President Donald Trump grew so frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during last September’s negotiations over a U.S.-brokered deal to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, that Trump cursed and yelled at Netanyahu in a phone call days before the agreement was announced publicly, according to a new book.

“Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi,” Trump said in a phone call with Netanyahu, Jared Kushner and White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, according to a book published on Tuesday by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan chronicling the first year of Trump’s second term. “All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you.” 

The conversation came during the United Nations General Assembly last September, when Trump was selling the deal that became his 20-point plan to end the Gaza war that began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. In the book, titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, Haberman and Swan recount the turbulent couple of weeks that led to the deal — starting with Kushner’s searing anger at the Israeli government after the Israel Defense Forces conducted an airstrike that targeted Hamas leadership in Doha. The September 9 attack came one day after Kushner and Witkoff met in Witkoff’s Miami home with Ron Dermer, a top advisor to Netanyahu, to discuss day-after plans for Gaza.

“Dermer lied to us,” Kushner and Witkoff told officials at the White House after the strikes in Qatar. 

The Qataris, according to Haberman and Swan, initially reacted by deciding they no longer wanted to help Israel. Kushner felt the same.

“I’m f**king out. The Israelis are crazy,” Kushner reportedly told an associate at the time. Then he realized it could provide an opening to rein in Netanyahu after nearly two years of war. 

In the aftermath, Kushner drafted what would become Trump’s 20-point peace plan. Days later, on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York, Kushner and Witkoff met with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister. The Americans told Al Thani that he had two options: isolate Israel further, which would be “understandable,” or use the moment “for leverage” to get Israel to negotiate. 

Al Thani took Kushner’s laptop and began typing edits directly into the draft document, according to the book. 

Trump brought the deal to Arab and Muslim leaders before he showed it to Netanyahu. Witkoff and Kushner warned White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that Netanyahu might try to call Trump to scuttle the plan. When he did finally call the White House, Wiles patched through Kushner and Witkoff, who stayed on the phone with Trump and Netanyahu. 

As soon as Trump got on the phone, he began yelling at Netanyahu — the tirade where he said everyone was sick of the prime minister. 

“You can’t back out of this. I’m the best friend Israel ever had. Everybody hates you, and I’ve stood by you,” Trump said, according to the book. “This is a great deal for Israel.” 

Netanyahu said he would agree to the deal. The two men announced it together at a joint press conference two days later, though the deal was not yet official. They presented a united front. Trump said Netanyahu would have his “full backing” to continue the war if Hamas did not agree to the deal.  

On the evening of Oct. 8, just over a week later, the deal was finalized. Soon after, the 20 living hostages who remained in Gaza were released.

Jewish Republican donors and activists are voicing their strong disappointment with President Donald Trump’s newly announced memorandum of understanding with Iran, which has been met with criticism from GOP lawmakers as well as influential hawkish conservatives.

Trump has fiercely defended the deal to end the war with Iran, the text of which was released Wednesday, claiming it is superior to the nuclear agreement with Tehran that was reached by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

But in interviews with Jewish Insider on Thursday, several Jewish conservatives who supported the war expressed misgivings about the deal that reopens the Strait of Hormuz, saying that it had granted too many concessions to a weakened Iran — including waiving sanctions on oil exports — while neglecting to broach the regime’s funding of terror proxies and its ballistic missile arsenal.

They also raised concerns that the memorandum of understanding with Tehran had not been favorable to Israel, a U.S. partner in the war, pointing to a term of the preliminary agreement that calls for a permanent end to military operations in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah, a key Iranian ally.

And they expressed serious doubts over Iran’s willingness to finalize a nuclear agreement during the 60-day negotiating period, fearing it could be indefinitely extended by “mutual consent,” per the terms of the MOU.

Their reactions highlight a rare point of tension between Trump and pro-Israel Republicans, who have long applauded his commitment to upholding a close alliance with the Jewish state, even amid rising hostility to Israel from the populist far right opposed to foreign wars.

Vice President JD Vance, who had initially been skeptical of the war, delivered a scathing public rebuke of Israeli officials who had criticized the agreement, saying on Thursday that Trump is “the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time” and warning Israeli detractors against “attacking the only powerful ally” they have “anywhere left in the entire world.”

But Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser who is on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that the war “achieved none of its stated aims,” including Trump’s pledge to liberate Iranians from a theocratic regime and nuclear disarmament. “We ran 26 miles, and then chose to stop at the last 385 yards,” he told JI. “I don’t understand why.”

“The most disturbing thing about the deal is that we have conceded to the Iranians up front that they can leave Lebanon alone,” Levine added, saying the deal effectively constrained Israel’s right to defend itself.

Levine predicted a future scenario in which Hezbollah would be “lobbing missiles into Israel” before the upcoming elections in Israel and the United States, prompting a disastrous chain reaction that could lead to the collapse of the deal and result in widespread GOP losses in November.

“Call me disappointed that we’re going down this road,” he sighed.

The RJC, for its part, was more positive about the deal, saying on Thursday that it had confidence in Trump’s decision, even as it was “deeply skeptical that the Islamic Republic has a genuine interest in peace or will abandon its Islamist, hegemonic malign ambitions in the region.”

The group said it was reassured that Trump had threatened to strike Iran again if it reneged on the agreement. “We take the president at his word and trust him to finish the job in the best interests of the United States and our allies in the region,” the RJC wrote in a lengthy statement.

Other Jewish leaders, however, have not been as charitable in assessing Trump’s motivations. One prominent Jewish Republican donor criticized the deal, speculating it had only come as a response to Trump’s fears about GOP losses in the midterms, as the war and rising gas prices have emerged as potent sources of Democratic attacks.

Gabriel Groisman, a Republican donor in Florida, said the terms of the deal were “certainly worrisome,” noting that “there is still no agreement on the major issues” such as “uranium enrichment, Iran’s ballistic missile program and its funding of terrorist proxies,” even as “sanctions relief appears poised to take effect immediately.”

“This MOU is not the end of the war and it unfortunately will not bring lasting peace,” he told JI. “Instead,” he added, “it appears to signal a significant realignment of American policy in the region, which raises serious concerns for many Americans, for U.S. allies and of course for American Jews, who have a special interest in the safety and security of the world’s only Jewish state.”

Joshua Katzen, the publisher of the Jewish News Syndicate and an RJC board member, echoed that sentiment, saying that he was “disappointed to see” Trump “apparently throwing away the leverage he has painstakingly accumulated and trading it for promises that are likely to be broken.”

“The worst aspect is that by relieving sanctions and allowing Iran to sell oil before they have performed more than letting a few ships through Hormuz,” he added, “Trump had given them the funds to rebuild and reconstitute the threat that he just spent billions of dollars to degrade.”

Katzen expressed hope that Trump was “playing four-dimensional chess here, as he often has in the past, but right now, I’m not so sure his horizon is larger than temporarily reducing oil prices while giving Iran the funds and time to renew their existential threat.”

While many Jewish Republicans acknowledged that Trump had been a strong friend to Israel and praised his initial decision to attack Iran, they were otherwise largely baffled about his decision to end the war, even as some attempted to put a positive spin on the move.

“I’m on a bunch of various threads and the majority are not happy, to say the least,” Alan Sager, a Jewish Republican donor and activist based in Texas, told JI. “I’m a wait-and-see guy.”

Still, he added that he was confused with Trump’s decision and doubted the Iranians would operate in good faith — particularly with regard to nuclear talks that have long proven to be unfruitful. “I don’t know what Trump is thinking,” he told JI. “I don’t trust the Iranians as far as I can throw them.”

Brad Kastan, a GOP donor in Ohio, said he was “taken aback like everybody else” when he learned about the deal, while acknowledging there was “no doubt” Trump ceded valuable leverage in readily agreeing to a range of key concessions. 

“But as in most things in life, things are never as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared,” he told JI, speculating that perhaps Trump agreed to an end to the war in order to “buy more time” for the United States and Israel to replenish their eroding munitions reserves. “Why would you let them off the mat unless you needed to?” 

“For every disappointment, I can’t help but think of all the good that happened. There are a lot of people rushing to jump to conclusions” while ignoring “the bigger picture,” Kastan said. “To conclude we are not better off today than we were a year ago is objectively false,” he argued, claiming “Iran is back on its heels.”

Marc Zell, an Israeli-American lawyer and chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, said in a social media post on Friday that he did not “like the content of the MOU or the tone of certain statements from the” White House “defending it, but that’s politics in an election year.”  

“The bottom line is the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is strong and inviolable,” Zell wrote.

One top Jewish Republican bundler said he was also more sanguine about Trump’s deal. “He took a huge risk for Israel, and people need to see what happens and calm down,” the bundler told JI, referring to the start of the war in February. “No president has done more than him or would do more.”

But Joel Geiderman, an RJC board member in Los Angeles, argued that “Israel’s last reliable ally seems to have abandoned her,” telling JI that he was “very disappointed” with the recently approved agreement.

Another top GOP donor, who also spoke with JI on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive subject in the wake of the deal, suggested that he was looking at the agreement through a realist’s lens.

In initially launching the war, Trump had “greatly underestimated Iran’s capabilities and willingness to stick with it,” and “put himself in a box where he had to make a deal,” the donor explained. “Every time he announced we had won the war, they’d shoot another ballistic missile.”

“Do I like this deal? Hell no. Nobody thinks he made a great deal. But there’s a difference between making a great deal and making the only deal you can make,” he told JI. “Knowing Donald Trump, he was going to make a deal.”

President Donald Trump expressed disappointment on Tuesday with Israel’s recent military actions in response to Hezbollah, criticizing a strike on a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut as “vicious” and suggesting that Israel step back and let Syria handle the fight against the Iranian-backed terror group.

Speaking with the Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France, Trump criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of Israel’s northern front, suggesting that the IDF’s response was unnecessary and disproportionate.

“I didn’t like that he [Netanyahu] did an attack based on … a very minor little thing with some drones that were released,” Trump said, referring to a Hezbollah drone strike on northern Israeli communities on Sunday. “I saw that [Israeli] attack, I saw where that bomb went. That was vicious, that was too much.”

While Trump emphasized that he maintains an “unbelievable” and “great” relationship with Netanyahu, he insisted that the Israeli leader must exercise more restraint.

“Bibi has to be more responsible with respect to Lebanon,” Trump said. “I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and Hezbollah. They should have been able to do the job faster.”

“You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah,” he added. 

The president added that the protracted fighting “goes on forever” and threatens to cast a “negative light” on the newly announced memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran. 

Despite ongoing Hezbollah attacks targeting northern Israel, Trump proposed that Israel step back and let the government in Syria confront the group.

“I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Hezbollah, because to be honest with you, I think they do a better job of doing it,” Trump said.

The diplomatic fallout highlights a growing disconnect over the parameters of the broader regional agreement. Senior U.S. officials confirmed that an Israeli military withdrawal from southern Lebanon is not a condition of the U.S.-Iran MOU, a position firmly backed by Netanyahu, who insists such a provision should not apply to Jerusalem.

However, Hezbollah’s media relations office claimed on Tuesday that the group received explicit assurances from Tehran that Iran would refuse to sign a final, permanent nuclear deal with Washington unless Israeli forces completely withdraw from Lebanese territory.

Trump also noted that he intends to submit any final agreement aimed at ending the war with Iran and restarting formal nuclear negotiations to Congress for review.

A year and a day after Israeli fighter jets first opened fire above Iran, setting off a year of intermittent fighting and numerous failed negotiations, President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that an agreement with Iran to end the war had been reached. A signing ceremony set for later this week in Switzerland — which is expected to be attended by Vice President JD Vance — will kick off a 60-negotiation period to address Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

For Americans, the deal closes a chapter that saw high gas and food prices as well as schisms in the GOP as the party’s wings fought over how the war should be fought and ended. Among Democrats, legislators and activists from the party’s progressive wing — from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to the National Iranian American Council’s Trita Parsi (who additionally gloated, “Netanyahu failed!”) — praised the deal.

But Israel was not part of the negotiations, nor did it have final say in what was in the agreement inked between Washington and Tehran. As the Is were dotted and Ts were crossed on the agreement, tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — already on display following Israel’s threatened escalation last week in Beirut, followed by an actual escalation on Sunday when Israel struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood — deepened. In a call on Sunday after Israel conducted the strike — later claiming to have killed a senior Hezbollah commander — Trump told Axios he had conveyed to Netanyahu that he “was so pissed off.” Netanyahu, Trump said, “has no f***ing judgement. I let him know that.”

In Israel, the deal is being met with dismay across the board, as neither of the war goals laid out by Netanyahu last June — removing Iran’s “existential threats” to Israel and ending Tehran’s support for its terror proxies across the region — have been met, even after a year of fighting.

With elections in the country fast approaching, Netanyahu, who has long billed himself as “Mr. Security,” is already finding himself on the receiving end of criticism from across the political spectrum. Former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman blasted the deal as “catastrophe from Israel’s perspective,” while prominent right-wing Israeli journalist Amit Segal posted an ominous quote from former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The question now is what, exactly, is in the agreement. Iran’s state-linked Mehr agency reported that under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. will release $12 billion in frozen assets to Iran before talks begin.

Fox News reported that the $12 billion figure, as well as other reports of the deal’s stipulations, are incorrect, and that officials within the Trump administration are growing frustrated over rumors about the contours of the agreement.

Calls for the deal’s text to be made public have come from even Trump’s staunchest supporters. Commentator Mark Levin said he has “asked for days, why can’t we, the people, see the damn MOU?” Levin added that he had “never seen anything like this. If it is a great outcome for peace, then release it.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on X on Sunday that he was “somewhat concerned” that Iran’s account of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal diverges sharply from what the U.S. negotiators are claiming, and demanded Vice President JD Vance personally present the deal to Congress. 

The vice president, who two months ago traveled to Pakistan for high-level negotiations with Iranian officials, has increasingly become the public face of the Iran talks. In an interview last week that aired yesterday on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Vance said he believed “that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program” in the long term.

For Vance, the success or failure of the deal, and of the negotiations to follow, could become one of the defining political issues of his rumored 2028 presidential bid — one in which he will likely find himself up against Secretary of State Marco Rubio in what could be a bruising primary.

With the deal’s signing later this week, the military phase of the war — begun just over a year ago — will conclude. But what comes next is the political phase, which will determine Iran’s nuclear future, Israeli security policy and the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the region for decades to come. 

President Donald Trump named Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as his nominee to replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, after a two-week furor over his plans to name federal housing chief Bill Pulte to the role in an acting capacity.

But the nomination likely comes too late to prevent a lapse on Friday of federal foreign surveillance authorities under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Democrats have refused to reauthorize in protest of the Pulte pick.

Clayton is also a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and partner at  Sullivan & Cromwell. “Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay. I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible,” Trump said in his announcement on Truth Social.

Though his career hasn’t been focused on national security issues, Clayton’s time at the SEC and the SDNY gave him background in law enforcement, security and counterterrorism issues, which could help assuage concerns on the Hill.

Clayton signed the U.S. indictment of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro ahead of Maduro’s capture by U.S. forces in Caracas.

After his time in the first Trump administration, among other roles, Clayton served as an advisor to Fireblocks, an Israeli-based cryptocurrency firm.

Trump initially said that Pulte would begin as acting DNI at the end of the month, but subsequently moved his start date earlier, to June 19. It’s unlikely that Clayton could be confirmed before the end of next week, so it remains unclear whether Trump still intends to put Pulte in the role at all.

Trump said Thursday afternoon that Pulte will be DNI for “a little while” and “he’s running it for a short while we get a very talented person, Jay Clayton, in.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters, “Pulte’s got to go. The DNI role is too important for him to be there. He has got to go, period. No matter what else they do.”

Asked whether he would support Clayton, Schumer responded, “I support getting rid of Pulte. That’s unequivocal.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) told Jewish Insider he was “encouraged by the president’s decision to name someone permanently for that role, and it’s the right move.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on X that Clayton is an “outstanding choice” who has “real-world experience, the complete confidence of the President and has performed every task in the public and private sectors in an exemplary manner.”

Some Democrats worried by Trump’s pick of Pulte appear to be at least somewhat relieved by the Clayton nomination.

“[It’s] a vast improvement. I’ll need to look at his record,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters. “I’ll need to look at his record … whether he has experience in the area of national intelligence.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on X he has “known and respected Jay Clayton for decades” and that he will be a “terrific DNI.”

“Had this nomination been made a week ago, lots of pain might have been avoided,” Himes said.

Others remain on guard.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) said he needs to research Clayton further before forming an opinion on him but said that he believes Trump “hasn’t changed on the whole idea of using the DNI to effectively screw with the 2026 elections.”

The Clayton nomination seems to come too late to salvage FISA talks before the Section 702 authorities lapse. Both chambers rejected efforts for a short-term extension of surveillance authorities — which Republicans warn creates national security and terrorism risks, especially ahead of the World Cup.

A bill requiring a two-thirds majority in the House was opposed by a majority of the House on Thursday, with Democrats and several Republicans voting against it. The House has now left Washington for a scheduled recess until June 23. 

Senate Democrats blocked efforts to unanimously pass an extension of Section 702 authorities shortly before Trump announced Clayton’s nomination.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I’ve never been a fan of Director Gabbard, but if Director Gabbard were to stay until he was confirmed, that could be a path out. But again, if there was any level of serious concern about this in the White House — the House has already left town.”

But Warner said he has “great respect” for Clayton.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told reporters, “Quite frankly, I wish we were talking about the substance of the bill, how we balance national security concerns on the one hand and civil liberties on the other. Instead, once again, Donald Trump is the fly in the ointment, and he’s put forward someone [Pulte] that demonstrates that he’s much more interested in having a political operative over our intelligence agencies than preserving our national security.”

Asked about Clayton, Warnock said, “Pulte has to be out of the equation.”

Michael Makovsky, the president and CEO of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security of America, criticized the Trump administration’s recent handling of the U.S. war in Iran, expressing concern about the possibility of a broader peace deal that does not address key issues.

“The U.S. has lost the plot on Iran,” Makovsky told Jewish Insider on Friday. “After significant military achievements, declaring the ceasefire was a huge mistake, and there was too much hype about what pressure a blockade alone would achieve. The net result has reduced U.S. leverage, and the perception that America is vulnerable if gasoline nears $5 per gallon.”

Makovsky said that the U.S. “should not pursue a deal” with Iran, arguing that such an agreement “wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on.” He said that a deal “will only enrich and strengthen the regime and demoralize the Iranian people.” 

“Instead, the U.S. should resume military operations for a couple weeks, weaken the regime and its nuclear and conventional capabilities further, cease the military campaign while maintaining the blockade and support the Iranian people in every way possible,” he said.

Makovsky spoke to JI in response after President Donald Trump’s announcement on Friday that he was nearing a decision on the agreement reportedly reached by U.S. and Iranian negotiators to extend the ongoing ceasefire by 60 days, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and continue nuclear talks. Makovsky made the comments prior to this weekend’s fighting between the two countries, with the U.S. striking Iranian air defenses and drone sites after Iran downed an American MQ-1 drone and shot missiles at U.S. forces based in Kuwait.

“Based on what appears to being negotiated, the Strait of Hormuz will be opened in return for certain Iranian pledges about what will be worked out in further negotiations,” Makovsky said. “There are even reports about a possible international investment fund in Iran, which would be preposterous with this regime.”

After holding a Situation Room meeting on Friday, Trump reportedly requested several amendments to the negotiated deal, including firmer commitments around Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, leading to another round of negotiations. Iranian state media reported on Monday that its delegation was suspending talks with the U.S. over Israel’s continued strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Northwestern University’s Jewish community is celebrating the appointment of Mung Chiang as the school’s new president, optimistic that the supportive environment he fostered for Jewish students during his tenure as president of Purdue University will help combat the antisemitism seen at Northwestern in recent years. 

“Purdue and Chiang have strong reputations for defending freedom of expression while not tolerating antisemitism,” Rich Goldberg, a senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern, told Jewish Insider. 

But Goldberg added that Chiang, who has been president of Purdue since January 2023, has enjoyed “a university culture and state leadership that looks very different from what he will find in Evanston, Illinois.” Under Chiang’s leadership, Purdue avoided much of the campus unrest seen at other schools following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.

The appointment comes as Northwestern navigates the fallout from a turbulent chapter with antisemitism in recent years. 

In November, the Illinois school reached a $75 million settlement with the Trump administration to restore federal funding that was frozen months earlier over allegations that administrators failed to address campus antisemitism.

Chiang, who assumes the role on July 1, “will need a new board chairman and other fresh faces who will have his back to fully enforce the federal settlement,” said Goldberg. 

Michael Schill, Northwestern’s former president, announced his resignation last summer amid a series of controversies during his brief tenure. 

When anti-Israel encampments emerged on college campuses across the country in spring 2024, Schill, who is Jewish, became the first university president to strike a deal with demonstrators. The deal allowed the students to avoid disciplinary action taken and acceded to several demands of the protesters, which drew strong condemnation from many Jewish leaders at the time. 

In an August interview with the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Schill sounded  unfazed to hear that a Palestinian professor he hired as part of the deal with encampment protesters had once met with slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. 

At the time of Schill’s resignation, Jewish alumni expressed optimism that his departure, and the House interview being made public, would lead Northwestern leaders to make reforms. Henry Bienen, who served as Northwestern president from 1995-2009, assumed the role of interim university president in September. Bienen previously established Northwestern’s Qatar campus, which has faced scrutiny for faculty ties to Hamas.

Northwestern Hillel said it “congratulates Northwestern University on the appointment of Mung Chiang as the University’s next president. We are deeply grateful to Interim President Henry Bienen for his leadership and partnership, and we’re especially appreciative of his support for students and campus life during this period of transition.” 

Hillel at Purdue University declined to comment on Chiang’s record with the Jewish community. 

The Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, a coalition of Northwestern students, faculty, parents and alumni, said in a statement that it “welcomes President-elect Chiang at a pivotal moment for Northwestern and higher education more broadly.”

Chiang “arrives with a reputation for academic excellence, technological innovation, institutional leadership, and support for free expression and open inquiry,” said CAAN. 

CAAN called on Northwestern’s new leadership to “ensure equal treatment and civil rights protections for Jewish, Israeli, Zionist students and faculty” and to “reinforce academic neutrality and viewpoint diversity.” 

At the same time, it said, “Northwestern’s challenges are significant and will require sustained leadership, transparency, and institutional courage. Federal scrutiny, governance failures, campus polarization, and concerns involving antisemitism did not emerge overnight, and meaningful reform will require more than symbolic change.” 

Dogged by his vote to impeach President Donald Trump in 2021, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) lost his bid for reelection on Saturday night, finishing in third place in the Louisiana Republican primary behind Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and state Treasurer John Fleming.

Letlow and Fleming, the top two finishers, will now compete in a runoff, which will be held on June 27. Cassidy only received 25% of the primary vote, lagging well behind Letlow, who received 45% of the vote, and Fleming, who won 28%.

The race offered another strong signal that Trump’s backing is the most important factor in Republican nomination fights. Of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial, only two remain in the Senate. One of them, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), faces her own difficult reelection. 

The results also come two weeks after Trump and his political allies successfully ousted five Republican state senators in Indiana primaries, after they opposed the Trump administration’s push to redraw the state’s congressional lines to further favor Republicans.

Cassidy, first elected to the Senate in 2014, had long been one of the more bipartisan members of his caucus, using his experience as a doctor to take the lead on health care issues. He drew close scrutiny for his decision supporting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be confirmed as health and human services secretary in his role as HELP Committee chairman, despite holding serious misgivings over Kennedy’s record opposing vaccine requirements. 

In his concession speech, Cassidy told supporters: “When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You don’t claim that an election was stolen from you.” 

The next big test of Trump’s influence in party politics will come on Tuesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a virulent opponent of Israel, will face off against Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a Navy veteran. Trump allies and outside pro-Israel groups have poured millions into the race to defeat Massie. Polls show the race is competitive, with Gallrein holding late momentum. 

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview President Donald Trump’s trip to China amid the tenuous ceasefire with Iran, and report from last night’s Anti-Defamation League reception in Washington, where lawmakers sounded the alarm over rising antisemitism. We have the first interview with Michael Kay, announced yesterday as the next head of UJA-Federation of New York, and report on NY-12 candidate Alex Bores‘ effort to distance himself from Our Revolution‘s stances on Israel despite receiving the group’s endorsement. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Gov. Mikie Sherrill, Noam Bettan and Spencer Pratt.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.

What We’re Watching

• President Donald Trump will arrive in China this evening ahead of his meeting tomorrow in Beijing with President Xi Jinping. More below.
• In Washington, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding markups on a number of pieces of legislation, including a resolution condemning attacks on civilians in Sudan and calling for an end to external support for warring parties in the war-torn country.
• Elsewhere in D.C., the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s annual gathering continues. Speakers today include Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, pollster Jim Gerstein, former diplomat Dennis Ross, former Pentagon officials Jeremy Bash and Dana Stroul, and former national security officials Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer.
• Tonight, the Israeli Embassy in Washington is holding a belated Yom Ha’atzmaut reception.
• Nonprofit executive Denise Powell defeated Nebraska state Sen. John Cavanaugh by two points (39-37%) in the Democratic primary last night in Nebraska’s 2nd District. Cavanaugh, a consistent Israel critic, was one of 10 state senators who declined to sign onto a resolution supporting Israel and condemning Hamas on the first anniversary of the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Powell will face Republican Brinker Harding, an Omaha city councilmember, in a bid to succeed retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE).
• President Isaac Herzog is hosting the “President’s Conference for a Shared Israeli Future” today in Jerusalem. Actor Gal Gadot is participating in a panel dedicated to relations between Israel and the Diaspora.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

There will be a number of items on the agenda when the two most powerful men in the world — President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping — meet in Beijing tomorrow, chief among them tech and AI. The president is bringing with him a roster of top business leaders, including Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Apple’s Tim Cook, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick, BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman.

And while emerging technologies will be a major topic of conversation during the three-day trip, most eyes — and markets — are on the tenuous ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Beijing has, after all, been playing a major role in the U.S.-Iran conflict — even if it has done so from the margins: serving as the largest importer of oil from the Islamic Republic in violation of U.S. sanctions, meeting with top Iranian officials (including last week’s sit-down between Xi and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi) and transferring weapons to Iran through third countries.

Trump, who has spent much of his second term welcoming leaders to Washington, will be on Xi’s home turf, face-to-face with a leader who is opting not to use his leverage to push Iran into making concessions. The longer the uncertainty continues, the more restless even the president’s most fervent supporters will get — especially with the midterms approaching.

That dynamic is already beginning to play out on Capitol Hill. Yesterday, JI reported on divisions among Republican senators over whether the U.S. should reengage militarily with Iran, while last week, Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), who is facing a tough reelection battle in his swing district, became the first GOP lawmaker to introduce an authorization for use of military force in Iran.

All of that is good for Xi, and gives him little incentive to use China’s economic and diplomatic leverage over the Islamic Republic, which while knocked down a few pegs, has managed to maintain control despite the severe blows it has been dealt.

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

SOUNDING THE ALARM

Lawmakers offer dire warnings about rising antisemitism at ADL reception

A series of largely Democratic lawmakers painted an unusually dire portrait of the state of rising antisemitism and threats to the Jewish community in remarks on Tuesday evening at an Anti-Defamation League reception honoring Jewish American Heritage Month on Capitol Hill, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Several emphasized the need for those in the audience, many of them young Jewish congressional staffers and Washington professionals, to continue speaking out and fighting for the Jewish community in a time of crisis.

Unvalidated: Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) emphasized that efforts to fight antisemitism have often been met with additional hostility. “It is a very scary time for the Jewish community,” Friedman said. “And to make matters worse, when we express that we’re scared and that there’s this rising level of hatred directed towards the Jewish community, we’re often met with people telling us that we’re not allowed to feel that way. And how dare we even say that there’s anything wrong with treatment towards Jews in this country?”

Read the full story here with additional comments from Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

Dem divides: Hoyer, a pro-Israel stalwart and a former House majority leader, said on Tuesday that Jewish Democrats “ought to be” concerned about the critical way that some of their Democratic colleagues talk about Israel, in remarks at the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s annual leadership summit, where he was honored with an award marking his upcoming retirement, after 45 years in Congress, JI’s Gabby Deutch reports. 

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HEATED BACKLASH

Israeli officials, AJC slam Nick Kristof’s NYT column as modern-day ‘blood libel’

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column alleging widespread Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners was certain to generate intense debate and scrutiny, given the sensitivities involved in covering such a highly charged subject. But after it was published on Monday, his opinion piece, headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” has faced particularly heated backlash, including accusations of antisemitism and claims Kristof relied on discredited sources to advance his message, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Pushing back: Despite the direct testimonies he presented, critics have countered with a range of rebuttals, claiming that he drew a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, that his column overstated the existence of alleged misconduct and that his broader assessment rests on questionable data and sources that weaken his central thesis. The American Jewish Committee expressed concerns about Kristof’s decision to cite allegations that Israel had trained police dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, a claim critics have rejected as a thinly sourced conspiracy theory, saying the allegation represented “a modern-day blood libel in the ‘paper of record.’”

Read the full story here.

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NAME AND SHAME

DSA is ‘evil,’ trying to drive Jews out of polite society, D.C. Jewish leader says

Amid the rise of a DSA-aligned mayoral candidate in the city, a senior Jewish community leader in Washington, D.C., excoriated the Democratic Socialists of America as an “evil” organization committed to driving Jews out of society. Speaking on a webinar with other Washington-area Jewish leaders on Tuesday, Ron Halber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, stridently criticized the far-left group, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Icing out: “I think they’re a fringe, radical, antisemitic organization, and I happen to even think they’re evil,” Halber said. “They are trying to do in America what [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] seems to do internationally, which is to make being Jewish unacceptable in polite society.” He said that the group wants to make Jews feel “isolated” and force them to “renounce Zionism” and their connection to Israel in order to participate in the political process. Antisemitism is “core to their belief,” he continued.

Read the full story here.

Slotkin signals: Asked at the Politico Security Summit in Washington on Tuesday if she still calls herself a Zionist, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said, “I believe in a Jewish State of Israel, yes. And that to me isn’t a radical thing to say and I always have,” JI’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.

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CANDIDATE FORUM WATCH

Bores breaks with Our Revolution on approach to Israel

New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores, a leading Democratic primary candidate for an open House seat in Manhattan, said on Tuesday that he disagreed with Our Revolution, the left-wing advocacy group that recently endorsed his campaign, over its opposition to U.S. military funding for Israel, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.  

What he said: Speaking at a candidate forum hosted by West Side Institutional Synagogue and moderated by JI’s editor-in-chief, Josh Kraushaar, Bores said that even as he welcomed the endorsement because of such shared interests as AI regulation, he was not aligned with Our Revolution’s approach to Israel, a key issue in the heavily Jewish 12th Congressional District. “They asked me specifically about my position on Israel, which is well-documented and different from theirs,” Bores explained. “I said the same thing I say in every room.”

Read the full story here.

Cash flow: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced his administration would allocate $26 million annually toward anti-hate crimes measures, signaling that the significant funding increase — promised during the campaign season — would go toward a program that funds both leading Jewish organizations and left-wing nonprofits, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.

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ON THE FENCE

Mikie Sherrill to ‘evaluate’ N.J. adoption of federal Education Freedom Tax Credit

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill has not committed to joining a new federal education tax initiative being championed by Jewish community advocates to secure funding for Jewish day schools and yeshivas, which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently agreed to adopt, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Wait-and-see approach: “Governor Sherrill will evaluate the program once the Trump Administration has finalized and published its rules. The Governor’s top priority is building New Jersey into the best public school system in the nation for all our kids,” Maggie Garbarino, Sherrill’s deputy press secretary, told JI on Tuesday.

Read the full story here.

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TRANSITION

UJA-Federation of New York taps Leffell School’s Michael Kay to serve as next CEO

The country’s largest Jewish federation, UJA-Federation of New York, has reached into the day school world to tap its next leader, naming longtime Jewish educator Michael Kay as CEO, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports for Jewish Insider. Kay, who currently serves as head of school at The Leffell School in Westchester County, N.Y., will succeed Eric Goldstein, 66, a former Wall Street lawyer who announced last June that he was stepping down after 12 years in the role. Kay, 46, will enter the position on Oct. 5.

City Hall relationships: Asked how he wants UJA’s relationship with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to look under his leadership during an interview with JI announcing his appointment, Kay said, “We have an obligation and a responsibility to work with our local elected officials no matter who they are to ensure that our needs are met and they are accountable for meeting those needs, as I said, well-being, thriving, safety, security.”

Read and watch the full interview here.

Nostra Aetate Award: Reflecting on his tenure as the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said it would be “difficult” to serve in his former position without the friendship of Jewish people, noting that Jews are a “respected part of the fabric” of New York City. Dolan was speaking at the American Jewish Committee’s Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday, where AJC honored him with the Nostra Aetate at Sixty Award for his work combating antisemitism and improving Catholic-Jewish relations, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

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Worthy Reads

Dahiya or Dubai?: The New York Times’ Tom Friedman talks to Emirati Lebanese writer Nadim Koteich about the two warring visions for the future of the Middle East, which Koteich refers to as “Dahiya or Dubai” — respectively a Hezbollah-controlled area of Beirut and a flourishing Middle Eastern business hub. “Anything this Dahiya vision touches ‘is a kiss of death for a country,’ as Koteich put it. ‘It turns it into another mediocre version of Iran.’ … [The Dubai model] proclaimed that the future belongs to those governments that produce noncorrupt, responsible bureaucracies, and that support moderate Islam, religious pluralism and an openness to the world and anyone eager to bring their talents. … The Dubai model is precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” [NYTimes]

AI in the Negev: In The Wall Street Journal, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mike Doran and Zineb Riboua advocate for the development of a joint U.S.-Israel AI hub in Israel’s Negev desert dubbed by Jerusalem as Project Spire. “Technologies developed at Spire would remain under American ownership, enabling scaling and manufacturing back in the U.S. — creating jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. A successful Negev base would serve as the prototype. Once proven, the model can be replicated with Britain, Japan, India and other trusted partners. In the contest to neutralize China’s espionage apparatus, Project Spire offers the foundation for enduring American primacy.” [WSJ]

Doing Deals in the ‘Stans: Politico’s Diana Nerozzi and Phelim Kine profile Sergio Gor, President Donald Trump’s envoy to India and Central Asia, who has focused the administration’s efforts in the region on dealmaking. “But Gor’s investment focus is a welcome change to those in the region and Central Asian countries have embraced the Trump administration’s focus on ‘business, business, business,’ said a Washington-based Central Asia diplomat. For Central Asian leaders that’s a welcome shift away from a traditional U.S. focus on governance issues. … ‘He’s much more effective because he has that direct line to the White House,’ a second Central Asian diplomat said. ‘That means he can much more easily overcome the bureaucracy of D.C.’” [Politico]

Word on the Street

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration does not plan to and does not believe it needs to seek congressional approval should it decide to resume military operations in Iran, further sidelining Congress at a time when a growing number of Republicans are becoming hesitant about continued U.S. military operations, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Vice President JD Vance tapped Cliff Sims, who served as special assistant to the president and director of White House message strategy in the first Trump administration, to serve as a national security advisor; Sims previously worked closely with CIA Director John Ratcliffe and served as chair of the CIA’s external advisory board…

The Wall Street Journal looks at how infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman has been turned into an “emergency logistics lifeline” for trucks carrying exports bypassing the closed Strait of Hormuz…

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps expanded its definition of the boundaries of the Strait of Hormuz to encompass a much wider area than before the war… 

Kuwait accused Iran of sending members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the strategically located Kuwaiti-held Bubiyan Island earlier this month, where the fighters exchanged fire with Kuwaiti soldiers, injuring one; four of the six IRGC fighters who took part in the attack on the island, located in the Persian Gulf, were arrested…

Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia launched covert strikes against Iran in late March in response to attacks from the Islamic Republic on Saudi territory…

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed into law a bill requiring the disclosure of foreign government funding in statewide K-12 schools; read more about the first-in-the-nation legislation here…

Politico reports on the “overwhelming evidence” that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who cites his background in medicine and experience as a physician in campaign materials and interviews, has “no experience as a licensed medical doctor”…

The New York Times looks at efforts by two GOP-linked super PACs to get involved in Democratic primaries in Nebraska, Texas, Ohio and California to boost their preferred general election candidates, in one instance sending out a mailer in support of a fringe candidate who has espoused antisemitic tropes…

The NYPD arrested four protesters demonstrating outside of a Jewish senior home in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, which was hosting an event promoting real estate opportunities in Israel… 

In text messages shared on X, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt appeared to denounce antisemitism, calling it a “legitimate mind virus and sign of a decaying society,” adding that he has “been horrified to see how the Jewish community has been vilified over the past few years”…

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, released a new online resource that provides educational materials focused on the American Jewish experience…

The Wall Street Journal interviews Israeli-American therapist Orna Guralnik ahead of the release on Friday of the new series “Couples Therapy,” in which Guralnik plays a major role…

A survey conducted by the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia and presented to the royal commission investigating antisemitism in the country found that 80% of Jewish women surveyed said that they or a family member had experienced antisemitism firsthand in the last two years; the survey also found that of that group, more than two-thirds had been called “genocidal” because they were Jewish, Israeli or Zionist…

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing growing calls to step down following last week’s local elections that saw his Labour Party lose more than 1,000 municipal seats…

Israeli singer Noam Bettan advanced to the Eurovision finals after his performance of “Michelle” at last night’s semifinals in Vienna…

Hezbollah head Naim Kassem called on the Lebanese government to pull out of direct talks with Israel, the third round of which is scheduled for Thursday, and return to indirect talks…

Pic of the Day

The family of slain Israeli American hostage Omer Neutra, who was killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and his body taken to Gaza, was awarded an honorary degree from Binghamton University at a reception hosted by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (left) to mark Jewish American Heritage Month.

Birthdays

Emmy Award-winning film, television and stage actress, Zohra Lampert turns 89…

Professor emerita of Yiddish literature at Harvard University, she is presently a distinguished senior fellow at The Tikvah Fund, Ruth Wisse turns 90… Actor and producer, Harvey Keitel turns 87… Ophthalmologist in South Florida, he is the father of Facebook’s former COO Sheryl Sandberg, Dr. Joel Sandberg turns 83… Former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at American Jewish University, Samuel Edelman turns 78… Professor of mathematics at Princeton since 1987, he was a winner of a 1991 MacArthur genius fellowship, Sergiu Klainerman turns 76… Former FDA commissioner in the 1990s, then chief science officer for COVID-19 response during the Biden administration, David A. Kessler turns 75… Retired editor and columnist for the New York Post, he was also managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, Eric Fettmann turns 73… Rabbi Uren Reich turns 70… Chief rabbi of the city of Shoham in central Israel, chairman of the Tzohar organization and rabbi for the Ezra youth movement, Rabbi David Stav turns 66… Founder and former CEO of LRN, a legal research, ethics and compliance management firm, Dov Seidman turns 62… Past chair of JFNA’s National Women’s Philanthropy Board and of the Hartford (Conn.) Federation, Carolyn Gitlin… Retired NFL defensive lineman, he played for the Raiders and Panthers, Josh Heinrich Taves, a/k/a Josh Heinrich, turns 54… Ice hockey player, she won a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics and a silver medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, Sara Ann DeCosta-Hayes turns 49… U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) turns 49… CEO of Friedkin Philanthropies, previously chief Jewish life officer at JFNA, Sarah Eisenman… Former Israel director for J Street, then the chief of staff for Israel’s Ministry for Regional Cooperation, Yael Patir … Member of the U.K.’s House of Lords, she was previously a member of the House of Commons, Baroness Luciana Berger turns 45… Software entrepreneur, Google project manager, then Facebook engineering lead, Justin Rosenstein turns 43… Israeli rapper, singer, songwriter and actor, known by his stage name Tuna, Itay Zvulun turns 42… Retired NFL offensive lineman for seven NFL teams, now a regional manager at Rocksolid, Brian de la Puente turns 41… Actress, writer, producer and director, best known as the creator, writer and star of the HBO series “Girls,” Lena Dunham turns 40… Hannah Sirdofsky… Co-founder in 2018 of Manna Tree Partners, she is the daughter of Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, Gabrielle “Ellie” Rubenstein… Chief of staff and senior program manager at Jigsaw, a unit within Google, she is an alum of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Raquel Saxe Gelb… Therapist in Philadelphia, Bela Galit Krifcher turns 33… Law clerk for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Dore Lev Feith turns 30… VP of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, Jesse Martin Arm… Gold medalist for Israel in rhythmic gymnastics at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Linoy Ashram turns 27… 

NGO Monitor President Gerald Steinberg is set to step down in January, 25 years after founding the Jerusalem-based watchdog group focused on scrutinizing nonprofit organizations critical of Israel and their funding sources, Jewish Insider has learned.

Olga Deutsch, 47, currently NGO Monitor’s vice president, will succeed Steinberg following a months-long transition process at the organization, which since its inception has been closely associated with its founder.

Steinberg, 74, who resigned from his position as a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University seven years ago, told JI, “There is a point in one’s life where one has to decide the different priorities. And I’ve done this long enough, and other people can have more energy and can take over.”

Deutsch joined NGO Monitor more than a decade ago, heading the Europe department before becoming VP seven years ago. Deutsch told JI that she hopes to “open the next exciting chapter,” while preserving the “character of the organization that Gerald created, which is serving as pioneers and continuing to flag the new fronts through which the Jewish state and the Jewish people are being attacked or put in danger.”

“No one can step into [Steinberg’s] shoes — I would not dare try that,” Deutsch told JI, describing Steinberg as a trailblazer who “identified 25 years ago what will be — and are — the tactics and the method in which the Jewish state and the Jewish people are being attacked, and that is weaponization and abuse of the language of human rights.”

Steinberg had previously been set on a purely academic career path. But the World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, which he said was “hijacked months or even years before as a platform for revitalizing the ‘Zionism as racism’ theme,” changed his trajectory, particularly as he observed the role of NGOs in that drive.

Reflecting on the achievements of the organization he subsequently built, Steinberg said, “I can certainly look back and say that both in the academic realm and in the political realm, NGOs are now recognized as important political actors.” 

Steinberg argued that there is greater understanding that NGOs can have malign impacts and can contribute to conflict and antisemitism, despite presenting themselves as human rights organizations.

When he started working on the subject, Steinberg recounted, “People said to me, ‘Why are you bothering with this? They are so unimportant in international politics.’ That’s no longer the case.”

Steinberg said that a challenge for the team going forward “is this tremendous increase in antisemitism as it’s reflected in and fueled by NGOs in a broad sense and how do you prioritize … in the activities of NGO Monitor? I think that that’s a very difficult challenge, because there’s a temptation to be everywhere.”

The group has long drawn criticism from human rights organizations and left-leaning activists who accuse it of seeking to delegitimize NGOs critical of Israeli policy and disproportionately targeting left-wing, pro-Palestinian groups, while aligning itself with Israeli government positions and broader pro-Israel advocacy efforts.

Deutsch rejected those accusations, telling JI, “We have a very, very clear definition of what it is that we research: We focus on NGOs that define themselves as human rights and humanitarian NGOs.” 

Deutsch was born in Serbia and lived in Germany and Belgium before moving to Israel. She brought to NGO Monitor expertise in Europe and the European Union, which she highlights as “the single largest aid donor in the world.” 

“We try to follow the money, because we understand that understanding the financial streams and who’s behind these organizations can be — and oftentimes is — quite telling,” Deutsch said. She argued that many of the organizations scrutinized by NGO Monitor receive European government funding and that some Palestinian NGOs highlighted in the group’s reports have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU. 

Last month, the Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) closed its doors, citing “Israel’s targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations.”

Steinberg said NGO Monitor’s research into alleged ties between DCIP officials and the PFLP led to increased scrutiny of the group and subsequent funding cuts. “We are blamed for that,” he said.

NGO Monitor research has regularly been presented in parliaments in Europe and offers specific policy recommendations in the region, as well as North America and Australia. Deutsch said the group seeks to “inspire that policy conversation with elected officials in how do you prevent aid going directly and indirectly to Hamas again” — a pertinent consideration in the rebuilding of postwar Gaza.

Most recently, the European Parliament in April passed a budgetary resolution citing an NGO Monitor report on internal suspected Hamas documents that “allegedly indicate attempts of Hamas’ infiltration and monitoring through so-called ‘guarantors’ of international NGOs including within Union-funded humanitarian projects in the Gaza Strip.”

The resolution “urges the Commission to investigate all allegations of any type of undue infiltration and influence within Union-funded humanitarian projects and to suspend or recover Union funding where breaches are confirmed.”

“Before Oct. 7, [2023,] it was not always easy to explain why the activities of these non-governmental organizations are dangerous,” Deutsch said. “But after Oct. 7, I think the magnitude and the volume and how publicly it was displayed, of the hatred done in the name of human rights, has made everyone understand why the work that NGO Monitor does is  crucial.”  

After Steinberg passes the mantle to Deutsch, he will remain involved with the organization’s 20-person team as president emeritus and continue leading its academic activities and research initiatives.

Two Jewish Democrats from Chicago are looking to run for president. 

One, Illinois’ two-term governor, JB Pritzker, has built up a reliably progressive record while steering clear of ideological fights over Israel, antisemitism and other cultural issues fueling the Democratic Party. 

The other, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is one of his party’s leading pragmatists, known for feuding with left-wing Democrats over education, the power of unions and the degree to which cultural progressivism cost the party on the ballot box.

So it came as a surprise that, in two separate interviews each published Tuesday, it was Pritzker who came out as a more forceful voice against antisemitism and in support of the U.S. relationship with Israel, while Emanuel sounded like he was all too eager to blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he anticipated a future breakup between the two close allies. 

Pritzker offered the point that relationships between allies aren’t dependent on whether you personally like the elected leadership in charge. It’s a line you’d expect more mainstream Democrats to invoke, especially as Israel’s favorability within the Democratic Party has sunk to new lows.

“There are a lot of people who don’t like Netanyahu, but you shouldn’t take it out on Israel. It’s a democracy that elected him. There are a lot of people who don’t like Trump. I mean, should we be tossed into The Hague as a country because of Trump?” Pritzker told Politico over matzoh ball soup at Manny’s Deli, referring to the home of the International Criminal Court.

Emanuel, when asked by Jewish Insider if there was a special relationship between the U.S. and Israel, agreed with the premise but then quickly pivoted to arguing the state of the relationship should be premised on Israel’s efforts contributing to peace in the region. It’s an implication that its post-Oct. 7 efforts at self-defense have gone too far. 

“Every risk you will take, the State of Israel takes, for peace, then America will stand by you,” he told JI. “We understand there’s risks. We have stood by Israel through thick and thin.” “But,” he said, “when one friend in that relationship abandoned something that’s contrary to our interests and contrary, in my view, also to Israel’s interests,” it is reasonable to rethink that alliance.

Pritzker also spoke directly about the scourge of antisemitism, laying most of the blame for the rise in anti-Jewish hate on President Donald Trump, but when pressed, also laid out a clear red line that it’s never acceptable to invoke antisemitism for disagreeing about Israel’s policies. 

“Antisemitism has often been connected to people’s views about Israel. That is: If you don’t like what Israel and, in particular, Netanyahu are doing, now it’s OK to have slurs that you’re spewing about Jews,” Pritzker said. “It’s not. It’s never OK.”

Asked about whether anti-Zionism intersects with antisemitism, Emanuel touted his own experiences fighting neo-Nazis in Skokie, Ill., and relentlessly attacking anti-Jewish hate as an elected leader. He told JI that “we have to confront” antisemitism wherever it emerges, referencing Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner not knowing he had a neo-Nazi tattoo on his chest. One day later on CNN, he endorsed Platner’s campaign. 

At a time when unfavorable views of Israel are at historic highs within the Democratic Party and open antisemitism is being tolerated in a way unimaginable not long ago, the trajectory of these two prominent Jewish presidential contenders — along with the fate of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — will be instructive on the future role of Jewish voters within the Democratic coalition.

Pritzker, with strong anti-Trump and progressive bona fides, may feel a little more comfortable tacking to the center when talking about Israel and antisemitism. Emanuel, who has made a name for himself as a moderate calling out the excesses of the left as he travels across the country (and speaks on TV), may be a little more reticent to tout his pro-Israel credentials, given the ideological direction the party is headed in.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he was temporarily pausing “Project Freedom,” the three-day-old operation aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic, at the request of Pakistan and due to progress in negotiations — hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio heralded the start of the operation. 

The president wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday evening that all elements of Project Freedom, a U.S. mission to escort commercial vessels safely through the Strait of Hormuz, “will be paused for a short period of time” in order to see if a “[peace] agreement can be finalized and signed.” 

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, however, “will remain in full force and effect,” Trump noted.

The president said that the decision had been made “based on the request of Pakistan and other countries” as well as due to the “great progress” made toward “a complete and final agreement with representatives of Iran.”

The comments came a few hours after Rubio held a lengthy press conference at the White House, where he repeatedly insisted that the U.S. had completed Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s name for the war in Iran, and was now solely focused on Project Freedom, as well as diplomatic efforts.

“Operation Epic Fury has concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. We’re not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What the president would prefer is a deal,” Rubio said. “He would prefer to sit down and work out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches on all the key topics that have to be addressed. That’s the route he prefers.” 

“That is, so far, not the route that Iran has chosen,” he continued. “And so the result has been that the United States has to do something about the fact that we’re the only nation on earth that can do anything to open up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there, and that’s what we’re undergoing now,” Rubio said of launching Project Freedom.

The nation’s top diplomat emphasized on multiple occasions that any future U.S. attacks on Iran should be viewed with a different lens than prior instances of fighting. 

“What’s really important for you to report and for everyone to understand is this is not an offensive operation — this is a defensive operation. What that means is very simple: There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first,” Rubio said. 

He also acknowledged that any peace agreement with Iran would need to address its nuclear enrichment, and allow for the U.S. or others to remove any enriched material currently in Iranian facilities buried in the U.S. and Israeli strikes in June of last year.

“As far as the negotiation is concerned, I think the president’s been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that’s very deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to figure it out,” he added. “That has to be addressed, and that’s being addressed in the negotiation.”

The secretary of state could not say if the president had followed through on his public musings to send weapons to Kurdish groups and Iranians looking to take up arms against the regime, but again tried to create distance between any prior offers and Project Freedom.

