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Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s upcoming trip to Israel, and look at the primary field already taking shape in New York’s 12th Congressional District following Rep. Jerry Nadler’s retirement announcement. We report on Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign ads, all of which mention AIPAC, and talk to a former board member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars about the organization’s “deeply flawed” passage of a resolution accusing Israel of genocide. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Deni Avdija, Lana Nusseibah and Yael Lempert.

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As Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of a planned takeover of Gaza City and rejects ceasefire proposals that fall short of a comprehensive deal to end the war and release all of the hostages, Jerusalem finds itself facing calls both at home and abroad against further entrenchment in Gaza.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing pressure from Washington to end the war — with a decisive victory over Hamas.

President Donald Trump signaled his growing weariness with a protracted war in an exchange with The Daily Caller, published earlier this week, in which he said Israel is “gonna have to get that war over with,” noting that Israel “may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations.” Netanyahu said at his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday that Trump had instructed Israel to go into Gaza City with “full force.”

Days earlier, the president held a White House meeting that included Jared Kushner and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss a “day-after” plan for the Gaza Strip. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer scrapped a planned meeting with World Food Program head Cindy McCain to fly to Washington for consultations.

Taken together, Trump’s comments and last week’s gathering underscore the president’s dwindling patience with the ongoing war — concerns that have been highlighted in Israeli media reports in recent days.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported over the weekend that Trump, frustrated by Hamas’ intransigence, is pushing Netanyahu to move more quickly to decisively defeat Hamas. That could pose a challenge for Israel, which has not been able to declare “total victory” against Hamas in nearly two years but now faces White House pressure to end the war in a short amount of time — “perhaps even within two weeks,” according to Channel 12. 

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

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Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D-NY) surprise decision on Monday to retire at the end of his current term has set off what is expected to be a crowded primary to succeed the long-serving Jewish Democrat — with a growing number of candidates weighing bids for the coveted Manhattan House seat he has held for more than three decades. The looming open-seat primary has also raised questions about whether candidates will embrace Nadler’s increasingly skeptical views on Israel, and how the issue will shape the race. The 78-year-old lawmaker, who represents one of the largest Jewish constituencies in the nation, has long identified as a pro-Israel progressive, even as he has vocally criticized Israel’s conduct during its ongoing war in Gaza and drew scrutiny from some Jewish community leaders over his early endorsement of Zohran Mamdani, the far-left Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. 

Looking at Lasher: Potential candidates include New York state Assemblymember Micah Lasher, Chelsea Clinton, Jack Schlossberg and former FTC Commissioner Lina Khan. Lasher, a former aide to Nadler who is expected to claim the congressman's blessing, according to people familiar with the situation, has built strong ties to the pro-Israel community, but he faced backlash from local rabbis over his similarly quick choice to support Mamdani, in spite of the nominee’s hostile views on Israel. One Jewish leader said it was premature to draw conclusions about Lasher’s positions on Israel, while voicing confidence that he “makes up his own mind” on tough issues, regardless of where his allies may stand. “Lasher is center-left but has always been relatively moderate on Israel,” a pro-Israel strategist added in assessing the assemblyman’s stances on the Middle East. 

Read the full story here.

Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner is putting anti-AIPAC and anti-Israel messaging front and center in fundraising appeals he’s circulating on social media, Jewish Insider's Marc Rod reports.

Ad attack: “My opponent has already been endorsed by AIPAC — an endorsement I will never get. Because what is happening right now in Gaza is a genocide,” Platner says in one direct-to-camera video ad focused specifically on his opposition to AIPAC. “I need your help because we refuse to take money from AIPAC, and we refuse to take money from the billionaires who support it.” Every one of the eight active ads that Platner is running on Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta’s political advertising library tool, includes a repudiation of AIPAC, and around half accuse Israel of genocide.

Read the full story here.

Notes from the field: Maine Beer Company co-founder and political neophyte Dan Kleban is entering the growing primary field of candidates hoping to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

China showcased its growing aggressiveness on the world stage in a major military parade on Wednesday, showing off missiles and fighter jets to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in attendance. The parade was an example of how Beijing has used WWII not only to encourage nationalism, but to project power internationally, from Jerusalem to Taipei and beyond, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.

