Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s surprise announcement Monday night that he will disperse his increasingly disunified coalition after just over one year in office sent Israel’s political sphere into a tailspin.

Standing beside his political partner, Alternate Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Bennett informed Israelis in a televised statement that dissolving the government, which he said had made progress in a broad range of domestic and foreign areas, was a “difficult moment, but it was the right decision for the State of Israel.”

The announcement, however, cast uncertainty on how the interim government might function in dealing with immediate and sensitive issues as the country heads into its fifth election cycle in less than four years. 

While Bennett’s government saw some successes domestically, including passing a state budget for 2022, there are looming issues, such as the annual budget for 2023, the health, economic and social fallout from the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and the skyrocketing cost of living. 

In addition, there are key foreign policy issues that need to be dealt with amid a transition in political leadership: the upcoming visit to Israel by President Joe Biden next month, as well as tensions with Iran, which have taken center stage in recent weeks amid credible threats to abduct Israelis traveling to Turkey. 

A joint statement released by Bennett and Lapid on Monday said the two will submit a bill to Israel’s parliament to dissolve the government. The initial vote could come as soon as tomorrow, but the process might take longer. An election is expected to take place on Oct. 25. During the election period, Lapid will replace Bennett as interim prime minister and Bennett will take on the role of alternate prime minister, handling the Iran portfolio.

Lapid will continue on as foreign minister and deal with the bulk of foreign policy matters, including greeting Biden when he visits Israel on July 13. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said on Monday that Biden’s trip “will happen as planned.”

“The president’s visit is going ahead on schedule,” Shalom Lipner, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Jewish Insider. “The president has stated that he is coming to see the people of Israel so I wouldn’t expect any changes. For both the president and whoever is in the prime minister’s office, this visit will serve mutual interests. I would also anticipate the continuation of the current government’s engagement with the administration, airing any disagreements in private.”

Lipner, who spent nearly three decades working in the Prime Minister’s Office, said that while “the transitional government will not be able to pass any important legislation like the 2023 budget, it will have a freer hand to govern without the constant threat of no-confidence motions or Knesset members threatening to topple it.”

“On the other hand, election campaigning will present the new challenge of preventing politics from determining policy,” he said. 

The disarray in Israel and its uncertain political future may have an impact, however, on how the country is viewed from the outside. Reports that Biden’s visit to the region, which includes a stop in Saudi Arabia, could bring the two Middle East countries closer to normalizing ties may be put on hold until there is more political stability in Israel.

Any hopes for restarting a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians will also need to wait until it is clear who will sit in the prime minister’s seat. And technical processes, such as Israel’s attempts to join America’s Visa Waiver Program, which will exempt Israelis from stringent visa requirements, will now slow down. 

“Israel’s Iran policy will remain unchanged,” commented Lipner, adding, “The normalization process of the Abraham Accords is also a matter of consensus in Israel, and the fundamentals on the Palestinian track will not change either.” 

Lipner noted that joining the Visa Waiver Program is likely to remain a goal for future Israeli governments, but “at the end of the day there is a technical question of who will shepherd it forward.”

“We won’t see a regression if Washington remains engaged and if whoever emerges [from these elections] are equally as interested in making it a success,” he said. 

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said that the political instability of the past three and a half years had made it difficult to persevere in the domestic arena, but when it comes to foreign policy, he said, “we have seen continuity.”

“The main security issues on the agenda are not largely contentious or controversial and that is why nothing much will change,” said Plesner, adding that matters such as developing and broadening the Abraham Accords and efforts to curtail Iranian aggression, which are led by the defense establishment, are “largely supported and nothing will change.”

“Fortunately, we had a government that functioned very well for most of the past year, and this meant that key nominations of professionals in the civil service were filled, the budget was passed and it bought time and oxygen before we dive into a new chapter in the political crisis,” Plesner concluded.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s announcement on Monday that the government will dissolve and head for new elections caught few observers off-guard, following weeks of political uncertainty amid a spate of defections that left Bennett’s coalition government in the minority.

The always-tenuous coalition government has teetered for months, experts on the region noted, following Knesset Member Idit Silman’s resignation from the coalition in April.

“I don’t think this news should come as a real surprise to people who’ve been paying attention, because once you started having these defections, anything could have blown it apart,” Susie Gelman, board chair of the Israel Policy Forum, told Jewish Insider.

The proximate trigger for the government’s collapse, analysts explained, was the Knesset’s failure last week to pass a bill extending Israeli law to settlers in the West Bank, a policy that has been in effect consistently since 1967. 

Some right-wing lawmakers who support the policy but are aligned with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, voted against the bill as part of an effort to scuttle the coalition government, joining left-wing and Arab lawmakers — a situation that David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described as “surrealistic.”

