President Donald Trump on Friday night publicly disavowed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), once one of the president’s closest and most committed allies on Capitol Hill, saying he was withdrawing his endorsement of Greene and is prepared to support a primary challenger to the far-right Georgia congresswoman.

Greene, long dogged by controversy for her record of promoting antisemitic and otherwise fringe conspiracy theories, has emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of Israel on the right, accusing the country of genocide and leading efforts attempting to cut off U.S. aid to the Jewish state.

She has also repeatedly publicly criticized Trump’s policies and Republican leadership on Capitol Hill since the start of the government shutdown, earning Trump’s ire. Her breaks with the GOP have made her into a budding star in liberal media circles, where her ongoing promotion of conspiracy theories has increasingly been overlooked.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he has heard that “wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie” and that “if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support,” accusing her of having “gone Far Left.”

Greene’s district is among the most heavily Republican in the country, and losing Trump’s support could prove a significant blow to the congresswoman.

“All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote, adding that Greene’s criticism began after he showed her statewide polling that placed her at just 12% support and discouraged her from running for Senate or governor, both positions Greene had been eyeing.

According to NOTUS, Greene is discussing a presidential run in 2028, though she denied that to the publication.

“[Greene] has told many people that she is upset that I don’t return her phone calls anymore, but with 219 Congressmen/women, 53 U.S. Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Counties, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day,” Trump continued in his post.

He later called Greene a “Traitor” and a “disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!”

Greene responded on X, saying Trump had lied to her and claiming that two recent text messages about files related to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had “sent him over the edge,” saying it is “astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out.”

Greene is one of a small number of Republicans cosponsoring a measure to force a vote, over Republicans’ objections on files related to Epstein. Trump, an associate of Epstein, has sought to prevent the full release of those files, calling the push for further disclosure “the Epstein hoax.”

“Most Americans wish he would fight this hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with foreign wars and foreign causes, are going broke trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream,” Greene said. “I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him. But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”

In a subsequent post, Greene shared a graphic showing she has not received support from pro-Israel groups alongside another graphic comparing her “Liberty Score” to that of Trump-backed pro-Israel Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). In the post, she wrote: “This and the Epstein files is why I’m being attacked by President Trump. It really makes you wonder what is in those files and who and what country is putting so much pressure on him?”

She also claimed that Trump’s posts are driving a wave of security threats against her.

Trump has also worked to defeat Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), another of the most vocal anti-Israel Republicans The president has endorsed retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who is challenging Massie in the GOP primary. 

On Friday, Trump called Massie a “LOSER!” in a separate Truth Social post, claiming that “the Polls have him at less than an 8% chance of winning the Election” and mocked his recent remarriage.

President Donald Trump is slated to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday in a meeting that experts told Jewish Insider is expected to move forward a U.S.-Saudi defense pact and sale of F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom — yet normalization with Israel, once tied to the prospect of such deals, remains elusive. 

U.S. and Saudi officials have been holding intense negotiations to finalize a defense agreement ahead of the visit, according to reports. Since an Iranian attack on Saudi oil refineries in 2019, Riyadh has sought to formalize American security guarantees, according to Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“Saudi Arabia is an important American security partner,” said Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The United States and Saudi Arabia have been working toward a regional security architecture for years.”

The agreement is expected to be modeled after the assurances Trump gave to Qatar in a September executive order, which stated that the U.S. will regard “any armed attack” on Qatar “as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.” 

“Having for better or worse made the commitment to Qatar, it seems to me unfathomable that the administration wouldn’t offer at least the same commitment to Saudi Arabia and probably to other traditional Gulf partners like the UAE who over the years have often been more steadfast and reliable allies in their support for U.S. regional and global objectives,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

Al-Omari said such guarantees help to solidify American leadership in the Middle East and “serve to limit Chinese influence in the region.” 

“It is almost certain that Saudi Arabia will get defense guarantees in this visit,” said Al-Omari. “Providing such guarantees is the correct policy. The security of Saudi Arabia is an American interest, and is key to deter Iran and its proxies from destabilizing the Kingdom. It also sends a clear message that the U.S. remains committed to its Middle East allies.”

Should the defense agreement be formalized as an executive order, like with the Qatar deal, it will need to be enforced by the next president to remain effective. Bowman argued that any serious agreement should instead go through the appropriate process even if it takes time.

“[The security deal] is essentially a treaty that should go through the U.S. Senate,” said Bowman. “That’s not going to be quick, but if we really believe what we’re saying about the value of Saudi Arabia as a security partner … then why not take the time and build consensus and explain that to the American people and their representatives on Capitol Hill and make the case?”

Hannah said that a more formal defense pact is also in Saudi Arabia’s best interest. 

“The problem for the Saudis is that until recently, they were holding out for an actual Senate-approved defense treaty that would have made the U.S. commitment to the Kingdom’s future wellbeing a bipartisan and permanent feature of the American foreign policy landscape rather than the temporary pledge of a polarizing, mercurial, and increasingly unpopular president who will be gone in three years time,” said Hannah. “That’s a pretty public climb down and trimming of ambitions from the kind of history-making agreement and lasting transformation of U.S.-Saudi ties that MBS has been insisting that he needed for the past three years.”

“It is likely that an announcement about the F-35s will be made,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “However, turning such an announcement into reality will have to contend with a number of challenges — whether the legal requirement to maintain Israel’s [qualitative military edge is met], or other congressional processes required to finalize such a deal.”

Riyadh is also reportedly seeking to purchase a weapons package from the U.S. that would include F-35 fighter jets. If agreed upon, Saudi Arabia would become the first nation in the Middle East other than Israel to procure it. 

The Trump administration has been open to such a deal this year, but questions still remain regarding the impact such an agreement might have, including on Israel’s qualitative military edge, which the U.S. is bound by law to uphold.

“It is likely that an announcement about the F-35s will be made,” said Al-Omari. “However, turning such an announcement into reality will have to contend with a number of challenges — whether the legal requirement to maintain Israel’s [qualitative military edge is met], or other congressional processes required to finalize such a deal.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said in an interview published on Thursday by The Jerusalem Post that Israel “prefer[s] that Turkey not receive F-35 [fighter jet]s from the U.S.” but said that “there’s no indication that Israel’s qualitative edge will be compromised” if Saudi Arabia were to acquire them.

The potential F-35 deal has also prompted concern on the risks of transferring sensitive technology to Riyadh while it cooperates militarily with China, a key U.S. adversary. 

“Guess what the Saudi military forces did last month? Last month, Saudi naval forces conducted a military exercise with China,” said Bowman. “That’s not a good look for a country. That’s not going to sit well with a lot of folks on Capitol Hill.” 

Bowman said that in the past, Saudi Arabia has suggested they would turn to Beijing if they couldn’t get “what they wanted” militarily from the U.S. 

Should the Trump administration formally approve the sale, it is required by law to be submitted to Congress where there is first a non-statutory, but normally respected, review process that involves leaders of the two foreign relations committees. However, it is highly unlikely for the sale to be stopped even if lawmakers disapprove, once the administration decides to formally submit the sale to Congress.

“The law provides a mechanism for Congress to try to stop an arms sale up to the point of delivery, but that requires both chambers to pass joint resolutions of disapproval and then overcome a prospective presidential veto,” said Bowman. “The Congressional Research Service noted last year that Congress has never blocked a proposed arms sale this way.”

While the Biden administration had tied such security deals to progress on normalization, Al-Omari said that the Trump White House has “abandoned this approach.”

“I think it would be folly not to insist that the ultimate integration of these planes into the Saudi order of battle be tied to normalization and a more fundamental and permanent transformation in Saudi-Israel relations and the regional security landscape,” said Hannah. 

Bowman agreed, “The F-35, to me, provides valuable leverage in getting Riyadh to recognize the world’s only majority Jewish state. Forfeiting that leverage would be unwise. I can’t imagine giving our nation’s most advanced fighter jet to a country that refuses to normalize relations with our best ally in the Middle East.” 

While experts believe Trump is unlikely to push normalization in the upcoming meeting, they say it is still something the Trump administration is pursuing. 

“The price for MBS clearly has gone up after two years of devastation in Gaza — and more important, two years of non-stop 24/7 coverage in Arab media of Palestinian suffering and carnage,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “MBS knows how significant his entry into the Middle East peace club will be for regional and global politics and he seems set on delivering something significant in exchange.” 

“President Trump is still committed to pushing forward Saudi-Israeli normalization,” said Al-Omari. “Yet he is also aware that the gap between the two countries at the moment is too wide to bridge.” 

Saudi officials have said they require an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution as a prerequisite to normalizing ties. Hannah said that he does not expect progress towards normalization during the trip, also adding that in the wake of the war in Gaza, Riyadh may be looking to gain more concessions before formally entering a peace agreement.

“The price for MBS clearly has gone up after two years of devastation in Gaza — and more important, two years of non-stop 24/7 coverage in Arab media of Palestinian suffering and carnage. MBS knows how significant his entry into the Middle East peace club will be for regional and global politics and he seems set on delivering something significant in exchange.” 

“I wouldn’t rule out that Trump might be willing during the visit to show greater openness and even U.S. support for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state along lines articulated by [MBS] in an effort to inch him along a little faster on normalization,” Hannah added. “Trump’s pressure and powers of persuasion, and his ability to offer other economic and military incentives to [MBS], also might help temper the crown prince’s demands and ambitions at the margins if the side payments are significant enough.”

Still, Al-Omari believes there are other ways the Trump administration could utilize the upcoming meeting to gain progress towards this goal.

“Instead, the U.S. should explore areas of economic cooperation between the two countries,” said Al-Omari. “That may fall short of full normalization, but would lay the groundwork for future progress.”

Beware the law of unintended consequences: President Donald Trump’s zeal to aggressively redraw maps in GOP-friendly states is looking like it will bring less of a political advantage to Republicans than originally expected.  

Indeed, if the overall political environment remains in the Democrats’ favor — which would be consistent with the historical precedent of the opposition party gaining seats in the first midterm election of a new president — the House is likely to flip back to the Democrats’ control in 2027.

Here’s the lowdown: California’s referendum on redistricting, which passed overwhelmingly on Election Day, will allow Democrats to gain as many as five seats with a new, more-partisan map — with three Republican-held seats (of GOP Reps. Doug LaMalfa, Kevin Kiley and Ken Calvert) all but guaranteed to flip.

That should offset the expected GOP gains in Texas, which started the whole redistricting gamesmanship off with a partisan redraw that guarantees Republicans to pick up at least three Democratic-held seats, with the hope that Republicans can win two additional seats that became more favorable to them.

But there’s a catch with the Texas map. Two of the redrawn districts — the seats of Democratic Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar — are in predominantly Hispanic areas along the U.S.-Mexico border that swung dramatically to Trump in 2024, but had a long tradition of voting Democratic before then. If Democrats rebound with Hispanic voters — as happened in New Jersey and Virginia on Election Day — and the national environment remains rough for Republicans, it’s not hard to see the two Democratic incumbents hanging on.

Adding another wrinkle to the GOP’s redistricting plans: A Utah judge rejected the preferred map drawn by Republican state lawmakers, and selected a new map that would guarantee a Democratic district in Salt Lake City. That would automatically flip one seat to the Democrats, given that the state’s current delegation is made up of four Republicans, all in solidly Republican districts. 

Republicans managed to secure an additional seat for their party in Missouri — eliminating the solidly Democratic Kansas City-area seat of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), but that’s about it when it comes to automatic pickups.

The GOP’s partisan redraw in North Carolina means they will be favored to win Rep. Don Davis’ (D-NC) seat, but it’s not a fait accompli. And new lines in Ohio give Republicans a better shot to unseat Reps. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Greg Landsman (D-OH) but those Democratic lawmakers will still have a good chance to win reelection.

As the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman put it, Republicans would only gain between 0-1 seats as the maps stand now, with Florida, Indiana and Virginia the remaining wild cards. 

In theory, Republicans could squeeze several additional seats in Florida, but like in Texas, would risk making some Republicans more vulnerable in an overly aggressive gerrymander. Meanwhile, if partisans overcome logistical hurdles in GOP-controlled Indiana and Democratic-controlled Virginia to gain seats, they would balance each other out.

All told, Republicans look like they won’t gain more than several seats in a realistic redistricting scenario — which is far from the insurance they’d need to sustain a tough midterm election performance. 

Right now, Democrats only need to flip three seats to win back the House majority. Redistricting won’t be enough for Republicans to hold the line if there’s even a mild headwind at the Democrats’ back next year. 

Israeli diplomats and experts have expressed concern as the U.S. seeks a two-year United Nations Security Council mandate for an international stabilization force in Gaza.

The force is part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to in September. However, the broad plan did not provide details on most of its points and did not mention a U.N. mandate.

Historically, Israel has had mixed experiences with such U.N. forces, ranging from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force along the 1973 ceasefire line between Israel and Syria — which countries abandoned amid the Syrian Civil War and was then replaced by fewer troops — to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which, for decades “obscure[d] the vast scale of Hezbollah’s extensive weapons build up … in violation of the relevant UNSC resolutions,” Sarit Zehavi, an expert in Israel’s northern border security, recently wrote. 

The Multinational Force in the Sinai Peninsula, established to ensure the implementation of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, has been in place since 1981 with little controversy. The force does not have a U.N. mandate, because the Soviet Union vetoed it, and comprises troops from 14 countries, including 465 American servicemen and women known as “Task Force Sinai.”

