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Good Monday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview today’s White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and report on Netanyahu’s meeting with a group of pro-Israel influencers on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. We talk to New York City politicos about Mayor Eric Adams’ decision last night to drop his reelection bid, and have the scoop on new congressional legislation that would allow the U.S. to send seized Iranian weapons to U.S. allies. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ronald Lauder, Safra Catz and Bob Iger.

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

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As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads into his meeting with President Donald Trump today, the key question is what kind of Gaza ceasefire plan he will agree to — and how Hamas will respond.

"We have a real chance for GREATNESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST," Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday, ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu. "ALL ARE ON BOARD FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, FIRST TIME EVER. WE WILL GET IT DONE!!! President DJT."

Netanyahu was more circumspect. “I hope we can make it a go because we want to free our hostages,” he told Fox News on Sunday.

“He won’t say no to Trump,” a source in the prime minister’s delegation said. But what Netanyahu has been saying is something like, “yes, but.”

While Trump clearly would like to make a big announcement at the end of Netanyahu’s White House meeting, having repeatedly said in public that the war will soon end, he has left out the specifics. 

A version of the plan that Trump shared with Arab leaders has leaked, but the administration has not made it public or talked much about specific goals beyond ending the war and freeing the hostages. Trump's Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who held Witkoff’s role in the first Trump administration, met with Netanyahu twice in New York and again in Washington, quietly working out the details.

Among the elements of the plan Trump shared with a group of Arab countries at the U.N. General Assembly last week are that the war would end and Hamas would release the 48 remaining hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive, within 48 hours of the ceasefire taking effect. In exchange, Israel would release over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds serving life sentences for serious acts of terror. Israel would not occupy or annex Gaza, and would gradually withdraw from territory.

Read the rest of 'What You Should Know' here.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ decision on Sunday to drop out of his race for reelection was met with a mix of tempered hope and continued resignation among political consultants and Jewish community leaders who have long been waiting for an opening to block Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner and Democratic nominee. In choosing to suspend his campaign for a second term with just five weeks remaining until the Nov. 4 election, Adams, the scandal-scarred mayor who had been running as an independent, may not offer the escape hatch that many Mamdani critics have been hoping for, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

State of play: Adams will remain on the ballot because the deadline to change it has passed. And Curtis Sliwa, the GOP nominee polling ahead of Adams, reiterated on Sunday that he will stay in the race, rejecting calls for him to step aside and help to clear the field for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who is also running as an independent after badly losing the June Democratic primary. But some critics of Mamdani suggested that the consolidated field could now move previously reluctant donors to invest in a late-stage effort to help bolster Cuomo. “Sentiment among some major donors had been that unless the field started to narrow, they were going to keep their powder relatively dry,” Jake Dilemani, a Democratic strategist who was involved in Cuomo’s primary bid, told JI. “With Adams out, that dynamic starts to change, pressure will mount on Sliwa to drop his bid, and dollars will follow.

Read the full story here.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope on Friday that the sale of TikTok to a joint venture partially owned by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison would be completed. “Weapons change over time,” Netanyahu told a group of pro-Israel influencers in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. “You can’t fight today with swords and you can’t fight with cavalry. …You have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield, and one of the most important ones is social media,” Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports.

TikTok talk: Netanyahu called the sale of TikTok “the most important purchase happening,” adding, “I hope it goes through, because it can be consequential.” Following a law requiring TikTok's owner, the China-based ByteDance, to sell the app's U.S. operations or be banned over security concerns, President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week authorizing a new company to buy over much of TikTok's U.S. business. The company started by Oracle – owned by longtime Netanyahu friend and Trump ally Larry Ellison – Silver Lake and UAE-based MGX, will control a 45% stake in TikTok's operations stateside. Oracle would oversee security operations, and Trump said that Ellison's company is "playing a very big part." China has yet to say it has changed laws needed for the deal to be completed, but Trump said that Beijing approved it.

Why it matters: Antisemitism has been an ongoing concern about TikTok for years and fears that antisemitic content was spreading unchecked on the platform increased after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel two years ago, when Jewish content creators asserted that they were facing a barrage of hate and that the company was not doing enough to protect them.

Read the full story here.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday morning, he addressed his remarks to a wide audience: not only to the international delegates before him — a comparatively sparse crowd after over a hundred representatives walked out as he approached the podium — and the larger audience watching his speech, primarily in Israel where it was broadcast by local news channels, but also Hamas leadership and fighters and the remaining hostages in Gaza as well after the Israeli military set up speakers around and inside the Strip. American Jewish organizations — another key audience for the speech — have been largely silent on his remarks, with only a few groups reacting to it, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports.

Sound of silence: The Jewish Federations of North America, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Israel Policy Forum and World Jewish Congress did not issue statements following the speech, and a representative from the AJC declined a request for comment on Netanyahu’s remarks. The Zionist Organization of America issued a statement describing Netanyahu’s remarks as “Churchillian” and applauding the prime minister for slamming the countries that recognized a Palestinian state. AIPAC live-tweeted several segments of the speech on X but did not make a statement of its own, while J Street posted a critique of Netanyahu and his choice of message as “shameful and dangerous.”