“I think what the president is expressing is the desire that he wishes the Iranian people had an ability to fight back against some of these things that are happening to them,” Rubio said. “And I would view that as distinct and separate from the specifics of this operation that was ongoing before it concluded, and certainly different from the operation that’s going on now.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner began normally enough — a bustle of reporters, administration officials and members of Congress among other A-listers streaming from the packed lobby of the Washington Hilton down into the basement ballroom.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Weija Jiang, a CBS News White House reporter, finished her introductory remarks, and the thousands of guests packed into the ballroom tucked into their salads.

Then, a loud, shattering bang rang out from the other side of the ballroom. Initially, I didn’t think anything of it — I thought someone had dropped a large tray of food (as President Donald Trump said later, he thought the same thing).

Videos and other accounts of the evening indicate that someone from the security staff shouted from the front of the room that guests should get down. I didn’t hear it. My first indication that something was wrong was when I started seeing other guests ducking under the tables and security officers drawing their guns.

I tried to duck under the tablecloth, but no luck — another occupant of the table was already underneath, and there was no room. My heart pounding, I was forced to do my best to stay low — but I was in the backmost row of tables, right by a door, sitting directly in the aisle.

If a shooter came into the ballroom from behind me, I was a sitting duck. I was completely helpless and exposed.

Two thoughts ran through my head. The main one: I’m getting married in six days. I can’t die now. The second: I can’t believe this is happening to me again. (For those readers who are newer to Jewish Insider — I was also on scene for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.)

Just a few yards away from me, a Secret Service agent stood, gun drawn, surveying the room. She kept yelling for us to stay down.

Perhaps foolishly, I poked my head above the table. I saw a group of agents in suits, slowly trying to pick their way across the enormous ballroom toward the Cabinet secretaries and other VIPs in the center of the room. Even before the chaos broke out, it had been nearly impossible to traverse the crowded room. Chairs were literally back-to-back, completely blocking the aisles, to say nothing of the people now crouching and lying all over the floor.

It struck me at the time as a fire hazard. Now, it seemed all the more ominous. The most senior officials in the country could easily have been trapped in the line of fire with no real way to escape.

And then I looked up to the head table. The president and the other guests — including Jiang, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and others — were gone. In their place was a group of Secret Service officers in heavy body armor, assault rifles at the ready, surveying the room.

For a venue chock full of journalists, information was strikingly hard to come by. X, once a reliable source of information in breaking news situations, had nothing. I was left asking my fiancée, who was at home, to send me information, because I could find nothing.

The first indication of the unfolding situation was a White House press pool report email, which said that an apparent shooter was in custody — but the reporter also said he’d seen Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. limping, which only increased our panic.

The pool report said that the shooter was in custody. My family told me that CNN was reporting that he was dead.

I’m sure we were only on the floor for a few minutes. But with no idea of what was happening, beyond the developing clarity that we’d just heard shots ring out, it felt like an eternity. My colleague, on the ground next to me, was in tears, near hyperventilating. I struggled to comfort her, not knowing what was going on, or if we were safe.

There were no announcements, at least that I heard, made to the group. My first indications that the situation might be safe were when the Secret Service officer nearby holstered her weapon, and when we saw a U.S. senator wandering toward an exit.

But we still had no real idea of what was going on.

Then, a door to the ballroom opened, and guests began to file out, first in a trickle then in a stream, pushing aside curtains that had been set up as security barriers, up the stairs and ultimately out the door of the hotel. Security kept telling us to keep moving, pushing us further and further from the scene.

On the way out, I saw C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist huddling with one of the cable network’s cameramen, positioned next to our table, who had kept filming through the entire event.

We ran into Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) at the exit of the hotel and shook his hand in the glow of the red and blue lights from armored SUVs for top officials still idling in the turnaround at the hotel’s entrance — perhaps the most surreal interaction I’ve had with a member of Congress as we shared our relief that we were all safe.

My colleague and I finally reconnected with her partner, who had been in the upstairs bar, watching the events play out on TV. They embraced tearfully, a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking sight.

We kept walking hurriedly, calling family to let them know we were OK, pushed further and further away from the venue. I was completely lost, teeth starting to chatter and my body shaking from an excess of adrenaline.

Much has been said over the past days about the security at the event — some say it was too lax, some say there was none at all, some describe the event as among the best-secured in the city. There’s a kernel of truth in all of them.

My experience, after having attended three previous dinners, is that security was unchanged from previous years. Entering the event, a block from the hotel, we were asked to flash our tickets, but plenty of people dressed in evening wear are regularly waved through the cordon. Protesters from the group Code Pink hassled guests as they entered the secured zone, having lined up along Connecticut Avenue outside the fenced-off area to chant and wave signs.

At no point during or before the evening were IDs checked. Tickets were assigned and sold by the WHCA to news outlets, rather than to individuals, and it’s up to the outlets to decide how to distribute the tickets. It’s a massive event — thousands of people in attendance. That’s significantly more than could reportedly be accommodated in the planned White House ballroom, which Trump and others have trumpeted as the solution to prevent future incidents like this.

At the top of the hotel’s driveway, we were again asked to present our tickets — either a ticket to the dinner itself, or an emailed invitation to one of the pre-dinner cocktail receptions hosted by various news outlets. With just a ticket or a screenshot of one of those invitations — or as a guest of the hotel, in the case of the shooter — one could gain access to the hotel. The hotel does not shut down for the event and hosts thousands of guests who are unrelated and can come and go as they please.

The ballroom is several floors below the lobby. To get on the escalator downstairs, I again had to flash my ticket to hotel staff. This is, seemingly, the only security checkpoint that did not perform as it was supposed to on Saturday evening. As a guest of the hotel, the shooter would have had access to all other areas of the hotel.

After making my way through a tangle of lines for red carpet photos, I finally came to the metal detectors, staffed by Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration staff.

Bags and pocket items were manually checked by security here — not in an X-ray machine — and I know at least one person who was allowed to proceed through with her bag unopened.

It was near this barrier that the shooter pulled out his weapons, and was ultimately subdued by law enforcement. The gunman did not reach the ballroom and there was seemingly only one injury — a Secret Service agent who was shot in his bulletproof vest and has reportedly since recovered.

The dinner itself is a short flight of stairs below the security checkpoint — the shooter seems to have been tackled at the top of those stairs, based on photos released by the White House, perilously close to the ballroom entrance. But  there is also a large atrium area on the upper level, where hundreds of guests pack in for a cocktail reception before doors open to the ballroom, not to mention the long lines that formed as guests were waiting to clear security. If the shooter had decided to open fire a few hours earlier, he would have had no shortage of targets.

One final note: When I finally made it home, I was, perhaps unwisely, scrolling X and saw a quickly proliferating set of conspiracy theories about the night, from both sides of the aisle — it was staged, the entertainer was in on it, security was purposely loosened, and more. I experienced the same in the midst of the Jan. 6 attack. There are few things more surreal, or more infuriating, than seeing people pretend an event you lived through wasn’t real. And there are few things more poisonous to our collective political discourse.

Now, in the wake of at least the third thwarted assassination attempt on this president, we’re all left to grapple with many questions. How could security let this keep happening? And what does this mean for the state of our country and our civic bonds?

The Jewish community has become sadly familiar with politically motivated violence, having faced deadly attacks and attempted attacks across the country. But increasingly, it seems to be a society-wide problem — and one without a clear path back.

President Donald Trump’s effort to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a longtime thorn in his side, got another big-money boost as Christians United for Israel Action Fund, the advocacy arm of the Christian Zionist group, announced that it is spending six figures to blanket Massie’s congressional district with dozens of billboards hitting the congressman over his opposition to the Iran war.

“For one full month, CUFI Action Fund will dominate Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District outdoor advertising space by securing every available billboard in the district, creating a broad and highly visible message presence across the region,” CUFI Action Fund senior director Ari Morgenstern told Jewish Insider. “The buy spans key communities across the district, ensuring the message reaches voters in both local population centers and along major commuter and travel routes.”

Morgenstern said that the billboards are expected to reach “1.487 million adult impressions each week,” along major roadways across the district. The Kentucky primary election, where Massie is facing off against Trump-endorsed Navy veteran Ed Gallrein, is on May 19.

The billboard displays an image of President Donald Trump atop the American flag alongside Massie atop the Iranian flag, with the captions “Kentucky = Trump Country,” “Tell Massie: Support Peace Through Strength” and “No Support for Iranian Regime.”

The campaign banks on the notion that GOP primary voters in the deep-red district remain strongly supportive of the Iran war.

AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC is also going on the offensive against Massie with a substantial TV ad campaign, which focuses on Massie’s opposition to the war in Iran. The Republican Jewish Coalition has spent $3.5 million in the district to oppose Massie as well.

Massie’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Argentine President Javier Milei began an event-packed visit to Israel on Sunday, which will include receiving a Presidential Medal of Honor and lighting a torch in Israel’s Independence Day ceremony on Tuesday.

Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the “Isaac Accords” on Sunday, an initiative conceived by Milei to encourage closer cooperation between Israel and Latin American countries. 

An Israeli diplomatic source told Jewish Insider that Ecuador and Paraguay are expected to join the Isaac Accords. Israeli media have reported that Costa Rica, Panama and Uruguay have also expressed interest. 

Milei described the launch of the initiative as “a historic moment for our nations. It will not only strengthen the relationship between Argentina and Israel, united by shared values, but also represents a step toward a freer and more prosperous hemisphere.”

“Isaac, the son of Abraham, represents an initiative to extend the model initiated by President [Donald] Trump in the Middle East to Latin America, addressing challenges such as terrorism, antisemitism, and drug trafficking, while inviting other nations to join,” Milei said. “Nations that share values have a mission to work together. With the support of the United States, we have the opportunity to bring about transformative change.”

The accords are “a new strategic framework aimed at strengthening cooperation between Argentina, Israel and like-minded partners in the Western Hemisphere, the descendants of Isaac and nations of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in defense of freedom and democracy, and in the fight against terrorism, antisemitism, and drug trafficking,” according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Milei suggested launching the accords in a meeting with Israel Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, whose father was from Argentina. The Israeli foreign minister was the main Israeli catalyst pushing for the agreement, including in his most recent meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio last summer, during which they established a working group to advance the matter, an Israeli diplomatic source told JI.

Netanyahu said that he sees “great hope vis-à-vis the Latin American continent. We see the beginnings of change, certainly we’ve seen enormous change in Argentina, but I think that this is also a compass and a map for other countries, not only for their internal reforms but also for their external reforms, that is coming back to the alliance of freedom. It begins with the two of us and with the support that is always there of the United States for free societies.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee took part in the launch ceremony, and called Milei and Netanyahu “two of President Trump’s greatest friends” who seek to “bring back the values that are the underpinning of Western civilization and Judeo-Christian values upon which our nations were built.”

Sa’ar described Milei as “one of the boldest leaders of our age. … We will continue to strengthen this close friendship! Viva Argentina! Viva Israel!” 

Earlier Sunday, Milei visited the Western Wall with Argentinian Ambassador to Israel Axel Washnish, a rabbi with whom he learned Torah for years before becoming president.

Israel and Argentina also announced direct flights between the countries. The first El Al flights to Buenos Aires are expected to start in November.

President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon to begin at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, after holding separate calls with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day.

“These two Leaders have agreed that in order to achieve PEACE between their Countries, they will formally begin a 10 Day CEASEFIRE,” the president wrote on Truth Social. He said he had directed Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to work with Israel and Lebanon to achieve a Lasting PEACE.”

Netanyahu quickly convened his Security Cabinet to discuss the ceasefire as Trump announced it, according to Israeli reports, angering ministers who were informed through the media without having held a vote on it.

Trump added in a second post that he will be inviting Aoun and Netanyahu to the White House for “meaningful talks.”

Netanyahu said in a statement that he had agreed to the ceasefire “to try and advance the agreement we began discussing during the meeting of ambassadors in Washington” on Tuesday, which were the highest-level discussions between Jerusalem and Beirut in over 30 years.

He said that Hezbollah had demanded Israel withdraw from all of Lebanese territory and wanted a ceasefire based on the “quiet for quiet” model, neither of which Israel agreed to. Instead, Netanyahu said the IDF will remain in Lebanon throughout the ceasefire in a “reinforced security buffer zone” of 10 km, broader than the five outposts the IDF maintained in Lebanon during the last ceasefire in November 2024.

“That is where we are and we are not leaving. This allows us, first and foremost, to block the danger of an invasion into our communities, and secondly, it allows us to prevent direct anti-tank fire into the communities,” the prime minister said.

In his posts, Trump did not reference Hezbollah, which had said prior to talks that it would not abide by any negotiated agreement though the text of the agreement released by the State Department said the Lebanese government will “take meaningful steps to prevent Hezbollah and all other rogue non-state armed groups in the territory of Lebanon from carrying out any attacks, operations, or hostile activities against Israeli targets.”

The agreement is a “gesture of goodwill” on Israel’s part “intended to enable good-faith negotiations” toward a permanent agreement, the text states, which “may be extended by mutual agreement” if Lebanon “effectively demonstrates its ability to assert its sovereignty” and prevents Hezbollah from attacking Israel.

The Lebanese government has agreed several times before, including in its November 2024 ceasefire agreement with Israel, to disarm Hezbollah so that it could no longer threaten or strike Israel, but Hezbollah maintains military capabilities and has continued to fire rockets and drones into the country.

A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute from late last week found 80% of Jewish Israelis think Israel should continue its military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, even if it causes friction with the U.S.

There’s been a lot of debate lately over whether President Donald Trump is losing some of his grip on the Republican Party, amid growing economic concerns and the ongoing military operations in Iran.  

While the media coverage has been amplifying any sign of intraparty discontent — to the point that former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is getting strange new respect from some Democrats and mainstream press alike — polls continue to show Trump with widespread backing from within his own party, and especially within the MAGA faction of the GOP.

Ultimately, election results are the best reality check. And you couldn’t draw up a better test on the degree of Trump’s impact on the Republican Party than examining the results from four states holding highly consequential primaries next month that will be a benchmark of the president’s power.

Key races in Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana and Texas will speak volumes about the president’s ability to shape the GOP agenda for the remainder of his second term — and most consequentially, whether he will be able to maintain a unified front with his party on continuing to pursue military action against Iran. 

The biggest intraparty showdown, especially when it comes to foreign policy, is the May 19 primary between Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and military veteran Ed Gallrein. Massie, one of the few anti-Israel Republicans in Congress, is being opposed by Trump but also has a solid base of grassroots support in the northern Kentucky district, which has thus far supported his anti-establishment brand of politics. But Gallrein has proven to be a credible challenger, raising millions and giving Massie the biggest political test of his career. 

Trump has spent some valuable political capital to boost Gallrein, including appearing at a recent rally in Massie’s district to promote his challenger. He’s been joined by the Republican Jewish Coalition, which has poured $3.5 million into the race, airing five ads underscoring Massie’s record of breaking with Trump. (Further drawing Trump’s ire: Massie also joined with Democrats in championing the release of the Epstein files.)

It’s never easy to beat a sitting incumbent, but Trump also has an imposing record of winning primaries in which he chooses to engage. If Massie pulls out a victory despite breaking so flagrantly with Trump on a number of key issues, it will be a sign of the president’s diminished political clout. 

Another high-profile race where Trump’s engagement in a primary hasn’t yet been definitive: Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) uphill fight to win renomination against Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and state Treasurer John Fleming. The primary will be held on May 16, with the top two finishers heading to a runoff if no one wins a majority of the vote. 

Cassidy, largely because of his vote to impeach Trump in 2021, has long faced challenges with the GOP base. Trump, looking to secure Cassidy’s defeat, backed Letlow earlier this year in hopes she’d consolidate the MAGA vote. But Trump’s endorsement hasn’t translated into a groundswell for Letlow, and the presence of Fleming, a former right-wing congressman, has complicated the political math in the primary. 

Cassidy looks like a long shot even if he heads to a runoff, and Letlow holds a narrow lead in the limited public polling of the race. But there’s a chance that Fleming could sneak past Letlow on the primary ballot and face Cassidy in a runoff, blocking Trump’s candidate from the race. If that happened, it would be another sign that Trump’s endorsement doesn’t carry the same weight as it once did.

The first Trump test of the month (May 5) will be in Indiana, where the president is trying to punish certain Republican state legislators for not backing a redistricting plan, championed by the White House, which would have allowed the GOP to gain an additional seat. 

Finally, it’s the spring race where Trump has remained on the sidelines that may be a signal of his limited political powers. After Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) finished ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state’s primary last month, reports indicated the president was close to endorsing Cornyn for reelection, in an effort to prevent an expensive and competitive general election against Democrat James Talarico. 

But amid furious pushback from right-wing activists and polls suggesting that a Trump endorsement wouldn’t have moved the needle that much, the president has not gotten involved in the race. That alone speaks volumes about the limited level of the president’s political capital. 

Trump boasts a near-perfect record in GOP primaries throughout his decade-long political career, with the most prominent setbacks being in Georgia (working against Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2022). So if the president’s chosen candidates end up falling short in these key contests, it will be a sign that Republicans may already be preparing for the post-Trump era.

President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to escalate the war in Iran on Monday if Iranian leaders do not agree to a broad ceasefire deal that includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz by his Tuesday evening deadline, threatening that the U.S. would target every bridge and power plant still standing in the country.

Trump took a hawkish posture while speaking to reporters at the White House alongside senior U.S. defense officials about the ongoing war and diplomatic efforts to bring it to a close, warning that the U.S. has a plan to take out Iran’s entire transportation and energy infrastructure within “four hours” if Iran did not make a deal. 

“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think, in good faith. We’re going to find out. … After [8 p.m. ET on Tuesday], they’re going to have no bridges. They’re going to have no power plants. Stone ages,” Trump said, referring to the deadline he set for Iran to agree to his terms, which has now been postponed three times.

The president said he extended the deadline from Monday to Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET because he “thought it was inappropriate” to demand a response “the day after Easter.” The comment came hours after telling reporters at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll that the Tuesday deadline was final and unlikely to have any additional extensions. 

“The entire country can be taken out in one night and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump said from the briefing room. “We have a plan, because of the power of our military, [where] every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock, and it’ll happen over a period of four hours if we want it to.” 

“We don’t want that to happen. We may even get involved with helping them rebuild their nation. If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is start with power plants, which are among the most expensive things, and bridges,” he continued. “So do I want to do that? No. Do I want to destroy their infrastructure? No. It will take them 100 years to rebuild. Right now, if we left today, it would take them 20 years to rebuild their country and it would never be as good as it was. The only way they’re going to be able to rebuild their country is to utilize the genius of the United States of America.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who took part in the press conference alongside Trump, told reporters on Monday that, “per the president’s direction, today will be the largest volume which strikes since day one of this operation. Tomorrow, even more than today, and then Iran has a choice. Choose wisely, because this president does not play around.”

Trump repeatedly reiterated his commitment to ensuring that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon — after saying the country’s nuclear program was “obliterated” last June — and said that any agreement between Iran and the U.S. would need to adhere to his terms, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be [that] we want free traffic of oil and everything,” the president said.

“They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said of Iran, arguing that his actions were an insurance policy for the U.S. “if somebody that takes my place someday is weak and ineffective, which possibly that will happen, because we had numerous presidents that were weak, ineffective and afraid of Iran.”

The president described the Iranians as “very good bulls*** artists, that’s why for 47 years they’ve been bulls***ing other presidents,” while defending his decision to take military action against the regime.

“I think that 47 years of this stuff is long enough. They’re at the weakest point they’ve ever been,” Trump said, despite Iran’s continued missile strikes across the Gulf and in Israel. “In fact, the biggest problem we have in our negotiations is that they can’t communicate. … They have no method of communication. So we’re communicating like they used to communicate 2,000 years ago with children bringing a note back and forth.”

Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff rejected a recent Student Assembly resolution calling for the university to boycott its partnership with an Israeli institution, stating that doing so would “fundamentally conflict with our core commitment to academic freedom” and noting the “political bias” within the resolution “is deeply disturbing.” 

In a letter to the Student Assembly, Kotlikoff wrote that the resolution — which calls to sever Cornell’s longstanding academic partnership with the Technion —  “would not only hinder our research, teaching and public engagement; it would imperil our academic principles.”

The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, the partnership in which Cornell Tech is based, was established in 2013 as a collaboration between the two institutions. It is located on Roosevelt Island in Manhattan.

The resolution calls on Cornell “to terminate its institutional partnership with the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology while maintaining Cornell Tech as an independent Cornell campus.” It claims “ethical and legal concerns” regarding the Technion’s involvement in Israeli military research and technologies linked to “human rights violations.”

The resolution, Kotlikoff wrote, “inaccurately asserts that ‘the continued operation of Cornell Tech as a Cornell University campus does not require an ongoing partnership with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.’ Cornell Tech, while part of Cornell, is a joint effort of the university, the Technion, and the City of New York. It is no more possible for Cornell to unilaterally terminate that effort and claim full control of the campus than it would be for the Technion or the City of New York to do the same.”

“Finally, I am deeply troubled by the selective manner in which this resolution singles out the Technion, alone of Cornell’s many international partners, for censure,” continued Kotlikoff, who noted that Cornell currently maintains 159 active agreements with institutions in 59 nations and regions; all of these institutions have some government affiliation, and many conduct research with military and security applications. “Cornell also has relationships with institutions in countries whose governments have been accused of human rights violations — as our own has been,” he wrote. 

“None of these publicly available facts are mentioned in the resolution; only our partnership with an Israeli institution is targeted for erasure. The political bias evident in this selective approach is deeply disturbing, and the resolution is incompatible with both the Student Assembly’s purpose and Cornell University’s core values. I reject it fully and forcefully.” 

During his campaign, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he would “reassess” the partnership between Cornell Tech and Technion, which he later walked back. 

President Donald Trump said repeatedly on Monday that he believed the Iranian regime was going to “take over the Middle East” and would have obtained a nuclear weapon “within weeks” had he not ordered the U.S. military operation against Iran. 

Trump made the comments from his Doral, Fla., golf club at a press conference while defending his decision to have the U.S. launch its military operation in Iran, noting that Iran had a “number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months, and those missiles were aimed at various countries.”

“When you look at over 1,000 missiles shot at, like the UAE, they were looking to take over the Middle East,” Trump said. “We got there first. We’re lucky.”

“If I didn’t hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first,” he continued. Had the U.S. not struck Iranian nuclear sites last June, “that was definite, because they would’ve had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks.”

Trump said that negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on the latter’s nuclear ambitions had reached a stalemate last year because the Iranians told Special Envoy Steve Witkoff “essentially, in a real nutshell, we want to continue to build nuclear weapons.”

“The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return, and the United States found it intolerable. In my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared [Kushner] and [Secretary of Defense] Pete [Hegseth] and others were telling me, [Secretary of State] Marco [Rubio] was so involved, I thought that they were going to attack us,” Trump said. “If we didn’t do this at the time we did it, I think they had a mind to attack us.”

Trump, who is in Doral for the House Republicans’ retreat, made similar comments while discussing the ongoing U.S. military operation in Iran earlier Monday in a speech to Republican lawmakers and donors.

“Within a week, they [Iran] were going to attack us,” he told the crowd at the Republican Members Issues Conference.

In comments at the retreat and the presser, Trump touted the progress made in the nine days since the U.S. first struck Iran as evidence that the operation had been a “tremendous success” thus far. 

“We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective, and some people could say they’re pretty well complete. We’ve wiped every single force in Iran out very completely,” Trump told reporters, adding that “most of Iran’s naval power has been sunk” and the regime’s “drones are way down.”

“We continue to target Iran’s drone and missile capability,” he continued. “We’ve struck over 5,000 targets to date, some of them very major targets, and we’ve left some of the most important targets for later, in case we need to do it. If we hit them, it’s going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So we’re not looking to do that if we don’t have to.””

About the future of Iran’s leadership, Trump said, “We want to be involved. We don’t want another president that maybe wouldn’t be willing to do what I’m willing to do, for the good of the world, for the good of our nation, to be stuck with a situation in five years or 10 years.”

Speaking to attendees at the GOP retreat, the president described the U.S. attacks on Iran as a “little excursion” that he expected would “be a short-term” operation. 

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil,” Trump said. “And I think it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”

Trump also acknowledged the broader differences between himself and Vice President JD Vance on foreign policy matters at the presser, but said that Vance was supportive of his decision to strike Iran. 

“We get along very well on this. He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”

Liz Magill, the former University of Pennsylvania president who resigned after facing criticism of inaction against campus antisemitism, was tapped on Friday as the dean of Georgetown University Law Center. 

Magill left her post at UPenn in December 2023, four days after she appeared at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill where she evaded questioning over whether students who called for the genocide of Jews violated the school’s code of conduct. 

Magill, who maintained her role as a tenured professor at the university’s law school after resigning as president, faced scrutiny following the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel over her handling of the subsequent rise of campus antisemitism from many elected officials in the state including Gov. Josh Shapiro. Even prior to Oct. 7, the Philadelphia campus saw increased hostility to Jewish students, including a September 2023 Palestinian Writes literature conference that featured a lineup of antisemitic speakers. 

In a campus-wide email, Robert Groves, Georgetown’s interim president, said Magill was selected for her “rare combination of leadership and experience.” 

“I am shocked and deeply taken aback by the announcement that Liz Magill will be the new dean of Georgetown Law. For many Jewish students including myself on this campus, this decision feels like a slap in the face,” Julia Wax Vanderwiel, a third-year student in the law school and founder of Georgetown Law Zionists, told Jewish Insider. 

