Following his victory in the Senate special election runoff in Georgia on Tuesday, Rev. Raphael Warnock invoked the legacy of civil rights activists Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in one of his first post-election interviews Wednesday morning.
“I think Abraham Joshua Heschel, the rabbi who said when he marched with Dr. King he felt like his legs were praying, I think he and Dr. King are smiling in this moment and we hope to make them proud,” Warnock said on CNN.
Heschel was a Polish-born rabbi, theologian and philosopher who was active in the civil rights movement. In 1965, he led a protest march alongside other civil rights leaders, including King, from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
News outlets have yet to call the race between Democrat Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), but Ossoff currently leads, and prominent election analysts expect him to win the race.
As both Democrats pulled ahead in their respective races Tuesday night, political observers drew parallels between Warnock and Ossoff’s cooperation and the Jewish community’s involvement in the civil rights movement.
Warnock characterized the results of Tuesday’s runoff as a triumph over hate and division.
“We’re sending an African-American man, the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church… and Jon Ossoff, a young Jewish man, the son of an immigrant… to the United States Senate in this moment in which, for years now, we’ve seen an emergence of those forces that would seek to divide us,” Warnock said.
Howard Rubenstein was remembered this week as a master publicist whose creativity and brilliant instincts helped him respond to all kinds of public relations challenges and to orchestrate some of the city’s most memorable fundraisers and protest demonstrations on behalf of the Jewish people.
Rubenstein, who died last Tuesday in his Manhattan home at age 88, believed the public relations firm that bears his name was successful because “he did things the right way, he was ethical and straight, and he had a very strong moral compass,” said Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan.
In fact, Lookstein said, “every year he had an ethicist come in and address all of his employees. It reflected his strong belief that doing things right was not only good but also created the groundwork for success.”
For more than 65 years, Rubenstein was the “go-to guy” when trying to predict the public reaction to different events, recalled Jeffrey Solomon, a former chief operating officer of UJA-Federation of New York.
Rubenstein helped orchestrate one of the earliest protest demonstrations on behalf of Soviet Jewry on Jan. 17, 1965, after the Soviets “were stupid enough” to move their mission to the United Nations to East 67th Street across from the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, according to Rabbi Arthur Schneier, the congregation’s spiritual leader.
Schneier said his Appeal of Conscience Foundation took out a full-page ad in The New York Times announcing the demonstration to protest religious repression in the Soviet Union. The Soviets quickly protested the planned rally to the U.S. State Department, “calling it a violation,” and Schneier said he then realized he “needed some PR guidance.”
The demonstration was ultimately allowed to go on.
“I couldn’t afford a major firm and someone recommended that I turn to Howard,” Schneier recalled. “We became very close friends and from then on, any major event I had at the synagogue for the Appeal or for when Pope Benedict came in 2008 — it was the first papal visit to a synagogue in the United States — Howard personally took charge. He came down and worked out all of the details. Later, when you walked into his office, there was a picture of Pope Benedict, Howard and me.”
“He was a gentle, kind man with grace and a man of integrity,” the rabbi added.
Rubenstein also helped orchestrate another demonstration on behalf of Soviet Jewry that was timed to coincide with an address to the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly by then-Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev on Aug. 26, 1972.
The Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry arranged with New York State officials and state lawmakers to be temporarily deeded tiny Belmont Island in the East River opposite the United Nations. The small man-made island — created from rocks and other rubble dug up for a subway tunnel in 1905 — was briefly renamed “Soviet Jewry Freedom Island” by activists who landed on the island by boat that morning with a 15-by-6-foot red and white banner proclaiming the new name.
The Soviets spotted the boat and the banner from their windows in the U.N. and complained to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who filed a complaint with the New York City Police Department. The NYPD dispatched a police boat to the island, but officers backed off when the demonstrators showed them their deed to the island. Among the protestors was then-Bronx Borough President Robert Abrams; then-Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton; and Sister Rose Thering of Seton Hall University, according to Malcolm Hoenlein, who was then the director of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry.
