The Heritage Foundation announced the hiring of Will Ruger, a leading critic of U.S. military engagement who served as a key deputy to former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, as a distinguished fellow. 

The conservative think tank announced on Monday that Ruger’s new role “will contribute to policy work, bringing the perspective of a scholar-practitioner” to the Heritage team. 

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren and Foundation for Defense of Democracies executive director Jonathan Schanzer squared off Monday evening in New York over whether Israel would be better off weaning itself from U.S. military aid.

Oren argued that Jerusalem should shift toward a strategic partnership before political winds in Washington dictate more unfavorable terms, while Schanzer warned that abandoning the arrangement mid-war could leave Israel exposed.

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said in an interview released Monday that Israel is not a friend or ally of the United States, escalating comments he’s made repeatedly this month characterizing Israel as a threat comparable to Iran.

“I don’t think an ally who uses you as a shield in war is actually an ally,” El-Sayed said in an ABC News interview. “And I think the broader part of the American public agrees with me on that. … An ally that takes your money to put you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally.”

A Jewish high school student in a Washington, D.C., suburb faced a campaign of antisemitic harassment at school, culminating in an anonymous phone call threatening to bomb him followed by fireworks set off outside his home, according to a new federal civil rights complaint accusing Montgomery County Public Schools of failing to protect him from antisemitic harassment.

The Title VI complaint, filed on Monday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleges that the threats and subsequent harassment left the student afraid for his physical safety, causing him to miss class. It asks the federal agency to investigate the district and require reforms, including staff training, revised procedures for handling antisemitism complaints and the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in district policies and training.

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said Tuesday that it is “not America’s job” to resolve the threats posed by Iranian-backed terror groups and militias across the Middle East, arguing that regional governments must take greater responsibility for their own security rather than relying on U.S. military intervention.

Speaking with Al Jazeera diplomatic editor James Bays at the Global Security Forum in Doha, Qatar, Barrack said the “answer” to Yemen’s struggle with the Houthis, Lebanon’s attempt to demilitarize Hezbollah and Iraq’s battle with Iran-funded militias “has to be that there becomes no purpose for those militias or those intermediaries, that the state or the nation state or the regime itself takes responsibility. So there’s no function for those militias. That’s not America’s job.”

American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) will hold 250 menorah lightings in all 50 states during Chanukah this year as part of a new initiative aimed at countering the “real darkness” of rising antisemitism and highlighting the Jewish community’s deep roots in American history shortly after the 250th birthday of the United States. 

“Even in times when we see real darkness, we should do what Jews ultimately need to do, which is to counter it with light,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Chabad’s executive vice president, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Sunday. “An increased light dispels darkness more than any other method is what we have seen.”

Three Jewish politicos from New York’s Capital Region — all women, and all Democrats — have launched a new state-level committee dedicated to supporting candidates with liberal social views who also push back on anti-Jewish and anti-Israel forces.

Aleinu-NY PAC, named for the Jewish prayer that translates to “on us,” registered with the New York Board of Elections in late September and officially launched its website last week. It describes itself as “a new nonpartisan political action committee in NYS established to support candidates who stand up against Antisemitism and the scourge in violence against the Jewish community throughout New York.”

Congress could renew its efforts to restrict U.S. weapons transfers to Israel, impose sanctions on Israeli officials and increase scrutiny of Trump administration policy in the Middle East if Democrats win control of Congress in the midterm elections, two Democratic foreign policy veterans said Monday, as they argued that declining support for Israel and shifting political attitudes are reshaping the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Marie Harf, a former State Department spokesperson and current executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, offered their assessments during a discussion titled “Israel, Iran and the Midterms: A Discussion on the Middle East and the 2026 Election,” hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization.