Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again voiced skepticism about the U.S.’ ability to reach an agreement with Iran as he departed Joint Base Andrews today, reports Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov, who is traveling with the prime minister’s delegation.

A day after his White House meeting with President Donald Trump, Netanyahu told reporters, “The president thinks the Iranians understand who they’re dealing with. He thinks the conditions he is setting, combined with their understanding that they made a mistake last time not reaching a deal, could bring them to agree to conditions that will allow a good deal to be reached.”

The prime minister’s view was more reserved: “I do not hide my general skepticism about the possibility of any deal with Iran.” Netanyahu said he told Trump that if a deal is indeed reached, “it must include the components that are important to us, the State of Israel, and, I think, the entire international community: not just the nuclear matter, but also ballistic missiles and Iranian proxies in the region.”

The Prime Minister’s Office also said Netanyahu will not be returning to Washington next week as scheduled, in order to speak at an AIPAC conference, and will instead appear virtually…

At a press conference this afternoon, Trump said the timeline for a potential deal with Iran is “over the next month … should happen quickly.” Asked why Netanyahu wants him to stop negotiating, Trump said, “He didn’t say that, we didn’t discuss that. I’ll talk to [Iran] as long as I like.” Trump additionally said Israeli President Isaac Herzog “should be ashamed of himself” and called him “disgraceful” for not issuing a pardon to Netanyahu…

The Trump administration smuggled around 6,000 Starlink terminals, used to establish internet connection, to activists in Iran during the regime’s violent suppression of nationwide protests, which included internet blackouts, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal…

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his team refused to condemn antisemitic and pro-Hamas social media posts from the co-founder of the group ‘Hot Girls for Zohran’ when pressed by JI’s Will Bredderman and other reporters today.

Speaking from City Hall, Mamdani would only stress that Gilani’s organization operated independently of his official election effort: “This was an individual leading an outside group and was never paid for by our campaign,” said Mamdani. “If New Yorkers want to know my views then they can hear it directly from me.

But when JI pressed the mayor directly whether he condemned the content of Gilani’s posts, he refused to respond and left the room, similar to how he fled questions on the matter from Politico on Wednesday…

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) urged the Trump administration today to investigate reports that a clique of radical staffers at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had launched an anti-Israel “working group” inside the agency, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.

In a letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stefanik decried reports that employees had met during work hours at the city bureaucracy’s Queens headquarters. She raised the possibility that the department’s federal funding might have gone toward a prohibited political purpose — or that the gathering may have violated civil rights protections by creating a discriminatory environment for Jewish New Yorkers…

The nomination of Jeremy Carl, tapped to be the assistant secretary of state for international organizations, appears bound to fail after Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) announced his opposition to Carl’s confirmation following his contentious hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

Curtis and a series of Democrats questioned Carl over past antisemitic, anti-Israel and otherwise inflammatory comments that the nominee had made online and in a series of podcast appearances, including his assertion that the U.S. spends too much time and energy on Israel “often to the detriment of our own national interest” and that “the Jews love to see themselves as oppressed”…

CENTCOM announced today it had completed a “deliberate and conditions-based” withdrawal of U.S. forces from al-Tanf Garrison in Syria, handing control of the site on the country’s border with Iraq and Jordan to forces aligned with the Syrian government. The U.S. has had a presence at the base since 2016 as part of its fight against ISIS; over 7,000 ISIS detainees are also being transitioned out of Syria into Iraq, while the U.S. troops were relocated to Jordan…

Germany joined the growing calls today for U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to resign, after France did the same yesterday, over her recent speech at the Al Jazeera Forum where she called Israel humanity’s “common enemy.” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul wrote on X, “I respect the system of independent rapporteurs of the UN. However, Ms. Albanese has already repeatedly failed in the past. I condemn her recent statements about Israel. She is untenable in her position”…

Israeli authorities arrested several people, and indicted one army reservist and one civilian, for allegedly using classified information to place bets on the popular prediction market Polymarket around the timing of Israel’s war with Iran last June, the Shin Bet announced today. The bets all correctly predicted the timeline of the strikes, raking in more than $150,000, Israeli media reported…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for reporting on the race to succeed Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, where the congresswoman is coming out forcefully against the lone Jewish candidate in the race — for being too supportive of Netanyahu.

The Munich Security Conference kicks off tomorrow, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio leading the U.S. delegation and speaking from the main stage on Saturday. Dozens of members of Congress were also expected to attend — official travel was canceled due to the impending shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security tomorrow, but members still may attend on their own. One member making a foray into foreign policy is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who will be speaking on two panels at the high-level summit. Other Democrats in attendance will be California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

In observance of President’s Day, we’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Tuesday. Shabbat Shalom!

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

The U.S. will continue pursuing diplomacy with Iran, President Donald Trump said following his White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier today, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports. 

“There was nothing definitive reached” in the meeting “other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue, to see whether or not a deal can be consummated,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference.”

If negotiations do not lead to a deal, the president added, “we will just have to see what the outcome will be. Last time, Iran decided they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with [Operation] Midnight Hammer. That did not work out well for them. Hopefully, this time, they will be more reasonable and responsible.”

Netanyahu’s office said about the meeting, “The prime minister stood up for the State of Israel’s security needs in the context of the negotiations, and the two agreed to continue to coordinate closely”…

Even as Trump insists diplomacy will continue, the Pentagon has told a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare for deployment to the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reports, to join the USS Abraham Lincoln along with dozens of U.S. aircraft and other warships…

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 23 senators, spanning the political and ideological spectrums, introduced a resolution today condemning the Iranian government for its crackdown on protesters and attempts to cut off internet access across the country, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

“Iranian civilians’ unprecedented nationwide protests and bravery, confronted with the regime’s unprecedented widespread extrajudicial killing of thousands and disruption of all electronic communication, have profoundly destabilized the country and constitute changed conditions in Iran,” the resolution reads, highlighting that the regime’s suppression and killing of protesters continues… 

The Trump administration expects to be able to announce several billion dollars in donations for Gaza reconstruction at the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting in Washington next week, The Times of Israel reports, even as it is still working on a proposal to disarm Hamas. That plan so far reportedly envisions Hamas relinquishing its heavy weapons and destroying manufacturing sites, without fully addressing lighter arms…

Conservative activist Carrie Prejean Boller was removed from the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission today, JI’s Gabby Deutch reports, two days after the commission held its first public hearing on antisemitism, which turned contentious when Prejean Boller pressed Jewish witnesses about whether they would consider her antisemitic for not being a Zionist and for believing Jews killed Jesus.

“No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs the commission, wrote in a post on X. “This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision”…

France is calling for the resignation of U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced today, after Albanese called Israel humanity’s “common enemy” in a speech at the Al Jazeera Forum in Qatar over the weekend.

“France unreservedly condemns the outrageous and reprehensible remarks made by Francesca Albanese, which are directed not at the Israeli government, whose policies may be criticized, but at Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable,” Barrot said in remarks to lawmakers. Her latest comments add “to a long list of scandalous positions,” including “justifying” the Oct. 7 attacks and “comparing Israel to the Third Reich,” he said…

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) introduced legislation seeking oversight into the hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan oil proceeds that the U.S. has acquired, some of which officials have said is being held in an account in Qatar…

New York City’s only Ethiopian-Israeli restaurant is closing its doors to diners, Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, and turning only to private events over rising anti-Israel harassment, which the owner, Beejhy Barhany, said escalated after the restaurant became kosher in February 2024…

The Department of Homeland Security hired a social media manager who had raised red flags at his previous position at the Department of Labor posting messaging that echoed white nationalist sentiments on official social media accounts, The New York Times reports.

Those posts “used evocative imagery, some reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, with phrases like ‘Restore American Greatness’ and ‘the globalist status quo is OVER.’ … Colleagues warned superiors that the department’s accounts could be seen as promoting white-supremacist rhetoric, Nazi imagery and QAnon conspiracy theories”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for an interview with Jason Friedman, a longtime Chicago Jewish federation leader making a bid for Illinois’ open 7th Congressional District.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a nomination hearing for conservative commentator Jeremy Carl to serve as assistant secretary of state for international organizations. Schumer denounced Carl and his nomination on the Senate floor this week, “citing Carl’s long history of racist, white supremacist, and antisemitic views.”

Sinai Temple in Los Angeles will host a summit tomorrow on faith and sports, ahead of NBA All-Star weekend taking place in the city. The convening will feature several NBA athletes, coaches and faith and civic leaders.

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

President Donald Trump is considering sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East as a contingency if negotiations with Iran fail, he told Axios today. “Either we will make a deal or we will have to do something very tough like last time,” the president said, adding, “We have an armada that is heading there and another one might be going.”

