Brandeis Center founder Kenneth Marcus indicated the administration is receptive to taking action on an ‘extraordinary surge’ in health care-related antisemitism
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Add JewishInsider on GoogleRepresentatives from several Jewish groups met with Paula Stannard, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, last week to discuss potential action to counter antisemitism in health-care and medical education.
The meeting, organized by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, also included representatives from the American Jewish Medical Association, Hadassah (The Women’s Zionist Organization of America), the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America and StandWithUs.
Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Brandeis Center, told JI that the meeting was the second sit-down between the Brandeis Center and HHS leadership, given an “an extraordinary surge in health sector related antisemitism reports” to Brandeis and a “greater involvement by HHS in antisemitism and other civil rights issues than we’ve seen before, so meeting with HHS has become much more important.”
He said that, in the first meeting, which was just between Brandeis and HHS, his organization “made clear the nature and scope of the problem of antisemitism in health care,” particularly the “decolonizing therapy” movement in mental health spaces that has characterized Zionism as a mental illness to be treated.
The second meeting, last week, which lasted around an hour, brought in other Jewish communal groups to share additional information.
Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of AJMA, called the meeting “very productive.”
“We went in with the goal of coming collectively, and also to take a look at how we can use the government relations arm to work and partner with the government, so in that way, we could take a look at what’s going on in the workplace environment, as well as medical schools and all the other various stakeholders that would have a part in it, which includes the [medical] associations, the unions,” Shekhman said.
She said that the AJMA representatives sought to communicate the various forms and examples of antisemitism that providers and medical students have faced.
“This has a different level of gravitas because of the life and death nature of it. … When people are distracted in the ER and the OR by politics, and particularly by antisemitism, it really puts vulnerable people, patients at risk,” Andrea Wolf, AJMA’s director of advocacy added. “And then on top of that, if a patient comes in as an identifiable Jew, wearing a magen david or a yarmulke, or something like that, we’re not sure anymore that they can get the same level of care as someone who’s not identifiably Jewish.”
Dan Granot, senior director of government relations for ADL, said in a statement, “ADL’s data shows a troubling rise in antisemitism within health care settings. We must use all levers of government to respond to this crisis. Hospitals must remain places of healing, not hate.”
“As a member of the federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, the Department of Health and Human Services has a key role in confronting this scourge,” Granot continued. “We welcome HHS taking this challenge seriously and appreciate the opportunity to engage in a constructive discussion on what should be done to protect patients, providers, and future providers alike.”
Rachel Dembo, the director of policy and government relations for JFNA, said, “Nobody seeking medical care should be exposed to hate. Unfortunately, we have seen many disturbing instances of antisemitism creeping into medical settings, and too many instances where institutions failed to act or, worse, were permissive of antisemitism. We appreciate HHS OCR for taking this issue seriously and look forward to continuing to work with them and Congress to ensure Jewish Americans have access to hate-free health care.”
HHS is looking both at potential civil rights violations by individual institutions as well as at the possibility of broader policymaking to combat antisemitism in the field generally, Marcus said. He said that the problems in health care are wide-ranging, and come from patients, providers and healthcare students, in educational, hospital and medical association and conference settings.
“HHS has an extraordinarily wide jurisdiction. Since they fund such a high percentage of colleges and universities, they could certainly address many of the same sorts of situations that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is handling,” Marcus explained. “But they also fund medical practices, health care of various sorts, and some associations, such as the American Psychological Association, where there have been concerning reports of antisemitic activity.”
He said HHS could issue informal guidance in the form of a dear colleague letter on antisemitism, but added that he’s “concerned at the appearance that HHS continues to fund some decolonizing therapy activity,” which he said he would like to see addressed in guidance and in enforcement activities.
Wolf said that AJMA is also pushing for a “more robust and accurate reporting mechanism” for incidents of antisemitism, noting that “our biggest challenge right now is not having a clear sense of the pervasiveness and the facts on the ground.”
Wolf and Shekhman said AJMA would also support an HHS dear colleague letter — reminding entities of their legal responsibilities and duty to combat antisemitism — and further work across administrative agencies and with Congress to address antisemitism and expand scientific partnerships between the U.S. and Israel.
Wolf said AJMA is also working to track donations to medical schools by bad actors.
HHS was involved in, and announced the revocation of, funds from various university-affiliated medical programs as part of the administration’s crackdown on campus antisemitism in early 2025. But that activity tapered off and faded from the public eye in the latter part of the Trump administration’s first year.
“What we’re looking for is a second wave of Health civil rights enforcement,” Marcus said. He noted that much of that early action was undertaken by personnel in acting capacities who in some cases are no longer at the agencies, and was driven largely by initiative from the White House.
“Now we’re looking for something different,” Marcus continued, calling for “more activity of a more institutionalized sort, such as investigations by HHS career officials throughout their regional apparatus” by the Office for Civil Rights and a “more normalized effort through the HHS bureaucracy taking on the issue of antisemitism.”
He said his conversations with Stannard and HHS have made him “optimistic” that such efforts would be forthcoming from the administration.
Wolf emphasized that AJMA aims to take a more collaborative approach with both the government and with medical schools themselves, and to serve as a resource to both. She said that HHS does not “condone or encourage investigations” of medical schools by HHS, “but once they are open by HHS, there’s really no better source of facts than AJMA membership, and so we will work with the government to help them.”
She said AJMA is happy that the administration is now taking a “more thoughtful and more targeted” approach to addressing antisemitism “without threatening a lot of scientific funding.”
Plus, poll shows Stevens as most electable Dem in MI-SEN race
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President Donald Trump speaks during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
Good Wednesday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump indicated that his threats to Iran are making an impact; he told reporters this afternoon, “We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping, it’s stopped, and there’s no plans for executions,” referencing reports that an arrested protester was due to be executed today.
Trump later appeared to downplay protester deaths, calling it “one of those things … people were shooting at them with guns and they were shooting back.” It’s a notable change in tune from the president, who just yesterday told Iranian protesters to “save the names of the killers and abusers” and that “help is on its way.”
Asked if this means that military action against Iran is off the table, Trump responded, “We’re going to watch it and see what the process is, but we were given a very good statement” that the killing has stopped “by people that are aware of what’s going on”…
Others are still bracing for potential military action: Some personnel were told to evacuate the U.S.’ Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar by tonight, Reuters reports. (Recall that Iran launched several missiles at Al Udeid after the U.S. strikes on its nuclear sites last June.)
A number of airlines have canceled or suspended flights to Iran; the Lufthansa group, in addition to avoiding Iranian and Iraqi airspace, said it will only operate day flights to Israel and Jordan through Jan. 19, avoiding overnight trips.
IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin warned on social media to avoid rumors and misinformation about the evolving situation, saying the IDF is “prepared for defense and on alert for surprise scenarios”…
White House special envoy Steve Witkoff announced the launch of Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan today, “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction.” This phase “establishes a transitional technocratic Palestinian administration in Gaza … and begins the full demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza, primarily the disarmament of all unauthorized personnel,” Witkoff said.
“The US expects Hamas to comply fully with its obligations, including the immediate return of the final deceased hostage. Failure to do so will bring serious consequences,” Witkoff added, though the U.S. has not taken action on Hamas’ failure to return the body of Ran Gvili, the final hostage, in the three months since the terror group was meant to at the outset of the ceasefire agreement.
It is still unclear how the U.S. and its partners will disarm Hamas or remove it from power, with the International Stabilization Force still not in place and foreign nations refusing to engage with Hamas militants…
Meanwhile, the midterms are picking up speed: New polling out of the Michigan Senate race shows Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) looking like the most electable Democrat against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the expected GOP nominee.
In a Detroit News poll testing general election matchups, Stevens and Rogers were tied at 44% each, while physician Abdul El-Sayed, who has made criticism of Israel central to his campaign, fared the worst, losing to Rogers 48-42%. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, another critic of Israel, would also trail, 46-42%, the poll found…
In the Garden State, Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) secured the endorsement of Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) today, a meaningful show of support from the progressive-minded senator as Menendez may face a primary challenge from his left from Mussab Ali.
Ali, who is expected to join the race shortly, is a vocal opponent of Israel and has been a champion for the anti-Israel protests and encampments that roiled college campuses in recent years; Kim has also been criticized by Jewish leaders for his support of measures blocking some arms sales to Israel…
Trump will not be endorsing three Republican senators facing competitive reelection campaigns: Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Politico reports. Cornyn and Cassidy are facing serious Republican primary opposition, while Collins is facing the likelihood of a hotly contested general election…
The State Department is indefinitely suspending immigration visa processing for individuals from 75 countries starting Jan. 21, building on the Trump administration’s total and partial immigration bans that already exist on nearly 40 countries. The pause will impact those looking to permanently immigrate who may “become a public charge on the United States and exploit the generosity of the American people,” the State Department said…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for an interview with Ryan Crosswell, the Marine veteran and former Republican looking to win the Democratic nomination in a key Pennsylvania swing district.
The technocratic Palestinian committee launched with Phase 2 of the Gaza Peace Plan — which will be headed by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister for the Palestinian Authority — is expected to hold its first meeting tomorrow in Cairo, also attended by Nickolay Mladenov, the former U.N. envoy to the Middle East now leading the Gaza Board of Peace.
The Israeli American Council kicks off its annual summit tomorrow in Hollywood, Fla., with a plenary including Adm. (res.) Daniel Hagari, the previous IDF spokesperson; Boaz Levy, the CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries; and Betsy Korn, the chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
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Plus, J Street plays both sides
Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump speaks to the press upon returning to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January 13, 2026.
Good Tuesday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
President Donald Trump’s rhetoric against Iran reached a fever pitch today, as reports indicate over 12,000 — and potentially as many as 20,000 — protesters have been killed by the regime amid nationwide demonstrations.
Trump posted on social media this morning that he has “cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS,” and said to the demonstrators, “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.”
Trump ended his message promising, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” without specifying what actions the U.S. may take, though he told reporters in Detroit that “it’s not a bad idea” for U.S. allies “to get out” of Iran.
Administration officials held several discussions today on options for intervening in Iran; Vice President JD Vance, whose team has pushed back on characterizations that he is opposed to military strikes, led the major briefing with the National Security Council’s Principals Committee this afternoon. Trump was in Michigan for a speech on the economy and likely did not attend…
As the U.S. weighs its next steps, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar are advocating against strikes, warning the administration that destabilization of the Iranian regime could impact oil markets and hurt the American economy, The Wall Street Journal reports. Saudi officials told Iran that they will not allow the U.S. to use their airspace to conduct strikes…
While Trump blocks meetings with Iranian officials, his special envoy Steve Witkoff secretly met with the exiled former Iranian crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, over the weekend, Axios reports, in the first high-level meeting with the regime’s opposition since the protests began. It’s not clear how much support the son of the deposed shah has in Iran, though videos from recent protests show demonstrators chanting slogans associated with him and the monarchy…
Looking to the campaign trail, in a first, J Street endorsed Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) in his reelection race while also listing his opponent, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, as an “approved” candidate. It’s currently the only race where the group is supporting a challenger to an incumbent, in a district where the candidates’ differing stances on Israel are a key issue…
Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor of North Carolina now running for the seat of retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), raised more than $9.5 million in the final quarter of 2025, The Hill reports, a major haul for a seat that Democrats view as one of their best chances to flip. His opponent, former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, reportedly raised $5.1 million during the same time frame…
The Trump administration designated three Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations today, including chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports.
The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were named as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, with the State Department citing their provision of “material support to Hamas,” while the organization’s branch in Lebanon received the more stringent label of Foreign Terrorist Organization…
The U.S. is “closely monitoring developments in Aleppo,” Syria, and “urg[ing] all parties to exercise maximum restraint,” Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, said in a statement today, after days of fighting between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces killed dozens and displaced over 150,000 people in the city.
SDF fighters were expelled from two neighborhoods they had held since 2011 over the weekend, leading to protests by thousands of Kurds and marking a setback for efforts to integrate the SDF into the armed forces and to unify the country’s diverse populations…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a profile of the new president of the University of Michigan, who Jewish leaders are optimistic will improve the climate on a campus that experienced some of the most disruptive anti-Israel and antisemitic activity in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
Trump will address the issue of Iran in an interview airing on “CBS Evening News” tonight.
Tomorrow, Iran International will host a town hall with Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Joel Rayburn, the former deputy assistant secretary for Levant Affairs and U.S. special envoy for Syria.
In Netanya, Israel, the Tribe of Nova Foundation will host a ribbon-cutting for Nova House, a center primarily funded by UJA-Federation of New York for survivors of the music festival massacre.