Zoom out: The parade came shortly after China hosted a summit with Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Eurasian leaders, deepening ties among major powers not aligned with the West. The attendees issued a communique last week strongly condemning “the military aggression launched by Israel and the United States against Iran" in June. China has also used World War II and Holocaust terminology in recent weeks as it continues its hostility against Israel, calling Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide,” even as the Chinese Embassy in Israel held an event highlighting Beijing’s positioning with the Allies in World War II. The recent statements reflect a broader double game China has played in its relations toward Israel, consistently showing hostility to Israel on the international stage since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, while within Israel, the Chinese ambassador has pursued a friendlier posture. 

Read the full story here.

A longtime former board member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars criticized the group’s passage of a resolution on Monday accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, calling the move deeply flawed and the result of a politicized process. Sara Brown, the American Jewish Committee's regional director in San Diego who has a Ph.D. in genocide studies, argued that “the whole premise and tenor of the resolution is deeply problematic.” In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov on Tuesday, Brown, who maintains her membership in IAGS, also pushed back against the narrative that most genocide scholars are accusing Israel of genocide.

How it played out: The resolution passed with only 129 out of over 500 IAGS members voting, 108 in favor, 18 opposed and three abstaining. All paid members have the right to vote, and membership is not restricted to academics; its ranks include artists, activists and others interested in the field of genocide studies. As a result, some pro-Israel figures paid to join the IAGS following the resolution’s approval. Under normal circumstances, Brown said, any member can propose a resolution, which goes before a committee for comments and feedback. Controversial or high-stakes resolutions are brought before a virtual town hall to discuss the text. This time, when the resolution was proposed on an IAGS listserv, Brown said that she and others attempted to publish a dissent that was deleted by the moderators.

Read the full interview here.

A book that centers on Palestinian identity is drawing controversy from some Jewish parents in the Montgomery County, Md., public school system after it was assigned to first grade students as required classroom reading, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned. The book, Tunjur! Tunjur! Tunjur! A Palestinian Folktale, written by Margaret Read MacDonald, aims to convey a message to children that there are consequences for taking things that don’t belong to them. It tells the story of a woman who “prayed to Allah” for a child and received a pot as her child. The pot, too young to know right from wrong, had a tendency to steal honey from the marketplace and jewels from the king — until she got caught. 

Voiced concerns: While the book does not mention Israel, local Jewish leaders and parents voiced concern that the required book’s subtext sends an anti-Israel message to elementary schoolers and that the reference to “Allah” does not belong in a public school setting. A syllabus notes that students can receive supplemental reading materials if “any instructional material conflicts with your family’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” The book’s lesson that “‘you cannot take things that do not belong to you’ echoes activist rhetoric that falsely casts Israel as an oppressor and the Jewish people as imperialist rather than indigenous,” Dana Stangel-Plowe, chief program officer at the North American Values Institute, a nonprofit that monitors antisemitism in K-12 schools, told JI.

But: Not all Jewish communal leaders agreed that the book was problematic. Guila Franklin Siegel, chief operating officer of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, argued that Jewish families should embrace the book. “If the only complaint about this book is that it’s sharing a Palestinian folktale that teaches children not to take things that don’t belong to them, I can’t see what the problem with the book is,” Franklin Siegel told JI. “It will be a shame if Jewish people wind up objecting to books only because they have protagonists who happen to be Palestinian.” 

Read the full story here.

The House Appropriations Committee’s proposed funding bill for the Department of Education includes sweeping new provisions cutting off funding for colleges and universities that fail to address campus antisemitism, but would also cut $49 million in funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in 2026, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

New language: New language included in the bill states that no federal funding may be provided to institutions of higher education “unless and until such institution adopts a prohibition on antisemitic conduct that creates a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in all documents relating to student or employee conduct.” The bill also bans funding to schools that have “failed to take administrative action against any student, staff member, or student group that commits acts of antisemitism while utilizing the facilities, grounds, or resources of such institution.” At the same time, the bill would provide $91 million in funding for the Office for Civil Rights, which pursues complaints of antisemitism lodged by Jewish students, down from $140 million provided in several previous years.

