Daily Kickoff
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2026
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on a suspected terror attack on an Israel-bound flydubai flight earlier this morning, have the scoop on prominent Michigan Democratic state legislator Noah Arbit’s decision not to endorse Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in the November election and cover New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly released plan to combat antisemitism, which received a mixed response from Jewish communal leaders. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Eric Cantor, Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri and Elaine Luria.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik.
Today's Agenda
U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from their last bases in Iraq earlier today, ending the more than two-decade-long American military presence in the country.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, State Department Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Moment magazine and the Romanian Embassy are holding an event today honoring Elie Wiesel. The author's son, Elisha Wiesel, is slated to speak at the event commemorating his father’s life and works.
Far-left streamer Hasan Piker is slated to speak at a University Democrats-sponsored event at the University of Texas at Austin. The event will take place in the location originally reserved by organizers, after administrators denied requests from University Democrats to move Piker’s talk to a larger venue.
One Thing to Know
A flydubai flight from the United Arab Emirates bound for Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia this morning in what Israeli security officials said may have been a terrorist incident following a violent altercation in which the plane’s captain, reportedly assisted by a passenger, wrested control from his co-pilot after the plane was thrown into a brief, rapid descent.
Images emerged in the hours following the incident of several passengers in bloody clothing. “We just heard screams, and then the cockpit door opened and we saw a huge amount of blood,” one passenger told Israeli media after landing in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport, near the Gulf state’s border with Jordan. Video also showed passengers tending to the pilot covered in blood on the floor, while the co-pilot appears tied up and possibly unconscious.
Israel’s i24News reported that the co-pilot who was subdued and restrained was of Omani origin, and that two additional pilots on board the aircraft, but not working the flight, were nationals of South Africa and New Zealand.
The Big Reads
democratic shift
Rising Jewish Democrat in Michigan won’t endorse El-Sayed
Noah Arbit, a rising Jewish Democrat in Michigan’s state Legislature, has been a vocal critic of Abdul El-Sayed, a fellow Democrat whose Senate campaign in the key battleground state has exposed deep divisions within the Jewish community. But until now, Arbit had not yet publicly clarified if he is willing to set aside his differences and endorse El-Sayed, like some prominent Jewish Democrats in the state who have recently announced their support despite reservations with his hostile stances on Israel and approach to countering antisemitism. In an interview with Jewish Insider's Matthew Kassel on Monday, Arbit, 31, confirmed that he would not be endorsing El-Sayed, pointing to what he called the nominee’s promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and affiliations with extremist figures on the far left, among other issues he cast as deal-breakers in the closely contested race.
big apple blueprint
Mamdani releases NYC strategy to combat antisemitism, but sidesteps Israel
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration on Tuesday released what it calls the country’s first municipal strategy to combat antisemitism, a 30-page plan that provides $7.4 million for security and prevention grants, but declines to adopt a definition of antisemitism and does not address Israel-related hate, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. Jewish leaders offered a mixed response to the mayor’s new strategy, with some welcoming increased security funding and other measures while also arguing that the plan fails to address what they see as a key driver of anti-Jewish hostility — rhetoric targeting Israel and its supporters. In a joint statement, UJA-Federation of New York, JCRC-NY, AJC New York and New York Board of Rabbis said that “any effort to confront antisemitism in New York City must fully address the realities Jewish New Yorkers face today.”
campus in focus
Federal commission highlights campus antisemitism concern, rebukes WH response
An independent federal commission on civil rights concluded, following a yearlong probe, that campus antisemitism is a “serious and growing civil rights concern,” but also suggested the Trump administration’s efforts to combat it went against both statute and established procedure, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights highlights that “recent federal enforcement has sometimes represented a departure from established practice” and that some of the administration’s punitive measures have been overturned in court. The report also called for greater staffing and better training for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights — which the Trump administration slashed even as complaints grew significantly — to ensure adequate responses to campus antisemitism.
The Rundown
The rest of today’s original stories from Jewish Insider — full stories, all published on the site.
On Our Radar
● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on our app (on Apple and Android) and website.
The Treasury and State Departments announced sanctions on 13 individuals and entities alleged to have assisted Iran in procuring weapons…
Anthropic's Dario Amodei, SpaceX's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and former White House AI czar David Sachs were on hand at a press conference following a meeting on AI between President Donald Trump, White House officials and the tech leaders...
Organizers of a16z's upcoming Tech Week in San Francisco said that a hackathon event associated with the conference had been removed from its calendar for violating Tech Week’s terms of service after an Israeli applicant was told he could not participate by an organizer who cited Israel’s 2024 pager attack on Hezbollah, saying, “Hackathon participants carry pagers, smartphones and laptops … What happened in Lebanon shouldn't happen in California”...
Immigration officials are moving to deport an anti-Zionist Israeli member of the Satmar Hasidic community who was present during an incident in which an Israeli flag was removed from a local government building in Rockland County, N.Y....