Despite the efforts to attain a UNSC mandate, the current draft resolution circulated by the U.S. would have the Trump-led “Board of Peace” command the force, not the U.N. However, the mandate was a condition of Indonesia and other countries considering sending troops to Gaza. 

The resolution states that the force would work with Israel and Egypt on the demilitarization of Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas and other terrorist groups. In addition, it would train a new Palestinian police force in Gaza.

Jordan’s King Abdullah expressed support for a more limited mandate in an interview with the BBC last week, while also saying his country would not send troops: “We hope that it is peacekeeping, because if it’s peace enforcing, nobody will want to touch that. Peacekeeping is that you’re sitting there supporting the local police force, the Palestinians, which Jordan and Egypt are willing to train in large numbers, but that takes time. If we’re running around Gaza on patrol with weapons, that’s not a situation that any country would like to get involved in.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said that the resolution is in the spirit of Trump’s plan for Gaza, which Israel supports. Still, he said, Jerusalem will monitor talks among UNSC members to ensure it stays in line with the plan.

Israel “would like to see the involvement of other countries in the region, especially of those capable of dealing with the disarmament of Hamas, but we must ensure we don’t create an ineffective mechanism like UNIFIL,” Danon said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“You want something constructive and effective, not an international presence that looks good on paper but actually destabilizes the situation.” 

Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad Counter-Terror Division and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told Jewish Insider on the sidelines of a conference on Trump’s 20-point plan on Wednesday that a U.N. peacekeeping force is destined to fail.

“There is no chance for a U.N. force to bring order to Gaza. If I had to rank which forces would go in, I would put them in last place. … They’d be like Tel Aviv traffic cops giving out tickets, and that’s it. No one from U.N. forces will endanger his life to bring order to Gaza,” Ailam said. 

Zehavi, the founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center, specializing in Israel’s northern border security, highlighted the difference between an “international force with a command center in Kiryat Gat under the Americans,” and a U.N. peacekeeping force.

“A U.N. force is a totally different event, a mistake. It will not lead to anything good, and it won’t happen,” she told JI.

Ailam argued that an international force under U.S. supervision, as described in the Trump plan, can only work “with Israeli intervention capability” to stop terrorism from rising again in Gaza, he added. 

In addition, Ailam said a coordination mechanism would have to be put in place to avoid friendly fire incidents between Israel and the international force.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Assaf Orion, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and the former leader of the IDF team in talks with UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces, noted to JI that “there are a a lot of factors influencing whether a force succeeds or fails, including its mandate, missions, authority, makeup … area of action, relations with the sovereign in the territory and power centers, and more.”

“Currently, everything is being put together, and there will be challenges in the UNSC, for example Russia and China’s stances,” Orion added.

Israel’s priorities are that “the force will not prevent it from stopping terror and demilitarization, and that the failed model of UNIFIL will return,” he said.

Ailam emphasized that this is the beginning of a yearslong effort to stabilize Gaza and remove it from terrorist control, which will require important steps included in the Trump plan other than the international force, including disarmament and dismantling weapons, and deradicalization, with an emphasis on changing school curricula.

“We are now at a very critical stage in the coming weeks that, to a great extent, will shape the future of what is going to happen here,” he said. “We’re not going to have Switzerland at the end, but we may be in a process that will lead to a better [place].”

“We can’t change the jihadi worldview, but we can change their capacity to put their ideas into action,” Ailam added.

President Donald Trump indicated that he expects Syria to join the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State during his meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on Monday at the White House. 

“Yes, you can expect an announcement on Syria,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to see Syria become a country that’s very successful. And I think this leader can do it. I really do.”

By joining the agreement, Syria would follow 89 countries that have committed to the pact’s goal of “eliminating the threat posed by ISIS.” The group was established in 2014 as part of a response to territorial gains made by the Islamic State after the collapse of Iraqi security forces in Mosul.

Following the fall of Syria’s longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad last December, al-Sharaa has sought to establish control over the war-ravaged nation and assert the authority of his new transitional government. However, the emergence of ISIS cells that have regrouped across Syria over the past few years pose a threat to this task. 

In 2025, ISIS has grown into a “small, flexible network” that seeks to establish a presence in eastern Syria, according to the Middle East Institute (MEI). An MEI report indicated that local security forces estimate there are between 2,500 and 3,000 active ISIS fighters in the country, calling the group the “most dangerous post-war security challenge” for al-Sharaa’s government.

Reports have indicated that ISIS is aiming to reactivate cells and amp up recruitment efforts in Syria through prisons and displacement camps.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said that by joining the coalition, al-Sharaa’s forces can work “hand in hand under U.S. direction to systematically crush ISIS across the country and take full responsibility for the massive detention camps at places like Al Hol [refugee camp].”

Al-Sharaa’s efforts to join the coalition show a commitment by Damascus to ensure ISIS does not pose a further threat to stability and marks a significant step in the changing relationship between the U.S. and Syria. 

“It’s obviously an important step,” said Hannah. “What’s intriguing in this case, however, is that al-Sharaa, the one-time fanboy of former ISIS leader Abu Omar Al Baghdadi and Al-Qaida franchise commander, is joining an anti-jihadist posse led and directed by the United States — the poster-child of the decadent, colonial and infidel West that also happens to be the primary patron of the world’s only Jewish state. That kind of sweeping ideological reversal is just not something you see every day. It certainly merits notice and should be welcomed.”

Ahmad Sharawai, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it would be a “significant milestone” should Syria join the anti-ISIS coalition and help Damascus’ new government “domestically and internationally.” 

“Externally, such a move would align Syria with the U.S.-led bloc in the region and help end its international isolation by presenting it as a credible counterterrorism partner,” said Sharawi. “Over the past year, we’ve already seen indications of this alignment, with reports of Syrian forces assisting coalition operations. A formal decision to join would only reinforce this new trajectory.” 

In 2019, the coalition was able to eliminate ISIS’ quasi-state in Syria with help from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — Washington’s main counterterrorism partner in the country since 2015. By signaling an openness to enter the coalition, experts told Jewish Insider that al-Sharaa’s government is hoping to position itself as the primary partner to counter ISIS rather than the SDF. 

“The new Syrian government has consistently demanded the SDF’s integration into national forces but has faced U.S. resistance that preserved the SDF’s leverage,” said Sharawi. “By entering the coalition, Damascus can argue that it, and not the SDF, would serve as Washington’s sole counterterrorism partner, thereby diminishing the SDF’s bargaining power in integration talks.”

Al-Sharaa has cooperated with the U.S. against the terrorist group for nearly a decade, sharing intelligence with officials regarding the whereabouts of key ISIS and Al-Qaida leaders, according to experts. 

“[Al-Sharaa] has had a long history of throwing former jihadist allies under the bus whenever they’ve gotten in the way of his own single-minded focus on acquiring and holding onto power to build his vision of a new Sunni-dominated Syria,” said Hannah. “He’s been cooperating with CENTCOM on anti-ISIS missions under the radar for some time, quietly allowing it to do the dirty work of bumping off those who might serve as an alternative magnet for disgruntled Sunnis, former jihadists and foreign fighters who form the backbone of al-Sharaa’s support.”

But despite this, some have expressed concerns stemming from al-Sharaa’s past connection to Al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, which he broke from in 2016 and rebranded to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Al-Sharaa formerly had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head due to these past ties. 

“People said he’s had a rough past,” said Trump at the Oval Office meeting. “We all have rough pasts, but he has had a rough past. And I think, frankly, if you didn’t have a rough past, you wouldn’t have a chance.”

The move for now remains largely symbolic, with the exact terms of Syria’s role in the coalition likely to formalize “eventually,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Syria’s ambassador to the U.N., Ibrahim Olabi, said the meeting between Trump and al-Sharaa also addressed a potential security agreement between Syria and Israel, something Washington has worked on mediating this year. 

Trump has worked throughout his second term to integrate Syria’s new government into the international order; temporarily lifting U.S. all sanctions in May and again on Monday, easing export controls in August and removing al-Sharaa from a terrorist watchlist in November. 

The White House is seeking the help of Congress to take another step, arguing for the complete removal of the Caesar Act sanctions, which Trump can only temporarily suspend, named after an Assad government whistleblower and enacted in 2019 in order to financially suffocate the former regime. With al-Sharaa’s government now in power, the sanctions are seen by some as a roadblock towards further normalization and investment in Syria’s rebuilding. 

The Senate has moved to repeal the law as part of its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, but the House version does not have the same provision. Some lawmakers are holding out, saying that al-Sharaa must take steps to protect religious minorities and improve relations with Israel. 

But others argue that the lack of investment due to the sanctions remaining in place could stymie the fledgling government and potentially allow for a further ISIS resurgence, according to the Middle East Institute.  

Hannah said this moment may be the “tipping point” in getting the sanctions removed, adding that it is al-Sharaa’s “highest priority.” 

“[Joining the anti-ISIS coalition] offers President al-Sharaa an avenue to strengthen his case for further U.S. support on sanctions relief and delisting efforts,” said Sharawi. “Syria remains designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, a status it has held since 1979, and participation in the coalition could give Washington the political cover to reconsider that designation.”

Kazakhstan, which has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, will join the Abraham Accords, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.

The announcement, made during Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to the White House, came shortly before a planned visit to Washington by Syrian President Ahmad a-Sharaa on Monday, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Nov. 18. 

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he had held a call between Tokayev and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that he will “soon announce a Signing Ceremony to make it official, and there are many more Countries trying to join this club of STRENGTH.” The Kazakh Embassy in Washington characterized the meeting as a discussion of “strengthening the Enhanced Strategic Partnership” between the countries. As of Friday morning Israel had not issued any official statement on the announcement.

The Trump administration has sought to bring Riyadh into the Abraham Accords and normalize relations with Israel since the Accords were announced in 2020, and has been negotiating an agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem, which reportedly may fall short of full diplomatic relations.

A Trump administration official told Axios that bringing Kazakhstan into the Abraham Accords is meant “as a first step in repairing Israel’s standing in the Arab and Muslim world” and that the White House wants to build momentum ahead of MBS’ visit. 

Israel and Kazakhstan, a Muslim-majority country, have had diplomatic relations for 33 years, in contrast to the countries that previously joined the Abraham Accords — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco — which had not had open diplomatic relations with Israel. The accords marked a positive shift in Israel’s stature in the Middle East, and the relations have endured through the two-year war in Gaza.

Since Trump’s return to office, his administration has sought to expand the Abraham Accords with an eye on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. 

But they have also pushed Muslim-majority countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which already have ties with Israel, to join the accords. Earlier this year, Farid Shafiyev, chairman of the Azerbaijan government-backed think tank the Center for Analysis of International Relations, told Jewish Insider that his country was “way ahead” of the Abraham Accords with its decades-long close relations with Israel, and dismissed American requests for Baku to join as “a bit of media buzz, but that’s it.”

As for Kazakhstan’s motivation, the central Asian nation has long lobbied Washington to cancel a Cold War-era law that has hindered its access to American markets, and could benefit from currying favor with the Trump administration.

For over a decade, Kazakhstan has lobbied to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which required the U.S. to downgrade trade with non-market economies — at the time, the Soviet bloc — that restricted emigration and other human rights. The amendment was intended to penalize the Soviet Union for not allowing Soviet Jews to leave.

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which normalized trade relations between the U.S. and Russia and Moldova. However, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment continued to apply to Kazakhstan and other former Soviet republics, which have to receive an annual waiver in order to have normal trade ties with the U.S.

As far back as 2013, Kazakhstan’s Jewish community has worked with the country’s government and American Jewish organizations to lobby Congress to repeal Jackson-Vanik. Leading Jewish organizations working on the issue came out in strong support of Kazakhstan’s move to join the Abraham Accords.

Mark Levin, CEO of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ), formerly the National Council for Soviet Jewry, said the group has been “supportive for decades” of Kazakhstan’s “graduation from Jackson-Vanik” and that the country has “more than met the requirements to be graduated.”

“We hope that the Trump administration will come out in full support of the U.S.-Kazakhstan Trade Modernization Act and encourage Congress to pass it,” Levin said, referring to the bipartisan legislation introduced by Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Dina Titus (D-NV), Darin LaHood (R-IL), Ami Bera (D-CA) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) in February.

William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which was instrumental in getting Jackson-Vanik passed, said that the group “has long advocated for Kazakhstan’s graduation from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, recognizing its sustained commitment to Jewish life, religious tolerance, and strong bilateral ties with both Israel and the United States. Repealing Jackson-Vanik would be both symbolically and strategically significant: affirming Kazakhstan’s modern record while strengthening the framework of partnership that the Abraham Accords embody.”

Daroff also said that “the reported decision by Kazakhstan to join the Abraham Accords represents a meaningful step toward deepening cooperation between Israel and the broader Muslim world.”

Daniel Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, said the repeal of Jackson-Vanik would be “a long overdue course correction for both the country itself, and for our community. Working for years in tandem with others in our Jewish community, we have long called for the removal of trade restrictions on a country that has demonstrated respect for its Jewish community, established ties over 30 years ago with the State of Israel, and seeks a strong  relationship with the United States. Kazakhstan will be an important player in what we hope will be an ever-expanding group of Abraham Accords countries in the months to come.”

This story was updated at 2 a.m. ET.

