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Good Monday morning!

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the release this morning of the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages, and preview President Donald Trump’s speech to the Knesset. We talk to historian Pamela Nadell about her new book about antisemitism, and look at the race taking shape in Tennessee between Rep. Steve Cohen and state legislator Justin Pearson. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Patrick Dumont, Zeev Buium and Ben Shapiro.

Ed. note: The next Daily Kickoff will arrive in your inbox on Thursday. Chag Sameach!

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

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It was the day that Israelis have waited for after more than two years — or two years exactly by the Hebrew calendar. Thousands had already assembled by dawn at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, where some had slept overnight, for the release of the last remaining hostages known to be alive. Shortly after 8 a.m., the first seven hostages — Omri Miran, Matan Angrest, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Alon Ohel and Eitan Mor — were released to Red Cross custody.

The song “Habayta,” meaning “home,” the unofficial anthem of the hostage families, played over a montage of photos of the 47 men and one woman who have spent the last 738 days in captivity — a scene that has repeated itself in the square every Saturday night for two years.

Israeli networks split coverage between the live festivities across the country, in-studio reporting and interviews with hostage families and former hostages. Former hostage Emily Damari called into Israel’s Channel 12 upon the release of her neighbors and friends, twins Zvi and Gali Berman, and said the Shehecheyanu prayer giving thanks — a prayer also recited by the thousands thronging in and around Hostages Square. The crowd erupted in joy at the sight of the two brothers being reunited. 

By midday, the 20 living hostages — also including Avinatan Or, Bar Kupershtein, Ariel and David Cunio, Eitan Horn, Elkana Bohbot, Evyatar David, Maksym Harkin, Matan Zangauker, Nimrod Cohen, Rom Braslavski, Segev Kalfon and Yosef-Chaim Ohana —  were on Israeli soil.

The first images of the men trickled out over the course of the morning: Miran, flanked by his wife and father, wearing a shirt with artwork by his two young daughters; the Berman twins in Maccabi Tel Aviv jerseys; Ohel, pale but smiling and standing on his own, with sunglasses to protect his damaged eyes.

In contrast to previous hostage release, as dictated by the agreement, there were no propaganda ceremonies staged by Hamas as they handed over the captive Israelis. Instead, Hamas made video calls to the hostages’ relatives, who spoke to their loved ones as they stood beside their masked and uniformed captors.

Amid the hostage releases, President Donald Trump descended from Air Force One to the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport on Monday morning, where he was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog. White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — who spoke at Saturday night’s hostage rally in Tel Aviv. Read our coverage of their speeches at the rally here.

Signing the Knesset’s guestbook after his arrival, Trump wrote, “This is my great honor — a great and beautiful day, a new beginning.” 

With the release of the last living hostages, and later today the remains of  four of the 28 deceased hostages, Israel will begin the process of releasing close to 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in accordance with the first phase of the deal. After that, attention will turn to negotiations surrounding the deal’s second phase. 

After addressing the Knesset, Trump will travel to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for a signing ceremony that will also include Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. Trump’s speech was delayed due to a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who extended an invitation to Netanyahu to join the ceremony. Netanyahu’s office released a statement saying that the prime minister thanked Trump for the invitation, but won’t be able to participate due to the close timing with the beginning of the Simchat Torah holiday this evening.

In Israel, it has been a day of celebration after two years of pain, longing, fear, anxiety. It was the first time in two years that Israelis were able to wholeheartedly greet each other with 'chag sameach'  — a greeting that took on a double meaning on the eve of Simchat Torah, which begins this evening. 

But the day will take a heavier turn this afternoon when the remains of just four of the deceased hostages are expected to be returned to Israel, bringing a combination of pain and closure to their loved ones who will finally be able to give them a proper burial. Meanwhile, the 24 other hostage families — who were shocked to learn this afternoon of the low number of bodies that will be released — will be left waiting for the remains of their loved ones to be located and returned home. The Hostages Families Forum called the development a “blatant breach of the agreement by Hamas,” and called on the Israeli government and the mediators to “take immediate action to rectify this grave injustice.” 