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SCOOP
Trump, Netanyahu at odds over Israeli plans to end reliance on U.S. military aid
Two sources told JI the president pushed back on Netanyahu’s claims about the prudence of Israel’s proposal to end U.S. military assistance over the next decade
FUND IT OR LOSE IT
Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell to Jewish donors: ‘Act quickly’ to fund theater’s Israeli Lounge or risk losing it
Grenell, at October event for Oct. 7-themed exhibit, told attendees: ‘It certainly would be a shame if we lost this room to a corporation or an individual and it was no longer the lounge‘
Plus, Trump favors strikes on Iran over diplomacy
Russell Yip/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
California State Senator Scott Wiener addresses the SF Chronicle Editorial Board on Thursday, Jan. 18, 2018 in San Francisco, Calif.
Good Monday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
The suspect in the arson attack that destroyed Mississippi’s largest synagogue early Saturday morning confessed to targeting the building because of its “Jewish ties,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi more than 48 hours after the attack, the FBI said the suspect, Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, admitted to starting the blaze at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., due to “the building’s Jewish ties” and referred to the institution as the “synagogue of Satan” in an interview with the Jackson Fire Department. Pittman was charged with “maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive”…
President Donald Trump said Iranian officials made contact with the U.S. over the weekend and proposed restarting nuclear negotiations, telling reporters, “A meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting,” referring to the U.S. potentially taking military action in Iran over its violent crackdown on protesters around the country.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also spoke with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff in recent days about the protests, Axios reports; White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters today that an Iranian government official who spoke to Witkoff “express[ed] a far different tone than what you’re seeing publicly.”
Trump is currently leaning toward authorizing military strikes rather than engaging in diplomacy, The Wall Street Journal reports, and he is scheduled to hold a briefing tomorrow with advisors, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, to make a determination…
California Jewish communal organizations released a joint statement today condemning state Sen. Scott Wiener’s remarks on Israel, after the Jewish House candidate said in a video statement yesterday that he is changing his position and will now call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.
“We recognize that Senator Wiener has been a strong supporter of the Jewish community throughout the Israel-Hamas war and his many years of public service, and that he has directly experienced antisemitic attacks simply for being Jewish. Unfortunately, Senator Wiener’s newly stated position is both incorrect and lacks moral clarity. … We call on the Senator and our elected, civic, and education leaders to recognize and reflect on the consequences of their words in this fraught and polarizing environment,” the statement read…
In a major recruiting win for Senate Democrats, former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) announced her run against Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) today, JI’s Marc Rod reports, giving Democrats an outside chance of picking up the red-state Senate seat.
Peltola maintained a strongly pro-Israel voting record during her one term in the House, breaking on numerous occasions with a majority of her party to vote for measures supporting the Jewish state post-Oct. 7, including supporting a stand-alone Israel aid package opposed by many Democrats. Sullivan, for his part, has been a hawkish pro-Israel voice in the Senate, and has pushed for a more aggressive stance toward Iran…
Democratic Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo is launching a bid to succeed his former mentor, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), as the former House majority leader retires. Boafo, who served as campaign manager for Hoyer, is expected to be the party favorite in the primary, Politico reports. Former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who rose to prominence after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, is also considering joining the race…
In another race to watch, Rep. Nellie Pou (D-NJ) in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District gained another opponent in Tiffany Burress, a Republican political newcomer and wife of former NFL wide receiver Plaxico Burress. On the first day of her campaign, Burress has already secured the backing of several GOP county chairs, as the party looks to flip the seat away from Pou after Trump unexpectedly carried the district in 2024…
Former Obama administration officials and Crooked Media hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Ben Rhodes are hosting a fundraiser in Hollywood, Calif., on Thursday for Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left, anti-Israel candidate running for Senate in Michigan, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
El-Sayed, a physician and former director of the Wayne County Department of Health, has made his criticisms of Israel a centerpiece of his campaign, blasting other candidates in the race as being insufficiently hostile to the Jewish state. Favreau, Lovett and Rhodes, on their “Pod Save America” and “Pod Save the World” podcasts, have also emerged as a vocal force against Israel and AIPAC in the Democratic Party, and have boosted prominent anti-Israel candidates in other hot-button primaries…
The future of the Israeli Lounge at the Trump-Kennedy Center is reportedly in peril, eJewishPhilanthropy‘s Judah Ari Gross reports, “unless a major donor from the Jewish community steps up and makes a large donation,” far-right commentator Laura Loomer said over the weekend. The center’s president, Richard Grenell, is seeking to renovate the space; Loomer has suggested Qatar may look to provide the funds for the room’s overhaul…
The New York Times reports on the brewing fight between states over the order of 2028 Democratic presidential primary elections…
Dina Powell McCormick, a banking executive, former deputy national security advisor to Trump and wife of Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), was named president and vice chair of Meta, reporting to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Axios reports. Zuckerberg said in a statement that Powell McCormick will focus on “partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for more details on the motives and background of the suspected arsonist who set fire to the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., over the weekend.
President Donald Trump will receive a major briefing on avenues for responding to Iran’s violent suppression of protests, including cyber, economic and military options.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will deliver her State of the State address in Albany, where she plans to announce her proposal to create a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship and health-care facilities. (The legislation, while welcomed by major Jewish groups, would not have prevented the pro-Hamas protest that disrupted a Queens community last week, which took place approximately 300 feet away from the targeted synagogue.) New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to be in attendance.
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ON ALERT
Hezbollah’s continued presence in south Lebanon alarms Israel, despite disarmament claims
The Lebanese Armed Forces said it took operational control south of the Litani River, but has fallen well short of fully disarming the terrorist group
Plus, New Jersey IHRA bill scuttled
Kamran / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images
Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Kermanshah, Iran on January 8, 2026.
Good Thursday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Protests are escalating across Iran, with videos showing masses of demonstrators taking to the streets and security forces at times overwhelmed. Human rights groups estimate dozens of protesters have already been killed and reports indicate the country is experiencing an internet blackout. Storeowners are reportedly shuttering their businesses in an economic boycott, further deepening the economic crisis that spurred the unrest.
President Donald Trump reiterated his warning today that the Iranian regime will “have to pay hell” if “they start killing people, which they tend to do,” speculating that the deaths so far have been caused by stampedes and not law enforcement. Vice President JD Vance said at a press briefing that the Iranian regime “has a lot of problems” and that “the smartest thing for them to have done … is for them to actually have a real negotiation with the United States”…
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced today that he is establishing a royal commission into antisemitism in the country, after the deadly terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney last month. The commission, considered a powerful tool in Australian governance, will investigate the scope and causes of antisemitism and make recommendations for law enforcement, in a report due on the year anniversary of the Dec. 14 attack…
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Spain would send “peacekeeping troops” to the Gaza Strip “when the opportunity presents itself.” Speaking to a gathering of ambassadors in Madrid today, he said, “Of course, we have not forgotten Palestine and the Gaza Strip … Spain must actively participate in rebuilding hope in Palestine.” Many countries remain wary of contributing troops to stabilize Gaza over concerns of being required to engage with Hamas…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today with Nickolay Mladenov, former U.N. envoy to the Middle East and soon-to-be representative of the U.S.-led Board of Peace in Gaza…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been silent thus far today about a protest taking place tonight organized by the radical anti-Israel group responsible for a similar protest outside the Park East Synagogue in November, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
The group posted the address of the real estate event they intend to protest, which is taking place at a synagogue in Queens’ heavily Jewish neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills. The synagogue canceled prayer services and two nearby schools, Yeshiva of Central Queens and PS 165, announced early closures. Democratic state Assemblymember Sam Berger, who represents the area, told JI that local principals, staff and parents are “very concerned.” The surrounding area has been “completely upended,” he said…
The New Jersey Legislature will not give further consideration to a bill seeking to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism into state law during this legislative session, the bill’s lead sponsor announced, after several years of the Jewish community’s urging for the measure to be adopted…
Rob Sand, the state auditor and Democratic candidate for governor of Iowa, announced he raised over $9.5 million in 2025, more than double the record for off-year fundraising for a gubernatorial election in the state. Sand told Jewish Insider in 2019, when he first took office as auditor, that he conducted what was “definitely the first audit” to ensure agencies were in compliance with a state anti-BDS law. “When you say [you are] willing to be supportive of your ally [Israel], you need to put your money where your mouth is,” he said at the time…
Far-left New York state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez joined the race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) today in the progressive 7th Congressional District covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens. The Democratic Socialists of America and Mamdani are expected to endorse Valdez, a move that could prove consequential in the district that The New York Times said will “pit left against lefter.”
Valdez, who has already brought on several of Mamdani’s advisors, was a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and pro-Israel political groups; her opponent, Antonio Reynoso, takes similar stances but is viewed as a more “traditional progressive” and is expected to secure Velázquez’s support, the Times reports…
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) officially announced his retirement today after serving 23 terms, one of the longest-serving House members in U.S. history. Speaking on the House floor, the former majority leader and pro-Israel champion warned he was “deeply concerned that this House is not living up to the founders’ goals” and that the country “is heading not toward greatness, but toward smallness, pettiness, divisiveness, loneliness and disdainfulness”…
In his first State of the State address since 2020 — and final before his term ends next year — California Gov. Gavin Newsom heralded his state as a “beacon” and a “policy blueprint for others to follow.” He denounced Trump and laid out a policy agenda including clean energy, increased wages and lowered housing costs, in a speech seen as laying the groundwork for his potential 2028 presidential run…
The Qatar Investment Authority and Emirati-based MGX, linked to a UAE sovereign wealth fund, participated in the latest fundraising round for Elon Musk’s xAI, which raised over $15 billion total. Gulf investors including QIA and the Saudi and Omani sovereign funds have taken part in previous fundraising rounds for the company that owns the Grok AI chatbot on X…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at how legislation in New Jersey to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism was scuttled — and who was behind the bill’s demise.
The third season of the hit TV show “Tehran” will premiere in the U.S. on Apple TV tomorrow, after a delay of several years. The popular international thriller, which follows a Mossad agent operating undercover in Iran, was indefinitely postponed at the outset of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The season ran in Israel in December 2024, and Apple has announced the fourth season is already in production.
On Saturday, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt will sit in conversation with Rabbi David Wolpe about the “golden age of American Jewry” at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
We’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Monday. Shabbat Shalom!
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Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Council member Julie Menin speaks during rally of 240 Holocaust survivors for 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas during terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Good Wednesday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Qatar is the top country donating foreign funds to American universities, and Cornell University is its leading recipient, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
According to a new dashboard from the Department of Education, Qatar holds the No. 1 spot for funds provided to U.S. universities at a whopping $6.6 billion — $2.3 billion of which has gone to Cornell, making up the vast majority of the school’s $3 billion in foreign funding. Qatar has provided significantly more funds than the next leading countries, bolstering criticisms of the Gulf state’s influence over American higher education…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud this afternoon “to advance ongoing bilateral cooperation” following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November. Rubio and Al-Saud discussed issues including Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and Syria, according to a State Department readout.
The Saudi foreign minister also met with lawmakers on the Hill, including Reps. Brian Mast (R-FL) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the chair and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee…
Trump is expected to kick off the second phase of the Gaza peace plan next week, Axios reports, including announcing the formation of the Gaza Board of Peace. Among the countries expected to participate are the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, with former U.N. envoy to the Middle East Nikolay Mladenov at the helm…
In a Truth Social post this afternoon, Trump called for the U.S. defense budget to be raised to $1.5 trillion in 2027, an increase of approximately 50% from his 2026 request…
Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, in a speech to the Knesset on Monday, warned the American right about the dangers of rising antisemitism within its ranks, JI’s Lahav Harkov reports.
“I stand here in Jerusalem to sound an alarm,” Illouz said. “We are used to enemies from the outside … but today, I look at the West — our greatest ally — and I see a new enemy rising from within.” Illouz, who was born and raised in Montreal, took the unusual step of speaking from the lectern in English.
The right-wing lawmaker called for American conservatives to reject what he called the “poison” of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, mentioning the podcasters by name. “They claim to fight the ‘woke left.’ They are no different than the woke left,” Illouz argued. “The woke left tears down statues of Thomas Jefferson, the woke right tears down statues of Winston Churchill … It is the same hatred of the West dressed up in a different costume”…
New York City Councilmember Julie Menin was unanimously voted speaker of the council today, as expected, after she announced in November that she had garnered enough support to secure the position.
Shortly after being elected, Menin, the first Jewish council speaker in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, said she will look to codify legislation to protect the Jewish community, including establishing safe perimeters for protests around synagogues…
A new poll by the Honan Strategy Group found Jewish and non-Jewish New York voters split in their views about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Forward reports. Fifty-five percent of non-Jewish respondents said Jews who say they feel threatened by Mamdani’s views on Israel are overreacting, while 53% of Jewish respondents said they are justified to feel that way. Fifty-one percent of Jews said Mamdani’s election is a troubling sign that antisemitism is being normalized, while 61% of non-Jews see it as evidence of healthy debate and diversity…
The New York Times lays out an ongoing lawsuit in New York over redistricting that could see the 11th Congressional District redrawn, which could impact the boundaries of Rep. Dan Goldman’s (D-NY) neighboring district and further complicate his reelection prospects…
In New Jersey, congressional candidates are raking in donations for what’s shaping up to be one of the state’s most expensive primary cycles ever. In the special election in the state’s 11th Congressional District to replace Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) announced he’s raised more than $1 million in the two months since he launched his bid.