When several dozen people gathered at the Kennedy Center for a yoga class overlooking the Potomac River on Oct. 8, the class began with a practice familiar to anyone who regularly does yoga: intention setting. 

The class was called “Yoga for Carmel,” in honor of Carmel Gat, a 40-year-old Israeli yoga instructor who was taken captive by Hamas from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7 and killed last year alongside five other hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Among those taking part in the class were former hostages and the family members of those still being held in Gaza, all of whom had gathered at the same spot a day earlier for a somber event marking two years since the attacks that reshaped their lives. 

“What do you do in yoga? You set your intention. You think about the release of the hostages. That’s all we thought about during the entire yoga session,” recalled Matan Sivek, who until last month was the director of the Hostage Families Forum’s U.S. operation. As soon as the class ended, a cacophony of cellphones began ringing as news broke about a possible deal.

“At 6 p.m., we got the news that the deal might be happening, that it’s evolving super rapidly,” said Sivek. Soon it was confirmed: Israel and Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire that would result in the release of all the hostages and an end to the war. The news capped off an emotional 36 hours, which began with the Oct. 7 memorial event at the Kennedy Center a day earlier. 

Sivek sat down with Jewish Insider last week for a wide-ranging conversation reflecting on the two-year-long advocacy campaign — spearheaded by Sivek, his wife Bar Ben-Yaakov and leading Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Committee and Schusterman Family Philanthropies — demanding the release of the more than 250 people taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. 

“I’m very happy that I am part of something that was successful at the end. There are many initiatives and nonprofits around the world who try to solve different issues, and they will never solve them. People try to end famine. They try to find a medicine for cancer. They try to stop addiction,” said Sivek. “For us, it’s something that you can say, ‘Wow, we really saved lives.’”

Advocating for the hostages was a task that Sivek and Ben-Yaakov took on almost by accident, but they ultimately became the address for Israeli hostage families who came to Washington to advocate for the release of their loved ones. The couple helped arrange meetings with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, officials in the Biden and Trump administrations and political and faith leaders around the country. Their strategy was to meet with anyone who would listen.

“We really were here to say that this humanitarian issue transcends all politics, and this was our strategy from Day One,” said Sivek.

It made sense, then, that the moment when President Donald Trump shared with the families that the hostages would be coming the following Monday — five days after that yoga class — was in a phone call to the hostage families as they stood in Sivek and Ben-Yaakov’s Georgetown living room. A video of the call, placed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who put Trump on speakerphone, quickly went viral and appeared on news broadcasts around the world.

“President Trump, you have the best crowd in the world,” Lutnick said into the phone. 

Everyone in the room shouted together, smiles on their faces: “Thank you!” 

“You just take care of yourselves. The hostages will come back. They’re all coming back on Monday,” Trump said. Among those in the room were released hostages Keith Siegel, Iair Horn, Doron Steinbecher and Arbel Yehoud, as well as family members of Gali and Ziv Berman and Omri Miran, who at the time were still in Gaza, along with Horn’s brother Eitan and Yehoud’s partner Ariel Cunio. 

“This is the moment when the world realized the timing of the release of the hostages,” said Sivek.

The White House deputy press secretary, Anna Kelly, told JI this week that Trump was deeply affected by the story of the hostages.

“President Trump is always motivated to end human suffering around the world, and he was horrified by the images of Oct. 7 and the capture of innocent Americans, Israelis and others taken hostage by Hamas,” said Kelly.

Within the Trump administration, Lutnick was working behind the scenes on behalf of the hostages. His wife, Allison, was the driving force behind his advocacy. 

Allison Lutnick had gotten to know many of the families after a trip to Israel early last year, when she met the mother of Omer Shem Tov, a hostage who was freed in February. Allison then connected with Sivek when she moved to Washington this year, and soon after he facilitated a meeting between the Lutnicks and several freed hostages at the Lutnicks’ apartment in Miami. 

“We spent three three hours together in our apartment talking and sharing. They spoke of the horrors of what they’d been through and we spoke of the horrors of what we had been through 24 years earlier on 9/11,” she told JI on Wednesday. At the time, Howard Lutnick was the CEO of the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 employees on 9/11, including his brother Gary. 

“There was definitely a bond between all of us, having experienced a terrorist attack and the loss of loved ones and horrible trauma,” she added. “Howard and I felt this very deep connection with them and what they were going through. We had an understanding of it.”

Whenever Sivek asked, Allison Lutnick texted leading administration officials like Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directly to set up meetings for them with hostage families. The Lutnicks’ family foundation supported the Sukkah of Hope at the Kennedy Center, where the Oct. 7 commemoration event took place. (The sukkah was supposed to be set up on the Ellipse, outside the White House, but the government shutdown scuttled that plan. So Allison Lutnick, a Kennedy Center board member, reached out to the center’s president, Ric Grenell — and, thus, it was moved there.) 

She and her husband both spoke at the memorial event, and that morning in the sukkah, a majority of Trump administration cabinet secretaries gathered for a breakfast with the hostage families. 

“We are part of you. We are with you, and we will help get them home,” Howard Lutnick said in a speech. Less than 36 hours later, there was a breakthrough in the deal.

“The two-year anniversary of Oct. 7 was a day of intense emotion, sadness, mourning and disbelief and horror that it’s been two years. And then the next day, Oct. 8, was this incredible elation. It just couldn’t have been more different,” Allison Lutnick said. “It was extraordinary to walk into Matan’s house later that night and celebrate with the families. It was the first time I’d ever seen them smile for a picture.”

She and her husband arrived at the impromptu celebration with two bottles of champagne. Meanwhile, Lisa Eisen and Stacy Schusterman, the president and the chair of Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, showed up with food for 30. They had been planning to host Sivek’s family and all the hostage families for Sukkot that night — Eisen and her husband had purchased a larger sukkah in preparation — but the gathering never happened.

“I called Lisa. I was like, ‘Lisa, you worked so hard for this dinner, but I think we cannot make it.’ And it was 6 p.m. At 7 we were supposed to be there,” Sivek said. “I was like, ‘A deal is happening. I cannot take them from the city. They need to stay here.’” 

“I said, ‘Well, this is the best excuse ever to not come,’” Eisen recounted to JI. She and her family sat down to eat, toasted the hostages and said the Shehechiyanu prayer, expecting to have a much smaller dinner at home. Then Sivek asked her to come celebrate with them.

“So we packed up all of the food for 30 people, and we drove down to Matan and Bar’s house, and we set up the meal because they had no food,” said Eisen, who split the cooking with her husband: three kinds of soup (coconut lentil, red lentil and matzoh ball), schnitzel, salads, homemade hummus, pies and cakes. “It was one of the most powerful, moving, beautiful moments. And I have to say, Matan and Bar, it wouldn’t happen without them. They were so tireless.” 

It was in that environment with hugging and crying and eating — critical to any Jewish event — that everyone realized this deal, finally, seemed to be real.

“This is how our kitchen became famous,” Sivek said with a laugh. “For us it was some sort of closure as well, the fact that after two very difficult years, the announcement came from our kitchen.”

Almost immediately, Sivek and his partners began booking the Israelis on flights back home; less than a week later, they would be reunited with their loved ones. It was a moment these Israelis had hardly dared to imagine during the agony of the preceding two years. In that period, their pain was shared by Jews around the world, who wore dog tags and yellow ribbon pins to constantly remind others of the people imprisoned in Gaza.

“Many people view this as a miracle that happened, that they’re out, and of course, it seemed like a miracle. But there was a lot of work of hostage families and former hostages behind the scenes to make it happen,” Sivek said. “I think that the Jewish people should be very, very proud of themselves, that we stood by our people, and we actually managed to save their lives.” 

A delegation organized by AIPAC recently completed a nine-day visit to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, Jewish Insider has learned, as the pro-Israel lobbying group seeks to promote ties with Israel among key U.S. allies. 

Over 200 of AIPAC’s largest donors as well as its CEO, Elliot Brandt; board chair, Michael Tuchin; board president, Bernie Kaminetsky; and top professional staff traveled to the region from Oct. 22-30, according to a participant with knowledge of the trip’s background.

Though Israel already has warm relations with all three countries, as both Israel and the U.S. look to increase ties in the Indo-Pacific region, the trip was meant to highlight the Jewish state’s relevance in its defense prowess, relationship to the U.S., shared democratic values, growing relations to the Gulf states — which have historically provided the Asian nations with much of their oil and gas — and acumen in the technology and business sectors, the participant said. 

The large group met with high-level leadership in each country, including the Taiwanese president, vice president and secretary-general of its National Security Council, Korean ministers and a Japanese senior diplomat.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te told the group that “the Taiwanese people often look to the example of the Jewish people when facing challenges to our international standing and threats to our sovereignty from China,” and that the T-Dome, a missile interceptor project announced by Lai earlier this month, was inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome and President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” project.

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Tel Aviv said in a statement to JI, “We welcome AIPAC’s recent visit in Taiwan, underscoring the positive synergies and mutual benefits of partnerships among Taiwan-U.S.-Israel. We continue to work with all stakeholders to deepen cooperation in trade and advanced technologies, to safeguard our shared interests of peace and prosperity.”

The Japanese leg of the trip coincided with Trump’s visit to Tokyo, and the Japanese government had just been sworn in — with its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. 

Takaichi, known as a national security hawk, was elected within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on a platform of boosting defense capabilities and reinforcing Japan’s role in the region, largely through prioritizing the country’s alliance with the U.S., which the AIPAC delegation highlighted as areas of success for Israel.

In South Korea, the delegation visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone, its border with North Korea, where participants heard from Mike Chinoy, a veteran CNN correspondent for the region. The conversations with government officials focused on shared concern between Israel and Korea about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities and cooperation with Iran.

The group also met with business leaders throughout the region who, the participant said, see Israel’s “start-up nation” as a compliment to their own “scale-up nations,” not well-known for innovation but able to rapidly scale technological advancements. The delegation emphasized the multilateral possibilities in the “new Middle East” as a result of Israel’s ties with its Abraham Accords partners, something the participant said is not yet well understood in the region. 

AIPAC has taken similar delegations to the Gulf, India and Europe. The Asia visit had been planned for 2020 but was postponed due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

As the GOP uneasily contends with rising hostility to Israel among younger right-wing voters, Nate Morris, a 45-year-old Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky who is courting the populist right with an anti-establishment message, emphasizes there is at least one long-standing party axiom he will never abandon: unwavering support for the Jewish state.

Morris, the wealthy founder of a successful waste management company who calls himself a “Trump America-First conservative,” said his commitment to upholding a strong U.S.-Israel alliance extends from his alignment with President Donald Trump’s vision for the Middle East.

“I think he’s been the most pro-Israel president we’ve had in our country’s history, and I want to continue that kind of leadership on the issue in the United States Senate, on behalf of Kentucky and the country,” Morris told Jewish Insider in an interview last Friday during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas, where he met privately with members to pitch his campaign to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Trump, he added, “has gotten it right, and obviously the success speaks for itself.”

But Morris also cited a more personal reason for what he described as his unequivocally pro-Israel worldview, explaining that, as a “proud” evangelical Christian, he has “always believed Israel is the land that was given to the Jews by God.”

“My views on Israel are never going to change,” he pledged. “They’re in my bones. That’s the way I was raised. That’s what my faith teaches me.”

“Look, all our differences here and the different positions that are out there, we’ve got to have more education, we’ve got to have more conversations as a party,” Morris said, without referring to Carlson or Roberts directly. “I want to discuss these things as a party, get on the same page as a party.”

His comments, while hardly unusual in a deeply evangelical state like Kentucky, come at a fraught moment for conservative Christian supporters of Israel, in the immediate wake of Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with the neo-Nazi streamer Nick Fuentes, a source of sustained criticism throughout the RJC’s three-day summit attended by elected officials, conservative activists, media personalities and other political candidates.

But even as Carlson had expressed his disdain for Christian Zionists, claiming they had been seized by a “brain virus,” Morris was relatively cautious when addressing the interview with Fuentes as well as the backlash toward the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank whose president, Kevin Roberts, has continued to stand behind Carlson.

“Look, all our differences here and the different positions that are out there, we’ve got to have more education, we’ve got to have more conversations as a party,” he said diplomatically, without referring to Carlson or Roberts directly. “I want to discuss these things as a party, get on the same page as a party.”

Morris also stressed that “we shouldn’t be in the business of canceling anyone, but educating them and making sure they understand the full context and what’s at stake here.”

“That’s the way we’re going to win as a party,” he said, “and I think that is what’s going to tamp out any differences that we have and that we shouldn’t be having.”

The hesitance to offer a forthright condemnation speaks not only to Carlson’s strong influence in the MAGA movement but also to how his fan base likely overlaps with the right-wing coalition that Morris is hoping to activate in a competitive primary with two more-established rivals. 

Morris, a friend of Vice President JD Vance who launched his campaign in June, is facing Daniel Cameron, the former state attorney general, and Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), both of whom are strong supporters of Israel. Morris described the race as a “proxy war between Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump,” as the outgoing senator has become one of the most vocal Republican critics of the president in the upper chamber and frequently warns of growing isolationism in the GOP.

Even as he worked as an intern for McConnell early in his career, Morris, who attended graduate school at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs as well as Oxford, has sought to tie his rivals to the retiring senator, arguing that Kentucky voters are “ready for change” and that Congress is in need of “new perspectives.”

