Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Jared Golden (D-ME) blasted a roster of progressive groups for their silence regarding the Iranian regime’s violent crackdown on recent protests, following the organizations’ outspoken criticisms of Israel over the past two years.

In a letter sent on Monday addressed to the League of Conservation Voters, Democratic Socialists of America, Sierra Club, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Jewish Voice for Peace, Queers for Liberation, Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats, the lawmakers said that “as the Iranian regime guns down peaceful protesters, tortures dissidents, and shuts off the internet to hide its crimes, your voices are unfortunately and conspicuously silent.”

They said the groups had “shown no hesitation in loudly and unequivocally condemning our democratic ally Israel, after terrorists brutally raped, burned alive, decapitated, and murdered more than 1,200 people, including dozens of Americans.”

They called for the groups to speak out against the Iranian regime, in alignment with their own professed principles.

“The Iranian government is violently repressing its own people for demanding basic freedom and dignity. Silence in the face of such clear oppression is a failure to uphold the principles you claim to defend,” the letter continued. “If you claim to stand against oppression, your outrage cannot be selective.”

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) will introduce a resolution this week affirming Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount, a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and demanding equal freedom of worship for all, Jewish Insider has learned.

The resolution, if adopted, would put the House of Representatives on record as affirming “the inalienable right of the Jewish people to full access [of] the Temple Mount and the right to pray and worship on the Temple Mount, consistent with the principles of religious freedom.” It also “reaffirms its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, as reaffirmed repeatedly in United States policy and law, which includes Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.”

The resolution describes the Temple Mount as “the holiest site in Judaism” and “a holy site for Christians and Muslims,” and makes note of the impediments faced by Jews and Christians in accessing the site that have restricted their prayer rights. 

“Israel upholds religious freedom for all by ensuring access to holy sites for people of all faiths, however, Jewish and Christian rights on the Temple Mount are severely restricted as compared to the rights of Muslims,” the resolution reads. 

The resolution points out that “Muslims can currently enter the Temple Mount from 11 different gates, but non-Muslims can only enter the Temple Mount from 1 gate,” and that “the hours of the lone non-Muslim gate is severely restricted compared to the Muslim gates.”

“Non-Muslims are not permitted access to the Temple Mount on Friday or Saturday, preventing Jews from observing Shabbat upon the Temple Mount,” it states. 

Many rabbinic authorities, including the Israeli chief rabbinate, posit that Jews should not ascend to or pray on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site and the former site of the First and Second Temples, because of ritual purity questions. 

The Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were built on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. Jews largely worship at the nearby Western Wall, which is the remaining portion of the barrier that once enclosed the Temple Mount.

Israel gained control of the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and allowed Muslim worship to continue on the holy site unimpeded. After Israel made peace with Jordan in 1994, the status quo was formalized, by which the Jordanian Islamic Trust determined religious use of the site. 

While Jewish visits to the Temple Mount came to a near-total halt during the Second Intifada in 2000-2005, in the past decade, it has grown increasingly popular among religious Zionist Israelis and other Israeli Jews to ascend the mount, with numbers reaching the tens of thousands each year. This has also included praying on the site, usually silently, despite police instructing otherwise. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always said that Israel will maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount, restricting Jewish prayer. However, in recent years, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has pushed for police to ignore any infractions, and he himself has prayed at the Temple Mount.

Over the past century, Arab and Palestinian leaders have used claims that Jews or Israel are trying to take over the Temple Mount to incite violence, from the 1929 Hebron Massacre to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, which Hamas named the Al-Aqsa Flood. 

The resolution states that the House of Representatives “supports the Government of Israel in its efforts to safeguard the rights of Muslim worshippers, and integrity of Islamic structures there, in accordance with Israel’s current policies.”

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) cosponsored the resolution, while the right-wing Zionist Organization of America and the Endowment for Middle East Truth endorsed it. 

A new bipartisan resolution introduced by Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Brad Sherman (D-CA) and 14 co-sponsors on Tuesday praises Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities and condemns Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on Israeli civilian targets.

The resolution marks a bipartisan show of support for the Israeli operation even as elements of the far left and far right are warning that the Israeli strikes risk dragging the U.S. into a regional or global war and run counter to American interests.

The resolution states that the House “stands with Israel as it takes targeted military actions to dismantle Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities and defend itself against the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran,” “recognizes that Israel’s preemptive and proportional strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites advance the United States’ vital national security interest in a nuclear free Iran” and “reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defense.”

The legislation further states that the House “stands ready to assist Israel with emergency resupply and other security, diplomatic, and intelligence support.”