Rob Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute, added that Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid — who will take over as prime minister until a new government is formed — likely decided it would be preferable to dissolve the coalition on their own terms and organize elections at a time of their choosing rather than “continue the water torture” of a continually eroding coalition.

“The pressure was coming like a pincer movement from both edges of the coalition,” Makovsky said. “It was just not a tenable situation.”

Bennett may have determined that it was preferable for him not to be prime minister at the time of the coming election, allowing him to focus on reinforcing his support among his base, while Lapid will now have the opportunity to prove himself capable of leading the country, Satloff said.

Recent terror attacks, in which more than a dozen Israelis were killed, were “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Makovsky said, noting that terror attacks have historically pushed Israelis to the right. The attacks coincided with a campaign of “intimidation” from right-wing members of the opposition targeting members of the coalition.

The coalition collapsed under “the sheer weight of contradictions and anomalies inherent within it,” explained Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Given the odds arrayed against it, Miller said that the coalition had “fared remarkably well” and “lasted longer than many would have imagined.”

Satloff praised the government for achieving “some laudable results” including approving a budget, “breaking the barrier on Arab participation in Israeli government,” handling ongoing Palestinian tensions and terrorism and organizing the Negev Summit with Arab and U.S. allies.

But, Makovsky noted, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proved to be an “inescapable” obstacle.

“That’s what this experiment was facing. The premise was, ‘We don’t agree on the conflict, but we can agree on everything else,’” he said. “But what you found is you couldn’t totally ignore this issue. And it would bite you.”

Netanyahu’s Likud party is likely to again emerge as the largest party in the Knesset, according to Satloff, but, as in previous elections, Netanyahu will need to bring together 61 votes to form a coalition, something had failed to do in several previous rounds of elections.

Despite the attacks from Netanyahu’s opposition coalition linking MK Mansour Abbas and the Ra’am party he leads to Hamas terrorists, analysts did not dismiss the possibility that Abbas and his cohort might join a future Netanyahu-led coalition. Netanyahu had previously courted Abbas in his own efforts to form a government.

“It’s certainly possible for the ultra-Orthodox to sit with Mansour Abbas,” Miller said. “And you can’t rule out Abbas’s determination to remain on the inside and at least get a piece of the pie.”

The key question to emerge from this coalition is whether Arab parties can be included in future governing coalitions or this government will go down as a failed experiment, according to Makovsky.

Satloff argued, “you can’t undo the fact that Mansour Abbas’s party was in this government.”

Gelman was skeptical about the future of Arab parties in government.

“I hope [the dissolution of the coalition] doesn’t mean that all that is for naught and that you will never have an Israeli Arab party in a coalition government again, but I would hasten to add that for the foreseeable future, that’s extremely unlikely,” she said. “The trends are not in that direction at all.”

Satloff described the coalition government as an effort to “transition” from the Netanyahu era to “something else,” but warned against “ascrib[ing] great historical forces at work to the dissolution of this government.”

Now, he continued, members of the coalition will need to “make the case not just why such a government existed and survived, but why their party deserves to survive into the next Knesset and potentially to the next government. And that’s a much more ideological argument… It’’ll be quite a challenge for some of the members of this government, especially Prime Minister Bennett, who lost considerable support among his right wing base.”

The sea change in Israel is unlikely to impact President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to the region next month, which is set to include a stop in Israel.

“The trip is definitely going to happen because, as you know, the trip is as much about Saudi Arabia as anything else, probably more so,” Gelman said. 

Satloff said the change in government “will trigger some shuffling, some rethinking of the optics of the visit, but by and large this doesn’t have a huge impact.”

“From the Biden administration’s perspective, this may provide an opportunity for a little bit more leeway of discussion on the Palestinian issue given that Lapid is less allergic than Bennett to discussing the question of a political horizon,” he said. “I don’t think there will be a substantial change. While Lapid may be to the left of Bennett, remember that we’re now in an Israeli election campaign, and so everything will be viewed through that lens.”

Miller noted that the Biden visit could potentially be a boon to Lapid. “Photo ops, Lapid and Biden, Yad Vashem, whatever else is on the agenda for Biden and Lapid will play to Lapid’s strength,” he explained. “And if the Saudi-Israeli normalization process goes forward… that will redound to the caretaker government’s credit.”

But a renewed agreement with Iran over its nuclear program — while currently unlikely — would give Netanyahu “a huge edge on which to run,” Miller said. And if Biden is seen to be “tipping his hand toward Lapid or undertaking things that clearly benefit a caretaker government,” Netanyahu might increasingly frame his campaign as being anti-Biden.

Satloff was skeptical that Netanyahu would openly attack Biden, calling such a move “risky” given that U.S.-Israel ties have traditionally been important to Israeli voters and “Joe Biden is viewed as a strong friend of Israel.”