“At Penn she failed to protect the students in her charge, choosing instead to engage in what appeared to be a political and semantic exercise at a moment when moral clarity was required. When directly confronted, she refused to acknowledge the harm her institution allowed or the fear Jewish students were experiencing due to cries and chants of calling for the genocide of Jews,” continued Wax Vanderwiel. “At a time when antisemitism on college campuses has surged and Jewish students are looking to their institutions for leadership and protection, this appointment sends a deeply troubling message. It suggests that Jewish students’ concerns are negotiable, contextual or secondary. That is profoundly disappointing.” 

Georgetown University — and its law school — have been under scrutiny for alleged inaction against extremism and the more than $1 billion the school has received from Qatar, a Hamas benefactor. In July, Groves was questioned about campus antisemitism by the House Education and Workforce Committee.

Last February, the law school scheduled a discussion featuring a convicted member of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The event, which was organized by Georgetown Law Students for Justice in Palestine, was postponed indefinitely following pushback from both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). Weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, Georgetown Law hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd, who celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called the massacre a “resistance tactic.” 

In a statement, Magill, who will begin at Georgetown on Aug. 1, said, “I know my testimony in Congress left many concerned and distressed, especially Jewish students on the Penn campus. That response matters deeply to me. I failed to convey my compassion and concern for Jewish students. I regret that; it does not reflect who I am as a person and a leader. I want every Jewish student, and all students, to have a secure environment at the law school where they can thrive.”

Beth Israel Congregation President Zach Shemper wrapped up a week on Capitol Hill Thursday feeling “confident” that sharing the story of the recent arson attack on his synagogue with lawmakers would bring increased security funding for houses of worship nationwide — including his own.

“My message to members of Congress was simple — increasing funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program and advancing the Pray Safe Act will make a real difference for houses of worship like ours across the country,” Shemper told Jewish Insider. 

It’s been one month since a fire heavily damaged the historic place of worship — the only synagogue in Jackson and the largest one in the state. The suspected arsonist, Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, admitted to starting the blaze on Jan. 10 due to “the building’s Jewish ties,” and referred to the institution as the “synagogue of Satan.”

Pittman was charged on Thursday with civil rights and arson offenses, which add to an earlier arson indictment. Two Torah scrolls were destroyed in the fire, and five more were damaged. A Torah that survived the Holocaust, which was kept in a glass case, was unharmed. The congregation’s library and administrative office were also destroyed. Synagogue leaders estimate it will take two or three years to rebuild. The 140 families that belong to Beth Israel are indefinitely holding services in a nearby church.  

Less than two weeks after the attack, ​​Congress put forward a budget of $300 million for NSGP for 2026. While that figure is a small increase from the funding provided in 2024 and 2025, it is lower than the allocations initially proposed by both the House and Senate. That figure is also significantly less than the $500 million to $1 billion for the program requested by congressional advocates and Jewish groups. 

New conditions on the program relating to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and immigration have also drawn bipartisan condemnation.

Still, Shemper said he is “feeling confident about increased NSGP funding. At the end of the day, it’s just the right thing to do.” 

In meetings facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, Shemper met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY); the ranking members of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI); Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA); and the co-chairs of the House Bipartisan Task Force to Counter Antisemitism, Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Grace Meng (D-NY), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and George Latimer (D-NY).

“The arson attack on Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi is a stark reminder that Jewish institutions across the country face serious and persistent security threats. ADL was proud to join Beth Israel Congregation President Zach Shemper on Capitol Hill this week to ensure lawmakers could hear directly from a community leader navigating the aftermath of a targeted attack,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Faith communities deserve to gather and worship without fear, and Congress has a clear opportunity, and responsibility, to help make that possible.”

Shemper told JI that “coming to Washington this week gave me the opportunity to underscore what it takes for synagogues like ours to keep our congregants safe.”

“After the arson attack on our synagogue, security is not an abstract concern,” he continued. “It is immediate, personal and a daily reality for our community. What happened in Jackson was not an isolated incident, it’s part of a dangerous pattern. No community should have to experience what we have, and no congregation should ever have to rebuild after an attack simply for being Jewish.”

Located in a major hub of the Civil Rights Movement, Beth Israel was also the target of a 1967 bombing by the Ku Klux Klan over the rabbi’s support for racial equality — including providing chaplain services to activists incarcerated for challenging segregated bussing in the state. 

Shemper said that NSGP “helped pay for security cameras that caught the assailant” of the arson attack.

“I was in Washington advocating for increased NSGP funding — because our grant didn’t cover the full cost of security cameras, and there are certainly more houses of worship who need access to this funding,” he continued. 

“Security for houses of worship can’t be optional, and it can’t just come after tragedy.” 

Columbia University this week tapped University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin as its  fourth president in two years — and first Jewish leader in three decades. 

While the New York City campus, which was roiled by antisemitic turmoil for nearly two years following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, has been quieter in recent months, Jewish student leaders who worked closely with Mnookin at Wisconsin expressed optimism that she could help Columbia repair its strained relationship with the federal government and ongoing division among students and manage the implementation of recent recommendations made by the school’s antisemitism task force. 

Still, Mnookin, a legal scholar who served as dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law before moving to Wisconsin in 2022, faced some criticism over concessions she made with Students for Justice in Palestine protesters during an anti-Israel encampment on the Madison campus in April 2024. 

Mnookin initially sent law enforcement to shut down the student encampment — resulting in the arrest of roughly three dozen demonstrators — then negotiated with protesters after they established a new encampment. The non-binding deal reached to dismantle that encampment required SJP to comply with university protest rules in exchange for the right to present their divestment demands to university leaders, who did not consent to their requests.

Under Mnookin’s leadership, SJP was suspended from campus in July 2025 for violating university policy while protesting an event with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield. SJP was reinstated, on probation, earlier this month. 

After Columbia’s board of trustees announced her unanimous appointment, Mnookin wrote in an email to the Columbia community on Monday that “the last several years have been challenging ones for higher education, certainly including Columbia. Having had the privilege for the past few years of leading a public flagship university in a complex time, I well understand the significant uncertainties and heightened scrutiny many universities are now facing.”

“The chancellor being Jewish would lead a lot of Jewish students to automatically assume she’s ‘on our side.’ That’s not her role, despite what her personal beliefs might be outside of her position. [But] Mnookin was definitely present in the aftermath of Oct. 7,” Jacob Bigelman, who graduated from Wisconsin in May with a degree in personal finance, told Jewish Insider. 

Bigelman, a former AEPi chapter president, helped organize the first meeting post-Oct. 7 between Jewish students and Mnookin “to express concerns about antisemitism and when freedom of speech teeters on the line of hate speech,” he said. 

“She’s a very experienced legal scholar with an understanding of the First Amendment,” Bigelman said. When Mnookin didn’t put out a statement immediately following the terrorist attacks, as many other university leaders had done, Bigelman questioned her about the silence during an encounter at the university’s Hillel, a couple days after the attacks. 

“She said it was a classic lose-lose situation,” he recalled. “You’re never going to make someone happy enough and it creates a precedent that every time a world event happens the university has to comment on everything.” Mnookin did release a statement on Oct. 11, which Bigelman described as “neutral.” In it, she expressed concern that “these devastating developments will fan the global flames of both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, making peace and justice in the region even more elusive.”

Later, her response to the encampment “left everyone wanting a little bit more,” said Bigelman. “Jewish students, and people fed up with the protests in general, were happy to see she gave them warnings. When those weren’t met she brought in the police. A lot of people were glad to see the university was taking concrete steps to follow through on dismantling the protest. When the encampment started again, a lot of people were hoping they would send the police back in and were disappointed to find out that they were going to enter negotiations with SJP.”  

At the same time, Bigelman said that “the negotiations were purely symbolic and she didn’t give in on anything of substance. The symbolism of negotiating with them is what frustrated a lot of Jewish students.”

“I think what Mnookin did well is she maintained institutional control,” he continued. “Campus never got to the levels of Columbia, which was seen as ground zero of all of this. Everyone was left wanting a little bit more [from her], but at the end of the day, in terms of negotiations with protesters, nothing happened with negotiations that impacted the way the university discloses its finances. I think it was just making the Palestinian cause feel that it had more space on campus. But just the symbolism of it left a sour taste in a lot of our mouths.”

Bigelman said that he would have liked to see more transparency from the administration, which relied on “proceduralism, such as codes of conduct, disciplinary probation, internal committees, that came off as a bit obscure to people involved.”

Overall though, “the chancellor was good to our university,” he said. “At the end of the day, she prevented the campus from turning into something worse. [That] track record may be why she was eyed for this opening at Columbia.” 

He added, “I think Mnookin will be strong with working with Congress” in regard to reinstating Columbia’s funding that was slashed by the federal government over an alleged failure to combat antisemitism. The university announced in July it would implement several commitments in an effort to restore some $400 million in federal funding.  

Sophie Small, who graduated from UW-Madison in December with a double major in history and religious studies, met Mnookin several times at Hillel. The chancellor was “a frequent flier at things like Rosh Hashanah services and would always come and light the Hanukkah candles on the first night,” Small, who served on Hillel’s executive board, recalled.

Small, who described the encampment as “a gathering” that was not disruptive like on other campuses, said she feels “70 percent positive, 30 percent negative” about how Mnookin handled protests and her relationship with Jews on campus.

“She did what she could and she showed up for the Jewish community in ways I was impressed by,” said Small. “She did not stop coming to Rosh Hashanah even though she was under flak from Jewish students and parents.” 

“I’m excited for her to be at Columbia,” continued Small. “I didn’t feel like Columbia was encouraging its students to engage in conversation [the way Wisconsin did]. Our encampment was a night and day difference from Columbia’s. I think she’ll be good there. It will be good for Columbia to have a Jewish leader.”   

Mnookin grew up in a Reform Jewish family in the Bay Area. Her father, Robert Mnookin, is on the board of directors at Harvard Hillel and the author of The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World.

Mnookin’s tenure comes on the heels of three other presidents who grappled with campus unrest post-Oct. 7. Minouche Shafik, who was leading the university during the attacks, cited the “period of turmoil” that followed when she resigned in 2024. Shafik was criticized by members of Congress and some of the Columbia community over her handling of the encampment, which included physical intimidation of Jewish students. 

Katrina Armstrong, who briefly replaced Shafik, abruptly stepped down in March 2025 as the school faced pressure and funding cuts from the Trump administration over antisemitism allegations.

Claire Shipman, Armstong’s successor and the current interim president, struck a deal with the government to restore funding. She also faced scrutiny — and later apologized — for leaked text messages where she suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed from the university’s board over her pro-Israel advocacy.

Hillel directors at Wisconsin and Columbia both expressed support for Mnookin in statements on Monday.  

“Mnookin has been an outstanding friend and partner to UW Hillel, and she has consistently and thoughtfully supported our students,” said Greg Steinberger, CEO and president of UW Hillel. “Her leadership, work ethic and commitment to building community has helped us grow the wonderful Jewish community the UW has long been known for. The UW Hillel Foundation is grateful to Chancellor Mnookin for her friendship, service, and leadership, and we look forward to continuing to work closely with her through the spring semester. We remember fondly celebrating our holidays with the Chancellor. She has stood with us through the challenges, sorrow, and sadness that our community and the campus have experienced.”

Brian Cohen, executive director of the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, Columbia’s Hillel, said, “the last few years have been undeniably difficult for the Jewish and Israeli communities on campus. While challenges remain, there is a vibrant, joyful, proud Jewish community at Columbia. I am hopeful that President-elect Mnookin will bring the reputation, experience, and understanding that we need to build on that strong foundation.”

Judea Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA — where Mnookin served as law school dean from 2015-2022 — was also supportive of Columbia’s new hire, calling Mnookin a “good choice” in a post on X.  

Mnookin will begin her tenure on July 1. 

In the summer of 2024, when Vice President Kamala Harris was vetting potential running mates for her expedited campaign for president, a senior member of her team asked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro whether he had ever been a “double agent for Israel,” Shapiro writes in a new book that will be published later this month. “Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was,” Shapiro recounts in the book.

The exchange — which Shapiro describes in an outraged tone — has prompted sharp criticism from Jewish leaders, including some who served in the Biden-Harris administration.

“The more I read about [Shapiro’s] treatment in the vetting process, the more disturbed I become,” Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the State Department’s antisemitism envoy under President Joe Biden, said in a post on X. “These questions were classic antisemitism.” 

Shapiro suggests in the book that he was being treated unfairly as a Jewish contender for the role of vice president: “I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” he writes.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called the line of questioning “barely veiled bigotry,” and said it is “a textbook invocation of one of the oldest antisemitic canards in politics: the smear of dual loyalty.”  

The comments also earned criticism from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who said in a statement that “that kind of insinuation and targeting is antisemitism, plain and simple. No one should be judged or discriminated against because of their faith.” 

Shapiro’s Jewish faith and his support for Israel became the object of criticism among far-left activists, who agitated against his selection as Harris’ running mate. Harris has maintained that antisemitism played no role in her decision not to pick Shapiro. 

Shapiro’s account of his interactions with Harris’ campaign suggests that his views on Israel did present a problem for Harris. According to Shapiro, Harris asked him to apologize for comments he had made denouncing the actions of some anti-Israel protesters at the University of Pennsylvania. He refused, writing in his book that he felt Harris wanted him to align “perfectly” with her on all issues.

“It nagged at me that their questions weren’t really about substance,” Shapiro writes. “Rather, they were questioning my ideology, my approach, my world view.”

Abraham Foxman, the former longtime leader of the Anti-Defamation League, called it “very disturbing” that Shapiro was asked about being an Israeli double agent. “Aides focused on Israel to the extent he found it offensive. Something very troubling about our current political culture,” Foxman wrote in a post on X. 

Shapiro was not the first Jewish official to face a “double standard” during the vetting process, Aaron Keyak, the Jewish outreach director on Biden’s 2020 campaign who later served as Lipstadt’s deputy at the State Department, said in a statement.  

“During my vetting process I faced questions in a classified setting that my fellow non-Jewish political appointees did not,” Keyak said. “These sort of antisemitic questions are anti-American and do not represent the best that the Democratic Party offers. Now and especially during the next Presidential campaign we must demand better.” 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was chosen as Harris’ running mate, was also asked a question about his own ties to foreign nations. The Harris campaign asked Walz — who had previously lived and worked in China — if he had ever been an agent of China, CNN reported. 

The adversarial nature of Harris and Shapiro’s relationship during the 2024 campaign was the source of a great deal of speculation. Harris took aim at Shapiro, too, in a book she published in 2025, writing that before they even met, he was asking questions about furnishing and decorating the Naval Observatory, where the vice president resides, should he be selected. 

A spokesperson for Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

This story was updated on Jan. 20 with additional comments.

The World Economic Forum kicks off in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday, with topics set to address a world that has been much changed since the last gathering a year ago. For one thing, founder Klaus Schwab will no longer be front and center, following his departure as WEF chair last spring; instead, attendees will hear from WEF President and CEO Børge Brende, WEF co-chairs André Hoffmann and Laurence Fink, and Swiss President Guy Parmelin when the first plenary convenes on Tuesday morning.

Marking a shift from the Biden administration, during which only senior White House officials attended the forum, President Donald Trump will travel to Davos, where he is slated to speak on Wednesday afternoon local time. Joining Trump is a delegation that includes White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and AI and crypto czar David Sacks.

This year’s summit theme, “A Spirit of Dialogue,” will be felt as much on the sidelines as in the official sessions. While at Davos, Trump is expected to chair the first meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace — which is tasked with temporarily governing Gaza after Hamas — and make an additional announcement about the group. 

The Trump administration has not yet specified how many members the Board of Peace might include, nor have any individuals been named. However, reports have indicated that Nickolay Mladenov, a former U.N. Middle East envoy, who is expected to run the board’s operations on the ground, is likely to tap people from the private sector and NGOs. Other names that have been floated around as potential members include UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.  

The group will ultimately be tasked with overseeing a 15-member Palestinian technocratic governing body in Gaza, led by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority who oversaw the development of industrial zones, according to a joint statement by Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.

Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), who this week is leading a delegation to Denmark as the U.S. engages with Copenhagen over Greenland, will travel on to Davos with some of the delegation’s members. He’s slated to participate in two panels on Wednesday — one on global aid, and a second on the U.S.-China relationship.

The legislators will be joined by Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, who are speaking on a panel about state governance. Beshear is also slated to speak on another panel focused on middle-class economics.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog will again participate in the forum, this year speaking in conversation with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Thursday morning. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will also speak Thursday morning, days after he made headlines for saying that the Iranian regime is “in its final days and weeks.”

More than a dozen countries — including the U.S., Qatar and Saudi Arabia — will open pavilions in Davos. This will mark Riyadh’s second time opening a pavilion, part of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to showcase the Gulf country’s Vision 2030 plan. The Invest Qatar Pavilion will host a series of events over the course of the week, largely focused on finance and innovation.

Israel won’t have a pavilion this year — but efforts are already underway for an Israel House pavilion at next year’s WEF, though the pavilion, unlike some others, won’t be an official pavilion backed by the Israeli government.

Some attendees will depart Davos on Friday following the conclusion of official events, but others will stay for the annual Shabbat dinner, attended by a who’s who of Jewish — and non-Jewish — guests. 

“When it comes to Shabbos, it’s at the end of a week of intense meetings and networking and business,” Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who for years has been involved in the planning for the annual dinner, told JI in 2023. “So then people come to the last important meal: It’s spiritual, it’s purposeful, it’s Yiddishkeit.” 

Jewish Insider Washington reporter Matthew Shea contributed to this report.

Even as President Donald Trump backed away from taking immediate military action against Iran, several leading foreign policy analysts believe a U.S. strike against the Islamic Republic remains a possibility, arguing that the administration may be deliberately keeping Tehran off balance and preserving its military options.

Trump appeared to ease off on striking Iran after being advised by administration officials that a large-scale attack is unlikely to bring about regime change and could instead trigger a broader regional conflict, and hearing concerns from allies — including Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — who have urged him not to carry out military action. U.S. officials said Washington is now monitoring to see whether Tehran is backing down from its violent crackdowns against protesters before determining whether to act.

“Even though Trump did not direct strikes on Wednesday, he is keeping options open,” said Dana Stroul, the research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointing to the administration’s decision to reposition the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. “The buildup of military posture in the region over the coming weeks keeps plenty of military options on the table and maintains pressure on the Iranian regime.”

Stroul said the president appears to be taking additional time to ensure the U.S. is prepared not only to act against Iran, but also to defend regional partners in the event Iran attacks U.S. allies or military bases in the region, in retaliation.

Analysts cautioned that the delay should not be interpreted as a decision against military action altogether. Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Jewish Insider that he believes a strike is still on the table, putting the odds at “60–40 [percent]” in favor of a strike.

“There’s still a very real possibility of a strike,” Miller said. “I don’t see how the president gets out of the box he put himself in,” referring to Trump’s public calls for Iranians to continue protesting and his promise of U.S. assistance. “When an American president emboldens demonstrators and then says ‘We will help you’ without the capacity to really protect them, you have to wonder whether that’s morally conscious.”

Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also noted that Trump’s rhetoric has made the administration’s hesitation striking.

“It’s puzzling and upsetting that President Trump would call on the Iranian people to continue protesting in the midst of gunfire and then wait so long to act,” Stricker said. She suggested the delay could reflect a deliberate effort to gain military or intelligence advantages before a strike.

“I lean more toward a possible deception campaign designed to expose IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] movements and preparations before an actual U.S. attack,” Stricker said, adding that the administration may prefer to wait until additional U.S. naval assets arrive in the region, which she said would “happen in the coming days.”

Other analysts were more skeptical that Trump’s hesitance is a cover for an impending operation. Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Iran envoy in the first Trump administration, said it’s possible the president won’t act at all.

“As of noon today, it seems Trump will not do anything, which is extraordinary after he urged Iranians to protest and seize institutions at the risk of their lives,” Abrams said on Thursday. “It is unconscionable to say ‘Help is on the way’ and then do nothing. I hope the president will change his mind.”

While the Iranian regime has faced unprecedented pressure at home and abroad, Stroul warned that Iranian retaliation could be significant in the event of a strike — potentially another factor in Trump’s hesitation.

“The regime still has substantial missile and cyber capabilities,” she said. In the event of a strike, “the U.S. and Israel would need to prepare for the possibility of a sustained, destructive conflict that could be extremely costly in human life, military platforms and infrastructure.”

Concerns over retaliation have fueled lobbying by Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, urging Trump to avoid military action, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly conveyed a similar message to the president on Wednesday

“Arab governments recognize that the regime in Tehran is destabilized but still dangerous,” Stroul said. “Desperate leaders often take unpredictable, aggressive actions. For a region trying to turn the page after years of conflict, leaders are wary of another escalation that could jeopardize economic and security priorities.”

Even among experts who believe military action remains possible, there is broad agreement that it’s not clear what the consequences of a strike would be or that sustained military engagement would lead to the collapse of the regime.

“Any military strike has to answer the question of how it actually changes the balance between a repressive regime and protesters who have very limited means to push back,” Miller said. “There’s no guarantee that even massive strikes would lead to regime change.”

Miller and Stricker both noted that the administration has also not articulated a clear plan for alternative political leadership in Iran should the regime fall — an issue that complicates any decision to intervene.

“Penalizing the regime enough to support the Iranian people could produce unclear outcomes in terms of who provides order and security afterward,” Stricker said. “At the same time, if Trump ultimately does not act, it will be seen by many Iranians as a historic betrayal — and by U.S. adversaries as weakness.”

While several prominent university presidents famously refused to say that advocating for the genocide of Jews violates school policy when pressed by Congress two months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, Kent Syverud, the president and chancellor of Syracuse University, wrote a campus-wide email explaining that such rhetoric would not be tolerated on campus. 

On Monday, Syverud was tapped as the University of Michigan’s 16th president following a six-month search to replace President Santa Ono. Syverud’s appointment was met with optimism from several Jewish leaders who said his strong ties to the Jewish community could benefit the Ann Arbor school, which experienced some of the most disruptive anti-Israel and antisemitic activity in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza. 

“Syverud’s appointment is very good news for the University of Michigan, which has faced numerous incidents of antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility in recent years,” Miriam Elman, who was a tenured associate professor at Syracuse before joining the Academic Engagement Network as its executive director in 2019, told Jewish Insider. University of Michigan’s undergraduate student body is 15% Jewish, according to Hillel International. 

At Syracuse, Syverud supported the school’s large Jewish community, including engaging collaboratively with the campus Hillel and Chabad chapters, according to Elman. Syverud also met regularly with the leadership of the Jewish Federation of Central New York. 

Last May, at the federation’s invitation, he provided introductory remarks for a community-wide screening of the documentary “October 8,” a film about the world’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks. “He provided an update on the campus response to antisemitism for the hundreds of attendees and made it clear that it will never be tolerated,” said Elman.

“He is committed to the principles of the academy, including unfettered free expression and academic freedom, as well as to community safety,” continued Elman. “While other university leaders equivocated and failed, since Oct. 7, the [Syracuse] administration, under his leadership, has consistently enforced the student code of conduct and reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on protests and demonstrations.

University of Michigan’s Board of Regents voted unanimously to appoint Syverud, an accomplished legal scholar, during a special session on Monday. Syverud is returning to his Ann Arbor roots; he served as the law school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1995 to 1997. He then served as law school dean of Vanderbilt University from 1997 to 2005 and later as the dean of the law school at Washington University in St. Louis from 2005 to 2013 before coming to Syracuse. 

University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker, who was the target of anti-Israel vandals at his home and law office near campus several times in 2024, told JI he is “proud that Kent Syverud is returning to his alma mater as president.”

“His time at Syracuse, [and] his leadership at Washington University and Vanderbilt show a deep commitment to students, their welfare, and creating an environment for all to learn. I have no doubt he will continue that legacy as Michigan’s new president,” said Acker. 

Elman noted Syverud’s “steadfast rejection of BDS and the academic boycott of Israel and support for numerous educational opportunities for students and faculty to engage with Israeli universities and scholars.” 

“Syverud also understands the threats facing the Jewish people and the campus, recently noting that nefarious external actors, including Iran, seek to manipulate students, stoke divisions and cause mayhem,” continued Elman.

Alums for Campus Fairness praised Syverud and said the organization “looks forward to continuing our strong working relationship” with the incoming chancellor, who in October participated in a panel on campus antisemitism hosted by the group.

Syverud also participated in a 2024 summit on campus antisemitism for university presidents hosted by the American Jewish Committee, Hillel International and the American Council on Education. 

“AJC is heartened over the news that Kent Syverud will take on the presidency at the University of Michigan,” Sara Coodin, AJC’s director of academic affairs, told JI.” “Syverud brings a wealth of experience and measured, thoughtful and heartfelt engagement and commitment to fostering a positive campus culture and countering hate.”

In 2019, Syverud was recognized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center for suspending Syracuse fraternities that posted videos with antisemitic and racist statements. 

The search for Michigan’s next president began last summer after Ono stepped down following a tenure marked by post-Oct. 7 turbulence — including a nearly month-long encampment — until his resignation last spring. 

Ono, now inaugural director of the Ellison Institute of Technology, was generally seen as an ally of Michigan’s pro-Israel community who was quick to condemn acts of antisemitism — leading to pro-Palestinian vandals attacking his home on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.  

Domenico Grasso, the former chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, currently serves as the university’s interim president. Syverud is expected to assume the position by July 1. 

