimming for the USA (2000 and 2004), Leonid “Lenny” Krayzelburg turns 50… News editor and correspondent at Voice of America, Michael Lipin… Israeli Ironman triathlete, Nina Pekerman turns 48… SVP at the Katz Watson Group, Lauren France… Director of field marketing for the Anti-Defamation League, Samantha Collidge… Regional director for the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition, Hadassa Levenson Korn… VP of operations at Tel Aviv-based iAngels, Ayelet Cohen… 2023 graduate of Yale Law School and author of a coming-of-age novel set in the Modern Orthodox community, David Hopen turns 32… Former NFL, XFL and CFL wide receiver and kick returner, Daniel Braverman turns 32…

• In New York today, an event on “Breaking the Chain: Global Action Against Hostage-Taking” will feature the first public remarks from former Israeli hostage Na’ama Levy. Also speaking are a Yazidi survivor of ISIS captivity; Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N.; Dorothy Shea, acting U.S. representative to the U.N.; and Ibrahim Olabi, Syria’s ambassador to the U.N.; among others.
• Chabad at Vanderbilt University will honor Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier with Chabad’s Lamplighter award tomorrow. Read JI’s interview with Diermeier and Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Andrew Martin here. 
• On Saturday, the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream is opening with its flagship exhibition, the “American Dream Experience,” in Washington.
• On Sunday, Charlie Kirk’s memorial will be held at the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., where speakers will include President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and far-right podcast host Tucker Carlson, who has advanced conspiracy theories in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder claiming the conservative activist was being pressured by Israel.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

In Washington, whether a public official or their spokesperson is speaking honestly is usually not fully known until much later. Take Israel’s attack on Qatar last week: the Trump administration claimed not to have known about it ahead of time, but Israeli officials told Axios that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given President Donald Trump a heads-up.

When a president leaves office, his former staffers tend to get rather loose-lipped — an opportunity for them to rehabilitate their reputation and, perhaps, tell the truth about their views (or at least the narrative they’d like to put forward on their own terms, not those of their boss). 

The past few months have provided such an opportunity to the three architects of President Joe Biden’s Middle East policy team: Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, Biden’s coordinator for the Middle East at the White House. All of them played a crucial role in shaping American policy toward Israel and Gaza after Oct. 7. Each has in recent months written op-eds and made lengthy appearances on podcasts and cable news to comment on developments in the Middle East. 

Looking at where Blinken, Sullivan and McGurk have positioned themselves publicly, without the constraints of government service, is a sign of the options available to Democrats right now, at a moment when the party’s future is up for grabs — with an ascendant anti-Israel wing that is exerting stronger influence than ever, though it remains in the minority.

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

Green Light for Annexation?: Philip Gordon, former national security advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, argues in The New York Times that the international community must pressure Israel to stop any expansion in the West Bank due to the Trump administration’s permissiveness. “The Trump administration has not officially given its blessing to Israeli annexation of the West Bank. But it appears to be doing nothing to stand in Israel’s way. … Given America’s apparent acquiescence, only international action can prevent a coming disaster. It was encouraging that the United Arab Emirates said earlier this month that Israeli annexation in the West Bank would be a “red line,” jeopardizing Israel’s prized relationship with Abu Dhabi. A conference sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia at the U. N. General Assembly next week on the Palestinian issue will be another chance for the international community to put down a marker that most of the world objects to this Israeli government’s agenda. The government of Mr. Netanyahu should know that it can have flourishing relations with the rest of the world, or total control of the West Bank — but not both.” [NYT]

Ellison’s Empire: Former Wall Street banker and founding partner of the Puck media company William Cohan suggests in The New York Times that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s rising profile as a “media magnate,” along with his friendship with President Donald Trump, threatens to reshape American journalism into a more partisan landscape. “Along with his son, David, [Ellison] could soon end up controlling a powerful social media platform, an iconic Hollywood movie studio and one of the largest content streaming services, as well as two of the country’s largest news organizations. Given Mr. Ellison’s friendship with, and affinity for, Donald Trump, an increasingly emboldened president could be getting an extraordinarily powerful media ally — in other words, the very last thing our country needs right now. … No matter their motives, two independent journalistic voices, CBS News and CNN, could soon be combined into something potentially almost unrecognizable, something way too close to what is served up on a daily basis by the Murdochs. And that will put yet another chink in the fragile armor that is America’s democracy.” [NYT]

President Donald Trump said at a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer yesterday that the recognition of a Palestinian state, which the U.K. plans to do this weekend, is “one of [the] few disagreements” between the two leaders. “We want [the war] to end. We have to have the hostages back immediately. That’s what the people of Israel want, they want them back. And we want the fighting to stop,” the president continued…

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to talk today, their second conversation in Trump’s second term, about trade and the framework deal to save TikTok in the U.S…

Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa told reporters on Wednesday that Syria and Israel could reach a security agreement “within days”…