Catching all of the action were scores of reporters and camera crews aboard a rented tug boat Rubenstein had arranged to ensure maximum media coverage, Hoenlein recalled.
“We made the front page of newspapers from Hong Kong to Africa, and the major Chinese papers as well,” Hoenlein said. “It was such a putdown of the Russians and Rubenstein was in his office handling the PR. When he saw a good, creative idea for the Jewish people, he was always there.”
Zeesy Schnur, then the executive director of the New York Conference, credits Rubenstein “with helping us develop relationships with different reporters and journalists. I have tremendous respect for him; he was very special.”
Rubenstein also participated in conversatons to determine the site for the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust at the southernmost tip of Manhattan opposite the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and he later became vice chairman of its board, said George Klein, a co-founder of the museum.
“He was an extraordinary public relations person who loved the city and was deeply committed to the Jewish people and the community,” Klein said. “He was a mensch. Even if you had a serious discussion with him, everyone left the room as friends.”
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a fellow board member of the museum, said Rubenstein was a “very important member of the board who was wonderful at board meetings. I learned a lot about PR from Howard that I used in my professional life.”
Judah Gribetz, another museum board member, said that at the early stages, “when we had to build the museum and the exhibitions, his staff was instrumental in helping our staff. He was wise with his contributions and his wisdom.”
David Marwell, a former director of the museum, said Rubenstein “had brilliant instincts about how to respond to any kind of challenge. He was famous for crisis communications.”
The Museum of Jewish Heritage was the closest cultural institution to the World Trade Center on 9/11 and although it was not damaged, the entire area was cordoned off in the weeks after the attack.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen to the neighborhood and we were planning a new addition to the museum,” Marwell said. “Howard said that since part of the message of the museum was about rebuilding life after a great tragedy, we could use that theme to help us. Howard was able to communicate that and when we reopened on Oct. 5, 2001, Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Hillary Clinton came. He helped us to organize the rebuilding in a way that was absolutely authentic and true to who we were.”
Rubenstein also chaired the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York’s advisory committee for intergroup relations, providing guidance for the group’s outreach to non-Jewish communities, said Michael Miller, JCRC’s executive vice president and CEO.
“We worked with him on a range of matters just to seek his guidance, including the annual Celebrate Israel Parade,” said Miller, who noted that Rubenstein was a JCRC board member and that his wife, Amy, took his seat when he retired. One of their sons, Steven, now holds that seat.
“He invited to the table his clients in the corporate world and even those who were not his clients but were associates of his,” said Miller. “He was the most networked member of the Jewish faith in New York. He knew everybody and he would pick up the phone and call the mayor and the governor. He did so much good behind the scenes that people were totally unaware of to assure the safety and security of the Jewish people. And he did it unassumingly.”
Miller recalled that Rubenstein kept hard hats in his office from all of the real estate moguls he represented over the years. When the Museum of Jewish Heritage was being designed, Miller made space for the museum staff to work from the JCRC office.
After the groundbreaking, Rubenstein gave Miller a silver shovel and hard hat from the event “as a way of saying thank you.”
After the appointment of Cardinal Edward Egan as the archbishop of New York in 2000, Miller said Rubenstein held a dinner in his home for Egan to meet with representatives from the JCRC. He also held a series of meetings in his home with authors, political figures and power brokers.
“He had better access to power brokers than anybody I ever met,” Miller said.
Solomon of UJA-Federation of New York recalled that Rubenstein was successful in getting many of his clients to “become honorees at UJA-Federation fundraising dinners, and they were very successful. I remember meeting with Howard to decide who we were going to honor one year and we chose Rupert Murdoch, who at the time was known for his strong pro-Israel views that were reflected in all of his media. The idea of having somebody who was not a traditional speaker at these events and who is not Jewish — it was an inspired moment.”