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on yesterday’s meeting between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and preview the Saudi leader’s schedule today in Washington. We talk to Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Mark Kelly about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ seizure last weekend of a tanker that originated in the United Arab Emirates, and cover Texas’ designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Mike Lawler, Ambassador Charles Kushner and Noam Tibon.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve with assists from Marc Rod, Emily Jacobs and Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.

What We’re Watching

• President Donald Trump is slated to deliver remarks at today’s U.S.-Saudi investment summit in Washington, being hosted by Saudi Arabia during Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the capital. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Saudi Investment Minister Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih will kick off the daylong summit at this morning’s plenary. Others slated to speak today include Elon Musk, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, IBM’s Gary Cohn, Alphabet and Google’s Ruth Porat, Andreessen Horowitz’s Benjamin Horowitz, Pfizer’s Albert Bourla, Palantir’s Alex Karp and Anduril’s Matthew Steckman.
• Following his White House sitdown and dinner yesterday (more below), MBS is slated to meet with House members today on Capitol Hill.
• Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding confirmation hearings this morning for Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the Trump administration’s nominee to be antisemitism envoy, and former State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce to be deputy U.N. ambassador. Kaploun was a last-minute addition to the SFRC’s schedule, first appearing yesterday afternoon, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
• Tonight in Washington, the Endowment for Middle East Truth is hosting its 16th annual Rays of Light in the Darkness awards dinner. This year’s honorees include Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), the Justice Department’s Leo Terrell, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. Szabolcs Takacs and Pakistani American journalist Anila Ali.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

As 2,000 Jewish philanthropists, activists and professionals prepared to leave Washington on Tuesday as the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly wrapped up, they heard a stern warning from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Americans must confront antisemitism on both sides, including the right; if they don’t, the nation will face an “existential crisis.” 

“I do not want to wake up in five years and find that both major parties in America have embraced hatred of Israel and have tolerated, if not embraced, antisemitism,” Cruz said. Read JI’s coverage of his remarks here. 

Cruz has become the most prominent Republican elected official speaking out against a rising tide of right-wing antisemitism. But the weeks following podcaster Tucker Carlson’s interview with neo-Nazi provocateur Nick Fuentes have sparked a reckoning for Republicans, including some who until recently considered antisemitism to be primarily a left-wing phenomenon.

That internal tension was on full display at a Tuesday afternoon conference hosted by the conservative National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. The group was until recently affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, until the conservative think tank’s president came to Carlson’s defense. Earlier this month the task force members voted to cut ties with Heritage.  

The NTFCA gathering, arranged in less than two weeks after the group’s split from Heritage, took place in a basement ballroom at The Line Hotel in Washington. About 100 people were in attendance, among them representatives from Jewish advocacy groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America and Combat Antisemitism Movement.

The event’s organizers — NTFCA co-chairs Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration; Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel; and Luke Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project — took the opportunity to forcefully reject Carlson and other far-right media figures who are gaining clout among conservatives by attacking Israel and its backers, and to issue a call for conservatives to join them in calling out growing animosity toward Jews. They don’t think enough people are doing so. 

“I remember Luke, early on, said, ‘Mario, keep your eye on the right.’ I said, ‘Well, look, that’s a fringe. It’s not really important,’” Bramnick said. “But now we’re seeing a very troubling development during President Trump’s second administration within the MAGA movement: antisemitic acts coming from MAGA movement leaders.” The Project Esther report that the task force developed with Heritage last year was focused solely on left-wing antisemitism. 

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

BEST OF FRIENDS

Trump, MBS announce sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets, progress on defense pact

In an Oval Office appearance following their meeting on Tuesday, President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced progress on multiple bilateral initiatives, including a U.S.-Saudi defense pact and Riyadh’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.

What Trump said: Trump indicated Riyadh may receive a similar jet to Israel’s advanced F-35I Adir model: “When you look at the F-35 and you’re asking me ‘Is it the same [as Israel’s]?’ I think it’s going to be pretty similar,” said Trump. “This [Saudi Arabia] is a great ally, and Israel’s a great ally. I know they’d like you [MBS] to get planes of reduced caliber, but I don’t think that makes you too happy. … We’re looking at that exactly right now but as far as I’m concerned, [both countries are] at a level where they should get top of the line.”

Read the full story here.

Dinner guests: The White House dinner with MBS included, from the business world, Apple CEO Tim Cook; Tesla CEO Elon Musk; Palantir CEO Alex Karp; Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and wife, Christine; Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman and his wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla; BDT & MSD Partners Vice Chair Dina Powell McCormick; Paramount CEO David Ellison; and Washington Commanders owners Josh and Marjorie Harris. Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha Vance; Donald Trump Jr.; and Tiffany Trump were also in attendance, as were Attorney General Pam Bondi and longtime partner John Wakefield; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his wife, Allison Lutnick; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; EPA Director Lee Zeldin; Interior Secretary Doug Burgum; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine. From Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA); Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Dave McCormick (R-PA); and Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee made the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue for the dinner. Fox News’ Bret Baier and Maria Bartiromo were also spotted at the dinner.

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WEAPONS SALES SCRUTINY

Democrats raise concerns about Trump’s sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia

Senate Democrats echoed their House counterparts on Tuesday in expressing concern about President Donald Trump’s announcement of a deal to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.

Shaheen’s statement: Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who will have some ability to obstruct or slow the deal, was deeply critical of multiple announcements made by Trump during his White House summit with MBS. Shaheen said in a statement that the F-35 deal “raises major concerns about protecting U.S. military technology and the military edge America shares with our allies” and demanded the administration “fully explain to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee why this sale is in the vital national interest of the United States.”

Read the full story with additional comments from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK).

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MARITIME SECURITY

Blumenthal, Kelly alarmed by IRGC seizure of tanker in the Strait of Hormuz

Two Democratic senators expressed concern on Tuesday about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ seizure of an commercial oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical international shipping route, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report. The IRGC took credit on Friday for the seizure of the Talara, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, for what state media described as alleged cargo violations. The tanker, which began its journey in the United Arab Emirates, was carrying petrochemicals through the Strait of Hormuz to Singapore when it was diverted by the IRGC into Iranian territorial waters.

On alert: “It’s like the 1980s all over again,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a former fighter pilot, said. “The first time I was there was 1989, in the Strait of Hormuz, with the Iranians doing that same old shit, where they would harass shipping. A couple times, I felt like we were on the edge of getting in the conflict.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that the U.S. needs to remain vigilant against Iran’s other malign activities in spite of the setbacks to its nuclear program. “Iran is Iran. They are the toxic element in the Middle East. We have no reason for complacency. Just because we set them back in their nuclear program, they remain a malevolent force, and the seizure of that tanker is just one indication of that,” Blumenthal said.

Read the full story here.

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TEXAS TAKEDOWN

Texas designates Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR as terrorist, criminal organizations

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a declaration on Tuesday designating the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations — a move that some lawmakers are pushing on the federal level, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What it does: Abbott’s proclamation notes the Muslim Brotherhood’s support to groups, including Hamas, that conduct terrorism in various countries, some of which have already been designated as terrorist groups, and that a series of countries have already imposed restrictions on their local Muslim Brotherhood branches. The proclamation describes CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood and an effective front group for Hamas in the United States and accuses the group of seeking to spread Sharia law in the country by infiltrating public office and other areas of public life.

Read the full story here.

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EXCLUSIVE

Booker, Goldman urge Trump to pressure Israel to crack down on West Bank settler violence, settlement expansion

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday urging him to pressure the Israeli government to intervene to stop attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and to oppose settlement expansion. The clear-cut criticism of Israel is notable coming from two lawmakers generally seen as strong supporters of the Jewish state. The two urged Trump to reimpose Biden-era sanctions — withdrawn by the Trump administration — on those involved in the settler attacks if the Israeli government does not act, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What they wrote: “The Netanyahu government’s lack of action to address extreme settler violence emboldens Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups, and builds resentment in the West Bank, while putting increased pressure on the fragile ceasefire agreement in Gaza that your Administration secured,” the two lawmakers wrote. “More must be done to stop settler violence and ensure that those who perpetrate acts of violence against civilians in the West Bank are not allowed to operate with impunity.”

Read the full story here.

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SUIT SETTLED

Virginia private school reaches settlement with Jewish parents over antisemitic harassment

A private K-8 school in Northern Virginia reached a settlement on Tuesday with the parents of an 11-year-old Jewish student who say their daughter faced months of antisemitic harassment that went unaddressed by school officials, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. According to the complaint, filed in July with the Office for Civil Rights in the Virginia Attorney General’s Office by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law and Washington-based firm Dillon PLLC, the student faced several antisemitic incidents while a student at Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Va., including a history class in which students collaborated on a large artistic rendering featuring Adolf Hitler’s face. The student was also told that Jews are “baby killers” and that they deserved to die because of the Israel-Hamas war. Kenneth Nysmith, the headmaster and owner of Nysmith, told the parents to tell their daughter to “toughen up” when they asked the school to take steps to address the bullying, according to the complaint. Two days later, the headmaster sent the parents an email stating all three of their children were expelled effective that same day. 

Terms and conditions: Under the terms of the settlement, in addition to monetary relief to the family, Nysmith School agreed to establish a committee to review and investigate discrimination complaints — with an independent monitor evaluating the committee’s work. It also agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and to provide staff with annual antisemitism training and students with annual education on antisemitism and the Holocaust for the next five years. The training will be led by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. Nysmith also agreed to issue a public statement apologizing for expelling the children and making them feel unwelcome based on religious identity. 

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Heritage’s Right Turn: The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the departure of Robert George from the Heritage Foundation’s board of trustees over the think tank’s relationship with Tucker Carlson and approach to far-right antisemitism. “Mr. George’s departure from the Heritage board means that the institution may be less likely to heed his call to be ‘unbending and unflinching’ in its fidelity to these principles. But a decision this serious may be owed in some part to his sense that Heritage’s commitments were already deteriorating during Mr. Roberts’s tenure. Others in the institution are confronting this same dilemma. Some of Mr. Roberts’s defenders are celebrating Mr. George’s departure as a victory for their form of conservatism. For them, it may be. But that is a reflection of a worldview that doesn’t resemble the conservatism for which Heritage has long stood. A ‘conservatism’ that plays footsie — or worse — with antisemitism and white identity politics, and those who traffic them, doesn’t merit the name.” [WSJ]

The GOP’s ‘Corroded’ Soul: In the Washington Reporter, Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel, warns of the rise of right-wing antisemitism. “Regardless of who the bigot may be, and whether they are declaring hatred for millions of Christian Zionists, blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ‘duping’ President Donald Trump into bombing Iran, accusing Israel of killing J.F.K., and/or Charlie Kirk, and/or implying that Hitler wasn’t as bad as we think — there are evil elements on the right who’ve discovered what many Democrats on the formerly fringe left have known for some time: there is both cash and cache in attacking Israel and her people. … People of faith and conscience cannot allow the same spirit that flowed through Haman and Hitler to corrupt and corrode the soul of the GOP. Whether it is in our communities, in our churches, on college campuses, or in Congress, antisemitism in our society must be confronted at every turn.” [WashingtonReporter]

Taking on the Brotherhood: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson consider the ways in which the Trump administration can counter the Muslim Brotherhood’s global influence. “The evidence validates U.S. concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood, particularly as the Trump administration aims to move beyond the Gaza ceasefire to build a more stable, peaceful Middle East. But taking sweeping action against the entire group will be both counterproductive and ineffective. Instead, the administration should look closely at Brotherhood entities that provide financial support for Hamas as potential SDGT targets. It should also designate those branches that are tied to violence as FTOs. At the same time, it should provide a strong legal framework to go after Brotherhood organizations using both sanctions and law enforcement tools.” [WashingtonInstitute]

Word on the Street

The Department of Education is moving several of its offices to other departments within the administration as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the agency altogether; the Office for Civil Rights will remain within the DoE, but could be moved elsewhere in the future…

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) introduced legislation to provide diplomatic privileges to the Gulf Cooperation Council, allowing it to establish a de-facto embassy in Washington; the legislation was previously approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee as an amendment to its State Department reform package in September…

U.S. Ambassador to France Charles Kushner presented his credentials to Prince Albert II of Monaco this week…

The Free Press explores antisemitic conspiracy theorist Nick Fuentes’ efforts to get involved in the 2026 midterms through his America First Foundation…

A Gustav Klimt painting from the collection of the late philanthropist Leonard Lauder was sold for $236.4 million, becoming the most expensive work of modern art to be sold at auction…

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is accusing the University of Pennsylvania of obstructing efforts to identify complainants and victims of campus antisemitism as part of the EEOC’s probe into the school’s handling of antisemitism…

Harvard’s undergraduate student population is voting this week on three Israel divestment proposals…

A Maryland man is facing up to 169 years in prison after pleading guilty to dozens of federal charges in connection with more than 40 threatening letters and postcards sent to 25 Jewish institutions spanning multiple states…

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has given tens of thousands of dollars in interest-free loans to students who lost “scholarships, housing or other support” due to their anti-Israel campus advocacy…

The Canada Revenue Agency revoked the tax-exempt status of Herut Canada, 15 months after revoking the statuses of the Canadian arm of the Jewish National Fund and the Ne’eman Foundation of Canada…

France posthumously promoted Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general, 130 years after the French army captain was wrongly convicted on charges of treason…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the ongoing discovery of hundreds of mass graves across Syria and the efforts to identify the bodies discovered in them…

Nvidia joined the Lightspeed-led $200 million funding round for AI startup AA-I Technologies, founded by Mobileye’s Amnon Shashua…

One person was killed and three others injured in a car-ramming terror attack in the West Bank…

Maj. Gen. (res.) Noam Tibon, who rose to international prominence after he rescued of his son’s family and others during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, is joining Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party ahead of next year’s elections…

The New York Times reports from the southern Israeli facility from which U.S. and Israeli military personnel, diplomats and Arab interlocutors are overseeing the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and are working to prepare the Gaza Strip for post-Hamas administration… 

The U.S., France, Germany and the U.K. submitted a draft resolution to the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency calling on Iran to provide “precise information on nuclear material accountancy and safeguarded nuclear facilities” and allow nuclear inspectors access to those facilities…

The Wall Street Journal spotlights the Ukrainian corruption probe targeting former business associates of President Volodymyr Zelensky…

Combat Antisemitism Movement appointed former U.S. Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Aaron Keyak, Republican Jewish Coalition board member Barbara Feingold and former Democratic Governors Association Executive Director Noam Lee to the organization’s advisory board, whose new chair will be Arie Lipnick, senior advisor to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)…

Pic of the Day

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations hosted a roundtable in New York on Tuesday with recently released hostages, including Omri Miran (pictured with microphone).

Birthdays

Professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour, John Maxwell Homa turns 35…

Retired New York state Supreme Court judge, his tenure on “The People’s Court” was shorter than that of his wife “Judge Judy,” Jerry Sheindlin turns 92… Attorney, investment banker and former U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Louis B. Susman turns 88… Professor of chemistry at Stanford University, Richard Neil Zare turns 86… Fifteen-term member in the U.S. House of Representatives (D-NY) until 2013, he is now a partner in Gotham Government Relations, Gary Ackerman turns 83… Fashion designer whose name appears on clothing, perfumes, watches and jewelry, Calvin Klein turns 83… Founder and president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, James J. Zogby turns 80… U.S. ambassador to Germany from 2022 untilJuly 2024, following 18 years as president of the University of Pennsylvania, Amy Gutmann turns 76… Los Angeles-based real estate investor, Sydney Ilene Cetner… Owner of Patty’s Piano Studio in Santa Monica, Calif., Patricia Fiden… Cosmetic dentist and chairman of pharma company Akelos, Inc., Steven Fox, DDS… California state senator until 2022, Robert Myles “Bob” Hertzberg turns 71… Dean and professor of Jewish history, literature and law at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel turns 70… Past chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and president of Millennium Properties R/E Inc., Daniel Hyman turns 70… Academy Award-winning screenwriter, producer, director and lyricist, best known as the writer of “Being John Malkovich,” Charlie Kaufman turns 67… Angel investor, investment banker and president of Sunrise Financial Group, Nathan Low… Retired member of the Knesset for the Kulanu party, he served as Israel’s minister of finance for five years, Moshe Kahlon turns 65… Officer of NORPAC New York and a partner in a New York law firm, Trudy Stern… Co-president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Lisa Eisen… Director of state and local government affairs for SAIC, Eric Finkbeiner… Co-founder of Optimistic Labs, Seth Cohen… Member of the New York state Assembly since 2005, Andrew D. Hevesi turns 52… New York Times best-selling novelist, she is also a professor at Rutgers University-Camden, Lauren Grodstein turns 50… Gymnast, she was a member of the Magnificent Seven, the women’s U.S. gymnastics team at the 1996 Summer Olympics, Kerri Allyson Strug turns 48… Editor-in-chief of Time magazine, Samuel P. Jacobs… Senior program director at M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, Rachel Hillman… Former congressional staffer, Michael Dale-Stein turns 38… Managing director at Climate Power, John D. Axelrod… European deals reporter at the Financial Times based in London, Ivan Levingston…

Gordon Gee has served as president of more American universities than almost anyone, as far as he knows. Most recently he led West Virginia University, from which he retired in July; before that, he oversaw Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Brown and the University of Colorado over a span of 45 years. 

Alongside his various presidencies, Gee also helped open Hillel houses on two different campuses: Vanderbilt and Ohio State. It’s a distinction that makes him particularly well-suited to opine on the state of American higher education, which has been grappling with the thorny and sometimes intertwined issues of antisemitism, free speech and student conduct. 

A 2002 Wall Street Journal article attributed Vanderbilt’s decision to increase recruitment of Jewish students to Gee, himself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. More than two decades later, under a successor Gee proudly claims, Vanderbilt is still courting Jewish students and positioning itself as a bastion of common sense amid the upheaval that followed the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago.   

As Gee, 81, looks back on his career and reflects on the state of academia, he sees a growing chasm between what he described as two different kinds of universities: those like Vanderbilt, that have held firm to the principles of institutional neutrality, and those like his alma mater, Columbia University, that have struggled to take an impartial stance in response to campus protests and antisemitism — and that are wary of making significant change. 

“One is the resistance. [They say] anything that comes out of the [Trump] administration, anything that they want, anything, it is just terrible,” Gee told Jewish Insider in an interview last week ahead of a keynote address at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. “The other are those institutions that are trying to determine a way to move forward and do so by knitting themselves together in different ways. Those are mainly the big public universities. Those are the real future of the American higher education system, and for Jewish students themselves.”

Immediately after Oct. 7, Gee called Rabbi Ari Berman, the president of Yeshiva University, and asked for help in recruiting other university presidents to sign onto a statement condemning the attacks, which was published in The Wall Street Journal as a full-page ad. But they were unable to get many of the big-name academic leaders they wanted. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

“That was when I really started to discover that there’s no moral high ground on this with a number of people. It was very distressing to me,” Gee said. “I think that so many people were walking on eggshells. They didn’t want to have disruptions. They also didn’t want to speak out.”

Although anti-Israel protests took place at West Virginia University, there was no encampment there in the spring of 2024, as happened on dozens of campuses around the country that semester. As Gee watched other university administrators fail to respond in clear ways to the protests that often crossed a line into harassment and targeting of Jewish students, he saw administrators afraid of upsetting stakeholders on campus. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

Rather than protecting the free speech of pro-Israel students who were often cowed into silence by classmates, university leaders did little, Gee alleged. 

“They were silencing those who were intimidated by it, those who were pro-Israel, those who wanted to speak up in terms of balance,” said Gee. “University administrators were allowing that to happen.”

As President Donald Trump has sought to make his mark on higher education by targeting campus antisemitism and going after university diversity programs, Gee does not share the same skepticism toward Trump’s proposals that has characterized the responses of many university administrators who worry the administration’s actions are too heavy-handed.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has approached several top universities about signing onto a compact that would give them preferential access to federal funds. No university has yet signed on, with administrators claiming it amounts to government infringement on their academic freedom. Gee — generally a skeptic of federal meddling in higher education — isn’t entirely opposed.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

“Three-quarters of it is exactly what universities ought to be doing. A quarter of it probably is a bridge too far,” Gee explained. “But the very fact that a political administration, this Republican administration, can take on universities, and successfully so in many ways, has shown how the relationship between universities and the general public has deteriorated.” 

While Trump’s approach may have come from a genuine concern about the academic environment, “they’ve used that not as a scalpel, but as a sledgehammer,” said Gee. Still, he thinks the vehement opposition in many corners of academia has to do with the messenger.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

Gee described himself as “always the optimist,” and said the current uncertainty facing academia — budget cuts, public distrust, a lack of understanding of its purpose — can be a “clarifying moment.”

“We need to understand we’re about teaching and learning. We’re not about propaganda. We’re not about ostracism. We’re not about making people feel inadequate if they don’t toe the line,” said Gee.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts doubled down on the influential conservative group’s support for Tucker Carlson, who has been leaning into increasingly explicit antisemitism and opposition to Israel on his podcast, and expressed unwillingness to “cancel” neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

Roberts’ comments come after a friendly Carlson interview with Fuentes, in which Carlson described Christian Zionists as infected by a “brain virus.” Carlson said he dislikes Christian Zionists “more than anybody. Because it’s Christian heresy, and I’m offended by that as a Christian,” pointing to conservatives including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has repeatedly sparred with Carlson over Israel and antisemitism, and Ambassador Mike Huckabee. On Wednesday, reports arose that Heritage had scrubbed references to Carlson from one of its donation pages.

Roberts, in a video posted on X on Thursday amid online discussion of Heritage’s relationship with Carlson, said he refused to cancel Carlson or Fuentes and that the group would “always” defend Carlson from the “pressure” of the “globalist class.”

“When it serves the interest of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” Roberts said. “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now.”

He said the group would “always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains — and as I have said before — always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”

Roberts rejected those criticizing Carlson as a “venomous coalition” and said that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.” 

He added that it is the responsibility of Heritage to attack the left, not to criticize those on the right. “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either,” Roberts continued.

Roberts, whose group assembled the Project Esther plan to combat antisemitism — focused on anti-Israel left-wing groups — also said in the video, “I want to be clear about one thing, Christians can critique the State of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course antisemitism should be condemned.”

Roberts quoted a statement by Vice President JD Vance at a Turning Point USA event on Wednesday: “What I am not OK with is any country coming before the interest of American citizens. And it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interest of our own country first. That’s where our allegiance lies, and that’s where it will stay.”

Roberts’ comments come amid an uproar from pro-Israel conservatives about Vance’s response to an antisemitic question he faced from a member of the audience at that event.

The questioner declared that Judaism does “not agree with [our religion] but also openly supports the [persecution] of ours,” to enthusiastic applause from the crowd.

Vance said in his response, “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States — they’re not controlling this president of the United States, which is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to have some of the success that we’ve had in the Middle East.”

He said that the Gaza peace deal was only possible because President Donald Trump was “actually… willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel.”

The vice president also said that ensuring Christian access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is an “obvious area of common interest” and that he is “fine” with working with Israel on the issue. “What I am not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens,” he continued.

Vance did not address or condemn the questioner’s accusations that Jews are attempting to persecute Christians.

Fuentes has been celebrating the recent developments, posting on X, “The Groypers have taken over. We run this” in response to questions posed to Vance at the TPUSA event.

Responding to Roberts, Fuentes said, “I don’t know what exactly you ‘abhor’ about my views, but we can all agree that free speech, Christ, and America First should be the pillars of our movement. Thank you for your courage in standing up for open discourse and defending Tucker against the Israel First Woke Right.”

After an agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas to initiate the first stage of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal in mid-October, the IDF retreated to an “initial withdrawal line,” leaving Israeli forces in control of 58% of the enclave as Israel and mediators push Hamas to release the remaining deceased hostages and comply with the rest of the agreement, including disarmament and relinquishing power. 

The line divides Gaza in two: an “East,” controlled by the IDF and serving as a buffer zone to Israel, and a “West,” run by Hamas and host to the concentrated Palestinian population.

In interviews with Jewish Insider, experts painted a picture of two Gazas, explaining that the area Israel holds can be used strategically to root out Hamas and maintain leverage if hostilities resume. But challenges lie ahead in rebuilding the enclave and moving Palestinians back into the eastern region.

“There are virtually no Palestinians living in the eastern part of Gaza beyond the yellow line. The eastern part does not see the movement and the maneuvers of Hamas. That’s still confined to the western part,” Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told JI. “Actual civilians of Gaza are all entirely under Hamas’ control in the west.”

Alkhatib said Israel has kept Palestinians from returning to the east over security and operational concerns, but also as leverage.

“How do you ensure that you don’t have Hamas members embedding themselves into the civilians, as they have done time and again? How do you ensure that Gazans coming into the east aren’t hindering clearance operations of tunnels or unexploded munitions?” Alkhatib asked. “I also think that the return of Palestinians to beyond the ‘yellow zone’ is leverage that Israel is holding onto until phase one is thoroughly and fully complete.”

Vice President JD Vance, in Israel last week, said during his trip that Palestinians should be able to move into a “Hamas-free zone” in southern Gaza “in the next couple months.” But experts warned that the timeline will be difficult given the conditions on the ground.

David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel has developed technology to recognize Hamas fighters and could use it to allow non-combatants access to the area under Israeli control. But even if Israel can vet who enters, eastern Gaza has endured destruction comparable to the west, and serious concerns await displaced civilians.

