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President Joe Biden accepted an invitation from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to visit Israel later this year, according to a White House readout of a call between the two leaders on Sunday.
The two also discussed regional challenges, including the Iranian threat and the situation between Russia and Ukraine.
The Austin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) announced it “will no longer be working on” the congressional campaign of Greg Casar in Texas’ 35th District and that Casar was pulling his request for an endorsement.
The move, announced Sunday night in a statement posted to the Austin DSA-run publication Red Fault, followed an article in Jewish Insider detailing Casar’s foreign policy positions, including his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and his support for military aid to Israel. The statement called the progressive candidate’s positions on Israel “not reconcilable with DSA’s stance in solidarity with Palestine” and said the decision followed discussions with Casar over his Israel-related policy positions.
The chapter, which had previously announced its backing of Casar, stopped short of pulling its endorsement on Sunday, noting that such a move would require a chapter-wide vote. A spokesperson for Casar did not respond to a request for comment. Read more here.
A new poll of Democratic voters in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District released last night and shared with JI shows Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Andy Levin (D-MI) in a dead heat, months after redistricting changed the congressional map, pitting the two against each other in one of the most closely watched member-on-member primaries in the country.
Rep. Claudia Tenney(R-NY) led eight GOP colleagues on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken calling for Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley to testify before the committee to update members on nuclear talks with Iran.
On Friday, President Joe Biden reversed some sanctions put on Iran by the Trump administration that will allow foreign companies to resume non-weapons nuclear energy work in Iran.
Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Michael McCaul (R-TX) condemned the administration’s move, saying in a statement, “I am deeply concerned these waivers show the administration is preparing to cut a nuclear deal with Iran that would be worse than the original JCPOA… Another bad deal is worse for our national security than no deal.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) denounced the waiver in a statement as “just one more step the Biden administration is taking toward reviving a weaker version of the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal” and promised “a sustained and aggressive response” from Congress.
fresh start
The story of Rodoba Noori’s harrowing evacuation from Afghanistan

Refugees who fled Afghanistan after the takeover of their country by the Taliban, gather at the International Humanitarian City (IHC) in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, as they wait to be transferred to another destination, on August 28, 2021.
For five months, Rodoba Noori, 20, an Afghan refugee from the town of Herat, has resided inside the stark, white-walled rooms of Emirates Humanitarian City (EHC) in Abu Dhabi, alongside nearly 12,000 other Afghan refugees, following the Taliban takeover of the country last August. Most are still in limbo awaiting answers to their entry status to the United States or to other countries. Some still don’t know where they will go. Noori is one of the few whose days of waiting will soon be over. She is on route to Canada, where she will join her mother, who also escaped, before continuing her studies at Bard College, a private liberal arts college in upstate New York, where she was recently admitted on a full scholarship, Rebecca Anne Proctor reports for The Circuit.
No choice: Noori’s harrowing evacuation from Herat in August and planned move to Canada are due to the efforts of IsraAID, an international non-governmental humanitarian aid organization based in Israel, and Noori’s friend Danna Harman, a former journalist, activist and now staff member at IsraAID. Noori’s story is one shared by thousands of refugees from Afghanistan whose lives have been completely uprooted. On Aug. 21, six days after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, faced with an uncertain life at the hands of the new government — particularly regarding the status of women — Noori felt she had no choice but to flee. The decision posed the risk of being killed, and the possibility of long-term separation from her family, but for Noori, her future depended on it.
Daring to dream: Noori studied medicine at Herat University. Her dream is to become a doctor — one spurred by her late father’s cerebrovascular disease. Noori’s mother told her that if she wanted to fulfill her dream, then she needed to leave. “After the Taliban came, all women had to stay in their homes; we could not leave without one man who was either a brother, husband, father or son,” she said. Noori said that, contrary to what the Taliban has told the media about the situation improving for women and girls in the group’s second takeover of the country, women’s rights have disappeared again. “They are telling lies,” she said. “Three months before [the] Taliban returned, we were free and now we are not. [The] Taliban even sent letters to my university threatening that if they opened the doors to the university, they would attack it with suicide attacks. No one has been able to return to school.”
Bus hopping: Noori recounts the terrifying journey out of Afghanistan with pain, compassion, sadness and, at times, even laughter. On Aug. 21, she and her brother boarded buses leaving for Kabul, a grueling, 24-hour journey. “I kept jumping from bus to bus because sometimes the Taliban would change their mind and not let a certain bus into the airport,” Noori recalled. “When one bus was told not to go, someone would call me to run and get another bus.” She and her brother spent nine days, from Aug. 22-30, jumping from bus to bus. They ate and slept on the buses. “We didn’t have money to buy good food, so we ate junk food.”
Close call: The Taliban put them in another bus in Kunduz City, telling them they were going to Tajikistan, but in fact the bus was heading back to Kabul. When Noori realized this, she called Harman to tell her. “Everyone on the bus was yelling and screaming not to go back to Kabul,” she remembered. The driver and a security man on the bus were both from the Taliban. Suddenly, the bus stopped in a deserted area and a Toyota Corolla arrived. “We thought maybe they brought us here to kill us, and everyone on the bus started crying,” recalls Noori. “But instead, they just wanted to send us off the bus. The passengers stayed at different homes nearby for several days until they finally managed to cross the border to Tajikistan by car. The IsraAID team had spoken to the Taliban and gotten permission for the group to cross.
Fruits of Abraham: The harrowing evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan via Tajikistan to the UAE is the first Israeli-Emirati joint humanitarian mission between the two countries, the fruit of the signing of the Abraham Accords in September 2020, which normalized relations between the two countries. “The UAE were particularly helpful and quickly approved this group because of the Israeli connection, which was very important for them,” Yotam Polizer, the CEO of IsraAID, told The Circuit. IsraAID had called numerous countries around the world seeking a home for the Afghans trying to flee, and the UAE was one of the only ones that would take in the refugees. “This is not a job most of us do for a living, but we all felt compelled to help,” Harman told The Circuit.