Rubenstein also arranged for then-New York City Mayor David Dinkins and the leadership of the Archdiocese of New York, which he represented at the time, to meet with the leadership of UJA-Federation at his home for a cocktail party, Solomon recalled. “The event was to express our appreciation to our major donors and some of those who came had never attended a UJA event. It was such a fun event and it was all Howard’s idea.”
Rubenstein is survived by his wife, Amy; his three children, Roni, Richard and Steven; and seven grandchildren.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), who was sworn into the House of Representatives on Sunday evening, will join the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a spokesperson confirmed Tuesday afternoon.
The North Carolina congresswoman, who made history as the first female chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, told Jewish Insider shortly after the November election that she was seeking a spot on the influential committee.
Manning did not receive a seat on the committee in the first round of assignments given to new Democratic members in December, receiving a spot on the Education and Labor Committee instead.
Manning told JI in November that she believes her commitment to and “deep knowledge” of the U.S.-Israel relationship would allow her to use a spot on the Foreign Affairs committee to “stand up for what I believe is such an important relationship.”
The North Carolina congresswoman added that she wants to repair America’s global standing.
“President [Donald] Trump had done a lot of damage to the relationships with our allies around the world,” Manning said. “And it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild those very important relationships. And I wouldn’t mind being part of that work.”
Freshman Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) will also join the committee, a staffer from her office confirmed.
The wait to determine which party will control the Senate appears nearly over as voters in Georgia cast their final ballots in the hotly contested races pitting two incumbent first-term Republicans against Democratic opponents who have never held public office. The upstart Democratic candidates are hoping they can turn Georgia blue as they compete in two of the most consequential races in recent memory, which experts have characterized as legitimate toss-ups.
“Everyone expects this to be very close,” said Alan Abramowitz, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s probably going to be decided by one or two points at most.”
Since November 3, Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock have engaged in a veritable war of attrition with their respective adversaries, Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, as hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising have poured into the state. Both sides, according to local and national observers, are largely focused on turning out their respective bases rather than persuading moderate and undecided voters in the deeply polarized election environment.
While Democrats have historically underperformed against Republicans in Georgia runoffs, the unique circumstances of the races have put Ossoff and Warnock in rarefied positions as the election has come to be regarded as something of a Rorschach test whose outcome may well determine the national political mood for at least the next couple of years.
If both Democrats win, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will serve as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate — a dynamic that will give President-elect Joe Biden ample leeway to enact his vision as he is already poised to benefit from a Democratic House majority. But should Ossoff or Warnock fail to secure the most votes, the Republicans will maintain their grip on the upper chamber as well as Biden’s plans for his first term in office.
Either way, one thing is certain: It is the Republicans’ race to lose in a traditionally conservative state that has trended purple in recent years but may not yet have reached a point at which it is ready to flip blue.
More than 3 million early votes have already been cast, and most experts agree that turnout so far appears to favor Democrats. Though Republicans are known to vote on Election Day, a habit that is expected to help them offset their apparent deficit, some GOP strategists are worried that the support may not be strong enough to secure the two Senate seats.
Jay Williams, a GOP strategist who has done digital and print advertising for both Loeffler and Perdue, told Jewish Insider that low turnout among Republicans during the early voting period puts the party at a significant disadvantage. Republicans, he says, are now down 14% relative to Democrats, according to a proprietary voter model he worked up for a GOP super PAC — a margin four points worse than the one Republicans were trailing by as they went into the general election this fall. “I don’t feel good about it,” Williams said.
He speculated that Republicans may still show up in full force today, perhaps having chosen to stay at home and opt out of early in-person voting because of the holiday season. But Williams added that President Donald Trump’s persistent effort to discredit Georgia’s recent election results could be influencing Republican voters to forgo casting their ballots.
On top of that, he added, Trump’s messaging has been doubly counterproductive as the president has taken aim at Republican elected officials in Georgia like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp at a moment when he could be more usefully focusing his ire on the Democratic candidates. At a Georgia campaign rally on Monday night, Trump made no effort to correct that impression, using his bully pulpit to propound a litany of conspiracy theories and attacks on political opponents.
