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Hours after Israel’s cease-fire agreement with Lebanon went into effect on Wednesday, the IDF shot at a vehicle believed to be violating the terms of the deal.
The IDF fired warning shots at a vehicle carrying several people entering Kfar Kileh, near the Lebanon-Israel border, where the Iran-backed terrorist group was barred from entering under the terms of the cease-fire.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Michael Blake, a former New York state lawmaker who officially launched his campaign for mayor of New York City on Tuesday, is facing new scrutiny for posting anti-Israel commentary in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks and the ensuing Gaza war — marking a sharp rhetorical shift from his past statements on Middle East strife.
In the weeks following Hamas’ attacks last year, Blake, a Democrat, shared highly critical social media comments amid the escalating conflict, charging Israel with enacting “genocide” in Gaza and demanding a cease-fire without calling for the release of hostages who had just been abducted.
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Rep.-elect Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) has roots that run deep in northeastern Pennsylvania. He was born and raised in the 8th Congressional District, a blue-collar, purplish area that stretches from Scranton to Wilkes-Barre to Hazleton. He attended the Methodist Wyoming Seminary in Kingston and the University of Scranton and soon after took over his grandfather’s construction company based in Exeter, also in the district.
But as the 34-year-old freshman lawmaker — who unseated Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) in the Nov. 5 election — was en route to the congressional new member orientation last week, Bresnahan turned his gaze to matters far removed from northeastern Pennsylvania, including thorny conflicts abroad where his vote could be crucial in the thin Republican majority in the House.
AP Photo/Phil Sears
Florida state Sen. Randy Fine, an outspoken Jewish Republican and staunch supporter of Israel with a history of inflammatory comments, announced his campaign for Florida’s 6th Congressional District on Tuesday.
Fine, 50, is aiming to replace Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), who will leave the House in January to become President-elect Donald Trump’s national security advisor. Fine entered the race with Trump’s endorsement — Trump announced he’d back Fine before he even announced his campaign.
Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
In response to a federal Title VI complaint filed against Occidental College in April alleging a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students, the Los Angeles-based private liberal arts college agreed on Tuesday to implement a series of initiatives to mend the campus climate, including the adoption of the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of four Occidental students, stated that since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, the university enforced policies against Jewish students while ignoring antisemitic declarations and violations on campus. Examples provided in the complaint include Jewish and Israeli students being accosted and harassed by demonstrators on campus, being “unable to carry out” their jobs on campus as a result of antisemitic behavior and an allegation that that Occidental faculty “engaged in hateful rhetoric that emboldened the student protestors.”
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Israel and Lebanon appeared to be hours away from a U.S.-brokered cease-fire on Tuesday, but Israeli politicians in both the coalition and opposition, as well as leaders of towns in northern Israel, are questioning whether the agreement will do enough to keep residents of the north safe.
The Israeli security cabinet is expected to vote on the potential agreement on Tuesday evening. The deal is meant to institute a 60-day cease-fire, based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War but was violated by Hezbollah within weeks.
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When anti-Israel activists at Columbia University disrupted an event last Thursday at the school’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life featuring Axios reporter Barak Ravid — calling out the Hillel’s Jewish benefactor Robert Kraft, for whom the building is named, by name and referring to Ravid, who is Israeli, as a “henchman of genocide” — the personal nature of the attacks caught the attention of antisemitism watchers.
“We are continuing to see more of Hillel — and even sometimes Chabad on Campus and big Jewish donors — being cited by name,” Shira Goodman, vice president of advocacy and national affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, told Jewish Insider.
JEROEN JUMELET/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
A bipartisan group of House lawmakers urged the Dutch prime minister last week to take prompt action in response to the string of recent antisemitic attacks and mob violence in Amsterdam that followed a soccer match more than two weeks ago.
In a new letter to Prime Minister Dick Schoof, the lawmakers requested information on “what concrete steps the [Dutch] government intends to take to protect Jewish people from further harm and to combat the rise of antisemitic rhetoric and violence,” demanding “immediate action” to protect Jews and to “send a clear message that such behavior will not and cannot be tolerated.”
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