Three Democratic candidates vying for Malinowski’s old seat in the neighboring 7th District, now held by Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ), have also raised over $1 million each, including former Navy pilot Rebecca Bennett. The large fundraising hauls are unusual for an off year, though Democrats see the 7th as a promising opportunity to flip a House seat, given that the swing district narrowly voted for Sherrill, a Democrat, in November…
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a far-right Republican, announced today he will not pursue a rematch against Gov. Josh Shapiro, to whom he lost decisively in the 2022 gubernatorial race, amid speculation that he would once again seek the office…
Warner Bros. rejected a hostile takeover bid from Paramount, in the latest development in the battle to acquire the media giant. The company’s board voted to maintain its existing deal with Netflix for $72 billion, calling Paramount’s amended $77.9 billion offer with a personal guarantee from Larry Ellison “inadequate”…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at the dynamics that may play out between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the newly inaugurated City Council Speaker Julie Menin as she plays a critical role in potentially providing a check against the mayor’s policy agenda.
Temple Emanu-El’s Streicker Center in New York City will host a screening of the documentary “The Road Between Us” about Gen. Noam Tibon’s historic rescue of his family amid the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, as well as a discussion with Tibon and director Barry Avrich. Read JI’s interview with Tibon and Avrich.
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REASONS AND RAMIFICATIONS
Why Israel recognized Somaliland — and what the rest of the world might do next
After Israel announced it would recognize the secessionist region, the big question remains whether the United States will follow suit
SAME AS THE OLD BOSS
New Venezuelan president signals similar anti-American foreign policy as Maduro
At a swearing-in ceremony on Monday, interim President Delcy Rodríguez appeared to embrace the ambassadors of Iran, China and Russia
Democratic state Assemblyman Sam Berger said Mamdani’s recent revocation of the IHRA definition is ‘all the more concerning’ in light of the threats to Jewish communities
Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
Anti-Israel demonstrators gather at 'No Settlers on Stolen Land' protest against a Nefesh b'Nefesh event at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan in November 2025.
A radical anti-Israel activist group responsible for the disruptive November protest outside of a historic synagogue in Manhattan announced it will hold a similar demonstration on Thursday, marking the first major test Mayor Zohran Mamdani will face in protecting the city’s Jewish community since he was inaugurated last week.
The group, called Palestinian Assembly for Liberation [PAL]-Awda, initially announced two demonstrations against Israeli immigration events in New York City this week. “Nefesh B’Nfesh settler recruitment fair on Wednesday at 7 pm in Manhattan and illegal Stolen Palestinian Land sale on Thursday at 6:30 in Queens,” it wrote Tuesday on social media, adding that it would disclose event locations on Wednesday.
The group, which never posted the location of the Nefesh B’ Nefesh event, wrote on Instagram on Wednesday evening, less than an hour before the event started, that “our planned action tonight to protest the settler recruitment event is being cancelled.”
“Although NBN is still holding their event, their reach and attendance has been diminished,” it wrote. “PAL-Awda NY/NJ and our allies will build on this win to ensure our community will always stand together in vocal opposition to zionist settler colonialism, to all settler recruitment, and genocide.”
Thursday’s demonstration, which PAL-Awda said it is still planning to hold, is protesting an event held by CapitIL, a Jerusalem-based real estate agency.
PAL-Awda led a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators in November in a protest outside of Park East synagogue as it was hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event providing information on immigration to Israel. Protesters shouted chants including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch later called the protest “turmoil,” while Mamdani’s office said the event was promoting “activities in violation of international law.”
The planned protest comes as Mamdani is facing criticism for repealing antisemitism and Israel-related executive orders issued by former Mayor Eric Adams, including one that saw the city adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, just hours after taking office on Jan 1. Coupled with Mamdani’s reaction to the November protest, Democratic state Assemblyman Sam Berger expressed concerns on Tuesday about how the mayor might handle this week’s protests.
“Without IHRA as a guiding standard, the city lacks a reliable framework to recognize when extremist language is being laundered as political discourse, leaving communities vulnerable in moments exactly like this,” Berger wrote on social media calling the mayor’s decision to repeal the executive order “all the more concerning” in light of the threats to the Jewish community.
Berger, an Orthodox Jew whose district includes the area where Thursday’s Israeli real estate event is being held, said that PAL-Awda also protested a similar event a year and a half ago. That demonstration “quickly descended into vile displays of antisemitism and open support for terrorist organizations whose stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. That context matters and it cannot be ignored,” said Berger.
“During that previous incident, protestors stood across the street, more than one hundred feet away, yet the distance did nothing to prevent a stream of antisemitic chants, tropes and harassment. Criticism of Israel is not the issue. The concern is when those arguments are used as a cover for blatant antisemitism, which is exactly what happened last time,” said Berger, adding that he’s “been in contact with the commanding officer of [NYPD’s] 107th Precinct and with Queens Shmira, and am assured they are taking this very seriously and that the community will be protected and public safety will remain the priority throughout this scheduled protest.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday she plans to implement a policy establishing “safety zones” around houses of worship.
Plus, New York candidates get in the midterm mood
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
An anti-U.S. and Israeli billboard depicting symbolic images of coffins of U.S. and Israeli soldiers, alongside a statement from the Speaker of Iran's Parliament, Ali Larijani, that reads, ''Watch out your soldiers,'' hangs from a state building in downtown Tehran, Iran, on January 6, 2026.
Good Tuesday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Bolstering concerns that Iran could attempt to strike Israel to rally domestic support amid nationwide protests, Iran’s Defense Council warned today that Tehran could act against its “long-standing enemies” over their “hostile behavior.”
The body, formed after the June war with Israel, said in a statement that “Iran’s security, independence and territorial integrity are an uncrossable red line, and any aggression or continuation of hostile behavior will be met with a proportionate and decisive response.”
“The long-standing enemies of this land” are “repeating and intensifying threatening language and interventionist statements in clear conflict with the accepted principles of international law, which is aimed at dismembering our beloved Iran and harming the country’s identity,” the statement continued, as President Donald Trump has threatened to intervene if Iran cracks down on the protesters…
Wrapping up a U.S.-mediated dialogue in Paris, Israel and Syria made progress towards improving relations as they agreed to accelerate the pace of negotiations going forward, considered a U.S. proposal to establish a demilitarized joint economic zone and agreed to set up a communication mechanism to facilitate coordination on military deescalation, intelligence sharing and diplomacy…
Domestically, midterm election year is in full swing: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) officially launched his reelection bid today in New York’s 10th Congressional District, highlighting the date as the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his role as the House’s lead counsel during Trump’s first impeachment.
Goldman came out of the gate against his opponent, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, with a slew of endorsements, including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) and House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA).
Goldman told The New York Times that he understood his continued support for Israel “ran the risk of engendering a primary” in his progressive district but that he made his decisions based on “what I genuinely thought was best for the state of Israel, the people of Israel, Palestinian civilians and the future state of Palestine”…
Nearby in New York’s 12th Congressional District, George Conway, a former Republican lawyer and prominent critic of Trump who launched his run today as a Democrat, raised several concerns about New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s approach to Israel and antisemitism in recent interviews, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
Conway, who recently relocated to Manhattan in order to run for the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), said in an interview with The New York Times that he was “disturbed” by Mamdani’s sharp criticisms of Israel, even as he called the mayor “a great politician” and voiced admiration for his “focus on affordability.”
Conway added in an interview with NBC News that he was “concerned about some of the language” Mamdani has “used in the past about Israel,” as well as the mayor’s recent decision to revoke a pair of executive orders related to Israel and antisemitism on his first day in office. “His focus really has to be on bringing people together,” Conway said of Mamdani, “not sending the wrong message to individual groups of people”…
In the crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District to take on Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Peter Chatzky, the deputy mayor of Briarcliff Manor, injected $5 million of his own money into his campaign, Politico reports. Chatzky has stood out from the crowd in the competitive swing district in the northern suburbs of New York City with his comparatively critical stance of Israel.
Cait Conley, meanwhile, a national security veteran strongly supportive of Israel who is considered one of the front-runners in the seven-person race to take on Lawler, announced yesterday that she raised more than $560,000 in the last quarter of 2025 and has over $1.2 million in cash on hand…
Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) is considering mounting a run for Senate to challenge Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Axios reports. Peltola narrowly lost her seat in 2024 when Trump carried the state in the presidential election; if she does make a bid, she would give Democrats the opportunity to contest a red-state race, giving them an outside shot to win back the upper chamber…
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) died today at 65, Republican leadership announced. AIPAC mourned him as “an outspoken pro-Israel leader in Congress.” The congressman’s seat, a largely rural district he represented since 2013, was redrawn last year to be more favorable to Democrats, but a special election to fill his seat will be held under the old map friendlier to Republicans due to the timing of the vacancy…
Speaking at a press conference on the latest crime statistics out of New York City, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, standing next to Mamdani, said that antisemitic hate crimes in the city declined 3% from 2024 to 2025 but, at 57%, still make up the majority of all hate crimes reported…
In an interview released today on CNN commentator Scott Jennings’ podcast, Vice President JD Vance, asked about the rise of antisemitism in the conservative movement, said, “we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s antisemitism, anti-Black hatred, anti-white hatred,” JI’s Danielle Cohen-Kanik reports.
“I think that’s one of the great things about the conservative coalition, is that we are, I think, fundamentally rooted in the Christian principles that founded the United States of America and one of those very important principles is that we judge people as individuals,” Vance continued…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a deep dive into the geopolitical ramifications of Israel’s choice to formally recognize the African nation of Somaliland — and whether the U.S. might follow suit.
The New York City Council will vote to elect its speaker tomorrow, which is widely expected to be Councilmember Julie Menin. Menin, who will be the first Jewish speaker of the council, has already begun to push back on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, expressing her concern to him over his repeal of former Mayor Eric Adams’ executive orders related to Israel and antisemitism.
In Washington, the Atlantic Council will host a discussion on the “future of humanitarian assistance,” including remarks from IsraAID CEO Yotam Polizer.
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TORAH AND BENCH
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DRAWING LINES
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Jewish groups praised the move for allowing law enforcement to increase its security presence at religious institutions, which is often paid for by the houses of worship themselves
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
A law enforcement vehicle sits near the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue on January 16, 2022 in Colleyville, Texas.
The House and Senate’s negotiated 2026 funding package for the Department of Justice includes funding for state and local law enforcement specifically allocated for protecting religious institutions.
The explanatory report accompanying the bill, released Monday, instructs the Department of Justice to allocate at least $5 million in DOJ law enforcement grant funding to agencies “seeking to enhance security measures for at-risk religious institutions and to address the precipitous increases in hate crimes targeting individuals on the basis of religion.”
Such funding, aimed at providing law enforcement with additional resources to step up their security presence at synagogues and other houses of worship, has been pursued by Jewish community groups particularly amid rising antisemitic attacks in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel.
Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told Jewish Insider the issue is one that the OU has been working on for some time, noting that many police seen stationed outside synagogues are often off-duty and being paid by the synagogues themselves, not their municipalities.
“It always struck us as a little crazy that communities have to pay out of pocket” to ensure police protection, Diament said, while noting that local law enforcement are often low on funding and cannot always spare the personnel. By dedicating some of the pool of federal funds that the Department of Justice provides annually to local law enforcement, police would be able to deploy on regular duty or on overtime, Diament said.
He said that OU had worked with the Justice Department under the Biden administration to issue guidance to police instructing them that they can, but were not required to, use the grant funding to deploy officers to protect religious institutions. He said he’d had discussions with Trump administration DOJ personnel about specifically allocating existing grant funding to that purpose earlier this year, but the officials said that congressional authorization would be needed.
Diament described this language in the report as a first step forward. He said that OU is hoping to see the language incorporated into the bill text itself before passage.
He said that the program could grow in the future depending on needs and the political debates on police funding, and emphasized that — if the bill passes — OU will urge the DOJ to allocate more than the allotted minimum of $5 million.
Diament also noted that providing police protection at no cost to Jewish institutions can help other security funding provided through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program “go further” and be applied to other security needs.
Diament credited Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee responsible for Justice Department funding, and Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the ranking member of the corresponding House committee, as key champions of the new provision.
Moran cited the killing of Sarah Milgrim, an Israeli Embassy employee and Kansas resident shot and killed at the Capital Jewish Museum last year, in a statement on the effort.
“In the months since then, the Jewish community has been rocked by numerous attacks that have prompted increased police presence at synagogues and houses of worship across the country,” he continued. “The freedom to worship is one of the most fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution. While it is disheartening that places of worship and faith-based organizations are coming under attack, we have a responsibility to protect these institutions and in doing so, protect the rights of Americans of all faiths.”
