Your Daily Phil: Israel-Iran ceasefire starts with 4 more dead, violations
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the emergence of an apparent ceasefire in the Israel-Iran war after 12 days of active fighting. We interview Yotam Polizer, CEO of the IsraAid humanitarian relief group, which is expanding its operations in Israel in response to Iranian missile barrages, and spotlight a new campaign by Jewish Women International to combat sexual violence in war. We feature an opinion piece by Ted Sasson about implications of the full-throated support from prominent American Jewish organizations in response to the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities; and one by Keshet Starr and Shoshannah D. Frydman about improving the way the Jewish community approaches the subject of domestic violence (and survivors themselves). Additionally, Pastor Todd Stavrakos highlights why now is a critical moment for constructive engagement between supporters of Israel and mainline Christians. Also in this issue: Samuel J. Abrams, Paula Gottesman and Seffi Kogen.
What We’re Watching
It’s Primary Day in New York City, and all eyes are on the Democratic mayoral primary to see if former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will prevail over Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
Olam’s Focal Point conference continues today in New York City.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH EJP’S JUDAH ARI GROSS
There was a cruel irony to the fact that millions of Israelis were awakened by air raid sirens triggered by incoming Iranian missiles this morning, only to see overnight headlines declaring that a ceasefire had been brokered between Israel and Iran. It was made even more cruel when news emerged that at least four people were killed and 20 more injured to varying degrees in one of the barrages on the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.
The ceasefire, which was meant to go into effect at 7 a.m. Israel time and was confirmed by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, was shattered a few hours later, when a missile was fired toward northern Israel, triggering a fresh wave of sirens throughout the region. The military said that it intercepted the incoming missile, and no injuries were reported. Israeli defense officials have already vowed to retaliate.
“In light of this grave violation of the ceasefire, which was carried out by the Iranian regime, we will strike forcefully,” IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said. A few hours later, Israeli jets conducted a small strike on an Iranian radar array outside Tehran.
Israelis are used to this type of will-they-won’t-they situation with ceasefire agreements. Nearly every conflict that Israel has had in the past decade has concluded with a ceasefire that officially went into effect before being promptly broken, resulting in a final round of tit-for-tat. As one Israeli commentator quipped: “The first sign of a ceasefire in Israel: There is no ceasefire.”
Israelis’ jaded retorts aside, it is far from clear this morning if the ceasefire will hold or if it is a blip on the way to further fighting.
President Donald Trump appeared furious with Israel over its plans to conduct retaliatory strikes on Iran. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Do you understand that?” he told reporters outside the White House.
As of this morning, 29 people have been killed in Israel in the Israel-Iran war. The youngest was Nastia Borik, a 7-year-old Ukrainian girl in Israel for cancer treatment, who was killed in a strike on an apartment building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam; and the oldest was Ivette Shmilovitz, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, who was killed by the shockwave from a missile strike on a building in the central town of Petah Tikva. More than 3,250 people were sent to the hospital with injuries from the Iranian attacks, of whom 201 remain hospitalized, three of them in serious condition, according to the Taub Center think tank. Though still significant, this represents a small fraction of the military’s estimated number of casualties.
According to the Taub Center’s tally, the Iranian strikes have caused more than $2 billion in property damage — to private homes and to institutions, such as Soroka Medical Center, the Weizmann Institute and the Bazan oil refinery, all of which sustained direct hits.
“According to our estimates, the total war expenses so far amount to approximately NIS 20 billion [$5.9 billion]… These costs were not included in the formulation of the state budget for 2025,” the think tank wrote. “Along with the increase in spending due to the prolonged fighting in Gaza, this represents an overspend that will force the government to update the state budget for 2025 and increase the planned deficit.”
The ultimate effects of the 12 days of Israeli — and eventually American — strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities are also unclear. While the aerial bombing campaign appears to have caused a significant amount of damage to Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile program, even its most avid supporters acknowledge that this is not a “one-and-done” situation, but the start of a new, complicated period of monitoring the country and demonstrating a willingness to relaunch strikes as needed.
“The game has changed. Iran’s path to the bomb is severely damaged — for now,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank, wrote on X. “But this will require vigilance, clear deterrence, and readiness to strike again if needed.” (Read eJP’s sister publication Jewish Insider’s coverage on the state of the Iranian nuclear program here.)
If today does mark the start of a ceasefire in what’s been dubbed the 12-Day War between Israel and Iran, it also marks its 627th day of Israel’s war against Hamas, with 50 hostages still held captive in Gaza.