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President Donald Trump gave a victory speech in the Knesset as the final 20 living hostages returned to Israel from Gaza on Monday, in accordance with the first phase of his plan to end the war, Jewish Insider's Lahav Harkov reports.

Live from Israel: Israeli television stations showed a live screen, with Air Force One landing at Ben Gurion Airport on one side, and IDF vehicles carrying freed hostages Eitan Mor, Gali and Ziv Berman, Matan Angrest, Omri Miran, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel to their families on the other. Trump was given a hero’s welcome in the Knesset, where he was met with an honor guard and current and former lawmakers gave him a lengthy standing ovation. “The hostages are back – it feels so good to say it!” Trump said.

Read the full story here.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), a 10-term congressman from Memphis, Tenn., has long occupied a unique position in U.S. politics. The 76-year-old lawmaker, who became Tennessee’s first Jewish member of the delegation when he took office in 2007, is the only Democratic House member in his solidly conservative state. And as the lone white member of either party to represent a majority-Black district, Cohen has also managed to deftly navigate a delicate racial dynamic in his district, only facing occasional primary challenges from Black challengers. Through it all, he has been a political powerhouse in Memphis, holding onto his seat by building a broad and diverse coalition of support. Now, he is facing what could be his biggest test in years as he prepares to go up against a formidable new challenger in the 2026 primaries, at a moment when some veteran Democratic House members are under growing pressure from a crop of younger opponents who are pushing for generational change to revive the party’s declining image among younger, disillusioned voters, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

New competition: Justin Pearson, a Democratic state legislator from Memphis who rose to national prominence in 2023 when he and a fellow Black colleague were expelled from the Tennessee General Assembly for leading a gun control protest on the House floor, announced last week that he would challenge Cohen in what is shaping up to be a bitterly contested and expensive primary, highlighting differences over identity as well as hot-button issues such as Israel and the war in Gaza. 

Read the full interview with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) here.

Historian Pamela Nadell is very familiar with the rituals of publishing a book, as she has written nine of them: Secure a release date, present at academic conferences, maybe headline a handful of general-public events. Although she is at the forefront of her field at American University — chair in Women’s and Gender History, director of the Jewish studies program and former president of the American Jewish Historical Society — Nadell knows that success in academia does not often translate to strong book sales. Things appear to be different for her latest book, Antisemitism: An American Tradition, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. 

Pertinent timing: Nadell began to understand how much interest a book on antisemitism would generate when her publisher assigned a full-time publicist to promote the book, which will be published on Oct. 14. Nadell is booked at speaking engagements across the country into 2027, starting with an event at the Washington bookstore Politics and Prose next week. The book that she began researching six years ago will now appear on bookshelves at a time when antisemitism has reached record levels since the Anti-Defamation League began tracking data in 1979. “I had hoped, frankly, that the subject would be seen as a historic subject by the time [the book] came out into the world,” Nadell told JI in a recent interview. “And that's absolutely not the case.” 

Read the full story here.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a Pentagon meeting with Qatari Defense Minister Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Friday, signed a deal to open a Qatari Air Force facility at the U.S. Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. Facing swift backlash, Hegseth clarified that under the terms of the agreement, “Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”

Broad opposition: The deal has elicited criticism from voices as wide-ranging as Trump ally and far-right influencer Laura Loomer and Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin. “An economic bailout for Argentina. An air force base for Qatar. This guy is doing everything but putting America first,” Martin said, a sentiment echoed by the DNC’s vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta. Loomer wrote a spree of X posts lambasting the deal, framing it as the vanguard of a Muslim Brotherhood invasion of Idaho and the United States, a threat to national security, a precursor to a potential terrorist attack and the harbinger of the downfall of Western civilization. “Now that the GOP has decided to literally harbor Islamic terrorists on US soil, I don’t really care about fighting for Republicans as much as I did yesterday. I have lost hope for 2026 and 2028 to be totally honest,” Loomer said. 

Read the full story here.