Still, Trump expressed optimism that Tehran “wants to make a deal very badly” and said the negotiations are “very different” since he authorized strikes last June on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also said he doesn’t think Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is en route to Washington for his Wednesday meeting with Trump, is nervous about the negotiations, stating Netanyahu “also wants a deal. He wants a good deal”…

Trump also reiterated his opposition to West Bank annexation, days after Israel’s Security Cabinet voted to expand Israeli authorities in the area. “I am against annexation. We have enough things to think about now. We don’t need to be dealing with the West Bank,” he told Axios. While Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu tomorrow will ostensibly focus on Iran, the latest Israeli moves could drive a wedge between the two leaders…

On the campaign trail, former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) conceded the race for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to far-left activist Analilia Mejia today, after outstanding ballots broke decisively in her favor over the weekend. 

In his statement, Malinowski, the presumed favorite who was the target of over $2 million of ads by the AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project super PAC, claimed that “the outcome of this race cannot be understood without also taking into account the massive flood of dark money that AIPAC spent on dishonest ads” attacking him. He warned, “If AIPAC backs a candidate — openly or surreptitiously — in the June NJ-11 Congressional primary, I will oppose that candidate and urge my supporters to do so as well.”

Mejia was congratulated by New Jersey Democratic leaders including Sens. Andy Kim and Cory Booker and Gov. Mikie Sherrill, though it remains to be seen if she will retain their support in the June primary when she must run for the Democratic nomination again if she hopes to retain the office for a full term…

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) officially launched her reelection campaign today for her seat which Democrats likely need to flip if they hope to take back the chamber. Collins, who has been targeted by Trump due to her occasional votes across the aisle, will likely face either Maine Gov. Janet Mills or oyster farmer Graham Platner in the general, after they battle it out in a hotly contested primary…

New York Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado dropped his primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul today, whom he had hoped to beat out in her reelection race from the left. The move comes after several progressive leaders, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, endorsed Hochul, which Delgado alluded to in his statement: “After much consideration, I’ve concluded that there simply is no viable path forward. And though my campaign has come to an end, I fully intend to do all I can in our effort to build a more humane, affordable, and equitable state that serves all New Yorkers”…

The Washington Free Beacon details several Mamdani administration staffers with a history of comments defaming Israel, including one who called Israel a “modern-day Nazi Germany” and one who called people ripping down posters of Israeli hostages “heroes”…

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, condemned rhetoric from the leader of the state Democratic Party’s Muslim Caucus, Elyas Mohammed, in a statement shared exclusively with JI’s Matthew Kassel. Mohammed recently described Zionists as “modern day Nazis” and as a “threat to humanity,” among other incendiary social media posts.

“Antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories have no place anywhere, including in the North Carolina Democratic Party,” the governor said, after the leaders of several prominent Jewish groups in the state sent a joint letter urging Democratic officials and lawmakers to publicly denounce Mohammed’s statements…

Columbia University is considering expanding and refocusing how its Middle Eastern studies department teaches about Israel, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. The provost’s regional review committee announced a set of recommendations this week for the department, including a stronger partnership with the school’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, marking a pivot in a field and at a school that have come under immense scrutiny from the federal government and Jewish leaders following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks…

Shaare Tefila, a Conservative congregation in Olney, Md., in the Washington suburbs, was defaced with antisemitic graffiti today, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. A swastika, the word “genocide” and the phrase “AZAB,” an acronym standing for “All Zionists Are Bastards,” were spray-painted on street signs and banners outside the synagogue.

Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, called the act “outrageous. While it is fortunate that no one was physically hurt, it is yet another sad reminder that antisemitic incidents have become common occurrences throughout our region,” he said…

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Justice Department intends to pursue and ultimately shut down groups that have engaged in disruptive protests at synagogues and other antisemitic activities, as well as those supporting those groups, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

Speaking today at a conference on antisemitism organized by The George Washington University Program on Extremism, Dhillon said her division’s work includes pursuing those funding, training and supporting groups such as American Muslims for Palestine and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which she said are engaging in “acts of domestic terrorism”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a preview of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bilateral meeting with President Donald Trump tomorrow at the White House, as the Israeli PM seeks to provide input on U.S. negotiations with Iran.

The House Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on the potential impacts of a Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which looks likely as lawmakers struggle to reach a deal before its funding runs out on Friday.

The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch will speak at New York City’s Temple Emanu-El on the organization’s annual State of Antisemitism in America survey, released today.

• We’re continuing to monitor developments in Australia. At a Sunday vigil in Sydney for the victims of last week’s Bondi Beach attack, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was jeered and booed over what the country’s Jewish leaders have derided as inadequate efforts to address antisemitism before and since the attacks. 
• Earlier today, an Australian court released police charging documents for the alleged shooter who was not killed during the attacks. The documents noted that Naveed Akram and his father had also hurled explosive devices into the crowd that had failed to detonate, and prior to the attacks had recorded a video explaining their motivations while standing in front of an ISIS flag. 
• In Israel, Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, in collaboration with the Ruderman Family Foundation, is hosting a conference this afternoon examining the U.S.-Israel relationship, including the connection between Israel and American Jewry.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Josh Kraushaar

The kids aren’t alright.

That’s the unmistakable takeaway from a weekend filled with shocking developments surrounding the views of young conservatives, punctuated by a Turning Point USA conference that turned into a proxy war between mainstream voices led by Ben Shapiro, looking to create guardrails against antisemites and conspiracy theorists within the MAGA movement, against a growing cadre of bad-faith right-wing influencers leading the charge to embrace extremist voices into the conservative coalition.

The conference concluded with Vice President JD Vance all but taking the side of the extremists, while offering fulsome praise to his friend, Tucker Carlson, as an essential part of the Republican Party coalition.

The last several days also featured news of an eye-opening Manhattan Institute focus group of Gen Z Nashville-area conservatives reluctant to offer any negative reaction toward Adolf Hitler and sharing numerous antisemitic stereotypes about Jews. (One 29-year-old woman offered this representative reaction about Hitler: “I think he was a great leader, to be honest. I think what he was going for was terrible, but I think he showed very strong leadership values.”)

The weekend ended with a Jewish Insider scoop that a Trump administration nominee for a senior position at the State Department has a long track record of making derogatory comments about the Jewish community, characterizing Jews as religiously incorrect and in need of conversion.

This moment was further underscored by the hideously antisemitic tirade that Candace Owens went on over the last few days, barely eliciting any serious pushback from conservative movement leaders. Meanwhile, former journalist Megyn Kelly, during her own speech Friday at the TPUSA conference, chose to go after Shapiro and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss even as Kelly has publicly steered clear of criticizing Owens, citing the fact that she’s a young mother and a personal friend. (Shapiro, she said, is no longer a friend after he criticized her in his speech Thursday night.)

Shapiro, long one of the leading voices on the right, opened the conference with a warning that the conservative movement is in danger from “charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty, who offer nothing but bile and despair.”  

He called out Tucker Carlson, Owens and Kelly by name. “We must not let fear of audience anger deter us from telling the truth; we must not let fear of other hosts deter us from telling the truth,” Shapiro warned. “The fact that Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years on end while others fly cover for her is … cowardly.”

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

• President Donald Trump will give a televised address at 9 p.m. ET.
• The Heritage Foundation is hosting a sit-down this afternoon between Heritage President Kevin Roberts and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.
• Elsewhere in Washington, Jewish members of Congress are hosting the annual Capitol Hill Hanukkah party. Across town, the Israeli Embassy in Washington is hosting its annual Hanukkah reception tonight.
• Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine and influential conservative thought leader, died on Tuesday. In a remembrance of his father, John Podhoretz wrote: “He bound himself fast to his people, his heritage, and his history. His knowledge extended beyond literature to Jewish history, Jewish thinking, Jewish faith, and the Hebrew Bible, with all of which he was intimately familiar and ever fascinated.”
• Australian police charged Naveed Akram, one of the suspects in the Sunday terror attack in Sydney, with 15 counts of murder in addition to dozens of other offenses, including committing a terrorist act; Akram is in stable condition at a Sydney hospital after spending two days in a coma.

A QUICK WORD WITH THE JI team

As Jewish communities are marking Hanukkah under the shadow of the deadly terror attack in Sydney that marred the beginning of the Jewish holiday, leaders in Washington and New York addressed growing concerns about antisemitism at several Hanukkah events held yesterday.

President Donald Trump warned that Israel and the “Jewish lobby” have lost their influence in Washington and that Congress is “becoming antisemitic,” in a holiday message delivered to attendees at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party.

Speaking from the East Room to a gathering of lawmakers and prominent Jewish figures ahead of a ceremonial menorah lighting, the president repeatedly cautioned that the Jewish community and its allies “have to be very careful because bad things are happening” to Jewish people and to Israel’s global standing, citing the shooting in Sydney and the ongoing denials of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Read the full story here.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, speaking at a Hanukkah reception hosted by Israel’s U.N. mission at The Jewish Museum in Manhattan, said the U.S. “can and will confront antisemitism without apology, without hesitation and will do so everywhere around the world, including right here in the halls of the U.N.” Read the full story here.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) annual Hanukkah party featured remarks by Shira Gvili, sister of Ran Gvili, the last hostage in Gaza, JI’s Marc Rod reports. Gvili highlighted that her brother had always dreamed of being a police officer and ran into the fight on Oct. 7 — when he was killed — despite waiting for surgery for a broken shoulder. She also noted that he volunteered to support Holocaust survivors.