Depending of the timing of the elections, dynamics could be shaped in part by the outcome of the U.S. midterm elections, Makovsky said. Should Republicans retake Congress, Netanyahu might take a more partisan line. If the Israeli elections take place before the midterms, Netanyahu might “play it more safe.”

Miller called the government’s collapse “a bad sign” for the long-term future of U.S.-Israel relations and Israel’s relationship with the U.S. Jewish community, which he said had improved overall under Bennett. He said the situation could turn positive if Lapid manages to form a new, centrist or center-left coalition without some of the further right and religious forces in the current government.

“If it doesn’t turn out that way, and Netanyahu returns to office, I think that all of the trend lines that appeared to be more positive… all of that is going to revert to a situation where the U.S.-Israeli relationship — [which is] powered by the critical importance of bipartisanship — is going to get once again ground up in American partisan politics.”

Satloff urged against “read[ing] too much into” the long-term significance of the government for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Analysts were dubious that Lapid will have much capacity to effect change as head of the caretaker government, particularly as he seeks to avoid further alienating right-wing forces ahead of the election.

“Historically, during an election period, everything freezes when it comes to the Palestinian issue,” Makovsky said, “because there’s no [incentive] in it for politicians to make any major moves.” The coalition, having lost its majority, will also be unable to pass any legislation.

Gelman speculated that the failure of the settlement bill could prompt renewed discussion about  annexing areas of the West Bank, a move that was halted in 2020 as a condition of the Abraham Accords. The bill’s failure, she said, may highlight that the settlements are not a full and permanent part of Israel.

Satloff noted that Lapid will remain prime minister until a new government is formed, a process which could stretch into next year.

“It’s not an insignificant period of time,” he said. “There will be restrictions on what the government can do because it’s the caretaker government. But you’re going to see perhaps a slight more centrist approach on some issues, because of the difference between the two, but you’ll probably see a lot of continuity.”

Concern is mounting in Washington over the Defense Department’s reported plans to downgrade the U.S. military official who coordinates security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, with 32 senators signing onto a letter on Friday opposing the move. A similar House letter is also in the works. 

The Defense Department is considering lowering the rank of the U.S. security coordinator from a three-star general to a colonel as part of a department-wide requirement to reduce the number of top-ranked officers, according to Axios, although there is widespread concern about the move from the State Department and from within the Defense Department. The Israeli government is also reportedly concerned.

Last week, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) led 30 of their colleagues — 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans — in a letter urging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin not to move forward with the plan.

“Given continued regional volatility, steadfast high-level U.S. leadership and engagement to support peace and stability in Israel and the West Bank remain in the national security interest of the United States,” the letter reads. “Downgrading this position would undermine U.S. leadership and credibility in a region where it is essential to have a high-ranking officer who can engage with other nations’ highest-level military leaders.”

On the House side, Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY) and Mike Waltz (R-FL) are working on a similar letter that will explain “why the USSC [United States security coordinator] in its current three-star rank is critical to its credibility and to ensuring Israeli and Palestinian security cooperation,” a Meng spokesperson told JI. That letter is expected to be finalized this week.

The Ossoff-Graham letter argues that the position is central to the global security mission in the region, and that downgrading the role would “undermine critical security programs and degrade communications between Israelis and Palestinians” and could “risk fracturing the U.S.-led international coalition.”

The mandate to reduce the number of top-ranked officers was handed down by Congress in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. The Trump administration reportedly decided to fulfill the congressional directive by reducing the number of top officers abroad.

“We stand ready to work with you to amend the law as necessary to support this vital policy objective,” the Senate letter’s signatories wrote.

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl is working on an alternative proposal to avoid downgrading the security coordinator, according to Axios. 

Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum, praised the Senate letter and said that the Middle East foreign policy community broadly agrees that the security coordinator position, first established in 2005, has been “important and successful.”

The position oversees both security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority — which was nonexistent prior to the establishment of this coordinator post — and training for Palestinian Authority security forces.

“When people talk about things that have been successful over the past 15 years within the Israeli-Palestinian space, this is far and away the most successful initiative,” Koplow said. “It really is an example of smart U.S. investment in terms of taking a relatively small program and making sure it punches well above its weight.”

Koplow said the training, popular across both parties and with Israeli officials, has been critical to professionalizing the PA security forces, establishing cooperation with Israel and keeping PA security forces out of terrorist activities. He said the coordination programs have also significantly curtailed suicide bombings inside Israel.

The security coordinator — currently Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel — is especially critical in times of crisis and conflict, Koplow continued. “Without an effective [coordinator]  there’s no question in my mind that it’s going to have a really bad effect on Israeli security; it’s going to contribute to harm to Israeli civilians and harm to Palestinian civilians,” he noted.

