While Congress is working on a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in the U.S., and the Islamist group is banned from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and beyond, the group’s status in Israel is much more complicated.

The matter drew renewed attention this week after Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Ra’am party in the Knesset, an ideological offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, declined to call for the eradication of Hamas on Israeli radio.

In an interview with Israeli public broadcaster KAN, Abbas mostly lamented the high rate of crime and gun violence in Israeli-Arab society, but when he mentioned Gaza, the interviewer, Asaf Liberman, asked whether he sees Hamas as part of the enclave’s future.

“Palestinian society needs to pick its leadership and go on a new path towards peace and reconciliation,” Abbas responded. 

Liberman twice repeated his question and sharpened it: “Does Hamas need to be destroyed?”

Abbas added that an international force must enter Gaza and after an interim period a security force of the Palestinian Authority would be trained, but after being pressed to make his position on Hamas clear, he said the interview was beginning to feel like an “interrogation,” and pointed out that he had gone on air to talk about domestic issues facing Arab Israelis. “If you want to talk about crime, fine, if not, bye,” he said, before hanging up. 

Abbas has previously condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, calling them unjustifiable and inhumane, and called for the release of the hostages. The other reporter who conducted the interview, Suleiman Maswadeh, later noted that Abbas and his family had recently received death threats, and hinted that was the reason the Knesset member avoided repeating his previously articulated position — which Maswadeh said does not include a future for Hamas in the governance of Gaza.

In 2021, the Ra’am party became the first Arab party in 50 years to join an Israeli governing coalition, which was celebrated by many in Israel and abroad as a milestone for coexistence, while the Israeli right criticized the 2021-2022 government for what it characterized as working with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Monday’s interview sparked headlines and analysis in right-leaning Israeli media and comments by politicians on the right about the viability of center and left-wing parties once again forming a coalition with Ra’am to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when Ra’am’s leader would not say that he is for eradicating Hamas.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a very generic term,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University. “It’s not membership in an organization; it’s a denomination. Mansour Abbas is the Muslim Brotherhood. Raed Salah, his rival, is also the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The historic and recent connections between Hamas and Ra’am, both of which were founded by adherents of the Muslim Brotherhood, shed light on the nuances of the international Sunni Islamist movement and its status in Israel.

Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, emphasized, in an interview with Jewish Insider on Wednesday, that the Muslim Brotherhood is an ideology aiming to make Muslim societies more religious, and is not one centralized organization spanning the Muslim world.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a very generic term,” Milshtein said. “It’s not membership in an organization; it’s a denomination. Mansour Abbas is the Muslim Brotherhood. Raed Salah, his rival, is also the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna’s brother, Abd al-Rahman al-Banna, founded the group’s branch in Mandatory Palestine in 1935; its leaders included Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who incited the deadly Hebron riots against Jews in 1929 and collaborated with Hitler, and Izz al-Din al-Qassam, leader of the 1935 Arab Revolt against the British and namesake of Hamas’ short-range Qassam rockets. 

Gaza-based Sheikh Ahmad Yasin formed the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Hamas in the 1980s. Sheikh Abdullah Nimar Darwish founded the Islamic Movement in Israel in 1971, which also espoused Muslim Brotherhood ideology.

In 1979, Darwish founded an underground group in Israel called The Family of Jihad with a goal of establishing an Islamic state. However, after his arrest and conviction for involvement in killing an accused collaborator and membership of a terrorist organization, he renounced violence and decided to promote Islamism within the confines of Israeli law.

Fissures began in the Islamic Movement in Israel after the Oslo Accords, with the northern branch, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, opposing it, while the southern branch supported it. The two parts of the movement officially split when the southern branch ran for the Knesset in 1996 as Ra’am, and Salah advocated boycotting national elections. 

The leaders of the northern branch were arrested in 2003 for aiding Hamas and in 2015, the branch was banned, after the police and Shin Bet demonstrated that it had close ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and received funds from groups affiliated with Hamas.

Darwish, however, continued to be the spiritual leader of the Islamic Movement’s southern branch and said he was committed to obeying the laws of Israel. He engaged in interfaith dialogue events, often with former Labor lawmaker Rabbi Michael Melchior, and spoke out against Holocaust denial. 

While Islamic Movement Southern Branch leaders have met with Hamas leaders and taken part in mediation efforts between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, in 2022, then-leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwar declared Mansour Abbas a traitor for joining the governing coalition and saying Israel is a Jewish state. Abbas has said that his decision to join the governing coalition in 2021 came from the values he “absorbed from the legacy of Sheikh Abdullah Nimr Darwish.” 

As such, the more radical of the two major offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Israel.

Yet, more recently, the Islamic Movement Southern Branch has come under scrutiny for its own possible ties to Hamas. 

In the decades since its establishment, the Islamic Movement has faced repeated crackdowns on its charities. The Islamic Relief Committee, founded in 1987 with the stated goal to help the needy in the West Bank and Gaza, was shut down by Israeli authorities in 1995 for aiding Hamas members’ families, the first in a series of such actions.

“Israel’s anti-terrorism law and the whole discipline has been to focus on specific organizations and declaring them as terrorist organizations because of their goals, because of the means that they use, rather than focusing on an idea, which the Muslim Brotherhood really is,” Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, the former director of the IDF Prosecution for Judea and Samaria, told JI.

In July, the Israeli Justice Ministry unit dealing with nonprofit organizations found grounds to shut down “Aid 48,” a charity affiliated with Ra’am, on suspicion of providing funding to terrorist organizations. “Aid 48” is the Islamic Movement Southern Branch’s main charity. According to an investigation by the ministry, in 2020-2021, the organization transferred NIS 2 million to a charity in Hebron that Israel had declared in 2012 to be part of a terrorist organization; in 2023, “Aid 48” worked with three such Palestinian charities; in 2020, the organization gave NIS 933,000 to a Turkish organization run by Hamas members, which funneled money to the terrorist organization.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, the former director of the IDF Prosecution for Judea and Samaria, currently the director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, explained to JI that Israeli law makes it easier to crack down on smaller subgroups than an umbrella term like the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Israel’s anti-terrorism law and the whole discipline has been to focus on specific organizations and declaring them as terrorist organizations because of their goals, because of the means that they use, rather than focusing on an idea, which the Muslim Brotherhood really is,” he said on the sidelines of a JCFA conference last week.

In order to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, “you have to break it down into intelligence,” Hirsch said, adding that the authorities would have to determine who they are seeking to arrest and what money and possibly weapons need to be seized.

Hirsch recounted taking part in the Israeli Security Cabinet meeting in 2015 when the government decided to outlaw the Islamic Movement Northern Branch.

“Some of the questions that were asked were, what is the next step? Who do we operate against now? It was a bit clearer than the entire Muslim Brotherhood, but even then there was a question,” he said.

“I would be very careful because, at its core, the Muslim Brotherhood is a movement that aims to change society. They have a lot of social organizations. It’s very different from Islamic Jihad or ISIS, who are not interested in social activism,” said Milshtein, adding that the Muslim Brotherhood ideology is up for interpretation by its adherents.

When it comes to the southern branch, Hirsch, who has worked with the “Choosing Life” organization of relatives of victims of terror whose lawsuit led to the shuttering of “Aid 48,”  argued that “there is a clear connection between Ra’am and funding Hamas … That connection was there all along. It’s partly ideological and partly the idea of the Muslim Brotherhood in its different constellations, including in Israel.”

Milshtein acknowledged that there have been cases of leaders of “Aid 48” meeting with Hamas leaders and funding going to Hamas ahead of its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but said that Abbas “took care of” those responsible when he learned of the incidents.

“I would be very careful because, at its core, the Muslim Brotherhood is a movement that aims to change society. They have a lot of social organizations. It’s very different from Islamic Jihad or ISIS, who are not interested in social activism,” he said, adding that the Muslim Brotherhood ideology is up for interpretation by its adherents.

“If you ask Mansour Abbas, there is no problem with being part of the Muslim Brotherhood and part of the government in a state that defines itself as Jewish,” he said. “If you ask Hamas, they want jihad against Israel.”

Israel’s influential minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, resigned from his post on Tuesday, three years after assuming the role.

“This government will be defined both by the attack on October 7th and by the prosecution of the two-year, seven-front, war that followed,” Dermer, widely regarded as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisor, wrote in his resignation letter.

Israeli media had reported for months that Dermer’s departure was expected.

Dermer noted that he had initially promised his family to work in the position for two years only, but extended his tenure twice, with their blessing, “first to work with you [Netanyahu] to remove the existential threat posed by Iran’s military nuclear capability and second to end the war in Gaza on Israel’s terms and bring our hostages home.” 