Q&A
With Israel in a ‘crisis within a crisis,’ IsraAid ramps up services at home
Founded in 2001, IsraAid has offered humanitarian aid in over 65 countries, supporting vulnerable communities after natural disasters and wars, but since the Oct. 7 attacks, for the first time in its history, the nonprofit has provided emergency services at home in Israel. With the country still reeling from one crisis, IsraAid launched additional emergency services after Iran began its ongoing barrage of ballistic missiles at Israeli cities.
Last Friday, Yotam Polizer, IsraAid’s CEO, spoke with Jay Deitcher for eJewishPhilanthropy about the group’s pivot to providing aid in its home country, the differences between the Oct. 7 and Iranian missile attacks, the difficulty of being an Israeli humanitarian organization in today’s political climate and its fundraising.
JD: What are the differences of working with the people who lost their homes on Oct. 7 and those who have lost their homes in the Iran attacks?
YP: The people from the south were mainly from the kibbutzim and the moshavim. Even though they went through a terrible massacre and trauma, the communities were, in many cases, very strong together. When you work with big cities like Ramat Gan or Bat Yam or Petah Tikva or Tel Aviv [the sites of some Iranian attacks], these communities just live next to each other, but it’s not really a community.
Obviously, the level of trauma. I’m not trying to say this is worse or that is worse, losing your home from an Iranian missile or losing your home because of a Hamas attack. Both are terrible traumas, but it’s a different kind of trauma. Also, Oct. 7 is an ongoing trauma because of the hostages.
There are some similarities. In the case of Oct. 7, people were evacuated to hotels across the country, but the two main hotspots were the Dead Sea and Eilat. Right now, they’re all over the place, in hotels in Tel Aviv, in Ramat Gan, so it’s different kinds of logistical challenges. The services they receive from the local government and from the national government are similar to what people received on Oct.7, and therefore, the gaps — education, mental health support — are very similar.
THE JUSTICE WE OWE
Jewish Women International launches global campaign against sexual violence in war
“I was a captive of Hamas. After I was freed, I was imprisoned by online trolls.” That’s how Agam Goldstein-Almog, a survivor of Hamas captivity, described modern warfare in a Washington Post opinion piece last year. The violence she endured, she said, did not end when the physical assault stopped. In today’s conflicts, survivors are discredited, harassed and silenced in real time — online. On June 19, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, Jewish Women International (JWI) launched a global initiative to confront this new and rising threat. At the center is a new alliance — The International Coalition on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) — formed to combat the weaponization of sexual violence and the disinformation that retraumatizes victims long after the war has moved offline, reports Efrat Lachter for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Online battles: “We want Israeli women to take their place in history,” Meredith Jacobs, CEO of JWI, told eJP. “When people talk about rape as a weapon of war in Myanmar, in Darfur, in Ukraine — they must also say Israel. That is the justice we owe them.” The initiative builds on a groundbreaking new report, “On Land and Online: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Social Media Battlefield,” authored by Meryl Frank, who during the Obama administration served as the U.S. envoy to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Commissioned by JWI and supported by the Evan and Tracy Segal Foundation, the report is the first of its kind to systematically examine how online disinformation compounds the trauma of sexual violence in war zones — amplifying denial, silencing survivors and enabling impunity. “When survivors speak up, they deserve not only to be heard but to be believed,” said Jacobs. “And in today’s world, the battlefield doesn’t end where the guns fall silent. The battle continues online.”
ANALYSIS
Jewish groups break with Democrats over bombing of Iranian nuclear sites
“By moving quickly to express support for the U.S. bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear sites, major Jewish groups have broken with the Democratic Party’s leadership and most of the party’s voting base,” writes Ted Sasson, a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and a professor of Jewish studies at Middlebury College, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Will this backfire?: “The Trump administration’s aggressive policies against antisemitism have generated widespread concern about possible backlash. In a survey last month by the Jewish Voter Resource Project, 61% of Jewish respondents said the Trump administration’s policy of arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian activists was likely to increase antisemitism, compared to just 20% who thought the policy would reduce antisemitism. These fears will now be amplified by concern that American Jews will be held responsible for a new Middle East war. … We will need to wait for surveys of Jewish public opinion to find out whether the leadership is out of step with the rank and file. More likely, we’ll discover that American Jews are increasingly out of step with the political party they had long called home.”