Koplow explained that the coordinator’s three-star general rank grants him direct peer-to-peer access to the Israeli Defense Force’s chief of staff and the head of Palestinian intelligence — access that would not be afforded to a lower-ranked officer. Other NATO countries that contribute to the West Bank security mission also often dispatch generals to the mission, and the U.S. downgrading its official could prompt a ripple effect or create tension between the U.S. coordinator leading the mission and higher-ranked foreign counterparts.

Koplow said he is expecting a similar letter from House members in the coming week. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) sent a letter expressing similar concerns earlier last week.

People like to say that Washington, D.C., is a company town, only the “company” is the federal government. But residents’ excitement for politics and public service has not always trickled down to local elections. In the 2018 Democratic primary, which all but assures victory in the general election in the overwhelmingly blue city, voter turnout was less than 20%. 

A surprisingly competitive mayoral race, with voters set to choose a Democratic nominee on June 21, could change that. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who is running for her third term, is facing a challenge from the left in Councilmember Robert White. 

“This is a time in the city’s history where we should be making significant progress for the people and communities that have been left behind for decades, and we haven’t done that under Mayor Bowser,” White told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “We are essentially treading water. We’re not moving forward.” (Bowser and another candidate in the race, Councilmember Trayon White, did not respond to interview requests.) 

A poll commissioned by Robert White’s campaign earlier this month showed him just a few percentage points behind Bowser, with 41% of likely voters saying they intend to vote for Bowser and 37% saying they plan to vote for Robert White. His campaign heralded the result as a “statistical tie.” 

If Bowser wins on Tuesday, she would be just the second mayor to serve more than two terms. (Marion Berry, the city’s most influential and infamous politician, served four terms as mayor in the 1980s and 1990s.) A February poll from The Washington Post showed that 58% of Washington residents approve of Bowser’s performance as mayor, down from 67% in 2019. 

Several high-profile incidents in recent years have caused Bowser’s star to rise on the national stage. During the 2020 racial justice protests, after former President Donald Trump had federal agents clear out protestors so he could walk through Lafayette Square to a church near the White House, Bowser had the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in massive lettering on 16th Street outside the church. She renamed the two-block stretch “Black Lives Matter Plaza.” She made a renewed, but unsuccessful, push for D.C. statehood after Democrats regained power in Congress in 2019.

“D.C. is overwhelmingly Democratic in population and having someone stand up to Trump, which she could do as mayor of the capital, gave her a national profile and I think probably helped her with a lot of voters in D.C.,” said Matthew Green, who chairs the department of politics at The Catholic University of America. “This is part of a broader theme of D.C., which is having the national government kind of telling D.C. what to do, and elected officials in D.C. push back. That’s something voters want.” 

Robert White served for several years as counsel to Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Washington’s non-voting member of Congress, before moving to a position with the D.C. attorney general. He was elected to an at-large seat on the City Council in 2016 in an upset victory that saw him unseat an incumbent. (Bowser, for her part, defeated an incumbent Democratic mayor when she was first elected in 2014.)

Rather than national political issues like statehood, what’s driving his campaign is concern for people like his family members, who have been pushed out of the city into nearby areas of Maryland due to gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs.

“Statehood didn’t didn’t factor into anything I’ve done politically,” White told JI. “The issues for me and for folks like my family were always much more basic.” His focus has been on building more affordable housing, getting people jobs and reforming public safety in the city. 

“​​Most of my family has been displaced for financial reasons over the past 20, 25 years,” said Robert White, 40, who has lived in every quadrant of the city and now resides in Shepherd Park, in Northwest D.C. “My dad and the rest of their siblings, my siblings, my cousins, have all been priced out of the city at this point.” All three candidates were born in Washington. 

Bowser’s reelection message seems to be one about stability and trust: She pulled the city through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump years and the Jan. 6 riot, so residents should trust her. Asked for five words to describe the state of the city, she told Axios: “Right track, ready for comeback.”

Responding to rising violent crime in the city has been a flashpoint between the major candidates, with Bowser, 49, calling for more police officers while Robert White has argued that the city needs to focus on preventing crime in the first place.

“Adding more police is not a plan. It’s a thing you can do. But if our goal is to make the city safer, then we have to focus a lot more on preventing crimes,” said Robert White, who rejected the notion that he supports defunding the police. “This is not a conversation about defunding the police. It is a conversation about adding city employees to do the things that we should be doing in the first place,” like mental health interventions. 

Robert White earned the endorsement of Jews United for Justice, a progressive activist group. He has been a “consistent ally on progressive policy issues” and “will have the bold vision and political will to make transformative change in our city,” JUFJ said in its endorsement. (A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

As a 501(c)(3), the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington does not make endorsements in the race. But JCRC Executive Director Ron Halber told JI that Bowser has a very strong relationship to the Jewish community. 

“JCRC does have an exceptionally close relationship with Muriel Bowser,” Halber said. He joined Bowser on a five-day trade mission to Israel in 2019. She has condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and in April, the city council — which both Robert White and Trayon White sit on — unanimously voted to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. 