Dermer has led Israel’s ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations since February. He is expected to stay on as Netanyahu’s envoy to continue handling the future of the Gaza portfolio, political sources recently told Jewish Insider. U.S.-born and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Dermer has long played a central role in managing Israel’s relationship with the U.S.

“What the future holds for me, I do not know. But I do know this: No matter what I do, I will continue to do my part to help secure the future of the Jewish people,” Dermer said.

Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.

A bipartisan group of 18 House members is urging the State Department to pressure Colombia’s government to change course on what the lawmakers described as a dangerous pattern of antisemitic rhetoric and policies by government officials, including the country’s president.

“As U.S.-Colombia relations continue to be strained by numerous issues, including the increasingly troubling antisemitic rhetoric and discriminatory policies from Colombian President Gustavo Petro, which are directly threatening the safety and well-being of Colombia’s Jewish community, we write to urge the administration to consider even stronger actions, including leveraging U.S. assistance to push for meaningful change in President Petro and his government,” the lawmakers, led by Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), said in a letter sent on Monday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The lawmakers said that Petro’s antisemitic comments on social media and anti-Israel posture “have contributed to an increasingly hostile environment for Colombian Jews,” raising particular concern about the appointment of Richard Gamboa, “a self-proclaimed ‘rabbi’ with anti-Zionist views and dubious credentials who lacks ties with Colombia’s Jewish institutions,” to be the Ministry of Interior’s director of religious affairs.

The letter characterizes Gamboa’s appointment as “a deliberate provocation aimed at legitimizing antisemitic perspectives within government institutions” and a “calculated effort by President Petro to normalize anti-Jewish hatred for political gains.”

“There is genuine concern that Mr. Gamboa will continue to accelerate the deteriorating situation facing Colombian Jewry,” the letter continues.

Gamboa, the lawmakers, noted, has gone on antisemitic “tirades” on social media, writing, “Zionists ARE NOT JEWS,” “true rabbis are not Zionists,” and “The full weight of the law should fall upon … defenders of a genocidal regime that usurps and profanes the name of Judaism.”

They also pointed to media reports that indicate that the government may seek to use Gamboa as its official liaison to the Jewish community, sidelining the Confederation of Jewish Communities of Colombia.

The letter was co-signed by Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY), Buddy Carter (R-GA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Gary Palmer (R-AL), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Pat Harrigan (R-NC), Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Pete Stauber (R-MN), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Frederica Wilson (D-FL), Don Bacon (R-NE), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ). 

Carter and Stevens are running for the Senate in Georgia and Michigan, respectively.

The American Jewish Committee supported the effort and “remains deeply concerned by the antisemitic rhetoric and discriminatory policies emanating from Colombian President Gustavo Petro and his Administration, which poses a direct threat to the safety and well-being of Colombia’s Jewish community,” Dina Siegel Vann, the director of AJC’s Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs, said in a statement.

“These actions by the highest levels of government in Colombia must not become normalized,” Siegel Vann continued. “We commend Representatives Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and María Salazar (R-FL) for their principled leadership in urging Secretary of State Marco Rubio to make clear to President Petro that his government’s continued provocations and embrace of antisemitic rhetoric and policies are inconsistent with our shared values and interests.”

Petro has a long history of anti-Israel and antisemitic comments and accused the Jewish state of genocide, severing ties last year. He declined to condemn the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, instead comparing Israel to the Nazi regime — something he has done for years, including prior to his time in office.

Amid an alarming rise in political violence, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday that the way to combat extremism and division is by bringing people together and restoring their faith in the government — a civic-minded strategy that included some thinly veiled swipes at President Donald Trump and the hardline rhetoric he has adopted since conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah last week.

Shapiro and his family survived an April arson attack that damaged the governor’s residence in Harrisburg while they slept, hours after hosting a Passover Seder there. The alleged arsonist acted to protest Shapiro’s stance toward the Palestinians, according to a police search warrant. 

“I believe we have a responsibility to be clear and unequivocal in calling out all forms of political violence, making clear it is all wrong,” Shapiro said in a keynote address at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, a Pittsburgh conference created in the aftermath of the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue. “Unfortunately some, from the dark corners of the internet all the way to the Oval Office, want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn.”