“On this celebration of light, of heroes, as we do on Hanukkah, Ran is not only my hero, he is our hero. For everyone lighting a candle tonight, may the glow of the menorah [brighten] the darkened moments. May the glow of the menorah’s light bring Ran home tonight,” Gvili continued.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also delivered remarks, and nearly 40 lawmakers — a majority of them Democrats — stopped through the gathering. These included Reps. Ed Case (D-HI), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Sara Jacobs (D-CA), Daniel Goldman (D-NY), Craig Goldman (R-TX), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), David Kustoff (R-TN), George Latimer (D-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), April McClain Delaney (D-MD), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Grace Meng (D-NY), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) and Don Davis (D-NC). 

Jeffries said that, after the attack in Australia, “it’s incumbent on all of us as leaders not just to, of course, authentically express our thoughts and prayers on behalf and directed at those families who have suffered from this unconscionable, unthinkable, unspeakable tragedy, but to make it clear that we all have a responsibility to combat antisemitism whenever and wherever it’s found, and make sure that no matter what it takes, we’re committed, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans, to bury antisemitism in the ground never to rise again.”

Jeffries continued, “At the same time, we’ll also make clear that we will continue to stand up for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state and a homeland for the Jewish people.”

⚠️ Shoulder to Shoulder: In The Times of Israel, Israeli President Isaac Herzog reflects on the Sydney terror attack and the meaning of Hanukkah. “Yet as we reflect on the miracle of the return home of our brothers and sisters, we also confront a deeply troubling reality beyond Israel’s borders. As the October 7th massacre in southern Israel was still ongoing, Jewish communities around the world began to experience a vicious wave of hatred. Institutional antisemitism, Holocaust inversion, conspiracies left and right, Jew-hatred platformed on social media, and moral bankruptcy masquerading as social justice have all disturbingly increased across the Western world. The deadly terror attack in Sydney this week demonstrates where these dangerous trends can lead.” [TOI]

👮 ‘Forever Changed’: In The New York Times, Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, mourns those killed in Sunday’s terror attack in Sydney, as well as the sense of communal security that no longer exists for Australian Jews. “Now we have suffered a loss that is impossible to measure or articulate. It is a loss felt nationally for a country that is forever changed. It is a loss felt communally for a way of life defined by pride and open observance that no longer exists. And it is a loss we feel individually for the friends and relatives who died in our arms from hideous wounds inflicted by high-powered shells used for hunting game. … My community will never recover from this, I am sure. My rabbi, my friend, Eli Schlanger lived by a mission of being proud of who he was as a Jew. The annual Hanukkah event he hosted on the beach was the ultimate evidence of our acceptance, the proof that we were safe in our acts of community pride. That is all gone now. And with it, a man who had shown us the way.” [NYTimes]

 ⚖️ After Bondi: In the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack, The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood posits that governments need to take serious, tangible actions that go beyond antisemitism education to address threats to the Jewish community. “With an attack like this, the only effective response is the zealous prosecution of anyone who planned or supported it, and the protection of those who might be targeted in similar attacks in the future. Museum education is nice, but if an attack is under way, a police officer with a rifle has more stopping power. Self-study to determine whether Jews are systematically excluded or vilified is worthwhile but will take time. Restrictions on speech are another matter, and a distraction from real police work. It should not be a crime to inquire about the whereabouts of Jews, or even to say you wish to gas them. But if you spray-paint a Jewish school or set a car on fire, a government with its resources properly ordered will find and charge you before you graduate to violent crime.” [TheAtlantic]

The Sudanese Armed Forces – backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Iran – are the subject of a new CNN investigation that found them responsible for mass killing of civilians and dumping their bodies into canals… 

United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed re-upped a 2024 Atlantic piece by Palestinian political activist Samer Sinijlawi calling for leadership changes in Israel and the Palestinian Authority…

Turkey was excluded from a CENTCOM-hosted conference in Doha, Qatar, focused on putting together an international stabilization force in the Gaza Strip…

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said that the Trump administration needs to put forward a new nominee for the post of ambassador for religious freedom as former Rep. Mark Walker’s (R-NC) nomination remains stalled in the Senate…

The widow of a security officer who was killed in a mass shooting at the Park Avenue building housing the headquarters of the NFL is suing the league, the real estate firm that owns the building and the building’s security company over their failures to prevent the attack, in which philanthropist Wesley LePatner and two others were also killed…

The NYPD is investigating an incident in which a group of Orthodox Jewish men were harassed and assaulted on a subway car after video of the confrontation was posted to social media; police are also investigating as a hate crime a separate incident, also filmed, in which a visibly Jewish man was attacked while walking down the street in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood…

Two members of the Heritage Foundation’s board resigned amid a series of high-profile departures from the think tank over its embrace of Tucker Carlson and failure to denounce extremist views; Abby Spencer Moffat said Heritage was “unwilling or unable to meet this moment with the clarity and courage it requires,” while Shane McCullar said the think tank was “unwilling to confront the lapses in judgment that have harmed its credibility, its culture, and the conservative movement it once helped shape”…

Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to reject Skydance Paramount’s hostile takeover bid due to concerns over financing; Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which had provided some backing to Paramount in its effort, withdrew its support for Paramount’s bid…

The Financial Times reports on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to build out AI infrastructure as he looks to compete with OpenAI and Google…

Qatar Sports Investments-owned Paris Saint-Germain was ordered by a French court to pay more than $70 million to former PSG star Kylian Mbappé resulting from unpaid wages and bonuses…

Actress Sydney Sweeney wore a gown by Israeli designer Galia Lahav to the premiere of her new film, “The Housemaid”…

Iranian victims of the Women, Life, Freedom protests that swept through the Islamic Republic in 2022 are suing more than three dozen Iranian officials in an Argentine court, alleging the officials committed or were complicit in crimes against humanity…

PBS reports from Hezbollah’s secretive military installations following their seizure by the Lebanese Armed Forces… 

Wall Street investment banker Arthur Carter, who would go on to purchase The Nation and found The New York Observer, died at 93…

Actor Jonah Platt sat in conversation with former Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi on Monday night at the American Friends of Magen David Adom’s Miami Gala.

Grammy Award-winning songwriter and musician, Benjamin Goldwasser turns 43… 

Retired attorney and vice chair of the American Jewish International Relations Institute, Stuart Sloame turns 86… Former CEO of multiple companies including the San Francisco 49ers and FAO Schwarz, Peter L. Harris turns 82… VP of strategic planning and marketing at Queens-based NewInteractions, Paulette Mandelbaum… Professor of Jewish history, culture and society at Columbia University, Elisheva Carlebach Jofen turns 71… Retired chair of the physician assistant studies program at Rutgers, Dr. Jill A. Reichman turns 70… Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and senior foreign policy advisor to prime ministers Sharon, Barak and Netanyahu, Danny Ayalon turns 70… Longtime chairman and CEO of HBO, he now heads Eden Productions, Richard Plepler turns 67… Israeli film director, screenwriter, animator and film-score composer, Ari Folman turns 63… Former president of Freedom House, now the director at Voice of America, Michael J. Abramowitz turns 62… Chief of the General Staff of the IDF until this past March, Herzl “Herzi” Halevi turns 58… Founder and CEO of LionTree LLC, Aryeh B. Bourkoff turns 53… Pastry chef, television personality and cookbook author, Jeffrey Adam “Duff” Goldman turns 51… Israeli former soccer goalkeeper, then on the coaching staff for the national team, Nir Davidovich turns 49… CEO of the New Legacy Group of Companies, he is also founder and chair emeritus of Project Sunshine, Joseph Weilgus… Co-director of New Public, Eli Pariser turns 45… Senior writer at National Review and author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America, Noah C. Rothman… Director of foundation partnerships at the UJA-Federation of New York, Julia Sobel… National correspondent for Vanity Fair and author of the 2018 book Born Trump: Inside America’s First Family, Emily Jane Fox… State general manager for Maryland at Entyre Care, Daniel Ensign… Actor, singer-songwriter and musician, he starred in the Nickelodeon television series “The Naked Brothers Band,” Nat Wolff turns 31…

• President Donald Trump is meeting with recently returned hostages and their families at 2 p.m. today at the White House.
  
• Vice President JD Vance is joining Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle for a fireside chat in Washington this morning.
  
• Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral is taking place at 11 a.m. at the Washington National Cathedral. Former President George W. Bush and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) are among those giving eulogies for the former vice president.
  
• On Capitol Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is set to hold a vote on advancing the nomination of Leo Brent Bozell III to be U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
  
• Elsewhere on the Hill, the Helsinki Commission is holding a hearing on lifting Caesar sanctions against Syria. Rabbi Yosef Hamra, the brother of the last chief rabbi of Syria, is among those slated to testify.
  