To underscore his point, Morris noted that Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, recently hosted an event for his Senate campaign, where Morris got the chance to “hear firsthand a lot of the inside details” about how the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas “came together.”

“What I love about the president is he uses tools of diplomacy, the same tools he uses as a negotiator and as a business leader, and he has applied those to his foreign policy to be able to get things done,” Morris said.

Trump’s approach “shows that when you have outsiders and business people negotiating, you can get great outcomes,” he added. “That’s one of the big reasons why I’m running for the U.S. Senate. I think that we need more people coming from the outside.”

“The thing is, unless you go there and see it, you don’t understand that every day, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Morris told JI. “You’re under constant threat and potential for assault when you live there and when you’re a citizen of Israel.”

He also called Vance, who encouraged him to run for the open seat, a fellow “outsider” who “wasn’t a career politician” before he launched his own bid for Senate in Ohio just a few years ago. Morris said that they had talked about foreign policy “in the context of” their “general worldview,” but did not elaborate. 

Morris was previously a fundraiser for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the libertarian Republican, with whom he traveled to Israel in 2013 on a trip that included evangelical leaders. He said the visit instilled in him a heightened sensitivity to Israel’s ongoing security concerns. (Paul has regularly voted against military aid to Israel and opposed Trump’s attack against Iran’s nuclear program, as part of his overall opposition to foreign aid and military engagement overseas.) 

“The thing is, unless you go there and see it, you don’t understand that every day, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he told JI. “You’re under constant threat and potential for assault when you live there and when you’re a citizen of Israel.”

The first-time candidate acknowledged waning support for Israel in younger Republican circles, even as he declined to criticize Carlson and others for stoking anti-Israel sentiment on the far right.

He expressed concern about students who posed a series of antisemitic questions to Vance at a recent Turning Point USA campus event, but stopped short of addressing the backlash the vice president subsequently faced for choosing not to challenge the students’ hostile remarks about Jews and Israel. 

While his evangelical faith primarily drives his own support for Israel, Morris said he also believes that “it makes the most sense for the United States,” and skeptical younger conservatives could be persuaded simply on the basis of that argument. “Even looking at it economically,” he said, “I could sell that all day long to any American, to say you’re going to prosper more by this relationship.”

“I think that these are the kind of tools that we can use to get over any hatred, any disagreement — any of the discourse that has been disgusting we’ve seen online,” Morris told JI. “These are the kind of things that can help change hearts and minds.”

A new poll from a leading Democratic pollster finds Democrats broadly support the ceasefire and hostage-release deal reached between Israel and Hamas and a majority of them think President Donald Trump played at least a “somewhat important role” in reaching the agreement.

The poll, released Monday by the Democratic Majority for Israel and conducted by the Mellman Group, surveying 800 Democrats between Oct. 15-26 with a 4.9% margin of error, found an overwhelming share (72%) of Democrats favored the Trump peace plan when all aspects of the agreement were spelled out.

Details provided about the first phase included Hamas returning all of the hostages, alive and dead, and Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners, as well as an influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The poll described the second phase as disarming Hamas, economic redevelopment in Gaza and “setting the conditions for a pathway to Palestinian statehood.” 

Respondents favored the plan at 72% with only 4% opposed. 

The description did not specify that Hamas has slow-walked the release of the hostage bodies, which it was meant to return shortly after the deal was reached, only saying that “While there have been flare-ups of violence, spokesmen from both sides have said they are still trying to make the agreement work.” 

Almost all Democrats (83%) said the deal is an important achievement. Fifty-six percent called it a “very important” achievement, with majorities across all ideological, age, gender and race categories.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said Trump played at least a somewhat important role in securing the deal, with 31% of them calling his role “very important.” Trump remained universally unpopular with those Democrats polled, holding an unfavorability rating of 92%.

A majority of the Democrats polled (56%) said they believe that the U.S. should keep its alliance with Israel, though only 32% felt so “strongly.” Three-quarters (75%) said they support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland, with 12% saying they don’t believe Israel has a right to exist.

LAS VEGAS — Until last week, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit was expected to be a triumphant gathering to celebrate President Donald Trump’s accomplishments in the Middle East, chief among them his administration’s recently brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

That all changed after Tucker Carlson hosted the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes on his podcast for a sympathetic interview, provoking fierce backlash. By the time that Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, came to Carlson’s defense on Thursday, the RJC recognized its conference would require a thematic update to more forcefully emphasize the urgency of confronting rising antisemitism — and its enablers — within the GOP.

“If there was ever a time for the RJC, this is our time,” Norm Coleman, the organization’s national chairman, said in opening remarks on Friday. “We have been called to this moment to fight the scourge of antisemitism.”

But even as multiple speakers at the three-day summit held at the Venetian Resort — including congressional leaders, conservative activists and media personalities — alluded to antisemitism in their ranks, many talked in broad strokes, didn’t mention Carlson by name or downplayed the issue as confined to the fringes, despite Carlson and Fuentes each commanding a significant number of dedicated followers on the far right.

The speakers also argued that anti-Jewish hatred had become an endemic problem for Democrats — especially in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. And in a preview of GOP messaging ahead of the midterms next year, many took aim at Zohran Mamdani, the far-left Democratic nominee for New York City mayor and fierce critic of Israel favored to win the election on Tuesday.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is now running for governor of Florida, relied on euphemism to refer to right-wing antisemitism, declaring that the GOP would “not stand idly by” as “some in other parts of politics try to demonize Jewish Americans” and “try to weaken or destroy the relationship between the United States of America and the nation of Israel.”

“I will always call out and confront antisemitism wherever it is and whoever spreads it,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), the House Republican conference chair, said on Saturday, but shared no examples of such prejudice in her own party.

Some, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), more forcefully addressed growing antisemitism on their side of the aisle. 

In an interview with Jewish Insider shortly before he took the stage on Friday, Graham described Carlson’s interview with Fuentes as a “wake-up call” for the Republican Party. “How many times does he have to play footsie with this antisemitic view of the Jewish people and Israel until you figure out that’s what he believes?” Graham said of the former Fox News host. 

But in his speech later, the South Carolina senator adopted a more sanguine attitude, speaking more like a stand-up comedian as he sought to lighten the mood. “I just want to make it really clear: I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” he said to applause. “What is this Hitler shit?”

“I feel good about the Republican Party,” he added, saying the GOP “has figured it out when it comes to Israel.”

Cruz also criticized Republicans who refuse to disavow right-wing antisemites in the conservative coalition, though he ultimately didn’t mention any of the offending individuals by name in his RJC speech.

McCormick, in his fireside chat with conservative author Douglas Murray, directly confronted the lack of right-wing voices challenging virulent antisemitism. “This very week, you had an avowed antisemite, Fuentes, given a platform. This is a guy that says Hitler is cool, says Jews should be terminated…and those views went unchallenged,” McCormick said. 

In his own speech at the summit, McCormick said: “Let’s face it, antisemitism is running wild on the progressive left and the leaders of the Democratic Party are not confronting it with their new star Mamdani,” McCormick said. “But I’m also sad to say we see that ugliness on the right too, and we must confront it. Jews can’t be slandered, antisemites can’t be given platforms.”

Their comments sidestepped a more deeply rooted challenge for mainstream Republicans following recent controversies in which young party leaders were caught sharing pro-Nazi messages in leaked group chats, and Paul Ingrassia, the controversial Trump ally, withdrew his nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel after text messages were unearthed where he allegedly made antisemitic and racist remarks. 

Vice President JD Vance also faced criticism from Jewish Republicans last week over his recent appearance at a conservative campus event, where he chose not to confront some students who asked questions that invoked antisemitic tropes. While some attendees at the RJC summit told JI that they had been troubled by Vance’s performance, it was not a topic of discussion on the main stage.

Taking the floor on Saturday, however, Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), a freshman congressman from Florida who is one of four Jewish Republicans in the House, criticized those who focus only on left-wing antisemitism or just broadly talk about anti-Jewish prejudice on the right.

“It’s easy to talk about antisemitism on the left,” Fine said in his remarks. “I want to talk about the dark force rising on our side. Multiple speakers have talked about the rise of antisemitism on the right. But it is not enough to speak in platitudes or generalities about the fight. We must call evil by its name.”

He called Carlson “the most dangerous antisemite in America” and said he did not belong in Trump’s movement — a message that was amplified by a line of student attendees who stood before him holding up posters declaring “Tucker is not MAGA.”

Fine also said that he was canceling a scheduled event with the Heritage Foundation, adding that the group had “no future” in his office. “I will be calling on all of my colleagues on the Republican side to do the same,” he confirmed.

Matt Brooks, the RJC’s CEO, told JI last week that his group would be reassessing its relationship with Heritage, noting that he was “disgusted” by Roberts’ decision to stand with Carlson. The RJC has not yet further clarified how it plans to move forward with regard to Heritage.

As the summit neared its conclusion on Saturday, one RJC member, Jon Tucker of Chicago, voiced optimism that Trump, set to deliver a prerecorded message later that evening, would choose to speak out against what he termed the “ultra-right wing, isolationist” and “anti-Christian Zionist” voices in the Republican Party.

“I would hope the president comes out and has something to say about it, just like Ronald Reagan did back in the ’80s when he, famously, kicked the right wing out of the Republican Party,” he told JI, expressing concern that — in the absence of direct condemnation from the top — “we could lose” the GOP to “radicals.”

When he finally appeared on screen, Trump made no mention of antisemitism’s ascendance within the GOP, instead touting his administration’s efforts to target universities for their alleged failure to address antisemitism while listing his achievements in the Middle East, including the ceasefire deal.

He also credited the RJC with helping him to perform particularly well among Jewish voters in 2024, even as he reiterated his complaint that he should have received more support in light of his pro-Israel policies.

“I can’t imagine we didn’t do better than that after all I’ve done for the Jewish vote, I must be honest with you,” Trump said. “But that’s OK.”

This story was updated on Monday to reflect Sen. Dave McCormick’s comments regarding Nick Fuentes.

Gordon Gee has served as president of more American universities than almost anyone, as far as he knows. Most recently he led West Virginia University, from which he retired in July; before that, he oversaw Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Brown and the University of Colorado over a span of 45 years. 

Alongside his various presidencies, Gee also helped open Hillel houses on two different campuses: Vanderbilt and Ohio State. It’s a distinction that makes him particularly well-suited to opine on the state of American higher education, which has been grappling with the thorny and sometimes intertwined issues of antisemitism, free speech and student conduct. 

A 2002 Wall Street Journal article attributed Vanderbilt’s decision to increase recruitment of Jewish students to Gee, himself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. More than two decades later, under a successor Gee proudly claims, Vanderbilt is still courting Jewish students and positioning itself as a bastion of common sense amid the upheaval that followed the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago.   

As Gee, 81, looks back on his career and reflects on the state of academia, he sees a growing chasm between what he described as two different kinds of universities: those like Vanderbilt, that have held firm to the principles of institutional neutrality, and those like his alma mater, Columbia University, that have struggled to take an impartial stance in response to campus protests and antisemitism — and that are wary of making significant change. 

“One is the resistance. [They say] anything that comes out of the [Trump] administration, anything that they want, anything, it is just terrible,” Gee told Jewish Insider in an interview last week ahead of a keynote address at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. “The other are those institutions that are trying to determine a way to move forward and do so by knitting themselves together in different ways. Those are mainly the big public universities. Those are the real future of the American higher education system, and for Jewish students themselves.”

Immediately after Oct. 7, Gee called Rabbi Ari Berman, the president of Yeshiva University, and asked for help in recruiting other university presidents to sign onto a statement condemning the attacks, which was published in The Wall Street Journal as a full-page ad. But they were unable to get many of the big-name academic leaders they wanted. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

“That was when I really started to discover that there’s no moral high ground on this with a number of people. It was very distressing to me,” Gee said. “I think that so many people were walking on eggshells. They didn’t want to have disruptions. They also didn’t want to speak out.”

Although anti-Israel protests took place at West Virginia University, there was no encampment there in the spring of 2024, as happened on dozens of campuses around the country that semester. As Gee watched other university administrators fail to respond in clear ways to the protests that often crossed a line into harassment and targeting of Jewish students, he saw administrators afraid of upsetting stakeholders on campus. 

“The biggest challenge facing university presidents is fear,” said Gee. “I think the university presidents, in many ways, are paralyzed, and a lot of it is brought on by themselves, because of the fact that they allowed themselves to become kind of engaged in this ‘go along, get along’ response, and now all of a sudden, when they discover that they’ve got to take a stand, it’s becoming very difficult for many of them.”

Rather than protecting the free speech of pro-Israel students who were often cowed into silence by classmates, university leaders did little, Gee alleged. 

“They were silencing those who were intimidated by it, those who were pro-Israel, those who wanted to speak up in terms of balance,” said Gee. “University administrators were allowing that to happen.”

As President Donald Trump has sought to make his mark on higher education by targeting campus antisemitism and going after university diversity programs, Gee does not share the same skepticism toward Trump’s proposals that has characterized the responses of many university administrators who worry the administration’s actions are too heavy-handed.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has approached several top universities about signing onto a compact that would give them preferential access to federal funds. No university has yet signed on, with administrators claiming it amounts to government infringement on their academic freedom. Gee — generally a skeptic of federal meddling in higher education — isn’t entirely opposed.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

“Three-quarters of it is exactly what universities ought to be doing. A quarter of it probably is a bridge too far,” Gee explained. “But the very fact that a political administration, this Republican administration, can take on universities, and successfully so in many ways, has shown how the relationship between universities and the general public has deteriorated.” 