Bowser has also engaged closely with the community; she spoke at Washington Hebrew Congregation on Yom Kippur in 2021 with Tom Nides, who was then awaiting Senate confirmation to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, and addressed a 2018 vigil at Adas Israel Congregation in the Cleveland Park neighborhood after the mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue. 

“It was unbelievable what the mayor said, and I’ll never forget this,” said Halber. “She was speaking about how antisemitism is not the problem of the Jewish people, but it is the problem of non-Jews to not be antisemitic, and not to act or feel in such a way. And that was very, very reassuring for American Jews.” 

Robert White told JI that he will work to build bridges between Washington’s diverse communities to help fight rising antisemitism and racism.

“One of the things that has really frustrated me as a Black man is seeing an increase in hate crimes, particularly against the Jewish community, because I understand very much the historic relationship that our communities have had in civil rights and racial justice,” he said. “People don’t have a full enough understanding of the historic bond between the Jewish community and the Black community, and it’s a very important one.”

In a voter guide published by the JCRC and Washington Jewish Week, Robert White said he hopes to address security concerns of houses of worship by appointing strong leadership to the city’s Office of Human Rights. He also said Jewish history and culture should be taught in Washington public schools. 

Trayon White, who represents Ward 8 in Southeast Washington, did not respond to the JCRC/Washington Jewish Week questionnaire. (Neither did James Butler, a fourth candidate who lost to Bowser in 2018.) Trayon White has come under fire from the Jewish community for past comments widely seen as antisemitic. 

In a March 2018 Facebook video, filmed in a snowy Washington, Trayon White suggested that Jews control the weather. “Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he says. “And D.C. keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city.’ And that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.”

White later apologized and attended several events in the Jewish community, including a Passover seder. He went on a tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum but left early.  

“I think his history with the Jewish community speaks for itself,” said Halber. “I just don’t see him as a viable candidate.”

Roughly 670,000 people live in Washington, and Halber said he estimates that 30,000 voters are Jewish. The main challenge, he said, is mobilizing voters. “I think one of the biggest struggles is getting people to actually even realize there is an election going on,” he said.

The differences between the candidates are real, but there’s a limit to how widely they can diverge, Catholic University’s Green argued. 

“This is the Democratic primary, so you’re not seeing the kind of dramatic differences in policy proposals that you would, say, see in a general election between a Republican and a Democrat,” said Green.

“Bowser, in some ways, represents — relatively speaking, the more moderate or establishment approach, which I think comes as much from her being the incumbent mayor. So you see other candidates, like Robert White, Trayon White, maybe suggesting more bold approaches, or nonconventional approaches to some of the problems that D.C. faces.”

Ben Smith has worn many hats in his journey from young New York City Hall reporter to founder of a media company. But everywhere the veteran journalist goes — from The New York Sun to Politico to BuzzFeed to The New York Times — he has brought a signature scoop-focused intensity. As he prepares to launch his newest venture, Semafor, Smith joined Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” for a discussion on the state of journalism, cutting his teeth in New York’s infamous Room 9 and how he looks to build a new media company.

Below are excerpts from the episode. 

Twitter’s impact on institutions:

“I don’t think journalism is particularly different from anything else. Everybody from television networks, to politicians, to businesses suddenly felt this new challenge. People could see inside the workings and demystify these institutions, which, I think, was a big problem for the media, because we would pretend we were better than we were, or doing something sort of special when it really was just kind of messy, hard work.

“I think the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are sort of meaningless institutions in the face of social media. It’s certainly been unbelievably destabilizing. I think some of the most inspiring versions of that destabilization, like the Arab Spring, were pretty quickly stamped out. But, I think, you had these, obviously, pretty weak establishments that sort of crumbled under the pressure of this disruption. [It’s] too soon to say, basically, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

Twitter’s impact on media:

“It’s not like the media wasn’t making mistakes and being ideological and bumbling and biased before. It’s just now, it’s all much more on display, like we were always idiots, it’s just on display now. And people can attack it…

“You’re just a normal person running around trying to figure something out. And so if you asked me at noon what I know, it could all be wrong, but by 6 p.m., maybe I figured it out. And by the time it’s in the paper the next morning, it’s a reasonable approximation of reality. The thing is, now, all that bumbling around that I was doing during the day is on public display, and people are like, ‘Oh my God, these people are total idiots. They don’t know any more than we do.’ The thing is, that’s always been true. It’s just that now it’s on display. And I think all journalists can do is just be like, ‘Yes, we don’t have any special magic powers that you don’t, we’re just trying to figure stuff out.’ Which I think is painful, because I think journalists like to have this special mystified status.”