Shapiro called for dialogue and a rejection of the demands for revenge that have permeated social media since Kirk’s murder last week. The speech did not name Trump, although Shapiro called for Trump to act with “moral clarity” in a post on X on Monday. 

Widely rumored to be considering a 2028 presidential run, the speech offered Shapiro a chance to deliver a wide-ranging speech to a national audience.

“We need to create more opportunities for peaceful and respectful dialogue, respecting each other’s fundamental rights as Americans,” said Shapiro. “Prosecuting constitutionally protected speech will only further erode our freedoms, deepen the mistrust. That is un-American.” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday that the U.S. would be “targeting” hate speech, which she said was different from free speech — a statement she attempted to walk back a day later after facing bipartisan pushback.

There is a better way, Shapiro added: “That better way is the Pennsylvania way.” 

“Those who stoke division will want to have us believe words are important, but we also need action,” said Shapiro. “We need to make sure people are safe here in Pennsylvania and all across America, safe to exercise their fundamental rights and freedoms, whether they’re debating on a college campus, praying at a synagogue or church or spending time at home with loved ones.” 

Americans should do more to address hate online, and to teach people to better distinguish “fact from fiction” on the internet, argued Shapiro. But more than that, he said, they need to see and trust that the government actually can make their lives better.

“There’s a deeper issue at the root of this dangerous rise of political violence. Too many people don’t believe that our institutions and the people in them can solve problems anymore. They feel alone, ignored, shut out by a government that isn’t working for them,” said Shapiro. “It leads to a belief among some that the only way they can address their problems is through violence.” 

The ways to prove otherwise, Shapiro said, are simple — helping people get driver’s licenses quickly, giving kids free breakfast at school and “building a government that works for Pennsylvanians and gets stuff done.” 

Shapiro leaned on Jewish teachings in his speech, referring as he often does to how his faith underpins his public service. 

During a speech at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Gov. @JoshShapiroPA shared the story of an 82-year-old Christian chaplain of a local fire department, who gave Shapiro and his family a letter signed by each member of their department after an April… pic.twitter.com/jqTD9U7S3U

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) September 16, 2025

“My faith has taught me that no one is required to complete the task, but neither are we free to refrain from it. It means that each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, get in the game and do our part,” Shapiro said.  

After the attack on the governor’s mansion, Pennsylvanians “were united in speaking and acting with moral clarity, making clear that hatred and violence has no place here in Pennsylvania,” said Shapiro. 

He shared the story of the 82-year-old Christian chaplain of a local fire department, who gave Shapiro and his family a letter signed by each member of their department. On the back, the chaplain had written by hand what he said was the most important blessing in his life, from the Book of Numbers.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.

“I wept when I read that prayer that he wrote,” said Shapiro, who recalls then telling the chaplain that he recites that prayer — known as the Priestly Blessing in Judaism — to his children each night. He then proceeded to do so in Hebrew, and offered his own benediction about the power the prayer holds for a nation reeling from violence. 

Yivarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha. Ya’er Adonai panav eilecha v’chuneka. Yisa Adonai panav eilecha v’yasem l’cha shalom. 

“Those are words of healing, words of hopefulness to me,” said Shapiro. “They are also words that again remind us of our shared humanity.” 

The editor-in-chief of Qatar’s pro-government newspaper Al Sharq called on Hamas “heroes” to kidnap more IDF soldiers in a since-deleted tweet. 

“If success is not achieved this time in capturing Zionist soldiers at the hands of the heroes of #AlQassamBrigades, then the second, third, and fourth attempts will succeed, God willing, by adding new rats to the tally held by the heroes of the Brigades,” Qatari journalist Jabar Al-Harmi wrote in Arabic last week, adding that the “heroes” of Al-Qasam “sent a number of Zionist soldiers to hell” by storming an IDF military site in southern Gaza. Those that weren’t killed were “sent to worldly torment with permanent disabilities and impairments, and others to mental and psychological institutions.” 

Al-Harmi continued, “Blessed be the hands of the heroes. And may the hands of the vile criminal outcasts be paralyzed.” 

Al Sharq, which is published in Doha by a privately held media company founded and owned by Sheikh Khalid bin Thani Al Thani, a member of the Qatari ruling family, is one of the four leading private daily Arabic newspapers in Qatar, all of which have a pro-government bent. 

Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow in The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Irwin Levy Family Program in the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship, told Jewish Insider that the tweet is “not surprising” and comes amid widespread praise for Hamas in Qatari media. 

“The Qatari media landscape is rife with statements, selective reporting and editorials that support Hamas,” said Al-Omari, former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. “Under the guise of supporting the Palestinian people, many Qatari media outlets have been a key vehicle for amplifying Hamas propaganda.” 

On Thursday, NBC News reported a claim from Iran’s Ministry of Health that “over 2,500 injured people were treated in public and university hospitals, with 1,600 discharged and about 500 still hospitalized.” Earlier this week, CBS News reported 224 Iranians were dead from Israeli airstrikes, also attributed to Iran’s Ministry of Health.

There is no free press in Iran, and journalists have been arrested and imprisoned simply for practicing journalism in the Islamic Republic. There is no real way to verify the Iranian Health Ministry’s numbers, and so many journalists report them, unscrupulously.

In a fast-paced, constantly evolving news environment, accuracy is paramount. The ability to try to authenticate a statistic by attributing it to an official government source, while knowing that the source is unreliable, can serve as the basis for an inaccurate narrative with wide-ranging effects.

Take, for example, the Al-Alhi Hospital incident in October 2023, when the most widely read Western media outlets reported on an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital, later confirmed to have been a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. In the aftermath of the hospital incident — which many outlets, including The New York Times, had to walk back — Jordanian King Abdullah II canceled an in-person summit with President Joe Biden in Amman, potentially altering the course of the conflict.

“Israel strikes Iranian state TV, warns people to evacuate Tehran after accusing Iran of targeting civilians,” was a CBS News headline on Monday evening. Hours prior, an Iranian ballistic missile salvo targeted dozens of locations across the country — with one missile landing in the heart of a residential area of Tel Aviv. 

Further missing in reports of fatalities in the region is the identity of those killed. Take, for example, an Israeli attack in December on the port of Hodeidah and Sana’a airport in Yemen, both utilized by the Houthis. “At least four people were killed and 21 others injured in the attack,” according to the New York Times report on the strike, filed by journalists in Israel and the United Arab Emirates who cited Yemeni state-run media and the country’s Ministry of Health. 

Why were those people at a Houthi port known for serving as a point of transfer for Iranian weapons? Were those who were killed Houthi officials? Were they engaged in activity that posed an active and immediate threat to Israelis? The reader will never know anything beyond that the numbers provided by the Houthi-run Health Ministry in Yemen “could not be independently verified.”

It’s a regular occurrence in Israel-related reporting, where reports on West Bank clashes fail to mention when those killed are members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or one of the many armed militant groups operating in the territory. 

More than 20 months after Hamas terrorists tore through southern Israel, raping, burning and killing people and destroying obstacles in their way, foreign reporters in the region continue to use casualty figures from the terror group’s Gaza Ministry of Health, noting only that the group doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Concerns over the reliance on the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry were so severe that American legislators passed — on a bipartisan basis — an amendment to last year’s State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations bill barring the State Department from using the health ministry’s statistics. Read our report here.

An ABC News report from earlier this week on violence near humanitarian aid distribution sites in Gaza leads with the headline “More than 30 killed at controversial foundation’s aid distribution sites in Gaza: Health officials,” giving an air of legitimacy to the claim — even though a reader would have to move down to the story before learning that those health officials came from the “Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.” And nowhere in the story does ABC News note that the Gaza Health Ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The inclination to publish talking points and statistics from terror groups and regimes incentivizes a playbook for malign actors — from Iran to the Houthis and Hamas — to provide misleading casualty figures for the media to carry that lack the intricacies and nuances necessary in such reporting.

And in this new media reality, misinformation and malign actors — already benefiting from  sympathetic media organizations — thrive. 

The Knesset is set to hold a preliminary vote on Wednesday to trigger an early election — and crucial partners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition are threatening to support it.

For the past week, Haredi parties have said they would vote in favor of legislation that would dissolve the Knesset and schedule an election for this fall. The parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, are threatening to jump ship because the coalition has not passed a law to continue the long-standing exemption for full-time yeshiva students from IDF conscription.

Without Shas and UTJ, Netanyahu’s coalition would be left with 50 members, far short of the 61-seat majority he needs to keep his government afloat.