“In recent years, there has been a significant rise in attacks on houses of worship of Americans of many faiths, including the Jewish community,” Meng said in a statement to JI. “As Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, public safety is a top priority for me. That’s why I was proud to work across the aisle to secure millions in federal funds to make it easier for houses of worship to hire security personnel. This bipartisan win will help stop incidents before they occur and builds on existing programs that help at-risk institutions enhance their physical security.”
The six-point security plan spearheaded by the Jewish Federations of North America and a coalition of more than 40 Jewish groups in response to the Capital Jewish Museum shooting also called for the government to “increase funding for local police and law enforcement to create capacity for both monitoring and protecting Jewish institutions” because “[t]he demands on local and state law enforcement far outpace their capacity to meet the need, which disproportionately affects targeted communities like the American Jewish community.”
“At a time when antisemitic threats are growing more frequent and more dangerous, federal funding to protect at-risk institutions, prevent hate crimes and support Holocaust education are essential,” Lauren Wolman, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior director of government relations and strategy, said in a statement. “ADL welcomes language in the FY2026 Conferenced CJS, E&W, and Interior funding bill that dedicates resources to help law enforcement enhance security for at-risk religious institutions and respond to the sharp rise in religion-based hate crimes.”
“We are pleased to see continued support for key programs that strengthen law enforcement, prevention and education,” Wolman continued. “The reality is that the need far outpaces current investment. Combating antisemitism requires sustained resources, coordination, and accountability across the federal government.”
Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of JFNA, also praised the new funding.
“It is critical that local law enforcement agencies have the resources to protect the Jewish communities they serve. Given the rising threats of violence to Jewish events and institutions, local law enforcement definitely needs federal help,” Fingerhut said. “This appropriation is an important recognition of that need and we look forward to working with Congress to develop the most effective and expansive assistance to local law enforcement possible.”
The negotiated bill also preserves funding for a series of hate crimes prevention grant programs supported by major Jewish community groups, providing $35 million under a series of programs, for which the original House version of the bill had not allocated any funding and which the Trump administration had aimed to slash. The Senate proposal included the $35 million in funding.
It also provides $20 million for the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service — a cut of $4 million from 2025 funding levels. The House version of the bill and the administration had aimed to shutter the CRS, which is charged with helping to mediate communal conflicts based on various forms of hatred and discrimination, completely.
Plus, the Harvard president's mea culpa
Bryan Dozier/Deadline via Getty Images
Amy Klobuchar, John Bessler and Tim Walz at the Residence of Ireland on April 27, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
Good Monday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Dominating the headlines, deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to charges including narco-terrorism during their arraignment in New York City today. “I am still president of my country,” Maduro told the judge, who set their next hearing for March 17.
At the same time, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, whom the Trump administration has said it will work with, was sworn in as interim president in Caracas, though she insisted that Maduro is still president and that he is being held hostage by the U.S…
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced today that he will no longer seek reelection to a third term after facing weeks of criticism due to revelations of widespread fraud primarily among the state’s Somali diaspora population.
“I came to the conclusion that I can’t give a political campaign my all. Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” Walz, who has increasingly played to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, said in his announcement.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), a moderate with a record of winning over independent voters, is considering running for governor in his stead, after she and Walz met yesterday. On the Republican side, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and Speaker of the Statehouse Lisa Demuth are already vying for the office…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani denied that his executive order altering the relationship between the NYPD and his office — which appeared to indicate that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch would no longer report to him but to a deputy mayor — will be meaningful in its impact, telling reporters today that the commissioner “will continue to report directly to me … The executive order is in terms of the question of coordination.”
The direct line between the mayor and NYPD head has been in place at least since the terror attacks of 9/11, after which the commissioner began to hold daily intelligence briefings for the mayor. The National Jewish Advocacy Center called the restructuring “unprecedented” in a letter to Mamdani and said that “The close relationship between the NYPD and the Mayor’s Office has been key to averting disasters for the Jewish community,” including during Hanukkah last month.
The move came as Mamdani revoked an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and an anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions order, which also drew backlash from Jewish leaders…
Meanwhile, in one of his final acts in office, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter today reminding all K-12 superintendents and school boards in the state of their obligation to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism into their codes of conduct and discrimination policies, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
“As part of your compliance with Federal and Virginia law, you must implement the IHRA definition and its contemporary examples into your codes of conduct and discrimination policies to assess unprotected activity,” Miyares wrote, referencing a law passed by the state legislature in May 2023 requiring use of the IHRA definition by all state agencies…
Harvard President Alan Garber said that the university was wrong to let professors express strong stances on controversial issues in the classroom, causing students to feel they couldn’t share their views, including faculty espousing anti-Israel views in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. “It did happen in classrooms that professors would push this,” he said in a live taping of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s “Identity/Crisis Podcast” last month…
Leslie Grinage, Barnard’s dean and vice president of campus life and student experience, left her position today, the Columbia Spectator reports, after she came under intense criticism for her role in disciplining students who had violated school rules during anti-Israel protests on campus. Dozens of protesters staged a sit-in outside her office last year to demand the reinstatement of two students who were expelled after they disrupted a History of Modern Israel class…
Speaking in the Knesset today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and President Donald Trump “will not allow Iran to rebuild its ballistic missile industry, and we certainly won’t let it renew its nuclear program” and that the two leaders agree that Iran must have no enrichment capabilities, all of its enriched uranium must be sent out of the country and there must be close oversight of its nuclear facilities…
Netanyahu also met with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) in Jerusalem today…
The Israel Defense Forces and Moroccan Armed Forces signed a joint work plan for 2026 during the third meeting of their Joint Military Committee in Tel Aviv this week…
A man was arrested for vandalizing the personal residence of Vice President JD Vance in Cincinnati this morning. Nobody was home at the time. “As far as I can tell, a crazy person tried to break in by hammering the windows. I’m grateful to the secret service and the Cincinnati police for responding quickly,” Vance said on X…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for a look at Judge Alvin Hellerstein, the 92-year-old Orthodox Jewish federal judge overseeing the trial of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
The Academic Engagement Network is convening a three-day “boot camp” in Miami Beach this week for university faculty combating antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus. Speakers will include Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal, the Atlantic Council’s Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, antisemitism researcher Miri Bar-Halpern and past president of the American Association of University Presidents Cary Nelson.
Tomorrow, former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and commentator Dan Senor will speak about “Israeli strategy in war and peace” in West Palm Beach, Fla., for the Palm Beach Synagogue’s “Critical Conversation Series.”
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DOMINO EFFECT
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ON THE AGENDA
Security remains Jewish community’s top lobbying priority for 2026
Major Jewish advocacy organizations told JI that they will continue to push for issues including Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding and combating antisemitism online
Plus, Ben Sasse announces terminal diagnosis
Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Members of the public pay their respects at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue on October 20, 2025 in Manchester, England.
Good Tuesday afternoon!
This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.
It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.
📡On Our Radar
Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking
Two men in Manchester, England were found guilty of planning a terror attack on the city’s Jewish community, in the same area where two people were killed in a car ramming and stabbing attack at a synagogue on Yom Kippur.
Police warned it would have been the “deadliest terrorist attack in U.K. history”; the would-be assailants were affiliated with ISIS and had obtained guns and ammunition for an extended shooting spree, which they indicated was revenge for Israel’s actions in Gaza. One told an undercover officer, “We start with the Jews and if there any Christians caught in the act, that is a bonus, but we start with the Jews”…
At the same time, British police dropped a criminal investigation into Bob Vylan, the rap duo who led “death to the IDF” chants at the Glastonbury music festival in June, citing “insufficient evidence for there to be a realistic prospect of conviction”…
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem today pushing for additional information about Nonprofit Security Grant Program allocations, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports, as well as criticizing the $330 million funding allocation for the program proposed last week by Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“As I travel around Connecticut and hear from community leaders here and around the country, I am struck by the severely heightened anxiety and apprehension about physical threats to places of worship and community centers involving hate-based violence,” Blumenthal said.
The senator requested data on grant applications and acceptances, the reasons why FEMA has provided less funding than requested to some institutions and the resources FEMA provided to unsuccessful applicants for each year from 2023 to 2025…
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz walked back comments he made earlier today claiming Israel would reestablish settlements in the Gaza Strip; he said in a statement shortly after that “the government has no intention of establishing settlements” in the enclave and his comments were “made in a security context only.”
A U.S. official told Fox News about Katz’s initial remarks that “the more Israel provokes, the less the Arab countries will want to work with them”…
Israel covertly airdropped weapons and ammunition to a Druze militia in Syria shortly after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, The Washington Post reports, over concerns of then-nascent President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s allegiances. Israel stopped providing weapons to the Druze after Al-Sharaa met with President Donald Trump in the White House earlier this year, though it continues to provide supplies including money, body armor and medical provisions.
“We were helping when it was absolutely necessary and are committed to minorities’ security, but it is not as if we are going to have commandos take positions next to the Druze or get in the business of organizing proxies,” one Israeli official told the Post…
At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council today, Iran accused the U.S. of violating its rights as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by insisting that the country have no domestic uranium enrichment. (The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency declared Iran in violation of the NPT in June.)
U.S. deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus said in response, “We’d like to make it clear to the entire world: the United States remains available for formal talks with Iran, but only if Tehran is prepared for direct and meaningful dialogue. … We have been clear, however, about certain expectations for any arrangement. Foremost, there can be no enrichment inside of Iran, and that remains our principle”…
Estimated private funding of Israeli tech businesses reached $15.6 billion in 2025, according to early numbers from Startup National Central, a nonprofit that tracks and promotes the Israeli innovation ecosystem, up from $12 billion in 2024. “At the same time, deal volume declined to 717 rounds, the lowest in the last decade. This divergence tells a clear story: investors are doing fewer deals, but committing significantly more capital to each one,” the organization wrote….
Ben Sasse, the former Republican senator from Nebraska and previous president of the University of Florida, announced today that he has terminal Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. As UF president during the disruptive campus protests in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, Sasse was heralded for taking a uniquely firm stance against the protesters; he resigned from UF in July 2024 due to his wife’s failing health…
⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today
An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead
This is the last Daily Overtime of 2025 — we’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, Jan. 5.
Until then, keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for reporting on Jewish communal organizations’ 2026 legislative agenda, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump in Florida next week (read JI’s Lahav Harkov’s preview of the meeting here), Zohran Mamdani’s first days in office after being sworn in as New York City mayor on Jan. 1, and more.
Happy New Year!
Stories You May Have Missed
MILTARY MATTERS
Pentagon plan to reorganize military could undermine U.S.-Israel security, experts warn
Shifting U.S. resources out of the Middle East could impact the U.S.’ ability to counter Iran and send allies towards Russia or China, JINSA’s Blaise Misztal said
DAMASCUS DEALINGS
Trump’s Syria strategy tested amid resurgence of ISIS in Damascus
An attack by ISIS forces on U.S. servicemembers earlier this month prompted U.S. airstrikes and an entry ban on Syrian nationals, despite Trump’s embrace of Syria President Ahmad al-Sharaa
The Turtle Island Liberation Front, which federal authorities say was plotting an explosive attack, appears to have organized a disruptive protest targeting the Wilshire Boulevard Temple earlier this month
Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli speaks to the press with LA County Sheriff Robert Luna and LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell in Los Angeles on Monday, December 15, 2025.
Federal authorities foiled an alleged terror plot by an anti-Israel, anti-American extremist group, officials announced on Monday. The group — the Turtle Island Liberation Front — appears to also be one of the organizers of an anti-Israel protest that targeted a Los Angeles synagogue this month.
Four members of TILF were arrested over the weekend in the Mojave Desert, where they had allegedly gathered to attempt to construct improvised explosive devices. According to Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, they planned to set off the pipe bombs in a coordinated attack at midnight on New Year’s Eve targeting U.S. companies in Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif.
“Last Friday, Dec. 12, the defendants took a significant step to carry out their plans,” Essayli said at a press conference Monday, noting that they traveled to a remote campsite near Twentynine Palms in San Bernardino County to begin assembling the bombs. “They had everything they needed to make an operational bomb.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi described TILF as “a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group” in a social media post about the arrests. The four people arrested were identified as Audrey Ilene Carroll, Dante Garfield, Zachary Aaron Page and Tina Lai. They face charges of conspiracy and possession of a destructive device. FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Monday that a fifth individual with ties to the plot was arrested in New Orleans.
Carroll had a poster at her home that said “Death to America. Long live Turtle Island and Palestine,” according to prosecutors. Turtle Island is a phrase used by some Native Americans to describe North America.
TILF appears to be an organizer of an anti-Israel protest that targeted Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of the largest synagogues in Los Angeles, earlier this month.