“The ubiquitous tunnel system that Hamas has dug in Gaza, which no doubt traverses the yellow line that serves as the ceasefire line, limits Israel’s ability to provide a safe zone in the eastern portion of Gaza,” May told JI.

Palestinians who move into the Hamas-free zone and those working on rebuilding would also face the issue of land ownership, Alkhatib noted.

“Who owns these lands, and where do people have their homes? Every plot of land in Gaza is accounted for,” he said. “You can’t just rebuild Gaza without taking into consideration that you’re doing so over pieces of land and properties that belonged to people.”

“There could be a process in which that happens, regardless of any claims to the land,” Alkhatib continued. “Basically there could be a fund established that allows for the compensation of rightful owners. But beyond that, eastern Gaza could be developed to create a compelling example that others in Gaza want to be part of.”

Despite these challenges, experts say finding ways to take in Palestinians to east Gaza could isolate Hamas in the west — a strategy Israel could use to undermine the terrorist group’s authority and bring in international support for rebuilding.

“East Gaza under IDF control would become a Hamas-free zone where the world comes together to support the emergence of thriving new political, social and economic institutions where the lives of average Gazans would flourish,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

“Hamas-controlled west Gaza, by contrast, would be condemned to repression, stagnation and sustained misery. Over time, the east would become a huge magnet for the vast majority of Gaza’s population who would vote with their feet to live within a ‘free Gaza,’ fatally isolating and undermining Hamas rule and legitimacy,” Hannah continued.

May said this contrast can show Gazans “an alternative to life under Hamas’ corruption and oppression” and make donors more likely to contribute to rebuilding projects knowing aid won’t be intercepted by Hamas.

“If there is running water, sewer, electricity, internet, fixed roads and infrastructure, if there is something that resembles jobs and economic opportunity, and you create vetted methods for accepting incoming civilians into that area, then absolutely there could be a way in such that slowly drains the population out of west Gaza,” said Alkhatib.

However, Hannah argued that keeping half the enclave as a buffer zone could also serve Israel’s interests if fighting resumes.

“Right now, Israel controls an extensive buffer zone containing very few hostile Gazans standing between its border communities and Hamas-controlled west Gaza,” said Hannah. “How eager should [Israel] be to attract over a million or more Gazans to pick up and move much closer to Israel’s borders?”

May said Israel may have plenty of time to decide on how to proceed should Hamas continue to be uncooperative with the implementation of the rest of the first phase of the agreement. 

“There is still a lot up in the air,” said May. “As ceasefire lines in the Middle East have a tendency to become permanent borders, Israel needs to plan for the possibility of the yellow line becoming a long-term territorial marker.” 

Ireland is set to elect a new president tomorrow. Like in Israel, the role of president is largely ceremonial, but unlike in Israel, where the Knesset elects the president and the choice is mostly the result of backroom political deals, the Irish president is directly elected by the people.

That means the choice reflects the mood of the Irish public — and after the news coming out of the Emerald Isle over the past two years, it may come as no surprise that the country appears to be on the verge of choosing a candidate with anti-Israel, antisemitic and even anti-Western views.

The current president, Michael D. Higgins, is no friend of Israel or the Jews, having called antisemitism accusations an Israeli “PR exercise.” When the Jewish community asked him not to attend a Holocaust remembrance ceremony out of a concern that he would politicize it, he went anyway and gave a speech comparing Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza to the Holocaust.

The country’s former justice minister, Alan Shatter, told Jewish Insider that the leading candidate for the presidency, Catherine Connolly, “if elected, will present as Michael D. Higgins on steroids.”

Connolly, a legislator representing Galway West since 2016, is a hard-left candidate running as an independent, and led a recent Irish Times poll by 18 points. 

The front-runner’s anti-Israel history goes back to before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, and includes remarks that crossed the line into antisemitism. In 2021, Connolly wrote in a parliamentary question that Israel is “attempt[ing] to accomplish Jewish supremacy,” using language associated with centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Since then, she has brought up Israel, which she calls a “terrorist state” or “an apartheid state,” in parliament over 200 times. One of those times was questioning the Irish Embassy in Tel Aviv joining an EU member embassies’ statement marking Holocaust Remembrance Day last year. 

Last month, she criticized calls to keep Hamas out of a future government for Gaza, saying that the terrorist organization is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people.”

Her views have earned her the endorsement of the notorious Hezbollah-supporting Irish rapper duo Kneecap. 

Connolly has also said that the U.S. and EU cannot be trusted, and called President Donald Trump a bully. She has parroted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s line on his invasion of Ukraine, claiming that “NATO has played a despicable role in moving forward to the border and engaging in warmongering.” She also said that Russia’s attempt to assassinate Sergei and Yulia Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies and his daughter, should be viewed in the “context” of an EU and NATO missile buildup. 

Shatter said that Connolly “personifies the Irish left’s and Sinn Fein’s anti-Israel hostility … counting amongst her political supporters those who advocate Israel’s replacement by a Palestinian state. On social media she is supported by the entirety of the obsessive Israel-hating Irish social media community. … She regards the Irish government’s hostility towards Israel and anti-Israel action to date as insufficient.”

Connolly “is a product of the Irish government pandering to and adopting the narrative of Israel’s most extreme critics, and the government parties failing to nominate credible, articulate candidates,” Shatter argued. 

Shatter also pointed out that, while there are other issues on the national agenda, Connolly’s “hostility to Israel has [put her in] center stage.” In addition, he said that at many of her events, supporters have been “waving Palestinian flags as if the Irish flag has gone out of fashion.”

Perhaps the front-runner’s obsession with a conflict thousands of miles from Dublin and disconnected from key issues in Irish society is a reason why turnout is expected to hit a record low on Friday. “Of the big-ticket items in Irish society – for instance housing, race, climate change, unification – [the candidates] have had very little interesting things to say,” and the campaign “hasn’t inspired voters,” professor Kevin Rafter, a political scientist and the co-author of The Irish Presidency: Power, Ceremony and Politics, told The Guardian. 

Good Friday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we cover President Donald Trump’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday as well as his pledge not to allow Israel to annex the West Bank, and preview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UNGA today. We explore how the U.S. investors set to take over the majority of TikTok could impact the issue of antisemitism on the platform and report on Zohran Mamdani’s Rosh Hashanah visit to a Brooklyn synagogue well-known for its anti-Zionist activism. We also report on Rob Malley’s remarks yesterday about the closure of the classified information investigation into his actions as the Biden administration’s Iran envoy. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: May Mailman, Tony Blair and Jason Greenblatt.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Gabby Deutch, Marc Rod and Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.

For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Post-Paramount sale, Shari Redstone is ‘full speed ahead’ on addressing antisemitism; Shomer Collective launch Shiva Circle initiative to offer ‘life jacket for grievers’; Concern mounts in Jerusalem as Qatar, Egypt set to take key roles in UNESCO. Print the latest edition here.

What We’re Watching

• 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.

What You Should Know

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.

PLATFORM PIVOT

TikTok’s U.S. takeover: Will it curb antisemitic content?

A new set of American power players appears set to take over ownership of TikTok’s U.S. business, a move pushed by Congress due to national security concerns over TikTok parent company ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government and broader societal concerns with extremist, divisive and harmful content often funneled to users through the app’s powerful algorithm. That algorithm is now expected to be licensed by the American software company Oracle, which would also manage the app’s security. With new ownership comes one key question about the transfer of TikTok from Chinese to American control, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports: Will American owners, with no ties to the Chinese Community Party, be more responsive to concerns about the proliferation of antisemitism, hate and extremism on the platform? 

Wait and see: Anti-hate experts at the Anti-Defamation League and the U.K.’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue cautioned that it’s too soon to know, and that new ownership does not necessarily mean a major change in policy — or that a change would necessarily be in the direction of more content moderation. After all, TikTok’s algorithm, which feeds users personalized content it expects them to like via the app’s For You Page, is the source of the company’s success, because the more that users enjoy the content being recommended to them, the more time they spend on the app. 

Read the full story here.

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HOLDING THE LINE

Trump pledges he will not allow Israel to annex West Bank

President Donald Trump pledged on Thursday that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, the first time Trump has addressed the matter in his second term. Asked about reports that he told Arab leaders this week he would not permit Israel to make the move, Trump confirmed to reporters in the Oval Office that he opposes annexation, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch and Danielle Cohen-Kanik report.

What he said: “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, nope, I will not allow it. It’s not gonna happen,” he said, hours after a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Asked if he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the issue, Trump said, “Yeah, but I’m not going to allow it. Whether I spoke to him or not — I did — but I’m not allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. There’s been enough, it’s time to stop now.” 

Read the full story here.

In agreement: Jason Greenblatt, a key architect of the Abraham Accords, joined Trump in coming out against the Israeli government’s reported plans to annex portions of the West Bank, saying on Thursday evening that it was the wrong time to do so, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports for Jewish Insider.

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TALKING TURKEY

Alongside Erdogan, Trump suggests he’ll permit Turkey to buy F-35 fighter jets

President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that he was likely to permit Turkey to purchase F-35 fighter jets as soon as “the end of the day,” ending a nearly eight-year blockade on Ankara’s acquiring the state-of-the-art fighter jet as a result of its 2017 purchase of a Russian S-400 missile system, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports.

Give-and-take: Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of a meeting between the two and their respective teams, Trump said without mentioning the F-35s or the less-advanced F-16 jets by name that he expected the Turkish leader would “be successful with buying the things” he would “like to buy.” Speaking at the outset of his meeting with Erdogan, Trump said, “He needs certain things, and we need certain things, and we’re going to come to a conclusion. You’ll know by the end of the day.” 

Read the full story here.

Damascus dealings: Stability in Syria could help ease tensions between Israel and Turkey — two countries with competing interests in the region — and the U.S. has a key role to play in shaping the security agreements needed to get there, experts from the Middle East Institute said Thursday during a panel titled “Can Turkey and Israel Find Common Ground in Syria?” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

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VENUE CHOICE

On Rosh Hashanah, Mamdani visits synagogue known for anti-Zionist activism

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, attended his first Rosh Hashanah service on Monday night at a Brooklyn synagogue well-known for its anti-Zionist activism. The visit to Kolot Chayeinu, a nondenominational synagogue in Park Slope that has drawn controversy over its anti-Zionist orientation, comes as Mamdani is seeking to engage in increased outreach to Jewish voters ahead of the November election, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. 

Polarizing position: But the venue choice also underscores his polarizing position in the broader Jewish community — where many Jewish leaders have continued to raise alarms over his anti-Israel policies and refusal to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada,” among other issues. Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel who has identified as anti-Zionist, was warmly received at the Monday service, where he sat in the front row in a mask and a yarmulke beside Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is a member of Kolot Chayeinu. Lander, a close ally of Mamdani, recently described the congregation, which was one of the first to call for an early ceasefire in October 2023, as a meeting point for anti-Zionist Jews and progressive Zionists like himself. The synagogue, which maintains an “open tent” policy on Israel and Palestine, has faced criticism for promoting anti-Israel views in its Hebrew school curriculum in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. 

Read the full story here.

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CASE CLOSED

Ex-Iran envoy Rob Malley says classified information investigation has been closed

Rob Malley, the Biden administration’s Iran envoy, revealed Thursday that the investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified information, which prompted the suspension of his security clearance and his suspension from his post, was closed earlier this year, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Going deeper: Malley claimed that he was never aware and had never been told what classified information he was being accused of mishandling, but said that the Justice Department had closed the investigation around two years after it had begun. Discussing Iran talks under the Biden administration, a Carnegie senior fellow, Malley suggested that President Joe Biden was never as interested in or committed to reaching a nuclear deal as President Barack Obama had been, and was unwilling to expend the political capital needed on Capitol Hill or with Israel to make a deal happen.

Read the full story here.

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BEHIND THE HEADLINES

Trump higher ed policy architect May Mailman explains antisemitism settlements

The Trump administration’s settlements with Ivy League universities, negotiated in response to alleged violations of federal civil rights law, are meant primarily as an attention-grabbing measure — a way to get more people to pay attention to President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach to tackling discrimination in higher education, according to an architect of those settlements, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Podcast playback: “When you see numbers like that, then you pay attention, and you look, and then you’re able to learn a little bit more, something maybe you wouldn’t normally learn,” May Mailman, a conservative attorney who until last month served as a senior White House strategist, told The New York Times’ Ross Douthat on an episode of his “Interesting Times” podcast that was released on Thursday. “A settlement on its own without a fine might not be taken as seriously by the public or by other universities as when there is a fine,” said Mailman. “These are small dollar figures compared to the amounts that they are getting every year from the federal government and from their donors — but I think it provides a seriousness and a focus on these in ways that promises only wouldn’t.” 

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

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]

Word on the Street

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…

Pic of the Day

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.

Birthdays

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…

The Senate confirmed former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on Friday to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, capping off a monthslong confirmation process that was marred by delays just days before the start of the U.N. General Assembly next week. 

Waltz, a former congressman from Florida and a Green Beret, was confirmed by a 47-43 vote in the Senate on Friday afternoon, with three Democrats and one Republican crossing party lines. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Fetterman (D-PA) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) voted in favor of Waltz’s nomination, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was the only Republican to oppose. 

Waltz’s journey to his current role began when President Donald Trump removed him from his post as White House national security advisor in late April and selected him to replace Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as his pick for U.N. ambassador. The White House pulled Stefanik’s nomination in late March, more than two months after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had advanced her nomination, amid concerns that her absence in the House could hurt Republicans’ ability to govern with their slim majority.

The former national security advisor was facing heavy scrutiny at the time over the Signal chat incident in which Waltz inadvertently added Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat of top national security officials discussing imminent strikes on the Houthis on the non-secure messaging app. Prior to the “Signalgate” incident, Waltz had already been viewed as a vulnerable target for ideological rivals and personal foes in the administration because of his hawkish approach on foreign policy. 

While Trump initially stood by Waltz, he eventually relented and in early May announced his intention to move the former congressman to the U.N. post. Waltz had already faced a setback after Trump fired six National Security Council officials whose views were aligned with Waltz. Their ouster was driven by an intervention by far-right activist Laura Loomer. 

Waltz, a staunch supporter of Israel and an outspoken critic of Iran, faced delays of his own during his Senate confirmation process this summer, with Paul siding with all Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee to block his nomination from advancing to the full Senate over concerns with Waltz’s national security and foreign policy positions. 

Shaheen eventually broke the stalemate in July, voting for Waltz because of his public and private support for continued U.S. global engagement than other figures in the administration, as well as potential alternatives Trump could nominate. 

Multiple outlets reported at the time that Shaheen, who is retiring next year, conditioned her support for Waltz on the Trump administration committing to providing $75 million in aid to Haiti and Nigeria, which had just been approved. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the committee, told Jewish Insider that the aid package was not directly tied to Shaheen’s support for Waltz.

During his confirmation hearing that month, Waltz said he would serve as a blockade to “anti-Israel resolutions” in the U.N. General Assembly and vowed to push for the dismantlement of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency over some of its employees’ involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. He also said he supported U.S. sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Israel and the Palestinian territories, amid widespread accusations she has espoused antisemitic rhetoric in her commentary on Israel.

Waltz will take over for Dorothy Shea, the career diplomat who filled the role in an acting capacity as chargé d’affaires during the nine-month vacancy. His first full week on the job will coincide with the General Assembly, bringing world leaders together in New York City for high-level discussions on issues ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine to European countries’ push for Palestinian statehood.

Michael Schill, the Northwestern University president who announced his resignation last week amid widespread controversy over his tenure, appeared unfazed to hear that a Palestinian professor he hired as part of a deal with encampment protestors had once met with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, an interview with the House Committee on Education and Workforce, released on Thursday, reveals. 

In the Aug. 5 interview, which was released as a response to Schill’s resignation announcement on Thursday, House investigators pressed Schill on the hiring of Mkhaimar Abusada as a visiting associate professor of political science. 

Abusada, who Schill described as “someone who is regularly quoted as an authority on Palestine governance and politics,” published a piece in Haaretz last year about his 2018 meeting with Sinwar. 

“Hypothetically, if somebody, you know, 4 years, 5 years before Oct. 7 has met with someone who — and, I mean, I’m not sure — my guess is — I’ve never been to Gaza, but it’s a pretty small place, and that you are going to meet people and talk to people,” said Schill, who claimed to not be aware of that meeting when he hired Abusada but noted in the interview that the professor’s position had been extended to August 2026. “I don’t know whether a seasoned professor who is doing the politics of Gaza could avoid getting to know some of these people, or whether that would be not doing his job right.”

Schill, who will remain as president in an interim role until his successor is chosen, oversaw a period of antisemitic turmoil on the Chicago-area campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and was accused of failing to respond in an adequate manner, leading some lawmakers to call for his resignation. 

The 135-page interview transcript provides new, detailed information on Schill’s response to years of campus turbulence, including his controversial handling of a violent anti-Israel encampment in spring 2024 and the university’s close ties to Hamas-allied Qatar. 

The interview comes as Northwestern is in talks with the Trump administration to restore $790 million in funding for the university that was pulled by the federal government over an alleged failure to protect Jewish students.

Jewish alumni expressed optimism that Schill’s resignation, and the interview being made public, would lead to Northwestern leaders making necessary reforms. 

“Northwestern’s board needs to take control of the situation in a way they have declined to until now [and] clear out all other administrators who have been part of this culture of enabling antisemitism on campus,” Rich Goldberg, a senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern, told Jewish Insider. 

“Those who are negotiating on behalf of the Trump administration, now seeing this transcript, will need to review any additional information that’s come to light, additional questions that they might have for the university, see if this changes anything that’s been under negotiation to date, and with Schill stepping down, hopefully signaling the board of the university wanting to see real changes made,” Goldberg continued.

Michael Teplitsky, president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism At Northwestern, said that Abusada “should never have been at Northwestern.” 

“There must be a massive turnaround and restructuring at the university and they have to make meaningful changes,” said Teplitsky. 

When anti-Israel encampments emerged on college campuses across the country in spring 2024, Schill, who is Jewish, became the first university president to strike a deal with demonstrators. The deal included no disciplinary action taken against students and acceded to several demands of the protesters, which drew strong condemnation from many Jewish leaders. Among other concessions, Schill committed to hire two Palestinian professors, which would include Abusada, and offer full scholarships to five students from Gaza. 

Schill acknowledged in the interview that — despite telling Congress that “discipline has been meted out to many of those students” who participated in the encampment and other antisemitic incidents on campus — no students had actually faced disciplinary action for anti-Israel activity on campus. Schill said that the university had reason to believe some demonstrators could be armed and claimed that university leadership had no option but to negotiate with the encampment organizers because they were dangerous. The university was afraid to send in the police to remove them, he said. 

“We didn’t think our students were armed, but we didn’t know,” Schill told the House committee. “There was a suspicious tent off to the side, and we knew that our students were trying to avoid the people in that tent, and we didn’t know what was inside the tent. And so we were concerned about that.”

The released testimony also puts a spotlight on Northwestern Provost Kathleen Hagerty’s support for the encampment and BDS activism on campus, which Schill argued she may have viewed as a “teachable moment.”  

In a series of exposed text messages, Hagerty wrote that “if the students really cared about actual divestment, then they need the patience to do the work to actually make it happen.” 

In an April 27 text exchange with a professor, Hagerty wrote that for Northwestern to boycott Sabra, an Israeli hummus company that is sold at the university, it would “probably be pretty easy,” adding that she is “all for making a deal.” 

Schill responded to the text messages by highlighting his support for the Jewish state. “I view Israel as our number one strategic partner in the world,” he said. 

“I don’t think [Schill] is the only administrator that needs to go,” said Goldberg. “Clearly the provost needs to follow him out the door as someone who is also chiefly responsible for the culture of enabling antisemitism at the university and implementing the encampment appeasement.” 

The interview also raised new questions around Northwestern’s relationship with Qatar. Schill said that students on Northwestern’s Qatar campus are exempted from completing the university’s mandatory antisemitism training and acknowledged several examples of professors on the Qatar campus engaging in extreme pro-terrorism and antisemitic activism and speech on social media. 

He said that Northwestern’s contract with Qatar prevents it or its affiliates from criticizing the country. “NU, NU-Q, and their respective employees, students, faculty, families, contractors and agents, shall be subject to the applicable laws and regulations of the State of Qatar, and shall respect the cultural, religious and social customs of the State of Qatar,” said Schill. He said that Qatar has given Northwestern $737 million since 2008. 

“The initial deal to put a campus out in Qatar was put together, it was in the era after 9/11,” Teplitsky told JI. “I think people had hopes and ambitions to build bridges in the Middle East, in Qatar. It had wonderful intentions. I think now looking back and looking at it specifically through the lens of Northwestern University… looking at it from a perspective of … values that Northwestern lists on its website, that relationship has not been a good one. It’s been one of failure. 

Teplitsky continued, “Should Northwestern be registered, as long as they continue to have this campus, with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent? I believe that they should have to register as a foreign agent if they choose to continue to have this campus.” 

Jewish Insider Senior Congressional Correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting. 

Seb Gorka, the White House senior director for counterterrorism and a deputy assistant to the president, aired his grievances with the anti-Israel faction within the Republican Party on Tuesday, alleging that the wing of the GOP aligned with podcast host Tucker Carlson is  “basically Pat Buchanan in a new guise.”

Gorka made the comments in a conversation on counterterrorism and U.S. strategy at the Hudson Institute after being pressed on the foreign policy disputes within the MAGA movement and Carlson’s grievances with President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. 

Asked by moderator Michael Doran, a Hudson senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, if he was comfortable addressing the growth of anti-Israel, antisemitic sentiment on right-wing podcasts and social media, Gorka replied, “Yeah, I am, because it bothers me immensely, but I’ve come to a certain realization with regards to that, that this wing of isolationism is nothing new. We had this 100 years ago.”

“This is just a poor, substandard repackaging of neo-Buchananite isolationism,” Gorka said, referencing Buchanan, the former Nixon communications director who became an outspoken critic of Israel. “It’s actually a more shallow version. Pat is far smarter than this version of isolationism.”

Gorka said that he is “actually in a better place with” the onslaught of anti-Israel rhetoric from Carlson’s wing of the party than he was previously, explaining that he realized that most of the rhetoric was coming from “probably half a dozen very loud people on Twitter and Rumble,” the right-wing video platform. 

“You get out of the miasma, the cesspit that is social media, and you talk to representative MAGA voters, of the 80 million that put the president back in the White House, they don’t think that we should pull down the shutters on the Pacific and the Atlantic coast,” Gorka explained. “They don’t think that Israel is the reason for Oct. 7. They actually have a very special place in their heart for Israel, and they don’t think that hospitals being bombed in Ukraine is a good thing because somebody offered NATO membership to Ukraine, allegedly, a decade ago.”

“As an immigrant to this country, a legal immigrant to the United States, one of the most trenchant indicative characteristics for me of the American people is common sense. They understand who is responsible for Oct. 7. They understand who [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is. And as such, I was worried by this neo-Buchanan isolationism, but I look at President Trump’s actions, they have no hold on him,” he continued.  

Gorka then pointed to the early days of the first Trump administration, alleging that at the time, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed hesitation about moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem out of fear that doing so would cause a third world war. 

Gorka said that Trump told concerned members of his Cabinet at the time that they were going through with the move because, “A) We promised the people of Israel 23 years ago, and we’ve broken that promise every six months of 23 years. B) I promised the American electorate in the campaign. We’re doing it. And C) It’s the right thing to do.” He argued that the “moral clarity” shown by Trump on issues impacting Israel highlighted the contrast between the president and his detractors on foreign policy matters. 

Earlier in the program, Gorka told Doran that the president’s approach to the Middle East was heavily focused on combating Iran.

“You need to understand one thing: When the president looks at the region, he doesn’t slice it down into cylinders of excellence. He doesn’t care if you’re the Syrian desk officer or the natural resources expert. He has one overlay for the whole AOR [Area of Responsibility], and that one metric, that one prism, is Iran, and he’s absolutely right,” Gorka said. “Iran is front and center in everything we do in the region, because they remain the greatest state sponsor terrorism, and the world would be a much safer place if that were not the case.”

Gorka noted that when Trump is asked by reporters about anything related to national security, “more than 50% of the time … the president will bring up Iran,” adding that this was “especially” the case “before [Operation] Midnight Hammer, because it really is on his mind that this is the threat. A nuclear Iran, an ideologically Islamo-fascist regime that wishes to acquire the most dangerous weapons in the world, is a threat to all decent peoples.”

Turning his attention to Israel, Gorka argued that the Jewish state’s “post-Oct. 7 operations have rewritten the map of the Middle East for the next 50 to 100 years.” He praised Israel’s military moves in Syria and Lebanon, crediting the IDF with taking down the Assad regime in Damascus and significantly weakening Hezbollah. 

As for whether the U.S. will undertake additional operations in the region to target Iranian proxies, Gorka said the “jury is still out on that,” but praised Trump’s strikes against the Houthis. 

“We had great success with our operation against the Houthis. Again, it wasn’t well understood by the so-called experts. For the president, the action against the Houthis was about one thing and one thing alone. When we told him there had been 150 attacks against U.S. vessels going through the Straits and that they’d actually fired on naval vessels as well, he said, ‘Well, that will not be allowed to stand.’ It’s not just about U.S. interests [but] about global freedom of maritime transport. So all of these things are connected,” Gorka said of Trump’s motivation to strike the Iran-backed Yemeni terror group. 