A new report from the U.K.’s Community Security Trust found that antisemitic incidents at universities in the country rose by 14% during the 2025-26 academic year, with 95 reported incidents compared to 83 the prior year…
Several dozen West Bank settlers clashed with Israeli security forces, several of whom were injured, as they were attempting to help a Palestinian family return to its home in the village of Jalud, from which the family had fled in July amid ongoing attacks by settlers…
eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher spotlights the Har Initiative, a post-Oct. 7 donor collective that plans to distribute $120 million in the coming months to groups fighting antisemitism; the initiave, which is made up of 12 funders including The Tepper Foundation, The Einhorn Collaborative, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and Maimonides Fund, is being led by Lindsey Spindle, president of the Samueli Foundation, and Fay Twersky, president of the Arthur Blank Family Foundation…
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and former top Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan, an advisor to Emirati President Mohamed bin Zayed, have reportedly agreed to form a coalition in the Nov. 28 Palestinian election if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas allows the election to move forward; Abbas has repeatedly postponed national elections, which have not happened in 20 years...
UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Tuesday, marking the first high-level bilateral meeting since tensions between the two Gulf countries erupted publicly over Yemen last year…
Moroccan King Mohammed VI appointed Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri as the country’s first female prime minister on Tuesday, after her Authenticity and Modernity Party won the most seats in last week’s parliamentary election…
Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is joining PhRMA as CEO after more than a decade at Moelis & Company…
JI Live Briefing · Free preview
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Community Comms
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The Missile Mess: The Atlantic’s Christopher Leonard spotlights the challenges associated with THAAD missile interceptors, which were frequently used by the U.S. and its allies during the height of tensions with Iran despite their high cost and dwindling stockpiles. “Munitions stockpiles have long been a neglected element of U.S. military strategy. Pentagon budget writers favor flashier line items, such as new fighter jets and naval destroyers. And munitions procurement relies on a fragile U.S. industrial base that is plagued by points of failure. They are produced by large U.S. defense contractors — such as Lockheed Martin, which makes the THAAD — whose business models constrain them from ramping up production even when a missile shortage is evident.” [TheAtlantic]
Mideast Misadventures: Wall Street Journal columnist William Galston considers the lessons learned over the course of the conflicts with Iran. “This is America’s third Middle Eastern misadventure in the past quarter-century, and likely the last. It signals the end of our effort to dominate the region, and it could set in motion a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces. … Our allies will have to choose between yielding to Iran’s regional dominance and creating a formal anti-Iranian alliance that could eventually include Israel.” [WSJ]
An Oct. 7 Reckoning: In the Jewish Review of Books, Matti Friedman reviews journalist Amos Harel’s 06:29: Anatomy of a Failure, a Hebrew-language account of the events of Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath. “Harel has no state budget, team of lawyers, or power of subpoena. ... 06:29 is yet another example of a scenario that we in Israel have seen again and again since that fateful hour nearly three years ago, and that indeed can be said to have saved the country: The state fails, and a citizen rises to the occasion.” [JewishReviewofBooks]
Picture of the Day
Interviewed by The New Yorker's David Remnick (left) at New York’s Streicker Center on Tuesday night for the launch of his new memoir, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich (right), who was wrongfully detained in Russia for 16 months, reflected on the country he covered for six years — and on how dramatically life there has changed for Russian Jews since the start of the war in Ukraine. Read more from Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen here.
Birthdays
Natan Levy, mixed martial artist who competed in the lightweight division in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, turns 35
Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, turns 81
Sanford Kadish, retired volunteer and tutor
Rochelle A. “Shelly” Kassen, past president of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, she is on the board of the Tikvah Fund
Adam Maximilian Aron, chairman and CEO of AMC Entertainment, he is a former co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, turns 72
Fran Drescher, actor and activist, she was president of the SAG-AFTRA labor union, turns 69
Ehud Hrushovski, professor of mathematical logic at Oxford, turns 67
Haim Taib, founder and president of the Menomadin Group and president of the Menomadin Foundation, turns 66
Allison Sommer, journalist for Haaretz since 2012
Jonathan Gruber, professor of healthcare economics at MIT and an architect of Romneycare and Obamacare, turns 61
Lisa K. Robbins
Gilad Menashe Erdan, Israel's U.N. ambassador from 2020 to 2024, now global president of Magen David Adom, turns 56
Anastasia Goodstein, senior digital director at Inseparable
David Herszenhorn, international editor for The Washington Post
Jacques Stambouli, CEO of Via Trading Corporation, a liquidator of consumer merchandise
Rabbi Eliezer Kaunfer, president and CEO of Hadar Institute in Manhattan
Hildy Kuryk, founder and partner at Artemis Strategies, a boutique consultancy, turns 49
Ari Michael Shapiro, CNN contributor, former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” turns 48
Daniel Grossberg, member of the Kentucky House of Representatives since 2023, he lost his May 2026 Democratic primary, turns 48
Jonathan Peter Kasdan, screenwriter, director, producer and actor, turns 47
Yonatan Neril, founder of the Jerusalem-based Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, turns 46
Stephen Cohen, computer scientist and entrepreneur, he is best known as a co-founder and president of Palantir Technologies, turns 44
Steven Russolillo, chief news editor at Business Insider
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