• In celebration of the holiday of Sigd, celebrated by Ethiopian Jews, the Israeli Embassy in Washington is hosting a reception this evening.
  
• The Hudson Institute is hosting a conversation with Caroline Glick, a senior advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, this afternoon at the think tank’s Washington headquarters.
  
• Catholic University is holding a remembrance ceremony tonight for legal scholar and professor Marshall Breger, who died in August. Breger served as Jewish liaison in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
  
• In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting this afternoon with American Jewish Congress President Daniel Rosen and a delegation of mayors from around the world who are in Israel for the organization’s 34th Mayors’ Conference.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MATTHEW KASSEL

Jack Schlossberg’s decision to launch a bid for Congress in New York City last week was just the latest example of a Kennedy scion hoping to ascend to federal office, testing the continued strength of a hallowed family name whose political currency has dwindled over the years.

His unorthodox campaign also marked the most recent arrival of a new type of political candidate that has cropped up with increasing regularity this election cycle: the social media influencer vying for power beyond the screen.

Schlossberg, the 32-year-old grandson of John. F. Kennedy, is joining a growing crop of young House contenders with digital clout who have been seeking to convert online popularity into a seat in Congress. His campaign announcement follows, among other recent newcomers, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old left-wing social media influencer running in next year’s crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in the Chicago suburbs.

And it’s not just young recruits trying to parlay their social media clout into political success. George Conway, the vocally anti-Trump conservative lawyer, is hoping that 2.2 million followers on X and his prolfic online attacks against the president will translate into Democratic votes as he seriously considers running in the Nadler district as well. To succeed, voters in the heavily-Democratic district would have to overlook his long record of traditionally conservative views on policy.

Both parties have tried to harness social media to advance their messages while courting influencers and content creators to broaden their appeal among younger online voters. But as influencers engaged in political commentary now pursue political office — most with few apparent qualifying credentials — it remains to be seen if their new efforts can translate to winning campaigns.

So far, the results have not been promising for such candidates. In a special election for a vacant House seat in Arizona this past summer, for instance, Deja Foxx, a 25-year-old influencer, fell short by a nearly 40-point margin, losing to a more well-known local lawmaker, Adelita Grijalva —  a daughter of the late congressman who represented the district for more than two decades. 

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

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Despite the historic nature of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s White House visit today, his meeting with President Donald Trump was kept a relatively low-key affair. Al-Sharaa entered through a back door and didn’t receive the usual greeting photo op with Trump, and the meeting was closed to the press.

The two leaders made news nonetheless: Syria is now set to join the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, Trump and al-Sharaa discussed reopening respective embassies in Damascus and Washington and the Treasury Department issued a new order extending the suspension of U.S. sanctions on Syria for six months. 

Ibrahim Olabi, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, said the two leaders also discussed a prospective Israel-Syria security agreement. “The term used frequently during the meeting by President Trump and Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio was ‘let’s get this done,’” Olabi said…

Trump has encouraged lawmakers to fully lift the congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions on Syria, but Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a Trump ally and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not commit to supporting sanctions relief when he held his own meeting with al-Sharaa yesterday, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Mast and al-Sharaa “had a long and serious conversation about how to build a future for the people of Syria free of war, ISIS, and extremism,” Mast said in a statement, but offered no words of praise for the Syrian leader…

Sergio Gor was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to India today to unusual fanfare — he and Trump were joined in the Oval Office by Rubio; Vice President JD Vance; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Attorney General Pam Bondi; U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro; Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jim Risch (R-ID); Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL); Erika Kirk and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, among others. 

Swearing in Gor, who used to serve as the head of the Presidential Personnel Office where he wielded significant influence in assuring political hires shared his skepticism of American engagement abroad, Vance said, “We have such a crowd here, you’d think we were swearing in a vice president”…

Laura Loomer, a right-wing Trump advisor who has historically maintained pro-Israel stances, wrote on social media today that, after spending “an incredible week” in Israel, she has “reached a firm conclusion: Israel must end its dependence on U.S. aid and the U.S. must end all aid to Israel.”

“I truly hope by the end of the Trump administration and by the beginning of a new administration in 2028 that we see zero aid flowing to Israel,” she wrote, calling it a “win-win” for the U.S., which will no longer be a “global baby sitter,” and for Israel, which will be free to conduct its wars as it wishes.

In response, Democratic Majority for Israel accused Loomer of continuing “a troubling pattern on the Right — embracing anti-Israel policies & undermining our allies,” in the vein of Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)…

Christine Pelosi, daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was thought to be considering a run for her mother’s seat as she retires, announced today that she is not running for Congress. Instead, Pelosi is launching a campaign for the state Senate seat currently held by Scott Wiener, who is running for her mother’s San Francisco congressional district…

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani named two of his top advisors today: Dean Fuleihan to be first deputy mayor and Elle Bisgaard-Church as his chief of staff. 

Bisgaard-Church is a democratic socialist who was part of Mamdani’s campaign inner circle. Fuleihan, on the other hand, is a city and state government veteran; he previously served in the same role under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and as his budget director, as well as a budget expert in the state Legislature, among other roles. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who was at times at odds with Mamdani during his campaign, called Fuleihan’s appointment “exceptional … in more ways than one”…  

Danielle Sassoon, the former interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who resigned her post rather than drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams at the request of the Trump administration, has joined the law office of Clement & Murphy, The New York Times reports. The conservative boutique firm is known for its “longstanding opposition to executive branch overreach”…

The Wall Street Journal reports on Yale’s attempt to stay out of the line of fire in Trump’s crusade against higher education, including President Maurie McInnis’ increased government lobbying expenditures and a student forum where classmates encouraged each other to refrain from disruptive anti-Israel protests: “‘The only thing continuing to protest will do is to take education and opportunities away from the rest of us,’ said one post [on the forum]. ‘Ppl need to stop being stupid and selfish and realize they will gain no ground under this administration on the Israel issue’”…

Palantir CEO Alex Karp defended his support of Israel in an interview with WIRED, released today, saying, “Israel is a country with a GDP smaller than Switzerland, and it’s under massive attack. Some critiques are legitimate, but others are aggressive in attacking Israel. My reaction is, well, then I’m just going to defend them.” 

“When people are fair to Israel and treat it like any other nation, which I don’t think they do, I will be much more willing to express in public the things I express in private to Israelis”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for reporting on veteran journalists Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi’s new book, Don’t Feed the Lion, which they will launch at Temple Emanu-El in New York City tomorrow night, joined in conversation by comedian Elon Gold.

This evening, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa will appear on Fox News’ “Special Report” with Bret Baier.

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

The Abraham Accords is expected to gain another participant this evening, though in a first, the country is not joining as a show of peace with Israel — since the new addition, the Muslim-majority central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, has had full diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992.

Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is expected to announce the move at a meeting with President Donald Trump later today, where they will also hold a joint phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump administration officials told Axios that the White House wants to “build momentum” for the Abraham Accords ahead of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington on Nov. 18.

As far as Kazakhstan’s motivation, the former Soviet nation has long lobbied Washington to cancel a Cold War-era law that has hindered its access to American markets, and could benefit from currying favor with the Trump administration.

Leading Jewish organizations have worked with Kazakhstan’s Jewish community and government for over a decade to lobby Congress to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and told Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov and Danielle Cohen-Kanik that they are highly supportive of the country’s inclusion in the Accords…

Ahead of Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s own visit to the White House on Monday, the U.N. Security Council voted in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution to lift sanctions on the former Al-Qaida leader turned president…

Also getting an Oval Office welcome, Israeli media reported today that Trump invited the 20 Israeli hostages released from Gaza last month to visit the White House in two weeks…

On the Hill, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee from both parties voiced concerns with Elbridge Colby, under secretary of defense for policy, and his office at the Pentagon at a committee hearing today — for the second time this week, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

“Many of this committee have serious concerns about the Pentagon’s policy office and how it is serving the president of the United States and the Congress,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement. “In many of these conversations, we hear that the Pentagon policy office seems to be doing what it pleases without coordinating, even inside the U.S. executive branch”…

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced this morning that she will retire at the end of her term in 2027, after serving 39 years in Congress where she made history as the first female speaker of the House. 

For most of her illustrious career, Pelosi has been a reliable ally of Israel and, as Democratic leader, generally managed to keep her caucus united around support for the Jewish state. But, like many Democrats, she leaned in a more critical direction during the war in Gaza, at one point supporting a call to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. Read JI’s interview with Scott Wiener, the state senator from California seeking to win her seat…

The IDF is beginning to demobilize thousands of reservists called up for duty, some of whom have served hundreds of days in the past two years, announcing that the country is transitioning from war into a period of “enhanced border security” as the ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza largely endures…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions today against members of Hezbollah’s “finance team” who “oversee the movement of funds from Iran” in an effort to support the Lebanese government’s moves to disarm the terror group. The department revealed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has already transferred over $1 billion to Hezbollah this year…

Author Jamie Kirchick argues in The Washington Post that the “inevitable fracturing of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is in sight, the instigator of its rupture that most narcissistic and destructive of media personalities: Tucker Carlson.” 