The group posted a “call to action” on its Instagram urging followers to target the “bloody war criminals” and “genocidal monsters” from Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense company, because of the purported use of Elbit’s AI technology in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood. “Never let them live in peace,” the caption read.
The post listed an address on Wilshire Boulevard for the demonstration but did not name the location. The address corresponds with the Wilshire Boulevard Temple building where an event to teach Koreans about security strategies, featuring an AI researcher from Elbit Systems, was taking place at the same date and time.
Protesters entered the synagogue and disrupted the event, with one person shattering a glass vase and chanting profanities. Two people were arrested during the incident. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called the activists’ actions “abhorrent” and pledged to send more security to houses of worship.
Other posts on TILF’s Instagram call for violence.
“Peaceful protest will never be enough,” one graphic reads. “The only way out is through resistance.”
The account’s most recent post was promoting a Palestine-themed holiday market in Los Angeles last weekend.
Prosecutors announced on Monday that the investigation into the TILF New Year’s Eve plot was due in part to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in September “to root out left-wing domestic terror organizations in our country such as antifa and other radical groups,” according to Essayli.
The Trump administration’s eagerness to normalize relations with Syria’s new government is echoing advocacy from leading Biden officials
Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa departs a meeting in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room at the U.S. Capitol, Nov. 10, 2025.
One year after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, policymakers and officials in the United States and Israel remain increasingly divided over how to confront the changing landscape in Damascus.
Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, the IDF moved into a U.N. buffer zone inside southern Syria to protect Israel’s northern border as Damascus’ military and political landscape shifted. A year later, against Damascus’ wishes, Israel still controls the 155-square-mile area and has proceeded to carry out arrests of terror suspects, while also seizing weapons and conducting targeted airstrikes.
These actions have collided with President Donald Trump’s push to broker a security agreement and end hostilities between the two countries, which the president and some experts see as a key part of stabilizing Syria — and, ultimately, the region. The Trump administration has often sided with Damascus in recent disputes, warning that Israel’s strikes are undermining efforts to reach an agreement, which the White House also views as a path to normalization.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that any agreement must require Syria to accept the demilitarization of territory stretching from southern Damascus to the Israeli border. However, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa has rejected this condition, arguing that it would create a dangerous security vacuum in southern Syria.
Critics of al-Sharaa and some in the pro-Israel community have remained wary of relinquishing the area to the Syrian government given al-Sharaa’s past ties to Al-Qaida, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization that he joined following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. While operating for the group as a foot soldier, al-Sharaa was captured by U.S. military forces and imprisoned, and he later founded one of the terror group’s Syrian branches.
“In [Israel’s] perspective, the problem is mistrust as well as hard security indicators,” Ahmad Sharawi, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider. “Southern Syria is awash with weapons, weapon trafficking routes and Iran-backed networks. At the same time, Israel is being asked to make concessions to a government led by a former Al-Qaida emir whose coalition still includes figures that praised the Oct.7 attacks and openly endorse armed resistance against Israel.”
Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, explained that Israel is concerned that should a deal be made, it could allow for “potentially hostile forces to encroach anywhere near the border.” In a conversation with the Hudson Institute last month, Caroline Glick, international affairs advisor to Netanyahu, said keeping threats away from Israel’s borders has become an instrumental part of the Israeli government’s foreign policy in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.
“Defense is simply not an option for such a small country, and thus the security of each and every border matters more for Israel than most any other country,” said Ruhe. “To be viable for Israel, a deal would have to demilitarize southwest Syria and probably include real prohibitions on Turkish military presence in Syria. It also likely would have to permit Israel to use Syria as an air corridor to Tehran, or at least not openly prohibit this.”
Reflecting the views of those urging an accommodation towards the new Syrian government, Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs under the Biden administration, maintained that Israel has nothing to worry about with a normalized al-Sharaa government.
Participating on a panel at the Middle East Institute on Wednesday, Leaf refrained from addressing Israel’s security concerns, instead arguing that Syria holds no hostile posture towards the Jewish state and that Israel’s actions are prohibiting an agreement. She pushed for the U.S. to exert more pressure.
“There’s no other recourse but for the White House to come down very hard and definitively on the Israeli government to stop the bombing and to start making plans to pull back from that border and get serious and finish this set of discussions,” said Leaf.
Sharawi suggested that Israel remains hesitant and has taken a “far more pessimistic view of Syria’s short-term trajectory.
“Even if al-Sharaa himself is signaling restraint, Israeli decision-makers are deeply skeptical that his control is durable or that he would retain power long enough to enforce any agreement,” said Sharawi.
Last month, Trump administration officials indicated that a security deal was “99% done,” with hopes that Trump’s Oval Office meeting with al-Sharaa in November could help push the agreement over the line. But talks continue to stall.
Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, said on Wednesday that the gap between the two sides has grown, as the Syrians have added new demands.
Ruhe said it may also be tricky for the White House to fast-track an agreement as Trump could have less room to exert pressure on Israel.
“Partly it’s a question of how much pressure Trump can still apply to Israel, since he already leaned hard on Netanyahu to agree to the Gaza ceasefire,” said Ruhe. “Any foreseeable deal would be a narrow nonaggression pact, not Syria joining the Abraham Accords as Trump may wish.”
The gathering, showing support after the disruptive protest last month, drew more than 1,000 attendees from all Jewish denominations and major groups
Rod Morata/Michael Priest Photography
Solidarity rally outside Park East Synagogue, Dec. 4, 2025
More than 1,000 New Yorkers braved the frigid temperatures on Thursday night, stretching across Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side outside of the historic Park East Synagogue, surrounded by heavy police presence and voicing a unifying message: “We are proud New Yorkers, proud Jews and proud Zionists.”
“The stakes in this moment could not be higher, because how we act will define our community for years to come,” Eric Goldstein, outgoing CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, told the crowd. “We gather outside the sacred space that was targeted weeks ago, standing together to defend our rights as Jews to worship safely and to support Israel’s right to exist as our Jewish homeland.”
The scene was a sharp contrast from the one two weeks ago on that same street when a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators protested outside of the Modern Orthodox synagogue, which was hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event providing information on immigration to Israel, shouting chants including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the Intifada.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch later called the protest “turmoil.”
The solidarity gathering, organized by UJA-Federation as a response to the Nov. 19 protest, drew a diverse coalition of participating Jewish groups, including more than 70 synagogues, schools and Jewish institutions, representing a wide range of denominations and political leanings. Other major Jewish groups acted as cosponsors, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the New York Board of Rabbis.
Members of B’nai Jeshurun, a non-denominational and progressive Upper West Side synagogue stood side by side with congregants of The Altneu, an Orthodox congregation on the Upper East Side, to condemn antisemitism; Columbia University Hillel student leaders, who have witnessed some of New York City’s worst antisemitic protests on campus, came out in solidarity, as did Yeshiva University students and high schoolers from the Modern Orthodox SAR Academy in Riverdale and Manhattan’s Modern Orthodox Ramaz School and pluralistic Heschel School. Brooklynites representing the Park Slope Jewish Center and Prospect Heights Shul crossed the river to participate, as did members of Long Island and Westchester Jewish communities.
The rally marked the first major gathering of diverse Jewish groups since the release of the remaining living hostages kidnapped during the Oct, 7, 2023, attacks and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in October. Throughout the war, such gatherings had become common across the U.S., with a unifying focus on bringing home the hostages.
Speakers at the hourlong event, in addition to Goldstein, were Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who leads Park East Synagogue; Hindy Poupko, UJA-Federation senior vice president of community organizing and external relations; Rabbi Joe Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis; Rabba Sara Hurwitz, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale; Rabbi Joanna Samuels, CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; Rabbi David Ingber, founding rabbi of the non-denominational Romemu synagogue and senior director for Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y; NYC Comptroller-elect Mark Levine; and Mark Treyger, CEO of JCRC-NY. The gathering also featured live performances by rapper Matisyahu and the Park East Day School choir.
“We’re not going back — we’re only going forward,” said Treyger. “We’re going to work and fight to make sure that we see a day where every Jewish New Yorker, every member of our community, is safe, not just in our houses of worship but in every corner of our great city.”
Schneier, who has served as senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue for more than 50 years, told Jewish Insider that the recent protest was “meant to incite fear and intimidation.”
“Chants of antisemitism, demonizing the State of Israel and its right to exist, and calling for a global intifada. Silence and indifference are not an option. No faith community should ever be met with threats, or fear risking their life to gather and pray. This gathering sends a powerful message,” he said
Schneier called for “safety and security and immediate legislation from the city and state to ban demonstrations in front of synagogues and all houses of worship,” which has been introduced by New York state legislators in recent days.
“Let our voices be heard in solidarity — and together, we stand united against a surge of antisemitism that threatens peaceful coexistence in our city. What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews,” Schneier said, remembering his experience as an 8-year-old child in Vienna in 1938.
“I witnessed my cherished synagogue smoldering to the ground during Kristallnacht — an organized, calculated assault on the Jewish community that was meant to terrorize and intimidate. It was just the precursor of what I lived through during the Holocaust.”
The visit includes a welcome ceremony, bilateral meeting in the Oval Office and a black-tie dinner in the evening
Win McNamee/Getty Images
President Donald Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a “coffee ceremony” at the Saudi Royal Court on May 13, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
President Donald Trump is hosting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday at the White House, marking the first time MBS has visited Washington since 2018.
Trump plans to roll out the red carpet for the visit, which includes a welcome ceremony, bilateral meeting in the Oval Office and a black-tie dinner in the evening. Tiger Woods and Elon Musk are expected to be in attendance at the dinner, among other high-profile attendees. “We’re more than meeting,” Trump said late Friday. “We’re honoring Saudi Arabia, the crown prince.”
The visit is not an official state visit, as MBS is not Saudi Arabia’s head of state; however, the crown prince holds almost all responsibility in ruling the kingdom.
The bilateral meeting will feature high-stakes discussions on several key issues, including the sale of F-35 fighter jets, Saudi-Israel normalization and a possible U.S.–Saudi defense pact. Experts told Jewish Insider such an agreement is likely to be modeled after the assurances Trump gave Qatar in September, in the wake of an Israeli strike on Hamas in the Gulf state, when he issued an executive order stating that the U.S. will regard “any armed attack” on Qatar “as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”
Trump announced on Monday he would approve the sale of the F-35s to Riyadh, helping the Saudis secure a long-coveted deal and making them the first country in the Middle East other than Israel to obtain the advanced fighter jets. “They want to buy. They are a great ally. We will be doing that. We will be selling them F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Concerns remain within the foreign policy community over the impact that the sale of F-35s will have on the military balance in the region and Israel’s qualitative military edge, which the U.S. is bound by law to uphold. Experts also cautioned the risks of transferring sensitive technology to Riyadh after Saudi naval forces conducted a joint military exercise with China last month. Israel has requested that such a sale be conditioned on the kingdom joining the Abraham Accords, however Trump made no mention of such a provision.
Trump, however, is planning to discuss Saudi normalization with Israel. “The Abraham Accords will be a part we’re going to be discussing,” Trump said Friday. “I hope that Saudi Arabia will be going into the Abraham Accords fairly shortly.”
Despite the president’s optimism, the hope of adding Riyadh to the Abraham Accords is likely a lot more wishcasting than a reflection of diplomatic progress in the region. Experts told JI that the Trump administration should use the aforementioned agreements as leverage tied to normalization, as has been the case under past administrations, but Trump is poised to take a different approach.
The gap between Saudi Arabia and Israel remains wide. Saudi officials have said they require an Israeli commitment to a two-state solution as a prerequisite to normalizing ties, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and much of the Israeli public — is firmly against. Experts told JI that after two years of war in Gaza, the security deals are likely not enticing enough on their own and Saudi Arabia may be holding out for more concessions before joining the Abraham Accords.
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
RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
Outside view of the Texas State Capitol, in Austin, on November 5, 2025.
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.
The legislation would require the imposition of sanctions on the Muslim Brotherhood, making it illegal to provide support to the group
Salah Malkawi/Getty Images
Jordanian police close the entrance of a Muslim Brotherhood headquarter after the announcement of banning the society in the country on April 23, 2025 in Amman, Jordan.
The firebombing of a hostage-release march in Boulder, Colo., this summer triggered a wave of calls from lawmakers — particularly Republicans — for action to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.
Legislation to that effect was introduced in both the Senate and House in July, taking a new approach to designating the group as compared to previous legislative efforts that had stalled over the course of the last decade.
The legislation would require the imposition of sanctions on the Muslim Brotherhood, making it illegal to provide support to the group, making its members and affiliates inadmissible to the United States and blocking transactions involving assets held by Muslim Brotherhood members in U.S. financial institutions.
There were also calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for the Trump administration to investigate the group and take action to designate it through executive authorities. The secretary of state has the authority to designate a group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and the White House could issue an executive order on the subject.
But so far, none of those efforts have come to fruition. The Senate bill currently sits at 11 co-sponsors, having recently picked up Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) as its first Democratic supporter, while the House bill has 19 co-sponsors from both parties — below the levels of support previous iterations of the bill had amassed.