While Trump’s approach may have come from a genuine concern about the academic environment, “they’ve used that not as a scalpel, but as a sledgehammer,” said Gee. Still, he thinks the vehement opposition in many corners of academia has to do with the messenger.

“If the Obama administration were doing exactly the same thing, people would cheerfully say, ‘Oh, that’s right, and that’s what we’re going to do,’” said Gee. “A lot of it has to do with the people in power, and I can understand that to some extent, but it doesn’t mean to say that the ideas are bad.” 

Gee described himself as “always the optimist,” and said the current uncertainty facing academia — budget cuts, public distrust, a lack of understanding of its purpose — can be a “clarifying moment.”

“We need to understand we’re about teaching and learning. We’re not about propaganda. We’re not about ostracism. We’re not about making people feel inadequate if they don’t toe the line,” said Gee.

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit kicks off tonight at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas with much to celebrate. 

President Donald Trump’s recently brokered ceasefire and hostage-release agreement is certain to be among the administration’s accomplishments touted by a range of high-profile speakers including Cabinet officials, congressional leaders, pundits and media figures. 

The RJC, which was established in 1985, is also celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and the proceedings will feature “content about where we came from and where we are today,” said Sam Markstein, the group’s national political director.

“It’s come a long way from its humble beginnings,” Markstein told Jewish Insider in an interview on Thursday.

Hanging over the three-day conference, however, is the specter of rising antisemitism on the party’s far right, an issue that Markstein said the RJC does not intend to avoid.

It’s a particularly timely, and urgent, subject as the RJC prepares to convene days after Tucker Carlson hosted the neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes on his podcast for a friendly interview. Carlson has faced backlash for not only inviting Fuentes onto his show but for failing to challenge any of his viciously antisemitic views — including admiration for Adolf Hitler and Holocaust denial.

During the interview, Carlson himself also expressed his disdain for Christian Zionists including Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, whom he accused of being “seized by this brain virus.”

Huckabee, for his part, is slated to give remarks, via livestream, during the RJC’s confab. Other outspoken critics of Carlson’s antisemitic turn, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Fox News host Mark Levin, will also be in attendance. 

The summit will also feature House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, among others. The four Jewish Republicans serving in the House are joining as well: Reps. Craig Goldman (R-TX), Randy Fine (R-FL), Max Miller (R-OH) and David Kustoff (R-TN).

It remains to be seen if Trump will speak at the summit as he has in recent years, either virtually or in person. The president has not commented on Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, with whom Trump himself had dinner in 2022 at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. Carlson has been a top ally of Trump, even as they have clashed over the administration’s military actions in the Middle East. 

According to Markstein, there will be several speakers at the summit who will talk about what he called “the challenges facing the Republican Party,” citing “certain media personalities.”

He added that the tenor of the conference with regard to such issues will thematically echo a speech delivered earlier this year by Matt Brooks, the RJC’s CEO, who warned against the “woke right” and said the GOP “must combat the rise of neo-isolationism” that is now fueling anti-Israel sentiment within the party.

“It certainly will take on a little added resonance considering who Mr. Carlson platformed this week,” Markstein told JI.

The RJC will also now find itself on the opposing side of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind Project 2025 whose president, Kevin Roberts, forcefully defended Carlson on Thursday.

“Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington,” Roberts said in a video posted to social media, adding that Heritage would not be “policing the consciences of Christians.”

Brooks told Jewish Insider that the RJC has worked with Heritage in various ways over the years, particularly its foreign policy team, “but obviously there’s going to be a reassessment of our relationship with Heritage in light of this.”

“They’re becoming more like Tucker Carlson and less like Ronald Reagan. Tucker Carlson represents the Barack Obama-Bernie Sanders wing of the Republican Party,” Brooks said of Heritage. “I believe that there’s still a vibrant Trump-Reagan wing of the Republican Party, and Heritage continues to position itself away from that — I think to their detriment.”

Roberts’ comments came a day after Vice President JD Vance, speaking at a Turning Point USA event on Wednesday at the University of Mississippi, faced scrutiny for using conspiratorial rhetoric while he discussed Israel with a group of conservative college students. 

Vance also avoided directly calling out antisemitic questions from some audience members, including one who suggested that Trump had been pressured into holding pro-Israel stances because he received political donations from Miriam Adelson, the GOP megadonor whose late husband built the Venetian Resort and is a frequent guest at the RJC’s summit. 

Markstein, for his part, said broadly that the RJC would stand firm against such thinking. “If folks believe that Israel is not an ally to the United States,” he warned, “they’re going to have to go through the RJC first.”

The White House has told Republicans that President Donald Trump will not pull the nomination of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and wants the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a vote on his candidacy, despite the growing bipartisan opposition to his nomination, Jewish Insider has learned. 

White House officials have communicated to committee Republicans in recent days that Trump would not withdraw Ghalib’s nomination because the president credits the Democratic Hamtramck mayor with helping him turn out Michigan’s Arab-American vote and win the state in last November’s presidential election, two sources familiar with the ongoing discussions told JI.

“We were told Trump believes he [Ghalib] helped him deliver Michigan. He doesn’t want to abandon him,” one GOP senator on the committee said of the White House’s characterization of the president’s thinking.

Pressed about the four committee Republicans who already committed to joining all Democrats in opposing Ghalib’s confirmation, the White House has told senators and senior committee staffers that Trump wants Ghalib’s nomination to receive a vote regardless of the outcome. 

“If Trump wants his friend to go down that way, that’s OK. He can go down that way,” another Republican on the committee said, expressing confidence that Ghalib had no path to advance out of committee. 

No Democratic senators on the committee will support advancing Ghalib’s nomination to the full Senate if and when it comes up for a vote, a source familiar with the Democratic whip count told JI. With all Democrats opposed, Ghalib could only afford to lose one Republican to be reported favorably out of committee. 

Four committee Republicans have already come out publicly against his nomination — Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Curtis (R-UT), Dave McCormick (R-PA) and John Cornyn (R-TX). At least two others confirmed to JI that they have voiced their reservations about Ghalib to the White House in the wake of his confirmation hearing last week, when Ghalib faced a bipartisan grilling over his long record of promoting antisemitic ideas and his embrace of anti-Israel positions as an elected official. Those senators have not yet made those concerns public. 

The White House did not respond to JI’s request for comment on Tuesday.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the committee’s chairman, acknowledged to JI on Tuesday evening that he had not yet scheduled Ghalib’s nomination for a vote, but demurred when asked if he planned to do so. 

A committee spokesperson for Risch declined to comment.

“A lot of what Trump is doing is kind of testing whether these guys have a gag reflex,” one Democratic committee member said of the situation, surmising that the president’s actions were partially aimed at assessing how much Republicans were willing to push back on nominees and legislative proposals that they object to.

As a deal to split off TikTok’s U.S. business is set to be finalized between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, antisemitism experts expressed mixed views over how likely the agreement will be in transforming the social media platform’s approach when it comes to combating the spread of antisemitism in its algorithm. 

Among the expected new owners of TikTok is technology company Oracle, which has Jewish ownership and has consistently expressed support for Israel. “We are optimistic about this moment,” Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, said while moderating a panel discussion on Tuesday about the deal, hosted at the organization’s headquarters in Washington. 

The panel featured Sarah O’Quinn, U.S. director of public affairs at the Center for Countering Digital Hate; Daniel Kelley, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society; and Yair Rosenberg, a staff writer at The Atlantic. 

Last month, Trump signed an executive order paving the way to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. under a new corporate structure with American ownership. Specific terms of the deal have not yet been made public. The agreement follows the bipartisan passage of legislation last year of a national security bill, which gave the U.S. government power to ban or sell apps controlled by foreign adversaries, such as TikTok. 

While the government has said the deal will protect Americans from Chinese influence, as TikTok’s parent company is beholden to the Chinese government, JFNA advocated for the bill’s passage last year in hopes that changing TikTok’s ownership would reduce the spread of antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric seen on the app. According to JFNA, those who use TikTok for over 30 minutes a day are 17 percent more likely to hold antisemitic or anti-Israel views, compared to six percent on Instagram and two percent on X. Last year, antisemitic comments on TikTok spiked 912 percent from the previous year.  

“The part that makes us most optimistic is the parties that seem to be associated with the deal on the American side, especially Larry Ellison [the co-founder] of Oracle, have been such strong supporters of the [Jewish] community,” said Fingerhut. 

“When people ask, ‘Why would the Jewish Federations of North America be involved in an issue like the TikTok bill?’ our answer was simple,” continued Fingerhut. “The number one issue we’re hearing from our communities is the responsibility to address the rise of antisemitism, particularly that’s being directed at our young people, and there’s no way you can do that without tackling the problem on social media, and TikTok was the largest and worst offender.”

But Rosenberg and Kelley remained skeptical about the deal’s ability to mitigate online hate — stressing the virality algorithms on TikTok and other platforms have demonstrated when showing antisemitic or anti-Israel content. 

“TikTok’s entire value is actually tied up in its algorithm, this black box that decides what people see on the app,” said Rosenberg. “That algorithm makes all of its money. That is what makes it valuable. That’s what makes it more popular and better than many other platforms … I think that there are some deep and fundamental problems that changing ownership of one particular social media platform can’t really address. The biggest thing for TikTok will be this question over the algorithm.” 

Kelley said, “We can’t look at TikTok alone as the arbiter of antisemitism. I think we have to place it in the context of a huge backwards trend in terms of addressing antisemitism online.”

O’Quinn echoed Fingerhut’s sense of cautious optimism around the deal, saying, “when it comes to the state of tech and platform accountability in the United States, because we live in a completely unregulated space, weight from elected officials, and then also from constituents, is the most important thing that we really have to hold these platforms accountable.” 

She said the biggest concern around TikTok, versus other online platforms, is that it’s designed for young people. “That is where you’re seeing — even in our internal data — that is where you’re seeing the most likely group to be falling for or believing antisemitic tropes.”

O’Quinn went on: “For Oracle to say this is their first time entering a social media platform, unlike other platforms, it is really for young people that are using this platform, and is there going to be a responsibility here? I think that we’re going to see very soon what kind of commitment is going to be made to American youth.”

Even with TikTok’s new leadership, O’Quinn called for “more oversight from these social media platforms, all across the board.” 

After an agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas to initiate the first stage of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal in mid-October, the IDF retreated to an “initial withdrawal line,” leaving Israeli forces in control of 58% of the enclave as Israel and mediators push Hamas to release the remaining deceased hostages and comply with the rest of the agreement, including disarmament and relinquishing power. 

The line divides Gaza in two: an “East,” controlled by the IDF and serving as a buffer zone to Israel, and a “West,” run by Hamas and host to the concentrated Palestinian population.

In interviews with Jewish Insider, experts painted a picture of two Gazas, explaining that the area Israel holds can be used strategically to root out Hamas and maintain leverage if hostilities resume. But challenges lie ahead in rebuilding the enclave and moving Palestinians back into the eastern region.

“There are virtually no Palestinians living in the eastern part of Gaza beyond the yellow line. The eastern part does not see the movement and the maneuvers of Hamas. That’s still confined to the western part,” Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told JI. “Actual civilians of Gaza are all entirely under Hamas’ control in the west.”

Alkhatib said Israel has kept Palestinians from returning to the east over security and operational concerns, but also as leverage.

“How do you ensure that you don’t have Hamas members embedding themselves into the civilians, as they have done time and again? How do you ensure that Gazans coming into the east aren’t hindering clearance operations of tunnels or unexploded munitions?” Alkhatib asked. “I also think that the return of Palestinians to beyond the ‘yellow zone’ is leverage that Israel is holding onto until phase one is thoroughly and fully complete.”

Vice President JD Vance, in Israel last week, said during his trip that Palestinians should be able to move into a “Hamas-free zone” in southern Gaza “in the next couple months.” But experts warned that the timeline will be difficult given the conditions on the ground.

David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel has developed technology to recognize Hamas fighters and could use it to allow non-combatants access to the area under Israeli control. But even if Israel can vet who enters, eastern Gaza has endured destruction comparable to the west, and serious concerns await displaced civilians.

“The ubiquitous tunnel system that Hamas has dug in Gaza, which no doubt traverses the yellow line that serves as the ceasefire line, limits Israel’s ability to provide a safe zone in the eastern portion of Gaza,” May told JI.

Palestinians who move into the Hamas-free zone and those working on rebuilding would also face the issue of land ownership, Alkhatib noted.

“Who owns these lands, and where do people have their homes? Every plot of land in Gaza is accounted for,” he said. “You can’t just rebuild Gaza without taking into consideration that you’re doing so over pieces of land and properties that belonged to people.”

“There could be a process in which that happens, regardless of any claims to the land,” Alkhatib continued. “Basically there could be a fund established that allows for the compensation of rightful owners. But beyond that, eastern Gaza could be developed to create a compelling example that others in Gaza want to be part of.”

Despite these challenges, experts say finding ways to take in Palestinians to east Gaza could isolate Hamas in the west — a strategy Israel could use to undermine the terrorist group’s authority and bring in international support for rebuilding.