Building Semafor:

“I think in terms of what we’re trying to build at Semafor now, we want to just acknowledge the reality that people connect more and audiences connect more with individuals than with a faceless brand, and lean into that and give great journalists an opportunity to speak really directly to an audience and not try to aggressively come in-between that and keep journalists in their box.

“I think the other side of that is that you can do it with a level of honesty and transparency where you’re not saying, ‘the view of The New York Times is that Donald Trump is a racist. Like, it’s just, who wants to ask these big institutions to have these views? They’re not the Catholic Church. They don’t need to hand out encyclicals.

“But I am interested in what Maggie Haberman thinks. She knows a lot, she’s an expert. I am interested in what Wes Lowery thinks. I am interested in what David Leonhardt thinks. All sorts of people, and they disagree with each other. And I disagree with them sometimes, but I’m interested in having disagreements with a smart journalist who knows what they’re talking about. I’m made uncomfortable when an institution takes an official posture. I don’t even know what to do with that.”

Starting at City Hall:

“I got to City Hall and, and because I was working for The New York Sun, which was this sort of weird, new kind of conservative newspaper that had descended from the Jewish Forward, [I] got a desk not in the real press room, Room 9, that kind of legendary high-ceilings press room just to the right of the door as you walk in, but in this basement room. It was Room 4A, and it was sort of filthy and it was where worse stuff that nobody knew what to do with went and there were squirrels sometimes coming in and out…

“They started running out of space upstairs. And so the most junior New York Post and Newsday reporters were down there, and that was Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush. So really, my main experience was like, ‘Whoa, these City Hall reporters are like, unbelievably smart and aggressive and fun and good at their jobs. I can’t imagine how good the people upstairs are.’ But in fact, Maggie’s a generational talent and I was just lucky to be sitting across from her. And I just learned an enormous amount from listening to her talk on the phone, but also, really compete. They were friends, but also competed very intensely [with] people who just turned out to be a couple other really great reporting talents of the generation.”

The House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security approved a spending bill on Thursday containing $360 million for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), matching the funding level requested by Jewish nonprofits for several years.

The spending bill — with an $85.7 billion topline — is one of 12 appropriations bills before the House of Representatives and increases NSGP funding by $110 million over the 2022 funding level.

The subcommittee approved the bill along a party-line vote, with Republicans objecting to its border security provisions; it now heads to the full Appropriations Committee for an as-yet unscheduled markup.

Jewish community leaders praised the proposed spending, a level that Congress has repeatedly declined to meet despite lobbying from Jewish organizations and advocates in both chambers of Congress.

“Seeing members of Congress mirror our $360 million request is unquestionably a victory, and we are incredibly pleased to see Congress taking such bold action,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement to JI.

The spending proposal comes as antisemitic incidents and hate crimes overall are on the rise. The program, which gives funding to houses of worship and nonprofits to bulk up their security, has provided grants for less than half the program’s applicants.

“The $110 million increase for the NSGP will help save lives and keep Jewish and other communities safe” said the Jewish Federations of North America in a statement.

Despite the subcommittee’s approval, the NSGP appropriation still has several hurdles to overcome.

“This is the second step in a long process,” Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union’s Advocacy Center, told JI, adding that the appropriations bills are likely to be folded into an omnibus spending package this fall and voted on during the period following November’s midterm elections, known as the lame-duck session.

The Senate has not yet proposed funding levels for NSGP, and its proposal could influence final funding levels. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who leads the Senate Appropriations Committee’s homeland security subcommittee, did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite that, community leaders expressed optimism about the fate of the program, noting that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has himself called for the $360 million appropriation.

“Between the leadership support and the bipartisan support in the Senate, I’m optimistic about the $360 million,” said Rabbi Abba Cohen, the Agudath Israel’s vice president for public affairs.

President Joe Biden also requested $360 million for the program in his 2023 budget request.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, the Biden administration’s nominee to be the assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development for the Middle East, expressed support for the Abraham Accords under questioning on Thursday by Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about past comments critical of the normalization agreements.

Wittes testified on Thursday at a confirmation hearing alongside Michael Ratney, formerly the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, who has been nominated to be the ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Wittes had expressed skepticism about the agreement’s durability and whether other countries beyond the United Arab Emirates would join them. She described the deals as having been “oversold,” a “betrayal of Palestinian interests” by Arab signatories and an overall setback for the Palestinians. She also said during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza that “Arab states that normalized with Israel bought this mess and now have to live with it.”

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) said that Wittes had used social media to promote an article that called the deal a “triumph for authoritarianism.” Her Twitter account is now private.

On Thursday, the nominee praised the Accords, which she said brought “profound transformation” and “strengthen[ed] the pro-American coalition” in the Middle East. She said she had encouraged the Biden administration to build on the agreements before she was nominated.