“I think a lot of Republicans like me who are involved in this process are frustrated,” said Williams. “It’s not healthy.”
Still, GOP State Treasurer Joseph Brannan is optimistic that Republicans will prevail, noting that the state party employed more than 1,000 paid staffers and sent tens of thousands of volunteer door-knockers across Georgia as it sought to improve its ground game. “I think the turnout’s going to be strong tomorrow from folks that want to cast their vote in person at the ballot box,” he said in a Monday evening phone interview, “and that will bring Kelly and David across the line.”
The Democrats, however, are betting that their turnout effort will prove stronger as they have sought to energize newly registered voters and minorities in metropolitan Atlanta and southwest Georgia as well as battleground cities like Macon, Savannah and Columbus. The state’s shifting demographics, particularly in and around Atlanta, have recently given Democrats more voting power, as Republicans have relied on a strategy of bolstering support in rural areas this election cycle.
“I think we’ve maximized the opportunity to succeed, with the largest ground game in Georgia history and historic investment in minority communities like Latinos and Blacks,” said a Democratic strategist who has advised both candidates but who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
It remains to be seen how quickly the elections results will be called. JI queried a number of experts who gave varying answers, including the following morning, Wednesday evening and as long as a week after the runoff. No one believed that the votes would all be tallied by Tuesday night.
Given the tensions over Trump’s efforts to challenge the results of the November 3 contest, it seems certain that Republicans will emulate the president this election, according to Fred Hicks, a Democratic strategist in Atlanta who is not involved in either campaign.
“I expect lawsuits and a lot of debate over what happens with these absentee ballots and people who registered after November 3,” he said, adding his prediction that there will probably be a manual vote recount if Ossoff and Warnock have the lead — a time-consuming process that could leave voters on edge for days.
Many Georgians will no doubt be disappointed that they will have to endure another repeat of the vote-counting process that took place during the recent presidential election. But they may also find some comfort in discovering that the costly media blitz that blanketed the state with political advertising over the past couple of months will have come to an end.
“I think everyone will be relieved when that stops,” said Abramowitz, the Emory professor, who adds that he has been bombarded with ads in the lead-up to the runoffs.
Still, the reprieve likely won’t last long, given that Warnock and Loeffler are competing in a special election to serve out the remainder of a term vacated by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) at the end of 2019. It expires in 2022, not far off by election standards. So when might it be reasonable to start campaigning again?
“Wednesday or Thursday or next week,” said Hicks, “or whenever this thing is done.”
A bill elevating the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism to the rank of ambassador passed Congress on Thursday, nearly two years after first being introduced. Prior to its passage, the legislation appeared to stall in the Senate, raising concerns in the final days of the 116th Congress that legislators might have had to start over in the new Congress.
The House of Representatives first passed its version of the bill on Jan. 11, 2019. But — despite broad bipartisan support for the legislation — procedural issues bogged down the bill once it reached the Senate.
Several proponents of the bill both inside and outside Congress told JI that they believed the bill was going to die in the Senate, forcing a reset in the new session of Congress, which began January 3. This characterization was disputed by other Hill staffers and activists who had been communicating with senators to advance the legislation.
“I wouldn’t say it was dead, but it needed outside help,” a Republican aide told JI.
The bill was hampered by a dispute over whether to pass an amended version of the House bill or an identical bill that originated in the Senate, according to two Senate aides familiar with the bill, as well as American Jewish Congress President Jack Rosen.
Rosen, who spoke to several senators in an effort to move the bill forward, said Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) preferred to pass the bill as a Senate measure. Menendez did not respond to a request for comment.
Backers of the legislation told JI that Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) was critical to clearing the roadblocks that stood in the way of the bill’s passage.
“Rosen became incredibly engaged and helpful,” a Senate Republican aide familiar with the bill told JI. Both Senate staffers familiar with the bill said that the senator had aggressively pushed colleagues to pass the legislation.
