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👋 Good Monday morning!

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to journalist Jason Zengerle about his new book about Tucker Carlson's political evolution, and look at the wave of antisemitic and anti-Israel messaging coming from Saudi Arabia in recent weeks. We spotlight White House advisor Josh Gruenbaum’s position as a key player in U.S. diplomacy, and look at the role that the United Auto Workers union is playing in anti-Israel activist efforts. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Jennifer Mnookin, Morris Katz and Marc Shaiman.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI 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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Anti-Israel and antisemitic messages from Saudi regime mouthpieces and state-sanctioned media have increased in recent weeks, as Riyadh has pivoted away from a more moderate posture to an alignment with Islamist forces, such as Qatar and Turkey.

Over the weekend, prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri wrote an article in a Saudi news site attacking the United Arab Emirates, with whom Saudi Arabia has been at odds in recent weeks, as "an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world ... in betrayal of God, His Messenger and the entire nation." He also wrote that "Israel is on a path to a rapid downfall and the umma [community of Muslims] will remain, God willing." The column, published after weeks of anti-Israel and antisemitic messaging from Saudi-backed channels, sparked an uproar from Western voices, including the Anti-Defamation League, which condemned "the increasing frequency and volume of prominent Saudi voices … using openly antisemitic dog whistles.”

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on the “Ask A Jew” podcast earlier this month that the Trump administration needs “to have a serious talk with” the Saudis. “I’m ringing the alarm; I’m breaking the glass,” he said. “I’m saying, listen, these guys are changing.”

In the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types … would be inciting against the Jews,” Abdul-Hussain said. “But this week, the [Saudi] state-owned media was inciting against the Zionist plan to partition the region and to divide the region. This is very new.” 

One possible reason for the turn in Saudi messaging is that Riyadh is “very afraid of Israel,” Edy Cohen, a research fellow at the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider, noting that it views recent Israeli actions as going against Saudi interests.

Cohen noted that “the Saudis and the Qataris led a campaign for Trump not to strike Iran. …[The Saudi leadership] heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] said the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy. Imagine Iran and Israel together … It’s their biggest nightmare.” Riyadh and Jerusalem are also at odds on Syria and Somaliland.

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

Daily Overtime brings you what we’re tracking at the end of the day — and what’s coming next.

In his richly reported new book, Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind, Jason Zengerle tracks the evolution of the mainstream conservative journalist for The Weekly Standard, CNN and FOX News into a prominent figure in the far-right media ecosystem whose commentary increasingly descends into open antisemitism. Zengerle, a veteran political reporter, ruminates over Carlson’s troubling transition from magazine writer to cable news pundit to his current position as a widely followed podcast host whose credulous interviews with Nazi sympathizers and Holocaust deniers, among others, have done little to dampen his influence in the MAGA movement he helped build. In a recent interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, Zengerle, whose book will be published Tuesday, warned that Carlson’s efforts to smuggle antisemitic views into mainstream discourse should not be taken lightly.

Weight of words: “Tucker has credibility, and he comes across as a credible person,” Zengerle said. “That he’s giving voice to these really pretty fringe and dangerous sentiments is not to be underestimated, because people trust him.” Whether Carlson personally believes the “awful things” he promotes, Zengerle writes in his book, “matters less than that he says them at all, and that millions of people — members of Congress, titans of industry, the president and just everyday Americans — listen to and take their cues from him.”

Read the full interview here.

Bonus: The New Yorker published an excerpt of Zengerle's upcoming book.

Josh Gruenbaum’s Thursday started in Davos, Switzerland, at the signing ceremony to inaugurate President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. Gruenbaum walked onto the World Economic Forum stage where Trump sat, surrounded by world leaders, to hand the president the board’s first resolution — focused on the demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza — for him to sign. Hours later, Gruenbaum’s day ended at the Kremlin in Moscow, alongside White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and advisor Jared Kushner. Gruenbaum is a relatively new figure on the diplomatic scene. He started working with Witkoff and Kushner soon after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in October, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Trajectory: Since then, Gruenbaum has been spotted in meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier this month, hewas named a diplomatic advisor to the new Board of Peace, which the Trump administration is reportedly envisioning as a replacement to the United Nations. It’s a somewhat surprising turn for Gruenbaum, whose expertise is not diplomacy or foreign policy but investment banking. But with his business background, Gruenbaum fits in with Witkoff and Kushner, both of whom come from the real estate world. His rise underscores how the Trump administration is reshaping the machinery of government by elevating loyalists with private-sector backgrounds and expanding their portfolios far beyond traditional lanes. 

Read the full story here.

Campaigning in a crowded field for the New Jersey House seat recently vacated by newly inaugurated Gov. Mikie Sherrill, former New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way is leaning strongly into her support for Israel and the state’s Jewish community, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What she said: Speaking to JI last week, Way cited the rise in antisemitism that is leaving Jewish voters “terrified” as one of the reasons she’s running for office, alongside her concern about attacks on civil liberties, health-care access, the economy and immigration raids. She said that, going forward, it’s “really my fervor and my hope to continue my work on behalf of the Jewish community,” highlighting the work of the New Jersey-Israel Commission — which fell under her purview when she served as secretary of state — to increase trade between Israel and New Jersey as well as push back on antisemitism.

Read the full story here.