Kirchick admonishes Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for failing to outright condemn Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes: “Stalinists and Holocaust deniers like Fuentes are perfectly entitled to spew their nonsense on street corners, through self-published manifestos or in online livestreams. What they are not entitled to is the imprimatur of purportedly respectable institutions whose reputations hinge upon the voices they choose to amplify”…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for an interview with former Minnesota Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, who will be celebrating his 95th birthday.

On Sunday, the Zionist Organization of America will hold its annual gala, where it will present awards to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY); Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; Leo Terrell, head of the Department of Justice’s antisemitism task force; Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon; and philanthropists Irit and Jonathan Tratt. 

We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Jewish Americans are still taking stock after Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night in the New York City mayoral race. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, based in New York, called Mamdani’s victory a “grim milestone” and a reminder “that antisemitism remains a clear and present danger, even in the places where American Jews have long felt most secure.” Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, listed policies the organization will be looking toward “to address the profound concerns about what the future holds for Jewish safety and belonging.”

Robert Tucker, the Jewish commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, resigned this morning, The New York Post reports, hours before he was set to fly to Israel to meet his counterpart there. 

In his first response to an incident of antisemitism as mayor-elect, Mamdani denounced the vandalism of the Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn, which had two swastikas graffitied on it overnight, as “a disgusting and heartbreaking act of antisemitism, and it has no place in our beautiful city”…

Another heavily Democratic city rejected its own far-left candidate for mayor today, as incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis won reelection against his DSA-aligned challenger, state Sen. Omar Fateh, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports. Marking a win for the more pragmatic wing of the Democratic Party, Frey secured his third term with 50% of the vote, to Fateh’s 44%, in the second round of the city’s ranked-choice voting.

A similar result may be emerging in Seattle, where preliminary results last night showed the Democratic incumbent, Mayor Bruce Harrell, leading over his socialist challenger, Katie Wilson, though many ballots remain to be counted… 

One day after a historic Election Day — first democratic socialist mayor of New York City, largest turnout in an NYC mayoral race since 1969, first female governor of Virginia, first Muslim woman elected to statewide office as Virginia’s lieutenant governor, a record percentage of registered voters turning out for the municipal election in Minneapolis, among others — and the U.S. is already hitting another milestone: the longest government shutdown in history, at 36 days long.

President Donald Trump partially blamed the shutdown for Democrats’ strong showing in yesterday’s elections at a breakfast with Senate Republicans this morning, telling them, “I thought we’d have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented, and what we should do about it. … I think if you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans”…

Citing the shutdown, increased polarization and rising political violence, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) announced this afternoon that he will not be seeking reelection. Golden, a pro-Israel centrist who often worked across the aisle, has represented Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, a largely rural, working-class district that Trump won in the 2024 election by 14 points, since 2018, a seat that will be difficult for Democrats to maintain…

Recently freed former hostage Elizabeth Tsurkov recounted her two and a half years of captivity by Kataib Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group in Iraq, in a new interview with The New York Times, detailing the torture she experienced that resulted in potentially permanent nerve damage and the need for “long-term physical and psychological rehabilitation,” as determined by doctors at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center…

The University of Maryland, College Park student government is scheduled to vote on two resolutions hostile towards Israel tonight, JI’s Haley Cohen reports. One calls for the university to prohibit people who are “committing war crimes” and “genocide” from speaking on campus, after the campus chapter of Students Supporting Israel hosted an event last month where former IDF soldiers spoke about their experiences serving during Israel’s war with Hamas.

The second resolution calls on the university to issue an apology to students who faced disciplinary action for protesting that event, when demonstrators packed the outside hallway shouting “baby killers” and “IOF [Israel “Occupation” Forces] off our campus,” while several others protested outside of the building with chants comparing the IDF to the Ku Klux Klan…

Variety profiles David Ellison in his first 100 days as CEO of the recently merged Paramount Skydance, including the media company’s about-face on Israel issues. Free Press founder Bari Weiss, hired as editor-in-chief of CBS News by Ellison, “has been so vocal in her support of [Israel] that she faces frequent death threats. She and her wife, The Free Press co-founder Nellie Bowles, require a detail of five bodyguards that costs the studio $10,000-$15,000 a day.” 

Paramount also reportedly “maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be ‘overtly antisemitic’ as well as ‘xenophobic’ and ‘homophobic,’” after the studio was the first to denounce a boycott of Israel signed by several Hollywood heavyweights…

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye on Jewish Insider tomorrow morning for the latest news on the Heritage Foundation’s internal reckoning with its defense of Tucker Carlson.

Tomorrow, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, a bill aimed at eliminating loopholes used to possess Nazi-looted artwork that Jewish families have been trying to recover.

The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a nomination hearing for Alex Velez-Green to be deputy under secretary of defense for policy, coming days after committee lawmakers blasted the Pentagon office and its head, Elbridge Colby, during a contentious hearing for failing to communicate with them. 

Maccabi Tel Aviv will play Aston Villa tomorrow in a Europa League match that generated controversy after local authorities announced that supporters of the Israeli team would not be permitted to attend, with the game deemed “high risk” over security concerns. Over 700 police officers are expected to be deployed and a no-fly zone will be established around the Villa Park stadium in Birmingham, England.

Israel’s Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball team will face off against the Dubai team in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Round 9 of the EuroCup tomorrow.

The Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, formerly the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, will host its second Sports Leaders Convening at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts tomorrow, featuring Robert Kraft, the organization’s CEO and owner of the New England Patriots; Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee; Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Adam Lehman, CEO of Hillel International; Michael Masters, CEO of the Secure Community Network; and leaders from major sports leagues.

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy will host a webinar tomorrow on the possibility of peace between Israel and Lebanon with Lebanese Member of Parliament Fouad Makhzoumi.

• South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Donald Trump will meet at the White House today, with new trade agreements on the agenda amid strained ties between the two countries.
• The Combat Antisemitism Movement and the Jewish Federations of North America will host the Annual Jewish American Heritage Month Congressional Breakfast on Capitol Hill today, with a keynote address from Bruce Pearl, head coach of the Auburn men’s basketball team.
• The House Appropriations Committee will hold separate budget hearings with testimony from Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
• The House Foreign Affairs Committee will also hold a hearing with Rubio on “Fiscal Year 2026 State Department Posture: Protecting American Interests.”
• The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold a hearing on “The State of Higher Education” with witnesses including Dr. Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute; Dr. Michael Lindsay, president of Taylor University; Dr. Mark Brown, president of Tuskegee University; Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center; and Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of the Austin Community College District.
• The Qatar Economic Forum continues today in Doha, with speakers including Donald Trump Jr.; Steve Mnuchin, former U.S. treasury secretary; Mark Attanasio, principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers; John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg; and Hassan Al-Thawadi, former secretary general at Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S hALEY COHEN

A new Anti-Defamation League report puts a spotlight on episodes of antisemitism in K-12 non-Jewish independent schools, a trend that doesn’t get as much attention as the higher-profile incidents on college campuses but is affecting Jewish students in critical ways. 

The study found antisemitic incidents in independent schools down 26% in 2024, compared to 2023, but still up significantly since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. There were only 494 documented incidents of antisemitism in independent schools in 2022; that number has nearly doubled to 860 in 2024.

A quarter of surveyed parents said their children experienced/witnessed antisemitic symbols (such as swastikas) in school.

The research was conducted through four focus groups and a survey of 369 parents of Jewish children in independent K-12 schools across 21 states. The ADL told Jewish Insider‘s Haley Cohen it selected independent schools to evaluate since they operate outside of the oversight of public education and therefore have greater autonomy in shaping their curricula, policies and disciplinary procedures. 

In addition to expressing concern over antisemitic symbols, nearly one-third of parents reported anti-Jewish and anti-Israel curricula featuring more prominently in their children’s classrooms since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. They’re also deeply dissatisfied with administrators’ responses to antisemitism: Of the parents surveyed who were aware of antisemitism in their child’s school, 34% said the school’s response was either “somewhat” or “very” inadequate.

One bit of encouraging news: A sizable majority of students at these schools (64%) said they felt “very comfortable” showing their Jewish identity at schools, with only 8% feeling somewhat or very uncomfortable with doing so. But there were isolated episodes of student discomfort, including one parent saying their son avoided wearing a Star of David necklace. 

Another notable trend: Many independent school parents voiced concern that diversity, equity and inclusion frameworks do not include Jewish identity and antisemitism. They view the exclusion as a fundamental flaw of the programming rather than an oversight and described a pattern in which Jewish identity was omitted altogether from DEI conversations or misrepresented to perpetuate bias.  