“Senator Rosen… moved this up in her agenda and began to push her colleagues,” Karen Barall, director of government relations for Hadassah, told JI. “She was very effective in ensuring this was understood to be an important measure. Without her, this would not have passed the Senate.”
Rosen told JI she was pleased that the bill passed through both chambers by unanimous consent — a procedure used to expedite legislation without requiring a formal vote. “In the Senate, I was able to build on my bipartisan record of working with colleagues to fight antisemitism by ensuring this critically important bill was brought to the floor and passed,” she said.
The Senate passed the bill on December 16, leaving a narrow window for the House to pass the amended bill and send it to the president’s desk before the end of the 116th Congress.
To ensure the bill made it through the House, supporters had to contend with a chamber focused on urgent debates over government funding and COVID-19 relief payments, as well as disputes between Republican and Democratic leadership, generating concerns that the bill would not make it back through the House before the end of session.
“The issue that came up was not a substantive issue related to the text of the legislation, but rather they got caught up in Republican and Democratic food fight over other issues,” a pro-Israel activist involved in discussions about the bill said.
In addition to Rosen and the bill’s lead sponsors in the House, Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Brad Schneider (D-IL), a number of Jewish advocacy organizations joined the effort, including the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah, the Orthodox Union, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
“After the Senate voted, there was very little time for the House leadership to act and major legislation — the NDAA, the omnibus, COVID relief — were understandably top priorities for House leadership,” said Barall. “Hadassah and other organizations made an aggressive push to get this done though, and send the bill to the president.”
The pro-Israel activist who asked not to be named credited Smith and Schneider for winning the support of their respective parties’ leaders to allow the bill to pass by unanimous consent on December 31.
Assuming President Donald Trump signs the bill, President-elect Joe Biden will become the first president to nominate a special envoy on antisemitism for Senate confirmation, although it will likely take time before he announces a pick for the spot, and even longer for the nominee to be confirmed.
Trump took 23 months to nominate the current special envoy, Elan Carr, for the position. An individual involved in discussions over the bill told JI that he expects an extended delay to fill the slot, noting that Senate-confirmed nominees face a more expansive background check process, and must go through the lengthy confirmation process, which can take months.
Given that Biden still has yet to nominate some Cabinet secretaries and a range of other high-level appointees that will require Senate confirmation, it’s unlikely the president-elect will name his pick for the position before his inauguration on January 20, the source added.
Among the names said to be under consideration by the Biden transition team are former ADL national director Abe Foxman, past envoy Ira Forman, Emory University professor and noted Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, University of California, Berkeley professor Ethan Katz and ADL senior vice president of international affairs Sharon Nazarian. Foxman and Katz declined to comment to JI. Lipstadt did not respond to a request for comment.
Nazarian confirmed to JI she has spoken to members of the Biden transition team about the role and is submitting a formal application. She posited that her experience at ADL, as well as her personal experiences as an Iranian-born Jew, uniquely qualify her to expand and advance the special envoy’s office.
“My number one mission every day… is to advocate and to monitor and to educate, and to train as many people, stakeholders, government officials, as I can to first of all, make them aware of the threat of global antisemitism, and how it manifests in our lives today,” Nazarian said. “I feel like I’m well-positioned both as a practitioner of this work, as someone who’s led a very large team at ADL at the senior executive level, and also [as] someone who’s lived it through my own intersectional identity.”
Nazarian argued that the special envoy’s office, to date, has not taken a sufficiently modern or forward-looking approach to antisemitism, and has relied too heavily on 20th-century understandings of and approaches to global antisemitism.
Forman, who served as special envoy under former President Barack Obama from 2013 to the end of Obama’s term, declined to say if he was in consideration for the slot, but told JI, “I know there are a number of highly qualified people who could undertake this critical work and I am confident the Biden team will make an excellent choice.”
Over the course of his colorful and prolific career as a journalist, David Andelman has hopped between 86 countries, dozens of disputed territories and his fair share of war zones. In his latest book, Andelman draws on his experiences to take a bird’s-eye view of the conflicts that are raging — and those that could spark at any moment — across the globe.