Evanston, Ill., Mayor Daniel Biss, who has expressed support for cutting off some military aid to Israel during his campaign for Congress in the Chicago suburbs, had expressed support for continued aid to Israel earlier in the campaign, according to a position paper Biss himself released Friday amid scrutiny of his past communications with AIPAC, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What it says: Biss said Friday that he had met with local AIPAC representatives to lay out his positions, but that he does not share AIPAC’s views and met with the group in the interest of open communication and in hopes “they might decide not to direct [their] MAGA donors to support [his primary opponent, state Sen.] Laura Fine.” The paper Biss released — which includes stances largely in line with those of other candidates AIPAC has endorsed — stated that Biss supports continued aid to Israel under the terms of the current U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, and that he would support another MOU in the future. Biss now supports efforts to impose an offensive weapons ban on Israel — a direct contradiction to the MOU.

Read the full story here.

Texas turnaround: Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in the state, has disavowed AIPAC and pledged not to take support from the group on the campaign trail. But in late 2019, he attended an AIPAC event alongside a major donor to his campaign, according to a contemporaneous Instagram post about the event posted by an AIPAC supporter, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

State Department officials who were tasked with deporting foreign students accused of antisemitism and threatening American national security warned that the efforts may present free speech concerns, according to government documents that a federal judge released last week. The several hundred pages of previously sealed federal documents are connected to the ongoing deportation cases against Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung and Badar Khan Suri, each of whom U.S. immigration authorities targeted because of their involvement in anti-Israel activity at American universities, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Scant evidence: One case concerned the visa status of Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts University who was ordered to be deported last March and was arrested by federal agents on her way to a Ramadan event. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told JI last year that federal investigators “found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” The only public evidence at the time connecting her to the anti-Israel protest movement was a 2024 op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that she penned with three other students calling for the university to divest from Israel. One of the State Department memos unsealed last week revealed that this op-ed was the sole basis for the effort to deport her — and that department officials recognized it might face legal challenges. 

Read the full story here.

The United Auto Workers, one of the largest unions in the country, has increasingly drifted away from its core mission of representing autoworkers in the workplace, driven by individuals pushing an extreme anti-Israel political agenda that leaves critics questioning the relevance to workplace issues. The most recent example came earlier this month, when 30% of the 275 employees of the Israeli-owned Breads Bakery signed union authorization cards for UAW Local 2179, the percentage necessary to petition the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. The group’s demands include that the management of the New York-based bakery chain, CEO Yonatan Floman and founder Gadi Peleg, “halt use of bakery profit to materially support the Israeli occupation,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.

Behind the push: Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the State Department’s antisemitism envoy under President Joe Biden, told JI that “many institutions and organizations, whether they be universities, unions [or] city councils, a small group is able to go in and organize, and with the minority of members, push a policy.” Lipstadt, a historian who has served on Emory University faculty for more than 30 years, said she has “seen similar situation[s] on university campuses and [within] professional academic organizations where a small group, sometimes just a few individuals, is able to gain control and push the organization in a certain direction, even if the vast majority of members don’t agree. I wonder if that is the same thing happening” with the Breads unionization push, she said.

Read the full story here.

Hatred, Then and Now: In The Telegraph, Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the Biden administration’s antisemitism envoy, distances modern-day antisemitism from that of prewar Europe, but warns that similar sentiments can erode society if not properly addressed. “There are no shortages of historical examples of anti-Semitism. And probably each generation that faced these disasters wondered if their experience paralleled that of a previous generation. While we do not want to forget or ignore the past – something I have spent my whole life studying and teaching – or ignore what might be the consequences of this cosmic hatred, we also must avoid finding or inventing simple continuities. Every situation and era has unique characteristics. While the past can remind us just how bad things can get, we must avoid using it as a template for predicting the future. … Today we find anti-Semitism on the Right and the Left. We find it among Christian nationalists and Islamist radicals. We find it among white supremacists and multiculturalists. We even find it among Jews. Too many people, who do not share these views, remain silent when those next to them, their political allies, engage in overt anti-Semitism.” [Telegraph]

Limits of the Law: In The Atlantic, John Yoo argues that the present-day interpretation of international law does not defend against malign actors and should be revamped accordingly. “If critics correctly argue that the attack on Venezuela violates international law, they have unintentionally revealed that international law — not the United States — must change. Removing Maduro was just: The dictatorship has killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Venezuelans, destroyed the country’s economy, and denied the electoral wishes of the Venezuelan people for new leadership. But international law did nothing about this crisis, and countenanced no solution. Because it prevents Western democracies from using force to preempt grave threats from disruptive nations, such as Venezuela or Iran, while posing little obstacle to the designs of our rivals in Beijing or Moscow, international law no longer serves as an instrument of global stability.” [TheAtlantic]

Peace Board Problems: On X, Palestinian American analyst and Gaza native Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib raises concerns about the degree to which the Trump administration’s newly created Board of Peace can be effective given on-the-ground constraints. “There are no perfect answers, solutions, or scenarios to address the myriad of terrible circumstances that require tough choices, strategic patience, and some trial and error. That said, what has been unfolding reeks of a horrendous disaster in the making and a five-alarm fire that may ensure the failure of Gaza’s future trajectory and prospects especially as it relates to the post war era, de-Hamasification, demilitarization, and deradicalization – all of which are core necessities for any hope that the coastal enclave will no longer be a battle field for Islamist jihadi terrorism or meaningless regional proxy battles which lead to squandered potential, needless deaths, and wasted opportunities.” [X]

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a request from the White House for Israeli President Isaac Herzog to attend last week’s Board of Peace signing ceremony on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland…

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SHALEV MANN

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (left) met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in Baku earlier today. Sa’ar traveled to the Caucasus country with a delegation of Israeli businessmen for conversations focused on advancing bilateral economic ties.

SAVION WASHINGTON/VARIETY VIA GETTY IMAGES

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