Bonus: A new Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after the U.S. struck Iranian nuclear facilities — but before Iran attacked U.S. bases and President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire — found that only 36% of respondents (13% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans) said they supported the strikes, while 45% opposed them.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE WON’T WAIT
Jewish continuity requires more than engagement — it requires safety
“Talking about domestic abuse is often the conversation we don’t want to have. Discussing violence in families and relationships feels uncomfortable, awkward and painful, not to mention frightening. This is likely why, for too long, this issue has been layered in silence and stigma, only occasionally addressed in mainstream Jewish and philanthropic spaces. The time to change that is now,” write Keshet Starr and Shoshannah D. Frydman, the CEO and clinical director of Shalom Task Force, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
What we do (and what we don’t) is critical: “In this moment of war in Israel, rising antisemitism in the United States and the evergreen challenges of engaging future generations in Jewish life, it’s easy to push issues like family violence off to the side to address once the crisis passes. However, in our work we have found that what happens to families and relationships in crisis impacts Jewish communal life — and future Jewish engagement — more profoundly than any of us realize… In May, the UJA-Federation of New York partnered with Shalom Task Force and convened the “Safe Homes, Safe Spaces” summit on domestic abuse in the Jewish community… As one survivor who shared her story at the summit put it: ‘My child will remember not just what happened to us at home, but how our community responded when we needed them most.’… Echoing the concepts shared at the summit, we want to share our vision for how we, as a community, can do better.”
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
The next interfaith crisis is already here. Are we ready?
“Unless we proactively address and improve Jewish-Christian dialogue with the mainline Christian community, we risk allowing simplistic or hostile narratives to shape perceptions of Israel, antisemitism and peace among tens of millions of Christians in North America,” writes Pastor Todd Stavrakos, director of Pathways for Middle East Peace, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. ““[I]nstitutions shaping Christian attitudes toward Israel often amplify selective, ideologically driven narratives, ignoring complexity and inadvertently fueling dangerous misunderstandings.”
An opportunity to get involved: “At Pathways, we’re building networks, training responsible leaders and elevating courageous voices advocating coexistence; but we can’t do this alone. Our efforts require strategic partnerships and ongoing community commitment to nurturing interfaith trust… This moment underscores the urgent need for strategic investment — not merely to oppose damaging theology and oversimplified narratives, but to cultivate authentic relationships resilient to political turmoil. That is why we are hosting the Pathways 2025 Virtual Summit: Voices of Peace on June 26.”
Worthy Reads
OK Computer: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, M.J. Prest looks at a new initiative by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, giving a new artificial intelligence tool to grantmakers to assess the financial viability of potential grantees. ‘‘We’re trying to take [on] the menial tasks of doing financial diligence and allow program officers to have that strategic, high-level viewpoint so they can streamline the entire process[,’ said Vilas Dhar, president of the McGovern Foundation]. … Powered by Anthropic’s large language model Claude 3.5, Grant Guardian extracts a charity’s financial data from submitted records, like a Form 990 or audited financial statements. The tool then analyzes the charity’s financial history and generates a scorecard along with a summary of its findings based on the criteria the foundation has defined as most important to a nonprofit’s financial health. … Foundations should not adopt the platform as a way to cut costs or jobs, [Dhar] warns, but instead should use it to advance impact. ‘Cost-saving is a consequence and an outcome, but it shouldn’t be a driver for using these tools. AI use and operations increase the capacity of your existing staff to do more and better, and that should be our North Star.’” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]
Make Methane a Priority: In The New York Times, Carl Pope — a former executive director of the Sierra Club and a member of the environmental movement in the U.S. for 50 years — asserts that focusing efforts on reducing carbon dioxide emissions and ignoring methane was a big mistake. “Methane traps about 80 times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide over 20 years. And methane emissions, which are driving an estimated 45% of human-caused warming, are rising rapidly. I now believe that cleaning up methane leaks from the production and shipping of oil and gas — one of the most significant sources of these emissions — is the best hope we have to avoid triggering some of the most consequential climate tipping points in the next decade. I think realistically it is our only hope… Oil and gas wells leak methane at the wellhead and in the processing and transport of these fossil fuels. But the gas is relatively easy and cheap to recover. When we seal leaks, the atmospheric concentration of methane declines, and we limit warming, making it one of the best bangs for our buck.” [NYTimes]
Word on the Street
Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, N.Y., celebrated the arrival of its Israeli counselors after they were delayed in arriving because of the Israel-Iran war. Read more about these delays here…