In A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen, which hits bookshelves today, Andelman argues that the proliferation of so-called “red lines” around the world have left people less safe and situations less stable. Red lines, he writes, “physical, diplomatic, military, all too often existential… have reached a toxic apex in numbers and virulence at this very moment in history.” Throughout the book, Andelman traces the history and evolution of such red lines — which he defines in a variety of fluctuating ways — from the Korean peninsula to China, Russia, Iran, Africa and many other areas of the world.
But Andelman, who has worked over the years for Forbes, CBS, Bloomberg, The New York Times and others, acknowledges that red lines can be used effectively in international diplomacy.
“I don’t necessarily think they’re a bad idea,” he told Jewish Insider in a recent phone interview. “They can be very useful in fact, if they’re properly constructed, properly built and properly understood by those on both sides of the red line.”
The problem, he said, is the wild proliferation of hastily enacted, poorly planned and sloppily enforced red lines, “with consequences hardly thought through and utterly unforeseeable.” In the book, Andelman excoriates President Barack Obama’s haphazard establishment of a red line in Syria by way of an offhand remark during a 2012 speech, while he lambastes President Donald Trump for his “lack of any sort of global vision” and a foreign policy dominated by bluff and bluster.
Asked to pick the one area of the world most at risk of spilling into all-out war, Andelman doesn’t hesitate: North Korea.
“North Korea has a nuclear device already,” Andelman said. “Iran doesn’t. And this is the critical difference — and this is where I think the potentially more toxic moves could come.”
But the situation in Iran, he added, “is the most active and interesting.”
As President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to return to the 2015 nuclear deal, Andelman said, “you have forces within Iran… the Revolutionary Guards, and the more extremists among the mullahs, who really believe that this is the time for Iran really to move toward some kind of a nuclear device.” Iran is also restricting international inspectors from its nuclear sites, and recently passed a bill that would require the government to boost its uranium enrichment if U.S. sanctions are not lifted. “This is very dangerous, obviously,” said Andelman, who noted that this deadline will arrive in the middle of Israel’s latest election season, “and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu [is] probably continuing to take a very hard line on this… these red lines are solid in that respect. They’re dangerous, but they’re deeply embedded.”
Biden’s quest to reenter the Iran deal that Trump pulled out of in 2018 “is going to be difficult — there’s no doubt about that,” said Andelman. One major question, he added, is that “all of the different signatories effectively need to agree that this is going to continue to be enforced — or is it going to be broken up.”
While Netanyahu has made clear he has his own set of red lines on Iran, Andelman still sees Israel’s hands as somewhat tied. “It’s hard to see how Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader could really go it alone in that respect,” he said. “Netanyahu needs the United States for military capabilities. It’s never going to launch any kind of an attack on Iran” without international backing, Andelman suggested.
In the section of the book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Andelman posits that “a two-state solution would seem to be the only viable formula for maintaining the seven-decade-old red line of the Israeli frontier.”
In conversation with JI, Andelman maintains that the red lines in Israel could actually be positive, but Israel’s moves on the ground, including “creeping settlements” and the construction of tunnels and roads in the West Bank, put those red lines in danger.
“All of these things are little more than effectively trying to move the red lines quietly and surreptitiously,” he said. “Israel really needs to understand the value of the red lines that exist — and how they can be used to its advantage, and not simply figure that all these red lines are to the Palestinians advantage — because they’re not.”
And while Andelman praised some aspects of the recent Abraham Accords, he said he is “somewhat more skeptical” of their long-term efficacy, “because it requires a certain degree of restraint by Netanyahu… on settlements and that sort of thing.” And when it comes to Sudan’s status as a state sponsor of terror and the U.S. recognition of Western Sahara as under Moroccan sovereignty, “there’s this whole sort of very fragile foundation that this whole thing is built on, that I’m afraid could come apart.”