“I said publicly when they were signed that they were a boon to the Israeli government and to Israelis who have long felt isolated in their neighborhood,” Wittes added. “The Accords offer a foundation for more cooperation between Arab states and Israel… If I’m confirmed, I look forward to engaging with you on how we can build on the Abraham Accords to bolster positive engagement across the region.”

Wittes acknowledged that she was initially “skeptical” that the Accords could be expanded beyond the UAE, “and I was wrong about that.”

Young, who is the top Republican on the Senate panel’s Middle East subcommittee, indicated to Jewish Insider after the hearing that her remarks had not mollified his concerns, saying that her early comments about the Accords should “probably” disqualify her from the position for which she was nominated.

“I think it’s notable how wrong she was as a scholar of the region. I credit her for admitting she was wrong, something many in government are disinclined to do today,” he said. “But more importantly, the history of intemperate remarks with respect to our government policies in the past is something that makes me concerned about her ability to serve effectively in a diplomatic capacity.”

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rob Portman (R-OH) also critiqued Wittes’ approach to the Accords.

Wittes, who spent more than a decade as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, including a time leading the think tank’s Center for Middle East Policy, faced questions about Qatar, which has provided significant funding to Brookings. Brookings’ president, retired Marine Gen. John Allen, recently resigned in response to a federal investigation into his involvement in a lobbying scheme involving Qatar.

Wittes insisted that grants that funded her work “included strong language” guaranteeing her work’s independence and that she had “no knowledge” of the accusations against Allen, had never discussed Qatar research with him and had never participated in fundraising efforts with Allen with foreign governments.

“I think my research and the research that I supervised was conducted with complete independence from all of our donors and it stands on its own merits,” she said.

Born in Turkey to a parent working at the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Wittes lived in Israel on a kibbutz and was a student at Tel Aviv University. She served as the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs from 2009 to 2012.

“I have spent over 20 years working on Middle East policy and traveled through nearly every country of the region,” Wittes said Thursday. “Engagement with the governments and peoples of the Middle East has been part of my entire personal and professional life and that’s why I’m so excited at the prospect of leading USAID’s Middle East Bureau.”

Wittes also praised the “exciting” Middle East Partnership for Peace program, which provides funding for joint Israeli-Palestinian business ventures and people-to-people programming.

“It can rebuild Israelis’ and Palestinans’ hope in the possibility of coexistence,” she said.

Wittes’ nomination has been stalled in the Senate committee for nearly a year; she was first nominated in mid-July 2021. 

Ratney was questioned during the hearing about his time as U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, during which the State Department provided grants to a group called OneVoice to conduct a media campaign to support Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. 

OneVoice subsequently campaigned against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and used infrastructure developed under the grant for those efforts, according to a Senate subcommittee investigation, but did not spend grant funds on its electoral efforts and did not violate its grant agreement.

The subcommittee found that the State Department should have implemented restrictions that would have prevented OneVoice from using U.S.-funded infrastructure for electoral purposes.

Ratney said he was responsible for oversight of a “piece” of the grant focused on boosting Palestinian support for a two-state solution and acknowledged the “deficiencies” in the grant restrictions.

“That is something that I made clear in my conversations with the staff on the permanent subcommittee that would be unacceptable had we been aware of it,” Ratney said. 

Ratney’s nomination has been met with hesitancy by some Middle East policy experts, who told JI recently that nominating a career foreign service officer to fill the Riyadh post might be seen by the Saudi government as a snub. Saudi Arabia typically sends top officials to fill its embassy in Washington. 

David Ottaway, a Middle East Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, told JI last month, “I don’t think Ratney has an inside track to [President Joe] Biden, and the Saudis always want someone who has a pipeline right into the White House.”

CORINTHIA, Greece – As a child, Leon Avigad was sure he would be one of two things when he grew up: a spy or a hotelier. While a life undercover still hasn’t panned out, Avigad has fulfilled his other dream as a co-owner of Brown Hotels, one of Israel’s fastest-growing hotel groups.

Together with partners Nitzan Perry (his husband) and Israeli businessman Nir Waizman, Avigad appears to have hit on a winning formula: purchasing old, forgotten buildings in down-and-out locations and reimagining them as fun and funky travel destinations aimed at entertaining and pampering.

In a retro style – think throwback lighting, rotary phones, record players and other knick-knacks for in-room decor – each of Brown’s hotels tells a story and offers the visitor a distinct vibe, ranging from party-all-night to Paris chic.

With 21 boutique lodgings already in Israel (and several more on the way), the group is now shaking up Greece’s tourism industry as it expands from five currently operating urban hotels, the bulk of which are in a less desirable section of Athens, to resort destinations beyond the country’s existing tourism hubs.    

“We like to stay away from the obvious places,” Avigad, 50, told Jewish Insider in an interview last week. “Greece is so much more than its islands, and Athens should not only be a stepping stone for tourists to those islands.”