More than 80 education leaders and donors signed an open letter doubling down on their commitment to the education sector…
Samuel J. Abrams, a nonresident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, published an article calling for the next chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary to play a more active role in communal issues…
Inside Philanthropy examines the Zell Family Foundation’s recent increase in giving, which may be a one-off event or mark a change in its grantmaking style…
The 21 members of the House Jewish Caucus — all Democrats — pressed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a letter sent on Tuesday expressing concerns about Kingsley Wilson, the recently promoted Pentagon press secretary with a history of antisemitic and otherwise controversial comments, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports on female funders who are expanding their support for gender equity nonprofits in the wake of the Trump administration’s efforts against diversity, equity and inclusion programs…
Former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is joining the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law as a distinguished visiting professor…
Watertown (Mass.) News spotlights a mobile Holocaust museum created by students at the Jewish Community Day School of Boston…
A New Jersey Assembly committee voted to table a proposed bill that would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism…
The New York Times reviews the new documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” about the actor’s rise to stardom and representation of the deaf community in Hollywood…
Leaders of the Columbus (Ohio) JCC broke ground last week on a new sports complex after raising $9 million of the $11 million needed for the facility…
NBC Palm Springs (Calif.) interviews participants from the Jewish Federations of North America’s recent Pride mission to Israel, which was interrupted by the Israel-Iran war…
Cosmochemist Edward Anders, who as a child survived the Holocaust and in his retirement wrote a book about the Jews from his Latvian town who did not, died at 98…
Major Gifts
Through the Jerry and Paula Gottesman Family Supporting Foundation, Paula Gottesman has donated an additional $500,000 to Israel Sci-Tech Schools, the country’s largest independent charter school network, for schools in the north. This brings the foundation’s total contributions to the network to more than $2 million in the past 10 years…
Transitions
Seffi Kogen has been hired as a senior program officer at Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies…
Pic of the Day
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An Israeli Tennis and Education Centers (ITEC) staff member delivers tennis rackets to Israeli children to lift their spirits during the Israel-Iran war, as part of a broader effort to support ITEC participants.
“Especially now, when children are confined to their homes and their daily reality has changed, it is our duty to continue supporting them — emotionally, socially and educationally,” Eyal Taoz, ITEC’s global CEO, said in a statement. “We don’t just train for excellence in tennis — we shape values, humanity and champions both on the court and in life. This is our vision, and this is our commitment.”
Birthdays
Professor of Jewish philosophy at American Jewish University and founding dean of its rabbinical program, Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff…
Ruth Weinstein… Activist investor, he is a co-founder of Trian Fund Management, Nelson Peltz… Professor emeritus in the College of Business at San Francisco State University, Sam S. Gill… Former chairman and CEO of New York Life Insurance Company, Seymour “Sy” Sternberg… Founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Yeshivat Maharat, Rabbi Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) Weiss… Former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, he is an author and professor at UC Berkeley, Robert Reich… Former member of Knesset and former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon… Early childhood specialist at Columbus City Schools and Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio, Carol Glassman… Executive vice president at Edelman until earlier this year, he is the author of a book on the Saatchi & Saatchi ad firm, Kevin Goldman… Circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Sandra Segal Ikuta… President and CEO of public relations firm Steinreich Communications, Stanley Steinreich… U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Florida, Beth Francine Bloom… President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum… Former principal of Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne, Australia, Rabbi James Kennard… The first on-air talent of the NFL Network when it debuted in 2003, he has become the face of the network ever since, Rich Eisen… Israeli businesswoman and owner of the soccer team, Hapoel Beer Sheva, Alona Barkat… Author and columnist, he is the managing editor at Shtetl, Shulem Deen… Singer and songwriter known professionally as Ariel Pink, Ariel Marcus Rosenberg… Film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and cinematographer, Todd Strauss-Schulson … Director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Continetti… Digital marketing manager at Guardian Pharmacy Services, Brett Rosner… Vice president of Houston-based RIDA Development, Steven C. Mitzner… 2015 contestant on “Jeopardy!” who earned $413,612 by winning 13 consecutive episodes, Matthew Barnett “Matt” Jackson… Actress and singer, Elizabeth Greer “Beanie” Feldstein… Director of legislative fiscal affairs at the Rockland County (N.Y.) legislature, Moshe Gruber… College basketball player for the Harvard Crimson until 2022, then a graduate transfer player at NYU until 2024, Spencer Freedman… Lois Charles…