And parents are voting with their feet: There’s been an increase in Jewish day school enrollment in recent years. 

But for those Jewish students who remain in independent schools, the ADL said it’s launching a new initiative to hold schools accountable and support families. “These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, said. “By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop.” 

A Tale of Two New York City’s: New York magazine’s E. Alex Jung writes about the stark contrast between Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary. “Their respective campaigns are striking foils: Cuomo, who at 67 would become the oldest incoming mayor of New York City ever, has stayed out of the public eye while racking up endorsements from major labor unions. When he does appear, he’s working the Black church circuit. He knows that the path to the Democratic nomination has historically gone through Black and Latino voters, mostly in Southeast Queens and Central Brooklyn. In one simulation, Cuomo is winning those communities by 91 percent and 72 percent by the final round, respectively. To the ire of white liberals, he has a broad multi-racial coalition. While Mamdani is seemingly everywhere in the city, running from protests to rallies to galas, his base is largely white college-educated Brooklynites, with much of his early efforts going toward activating South Asian and Muslim voters, who have traditionally been ignored. ‘Zohran is Cuomo’s wet-dream opponent,’ says one anti-Cuomo Democratic strategist. ‘Supported by online kids, on the record for “defund,” on the record about Palestine, and little support in Black or Latino communities.’” [NYMag]

Sam (A)I Am: In a New Yorker review of two new books on Sam Altman and the future of AI, Benjamin Wallace-Wells considers the OpenAI founder’s Midwestern Jewish roots. “Within the world of tech founders, Altman might have seemed a pretty trustworthy candidate. He emerged from his twenties not just very influential and very rich (which isn’t unusual in Silicon Valley) but with his moral reputation basically intact (which is). Reared in a St. Louis suburb in a Reform Jewish household, the eldest of four children of a real-estate developer and a dermatologist, he had been identified early on as a kind of polymathic whiz kid at John Burroughs, a local prep school. “His personality kind of reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell,” the school’s head, Andy Abbott, tells [Keach] Hagey [author of The Optimist: Sam Altman, Open AI, and the Race to Invent the Future]. ‘He can talk about anything and it’s really interesting’ — computers, politics, Faulkner, human rights.” [NewYorker]

Under African Skies: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior director Elaine Dezenski and senior research analyst Max Meizlish offer a warning about South Africa’s anti-American activity in the run-up to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s meeting with Trump today. “South Africa isn’t an innocent, neutral party. It is playing both sides — courting the West while deepening its ties to China, Russia and Iran. Its leaders speak the language of nonalignment, but their actions tell a different story: They’ve welcomed Hamas and Hezbollah officials, hosted sanctioned Russian warships and worked with entities tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … South Africa’s conduct is not just inconsistent with American values — it’s increasingly incompatible with US national security. Under Ramaphosa, the ANC has intensified its lawfare campaign against Israel at the International Court of Justice, ramped up efforts to diplomatically isolate Taiwan, and embraced Beijing’s narrative on global governance by joining the China-led BRICS group. The ANC’s historical alignment with authoritarian powers is no secret — but today, it’s backed by real material support. That should concern every serious policymaker in Washington.” [NYPost]

The Illiberal Left, and Right: The Liberal Patriot’s executive editor, John Halpin, considers the future of American liberalism. “Instead of pragmatic, universal solutions to the problems of working- and middle-class Americans, Democrats after Obama went off on extreme ideological tangents and illiberal fads from structural racism and transgender ideology to decriminalization and open borders to the socialist ‘Green New Deal’ and other radical climate policies. Notably, all of these illiberal ‘ideas’ produced significant public backlash from a wide array of American voters and are now in the process of being dismantled or disregarded. On the Republican side, the traditional party of Reagan has basically discarded all its past social and economic liberal commitments in favor of Trump’s peculiar blend of command-and-control tariff and trade policies, unrestrained executive authority, withdrawal from global allies and international security arrangements, and the use of governmental legal and bureaucratic authority to attack and prosecute perceived enemies. ‘Postliberal’ ideas that explicitly reject individualism as the foundation of American life are now dominant in a party that feels the need ‘to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,’ according to Vice President JD Vance.” [LiberalPatriot]

President Donald Trump is reportedly frustrated by the continuing war in Gaza and has instructed his aides to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “wrap it up,” White House officials told Axios…

Netanyahu’s office announced yesterday that the senior members of the ceasefire and hostage-release negotiating team had been recalled from Doha, Qatar, while the working echelon would continue the talks. The PMO statement stressed that Israel had agreed to the U.S. proposal but that Hamas “is continuing to cling to its refusal”…

In an interview published today in The National, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security advisor, says of Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu, “It’s not that the balance of power has changed, just the weight and emphasis on who can deliver” …

CNN, citing intelligence from “multiple US officials,” reported that Israel has been making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, though they stressed it remains unclear if Israeli leaders have made a final decision to do so. In reaction to the story, former Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Nadav Pollak wrote on X: “The only surprising part in [the story] is that US officials leaked the fact they monitor Israeli communications.”…

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that, “I do not think nuclear talks with the U.S. will be successful” and warned, “They should not try to talk nonsense. It is a big mistake to say that we will not allow Iran to enrich. No one is waiting for permission from this or that.”…

Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will move forward on construction of a Golden Dome missile defense system. Trump began calling for a U.S. missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome after watching Israel deflect missiles and drones amid Iran’s attacks in 2024… 

Democrat Sam Sutton won a special election for a New York state Senate seat, which the GOP had hoped to flip after Trump received 77% of the vote in the district in November. The district encompasses several heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, and Sutton is a leader of its Sephardic community…

The New York Times confirmed reporting that Trump, through the Pentagon, White House military office and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, had initially approached the Qataris about purchasing the luxury Boeing 747 jet for use as Air Force One, rather than it being offered as a gift…

Newly released emails reveal that Joe Kent, chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, pressured analysts to revise an intelligence assessment to align with Trump’s claim that Venezuela’s government controls a criminal gang…

Elon Musk told attendees at the Qatar Economic Forum that he doesn’t plan to spend money on elections in the future. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) clashed in a heated exchange during a Senate hearing Tuesday. “I regret voting for you for secretary of state,” Van Hollen said. “Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded… 

Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) sought unanimous consent to call up a resolution pushing the administration to work to resume U.S. aid to Gaza, which is sponsored by nearly all Senate Democrats. Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) blocked the effort…

The United Arab Emirates said yesterday that it will send urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and his Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke on the phone… 

The U.S. and Turkey released a joint statement on the U.S.-Turkey Syria Working Group’s most recent meeting held in Washington, which included discussions on “shared priorities in Syria, including sanctions relief according to President Trump’s directive and combatting terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”…

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sent a letter to Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone expressing their concern that CBS News may be engaging in “improper conduct” and violating anti-bribery law in its effort to settle a lawsuit with Trump that will potentially block Paramount’s intended merger with Skydance…

Trump called Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) a “grandstander” who “should be voted out of office” over Massie’s opposition to his budget bill. Massie, a longtime opponent of aid to Israel and legislation to combat antisemitism, is mulling a statewide run for Senate or governor in Kentucky…

Speaking at a congressional hearing of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Tuesday, AJC CEO Ted Deutch urged the U.S. to remain engaged in international bodies including the U.N., UNESCO and OSCE and called for Congress to confirm Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun to the role of special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and provide $3 million in funding for the office…

New York Times reporter Joseph Bernstein chronicled the life of his father, a “Nazi hunter” with the U.S. Department of Justice in the ‘80s, who was killed in the Pan Am 103 bombing in 1988, and his struggle to find meaning in the resulting decades-long investigation that ultimately led to the currently delayed trial of a Libyan man accused of planting the bomb on behalf of dictator Muammar Gaddafi…

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer eulogized his mother, Yaffa Dermer, who died last Sunday at the age of 89. Ron said, “We don’t choose our parents. They are chosen for us. So I thank Hashem for blessing me to have been raised by such an extraordinary mother and teacher. … Over the years, I have had the privilege to serve in prominent positions and hold prestigious titles. But the greatest honor of my life has been to be Yaffa’s son.”…

Eva Wyner, previously deputy director of Jewish affairs for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, is now serving as the governor’s director of Jewish affairs…

Arthur Maserjian, previously chief of staff at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, is now the senior director of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Center for Combating Antisemitism…

Eric B. Stillman was hired to serve as the next president and CEO of the Florida Holocaust Museum, which will reopen on Sept. 9 following an extensive renovation; Stillman succeeds Mike Igel, who has led the organization as its interim CEO for the past year…

Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Dan Goldman (D-NY) addressed an Anti-Defamation League reception celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month yesterday in Washington.