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere on the Hill: With the 2025-26 school year kicking off, Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and John Fetterman (D-PA) wrote to the presidents of five Pennsylvania universities urging them to work with their Jewish communities to ensure Jewish students’ safety and ability to participate in campus life, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Hitting the Houthis: The Wall Street Journal’s Dov Lieber and Saleh al-Batati spotlight Israel’s efforts to target Houthi leadership, following a strike last week that killed the terror group’s prime minister and nearly a dozen other senior officials. “The strike also reflects an aggressive Israeli security posture in which Israel wants its adversaries to know it will hit back hard against any potential threat, say military analysts. The new doctrine is referred to among soldiers as FAFO, an acronym for f— around and find out, according to one of the security officials. … After escalating its fight against the Houthis, Israel hopes its strikes will have a deterrent effect on the group and other potential enemies in the region, one of the Israeli security officials said. The official said there is hope in Israel that the Yemeni people opposed to the Houthis will once again take up arms against them. ” [WSJ]

Inspection Time: The editorial board of The Washington Post calls on Iran to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back into the country and to resume nuclear talks with the U.S. “The only way to know for certain what’s left is for the inspectors to fully return and for the Iranian government to come clean about what, if anything, it still has. To prevent further conflict, Iran also needs to reenter negotiations with the United States over any future nuclear program for civilian-only use. The United States says it is ready to talk, but Iran has insisted as a precondition, among other things, that Trump commit to no further strikes. That would give away too much leverage. … If Tehran takes any lesson from June, it should be that the United States is not afraid of using military force to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. Trump resisted pressure from the vocal isolationist faction in his base, and he could do so again if he feels it is necessary to protect the nation’s security.” [WashPost]

Higher Ed’s Real Problem: In The Atlantic, Boston University professor E. Thomas Finan posits that the Trump administration’s legal efforts against top-tier universities should serve as a “wake-up call” that pushes schools to meaningfully address deep-seated issues. “Strong free-speech protections for students and faculty combined with a commitment to intellectual diversity can help foster open inquiry and rigorous analysis. Colleges and universities should also consider remaining neutral on more political issues: Constant interventions can sap the academy’s credibility and make students who take opposing views feel unwelcome. … Colleges cannot assume that the public consensus that has sustained them will simply remain in place, nor should they assume that reaching financial settlements will mend the structural weaknesses that have made them so vulnerable in the first place. The surest protection for the academy is to forge a new political compact — to prove, once again, that America’s higher education is indispensable to its democracy.” [TheAtlantic]

New War Footing: In his “Clarity” Substack, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren considers the ways in which the Israeli approach to the country’s military has shifted in the post-Oct. 7 era. “Never will we forfeit the need for deep buffer zones along all our frontiers. Never again will the IDF favor a defensive over an offensive strategy — Iron Dome over tanks and armored personnel carriers — and rely almost exclusively on technology rather than soldiers to guard our land. Never again will our reservists go years without training or go into battle without even the most basic gear. … If, before the war, the questions of Haredi military service and integration into the economy were important but still open to debate, today that discussion has ended.” [Clarity]

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The Treasury Department announced sanctions on Iraqi businessman Waleed al-Samarra’i, who also holds citizenship in St. Kitts and Nevis, over his efforts to help Iran evade restrictions on oil exports…

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MASSIMO CERETTI/FIBA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Israel’s national basketball team, led by Deni Avdija (pictured, in blue), secured a Sweet 16 spot in the EuroBasket tournament for the first time in more than a decade. The team beat Belgium 92-89 on Tuesday in Katowice, Poland.

GREG DOHERTY/GETTY IMAGES

Media personality, psychologist and socialite, also known as Dr. Estella, Estella Sneider, Psy.D. turns 75...

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