As such, Netanyahu and his allies have been frantically trying to negotiate a compromise that will keep the Haredi parties in the fold. 

Past laws exempting young Haredi men from military service have expired and a new one has not been passed, leading the High Court of Justice to order the government last year to actively conscript them.

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein, who is responsible for ushering a bill to a vote that would codify the status of young Haredi men and set rising enlistment targets for the coming years, has said he will not move it forward unless it includes significant penalties for yeshiva students who refuse to serve. These reportedly include canceling daycare and housing subsidies and bans on leaving the country and receiving a driver’s license before age 29. 

Likud and other parties leading Israel over the past half-century allowed the Haredi exemption to continue out of political expedience. But that position has become politically and militarily untenable in the more than 600 days since the war in Gaza began and hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been called for reserve duty, with some serving for hundreds of days. 

In addition to Edelstein, several other coalition lawmakers and Cabinet ministers have similarly said they will not support a bill that would continue to allow the vast majority of Haredi men between the ages of 18-24 to decline IDF service without sanctions.

Those sanctions are a red line for the Haredi parties, for whom maintaining their communities’  practice of yearslong full-time yeshiva study has become a key political issue. As such, the parties’ spiritual leaders instructed their politicians to force new elections if penalties for avoiding IDF service are put in place. 

While the gaps between the sides are significant and the disputes are serious, Netanyahu has managed to keep coalitions afloat in seemingly hopeless political situations before.

Several factors are working to his advantage. Most significantly,the Haredim are not likely to find themselves in a better situation after a new election. Opposition parties are even more opposed to yeshiva students’ exemption from the draft than those currently in power, and they favor more liberal policies on other religion and state issues that are important to Haredim. 

As such, the best an election can do for the Haredim is to buy time, hope the war will end and bet that public pressure to draft their young voters will abate. One senior Shas rabbi predicted that the current coalition parties will “come crawling” back to the Haredi parties after an election. 

The leading rabbi of one of the Hasidic sects within United Torah Judaism, Belz, opposes holding an election during wartime, and his representative, Jerusalem Affairs Minister Meir Porush, has also been working to try to stop the dissolution of the Knesset.

In addition, the vote on Wednesday is a preliminary one, which means that in order for the Knesset to call an election, three more votes on the matter would be necessary. While it would be possible to go through the whole process in a day, Netanyahu and his coalition would likely drag out those votes for as long as possible, at least past July 23, when the Knesset’s long summer recess begins. 

If the bill is voted down, it cannot be brought to a vote again for six months, though a different party could put forward a similar bill days later.

If the law passes, an election would have to be held after a minimum of 90 days and no more than five months after the Knesset is dissolved.

During that time, a caretaker government would comprise the current Cabinet members, who would still be led by Netanyahu. There are few limits in Israeli law to what a caretaker government can do, and the High Court has been inconsistent about the kinds of decisions a government can make after the Knesset is dispersed.

Following a visit to the Middle East, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he’s very “optimistic” about the future of Lebanon under its new government, describing the country’s leaders as serious about centralizing power and demilitarizing Hezbollah.

Lankford and Sen. Angus King (I-ME) traveled last week to Baghdad and Erbil in Iraq, Beirut  and Amman, Jordan. Lankford continued on to Jerusalem while the Maine senator went on to Turkey. 

Lankford, in an interview with Jewish Insider in his Senate office on Thursday, said that he also heard from Iraqi partners that Tehran is not budging on its commitment to uranium enrichment and that regional leaders are supportive of sanctions relief for Syria.

Lankford pointed to reforms in banking rules to help allow for international investment and concerted action by the Lebanese government and Lebanese Armed Forces against Hezbollah as reasons for optimism.

“The Lebanese Armed Forces and the president were very clear: ‘We will be the defender of Lebanon. There’s not two armies, there’s one army,’” Lankford said. “They are working to demilitarize Hezbollah and to be able to make sure that they are the one army … I think there’s real progress and real opportunity.”

He said the LAF has undertaken hundreds of operations to move into and take over Hezbollah strongholds — which he said had been confirmed by U.S. military leadership — and Lebanese leaders were clear that they plan to continue to advance, seize weapons in Palestinian refugee areas and ultimately move into the Beqaa Valley, where many Hezbollah fighters have fled. 