Northern California-based comedian, he celebrated his bar mitzvah at 52 years old in Israel, Josh Kornbluth turns 66… 

Former U.S. senator from Minnesota, he was previously a comedian, actor and writer, Al Franken turns 74… VP of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, Ralph Lewin turns 72… Guitarist and composer, Marc Ribot turns 71… EVP of American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, Ron Solomon… Chief rabbi of Mitzpe Jericho and dean of Hara’ayon Hayehudi yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer turns 70… CEO of the Boston-based hedge fund Baupost Group, Seth Klarman turns 68… Legal analyst at CNN, Jeffrey Toobin turns 65… Founder and former co-owner of City & State NY, Thomas Allon turns 63… Director of antisemitism education and associate director of the Israel Action Program, both at Hillel International, Tina Malka… Actress, artist and playwright, Lisa Edelstein turns 59… Former head of Dewey Square’s sports business practice, now a freelance writer, Frederic J. Frommer… Author and journalist, she was a reporter with The New York Times for eight years, Amy Waldman turns 56… U.S. cyclist at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she is now the executive director of the New England Mountain Bike Association, Nicole Freedman turns 53… President and CEO of the Michigan-based William Davidson Foundation, Darin McKeever… University chaplain for NYU, Rabbi Yehuda Sarna turns 47… Founder of Agora Global Advisory, Brandon Pollak… EVP and chief legal officer at Sinclair Broadcast Group, David Gibber… Professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, Scott Joel Aaronson turns 44… President of Mo Digital, Mosheh Oinounou… International fashion model for Versace, Sharon Ganish turns 42… Partner at CreoStrat, Steve Miller… Windsurfer who represented Israel in the Olympics (Beijing 2008 and Rio 2016), she is now a SW delivery lead at SolarEdge, Maayan Davidovich turns 37… Player on the USC team that won the 2016 NCAA National Soccer Championship, she is now an associate in the LA office of Foley & Lardner, Savannah Levin turns 30… Comedian, actress and writer, known for starring in the HBO Max series “Hacks,” Hannah Marie Einbinder turns 30… Deputy director at the Yael Foundation, Naomi Kovitz…

BIRTHWEEK: (was Monday): Alex Shapero…

• Technical talks on Iran’s nuclear program are taking place in Oman this weekend. More below.
• Elsewhere in the region, CENTCOM head Gen. Erik Kurilla is in Israel for meetings with senior officials to discuss Iran.
• The White House Correspondent’s Dinner will take place tomorrow night at the Washington Hilton in Dupont Circle.
• President Donald Trump will attend the funeral of Pope Francis tomorrow in the Vatican.
• Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is facing at least two years in prison when he is sentenced today for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
• The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum kicks off on Sunday in New York. More below.

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MARC ROD

The American Jewish Committee’s annual Global Forum Conference kicks off this weekend in New York. AJC’s CEO Ted Deutch told Jewish Insider that the organization is expecting over 2,000 attendees.

“It’s been clear since Oct. 7 [and] in everything we’ve seen since, the challenges that the Jewish community in Israel are facing are global challenges and they require global responses,” Deutch said. “AJC has people in 40 places around the world — 25 offices in the U.S., 15 more around the world — this is the opportunity for all of that global advocacy, all of those global advocates, to come together.”

Headline speakers will include Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, who moved his country’s embassy to Jerusalem last year and yesterday designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and expanded Paraguay’s terrorist designations of the armed wings of Hezbollah and Hamas to encompass the entirety of both organizations. In addition, outspoken pro-Israel members of the European and Brazilian legislatures, as well as Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Auburn University basketball coach Bruce Pearl, will address the gathering. John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, and former Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass will be speaking.

Deutch said there will be a significant focus on the hostages — Noa Argamani and the family of Edan Alexander will be in attendance.

The event will also feature a debate between Ellie Cohanim, the former deputy antisemitism envoy in the first Trump administration, and Bill Kristol, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, on American leadership in the world and the implications of Trump’s America First foreign policy.

While not yet confirmed, Deutch said that the Trump administration had “expressed great interest” in sending a representative to speak at the conference.

Deutch also teased the announcement of a new collaborative effort to “help document antisemitism and the need to really confront it in all of its contemporary forms.”

In total, attendees and speakers will hail from more than 60 countries, including a feature discussion with Jewish community members from France, Mexico and Australia. Students will come from 46 U.S. colleges and universities and 27 other countries including Mexico, South Africa, North Macedonia and Australia. Young leaders from 14 countries who are part of AJC’s Access Global program will also be in attendance.

Deutch told JI that seeing university students step up as leaders and work together to strengthen each other has become “one of my favorite parts of AJC.” He said that there will also be opportunities for AJC’s campus programs to work with the World Union of Jewish Students and the European Union of Jewish Students and meet with Deutch and other AJC leaders.

“We’ve continued to work under the firm belief that the most important battlefield in the fight against antisemitism in the United States right now is in education,” Deutch added. He said that the conference will feature conversations with officials and activists at all levels, with a focus on both college and high school.

Speaking to JI at AJC’s offices in Washington this week, Deutch also delved into the nuanced approach AJC is taking on the Trump administration’s high-profile actions on campus antisemitism, including stripping grants from colleges and large-scale deportations of student visa holders, as well as offering an outlook on the ongoing Iran talks. Read more below.

The Last Waltz: The Atlantic’s Isaac Stanley-Becker does a deep dive into the recent upheaval and series of dismissals at the National Security Council coupled with President Donald Trump’s growing “distrust” of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. “The result is that Waltz remains on the job even as he has effectively lost control over his own NSC. The erosion of his authority extends to both policy and personnel. On the priorities that matter most to the president, Waltz has less influence than Stephen Miller, the homeland-security adviser and deputy White House chief of staff for policy, whose team is part of the NSC. Miller treats the advisory body not as a forum to weigh policy options, current and former officials told me, but as a platform to advance his own hard-line immigration agenda. On the most sensitive geopolitical issues, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and U.S. interests in the Middle East, Trump’s longtime friend and special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sometimes draws on the support of the NSC staff but often operates independently, officials said.” [TheAtlantic]

The Dermer Doctrine: The Washington Post’s Shira Rubin looks at Israeli Strategic Minister Ron Dermer’s role in working to facilitate a potential U.S.-Saudi-Israeli mega-deal. “Dermer, 54, is technically Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, but he is widely viewed as Israel’s unofficial foreign minister, and his rise has helped shape the country’s relationship with Washington, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. … While the Saudis have pinned their hopes on Dermer — seeing him as Netanyahu’s ‘right hand man, who is extremely influential and effective,’ according to Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University — normalization is a harder sell than it’s been before, he said. The war in Gaza has made it more difficult for Saudi Arabia to pursue negotiations with Israel, as Saudi youth have increasingly taken up the Palestinian cause. And Netanyahu’s resistance to Palestinian statehood and the push by some members of his far-right government to resettle Gaza and expel its residents are a challenge to the kingdom’s ambitions to stabilize and modernize the region.” [WashPost]

Alternate Approach: In Foreign Policy, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Steven Cook argues against both military strikes and diplomacy to address Iran’s nuclear program. “Only once policymakers in Washington understand the Iranian sociopolitical order that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his successor built does a superior policy become clear: doing more of what Washington has already been doing. Maintaining sanctions on Iran, preventing the regime and its proxies from destabilizing the region, and responding to them when they try, as well as providing moral support for the Iranian opposition, provide the United States with the best chance for the regime to collapse in on itself. Such an approach is not without risk, however, as Iranian scientists continue to work diligently to develop their nuclear program. But it is the most realistic and feasible policy toward rendering Tehran’s nuclear program less worrisome.” [ForeignPolicy]

Hitting Harvard: In The Hill, attorney Mark Goldfeder reflects on Harvard’s response to the Trump administration’s funding cuts and freezes, which it has blamed on the school’s handling of campus antisemitism. “The bottom line is this: We are living at an inflection point in our country’s history, and it is time for everyone to take a long, hard look in the mirror to see where they stand. If you are fine with protesters using their free speech to incite anti-Jewish hate, but not with the government using its free speech to stand up for the Jews; if you are okay with the IRS revoking tax breaks for racist institutions, but not for ones who ignore antisemitism; if you romanticize leaders of groups that endorse the murder of Jews, yet call it ‘unlawful’ when the government enforces civil rights; and if you care so much about ‘illegal’ detentions that you simply must get on a plane and act, but only when the person being held is not Jewish, well, there is a word for that, and it isn’t pretty.” [TheHill]

The Department of Health and Human Services Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said it was “cautiously encouraged” by Yale’s efforts in recent days to swiftly address anti-Israel activity, including the brief establishment of an encampment on the campus…

Ed Martin, the Trump administration’s pick to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., who is currently serving in an interim role, apologized for his recent praise of a Nazi sympathizer with a history of making antisemitic comments…

Joe Kasper, who served as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is departing the Pentagon entirely, days after reports that he would be reassigned out of Hegseth’s office… 

The Financial Times spotlights Brian Ballard’s lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which previously employed several members of the Trump administration and includes clients in Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia…

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff rejected a proposal from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to attempt to reach an interim nuclear agreement, saying that the parties should work to reach a comprehensive deal by the end of the 60-day window given by the Trump administration…