“East Gaza under IDF control would become a Hamas-free zone where the world comes together to support the emergence of thriving new political, social and economic institutions where the lives of average Gazans would flourish,” said John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

“Hamas-controlled west Gaza, by contrast, would be condemned to repression, stagnation and sustained misery. Over time, the east would become a huge magnet for the vast majority of Gaza’s population who would vote with their feet to live within a ‘free Gaza,’ fatally isolating and undermining Hamas rule and legitimacy,” Hannah continued.

May said this contrast can show Gazans “an alternative to life under Hamas’ corruption and oppression” and make donors more likely to contribute to rebuilding projects knowing aid won’t be intercepted by Hamas.

“If there is running water, sewer, electricity, internet, fixed roads and infrastructure, if there is something that resembles jobs and economic opportunity, and you create vetted methods for accepting incoming civilians into that area, then absolutely there could be a way in such that slowly drains the population out of west Gaza,” said Alkhatib.

However, Hannah argued that keeping half the enclave as a buffer zone could also serve Israel’s interests if fighting resumes.

“Right now, Israel controls an extensive buffer zone containing very few hostile Gazans standing between its border communities and Hamas-controlled west Gaza,” said Hannah. “How eager should [Israel] be to attract over a million or more Gazans to pick up and move much closer to Israel’s borders?”

May said Israel may have plenty of time to decide on how to proceed should Hamas continue to be uncooperative with the implementation of the rest of the first phase of the agreement. 

“There is still a lot up in the air,” said May. “As ceasefire lines in the Middle East have a tendency to become permanent borders, Israel needs to plan for the possibility of the yellow line becoming a long-term territorial marker.” 

One thing Betsy Sheerr knows for sure is that most Democratic lawmakers still believe in Israel’s right to exist. She also knows that needing to reestablish this basic fact may not be a good sign for her party, and, more broadly, for American support for Israel.

“I can’t believe the bar is so low that that’s where we have to start,” said Sheerr, a longtime Democratic activist and a board member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. 

That’s the position in which many pro-Israel Democratic advocates find themselves as they begin to take stock of the domestic political damage wrought by Israel’s two-year war with Hamas that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. 

Unlike naysayers on the right who suggest Democrats have abandoned Israel — a claim made frequently by President Donald Trump — the Jewish activists and communal leaders who advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and for U.S. aid to Israel still insist that support for the Jewish state remains bipartisan, and that congressional Democrats remain broadly pro-Israel. That proposition faced its toughest test during a two-year war, when Democrats became increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinians as Israel’s effort to eradicate Hamas left the Gaza Strip in ruins and claimed thousands of lives.

As a fragile ceasefire holds, Jewish Democrats see an opportunity to reengage party activists and elected officials who have grown frustrated with Israel’s actions in Gaza. 

Jewish Insider spoke to more than a dozen fundraisers, activists and professionals in the pro-Israel space, most with a long history of involvement in Democratic politics. Their pitch to Democrats at this precarious moment involves two parts: First, push to make Trump’s peace plan a reality. Second, ensure that Democrats understand that the value of America’s relationship with Israel is independent from the leader of either country — and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains unpopular with the American left, won’t be in power forever. 

“I think ending the war turns the temperature down pretty dramatically,” said Brian Romick, CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel. “Right now, what we’re saying is, no matter where you were in the previous two years, we all need the deal to work, and so being for the deal [and] wanting the deal to work is a pro-Israel position right now, and then you build from there.”

At the start of the war, 34% of Democrats sympathized more with Israel, and 31% sympathized more with Palestinians, according to New York Times polling. New data released last month shows that 54% of Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians, compared to only 13% with Israel. That stark shift in public opinion corresponded to more Democratic lawmakers voting to condition American military support for Israel than ever before.

This summer, 55 Democrats in the House co-sponsored legislation that would significantly restrict arms sales to Israel. Twenty-seven Democratic senators voted in July to support a bill put forward by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that aimed to reject Israeli arms sales. The bill failed, but it marked a watershed moment for the party, with more than half of all Democrats voting in support of the measure. Not long ago, voting to condition aid to Israel would have been seen as a red line by pro-Israel groups. But with a growing number of Democrats who have already done so, such threats could ring hollow.

“I do think that there is room to build forward,” said Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, which works closely with Democratic lawmakers in deep-blue Massachusetts. “We have to be secure enough in our own belief in the future and our hope for the future to say ‘OK, if your point was that you’re committed to the long-term project of Israel’s security and safety, and you were looking for short term ways to pressure the government of Israel, then let’s move forward with the long-term project, even if we disagreed with you in the short term.’” 

The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC maintains that it is committed to bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, even as the group has faced sharp criticism from progressive activists — including some who have pressured political candidates to swear off donations from the group. A spokesperson for the organization downplayed the shifting political headwinds, noting that American military aid to Israel continued throughout the war. 

“It is important to separate the noise from anti-Israel extremists of the right and left and actual impact,” AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JI. “For example, time and time again Congress has resoundingly rejected the efforts of those extremists to cut defense assistance to Israel.”

AIPAC has a long-standing policy of not criticizing the Israeli government no matter who is in power, and that isn’t shifting. But other pro-Israel advocates believe that approach may not work with Democrats who are fed up with Netanyahu’s governance. 

“We know that can one be critical of certain Israeli government policies and still be pro-Israel, and we also know that’s increasingly the case for many Democrats, just as it is for a majority of Jewish Americans,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. 

“The vast majority of Democrats are far more sympathetic to the people of Israel than its current leadership,” echoed Tyler Gregory, who leads the Bay Area JCRC and works closely with progressive leaders in San Francisco. “We need to bring it to a human level.” 

Andrew Lachman, president of California Jewish Democrats, was more overt in his hope that Israel elects a new leader in its next election, set to take place next October, unless it’s called sooner. 

“If there’s a new change in leadership in Israel, that has the opportunity to be able to reset some of those relationships,” Lachman told JI. 

It’s a sentiment echoed by Sheerr, who regularly interacts with Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “I think a lot of people, both lawmakers and others, are looking forward to the next Israeli elections, frankly, and life after Bibi,” she said. That is, of course, assuming that Netanyahu isn’t reelected — a risky bet given that Netanyahu has held the role through multiple elections since 2009, except for one 18-month stretch.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who is challenging Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) in Massachusetts’ Senate primary next year, said this month that he would return donations from AIPAC, an organization that has previously endorsed him. He told JI last week that he took issue with the group’s “steadfast support for the Netanyahu government.” 

“My views on Israel as an essential partner of the United States and our most important ally in the Middle East have not changed,” Moulton said. 

Markey, for his part, has been one of Israel’s leading critics in the Senate, making next year’s Democratic primary one between a candidate who condemns the leading U.S.-Israel advocacy group and a candidate with a record of voting against military aid to Israel.

Ron Halber, who leads the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and maintains close ties with Democratic lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia, said that Israeli leaders also have a responsibility to repair ties between Democrats and the Jewish state.

“For Israel to align itself, or for the current government or for advisors to think that working with the Republican Party is the way to the future, is about the dumbest strategic mistake I can imagine,” said Halber. “The bipartisan nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship is the fundamental blanket of Israel’s support in the world.” 

The leftward shift of Democratic lawmakers has come despite advocacy campaigns by major Jewish groups who urged senators to vote against Sanders’ resolutions restricting aid to Israel. But some within the mainstream Jewish community recognize that the longtime approach of offering unequivocal support to Israel’s government is not sustainable. 

“My opinion is that this government is harmful,” said Sam Lauter, a public affairs consultant in San Francisco and Democratic fundraiser who helped create DMFI in 2019. “I used to be one of those people who would be sort of silent about that, because ‘I’m a diaspora Jew, and I don’t get a say.’” 

Halber said he believed that many Democrats supporting Sanders’ bill “did so symbolically,” because they knew it was going to fail. “They were trying to send a message to Israel that this is a bridge too far, when they believed humanitarian aid [to Gaza] was being cut off,” he added.

The “million-dollar question,” according to Ilan Goldenberg, J Street’s vice president of policy, is whether lawmakers’ support for conditioning military assistance to Israel will continue after the war, when they have to vote to approve the annual $3.8 billion security package to Israel. 

“I think it’s going to be, ‘We need accountability, and we need certain behavior that we would like to see,’ and if you’re not getting that out of the Israelis, then a willingness to use more leverage and pressure and accountability,” said Goldenberg, who served as Jewish outreach director on Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign last year. “I think that is where the center of the Democratic Party is likely to settle, which is a very different place from where we were before the start of the war.” 

J Street has supported Sanders’ resolutions restricting arms sales to Israel.

If any of the support for the bills that sought to reject certain weapons sales carries over into the regular appropriations process, it would mark a significant shift. 

“It seems indisputable that the Overton window has shifted dramatically over the last two years in terms of what ‘the left’ broadly deems acceptable about Israel, Zionism and even the Jewish American community,” said Amanda Berman, CEO of the progressive group Zioness. “This kind of rhetoric doesn’t just disappear when the news cycle moves on. That said, the vast majority of liberals and progressives are not uniquely obsessed with Jews or Israel, and have any number of urgent issues of concern.” 

Even as pro-Israel activists seek to rebuild frayed ties with erstwhile allies, they recognize that not everyone should be welcomed back into the tent, even if the tent is bigger than it was before.

“We don’t need to be forgiving or ignoring those who chose to just demonize and be dismissive of our anxieties, our fears, our hopes over the last two years,” said Burton. 

The dust has hardly settled in Gaza, and it is too soon to know what the lasting impact of the war will be. But given that this was Israel’s longest war, and that it played out under scrutiny of the traditional media and social media, “it’s going to be a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle than previous times,” as one person involved in Jewish philanthropy and Democratic politics quipped. 

When Harmeet Dhillon started her role as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department in April, she refocused the division’s priorities to explicitly follow the aims of President Donald Trump: rooting out antisemitism, eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion programs and ending the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports. 

The move was met with controversy among the civil rights division’s staff, many of whom are civil servants, not political appointees. About half of the division’s lawyers have quit since she was sworn in. 

But while Dhillon, a Republican operative and civil rights attorney from San Francisco, is committed to rigorously carrying out Trump’s agenda, she is attempting to do so while also remaining committed to protecting free speech. In an interview at the Justice Department on Thursday, Dhillon told Jewish Insider that she does not intend to crack down on free speech despite the prevalence of antisemitism at American universities — a position that she said diverged from what some members of Congress and Jewish activists have asked of her.

“People in the Jewish community have pressured me to issue guidance to outlaw certain kinds of speech on the campus, and I haven’t gone that far. I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Dhillon said on Thursday in her office. “I think that you can criticize Israel. Many Jews criticize Israel. You can criticize the United States’ role. You can support the aspirations of the Palestinian people. You can even support Hamas, to a degree.”

Unless, she noted, the person who is espousing support for Hamas is an international student. “If you’re here as a foreign student and you’re supporting terrorism or what happened on Oct. 7, you may not be entitled to stay in this country. So those are all personal choices people are making, and those personal choices have consequences,” said Dhillon.

As a partner at her own law firm, Dhillon took on several notable cases representing conservative clients who felt their rights had been trampled in liberal jurisdictions. In 2017, she sued the University of California, Berkeley, on First Amendment grounds, on behalf of the Berkeley College Republicans after a speaker the group brought to campus was canceled by the university. She filed numerous lawsuits in 2020 challenging California’s COVID-19 policies. In 2023, her firm filed a case on behalf of a person who sought to reverse their gender transition.

A former board member of the northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Dhillon outlined her approach to determining when free speech crosses the line into unlawful behavior.

“I am a firm believer in free speech, and I think the way I see it on a campus setting is that a campus is not just an ‘open free speech’ zone,” Dhillon explained. “Where someone’s so-called free speech is obstructing the main purpose of the facility or the area, and obstructing the right of students and employees of the university to be able to get to their classes, teach their classes, enjoy their classes, or there’s a level of othering and obstruction and picketing and misery that makes it impossible for people to enjoy a peaceful educational setting — that’s where it becomes problematic.” 

It’s the onus of the universities to “police this,” she said, because they receive federal funding. 

“It’s complicated, and so each case is different,” said Dhillon. “You have to do the analysis of where this is and where it’s happening. Blocking access to a dormitory — that’s not a limited purpose public forum. It’s a private space, actually, so you don’t have the same free speech rights there as you do on the college green.”

While antisemitism has factored heavily in the Justice Department’s work in recent months, Dhillon said it is secondary to DEI in terms of the extent of each problem. 

“Antisemitism is just one of the many issues. DEI is a bigger issue. There’s sports issues, Title IX issues, women’s privacy issues,” said Dhillon. “You don’t see antisemitism at every school. You see DEI at every school.” 

Trump administration officials and other opponents of DEI argue that diversity, equity and inclusion programs promote discrimination by prioritizing identity over merit, while critics of that view say eliminating them will roll back decades of progress on equal opportunity. DEI initiatives, which expanded rapidly in universities and corporations after the George Floyd protests and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, have recently faced pushback and retrenchment — as institutions from the federal government to major companies and universities scale back their programs.

Much of the department’s work under Dhillon has centered on conservative priorities and targeted left-wing causes. That doesn’t mean the DOJ is ignoring antisemitism from the right, said Dhillon, noting she does “not apply a political lens to our work.” But she is not worried about harmful speech alone.

“Where protesters have blocked access to Hillel or Chabad on campuses, those are FACE Act cases. People need to bring me the facts, and we will work them up and see if we can bring a prosecution on those cases, civil or criminal,” Dhillon said. 