That being said, “I hope the Abraham Accords work,” he added. “I would like to see all of the Middle East recognize Israel… those are red lines that need to come down, barriers between countries, between civilizations that have existed for a very long time for no good reason.”
By his count, Andelman has visited 86 countries across his varied and prolific news career, including multiple visits to Israel over the years, which have left an indelible impression. He recalls interviewing Prime Minister Menachem Begin “in one of his last interviews he gave… he was an extraordinary individual.”
“I’ve been all over Israel, I have a great affection for Israel,” he said. “I like to think the best of Israel, and I like to think it’s a country that will do the right thing in all cases, and I’m not sure if the last few years that’s been the case.”
The deep divisions that marked the 116th Congress showed no signs of abating on the first day of the 117th session on Sunday. As new members in both houses were sworn in, Capitol Hill was focused on challenges to the results of the November election and discord over congressional COVID-19 protections.
In the Senate, all four first-term GOP senators are joining a long shot effort by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to delay the counting of the Electoral College votes.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), said that he felt voters wanted representatives to continue to “follow through” on “irregularities” in the election.
“This is a decision of the heart that we need to follow through on some of these irregularities,” Marshall said Sunday in a press gaggle. “We want our day in court where everybody’s in the same room, put all the facts down and then let America decide.”
State and federal courts nationwide have repeatedly thrown out a series of lawsuits from President Donald Trump and his allies over the election results. Despite the dismissal of dozens of related court cases, Marshall insisted: “I don’t think that the courts have heard all of the facts.”
The Kansas freshman demurred when asked if he thought Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had erred in attempting to quash the election challenges in the Senate, adding that he thinks the divisions in the conference will “make us stronger” and “prove that we can listen to each other and still come to some type of agreement that we’re professionals and we can respect each other’s opinion.”
Shortly afterward, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who opposes the election challenges, took a different tone, remarking that efforts to overturn the results are bound to fail. “I actually like to come up with plans that have a chance of being successful,” he said.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), usually a close ally of the president and a likely 2024 presidential hopeful, broke with Trump Sunday night, announcing he would also oppose the election challenge.
Incoming Democrats also faced questions about Republican moves to overturn the election results.
Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), the only Senate Democrat to flip a Republican-held seat this cycle, cast an optimistic tone despite the tension in the chamber.
“Many Republicans are being torn in different directions. This is a great experiment in democracy. And this is a test and I think we’re going to get through it,” Hickenlooper said.
On the other side of the Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) eked out another term as speaker of the House — one she previously said would be her last — with the votes of 216 Democrats, having secured support from several representatives who opposed her in the past.
Two Democrats voted for alternative picks — Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) cast his vote for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), while Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) — all centrist Democrats with backgrounds in national security — voted present.
All 209 Republicans present for the vote backed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Res. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) — a progressive upstart who unseated a longtime Democratic congressman in Missouri’s first district — cast their votes for Pelosi late in the afternoon, after missing their assigned voting time — which had been divvied up alphabetically to limit the number of representatives on the floor and allow for social distancing.
Ocasio-Cortez’s delayed vote prompted questions about whether she had been holding out for concessions from Pelosi, something Ocasio-Cortez rejected after casting her vote. Ocasio-Cortez told The Intercept last month that she thought the House leader and other top Democrats needed to be replaced, but that there were currently no viable alternatives.
“We are just an extremely slim amount of votes away from our side risking the speakership to the Republican Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday. “This is bigger than any one of us and that is consequential… This is not just about being united as a party. It’s about being united as people with basic respect for rule of law, our Constitution and the actual underpinnings of American democracy.”
The New York congresswoman added that she believed Trump should be impeached over his call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, reported by the Washington Post on Sunday, during which Trump suggested that Raffensperger “find” enough votes to reverse his defeat in Georgia.
“If it was up to me, there’ll be articles on the floor quite quickly,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) similarly called for Trump’s impeachment, and criminal prosecution, on Twitter on Sunday night.