Puck’s William Cohan interviews former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, previously the president of Harvard, about the Trump administration’s approaches to tariffs and academia…

In Time, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called for the party’s senior officials to abstain from intervening in Democratic primaries, days after DNC Vice Chair David Hogg pledged to back insurgent candidates through an outside spending group…

Far-left New York state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who is mounting a bid for mayor of New York City, released his first ad of the race, targeting front-runner and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo…

Adam Neumann’s real estate startup Flow raised over $100 million in a Series B funding round with backing from Andreessen Horowitz…

The Washington Post reviews Richard Kreitner’s Fear No Pharaoh, which spotlights Jewish American views on abolition in the Civil War era…

The International Criminal Court’s appeals chamber unanimously ruled to return to a lower chamber an Israeli challenge to a ruling regarding jurisdiction in the issuance of arrest warrants of senior Israeli officials to a lower court…

Israel acknowledged its responsibility for the death of a Bulgarian aid worker who was killed in a strike last month on a U.N. guesthouse in Gaza where the IDF said it had “assessed enemy presence”…

Documentarian Andrea Nevins, whose short film “Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies” was nominated for an Oscar in 1998, died at 63…

Author and researcher Leonard Zeskind, whose work focused on far-right and white nationalist movements, died at 75…

Attorney and art collector Arthur Fleischer Jr. died at 92…

Nechama Grossman, the oldest Holocaust survivor in Israel, died yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, at 110…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem on Thursday with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Reps. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa), Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Greg Landsman (D-OH) and Laura Friedman (D-CA).

Former chairman of the Conference of Presidents and previously president of Bed, Bath and Beyond, Arthur Stark turns 70… 

FRIDAY: Retired attorney, Myron “Mike” Sponder… Social worker and former health spokesman of the Green Party of the U.K., he is the older brother of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Larry Sanders turns 90… Co-founder of Lender’s Bagel Bakery, he was the national chair of UJA, Marvin Lender turns 84… Founder of Omega Advisors, Leon G. “Lee” Cooperman turns 82… Former CEO of Caravan Products and the H.C. Brill Co., Joseph (Joe) Weber turns 80… Founder of CAM Capital, Bruce Stanley Kovner turns 79… Rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva University and rabbi of the Young Israel of Riverdale Synagogue, Rabbi Mordechai Willig turns 78… David Handleman… Longtime chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures, now president of Through The Lens Entertainment, Bruce Berman turns 73… Administrative law judge at the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, Beth A. Fox… Commissioner of the National Basketball Association, Adam Silver turns 63… Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Michael Scott Doran turns 63… Litigator at Quinn Emanuel, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic in the Obama administration and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Andrew H. Schapiro turns 62… Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian and producer, he is descended from a Sephardic family rooted in Thessaloniki, Hank Azaria turns 61… Infomercial pitchman, better known as Vince Offer, Vince Shlomi, or “The ShamWow Guy,” Offer Shlomi turns 61… Israeli diplomat who served as deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Israel in D.C., Benjamin Krasna turns 60…

CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester (NY) since 2016, Meredith Dragon… New York Times-bestselling author and adjunct professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, David Eagleman turns 54… Deputy director of community health at the Utah Department of Human Services, David E. Litvack turns 53… Manager of the Oakland Ballers baseball team in the Pioneer League until last July, Micah Franklin turns 53… Democratic Party strategist, she is a co-founder of Lift Our Voices, Julie Roginsky turns 52… President of the Alliance for Downtown New York, the nation’s largest business improvement district, Jessica S. Lappin turns 50… Senior-editor-at-large for Breitbart News, Joel Barry Pollak turns 48… Attorney turned grocer and now professor at American University, she founded and sold Glen’s Garden Market north of Dupont Circle, Danielle Brody Rosengarten Vogel… Co-founder of WeWork and now Flow, Adam Neumann turns 46… Executive director at Yaffed, Adina Mermelstein Konikoff… Managing director, head of social, content and influencer at Deloitte Digital, Kenneth R. Gold… Spokesperson and director of public affairs and planning division at FEMA during the Biden administration, now SVP at Avoq, Jaclyn Rothenberg… Film and television actress, model and singer, Sara Paxton turns 37… Staff writer at Daily Kos, Emily Cahn Singer… Former NHL ice hockey defenseman, now a color analyst for Westwood One and ESPN, Colby Shane Cohen turns 36… TikTok Star with 10 million social media followers and over 3 billion annual views, he runs the culinary website CookWithChefEitan, Eitan Bernath turns 23…

SATURDAY: Computer expert, author, lecturer, Jewish genealogy researcher and publisher of Avotaynu, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Gary Mokotoff turns 88… Retired Federation executive in Los Angeles, Oakland and Sacramento, Loren Basch… Investment banker and chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers through its bankruptcy filing in 2008, Richard S. Fuld Jr. turns 79… Professor of computer science and engineering at MIT, Hal Abelson turns 78… Chair of the Conference of Presidents, Harriet P. Schleifer… President of Brandeis University from 2016 until last November, Ronald D. Liebowitz turns 68… Moscow-born journalist and political activist in Israel, Avigdor Eskin turns 65… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing editor of The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch turns 65… London-based interfaith social activist, she founded and chaired Mitzvah Day International, Laura Marks turns 65… Journalist, biographer and the author of six books, Jonathan Eig turns 61… Former member of the Maryland House of Delegates for four years and then the Maryland State Senate for eight years, Roger Manno turns 59… Former member of the California State Assembly where he served as chairman of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, Marc Levine turns 51… Member of the NYC Council for six years and now a recently elected member of the NY State Assembly, Kalman Yeger turns 51… General partner of Coatue Management, Benjamin Schwerin… Senior staff editor of the international desk of The New York Times, Russell Goldman turns 45… Senior director of federal government affairs at Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Karas Pattison Gross… Media relations manager at NPR, Benjamin Fishel… London-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering finance, he is the co-author of a book on WeWork, Eliot Brown… Male fashion model and actor, Brett Novek turns 41… Head coach of the UC Irvine Anteaters baseball program, he played for Team Israel in the 2012 World Baseball Classic, Ben Orloff turns 38… Communications director at the University of Florida College of Health and Human Performance, Alisha Katz… Product strategy services at Apple, Kenneth Zauderer… Washington correspondent for The Epoch Times, Jackson C. Richman… Board liaison at American Jewish World Service, he is also a part-time matchmaker at Tribe 12, Ross Beroff… Ahron Singer…

SUNDAY: Financial executive, he retired in 2014 as head of marketing for money manager Van Eck Global, Harvey Hirsch turns 84… Nonprofit executive who has managed the 92nd Street Y, the Robin Hood Foundation, the AT&T Foundation and Lincoln Center, Reynold Levy turns 80… U.S. senator (R-WV), Jim Justice turns 74… Physician and a former NASA astronaut, she is a veteran of three shuttle flights with more than 686 hours in space, Ellen Louise Shulman Baker, M.D., M.P.H. turns 72… Director-general of the Israel Antiquities Authority until 2020, he was previously a member of Knesset and deputy director of the Shin Bet, Yisrael Hasson turns 70… VP at Covington Fabric & Design, Donald Rifkin… Biologist and professor of pathology and genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine, he won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine, Andrew Zachary Fire turns 66… Co-founder of Casamigos Tequila and owner of restaurants, bars and lounges worldwide, Rande Gerber turns 63… Former member of the Knesset for the Shinui party, Yigal Yasinov turns 59… CEO of ZAM Asset Management, Elliot Mayerhoff… Showrunner, director, screenwriter and producer, Brian Koppelman turns 59… Founder and CEO of NYC-based Gotham Ghostwriters, Daniel Gerstein turns 58… Israeli actor, entertainer and television host, Yitzhak “Aki” Avni turns 58… Attorney and journalist, Dahlia Lithwick… Author, political analyst and nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, Dana Milbank turns 57… U.S. senator (D-NJ) since 2013, he was previously the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker turns 56… Israeli television and radio journalist and former member of the Knesset for the Jewish Home party, Yinon Magal turns 56… Professor of science writing at MIT, Seth Mnookin turns 53… Cinematographer and director, Rachel Morrison turns 47… Identical twin brothers, between the two of them they won 11 Israeli championships in the triathlon between 2001 and 2012, Dan and Ran Alterman both turn 45… Israeli screenwriter and producer, she has written numerous advertisements and screenplays, Savion Einstein turns 43… Deputy regional director for AIPAC, Leah Berry… Television and film actress, Ariel Geltman “Ari” Graynor turns 42… Basketball coach, analyst and writer, Benjamin Falk turns 37… Senior creative director at Trilogy Interactive, Jessica Ruby… Head of data and climate science at Watershed, Jonathan H. Glidden… Associate at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, David Jonathan Benger… Investor and entrepreneur, Noah Swartz… MD/MPH candidate in the 2025 class at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, newly matched to be a medical resident at UCLA, Amir Kashfi…