The Senate voted this week to confirm Kimberly Richey as the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department, eight months after President Donald Trump named her to the role. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which Richey will lead, is responsible for overseeing investigations into antisemitism at American schools and universities. The Trump administration laid off more than half of the division’s investigators earlier this year, sparking sharp criticism from congressional Democrats, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Background: Richey previously served in the same role on an interim basis for the final months of Trump’s first term. For much of that administration, she was deputy assistant secretary of the office that oversees special education issues. She first worked at the Education Department in the George W. Bush administration after being hired by Ken Marcus, now the chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. Richey comes to Washington from Florida, where she had been serving as senior chancellor for Florida’s Department of Education. Before that, she was deputy superintendent of the Virginia Department of Education.

Read the full story here.

The Senate approved the repeal of strict sanctions legislation targeting the now-deposed Assad regime in Syria, as part of its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

State of play: The chamber also passed, as part of a bipartisan package of amendments, an amendment led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — opposed by some Syrian-American activists — that requires regular reports to Congress certifying Syria’s compliance with a variety of U.S. priorities and urges the administration to reimpose sanctions if such verification cannot be completed. The House version of the NDAA does not include a similar provision, so whether the sanctions repeal is included in the final bill, and in what form, will be subject to negotiations between the two chambers.

Read the full story here.

The Families’ Fight: The Free Press’ Matti Friedman reflects on the successes of the movement to free the hostages juxtaposed with the realities of war. “On the day of the Hamas massacres, which ravaged swaths of southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people, Israelis saw their feeling of security shattered, along with their faith in their leadership and army and in the basic promise that the helpless chapters of Jewish history had ended conclusively with the founding of the state of Israel. This rupture required psychological repair, and this became inseparable, for some, from the hostages’ return. ‘The slogan ‘Bring Them Home,’ rather than ‘Give Them Back,’ the fact that it’s directed inward, gets at the idea that this is really about restoring our own place and our own agency, which is at the heart of Zionism,’ [Tal] Becker said when we spoke again Sunday. Another popular slogan, seen on bumper stickers and protest signs, reads Nachzir, nakum: ‘We’ll return them and rise.’ Those two acts are linked, the second predicated on the first.” [FreePress]

Sharabi’s Survival: The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer considers what he calls the “existential heroism” of the released Israeli hostages. “Unlike Sharabi, some of the hostages already surmised that they had lost their families in the massacre, shattering the most compelling why of them all. Yet that didn’t diminish their will to live. Despite being secular, they found solace in listening to an observant hostage, the son of a rabbinical scholar, recite the Jewish grace after meals. Like Odysseus, they trained their minds to relentlessly focus on home. ‘There is no more regular Eli,’ Sharabi told himself in his first days in Gaza. ‘From now on, I am Eli the survivor.’ That he clung to optimism in the face of despair wasn’t inevitable.” [TheAtlantic]

Campus Beat: In The New York Times, Danielle Sassoon, who resigned as interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York earlier this year after she refused to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, raises concerns about free speech and civil rights on college campuses. “Universities, no less than the professionals they teach, have an obligation to uphold civil dialogue as the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Administrators continue to overlook that this obligation means they must guarantee forums to explore a diversity of ideas safely and openly. … Students who object to policies of the Trump administration or oppose Israel’s war in Gaza or who advocate abortion rights rarely have to worry that their campus speakers will be disrupted by protesters or generate security concerns related to the backlash of a student mob. Security concerns, real or fabricated, arise when a speaker promises to buck campus orthodoxy. And that is precisely when universities need to stand up for debate rather than surrender to those who would stifle it.” [NYTimes]

What’s Next: In The Times of Israel, Alan Gross, who was held as a political prisoner in Cuba for five years and now lives part-time in Israel, considers how Israelis and Palestinians can rebuild in a post-war era. “Healing will not come from slogans or ceremonies. It will come — slowly, painfully — through remembrance, accountability, and the rebuilding of trust where it has been shattered. It requires rejecting the easy narratives that divide “us” from “them,” and insisting instead on empathy — for our own people, yes, but also for those on the other side who have also lost children, parents, and homes. Too many of us already know what it means to wake up each day in a world changed by violence. Yet it is precisely in that fragile act of continuing — of refusing to surrender our humanity — that recovery begins.” [TOI]

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CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

People celebrate in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Monday morning as they watch a livestream of the release. 

ANNA POCARO/VIBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

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