Fetterman’s co-sponsorship could help the bill receive consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the panel often only considers legislation with bipartisan support. A source familiar with the matter tells JI that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the bill’s co-sponsor in the Senate and a member of the committee, is pushing for the panel to mark up the bill at their next business meeting.
Neither bill has been called up yet for a vote in committee — a process further slowed by the ongoing government shutdown — and it is currently not included in either the Senate or House versions of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, a potential vehicle for legislation of this sort.
The White House declined to comment. A spokesperson for Cruz told JI: “Sen. Cruz is pushing for the bill to be advanced through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then to be passed by the full Senate. Sen. Fetterman is showing commitment and leadership to American national security interests by providing this measure with bipartisan backing here in the Senate, and it’s time to move it forward.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who is not currently a co-sponsor of the Senate bill but is supportive of efforts to counter the Muslim Brotherhood, told JI on Wednesday that the issue is not top of mind for many colleagues and it will take time to build interest and support for moves like designating the group.
Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration official, told JI that, within the executive branch, FTO designations are a time-consuming process — requiring extensive legal consultations as well as significant behind-the-scenes work to understand potential implications, unintended consequences and diplomatic fallout, as well as assembling a list of visa exemptions needed for diplomats.
Based on public comments from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the National Security Council’s Sebastian Gorka indicating support for a terrorism designation, Goldberg said that he believes that there is momentum in the administration, further fueled by the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, anti-Israel protests around the country and evidence of growing Islamist influence on the far right as well. He said that the fact that no designation has been announced should not necessarily be read as a sign that it is not actively being worked on in private.
Goldberg also said that any action on the designation from Congress would likely be timed to coordinate with potentially pending action by the Trump administration, given the high-profile nature of the issue and the administration’s expressed interest.
One potential obstacle to the efforts: Qatar and Turkey, with which the administration has been strengthening ties. Both have extensive links to the Muslim Brotherhood and could be resistant to such a designation. Goldberg, however, said he has not heard any discussion of those countries actively trying to stop a designation, and urged the Trump administration to push forward, describing the Muslim Brotherhood as both a threat to homeland security and President Donald Trump’s desire for Middle East peace.
Lt. Goldin was killed by Hamas during Operation Protective Edge in 2014; Hamas still holds four more hostage bodies
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images
Israeli soldiers salute and people hold national flags as a van carrying Lt. Hadar Goldin's remains arrives at the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv on November 9, 2025.
Hamas returned the remains of Lt. Hadar Goldin on Sunday, over 11 years after he was killed in battle in Gaza.
Israel confirmed the body was Goldin’s through DNA testing, four hours after it was returned.
Goldin was 23 when he fought in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and took part in a mission to destroy a Hamas tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 1, 2014, during a 72-hour ceasefire. Hamas terrorists killed two Israeli soldiers, taking Goldin’s body with them.
Goldin’s parents, Leah and Simcha, publicly advocated for his return, but did not support the release of living terrorists in exchange for their son’s remains. They repeatedly suggested that humanitarian aid to Gaza be reduced or stopped as long as the remains of their son and Oron Shaul, another soldier whose body was taken in 2014, were held in Gaza.
After Goldin’s remains were returned, Leah said her family “took for granted that the State of Israel would not leave soldiers behind. It took us 11 years to bring him home through the IDF and security forces. … We faced many disappointments. We cannot give up on who we are, and we will prevail through our values. …Thank you for walking with us all the way.”
Simcha Goldin credited IDF “soldiers [who] fought to bring warriors back from the battlefield. The IDF brought Hadar back to his homeland — no one else. … What this war has proven is that when we fight for our soldiers, we succeed. Victory means bringing home the hostages and bringing home our soldiers to Israel.”
Goldin’s body is the 24th that Hamas has returned since the ceasefire began on Oct. 13 this year, after which all of the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, were meant to be returned within three days. However, the terrorist group has drawn out the return of the remains, and four more hostages have yet to be handed over to Israel: Meny Godard, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, Dror Or and Sudthisak Rinthalak, a Thai national.
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited the Goldin family on Saturday night. Hamas and the Red Cross were permitted to search for his body in the areas of Gaza controlled by Israel, Hebrew media reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced earlier Sunday that Hamas was expected to return Goldin’s body.
“Lt. Hadar Goldin fell in a heroic battle in Operation Protective Edge 11 years ago,” Netanyahu said. “His body was taken hostage by Hamas, who refused to return him throughout this entire period. This entire time, Israeli governments made a great effort to return him. Naturally, this has been amid the great agony of his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.”
Netanyahu added that Israel has “a tradition from the establishment of the state … to bring back our soldiers who fell in battle, and we are doing it. Sometimes it takes a long time … It is a holy value. It expresses our mutual responsibility with the citizens of Israel and first and foremost the soldiers and fighters of Israel.”
Goldin’s return was reportedly tied to the fate of 200 Hamas fighters currently hiding in a tunnel in the Israel-controlled half of Gaza.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the White House reportedly suggested a plan by which, after Goldin’s remains are returned, the terrorists would lay down their arms and surrender, and Israel would allow them to go into exile or to the Hamas-controlled half of Gaza. The IDF would then destroy the tunnel in which they were hiding.
An Israeli official said last week that Netanyahu “would not allow safe passage for 200 Hamas terrorists.”
The story of how the hostage families came to learn their loved ones were coming home, told to JI by key players
Liri Agami
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.”
Gee, who served as president of five universities over 45 years, told JI he believes some administrators are opposed to reform efforts as a knee-jerk reaction to Trump
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University of West Virginia President Gordon Gee speaks to reporters after the College Football Playoff presidents group meeting Tuesday, June 22, 2021, in Grapevine, Texas.
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 documentary highlights anti-Israel conspiracy theories and is filled with antisemitic tropes
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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) speaks at a rally near the U.S. Capitol on June 29, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) distanced himself from antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll after the congressman posted to social media an excerpt from a YouTube documentary that featured separate clips of himself and Carroll.
Carroll, described in the documentary as a researcher, is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist who has engaged in Holocaust distortion. He has claimed that Israel and Jewish people are involved in a malign global conspiracy, control the U.S. government and were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He has also asserted that pedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein was a “clearly a Jewish organization working on behalf of Israel and other groups.”
In the excerpt shared by Khanna alongside his own comments, Carroll stated that recipients of pro-Israel support are “operat[ing] our government on behalf of someone else,” referring to AIPAC and Israel. Khanna himself discussed his concerns about interest group spending in U.S. elections.
“This was a documentary made by Tommy G who interviewed me. I did not speak to or meet Ian Carroll. I stand by my words and should be judged by them,” Khanna said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “I vehemently disagree and reject any views blaming Israel for 9/11, denying the Holocaust, or conspiracies about a Jewish syndicate exerting control.”
In the documentary, Khanna described the U.S. as “complicit” in the destruction in Gaza and stated that Israel has committed war crimes in the enclave and that the International Court of Justice should examine and adjudicate the issue.
“The Hamas terrorist attack was awful, and I said that people who committed those crimes had to be brought to justice and the hostages had to be released,” Khanna said. “But that happened months in. Netanyahu has been bombing for 2 years.”
“Who says, ‘We’re going to starve the people so much that they suffer that we’re going to force the surrender?’ It’s sick, and your tax dollars, my tax dollars, are funding them,” Khanna added.
The documentary itself, posted by a YouTube videomaker with the handle Tommy G, is filled with antisemitic tropes. The thumbnail for the video frames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a puppetmaster with strings controlling several men in suits, posed in front of the White House, flanked by Israeli and AIPAC flags. There are also several dollar bills superimposed over the image.
The documentary highlights anti-Israel arguments — including some conspiracy theories — and repeatedly brushes off or attempts to rebut arguments from pro-Israel voices featured in it. Anti-Israel voices receive the majority of the screen time in the video.
The narrator, Tommy G, opens the documentary by highlighting claims of a coverup or Israeli foreknowledge of the Oct. 7 attack, and plays up alleged Israeli abuses in Gaza.
While condemning Hamas’ actions, he suggests that the terrorist group’s actions could be seen as reasonable or provoked by Israel’s own actions, framing the group — as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan — as “freedom fighters” and “resistance movements.”
Tommy G also makes passing mention of — and does not interrogate — baseless claims that Israel may have been involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
The documentarian describes Carroll as “one of the internet’s top conspiracy analysts,” who critics “label an antisemite … but to others he is a fearless journalist that speaks on what some perceive as an extremely strong Zionist pressure on our government.”
He also suggests that it is inherently suspicious that many lawmakers have traveled to Israel.
And he concludes the documentary by stating, “A lot of us feel deep in our gut something is off here, something is wrong here and I will not be intimidated into not asking questions.”
Carroll himself suggests in the documentary a connection between the pro-Israel cause and the John F. Kennedy assassination, that Israel had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack and that Israel dispatched Jeffrey Epstein to cultivate relationships with U.S. leaders and blackmail them.
Another anti-Israel voice in the documentary is Anthony Aguilar, a former Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractor whose key claim of Israeli and GHF abuses has been disproven.
Aguilar states in the documentary that American politicians aren’t allowed to talk about Israel and that shows “who controls you.”
Other featured guests include Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Hank Johnson (R-GA), as well as Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin, an IDF reservist and a U.S. doctor who volunteered in Gaza.
Mace, Johnson and the IDF reservist all spoke in defense of Israel.
The video includes a clip of Norman Finkelstein, an antisemitic scholar who has voiced support for Hezbollah and accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust.
In the documentary, Paul suggests, falsely, that the U.S. has created “easier” rules around lobbying disclosures for countries the U.S. considers to be allies and that many pro-Israel activists are dual-citizens, part of a segment of the documentary that attempts to interrogate why AIPAC is not registered as a foreign lobbying group.
The group’s members and leaders are American citizens who act on their own recognizance, rather than at the instruction of the Israeli government.
Khanna, pushing back on the narrative framing AIPAC supporters as foreign agents, states in the documentary, “They’re American citizens. If you’re an American citizen and you’re articulating a point of view, that’s your right. … They’re American citizens. They’re lobbying for their interests. They’re lobbying for the Netanyahu government’s interests because they think that’s what benefits America. And they’re paying millions of dollars, which under Citizens United is legal.”
Khanna argues in the documentary that spending from outside super PACs on behalf of favored candidates should be outlawed.
The California congressman, rumored as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has also recently faced scrutiny for his appearance at ArabCon, where other speakers defended Hamas and laughed off the idea of condemning its Oct. 7 attacks.
Sharabi’s new book, Hostage, tells the story of his kidnapping and 491 days in Gaza
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Eli Sharabi speaks to the press ahead of Security Council meeting at U.N. Headquarters.
Freed hostage Eli Sharabi’s new book, Hostage, ends with him visiting the graves of his wife, Lianne, and his daughters, Noiya and Yahel, for the first time after being released from nearly a year and a half of captivity in Gaza, during which he had hoped they were still alive following the Hamas attack on their home in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.
“This here is rock bottom. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it,” Sharabi writes. “Now, life.”
The memoir tells a horrific story of 491 days of violence, deprivation and starvation.
That final sentence of Sharabi’s memoir — “Now, life” — could sum up his post-captivity self. In an interview with Jewish Insider last month, Sharabi said he was determined to reassert his agency, take action on hostage advocacy and move forward in his life.
Sharabi seemed cheerful speaking about his recovery. He was still slimmer than his pre-captivity self, but no longer as gaunt as he was emerging from the tunnels in Gaza in which Hamas starved him, giving him only a stale pita to eat each day, at most.
“I’m getting stronger every day,” Sharabi said. “I make sure to exercise and have weekly therapy sessions and make sure to take care of myself. I am strong and positive and facing forward.”
Sharabi’s days are filled with meetings around Israel and the world advocating for the remaining hostages to be freed.
“From the moment I got out of Sheba [Medical Center], 10 days after being freed, it has been non-stop action,” he said. “I have a lot of trips abroad, meeting with government officials — presidents, prime ministers, members of parliament, foreign ministers — and a lot of lectures in Israel and around the world, to a lot of Jewish communities. … It’s non-stop, morning to night.”
In his book, he recounts reassuring hostages Alon Ohel, who is still in Gaza, and Eliya Cohen and Or Levy, who have since been released, that he was sure their families were protesting and advocating for their release.
“It was important for Eliya and me to tell Or and Alon, who were more pessimistic about our chances, to get out and thought ‘maybe they forgot us,’” Sharabi recalled. “Eliya and I were very positive and said we had no doubt our families and good friends are not resting for a moment and doing all they could to free us.”
Sharabi said that when his captors would tell him about protests in the streets of Israel, they would say the demonstrations were against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he and his fellow hostages saw it as “the nation going out to fight for us. It gave us hope.”
