Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington in early February 2025 with a pitch for President Donald Trump: to join Israel in a future campaign to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump did not agree at the time, though he eventually came around to the idea.

Two powerful White House figures were particularly skeptical of Netanyahu’s message. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists announced it will conduct a review of its database of members of the media killed during the Israel-Hamas war, after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published obituaries that identified individuals CPJ listed as journalists as members of the terrorist groups.

“CPJ has always been clear that we do not include anyone in our data sets if there is evidence that they were engaging in combat or inciting imminent violence,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “This is consistent with international humanitarian law, which considers journalists affiliated with non-state actors to be civilians, provided they do not directly participate in hostilities.”

Yair Rosenberg, a longtime journalist and commentator on American Jewry, is joining The New York Times as a reporter covering Jewish American life, the Times announced on Monday. 

Rosenberg joins the Times following 15 years covering Jewish life, antisemitism and the intersection of politics and religion, including writing for Tablet Magazine and authoring The Atlantic’s Deep Shtetl newsletter since 2021. 

President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that the U.S. and Iran will meet in Qatar on Tuesday to continue negotiations, as both nations attempt to step back from a weekend exchange of military strikes that threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire agreement.

“IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING. IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

As tensions run high in the Gulf following exchanges of fire between the U.S. and Iran over the weekend, a vastly different security situation is taking shape in Lebanon, with the Trump administration’s top officials — Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — taking responsibility for the respective outcomes.

Vance, who led last week’s negotiations with Iran in Switzerland, said upon his departure from the talks that a “good foundation” had been established between the countries. But that foundation displayed its first cracks just three days later, when Iranian drones fired on a commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the U.S. to strike Iranian military infrastructure.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, now says he plans to support efforts to strip a provision on U.S.-Israel cooperation from the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, after arguing strenuously against similar efforts during the committee’s markup of the same bill weeks ago.

The provision, based on the FUTURES Act, is relatively routine, creating a single official to oversee all U.S.-Israel cooperative programs in developing and acquiring defense technologies, and builds on existing programs. But critics have falsely claimed the provision would irrevocably link the U.S. and Israeli militaries and undermine American sovereignty.

Historian and prominent neoconservative foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan claimed the U.S. was “never supporting Israel for strategic reasons” and that American strategy in the Middle East has come “to be about defending the interests of Israel,” during a live taping on Friday of “The Long Game” podcast — hosted by former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer — at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

Finer, who served as principal deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration and also worked with Sullivan under President Barack Obama, asked Kagan if he believes Israel is still a democracy and if Israel is still a U.S. ally, “given [their] increasingly divergent interests.”

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee are warning that an effort by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to cut aid to Israel from the State Department’s annual funding bill could have further-reaching consequences than intended and impact a range of other programs and issues, Jewish Insider has learned.

Those concerns come amid reports of an outpouring of agita among House Democrats about how to approach the amendment — a reflection of how far debate among Democrats over aid to Israel has shifted.