Last week, the company inaugurated two more hotels in the Mediterranean country, branching out from its city-based accommodations to all-encompassing resorts that are welcoming and affordable to families. And, over the next year, Brown plans to open around a dozen more hotels, including eight more in Athens and others on islands such as Corfu and Evia.

Dave Red hotel in Athens, run by Brown Hotels Group, once served as the headquarters of Greece’s Communist Party. (Courtesy)

Additionally, the company just announced a 40 million euros ($43 million) deal with Israeli airline Israir to purchase additional hotels in the country and create exclusive travel packages for Israelis, including direct flights from Tel Aviv to its new resorts.

Avigad, whose business card describes him as “founder/storyteller/impresario,” told JI the company currently owns around 40 more properties in Greece that are just waiting to be “Brownized.” And, he said, the company is eying other European destinations such as Croatia, where it already runs one hotel.

Such rapid expansion is ambitious for any business but especially risky in the hospitality sector, where the global tourism industry is only just beginning to rebound from two years of COVID-19 restrictions, which saw flights grounded, a steep decline in tourism and in some places, the banning of large gatherings in places such as hotels.

“We were always very optimistic,” Avigad said of the challenges brought on by the pandemic.

He explained that the Brown group took advantage of the shutdowns to begin “rooting” itself in its chosen country, purchasing and renovating defunct former hotels and other interesting buildings, such as the former headquarters of the Greek communist party – now a boutique hotel named “Dave Red Athens – son of Brown.” The hotel includes a dungeon-dive bar and leftover graffiti from its more socialist days.

Of the five Brown hotels currently up and running in Athens, four are in Omonoia Square, an area that for years served as the city’s red-light district, and was largely avoided by tourists. Now undergoing regeneration, Avigad and his partners are banking that the square – long ago a buzzing hotspot in Athens – and the surrounding neighborhood to return to its former glory.

“I was asked again and again during the pandemic why we were developing this area, and I always said that Athens is the next Berlin and Omonoia is the next Soho slash Meatpacking District,” said Avigad.

“For us, the timing was perfect, and we’ve enjoyed the great luck of backwind from the [new] government and the mayors of Athens, Salonika, Loutraki and others,” he continued, describing how over the past few years the Greek authorities have worked to ease bureaucracy and welcome foreign investors in an effort to improve the lives of Greek citizens.  

“Yes, we love the food and the culinary and gastronomy and the art and the heritage here, but we’re also business people and what we understood very early on was that Greece is a very welcoming country that has allowed us to enter into the market with relatively moderate real estate prices,” explained Avigad, who relocated to Athens with his own family a year ago, after nearly four years of weekly flights from his native Tel Aviv.

He also pointed out that pre-pandemic, more than 32 million people a year visited Greece, almost the same numbers as Italy and France, but at one-quarter of the cost of those more expensive vacation spots.

Two weeks ago, Brown marked the opening of one of its newest destinations: Isla Brown Corinthia – a 166-room resort hotel replete with access to sandy beaches and crystal blue Mediterranean waters – with a one-day travel and tourism conference for Israeli and Greek developers and investors.

Organized in conjunction with partners Israir and the Israeli financial news outlet Calcalist, the event took place in the still-under-construction hotel located in a sleepy Greek town more than an hour outside of Athens – far from the usual tourist destinations; it drew distinguished speakers such as Israel’s Minister of Tourism Yoel Razvozov and Greek Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias, as well as other industry officials and business leaders who spoke about the new opportunities created by Brown and the many possibilities of reciprocal Israeli-Greek tourism.

Dimitris Vassiliadis, manager of Israel’s office of the Greek National Tourism Organization, who attended the conference, called Avigad’s vision “bold.”

“I admire Leon and the people of Brown Hotels because they started a new and very expensive investment in places with seemingly zero potential, and that is very bold of them,” he said, adding that, “as Greeks, we only learn to gain from that.”

Isla Brown Corinthia is the newest Brown hotel to open in Greece. (Courtesy)

Michal Manor, editor and founder of Israeli travel magazine RoaOlam, who also attended the conference, told JI, “It takes a lot of courage for them to open so many hotels during corona and in places not among the usual highlights for tourists – the Brown group sees opportunities and jumps on them, but it’s a gamble.”

However, for Avigad, who started his career in hotel management as a concierge at Jerusalem’s iconic King David Hotel 20-something years ago and received training in top hotels in London, Switzerland and Los Angeles, it is the very challenge of a fickle and unpredictable industry that appears to be the draw.

“It’s always the most troublesome guest who ends up becoming a loyal customer,” he quipped, shrugging, “Brown is not simply a chain of hotels, it’s a collection of stories, and if you create a brand of soulful hotels then you know you’ll succeed.”

The writer was a guest of Brown Hotels in Greece.