“I see a lot of noise online. I see some conservative commentators, including some people who’ve been friends of mine or I agreed with in the past, taking some radical views on some of these issues. And I mean, okay, the marketplace of free ideas in America means I don’t have to follow them or listen to them,” she said. “It’s disturbing, but that’s free speech. So the antidote to speech we don’t like in America is more speech. [But] where you’re talking about somebody attacking a house of worship, attacking people of the Jewish faith because of their faith or because of their support of the victims of Oct. 7, those are hate crimes, and that’s what we deal with.”

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit in September against anti-Israel protesters who demonstrated outside a New Jersey synagogue, alleging their actions were meant to keep congregants from exercising their religion. The suit relied on the FACE Act, a Clinton-era statute that has typically been applied to violent protesters outside abortion clinics, but which also has a provision about houses of worship. Dhillon intends to file more cases in that vein.

“Where protesters have blocked access to Hillel or Chabad on campuses, those are FACE Act cases. People need to bring me the facts, and we will work them up and see if we can bring a prosecution on those cases, civil or criminal,” she said. 

While the department does research into which cases to bring, Dhillon said her team acts “as almost a customer-service bureau, if you will, to complaints from the public.” Some of it comes across her desk online. She is active on X, where she regularly responds to news stories and commentary. “Not good,” she wrote on Tuesday in response to a post from a Seattle talk radio host who was calling attention to DEI programs at the University of Washington.

At the heart of the Trump administration’s aggressive approach is a willingness to demand that all entities that receive federal funding — nearly every university in America, as well as many municipalities, school districts and more — are committed to upholding civil rights in the way the administration has interpreted that pillar of American democracy. 

“We’re not in the business of micromanaging universities. We’re in the business of ensuring that our federal civil rights laws are being followed,” Dhillon said. “We have the right, as the DOJ, under this agreement [with UVA], to go back in immediately and open up new investigations if the facts merit that.” 

The result has been the withholding of billions of dollars of funds from several prominent universities and, more recently, settlements with a number of those schools, including Columbia, Brown and, this week, the University of Virginia. 

That’s a function that in the past may have been reserved for the Education Department. But with Trump’s desire to eliminate the Education Department entirely, more of those responsibilities now fall under Dhillon’s purview. Despite the heavy-handed approach, Dhillon said the government mostly intends to leave implementation of the agreements up to the schools, so long as they know they are not off the hook for future violations.

“We’re not in the business of micromanaging universities. We’re in the business of ensuring that our federal civil rights laws are being followed,” Dhillon said. “We have the right, as the DOJ, under this agreement [with UVA], to go back in immediately and open up new investigations if the facts merit that.” 

That threat of legal action has led to change on college campuses, Dhillon said. 

“That’s the effect of a watchdog, aggressive DOJ, and it has been very effective so far,” said Dhillon. “I don’t think any school in America thinks they can get away with discriminating against Jews and not letting them get to class without seeing a tweet from me followed by a lawsuit from me.”

Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., and President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, struggled to win over skeptical senators of both parties during his confirmation hearing on Thursday as he faced a grilling over his long record of promoting antisemitic ideas and embracing anti-Israel positions as an elected official. 

Ghalib was grilled by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which began when the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), called out his litany of antisemitic comments and denial of sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. 

It culminated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), after questioning Ghalib about his past opposition to the Abraham Accords and support of boycotts against Israel, announcing at the end of the hearing that he would not be able to support his nomination. 

Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed Ghalib over a litany of extremist views and statements he’s made in recent years. In addition to his denial of the scope of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, senators also pointed to past comments he made suggesting that the terrorism itself was justified. They also questioned him over his consistent unwillingness to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, and even when pressed at the hearing, resisted recognizing Israel’s place as the Jewish homeland. 

He also faced bipartisan scrutiny over his recent characterization of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator who invaded Kuwait, as a “martyr” — a social media post senators found stunning given that he’s being tapped as ambassador to the country Hussein invaded.

His record of antisemitic commentary was also probed, with senators asking about his liking a comment on Facebook referring to all Jews as “monkeys” and the record of one of his political appointees in Hamtramck who said the Holocaust was “God’s advanced punishment of the chosen people” over Israel’s war in Gaza.

Ghalib also tried to evade responsibility for Hamtramck becoming the first city in the nation to adopt a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy against Israel. He claimed he played no formal role in that designation.

Throughout the hearing, Ghalib declined to walk back his comments, repeatedly arguing that what he believes in his “personal capacity” should be distinguished from how he planned to act in his “official capacity” as a U.S. ambassador. “I’m a Semite. The Arabs are Semites. Do we read history? How can we be antisemites? And I think, like I said, judge my actions and not my intentions,” Ghalib said.

Cruz, in the hearing, became the first Republican senator to say he can’t support Ghalib’s nomination. Several other GOP senators on the committee are considering coming out against Ghalib, according to sources familiar with lawmakers’ thinking.

“I believe your beliefs are sincere. I believe that when you became the mayor of the first city in America to pass a BDS resolution, it’s because you believe in BDS,” Cruz said. “What I do not understand is how you could possibly serve as United States ambassador for President Trump in the Middle East when you have passionate views, including having been a vocal opponent of the Abraham Accords, the singular and most consequential accomplishment President Trump has negotiated.”

“Your long-standing views are directly contrary to the views and positions of President Trump and to the position of the United States. I, for one, am not going to be able to support your confirmation,” he continued.

Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) who serves on the committee but was not in attendance at the hearing, released a statement after Ghalib’s testimony saying that the Utah senator is “deeply concerned about Mr. Ghalib’s nomination.”

“It is crucial that we expand peace in the Middle East and that begins with the acceptance of Israel’s right to exist. Ghalib has demonstrated he is sympathetic to beliefs that run completely contrary to that goal,” the statement read. 

“I think that you have dug your hole deeper today,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Ghalib. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you support the president’s [Middle East peace] plan. Again, this idea that your personal views don’t matter is ridiculous.”

Senators told Ghalib that he was welcome to hold incendiary points of view or embrace those with such beliefs, but that would likely disqualify him for a role representing the United States as ambassador. 

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, excoriated Ghalib during her opening statement, describing his conduct as unacceptable for a public figure. “As an elected official, you had a responsibility to work with your constituents to eliminate hatred from communities, all hatred from communities, but instead, you chose to inflame divisions and traffic in antisemitism,” Rosen said.

“You liked a Facebook comment comparing Jews to monkeys. You characterize leaders you don’t like as ‘becoming Jewish.’ As mayor, you failed to comment after one of your political appointees suggested the Holocaust was ‘advance punishment’ for the war in Gaza, and you denied the Hamas used sexual violence as a weapon of war on Oct. 7,” she continued. “You can disagree with the Israeli government, but peddling antisemitism in such a public manner, as an elected official, as a community leader, is beyond the pale.”

Ghalib was asked four times — three by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and once by Murphy — if he would say that he supports Israel’s right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people. “I think everybody, we can coexist in the region, and everybody has the right to exist now,” Ghalib told McCormick after the Pennsylvania senator’s third time asking the question.

Only after Murphy criticized his refusal to answer McCormick’s question did Ghalib respond directly.

“I believe it can be a home for the Jewish and the Arabs and the Muslims and the Christians as well. And that’s why it’s a diverse land for the three major religions,” Ghalib told Murphy, without mentioning Israel by name. “I think they can coexist, all the nations in the Middle East, based on the peace plan of President Trump that I support strongly.”

Murphy pressed Ghalib on his claims that he had condemned the October 2023 comments by Nasr Hussain, a political appointee of his on the Hamtramck Plan Commission, about the Holocaust being “God’s advanced punishment,” noting that Ghalib had not responded to requests from senators for proof that he had distanced himself from Hussain. 

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) also pointed out that Ghalib had expressed support for the Houthis’ November 2023 hijacking of the British-owned Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea, prompting Ghalib to deny he had ever made such a statement. 

Kaine then asked if he was denying that he had authored the social media post with the statement. Ghalib responded by suggesting that he now opposes the attack, and then appeared to accuse the Virginia senator of making “assumptions” and taking his words “out of context.”

“I don’t think it’s a celebration. This is an assumption that [you’re] making. I disagree with attacking the ships and disrupting,” Ghalib said. “I think there was a post, but it seems like it’s taken out of context. Maybe I commented, I don’t know.”

Later on, Cruz grilled Ghalib about a social media post he wrote in 2020 praising the Muslim Brotherhood as “an inspiration” and asked whether his stated support for the group would be a conflict if the Trump administration were to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Ghalib said he would implement the president’s policies, though only after downplaying the group’s extremism.

“I believe that it’s an ideology. It’s not just a group of people. I disagree with a lot of things that they do. Some of them are extremists. Some of them are part of some governments in the Middle East,” Ghalib said of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Shaheen, the top Democrat on the committee, called Ghalib’s expressed beliefs “abhorrent” and said she was “very concerned about some of the statements that you have made, and frankly, what appear to be antisemitic views.” The New Hampshire senator said she took grave offense to Ghalib’s comments claiming that reports of sexual violence by Hamas on Oct. 7 were “lies and deception” and expected him to offer “an unequivocal condemnation of the horrific crimes committed on Oct. 7.”

Ghalib said he had “totally condemned what happened on Oct. 7” after learning of the atrocities, and claimed that he “was not aware” of what “kinds of abuses” Hamas had orchestrated when he made those comments. He also alleged that local media had misrepresented his past social media posts and public comments to make it look like he was antisemitic or supportive of terrorists and dictators. 

“I’m in politics. I understand the press doesn’t always accurately represent what we say,” Shaheen replied. “That doesn’t explain the comments you made to my staff, nor the direct quotes from your hometown news outlet about sexual violence on Oct. 7. The fact that you represented to my staff that there was no documented evidence of that just shows to me a lack of recognition of what was going on.”

The only apology Ghalib offered regarding his past remarks related to his comments about Saddam Hussein, telling senators that he was sorry if his description of the late dictator had caused offense, especially with “those who suffered from Saddam or lost loved ones.” He explained that he was complimenting Hussein for “keeping the Iranian regime in check” after McCormick noted that he served in the 82nd Airborne Division that helped liberate Kuwait from Hussein’s forces.

The White House did not respond to Jewish Insider’s request for comment on the status of Ghalib’s nomination. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to Israel on Thursday, becoming the latest senior official dispatched to the country by President Donald Trump as the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas extends into its second week. 

Rubio joins several other administration officials and representatives who have made the journey to Israel this past week, on the heels of the signing of the first phase of Trump’s peace proposal, including Vice President JD Vance, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and advisor Jared Kushner.

The swift mobilization of U.S. officials comes as the Trump administration aims to lay the groundwork for the second phase of the deal and works to keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from reigniting fighting in the Gaza Strip and fracturing a delicate peace deal, amid Hamas’ repeated violations of the agreement. 

Vance, in his meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday, emphasized that Israel is not a “vassal state” that needs to be told what to do. 

The string of high-level visits is “not about monitoring in the sense of, you know, monitoring a toddler,” Vance told reporters alongside Netanyahu. “It’s about monitoring in the sense that there’s a lot of work.”

Meanwhile, ahead of his own visit to Israel, Rubio warned Israeli leaders that the West Bank annexation vote that passed the Knesset this week — championed by far-right MK Avi Moaz — threatened to derail the Trump-orchestrated ceasefire deal.

Chuck Freilich, an associate professor of political science at Columbia University, told Jewish Insider he sees it as a form of U.S. oversight, or “Bibi-sitting,” something he says is “long-standing tradition” in the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“From the U.S. perspective, you want to go over and reassure Israel its legitimate security concerns are not in jeopardy by continuing to adhere to the ceasefire,” said Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow for American strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “I imagine that Rubio will be there to more echo and amplify the messages that have already been laid out, assuming the facts on the ground don’t change between now and then.”

While disagreements between the U.S. and Israel are not unusual, the Biden administration’s efforts to oppose Netanyahu’s preferred policies often led to accusations of insufficient U.S. support for the Jewish state.  

During the Biden administration, senior officials, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken, were dispatched to the region to keep Israel from conducting military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. At the time, Biden faced criticism from some in the pro-Israel world for restraining Netanyahu’s government from doing what they saw to be in Israel’s best interest during the war. 

Given Trump’s high popularity in Israel in the immediate aftermath of the hostage-release deal, that blowback is not happening this time around. Freilich says the Trump administration’s exertion of restraint on Netanyahu from going after Hamas to uphold the ceasefire is different. 

“Unlike with Biden, I don’t think there is a war to be won now that the U.S. is blocking,” said Freilich. “Israel has already done most of what it can do. The real problem is with phase two, how to dismantle and disarm Hamas and remove it as the governing body in Gaza. The administration is working on it intensively, including in all of these visits.”

The continued engagement is also a way for the Trump administration to provide Netanyahu cover from the right-wing coalition of his government, which had been more reluctant to end the fighting and make a hostage deal before the complete elimination of Hamas. The Trump administration may see holding them at bay as another way to keep the ceasefire intact.

David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Rubio will be a worthy asset alongside Witkoff and Kushner, stating that his presence could help Israel get Hamas to “uphold a ceasefire that would effectively dismantle the terrorist group.” 

“Dispatching Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a very positive development,” May told JI. “Rubio possesses immense knowledge of the issues and the actors with his decades of experience operating in U.S. foreign policy.”

