In a series of social media posts, Vice President JD Vance linked data finding increased antisemitism among young people on both sides of the aisle to immigration, and said that there is a difference between “not liking Israel” and being antisemitic.

Responding to excerpts from an Atlantic story highlighting the increase in antisemitic attitudes among young people, Vance said, “Mainstream journalism is just profoundly uninteresting and lame, consumed by its own pieties.”

During a Friday sermon at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid — one of the nine imams of the mosque — urged Muslims to view Palestinian children as role models in the face of what he described as an “oppressive and brutal Zionist enemy.”

“Among the most joyful examples and noble images are the young children of Palestine,” said bin Humaid. “Heroic children whose fathers were killed while they watched and whose homes were demolished while they witnessed. Jerusalem and Palestine will remain high and lofty in the hearts of Arabs and Muslims.”

A senior State Department official and two GOP members of Congress met Friday with members of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has long faced accusations of extremism and pro-Nazi sympathies.

The State Department meeting is in line with the recently released National Security Strategy, which stated that it would be U.S. policy to boost anti-European Union and anti-immigration parties in the European Union.

President Donald Trump and senior U.S. officials took a moment during the start of Hanukkah to reflect on the deadly antisemitic terrorist attack over the weekend at a holiday celebration in Sydney, Australia. 

The attack, which occurred Sunday when two gunmen opened fire at a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, killed at least 15 people, including a Holocaust survivor. Over 40 others were injured.

Federal authorities foiled an alleged terror plot by an anti-Israel, anti-American extremist group, officials announced on Monday. The group — the Turtle Island Liberation Front — appears to also be one of the organizers of an anti-Israel protest that targeted a Los Angeles synagogue this month. 

Four members of TILF were arrested over the weekend in the Mojave Desert, where they had allegedly gathered to attempt to construct improvised explosive devices. According to Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, they planned to set off the pipe bombs in a coordinated attack at midnight on New Year’s Eve targeting U.S. companies in Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif. 

For the Jews of Sydney, Australia, the horror that unfolded on the popular Bondi Beach during a Hanukkah celebration was a shock, but not a surprise.

Nor was it a surprise for much of the global Jewish community, which, while always on alert and monitoring threats, scales up its efforts around holidays — a task even more critical in the wake of antisemitic terror attacks earlier this year on Passover and Yom Kippur. 

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) said on Friday that there is a concerted network, on both the right and left, pushing antisemitic and anti-Israel ideology to the point that it has become “pervasive,” particularly among younger people.

Speaking at a Hudson Institute conference on antisemitism, Mast, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he does not have a “silver bullet” to address the problem because of how widespread it has become. He recounted a recent speech in a class at a military academy where he saw “probably a 50/50 divide about why we have this [U.S.-Israel] relationship, what is the benefit of this relationship?”

U.S. officials and lawmakers across the political spectrum are condemning the terrorist attack at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration Sunday outside Sydney, Australia, tying the murder of 15 attendees to the rise of antisemitism across the world. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the United States “strongly condemns” the attack and that “antisemitism has no place in this world.”