It asserts that the war came “after exhausting all diplomatic avenues,” and describes the Israeli operation as “intelligence-driven preemptive strikes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and such capability explicitly designed to achieve the destruction of Israel and the United States,” which, the resolution states, has “achieved national security objectives without risking American lives.”

The resolution also condemns Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks against civilians in Israel” and its repression of its own citizens, and calls on Tehran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons and dismantle its nuclear program and urges other countries to support that goal.

The legislation accuses Iran of having “repeatedly rejected good-faith diplomatic efforts by the United and others to address its nuclear program” and of not negotiating “in good faith.”

The resolution is co-sponsored by Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Shri Thanedar (D-MI),Roger Aderholt (R-AL), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), Randy Feenstra (R-IA) and Tom Barrett (R-MI), and supported by FDD Action, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and the American Jewish Committee.

The resolution highlights that Iran had been increasing its enrichment activity, stockpiling enough highly enriched uranium for six nuclear weapons and blocking international inspections, among other steps that have brought it closer to a nuclear bomb.

It notes that the International Atomic Energy Agency recently censured Iran for violating its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments, and that Iran responded by further increasing its enrichment activities.

“This bipartisan resolution reaffirms the United States’ unwavering support for Israel’s right to self-defense and for its bold, courageous efforts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program once and for all,” Tenney said in a statement. “The U.S.-Israel partnership remains unshakable, and this resolution sends a clear and unified message: we will work together to ensure the Iranian regime is never able to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Sherman, in a statement, argued that Iran’s activities had made Israel’s strikes necessary.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has made clear time and time again its intent to ‘annihilate’ Israel and attack the United States and has funded direct military attacks on Israel and the United States for decades It’s regrettable that Iran’s decades of violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it signed has led us to a point where this is necessary,” Sherman said. “The only thing more dangerous than this war is an Ayatollah with access to nuclear weapons. Israel could not wait until Iran had a stockpile of nuclear weapons ready to be launched.” 

In a new letter to interim Harvard President Alan Garber sent on Monday, 28 Republican House members, led by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-MI) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), said that the Harvard antisemitism task force’s recent preliminary recommendations on responding to campus antisemitism don’t go nearly far enough to address the situation on the campus.

The lawmakers said they have “serious concerns regarding the inadequacy” of the recommendations, which are “weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive” than those presented by a previous task force in December 2023. Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni have said they’re disappointed by the recommendations, released in late June.

“Instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals, and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays,” the letter reads.

It calls the recommendations “particularly alarming given that Harvard’s leaders had already received a strong, detailed, and comprehensive set of recommendations” from the previous task force, arguing that the current group should have built on that framework.

The lawmakers said that Garber needs to “publicly address” criticisms of the task force from Jewish community members, adopt and begin to implement the recommendations from both task forces before the next semester and sever Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University in the West Bank, whose student government and administration have expressed support for Hamas.

The letter states that the task force was correct to support disciplinary action and condemnation in response to the “serious problem with antisemitism” on Harvard’s campus but did not “offer real solutions for doing so.” It also accuses the task force of giving “insufficient attention” to Harvard’s “failures in imposing discipline for antisemitic misconduct.”

The lawmakers said that the task force “left numerous other significant issues wholly unaddressed,” such as academic programs that have seen significant issues with anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment, student groups’ violations of Harvard rules, failures by Harvard’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging office to address antisemitism, falling Jewish enrollment, a lack of viewpoint diversity among faculty on the Middle East, masked protests and possible foreign influence.

They further said that the university “has a consistent practice of balancing statements and efforts regarding antisemitism with similar ones regarding Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.”

“While hatred and discrimination against Muslims and Arabs is deplorable and must be addressed, there is simply no comparison between the explosion of pervasive antisemitism on Harvard’s campus and instances of Islamophobia or anti-Arab bias,” the Republicans continued. “These constant attempts at balancing serve to trivialize antisemitism and distract from the urgency and severity of the problem.”

Other signatories to the letter include Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Jim Banks (R-IN), Aaron Bean (R-FL), Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Anthony D’Esposito (D-NY), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Russell Fry (R-SC), Lance Gooden (R-TX), Michael Guest (R-MS), Erin Houchin (R-IN), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Nick LaLota (R-NY), Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Mariannete Miller-Meeks (R-IA), Burgess Owens (R-UT), Keith Self (R-TX), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Jason Smith (R-MO), Lloyd Smucker (R-PA), Michelle Steel (R-CA), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), Randy Weber (R-TX) and Rudy Yakym (R-IN).