This will be Rubio’s fourth visit to Israel since taking office in January. The secretary of state has a plethora of diplomatic experience with the Jewish state and has long expressed steadfast support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, dating back to his time in the U.S. Senate. 

Every Senate Democrat with the exception of Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) wrote to President Donald Trump on Tuesday urging him to “reinforce” the White House’s pledge to oppose Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

In a letter led by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the senators offered their “support for your comments opposing any efforts by the Government of Israel to annex territory in the West Bank and to urge your Administration to promote steps to preserve the viability of a two-state solution and the success of the Abraham Accords.”

The missive was sent weeks after Trump vowed publicly to not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, telling reporters in the Oval Office in late September that, “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, nope, I will not allow it. It’s not gonna happen.”

“Since your plan for Gaza does not address the West Bank, it is imperative that your Administration reinforce your comments and emphasize its opposition to annexation. As longstanding supporters of Israel’s security and Palestinian aspirations for statehood, we are unified in our opposition to unilateral measures by either party that undermine the prospect of lasting peace through negotiations to achieve a two-state solution,” the letter stated.

The senators argued that “any steps by Israel to annex territory or expand settlements that prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state” would be harmful to the peace process. 

“Such steps have elicited deep concern and opposition from Arab partners and place at risk your past achievements under the Abraham Accords and the possibility of expanding them further,” they wrote. “At the same time, terrorism, including the horrific terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023, must be uniformly condemned and will not bring the region closer to peace.”

“It is essential that the United States reject measures that undermine the viability of a negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the letter continued. 

In recent months, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) has stood apart from many of his Democratic colleagues in offering staunch support for Israel, openly praising President Donald Trump for finalizing a deal to free the hostages in Gaza and maintaining a hard line against New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani.

Suozzi, a moderate Democrat who hails from a swing district on Long Island with a significant Jewish population, is a longtime stalwart supporter of Israel, and argued in a recent interview with Jewish Insider that maintaining bipartisanship on the issue is critical.

Suozzi has been among the minority of Democrats who have openly credited Trump for the ceasefire that secured the release of the remaining living hostages in Gaza last week.

“We thank God and congratulate President Trump and all those who helped make the return of the hostages a reality. As we celebrate this moment, let us also pause to pray for all those who have endured so much suffering, death and destruction along the way,” Suozzi told JI last Monday, after the hostages were freed.

“It’s plain on its face that the president orchestrated this and put a tremendous amount of effort into this,” he continued. “I disagree with the president on certain things, but when it comes to this issue, I’m fully aligned with him.”

Suozzi said that the Torah and Old Testament teach that it’s critical to stick to one’s values and keep moving forward in hard times.

“One of the values that we need to stick by right now is to stand with the State of Israel, who’s our great ally and shares our values during what has been difficult times,” Suozzi said. “The president is the one who’s accomplished — along with a lot of help from other people — this very important thing, we have to praise him for that, even though I disagree with him on a whole host of other things. On this, he’s really done something remarkable.”

Suozzi noted that he had also supported Trump’s signing of the Abraham Accords and decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem during his first term.

“We have to get back to a place in our American governing and politics where people can disagree, where they disagree respectfully, but also give credit where credit is due in trying to work together to to solve problems,” Suozzi explained. “I want to work with the president. … If he could do Ukraine and an immigration deal — which would require some bipartisan cooperation — he would truly have cemented his place in history. I want to be helpful in that respect.”

Asked about those in the Democratic Party — including some of the most vocal critics of Israel — who have refused to credit Trump or acknowledge the ceasefire that went into effect earlier this week, Suozzi said he sees them as hypocritical.

“It’s the pot calling the kettle black. They criticize Trump for being partisan, or they criticize Republicans for being partisan — which they are, I’m not saying they’re not,” Suozzi said. “When you have something like this that happens, you can’t just base it on your party. It has to be based on what’s right and what’s wrong. This is clearly right. This is clearly a good thing.”

He also said that people, on both sides of the aisle, who understand the damage wrought by antisemitism, “have to join league with each other, regardless of our political party, and work together to do everything we can to stamp it out. In the short term: hold people accountable and prosecute them. In the long term: educate our society about where antisemitism comes from and why it’s so destructive.”

Suozzi said that both in the Democratic Party and the country as a whole, “we have to do a better job” of rooting out and calling out antisemitism. 

“It’s not always easy to take on people that are on your team, so to speak,” he continued. “But I think there’s a lot of people on the wrong side of history here. This is an important moment with the enabling of the haters, with social media, with the algorithms on the different platforms — especially TikTok — that are inciting this hateful behavior and the foothold that some malign actors have been working — not just recently but over decades — to build this hate machine. We have to really stand strong against this, even when we have to disagree with people that are on our team, so to speak.”

“At a time when most have hidden beneath the parapet, the Jewish community is very lucky to have fearless leaders like Tom, who willingly stands up to the antisemitic haters and unflinchingly protects the U.S.-Israel relationship,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), another outspoken pro-Israel moderate, told JI.

Suozzi, along with Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY), has been among the most vocal opponents within New York Democratic politics of Mamdani’s candidacy — publicly condemning the democratic socialist and explicitly rejecting the prospect of endorsing him, when other Democrats have fallen in line or remained silent. Among other issues, Suozzi has called out Mamdani for his refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada.”

Suozzi has also pushed back more broadly on the left wing of his party.

“If [Mamdani] wants to be a socialist, he should form his own party and not be part of the Democratic Party,” he said, a sentiment he has directed at the Democratic Socialists of America as a whole.

Asked how he thinks supporters of Israel and opponents of antisemitism can go about rebuilding the eroding bipartisan consensus on these issues, Suozzi said that it’s critical for supporters of Israel to vote for Democrats like himself who are aligned with them on that issue.

He recounted a conversation he had with longtime friends who are Orthodox Jews and who said they had voted against Suozzi in the last election, opting instead to vote down the Republican Party line.

“The person I was speaking with said, ‘We need to get your party back to what it was,’” Suozzi recounted. “I said, ‘Well then you have to support Democrats like me that are working on that. Because you don’t know what things are going to be like in five years, or 10 years, or 15 years or 20 years. The key to the future is to ensure that this continues to be a bipartisan effort, this relationship between the United States and Israel.’”

Suozzi said that his commitment to standing with Israel and the Jewish people is deep-rooted, tracing back in part to his father, his own history and the values and democratic principles shared by the U.S. and Israel.

His father — “the best man I ever knew” — was an Italian immigrant who fought in World War II and faced discrimination at home after the war. “He would not tolerate any sort of discrimination [against] anybody. … If anybody said something that was anti-Jewish or anti-Black or anti-anything, he’d either confront you or get up and walk out of the room.”

Suozzi said that he found an Israeli war bond in his father’s files after he passed away. “He never talked about anything like that, it was just who he was.”

Suozzi said that reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, about the psychologist’s experience in the Holocaust, was deeply impactful on him as a high school student. He first traveled to Israel as Nassau County executive in October 2002, meeting with key leaders during the Second Intifada.

He said that his hotel was largely empty due to terrorism concerns, that heavy security was necessary for his group and that the trip organizers attempted to prohibit him from going to mass at the Church of The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for security reasons. 

Undeterred, Suozzi snuck out of his hotel to go and initially felt “so courageous” but, walking out of the church, “I see these little girls getting on the bus to go to school that morning. … It was like, ‘Wow, I’m not courageous. People have been living like this … 60 years, living their lives, making this place successful, despite the fact that everybody in the area is trying to kill them. And they’ve held onto their values, and they’ve held onto the things that I believe in.’ So I decided right then and there that I would always stand strong with Israel, no matter what.”

Two clashing narratives have emerged about Israel’s strike on a meeting of senior Hamas terrorists in Doha, Qatar, in September, following the release of a preview of an interview with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on CBS’ “60 Minutes” program that aired on Sunday evening.

Both narratives posit that the strike hastened the arrival of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to free the hostages and end the war. Figures close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the attack pushed an anxious Qatar, Hamas’ patron and host of its senior officials, to do more to get the terrorist organization across the finish line. 

Trump’s negotiators, however, presented a scenario in which the president, unhappy about the strike, pressured Israel to end the war.  

Of the Israeli strike on Doha, Witkoff said that he and Kushner, who in recent months has also played a key role in the administration’s Middle East efforts, “felt a little bit betrayed.”

Kushner added, “I think [Trump] felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing, and it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things he thought were not in their long-term interest.”

Witkoff said that Qatar, which served as a key mediator between Hamas and Israel for much of the negotiations, said that, following the strike, “we had lost the confidence of the Qataris, so Hamas went underground. It was very difficult to get to them … and it became very, very evident as to how important, how critical [Qatar’s] role was.” 

Jerusalem, however, had a different version of the events, as told by Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest confidante, in an Israel Hayom column by journalist Amit Segal.

Israelis involved in the negotiations viewed Qatar as a “spoiler,” such as when they talked Hamas out of accepting a deal proposed by Egypt earlier in the year, according to Segal. 

Dermer, Segal wrote, “links the strike to the agreement … The Qataris, it turns out, were convinced that by agreeing to host the negotiations, they had obtained immunity from Israeli strikes on their soil. From their perspective, the strike was a blatant, offensive breach of the commitment. … The Americans’ genius was to convert that negative energy into fuel to propel negotiations to their goal. ‘You want Israel to stop? Then let’s end the war.'”

Netanyahu’s office and the White House closely coordinated throughout subsequent talks to end the war, Segal reported. Then came an agreement backed by several Arab states calling for Hamas to disarm and without the immediate involvement of the Palestinian Authority.

Reactions in Israel to the “60 minutes” preview fell on predictable lines. Netanyahu’s critics said that the U.S. officials’ comments demonstrated that the prime minister did not want to enter the agreement, but instead was pushed into it by Trump.

Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid argued that Witkoff and Kushner’s comments made clear that “after the failed attack on Doha, Trump thought that Netanyahu lost control and forced an agreement on Netanyahu that he didn’t want. … An American administration has never described an Israeli government like this.” 

Ha’aretz journalist Amir Tibon, who lived in one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, posted on X: “Witkoff and Kushner say in their own voices: Trump understood that Netanyahu was not on the right track and acted aggressively against him to reach a ceasefire and free the hostages.”

Nava Rozolyo, a prominent figure in the protests against Netanyahu years before the Gaza war began, wrote: “Thank you … for forcing Hamas and Netanyahu to reach an agreement on the return of all hostages and ending the war. Thank you for saving us from our own government and for saving lives.” 

On the Israeli right, many took issue with Witkoff and Kushner’s retelling of events.

Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs President Dan Diker posted on X that “the Israelis ‘getting out of control’ is what helped bring the hostage deal to the table, scaring the Qataris out of their minds.”  

Some highlighted Kushner and Witkoff’s business dealings in Qatar. Kushner’s investment company, Affinity Partners, manages billions of dollars in investments from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. Witkoff’s son sought Qatari investments in commercial real estate projects earlier this year, and in 2023, Qatar bought the Park Lane Hotel in Manhattan from Witkoff and his partners. 

Yishai Fleisher, spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron and an informal advisor to Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who opposes the ceasefire deal, posted on X in response to the video: “Two American Jews, with no blood on the line in Israel (their wife and kids don’t drive on the roads with Jihadis), but lots of money on the line and business with Qatar, wag their finger at the Jewish State as they cut an awful deal that is certain to bring war.”

Other moments in the interview courted further controversy in Israel, such as when Witkoff described an Israeli cabinet meeting that he attended, in which Ben-Gvir talked about “all the death and all the carnage” from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and was “emotional.” In response, Witkoff described his son Andrew’s death from an overdose and told the Israeli cabinet minister to “let it go, you just can’t play the victim all the time.” 

Witkoff also brought up his son’s death in the interview in relation to his meeting with Hamas lead negotiator Khalil al-Haya, whose son was killed in the Doha strike.

“We expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son, and I told him that I had lost my son and we are both members of a really bad club, parents who had buried children,” he said. 

Kushner said of Witkoff and the senior Hamas terrorist: “When Steve and him talked about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.”

Kushner also said that he sought to relay a message to Israel’s leadership that “now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better.”

“How are you doing with that message?” Leslie Stahl asked.

Kushner smiled and replied: “We’re just getting started.”

This report was updated on Oct. 20, 2025, after the CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired in full.

Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., and President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, is scheduled for a confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a delayed step toward confirmation for a nominee whose background and past comments have come under scrutiny.

Ghalib will come before the committee next Thursday, Oct. 23, at the first confirmation hearing the committee has held in more than a month. Ghalib is currently the only nominee on the agenda for that hearing.

The Democratic Hamtramck mayor, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election and helped him rally support in Michigan’s Arab and Muslim American communities, has a history of anti-Israel commentary, including questioning reports of Hamas atrocities during the Oct. 7 attacks and supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, as well as liking antisemitic posts on social media.

The Anti-Defamation League has said Ghalib’s nomination should be withdrawn. “Ghalib routinely traffics in antisemitism, actively supports the antisemitic BDS movement, attempted to justify the 10/7 massacre and refused to take disciplinary action against an appointee who attempted to justify the Holocaust,” the group said on X in March.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) told reporters that the nomination had been delayed as lawmakers gathered additional information about Ghalib and his background via written questions.

Ghalib announced publicly after such reports that Trump had called him to emphasize his continued support even as “some parties have hindered this appointment.”

Ghalib will likely face questions about his record at the hearing.