Gorka also disputed the notion that the president was tied down by ideological labels, but rather that he’s focused on achieving results and fixing problems: “Here’s the trouble for the Beltway with understanding the current commander in chief: there is no ideological taxonomy into which he will fall.”

President Donald Trump decried the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Monday, telling reporters that he does “not particularly” agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment that there is no starvation taking place in the enclave.

“That’s real starvation stuff,” Trump said, following a meeting in Scotland with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I see it, and you can’t fake that.” 

Trump said the U.S. will be getting “even more involved” in taking steps toward addressing hunger in Gaza, including by setting up “food centers.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment when asked for specifics about what this plan might entail. Trump said “all of the European nations” would be part of the project. 

“We’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people, and we’re going to supply funds,” said Trump.

Food distribution in Gaza is currently being operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by both the U.S. and Israel. The organization has faced criticism for failing to meet the needs of Gazans, and scenes of chaos at the gates of its distribution centers have spread online.

Without mentioning GHF by name, Trump appeared to take aim at the existing aid mechanisms, saying that the new “food centers” will not have fences to keep people out. 

“We’re also going to make sure that they don’t have barriers stopping people here. You’ve seen the areas where they actually have food, and the people are screaming for the food in there, they’re 35-40 yards away, and they won’t let them because they have lines that are set up,” said Trump. “And whether they’re set up by Hamas or whoever, but they’re very strict lines. We have to get rid of those lines.” 

Trump blamed Hamas for the failure of recent ceasefire talks and for prolonging the war, including the humanitarian crisis. The president’s comments come after European leaders have pressed Israel to allow a freer flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“We have a good group of countries who can help with the humanitarian needs, which is food, sanitation, some other things. It’s very difficult to deal with Hamas,” said Trump. “Hamas has become very difficult to deal with in the last couple of days, because they don’t want to give up these last 20 [hostages], because they think as long as they have them, they have protection. But I don’t think it can work that way.” 

Fifty hostages remain in Gaza, and Israel believes at least 27 of them are dead. The most recent ceasefire proposal would only have seen the release of about half of the living hostages. 

Trump also said Iran played a role in the failure of ceasefire talks, saying Iran “interjected themselves in this last negotiation.” 

“I think they got involved in this negotiation, telling Hamas and giving Hamas signals and orders. And that’s not good,” Trump said. “For a country that just got wiped out, they’ve been sending very bad signals, very nasty signals. And they shouldn’t be doing that.”

Sebastian Gorka, the White House senior director for counterterrorism and a deputy assistant to the president, said Wednesday at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that the U.S. is not seeking regime change in Iran, but will maintain its maximum-pressure campaign on Tehran.

Gorka also said that he supports efforts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, suggested that he’s pursuing efforts to convince Qatar and Turkey to cut ties with Hamas and said the U.S. wants to see Syrian minority groups come to the table and join with the new Syrian government.

He said that the Trump administration views Iran as the paramount threat and focus in the Middle East, and that its strategy toward Iran is “max pressure, no regime change,” with the goal of stopping Iran’s nuclear program and ending its support for terrorist proxies.

“We are not in the business of deploying the 82nd Airborne to do regime changes anywhere. We don’t believe in that,” Gorka said. 

In the long term, he added, “we would like the people of Persia, including the minorities of Persia, to eventually liberate themselves.”

Trump had publicly floated the possibility of regime change in Iran after the U.S. strikes on the country last month, but subsequently said he does not seek regime change. Some administration officials had also floated the idea of sanctions relief for Iran.

Gorka said he backs efforts to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, describing the group as the “granddaddy” of all of the terrorist organizations that have attacked the United States and its allies for decades. 

“If we can designate, as we have, Hamas, which in its founding charter from 1984 says, ‘We are a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood,’ then why haven’t we designated the Brotherhood itself?”

“So what I’ll say right now,” Gorka said, clearing his throat, is, “I like the idea,” he finished in a whisper.

Asked by Jewish Insider about whether the administration is working to end Turkey and Qatar’s sponsorship of Hamas, he said that he is “imminently traveling to that part of the world, so that should tell you something.”

He added that Turkey is an “important nation, it’s a geopolitical nation, it has a role to play with us as a NATO nation, but there are things I will be discussing with Ankara that I find leave me with a sense of unease,” including the Turkish government’s relationship with Hamas as well as reports that ISIS terrorists have been moving through Turkey.

“There has to be a balance between their conceptualization of the PKK threat,” Gorka said, referring to the Kurdish militant group, “and threats that we share, such as ISIS. I think that’s where the rebalance has to come.”

“With regards to Qatar, Qatar has … a very simple choice it has to make. Do you give any kind of succor to those who do not help in the stabilization of the region? That’s all I’m going to say,” he continued.

In Gaza, Gorka said that there “are a lot of good things happening at a tactical and operational level” on the ground, in that the U.S. is working to train anti-Hamas police and security units and that those units are “working quite closely with Israel.”

But, he said, “as far as I’m concerned, none of that goes anywhere until the political leadership changes,” saying that the “cultural issue” of widespread support in Gaza for Hamas and the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel is a problem that cannot be solved by a police force. “We need some brave men and women to say, ‘I am here to help fix Gaza.’”

Gorka framed President Donald Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to take over Gaza and relocate the Palestinian population as a negotiating tactic to motivate Middle Eastern countries to step up to take responsibility and invest in Gaza — though that investment hasn’t yet come to fruition.

Gorka, who said he regularly watched videos of ISIS and Al-Qaida’s brutal torture and murder of their victims, described footage of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 as far beyond anything he had ever seen before. “Nothing I’d watched in my two decades prepared me for what I saw that day.”

“I praise the government of Israel. I praise the IDF because what they have done in response is a redrawing of the map of the Middle East that will change your politics for at least a century,” Gorka said. “One of the greatest things they have done is to ensure that the strategic threat of Iran is now incapable of resupplying its proxies in the territory of Syria. God bless Israel for doing that. Now we have to finish the job. We have to make sure Iran stops supplying its proxies. We have to stabilize Syria.”

He added that, “despite the ideological way it has been exploited by certain actors here and elsewhere, the response to Oct. 7 has actually benefited us, because people have woken up to the horrors of modern … Jew hatred.”

The White House advisor said that the administration has told Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa that the U.S. “want[s] him to make Syria great again,” and that doing so will require bringing all elements of Syria to the table, including Kurds, Christians, Alawites and Druze. Additionally, the U.S. has told those minority groups, including Kurdish allies, that it does not support them making pushes for autonomy.

“Come to the table, because this is your shot,” Gorka said. “Get in on that deal, because it’s the only time it’s going to happen.”

In the short term, he said, the administration wants to make sure those minority communities can protect themselves and to “make sure the state sees an end to the massacre of whichever confessional community.”

Asked by JI about the possibility of Iranian retaliatory attacks in the United States, Gorka said that “because of how we boxed in Iran, they are basically forced to use surrogates. … They can’t deploy their own assets, which is a good thing. Beyond that, we take it very seriously and that’s all I can say right now.”

He highlighted other recent intercepted plots, including one in the United Kingdom, where Iran has attempted to utilize Iranian expatriates to attack the Israeli Embassy, adding that the group has also sought to employ domestic criminal groups to carry out operations on its behalf.

Gorka praised Israel’s operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and noted that the country’s new president, Joseph Aoun, studied under him at the National Defense University.

“The relationship is positive but it could be improved in terms of matching verbiage to actual results,” he said.

Gorka previewed U.S. plans for a “series of short efforts, high-intensity efforts to make the leading terror threats to America combat-inneffective, at which point our friends, our allies, our partners in the Middle East and elsewhere pick up the terrorist suppression operations.” The goal, he explained, is to prevent terrorist groups from being able to carry out operations on U.S. soil.

He said that the U.S. does not want to maintain a global presence permanently to counter terrorism, though he added that the U.S. is willing to maintain a “small footprint” in certain locations to address specific threats.

He also emphasized the need for the U.S.’ Muslim partner nations to lead efforts to counter jihadist narratives and recruiting efforts, and poke holes in jihadist ideology.

Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on last night’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, and cover the National Education Association’s recent passage of a measure banning coordination with the Anti-Defamation League. We look at concerns from Jewish community security groups and congressional Democrats over plans to shrink the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and spotlight Pepperdine University’s new Middle East policy graduate program, which is being launched in partnership with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sam Altman, Effie Phillips-Staley and Amb. Tom Barrack.

What We’re Watching

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Washington trip continues today. He’s slated to meet with Vice President JD Vance, and will head to Capitol Hill later this morning for meetings with House and Senate leadership, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
• Elsewhere on the Hill, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittees continue their markups of the NDAA.
• In Sun Valley, Idaho, the annual Allen & Co. gathering formally kicks off today. Look out for the paparazzi photos of vest- and fleece-wearing tech and media moguls arriving at the Sun Valley Lodge. 

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MARC ROD

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s third visit to Washington since the start of the Trump presidency kicked off Monday with closed-door meetings with President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Trump and Netanyahu were on warm terms during remarks to the press ahead of their dinner. Netanyahu offered effusive praise for Trump for the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and said he nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as following Trump’s lead in expressing openness to the new Syrian government.

Trump, for his part, deferred to Netanyahu on a question about a two-state solution. “We’ll work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors, those who don’t want to destroy us,” Netanyahu said. “I think the Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us. That means that certain powers like overall security will always remain in our hands. Now that is a fact and no one in Israel will agree to anything else because we don’t commit suicide.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier in the day that Trump’s “utmost priority … is to end the war in Gaza and return all of the hostages” and that Trump and Netanyahu would discuss “peace in Gaza and ending that conflict.”

But that agenda item saw little discussion in Trump and Netanyahu’s public remarks. Asked about talks with Hamas, Trump instead spoke about Iran.

A senior Israeli official in Netanyahu’s delegation told reporters following the Trump-Netanyahu meeting that a deal to end the Gaza war is not on the table because “Hamas is not responsive to the conditions that would allow a comprehensive agreement,” such as demilitarization for Gaza and exile for remaining Hamas leaders, the senior official explained. Without those conditions, “Hamas could do [the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks] again.” More on this from JI’s Lahav Harkov here.

At the same time, the differences between the two leaders’ comments on potential further strikes on Iran indicated a possible point of friction in the future.

Asked about further strikes, Trump said he “can’t imagine wanting to do that” and maintained that Iran’s nuclear program had been “knocked out completely.” Trump added, “I think they want to make peace and I’m all for it,” while also suggesting that there is no need for negotiations or a deal, saying “What’s the purpose of talking?” He said that the U.S. is “ready, willing and able” if further strikes are necessary, “but I don’t think we’re going to have to be.”

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

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

Trump-Netanyahu bromance returns with Nobel Peace Prize nomination

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted President Donald Trump in the White House Monday evening with effusive warmth, expressing the “appreciation and admiration” of Israel, the Jewish people and “the leadership of the free world” for the U.S.’ recent bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also offered Trump an avenue toward his elusive goal: receiving a Nobel Peace Prize, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Prize goals: “He is forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other. So I want to present you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee,” Netanyahu announced, saying it would be a “well-deserved” honor for Trump. “Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful,” Trump said. “It’s a great honor.”

Read the full story here.

Notable quotable: U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Barrack, who is serving as special envoy to Syria, said on Monday that Hezbollah could have a future in Lebanese politics, despite the organization’s designation by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, Jewish Insider’s Jake Schlanger reports. “Hezbollah is a political party. It also has a militant aspect to it,” Barrack said at a press conference on Monday morning in Beirut, following a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. “Hezbollah needs to see that there is a future for them, that the road is not not harnessed just solely against them, and that there’s an intersection of peace and prosperity for them also.”

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EDUCATION CONSTERNATION

As teachers unions target ADL and oppose antisemitism bill, Jewish educators sound the alarm

A grassroots campaign urging educators to stop using teaching materials from the Anti-Defamation League reached the highest levels of K-12 education over the weekend. Inside a packed conference hall in Portland, Ore., the thousands of delegates who make up the governing body of the National Education Association — the largest teachers union in the country — passed a measure that bars the union from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

School ties: The NEA’s adoption of a measure targeting the leading Jewish civil rights organization may be an escalation, but it is only the most recent example of antisemitism — and divisive politics surrounding the war in Gaza — spilling into K-12 education, and teachers unions in particular. Just this week, the largest teachers union in California, a 300,000-person NEA affiliate, published a letter urging state senators to vote against a bill focused on fighting and preventing antisemitism. In May, the state assembly voted unanimously to approve the bill. But the bill’s fate is now in jeopardy as senators face pressure from one of the state’s most powerful unions to reject it.

Read the full story here.

Case closed: Barnard College reached a settlement on Monday in a lawsuit brought by Jewish students which claimed that the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by failing to address antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

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campus competition

Pepperdine, Washington Institute launch Middle East policy graduate program

As the federal government continues its battles with dozens of colleges over campus antisemitism, the field of Middle East studies has been particularly scrutinized for advancing a one-sided, anti-Israel curriculum contributing to a rise of hostility towards the Jewish state in the classroom and beyond. Aiming to address that bias, Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy will launch a new Middle East Policy Studies master’s program this fall. The tuition-free, fully accredited, two-year master’s program on Pepperdine’s D.C. campus is a partnership with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It will be funded solely by American citizens — unlike many similar university programs that take foreign funds, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Seeking balance: The program comes as critics of the field have long alleged that it imparts to students a one-sided history of the Middle East in which Israel is a perpetual villain, particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. “We wouldn’t be in these conversations had it not been revealed what’s been happening on college campuses since Oct. 7,” Pete Peterson, dean of Pepperdine’s public policy school, told JI. 

Read the full story here.

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WORKFORCE WORRIES

Jewish groups, congressional Democrats raise concerns about DHS intelligence cuts

Jewish community security groups and congressional Democrats are raising concerns about the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to slash 75% of the staff for the department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What they’re saying: I&A plays a role in collecting and disseminating to local law enforcement and private partners intelligence to counter threats including terrorism and foreign adversaries. But the office has also faced criticism from various fronts in recent years. “Hollowing out the office risks leaving the homeland dangerously exposed to these threats, especially at a time when the FBI’s budget is being substantially reduced,” top congressional Democrats said. A coalition of Jewish groups said, “We are deeply concerned that any wholesale changes to the operations of I&A will have an adverse effect on countering antisemitism and ensuring the safety of the Jewish community in the United States.”

Read the full story here.

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HUDSON VALLEY SHOWDOWN

Effie Phillips-Staley plays to progressive base as she targets Rep. Mike Lawler

Effie Phillips-Staley, running on a progressive platform in the crowded Democratic field looking to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in a swing congressional district, is taking a firm stance against the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, even as she has expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Positioning: “For the leader of the free world to decide to strike Iran based on Fox News coverage and without deliberation or the approval of Congress is alarming and unprecedented,” she said in a statement to JI on Monday, a position shared by many congressional Democrats. “We cannot have a nuclear armed Iran under any circumstances and Congress must hold this President accountable by upholding the War Powers Act and requiring a full diplomatic process.” Despite her criticisms of the Iran strikes, Phillips-Staley has otherwise not embraced elements of the left-wing policy agenda that have alienated Jewish voters.

Read the full story here.

Blast from the past: Former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) is mulling entering the crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District after falling short in his 2022 matchup against Lawler.

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legal case

New legal report by Israeli NGO finds systematic use of sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7

A report released by The Dinah Project on Tuesday that seeks to “set the record straight” on the sexual assaults that occurred during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on southern Israel found that the terror group systematically used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war, acts that the report argues constitute crimes against humanity. The study, which was led by legal and feminist experts and has been compiled into a book, offers a new evidentiary and legal framework to prosecute such crimes as its authors call on international bodies to hold the perpetrators accountable, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports for eJewishPhilanthropy.

The painful truth: The 80-page report, “A Quest for Justice: October 7 and Beyond,” is described by its authors as the most comprehensive legal analysis to date of the sexual and gender-based crimes committed during the-Hamas led attacks, and afterwards against hostages in captivity. It argues that the acts of sexual violence committed constitute crimes against humanity and that the acts were not isolated, but deliberate, widespread and systematic. The authors call for the development of a new legal protocol to handle cases of sexual violence in armed conflicts. The report was presented on Tuesday to Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog at a press event at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. “The report presents the truth as it is — shocking, painful, but necessary. On behalf of all those who were affected, we are committed to continuing to fight until their cry is heard everywhere and until justice is done,” Herzog said.

Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

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Worthy Reads

Bringing Harvard to Heel: The New York Times’ Stephanie Saul and Steven Rich look at how Harvard’s fiscal ties to China, which boosted its giving to the school following the 2008 recession that significantly impacted Harvard’s financial stability, have contributed to the Trump administration’s legal battles targeting the Ivy League school. “Now Harvard’s ties with China are coming back to haunt the university. Those connections were forged when Harvard was more financially vulnerable and when much of the foreign policy establishment believed that higher education could play a part in pushing America’s democratic ideals to China and the rest of the world. But American foreign policy has turned sharply hawkish against China, and even though Harvard has steadily reduced its ties there, the Trump administration has made the relationship another line of attack in its broader effort to bring the university to heel.” [NYTimes]

What Mamdani Means: The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker considers how New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s primary success underscores the present political climate that allows more extreme positions and views to take hold. “But while we may mock the radicalism of Mr. Mamdani and his fellow socialists seemingly on the rise in the Democratic Party, I see in the man’s appeal, his evident popularity among a certain type of young voter especially, more signs of the continuing crack-up of American politics. Many Republicans like to think that the extremism represented by the likes of Mr. Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a signal of the Democrats’ growing irrelevance and unelectability. But his ascent — provisional though it may still be — is more likely a reflection of the fissures that continue to stretch our national cohesion than some proof of the marginalized nature of Donald Trump’s opponents.” [WSJ]

Alarmed in Algeria: The Financial Times’ Heba Saleh and Leila Abboud report on how the shifting dynamics and power structures across the Middle East and North Africa — including Israel’s warming ties with Morocco — have affected Algeria. “Algerian leaders feel surrounded by hostile forces, with Morocco, Israel and the United Arab Emirates all increasing their influence in the region, analysts say. Algiers has also fallen out with France, the former colonial power and a key partner. … Staunchly pro-Palestinian Algiers has been particularly riled by the Moroccan normalisation deal with Israel, which was the price Rabat paid for US recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara. It is also wary of Israeli-Moroccan military co-operation.” [FT]

Word on the Street

President Donald Trump overruled Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby in calling for a restoration of weapons to Ukraine, one week after the Defense Department announced a holdup of arms earmarked for the country; “We have to, they have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump said in his Monday meeting with Netanyahu…

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a confirmation hearing next week for former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, the Trump administration’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the U.N.…

The U.S. revoked the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the militant group led by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa that overthrew the Assad regime last year…

Syrian media reports that Syrian President Ahmed al‑Sharaa met an Israeli official on Monday in Abu Dhabi during his official visit to the United Arab Emirates; the reports named Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi as the official, but Hanegbi is said to be in Washington as part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s delegation…

The IRS, in a new court filing, said it will allow places of worship to endorse political candidates, exempting them from a law prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from engaging in political activity…

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim looks at how Jewish organizations in central Texas are mobilizing to assist in relief and recovery efforts following storms and flash floods that have killed more than 100 people across the region…

A federal court in Massachusetts heard opening arguments on Monday in a lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by two faculty associations over the government’s targeting of noncitizen U.S. residents who have espoused or engaged in anti-Israel activity that could be seen as supporting Hamas…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the support that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is receiving from city real estate executives following Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described himself in a recent social media post as “politically homeless”; addressing Mamdani’s recent suggestion that billionaires shouldn’t exist, Altman said he would “rather hear from candidates about how they are going to make everyone have the stuff billionaires have instead of how they are going to eliminate billionaires”… 

Mubadala Capital, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, hired Ophir Shmuel as its new head of business development, The Circuit reports… 

U.K.-based American stand-up comic Reginald Hunter appeared in a London court to face charges for sending offensive, antisemitic messages on multiple occasions to an organizer of the city’s hostage-awareness events…

Five IDF soldiers were killed and more than a dozen injured when an explosive detonated in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun; four of the soldiers killed were members of the army’s Haredi “Netzah Yehuda” battalion…

Iran has expelled more than 800,000 Afghans since March, the majority of whom were forced to leave the country in the last five weeks amid a crackdown on undocumented individuals in the Islamic Republic…

Two people were injured and two others are missing following a Houthi attack on a Liberian-flagged ship transiting through the Red Sea; the attack came a day after the crew of a second Liberian-flagged vessel was forced to abandon ship following an attack believed to have been conducted by the Houthis…

Psychoanalyst Dr. Anna Ornstein, who as a teenager survived the Holocaust and would go on to pioneer a school of thought in her field that prioritized empathy, died at 98…

Playwright Ronald Ribman died at 82…

Pic of the Day

Imams and Muslim community leaders from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and the U.K. visited Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem on Tuesday as part of a trip focused on coexistence that also included a meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Birthdays

Israeli film director, producer and researcher, Eyal Boers turns 50… 

Retired in 2016 after 26 years as executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, Arthur “Art” Abramson turns 77… Democratic candidate for president of the U.S. in 2020 and 2024, Marianne Deborah Williamson turns 73… Mayor of Farmington Hills, Mich., until 2023, she is a former member of the Michigan House of Representatives, Vicki Barnett turns 71… Attorney and Democratic politician from Texas, Barbara Ann Radnofsky turns 69… Attorney and a former U.S. ambassador to Belgium in the Obama administration, Howard Gutman turns 69… Partner of the global law firm Dentons, when he was elected attorney general of Georgia in 2010 (and reelected in 2014) he became the first Jewish person to win statewide office in Georgia, Samuel Scott Olens turns 68… Former member of Knesset who had served as Israel’s foreign minister, justice minister, agriculture minister and housing minister, Tziporah Malka “Tzipi” Livni turns 67… Retired rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Beaumont, Texas, Rabbi Joshua Samuel Taub… Co-president of Rochester, N.Y.-based Hahn Automotive Warehouse, he is on the board of governors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, Eli N. Futerman… SVP and COO of New York’s Jewish Communal Fund, Marina W. Lewin… Former Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas turns 65… Consultant strategist, policy advisor and writer, he served as corporate counsel to Allstate Insurance for 28 years, Steven Richard Sheffey turns 65… Writer, television producer, ventriloquist and puppeteer, Mallory Hurwitz Tarcher Lewis turns 63… Managing partner at DGA’s Albright Stonebridge Group, Dan K. Rosenthal turns 59… Former ice hockey player, her three sons were seventh, first and fourth picks overall, respectively, in the 2018, 2019 and 2021 NHL Drafts, Ellen Weinberg-Hughes turns 57… Higher education reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Douglas Belkin… New York City comptroller, Brad Lander turns 56… Managing director of investor relations for Harbor Group International, Meir Raskas… EVP of the Atlantic Council, Jenna H. Ben-Yehuda… Atlanta-based educator, activist and writer, Robbie Medwed… Sports journalist, known for his coverage of mixed martial arts and professional wrestling, Ariel Jacob Helwani turns 43… Senior legal counsel at Horizons Law and Consulting, Alon Sachar… Policy and communications consultant, Stefanie Feldman… Diplomatic correspondent at the Jerusalem Post and i24NEWS, Amichai Stein…

Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we spotlight Kentucky state Sen. Aaron Reed, who is considering a primary challenge to Rep. Thomas Massie, and report on interim Columbia President Claire Shipman’s apology to Jewish communal leaders over past comments calling for the removal of a Jewish trustee over her pro-Israel advocacy. We look at the race taking shape in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District, where Adelita Grijalva is polling above Daniel Hernandez ahead of the July 15 special election primary, and report on bipartisan legislation led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler that call for the U.S. to provide Israel with bunker-buster bombs and the planes to use them. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Ritchie Torres, Phil Rosenthal, Bar Winkler and Roey Lalazar.

Ed. note: The next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Monday, July 7. Enjoy the long holiday weekend!

What We’re Watching

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington on Sunday, ahead of his planned Monday meeting with President Donald Trump.
• We’ll be reporting on the details around the meeting and what’s at stake as the two leaders discuss Gaza, Iran, Syria and normalization efforts — sign up for Jewish Insider’s email and WhatsApp alerts to stay up to date with the latest developments over the long weekend.
• Former Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander is slated to meet Trump at the White House at 12:45 p.m. ET.
• The Nova Music Festival exhibition and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are hosting an event this afternoon with DJ and Nova festival survivor Noa Beer and Holocaust survivor Nat Shaffir.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH

After Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, the U.S. is now demanding that Tehran return to the negotiating table. 

“Told you so,” many prominent Democrats — including architects of Iran policy in both the Obama and Biden administrations — are saying in response, arguing they were right all along about the power of negotiations. But in doing so, they are also overlooking the impact of President Donald Trump’s military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities on the regime’s negotiating calculus. 

The Pentagon is now saying the strikes set back the Iran nuclear program by two years. Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, said that Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state as a result of the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

But those assessments, among other similar analyses, have done little to change the minds of some of the leading Democratic foreign policy hands who have long argued for diplomacy above all else.