Read the full story here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

What he said: In Netanyahu’s address to the UNGA, he painted a picture of a nation abandoned by its allies, who he said had caved to “radical Islamist constituencies and antisemitic mobs.” Netanyahu began with a victory lap, hailing Israel’s military successes against Hezbollah, Iran and even Hamas over the past year. But much of the speech was defensive in nature, relying on rhetoric he has invoked frequently over the last two years, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

A total of 47 progressive House Democrats signed onto a letter to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), calling for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state on the heels of similar moves by European allies last week, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What they said: “It has long been acknowledged by much of the international community and previous U.S. administrations of both major political parties that a Palestinian state recognized as a full and equal member of the community of nations is necessary to fulfill the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people and ensure the state of Israel’s survival as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people,” the letter, which was first reported on by JI, reads.

Read the full story here.

Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Jefferson Shreve (R-IN) and Rich McCormick (R-GA) are set to introduce legislation on Monday allowing the U.S. to send seized Iranian weaponry to U.S. allies. The bill is the House version of the Seized Iranian Arms Transfer Authorization (SEIZE) Act introduced last month in the Senate by Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What it does: The SEIZE Act would allow the U.S. to quickly distribute to U.S. partners any weapons or other materiel confiscated by the U.S. in transit from Iran to its Houthi proxies in Yemen, by treating any seized weapons as part of the U.S.’ own stockpiles and authorizing the president to use Washington’s drawdown authority to distribute such weapons to U.S. partners.

Read the full story here.

Cornell University placed a professor with a history of anti-Israel activism on leave this week following his attempt to exclude an Israeli student from participating in his course on Gaza, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned. A Cornell spokesperson told JI that “a complaint was filed” against Eric Cheyfitz, a professor of American studies and humane letters, “who admitted to actions that violated federal civil rights laws and fell short of the university’s expectations for student interactions.”

Details: “Based on the findings of this investigation, the faculty member is not teaching this semester and significant disciplinary action is being recommended,” the spokesperson said. A source familiar with the course told JI that Cheyfitz informed the Israeli student that he was not welcome in the class. Cheyfitz did not respond to a request for comment from JI. Cheyfitz, who is Jewish, was previously involved with Cornell’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and has served as a faculty advisor to the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. He began teaching the course, titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” last spring semester. 

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere on the campus beat: As UCLA works to restore $500 million in federal grant funding cut by the Trump administration earlier this year, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said on Thursday that there are three principles the campus must “safeguard” amid its negotiations with the government. “We need to assure that there’s no government interference in who we hire, who we admit and what we teach or do research on,” Frenk told radio talk show host Larry Mantle. 

Rahm’s Run?: The Wall Street Journal’s John McCormick shadowed Rahm Emanuel as the former U.S. ambassador to Japan appeared at an Iowa Democratic Party event in Des Moines amid speculation that he could mount a 2028 presidential bid. “While he wasn’t technically campaigning, it was the first time the famously combative Emanuel had made a high-profile retail political appearance on his own behalf for the better part of a decade. It felt at times a bit like watching a professional athlete return to the arena after an extended absence. The game has changed significantly since the 65-year-old was last a candidate in 2018, with the explosion of social media and viral videos in politics. Emanuel made frequent mentions of political and policy wins he helped presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama achieve, as well as his own in Chicago. But gone were his recent criticisms of his party’s brand as ‘toxic’ and ‘weak and woke.’” [WSJ]

Trump, Bibi and the Endgame: In The Washington Post, Dennis Ross weighs in on the Trump administration’s proposal to end the war between Israel and Hamas. “An Arab force may not come in with the mandate to kill Hamas members, but it will come in with a mission of protecting the population. … That said, there needs to be a genuine commitment by the interim administration, largely led by key Arab states, to implement disarmament. A wink and a nod won’t cut it. There must be a similar commitment, with a real mechanism, to ensure an end to the smuggling that Hamas used to build its military and tunnel infrastructure. Trump will remain the key player. He will have to hold the interim administration’s feet to the fire to make sure the disarmament commitments are actually carried out — and also be prepared to support Israeli responses if Hamas begins to reemerge. But first, he will have to insist that the Netanyahu government end the war and withdraw.” [WashPost]

Lit Crit: In Arc Magazine, Alexander Nazarayan considers the increasing politicization of the LitHub magazine, which has drifted to the ideological left in recent years. “But in becoming more overtly political, LitHub has also alienated some readers and writers, turned off by its increasingly leftward slant, which sits uneasily next to traditional literary content. That lean has become especially pronounced since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, leading the writer Lisa Smith Siegel to call its newsletter ‘a daily delivery of anti-semitism in your email box.’ On topics such as free speech and gender politics (including, inevitably, l’affaire Rowling), LitHub has embraced positions well to the left of the mainstream — though arguably not so far to the left of the industry it covers. You can still find LitHub posts about how Substack is a font of right-wing propaganda, the kind of Biden-era stance that most outlets, and writers, have dialed (or walked) back in the current moment, for better or worse.” [ArcMag]

In the runup to New York City's mayoral election, join us on October 23 for the next SAPIR Debate: Does Zionism Have a Future on the American Left? with Bret Stephens, Kathy E. Manning, Yehuda Kurtzer, Batya Ungar-Sargon, and Jamie Kirchick at 92NY. Buy your tickets now: sapirjournal.org/JIdebates.

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Former Israeli hostages Agam Berger, Naama Levy and Karina Arayev participated in Selichot services at the Western Wall on Saturday night in Jerusalem.

BRUCE GLIKAS/GETTY IMAGES

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