Hostilities in the House began even earlier in the day, during the early afternoon quorum call to open the new session of Congress, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — who has promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories — and another incoming Republican legislator prompted a “screaming match” between Republican and Democratic staffers by refusing to wear masks on the House floor, in violation of House coronavirus rules.
House Republicans also objected to a new plexiglass enclosure on the House floor designed to allow House members who are nominally quarantining for COVID-19 exposure but have tested negative to vote on the floor, prompting a dispute between Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), the ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, and attending physician Brian Monahan.
Davis described Monahan’s explanations of the setup as “horseshit” and claimed that the “only reason this is happening is because Speaker Pelosi needs to be re-elected speaker.”
Once the speaker election wrapped up in the late afternoon, the House hit another snag when Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) forced a recorded House vote on whether to swar in elected members from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which was widely viewed as an attempt to put his GOP colleagues on record as accepting all the election results in these states, despite disputing the results of the presidential race.
“It would confound reason if the presidential results of these states were to face objection while the congressional results of the same process escaped public scrutiny,” he explained on Twitter. Two Republicans, Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Andy Harris (R-MD) voted against swearing in all new members of Congress.
Roy was one of seven House members, including Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Tom McClintock (R-CA), Ken Buck (R-CO), Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) who released a joint statement Sunday afternoon denouncing their colleagues’ challenge to the election results.
The day’s events concluded when Pelosi swore in the new Congress — mostly in one large group of members who had rushed to the floor to vote on the swearing-in issue — scrapping a previous plan to swear in members in small groups.
After the first swearing-in, hundreds of representatives flooded out of the House chamber, packing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder into the hallway outside, social distancing forgotten.
With 78 days until Israel’s next national election, defections, reshuffles and new political parties continue to reshape the political landscape. Here are all the latest twists and turns on Israel’s electoral scene.
New player: Announcing yet another new political party, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, 76, launched “The Israelis” last week, vowing to fight Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to represent the true left of the political map. In an impassioned speech, Huldai — who has led Tel Aviv for 22 years — proclaimed that “we have gotten used to a crazy government that doesn’t know how to run anything… we can and must run Israel differently.” In a blow to Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Huldai poached Blue and White’s Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn to take the party’s number two slot. Blue and White MK Einav Kabla has also joined Huldai.
Also running: Former Mossad chief Danny Yatom, 75, is slated to announce his own new party on Monday, which is expected to model itself after the now-defunct Pensioners Party and address issues important to Israel’s retired population. Economist Yaron Zelekha, a former accountant-general of Israel’s Finance Ministry, also announced his own new party last week, titled “The Economic Party.” Neither faction is predicted to garner enough votes to enter the Knesset if they run independently.
Primaries: Almost every political party declared that they would not be holding primaries ahead of the March 23 vote, including Likud. Likud’s central committee approved Netanyahu’s proposal to cancel the primary and to give the prime minister the option of appointing six reserved slots on the party’s electoral list. The Labor Party, meanwhile, is expected to hold a leadership race and a vote for its general slate after current leader Amir Peretz said he would step down — and a court ordered the primary to go ahead, pending an appeal to the Supreme Court. Longtime Labor MK Merav Michaeli is the first person to announce her candidacy for the position. Welfare Minister Itzik Shmuli, who — along with Peretz — split the party when he entered the government last year, is expected to also run, while some party officials are seeking to convince former Prime Minister Ehud Barak to toss his hat in the ring.
No thanks: Former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot officially ruled out his entry into political life before the upcoming election, after months of rumors surrounding his candidacy. Blue and White’s Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, also a former IDF chief of staff, announced that he is taking a break from politics and will not run again in March. Former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni — who sat out Israel’s last three elections — is reportedly in talks to join Yair Lapid‘s Yesh Atid, though no final decision has been made. And a series of mergers are expected to take place among the many new and old parties on both the left and the right vying for the 120 Knesset seats, particularly among those parties who appear to be in danger of falling below the 3.25% electoral threshold.