When Sharabi was released, he saw that the scale of the hostage advocacy movement was beyond what he had imagined.
“When I got out and understood that it was masses of people in Israel, it excited me,” he said. “I met members of Jewish communities in New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Mexico. I meet Israelis and Jews all around the world and understand what they did all this time. It is very touching. I didn’t expect it at all. I expected my friends and family. I didn’t think that people would have posters of me at their holiday table. It’s heartwarming.”
At home in Israel, however, there have been sharp political divisions about the looming deal to release the hostages in exchange for ending the war in Gaza. Some far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government oppose President Donald Trump’s plan, which calls to free all 48 remaining hostages — 20 of whom are thought to be alive — within three days, because they call to prioritize defeating Hamas.
“In Israel, everything is political,” Sharabi lamented. “It’s terrible. All of our elected officials, with no exception, are partners in this terrible thing. I think all the people of Israel are sick of everything being political. I think most people in Israel hate this.”
The hostages, Sharabi said, “are not about right and not about left.” His brother, Yossi, was also taken captive and was killed while in Hamas captivity, which the IDF found may have been caused by an IDF airstrike.
Sharabi had an almost paternal relationship with Ohel when Hamas held them captive together in the tunnels under Gaza, and he expressed relief to have seen Ohel in a new hostage video released by the terror group last month.
“He’s amazing,” Sharabi said. “If you told me a week after I met him that he would survive six or seven months alone, after I left him, I would have doubted it. I left him after a very positive process during which he strengthened himself and learned how to survive, that you can’t be nice all the time and can’t be naive. He developed resilience and isn’t shaken by every change and every fear.”
Sharabi emphasized that, while in captivity, it is crucial to “understand that not everything is in our control, but we have the ability to choose how we respond.”
“I’m optimistic that soon we will see [Ohel] united with his family, and soon after, I will reunite with him. I am looking forward to it,” he said.
Sharabi describes his captors in detail in the book. Some were always cruel, while others snuck the hostages extra scraps of food. Some were true extremists, while others appeared to be in Hamas for the money.
“There are no innocent people in Gaza,” he said, “not civilians and certainly not the people in Hamas. In the 52 days that I was aboveground, not in tunnels but with a family in a house, they made sure people outside would not hear or see me, because they thought people would come in and kill me.”
“I recognize that even within Hamas, after spending 24/7 with them for many months and having different conversations with them, I understand who is ideological and who stumbled into it because Hamas controls the financial faucets in Gaza,” Sharabi added. “Does that make them innocent? Of course not. The moment they got the order, I was shackled around my legs. If they were told to shoot me, they would have shot me. … Some did it for money, not ideology, but they starved me, humiliated me and beat me. It doesn’t make them innocent.”
Sharabi also called on the Western world to recognize that Hamas is part of a broader ideology that threatens them, as well.
“I recently got back from 10 days in Australia,” he recalled. “We flew to Canberra to meet the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, both of whom are, at the very least, not pro-Israel. It was important for me to tell them two things.”
“First, disagreements with Israeli policy are fine. I, too, as a citizen, don’t always agree with Israeli policy. That’s what’s good about a democracy… We can say our opinions and disagree. But at the same time, even if they don’t think like Israelis and don’t have to care about me as an Israeli, they are part of the Commonwealth, and my wife and daughters were British and murdered in their homes with their British passports in their hands — the Hamas terrorists knew.”
Sharabi said his captors said to him time after time that “after Israelis and Jews, they will get to France, Britain, America and Spain. The whole world will be Islam.”
Second, Sharabi said he speaks out against antisemitism in his meetings with leaders.
“It cannot be that in 2025, Australian Jews are afraid to go out into the streets. It’s 2025, not 1940. That is [the leaders’] responsibility. They are not speaking out clearly enough against antisemitism. I’m not a politician or a diplomat, so I can say that each one of them is responsible. … Every Jew today is affected by the hate crimes in the world, and that is the responsibility of the government and elected officials,” he said.
Sharabi said his constant activity, including writing his memoir, “has a therapeutic side to it, to deal with [the experience] and not leave it all inside.”
“I don’t like to compare it to the Holocaust, but a lot of survivors didn’t talk, not even to their children,” he noted. “My psychologists, from the beginning, said … they never saw such a huge trauma. It’s not just the captivity, but also the huge loss of my wife, daughters and brother. It’s important to talk. It helps me a lot.”
As to why he doesn’t like to make comparisons between Oct. 7 and the Holocaust, when some Israelis have done so, Sharabi said that during the Holocaust, Jews were “a stateless people, a homeless people, with no government to take care of them.”
“There is a lot of anger in Israel in part because there is a country, there is an address that was supposed to take care of us and our security, and it failed,” he added. “It’s not like the Holocaust, so I don’t like the comparison. There were horrors there that we didn’t see here, like the gas chambers; instead there is a murderous terrorist organization.”
At the same time, Sharabi noted that in the months since his release in February, he has not been exposed to a lot of the details and footage of the Oct. 7 attacks, in which his wife and daughters were among the 132 Israelis murdered in his hometown, Kibbutz Be’eri: “I am being protected like a safe. I haven’t turned on the TV; I don’t watch my own interviews.”
“I have trouble grasping it,” he added.
Even without exposure to the horrors of Oct. 7, speaking and writing about his captivity means going back to the darkest moments of his life, repeatedly.
“I am connected to the pain. I recognize it; I have words for it. Not a day goes by that I don’t cry over it. I hear music on the radio in the car that reminds me of the girls,” he said. “But I also remember them with a lot of smiles, and when I cry, it’s about longing for them, not sadness. I am emotional about the good, when I remember my wife and my girls and their smiles.”
“It’s good for me to talk all the time. It’s important to me. I’m freeing it from my system, instead of leaving it inside,” he added.
The bill would create a federal database for security best practices, training materials and grant opportunities for religious nonprofits
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Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) attends a bill enrollment ceremony for H.R. 3525, a bill to create a commission to study making a national museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture, at the U.S. Capitol June 7, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
Senate and House lawmakers on Tuesday are expected to reintroduce the Pray Safe Act, a long-gestating bill that would create a federal database and clearinghouse for security best practices, training materials and grant opportunities for religious nonprofits.
The legislation is being led by Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Reps. Grace Meng (D-NY) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and comes after a series of high-profile attacks at religious institutions, including mass shootings at a Catholic church in Minneapolis and a Mormon church in Michigan.
“No one should ever have to fear for their safety while practicing their faith,” Meng said in a statement. “However, we have seen an alarming rise in vandalism, violence, and terror targeting houses of worship, faith-based organizations, and other nonprofit organizations. It is vital that these organizations have the security resources they need, and ensuring their protection should always be a bipartisan priority.”
“The Federal government should not sit idly by while faith communities experience attacks on their houses of worship. The security needs are only increasing and creating a dedicated resource for communities to improve their security would help stop these incidents before they happen,” she continued.
“The Federal Clearinghouse on Safety and Security Best Practices would be staffed by experts who can walk even the smallest rural parish or synagogue through safety-related resources that meet their community or congregation’s direct needs,” a group of Jewish, evangelical, Catholic and Hindu leaders said in a letter of support to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate and House homeland security committees.
“In a moment when acts of hate seek to divide us, the Pray Safe Act embodies the unifying principle that every American, regardless of creed or tradition, deserves to gather peacefully,” the letter continues. “We respectfully request that you schedule a markup, move the legislation expeditiously out of Committee, and champion its swift passage on the floor.”
Jewish groups that signed the letter include the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America, A Wider Bridge, Agudath Israel, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Assembly, Secure Community Network and the Union for Reform Judaism, joined by Christians United for Israel, the Hispanic Israel Leadership Coalition and Passages Israel.
The letter emphasizes the spate of attacks on places of worship, of various denominations, across the country in recent years.
“Empowering our churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, temples, mandirs and other houses of worship with the resources and expertise they need, yet often cannot afford, is paramount in this moment of increased violence,” the letter continues. “This support is critical to safeguarding a pillar of the American fabric, freedom of religion.”
The legislators describe the Pray Safe Act as “the most direct, cost-effective path forward” that “will not create a new grant program or impose mandates, it simply streamlines and makes more accessible resources Congress has already authorized, increasing efficiency, and ultimately saving lives.”
“As ADL’s research has shown, antisemitism and other forms of hate continue to fuel threats against faith-based organizations and houses of worship,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “We are grateful to Representatives Grace Meng and Maria Salazar, as well as Senators Maggie Hassan and Ron Johnson, for reintroducing the bipartisan Pray Safe Act. This legislation will help ensure that synagogues, churches, mosques, and other faith communities have the resources, training, and best practices they need to stay safe and secure.”
A group of lawmakers threatened potential ‘punitive measures’ in response to the European allies’ move
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U.S. Capitol Building on January 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
A group of 28 Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House wrote to the leaders of Australia, Canada, France and the U.K. urging them to walk back their plans to recognize a Palestinian state this month and threatening potential retaliation if they proceed.
“This is a reckless policy that undermines prospects for peace. It sets the dangerous precedent that violence, not diplomacy, is the most expedient means for terrorist groups like Hamas to achieve their political aims,” the Republicans, led by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), wrote. “Accordingly, we respectfully request that you reconsider your decision, especially as Hamas continues to hold Israeli citizens hostage while still refusing to agree to a ceasefire.”
The Republicans suggested that the move could prompt “punitive measures” by the United States, without offering further details.
They said that unilateral recognition “undermines the principles of direct negotiations and imperils Israel’s security by removing incentives for Palestinian groups to repudiate terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and address final-status issues” and is “especially troubling” in the context of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
They said that granting statehood now would only serve as a validation of Hamas’ activities and fuel more violence in the future, and that statehood should not be granted “until the Palestinians are willing to take responsibility for their people, renounce terrorism, and come to the negotiating table in good faith.”
They emphasized that France, the U.K., Canada and other countries lost citizens as well in the Oct. 7 attacks and that Hamas continues to hold hostages in “deplorable conditions.”
“Hamas’ war crimes are clear, and its rejection of diplomacy should lead your countries to impose more pressure. Instead, you offer greater rewards,” the lawmakers continued.
They said that the “misguided effort to reward terrorism” will also endanger the Jewish populations in the U.S. ally nations, where they already face rising antisemitism, harassment and attacks.
“You have the responsibility to stand against this scourge, denounce violence, and protect Jewish communities,” the lawmakers argued. “Sadly, your actions to legitimize a Palestinian terror state will only provide greater motivation to the violent antisemitic mobs.”
The letters were co-signed by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Steve Daines (R-MT), Dan Sullivan (R-AL), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Reps. Rudy Yakym (R-IN), Greg Steube (R-FL), Barry Moore (R-AL), Jefferson Shreve (R-IN), Josh Brecheen (R-OK), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Craig Goldman (R-TX), Mike Flood (R-NE), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), John McGuire (R-GA), Scott Franklin (R-FL), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) and August Pfluger (R-TX)
Stefanik said in a statement to Jewish Insider, “Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state undermines the principles of direct negotiation and imperils Israel’s security. This absurd action would reward the behavior of Hamas terrorists and does nothing to secure the release of the 48 hostages still held by Hamas.”
In the first visit by a Syrian government official to Congress in decades, lawmakers discussed efforts at repealing the remaining congressionally mandated sanctions on Syria
Courtesy Sen. Jeanne Shaheen
Senate and House lawmakers met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaiban on Capitol Hill, Sept. 18th, 2025
Senate and House lawmakers met Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, in the first trip by a Syrian government official to the Congress in decades.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that their meeting was “very encouraging and constructive.”
“I think we are on a path to eliminate sanctions in a way that safeguards interests of other nations in the region, and at the same time, provides for reconstruction in Syria, in a way that negates the influence of Iran and Russia,” Blumenthal said.
He said there was broad, but inconclusive, discussion about talks between the Syrian and Israeli governments.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ), who worked on Syria and Middle East issues at the State Department, called the trip “historic.” This was his first meeting with officials from the new Syrian government.
“He very much expressed a deep interest in being able to work as partners with us to stand up against ISIS, to stop Iranian reach and meddling throughout the Middle East, to push back on Russian interference,” Kim said. “There’s something really serious here that we need to engage with, and see how we can play a role. I worry that if we miss this opportunity, it could be a long time before we see a chance to be able to reshape the Middle East in a way for greater peace.”
He likewise said that al-Shaibani had said that the Syrian government has had extensive negotiations with Israel and suggested that they had been “positive conversations,” but that no agreements had been reached.
Regarding sanctions, Kim said that al-Shaibani had been “helpful in explaining how these restrictions are hurting” Syria’s reconstruction and recovery. “That’s important for us to hear and it’s important for us to think through what the effects are.”
“There’s a possibility and an opportunity here to reshape the Middle East in a way I could never have imagined,” Kim said.
Along with Kim and Blumenthal, Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Chris Coons (D-DE), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) met with al-Shaibani.