“[Lebanese leaders] don’t want to be at war with Israel and they don’t want to have two militaries in their country,” Lankford emphasized. “They want to be Lebanon and have peaceful relationships with their neighbors.”

At the same time, he said that the prospect of normalization between Lebanon and Israel floated by some Trump administration officials appears further off. He said the issue came up in his discussions, but that Israel’s military presence inside Lebanon is a “sticking point” for Lebanon’s leadership.

“The Lebanese leadership is saying, for Israel, ‘We understand that you’re wanting to be able to have some leverage here to be able to get us to do our work. We are doing our work. This is our country, you need to back across the Blue Line,’” Lankford said, referring to the border between the Golan Heights and Lebanon. “What we all understand is that boundary, and they’re working to be able to solidify that. And I believe they’re very close.”

He said that on both the Israeli and Lebanese sides, officials volunteered their “overwhelming support” for Morgan Ortagus, the Trump administration’s deputy Middle East envoy, who sources said will depart her post soon. Lankford said that regional leaders viewed Ortagus as an “honest broker, someone who is legitimately working to try to get to a resolution in the area.”

He said that discussions about Iran’s nuclear program were a primary focus for many in the region, adding that he “heard loud and clear” from leaders in Iraq who have been in close contact with Tehran that Iran is not budging on its insistence on maintaining enrichment capacity.

“[Leaders in Iraq] said, ‘All they want is peaceful [enrichment] purposes and [Iran is] hopeful that they’re going to keep that and they’re hopeful for the negotiations,’” Lankford said. “And I just said, ‘I’m not in the negotiations but I could tell you, there’s not an interest in having a uranium enrichment program in Iran at all.’”

Asked about recent reports that the U.S. has put forward proposals that would allow Iran to continue enriching, either in an interim capacity or as part of a regional consortium, Lankford said that Iran’s centrifuges cannot continue operating.

He also said, in response to comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Iranian proxy terrorism and ballistic missile development are not part of the ongoing talks, that the proxies and missiles are central to the U.S.’ issues with Iran, and “it all needs to be addressed.”

Lankford added that Iran cannot be allowed to continue developing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon while it continues to enrich uranium.

“I can remember saying [in 2015] that the problem with JCPOA is that they can continue to do their weapons development towards a weapon that can deliver a nuclear weapon, while they have time to be able to [do] more study,” Lankford said. “So it provides them the two things they need, money and time, and they don’t have to slow down their weapons development.”

Lankford said that, throughout the region, he heard support for sanctions relief for the new leadership in Syria to allow the fledgling government a chance to coalesce.

“There’s also cautious skepticism about the new leadership there, to say they need to have a chance, but they need to pull together a government that respects the rights of the minority,” Lankford said. “Everybody was focused in on, how do you get a unified Syria so it’s not split up? With so much diversity in Syria, how do you actually make that work?”

He said he hadn’t discussed the prospect of sanctions relief directly with Israeli leaders, but said that Israeli leaders are very wary of Turkish influence in Syria, and of Ankara effectively attempting to annex the country.

“That’s a real threat if the Turks decide they’re just going to keep moving south and dominate that, the Israelis are not comfortable with that at all,” Lankford said. “Syria needs to be Syria, and not Turkey South, and the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was very, very clear about that.”

He said that the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, said he’s encouraging Syrian Kurds to focus their attention on the new Syrian government in Damascus and on establishing themselves as “part of the new Syria, not a separate entity … and that’s not going to happen if they just stay to the east and don’t actually go engage with the new government.”

Lankford said Israeli leaders were “skeptical” that a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas, as pushed by the Trump administration, is achievable, and said Israeli leaders told him they plan to continue military operations until Hamas agrees to release the hostages, though he said all parties involved want to see a ceasefire and hostage release.

“[Hamas] could turn over the hostages at any moment and they’ve chosen not to do that, and so we’re going to go get our hostages,” he said, characterizing Israeli leaders’ position on the issue, adding that Hamas cannot remain in power.

He said that Israel is also focused on eliminating remaining Hamas fighters and weapons and said that Israel still has “a long way to go in the tunnels,” but is working to create “safe areas for people to live free of Hamas” and receive food aid.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the new U.S. and Israeli-backed aid delivery mechanism in Gaza, began operations while Lankford was in Israel, and he said that it was achieving its desired results in getting food to Palestinians free of Hamas control.