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

KENTUCKY CONTEST

Potential Massie challenger Aaron Reed a supporter of Israel, Iran strikes

Local and national Republicans are eyeing Kentucky state Sen. Aaron Reed as a potential primary challenger to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), as President Donald Trump and his political allies mount an aggressive effort to unseat the incumbent lawmaker, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Dividing line: Middle East policy is emerging as a key divide between the first-term Reed and Massie: asked by the Louisville Courier Journal about any ideological differences between him and Massie, Reed offered a one-word answer: “Israel.” Reed’s Kentucky state Senate biography page lists him as a member of the Kentucky-Israel Caucus. While Massie was the most vocal Republican critic in Congress of the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, introducing a war powers resolution that aimed to stop U.S. military action against the Iranian regime, Reed has been openly supportive of the strikes.

Read the full story here.

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TUCSON TUSSLE

Adelita Grijalva emerging as the favorite to succeed her late father in Congress

The latest Democratic primary battle between the left and center where Israel has emerged as a point of division is playing out in a special House election in Tucson, Ariz., later this month, as five candidates vie to replace former longtime Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who died in March. The July 15 primary in Arizona’s dependably blue 7th Congressional District has kept a relatively low profile, even as it features ideological tensions over Middle East policy that could hold implications for the party’s increasingly fractious approach to Israel in the lead-up to next year’s midterm elections. Adelita Grijalva, 54, a former Pima County supervisor, is viewed as the favorite to win the seat in what is expected to be a low-turnout race, owing in part to her significant name recognition in the area represented by her late father for over two decades, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

She has also consolidated endorsements from top establishment Democrats, including Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), while securing the backing of progressive leaders such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), among other high-profile critics of Israel in Congress. But her limited record of commentary on Israel has raised questions among pro-Israel activists rallying behind one of Grijalva’s chief primary rivals, Daniel Hernandez, a former state lawmaker who identifies as a pro-Israel progressive and claims support from Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and the political arm of Democratic Majority for Israel.

Read the full story here.

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BOWING OUT

Ritchie Torres says he’s likely passing on New York gubernatorial run

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), in a surprise reversal, said Wednesday that he’s unlikely to mount a primary challenge against New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, after months of circling a potential run for that office, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What he said: “I’m unlikely to run for governor. The assault that we’ve seen on the social safety in the Bronx is so unprecedented, so overwhelming that I’m going to keep my focus on Washington, D.C.,” Torres, a favorite of the Jewish community, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “So, my heart lies in Washington, D.C. I feel like now, more than ever, we have to fight the catastrophe that is the Trump presidency.”

Read the full story here.

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SCOOP

Columbia’s Claire Shipman apologizes for leaked messages calling for removal of Jewish trustee

Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, issued an apology to several members of the campus community for leaked text messages where she suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed from the university’s board over her pro-Israel advocacy. “The things I said in a moment of frustration and stress were wrong. They do not reflect how I feel,” Shipman wrote on Wednesday in a private email obtained by Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen, noting that she was addressing “some trusted groups of friends and colleagues, with whom I’ve talked regularly over the last few months.” 

Individual and group apologies: “I have apologized directly to the person named in my texts, and I am apologizing now to you,” Shipman wrote in Wednesday’s email. “I have tremendous respect and appreciation for that board member, whose voice on behalf of Columbia’s Jewish community is critically important. I should not have written those things, and I am sorry. It was a moment of immense pressure, over a year and a half ago, as we navigated some deeply turbulent times. But that doesn’t change the fact that I made a mistake. I promise to do better.” 

Read the full story here.

Hill weighs in: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) called on Shipman to resign, following JI’s report on Shipman’s apology.

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HELPING HAND

Gottheimer, Lawler push to provide Israel with bunker busters after U.S. strikes

A bipartisan group of House members reintroduced a bill on Wednesday to allow the president to provide Israel with bunker-buster bombs — the heavy ordnance used by the U.S. against Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities — and the planes needed to drop them, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Independent action: The bill is part of a long-standing effort led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), one of its lead sponsors, to give the administration the option to provide Israel the capabilities to act independently against Iran’s most highly fortified nuclear facilities. The legislation’s sponsors argue that it remains relevant even in the aftermath of the U.S. strikes in the event Iran attempts to reconstitute its nuclear program. Transferring the systems — which are unique to the U.S. — to Israel has been seen by some experts as a way to ensure Israel has the ability to destroy underground nuclear sites in Iran while avoiding direct U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Read the full story here.

Damage assessment: The Pentagon’s chief spokesman said on Wednesday that the U.S. strikes against the Iranian nuclear program had set the program back by two years. His estimate appears to be the most specific information the Trump administration has shared on the extent of the damage caused by the strikes, Jewish Insider’s Jake Schlanger reports.

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FIRST AID

Israeli mental health experts warn of impending ‘tsunami of war-related psychiatric illness’ after 20 months of conflict

“Resilience” has long been the goal of Israeli mental health practitioners, an emotional ruggedness allowing Israeli society to bounce back quickly after tragedy. This has been particularly true since the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the resulting wars that continue to claim the lives of soldiers and civilians, including the recent 12-day conflict with Iran, which killed 28 Israeli civilians and displaced thousands. The night after a ceasefire was declared, Israelis were seen back at the beach, and the following morning, schools reopened. However, mental health professionals warn that beneath this celebrated toughness lie deeper, troubling emotions — fear, guilt, shame, vulnerability, anger and anxiety — affecting all layers of society, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky reports.

Busy lines: Mental health hotlines and clinics run by three of Israel’s top providers — ERAN, NATAL and ELEM, the latter of which supports at-risk youth — have reported sharp increases in demand since Oct. 7, 2023. Calls to ELEM’s digital programs have tripled; NATAL now treats over 3,000 people weekly, up from 350 before the war; and ERAN volunteers have handled over 500,000 calls since the outbreak of the war, averaging 1,200 to 1,500 a day. This surge reflects the complex emotional and psychological issues people are facing now, professor Rivka Tuval-Mashiach, steering committee chair of NATAL, told eJP, with call volumes related to anxiety issues significantly increasing to both of NATAL’s two dedicated hotlines — one for the general public and one for soldiers and veterans.

Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

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Worthy Reads

Just the Beginning on Iran: In The New York Times, former National Security Advisor John Bolton suggests that the U.S.’ strikes on Iran last month are not the end of Washington’s efforts to degrade the threats posed by Iran. “Satisfying America’s legitimate demands requires Iran to do a full Libya, meaning real performance in denuclearizing, not just acquiescing to treaty verbiage. It requires that Iran surrender all of its weapons-related assets, meaning any enriched uranium and all remaining physical assets, including dual-use capabilities. However, absent a change of government in Tehran, which Washington should support, a full Libya is impossible. Unlike Muammar el-Qaddafi, the mullahs, already badly humiliated, realize that further humiliation would fatally weaken their rule. They will never voluntarily accept that fate. Instead, they will resume their earlier tactic of using negotiations to string the West along until memories dim and, as the old saying goes, ‘zeal for a deal’ takes over, as it did for Barack Obama, producing the fatally flawed 2015 Iran agreement.” [NYTimes]

Mideast Magical Thinking: In The Wall Street Journal, presidential historian and former White House aide Tevi Troy examines the history of Middle East regimes falsely claiming victory over Israel, following claims by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Israel had been “practically knocked out and crushed” by Iran’s military. “These false statements by Middle Eastern autocracies show the weaknesses of systems that can’t acknowledge reality. An inability to turn a critical eye on oneself and admit a mistake represents a fundamental flaw in authoritarian regimes. … As long as autocratic nations like Iran continue to act like Monty Python’s Black Knight, they’ll never develop the capacity to fight effectively against nations that can critique themselves. But that isn’t all that truth telling can bring. If Iran ever does develop the capacity for honesty, then its leaders would realize — like the Egyptians did — that peace with Israel is a much more effective strategy than fighting with it.” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on Wednesday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud…

In The Wall Street Journal, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who last week withheld his support from New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, suggests that the Queens assemblyman’s victory should be a “wake-up call” to Democrats and posits that Mamdani won the primary “because too many voters think the rest of the Democratic Party no longer stands for them”…

In the New York Daily News, political strategist Bradley Tusk posits that Mamdani is likely to win the general election in November, owing to the “ceiling” facing any Republican candidate and Mayor Eric Adams’ own unfavorability ratings in the city as he mounts an independent bid…

Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman called on former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to withdraw from the mayoral race following his primary loss to Mamdani, assessing that Cuomo’s “body language, his subdued energy and his proposals to beat Mamdani” indicated he was “not up for the fight” and suggested Cuomo’s departure from the race would be necessary “to maximize Adams’ probability of success”…

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched an investigation into George Mason University’s handling of antisemitism issues, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports; the Virginia university had faced scrutiny over its response to a series of incidents involving students, including the discovery of pro-terrorism materials in the home of two of GMU students and federal charges brought against a third student accused of plotting a mass causality attack… 

eJewishPhilanthropy‘s Judah Ari Gross interviews Mike and Shelly Pitman, respectively the president and executive director of the Brooklyn-based La’Aretz Foundation, which has raised $1 million to provide $2,500 directly to 500 Bat Yam families affected by Iran’s ballistic missile strike on the city…

Bar Winkler and Roey Lalazar’s Israel-based AI startup Wonderful raised $34 million in its latest round of funding…

The New York Times spotlights “Everybody Loves Raymond” creator Phil Rosenthal, following the release of the eighth season of his travel food show “Somebody Feed Phil”…

Smithsonian Magazine looks at the resurgence in popularity of Jewish food in Poland…

Iran charged two French nationals who have been imprisoned in the country for three years with spying for Israel and conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government…

Australia confirmed it canceled the visa of artist Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, following the May release of a song titled “Heil Hitler”…

Punk-rap duo Bob Vylan was removed from the lineups of upcoming music festivals in France and the U.K. following an uproar over an incident at the Glastonbury music festival last month in which the group led attendees in a chant calling for “death to the IDF”…

U.K. Parliament members voted overwhelmingly in favor of banning the activist group Palestine Action, after two members of the group broke into a British air base and vandalized military aircraft… 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian approved a law passed days ago by the country’s parliament to suspend coordination with the International Atomic Energy Agency and ordered Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Supreme National Security Council and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to begin implementation of the new law…

The New York Times looks at Iran’s history of recruiting common criminals and cartel members to carry out attacks on American soil…

Hamas called on the leader of a Bedouin clan that has challenged Hamas’ leadership in the enclave to surrender, as Israel bolsters its support for groups operating on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll against Hamas…

Adam Szubin is joining Covington as of counsel in the firm’s national security practice (h/t Playbook)…

Pic of the Day

Former hostages Omer Shem Tov (second from left); Noa Argamani (third from right) and Iair Horn (second from right); and Tzur Goldin (far left), brother of Lt. Hadar Goldin, met on Wednesday in Washington with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Birthdays

Movie, television and stage actress, director and writer, Shoshannah Stern turns 45…

Civil rights attorney known for many high-profile cases, born Gloria Rachel Bloom, Gloria Allred turns 84… Winner of the Israel Prize in 1998, professor emeritus of mathematics at both Hebrew U and Rutgers, Saharon Shelah turns 80… Founder of an eponymous charitable foundation and a political office, Barbara Fish Lee turns 80… Retired director of the March of the Living in Miami-Dade and in Boca Raton, Leon Weissberg… Psychologist and board member of many non-profit organizations, Dr. Gail (Giti) Bendheim… Israeli celebrity chef, author of 32 cookbooks and culinary columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, Yisrael Aharoni turns 75… Head of pediatric oncology and associate professor of pediatrics at the Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York, Dr. Carolyn Fein Levy turns 57… Musician, best known as a harmonicist, Annie Raines turns 56… Actor who has appeared in film and television in the U.S., U.K. and Israel, Yair “Jonah” Lotan turns 52… Development professional Suzanne Greene… Pini Herman…

A bipartisan group of House members reintroduced a bill on Wednesday to allow the president to provide Israel with bunker-buster bombs — the heavy ordnance used by the U.S. against Iran’s Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities — and the planes needed to drop them.

The bill is part of a long-standing effort led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), one of its lead sponsors, to give the administration the option to provide Israel the capabilities to act independently against Iran’s most highly fortified nuclear facilities. The legislation’s sponsors argue that it remains relevant even in the aftermath of the U.S. strikes in the event Iran attempts to reconstitute its nuclear program.

Transferring the systems — which are unique to the U.S. — to Israel has been seen by some experts as a way to ensure Israel has the ability to destroy underground nuclear sites in Iran while avoiding direct U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Stating that Israel and other U.S. allies should be “prepared for all contingencies if Iran pursues development of a nuclear weapon” and that the U.S. must “send a clear signal to Iran that development of a nuclear weapon will never be tolerated,” the bill authorizes the president, at his discretion, to take steps to transfer the bombs and aircraft to Israel for the purpose of striking Iran’s nuclear sites, if certain conditions are met.

If the president certifies to Congress that Iran has violated or changed its implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or reduced access for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors such that they cannot fully verify Iran’s nuclear material and activities and that Israel has no other method to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, then the president would be authorized to transfer the bunker busters and aircraft.

Under the legislation, either the president or, by his delegation, the secretary of defense would be authorized to give the order to transfer the weapons.

Iran is currently in violation of its NPT obligations and has limited access for IAEA inspectors, enacting a law on Wednesday suspending cooperation with the body.

In advance of the potential transfer, the legislation authorizes the administration to build infrastructure in Israel to allow Israel to host and operate the relevant systems — which Israel currently does not have — including extended runways for the aircraft and facilities to house the aircraft and store the bunker busters. It also authorizes the administration to store bunker busters in U.S. facilities in Israel.

The legislation also allows the U.S. to train Israeli personnel in the use of the bunker busters, and to engage in joint research with Israel to improve U.S. weapons and develop weaponry to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities and Hezbollah’s underground rocket storage sites.

The bill further states that the U.S. should “seek to extend limitations on Iran’s enriched uranium, including through engagement in multilateral diplomatic initiatives,” and notes that the legislation does not constitute an authorization for use of military force against Iran.

The bill is led by Gottheimer and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), and co-sponsored by Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Juan Vargas (D-CA) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY).

“It’s a pivotal moment to see what happens in terms of Iran agreeing … not to develop a nuclear weapon or not, to continue their nuclear program proliferation or not, to let in monitors or not,” Gottheimer told Jewish Insider. “This [bill] is poised to see what Iran does moving forward, and obviously why it gives the president discretion to make the decision on selling these weapons to Israel.”

Gottheimer said that whether the bunker busters will be needed again in the future is “really dependent upon what Iran does next.”

“If Iran continues to develop its program, we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If Iran decides to reconstitute its program and move ahead and break out and go to 90% enrichment, I think you want to make sure that they’re strongly deterred from doing so.”

Lawler said that the bill is a “bipartisan stand to protect Israel and stop Iran’s nuclear threat. Iran’s uranium stockpile makes clear that the danger is real. This bill gives the president the authority to equip Israel with the tools and training they need to deter Tehran and make the world a safer place.”

Tyler Stapleton, the director of government relations at FDD Action, a lobbying group affiliated with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is supporting the bill, said that, following the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran, “it remains critical that the U.S. continue to support Israel in training and equipping its forces to target and destroy fortified nuclear facilities that could be rebuilt in the coming years.”

“The United States should assist Israel in developing the capability to store bunker-buster munitions and create an aerial delivery system that can be deployed independently by Israeli forces if necessary,” Stapleton said. “Congress should authorize the Department of Defense to take these actions without delay, ensuring both the U.S. and Israel retain the operational flexibility needed to counter the ongoing threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next Monday, a Trump administration official confirmed to Jewish Insider. 

The visit, which will come just two weeks after Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, will be Netanyahu’s third Oval Office meeting this year. 

Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, is in Washington this week for White House meetings about efforts to end the war in Gaza. “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!” Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend. 

The Trump-Netanyahu meeting also comes after a lengthy post from the president slamming Israeli prosecutors’ corruption case against Netanyahu. 

“It is terrible what they are doing in Israel to Bibi Netanyahu. He is a War Hero, and a Prime Minister who did a fabulous job working with the United States to bring Great Success in getting rid of the dangerous Nuclear threat in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

An Israeli court canceled hearings scheduled for this week in the case after Netanyahu requested a delay for classified security and diplomatic reasons.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday rebuked Republican isolationists who have argued it’s not necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, dismissing them as not being his true supporters.

“My supporters are for me. My supporters are America First and Make America Great Again,” Trump said from the Oval Office, in response to a question about the foreign policy debates between hawks and isolationists in the GOP base. “My supporters don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon. … Very simple: If they think it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, then they should oppose me.”

The president said he believes Iran would use a nuclear weapon if it had one.

“I don’t want to get involved either, but I’ve been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. “I’ve been saying it for a long time, and I think they were a few weeks away from having one.”

He highlighted apparent logical inconsistencies in isolationists’ position on the issue.

“The problem is they get themselves into a thing: They don’t want them to have nuclear, but then they say, ‘Well, we don’t want to fight,’” Trump said. “Well, you’re going to have to make a choice because it’s possible that you’re going to have to fight for them not to have nuclear.”

Trump softened some of his previous criticism of Tucker Carlson, a prominent voice in isolationist circles whom the president had rebuked earlier this week for railing against U.S. support for Israel. He said that Carlson had called him to apologize.

Trump said he’d pressed Carlson on whether he would accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and said that Carlson “sort of didn’t like that. I said, ‘Well, if it’s OK with you, then you and I do have a difference,’ but it’s really not OK with him.”

“Therefore, you may have to fight and maybe it’ll end, and maybe it’ll end very quickly, but there’s no way that you can allow — whether you have to fight or not — you can have Iran to have a nuclear weapon, because the entire world will blow up,” Trump continued.

Trump said he planned to hold a meeting in the Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the situation in the Middle East, but said he would delay a decision on striking Iran as long as possible.

“I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due,” he said. “With war, things change. It can go from one extreme to the other. War is very bad. There was no reason for this to be a war.”

The president said that the United States is the only country with the capabilities to destroy the deeply buried Fordow nuclear facility, but reiterated that he had not yet made the decision to do so.

Trump said that the success of Israel’s operations on their first night of bombing raids last week had made him more willing to consider possible U.S. involvement and strikes.

He also sent somewhat mixed messages on whether he’s open to continued talks with Iran.

“I had a great deal for them. They should have made that deal. Sixty days we talked about it, and in the end they decided not to do it. And now they wish they did it, and they want to meet,” Trump said. “It’s a little late to meet, but they want to meet and they want to come to the White House … so we’ll see. I may do that. It’s a shame, it could have been done the easy way.”

He said that he’s seeking “total complete victory” over Iran, in which it cannot have nuclear weapons.

“Iran was very close to signing what would have been a very good agreement for them and maybe that could still happen, I guess,” he said, adding that Iranian negotiators’ interest in visiting the White House is “a big statement, but it’s very late.”

Trump also noted that it may be difficult for Iranian negotiators to actually leave the country to visit the White House for negotiations.

The latest comments appeared somewhat less aggressive than Trump’s warnings the previous day that the U.S. could assassinate Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Trump today was largely noncommittal on the issue of regime change in Iran saying, “Sure, anything could happen. That? That could happen.”

While the last two months have been an exercise in diplomacy for Trump administration officials, who have crisscrossed the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, the last 24 hours have seen a sharp pivot from President Donald Trump to a more hard-line approach to Tehran.

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the president posted on his Truth Social site on Tuesday afternoon, understood to be a message to Iran after more than five days of Israeli attacks meant to degrade Tehran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. Iranian reprisals have paralyzed Israel, but resulted in damage that has fallen far short of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats. Khamenei responded on Wednesday that “the Iranian nation will not surrender.”

The president’s post, made following his early departure from the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada, but before his Situation Room sit-down with senior advisors, signaled Trump’s new approach to the regional conflict.

Trump’s latest comments underscore his shift away from the isolationist elements of the GOP that have dominated his administration since a purge of more traditional foreign policy-minded Republicans, including former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote on Tuesday, Trump’s isolationist supporters “imagined that personnel was policy, that the realists and would-be restrainers in Trump’s orbit would have a decisive influence. That was clearly a mistake, and the lesson here is that Trump decides and no one else.”

As the president’s position further crystalized — also Tuesday, he called Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei an “easy target,” but said the U.S. would not assassinate him, “at least not for now” — his post-G7 rhetoric trickled down to his inner circle.

Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X yesterday. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. … Whatever he does, that is his focus.”

It’s a notable shift from Vance, too, who has been one of the most prominent opponents of preemptive military action in the Middle East. (Vance opposed U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this year.)

Journalist Eli Lake noted on Tuesday that Trump’s “inner circle deliberating on Iran policy is very small and has been fairly tight-lipped,” adding that those advising him on Iran include Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Lake said, is “occasionally” part of the group, but was absent from recent Camp David conversations about Israel and Iran.

On Capitol Hill, while Republicans appear publicly split on the level of involvement that the U.S. should have in the conflict — from working with Israel to destroy the Fordow nuclear facility to forcing Iran’s hand in diplomatic talks — JI’s conversations with legislators indicate a different approach behind the scenes. One senior Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss internal conference dynamics estimated that nearly the entire GOP conference is privately united on the issue of the U.S. supporting Israel in bombing the Fordow facility if Israel needs such support. Read more from JI’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod here.

“I think the president has struck the right position,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told JI earlier this week, “which is supportive of Israel’s right of self-defense, which is what this really is, and supporting them publicly while they defend themselves. I think that’s the right position to stick on.” Read more of Hawley’s comments here.

Trump has “handled this situation very deftly,” Hawley added. “I think his message has been pretty clear, which is that Iran is not going to get a nuke. So they can either surrender their nuclear program peaceably, and he’s willing to [have] the United States facilitate that, or the Israelis are going to blow their program to smithereens. Right now they’re choosing the smithereens route.”

President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to proceed with plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while the U.S. and Iran continue negotiations, saying that he told the Israeli leader a strike “is not appropriate right now.” 

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president responded to a question about the validity of the report by saying, “I’d like to be honest. Yes, I did.”

Pressed about the nature of the conversation, the president clarified, “It’s not a warning, I said I don’t think it’s appropriate. We’re having very good discussions with them [Iran] and I don’t think it’s appropriate right now.”

Trump suggested the U.S. may strike a “very strong document” with Iran “where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want but nobody’s getting killed. We can blow up a lab but nobody’s going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right? Two ways of doing it.”

He affirmed he told Netanyahu to hold off “because we’re very close to a solution. Now, that could change at any moment. It could change with a phone call. But right now I think they want to make a deal and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.”

He said a deal with Iran could be reached “over the next couple of weeks.”

Netanyahu, for his part, denied a New York Times report that he had been pressing for military action against Iran, which could upend the talks, calling it “fake news.” 

On the new U.S.-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza that went into effect this week, Trump said, “We’re dealing with the whole situation in Gaza. We’re getting food to the people.” 

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking beside Trump, added, “I think that we are on the precipice of sending out a new terms sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today. The president is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution — temporary ceasefire and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict.” Witkoff did not expand on the details of the “terms sheet” nor to whom it will be delivered. 

President Donald Trump said he’d be open to meeting directly with Iran’s president or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but also suggested that the U.S. could attack Iran to keep it from acquiring a nuclear weapon, in an interview with Time magazine, released on Friday.

When asked if he would consider such a meeting, the president responded, “Sure.”

Pressed if he is worried Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could “drag you into a war” with Iran, Trump responded, “No. By the way, he may go into a war. But we’re not getting dragged in.” The president clarified that he did not mean the U.S. wouldn’t join a war if Israel initiates one: “You asked if he’d drag me in, like I’d go in unwillingly. No, I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”

Trump further denied reports that he had stopped Israel from carrying out plans to strike Iran, but affirmed that he is unsupportive of an attack without attempting negotiations. “It’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”

Asked why his administration is revoking visas from and beginning to deport hundreds of foreign students, Trump said, “Tremendous antisemitism at every one of those rallies.” The president said he’s unconcerned about “intimidating students or chilling free speech” through this policy: “They can protest, but they can’t destroy schools like they did with Columbia and others.”

He said he would “look into” having the Department of Justice provide evidence that Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national who was detained by plainclothes federal agents on March 25, has ties to Hamas as the government has alleged, but he’s “not aware of the particular incident.”

On Saudi-Israel normalization, the president said he is confident that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords, “and by the way, I think it will be full very quickly.”

Democratic Majority for Israel’s founder and president, Mark Mellman, a pollster and decades-long fixture of Democratic politics who sought to counter a rising generation of Democratic politicians critical of Israel, is stepping down from his leadership of the pro-Israel organization six years after its founding. The organization did not give a reason for his departure, which will come at the end of this week.

Mellman launched the organization in early 2019, soon after the first members of the Squad — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — took office, with the stated goal of fighting anti-Israel forces in the party and maintaining the Democratic Party’s historic support for Israel. 

“Most Democrats are strongly pro-Israel and we want to keep it that way,” Mellman told The New York Times at the time. “There are a few discordant voices, but we want to make sure that what’s a very small problem doesn’t metastasize into a bigger problem.”

DMFI was one of the first pro-Israel organizations to become a major direct spender in political campaigns, before AIPAC created its own political fundraising arm in 2022. One of its early successes came in Cleveland in 2021, when Shontel Brown defeated progressive activist Nina Turner in a hard-fought primary. DMFI spent $2 million backing Brown. 

DMFI did not name a successor for Mellman but said in a press release that its board “will announce soon new leadership to build on its past successes and position Democratic Majority for Israel for even greater impact in the future.” 

Mellman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.