“We discussed steps that are essential for Syria to ensure their full access to the international economy. Syria has an opportunity to build a stable democracy, something the region desperately needs right now, and I am hopeful they are on the right track,” Risch, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a statement.
Shaheen, the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking member, emphasized in a statement the need to move quickly to repeal the Caesar Act sanctions on Syria.
“Syria’s economy is in crisis, and its authorities need financial resources to maintain basic functions of governance,” she said. “If we are too slow to act, we risk plunging Syrians back into conflict, which is in no one’s interest except for Russia and Iran. We have a small window of opportunity to put Syria on a path toward stability and prosperity. Members of our recent bipartisan congressional delegation to Syria as well as senior Administration officials … all agree: now is the time for the Senate to act by repealing the Caesar Act sanctions.”
Wicker chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Wilson said, “President Trump’s leadership has ushered in a historic opportunity for a new chapter, benefitting ALL. Congress must now act: fully repeal the Caesar Act.”
Plus, the mood at MEAD
Natascha Tahabsem/Cover Images via AP Images
Flags lowered and Candlelight vigil for assassinated Trump Ally Charlie Kirk in Washington
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to friends and associates of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk after the conservative activist was shot and killed at an event at a Utah university. We cover the House’s passage of the 2026 defense bill, including a repeal of the AUMF, and report on concerns by two senior pro-Israel House Democrats that Israeli annexation efforts could pose a threat to the Abraham Accords. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Jerry Seinfeld, Larry Ellison and Dana Stroul.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Marc Rod and Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Today is the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Ceremonies and commemorations will be held around the country today in remembrance of the attacks.
- President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will attend a ceremony at the Pentagon this morning to commemorate the day, while Vice President JD Vance will attend a ceremony at Ground Zero in Manhattan. Trump will travel to New York this afternoon to attend tonight’s Yankees game against the Detroit Tigers.
- In Israel, the Jewish National Fund and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem are jointly holding a remembrance ceremony.
- The Senate Appropriations Committee is holding its markup for the Department of Homeland Security, while the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding its confirmation hearing for Sergio Gor.
- The Jefferies TechTrek wraps up today in Tel Aviv.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S Gabby Deutch
When 200 top policymakers, analysts and government officials from the U.S. and the Middle East gathered on Wednesday for the second day of the high-profile MEAD conference, one topic was top of mind for everyone at the ritzy Washington confab: Israel’s strike on Doha a day earlier that targeted senior Hamas officials who were gathered in the Qatari capital.
Although many at the conference were decidedly pro-Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s risky mission — Israel’s first-ever airstrikes on Qatar, a major non-NATO ally of the United States — faced significant skepticism, particularly as reports emerged that the attack may not have killed the high-level Hamas leaders that Israel hoped to target.
In a rare on-the-record session, former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, questioned whether the strike fit within Israel’s broader war aims.
“If you take the operation itself, per se, and you single it out from anything else, of course these are a bunch of bad people that we should have killed a long time ago, and whenever you have a chance to kill them, you should kill them,” Lapid said. “Having said that, as the hours go by, we understand two things. A is that it might not be as successful as we thought in the beginning, and B [is] that this has nothing to do with strategy. It’s just an operation.”
That language marked a shift from Lapid’s initial reaction to the Qatar strike, which he described on Tuesday afternoon in a Hebrew-language tweet as “an exceptional operation to thwart our enemies.”
A lot changed in the interim: President Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” with the attack, and that it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” Arab nations rallied around Qatar, with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all visiting Doha this week. That led some MEAD attendees to argue that Israel’s strike could jeopardize regional integration efforts led by Washington.
IN MEMORIAM
Charlie Kirk remembered as a bulwark against antisemitism on the right
Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old Trump ally and conservative campus advocacy leader who was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, was seen as a crucial bulwark against rising antisemitism and anti-Israel antagonism on the far right, friends and acquaintances told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel and Emily Jacobs. While he was best known as a fierce and unyielding critic of what he assailed as the excesses of left-wing culture, Kirk, the founder of the youth activist group Turning Point USA, also cautioned against the risks of young conservatives embracing antisemitism and online conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel.
Friends grieve: Jewish conservatives who were close with Kirk both personally and professionally lamented his death as a major loss for the long-term standing of pro-Israel sentiment in the MAGA movement, citing his continued defense of Israel and recent commentary warning against the embrace of antisemitism on the far right while visiting college campuses nationwide with TPUSA. Josh Hammer, a conservative political commentator and a personal friend of Kirk, argued that Kirk’s affinity for the Jewish people was grounded in his evangelical Christian faith and the fact that some of his earliest professional mentors were conservative pro-Israel champions David Horowitz and Dennis Prager. Hammer said he and Kirk engaged regularly on the best ways to address rising antisemitism within the GOP, and that he was concerned about how Kirk’s absence going forward would impact that surge.
ON THE HILL
House passes 2026 defense bill, including repeal of Iraq war powers
The House passed its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, including an amendment that would repeal the Authorizations for Use of Military Force that allowed for the Iraq war, the Gulf War and many of the U.S.’ subsequent counterterrorism actions globally. The House also passed a series of amendments aimed at countering the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel and enhancing defense cooperation with Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. An effort to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by a bipartisan 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans voting with 212 Democrats in favor of the amendment.
Remaining questions: Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he agreed that there should be sunsets on AUMFs, but said that changes should not be made without discussions with key U.S. military leaders about how the repeal would impact U.S. activities and counterterrorism efforts and whether additional authorities would be needed to reauthorize ongoing U.S. operations. “These are questions that were not asked, and the answers were not given,” Mast said. “We have, I think, probably large agreement on reasons to sunset things, but it should not be done in absence of doing something of this gravity in the proper way.”
PLAYING AGAINST TYPE
Pat Ryan endorses Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a swing-district Democrat representing parts of the Hudson Valley, announced his endorsement on Wednesday of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. With the endorsement, Ryan becomes the first New York Democratic lawmaker outside of New York City to support the 33-year-old democratic socialist and Queens assemblyman, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.
What he said: “Public service is all about one thing: who do you fight for?” Ryan said in a social media post. “Zohran Mamdani fights for the PEOPLE.” He also took a swipe at former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was soundly defeated by Mamdani in the June Democratic primary and is now running as an independent, calling him “a selfish POS who only fights for himself and other corrupt elites.” Ryan added: “I know whose side I’m on. I’m with the people. I’m with Zohran.”
REACTION IN ACTION
Dana Stroul: Israeli strike on Doha is pushing Gulf states toward Qatar
Dana Stroul, the director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior Defense Department official in the Biden administration, warned yesterday that the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha is leading Arab states to rally around Qatar, potentially dealing setbacks to regional normalization, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Stroul’s insights: Stroul, speaking at an American Jewish Committee event in Washington to mark the five-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords, said that Arab leaders are offering support for Qatar following the strike, and that both Israeli and Iranian moves to make the Gulf a “new battlefield in the Middle East” are making the U.S.’ regional partners “very nervous.” Stroul continued, “It is really disappointing that not one [Arab] government acknowledged Hamas. What’s very clear is that everyone else in the region is aligned that this was a strike on Qatar,” as opposed to a strike on Hamas. “This is about Qatari sovereignty. We’ve seen really a shoring up of Arab leaders’ alignment with and defense of Qatar.”
Defiant defense: Also speaking at the event, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter offered a strong defense of Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, as the Israeli government doubled down on the strategy in the face of strong pushback from the Trump administration. Leiter argued that, in carrying out the strike, Israel was only doing what it and other countries have always done in the past: hunting down terrorists who perpetrate attacks on them wherever they may be.
In the room: Hikmat Hajiyev, a senior advisor to the president of Azerbaijan, made a surprise appearance at the AJC event and, in a signal of recent changes in Eastern Europe, shook hands with the ambassador from Armenia. The U.S. recently brokered an end to the war between those two neighbors.
WORDS OF WARNING
Top House Dems warn against steps that could compromise Abraham Accords, two-state solution
Two senior pro-Israel House Democrats, who are co-chairs of the House Abraham Accords Caucus, warned on Wednesday at an American Jewish Committee event in Washington that any moves that would prevent the ultimate establishment of a two-state solution could endanger the survival of the Abraham Accords, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Eye on annexation: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) said that his concerns about Israeli movements toward annexing the West Bank remain. Israel agreed to put those moves on hold five years ago when it sealed the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates. Schneider said that any attempt at a one-state solution would create a permanent violence and conflict. “The UAE has made clear that if Israel goes down that path it has the likelihood — not the possibility, but the likelihood — of cleaving the Abraham Accords to such a point that they may not be recoverable,” he said.
In agreement: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) similarly said at the AJC event that “we are at a crossroads with the Abraham Accords” and warned that “progress could be squandered by any steps that permanently foreclose a two-state future.”
Incentivizing peace: Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), meanwhile, urged the Trump administration to offer clearer incentives, including favorable trade and tariff treatment, to countries that normalize relations with Israel. “The United States needs to make a clearer statement to the world that, ‘If you join the Abraham Accords, this is what happens to trade. We change the rules on what we do, on trade, on tariff, on relationships — it’s different for this group, so wouldn’t you like to join this club?’” Lankford said at the event.
Long-term vision: Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, said that he wants to work toward a situation in the long term “in which the Palestinians are free from their oppressors, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.”
EARNEST ERNST
Sen. Ernst says she’s optimistic but skeptical after meeting with Syrian president
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said that she came away with optimism for the future of Syria from a meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa last month, while adding that she remains skeptical and emphasizing the need to “trust but verify,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Takeaways: “This is an opportunity right now. Whereas before, we have been on opposing forces, now is the time when we can come together for the prosperity of the region and stability in Syria,” Ernst said at an American Jewish Committee event on Wednesday in Washington. “Yes, I’m skeptical, but I am optimistic.” Ernst, a vocal supporter of Israel, joined a statement shortly after that meeting condemning Israel for carrying out strikes against Syrian government targets. Ernst said that she’d had a striking exchange with al-Sharaa over their shared time in combat in Iraq — Ernst as a U.S. service member and al-Sharaa as a member of Al-Qaida. “I told him I, as well, served in Iraq. He was kind of taken aback by that, but then we laughed,” Ernst said.
Worthy Reads
What Charlie Kirk Meant: The Free Press’ Adam Rubenstein reflects on the life and death of Charlie Kirk, whom he’d profiled in 2018 amid Kirk’s meteoric rise. “If I had to use a single word to capture him, it would be gracious. We could disagree about anything — and we did — but he would, without fail, engage civilly and explain his point of view. He did not do this, as many do, to make himself feel smart. He did it so he could share the other side of something he cared about. And he cared deeply. … Charlie Kirk was not naive. In the video after he is shot, you can see a security team of at least half a dozen bodyguards surround him and spirit him away. Like anyone speaking their mind in public these days, he knew there was a risk. He had the courage anyway. And today he died under one of those tents where he defended freedom — his, and all of ours.” [FreePress]
A Just Incursion: In The Washington Post, John Spencer, the chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, argues that the IDF’s military incursion into Gaza City is lawful and necessary to end the war. “In war, there are no perfect solutions, only questions: Is an operation lawful or unlawful, moral or immoral, necessary or unnecessary? Given Israel’s record thus far, its attack on Gaza City will be lawful, moral and necessary. The IDF will proceed like any modern military facing an entrenched enemy in dense cities. The end of the war depends on whether Hamas releases captives and surrenders its grip on Gaza City. No government can allow a terrorist army to maintain safe haven in a dense city while holding hostages and firing rockets. If Hamas fighters refuse, Israel is justified in completing its siege and assault until they are defeated.” [WashPost]
Khamenei’s Calculus: In Foreign Policy, the Middle East Institute’s Alex Vatanka lays out the miscalculations he believes Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is making in his approach to the West and in his allyship with Russia and China. “His revolutionary identity is built on never yielding to the United States, and he will not abandon that legacy unless the payoff is unmistakably greater. So far, U.S. President Donald Trump has offered no such incentive. Washington, in fact, shows little sign of having a coherent strategy for compromise with Iran beyond pressing for capitulation on three issues: enrichment, missiles, and its network of militant allies. In the absence of clarity, Tehran assumes the Iran file has been subcontracted to Israel — making a negotiated deal even more perilous from Khamenei’s perspective. Meanwhile, Khamenei’s ability to prepare the country for greater turmoil is constrained, leaving him to shuffle the national security team around without authorizing a fundamental change of course. And he still clings to the hope that U.S. rivalry with China and Russia will create exit ramps from Western pressure — even as many in Tehran warn against mistaking Beijing’s pageantry for protection.” [ForeignPolicy]
Word on the Street
The Trump administration will, following a judge’s order, restore some funding and grants to Harvard University that for months have been frozen; the government plans to appeal the decision…
The Wall Street Journal reports on frustrations between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid the fallout from the Israeli strike in Doha on Tuesday that killed several Hamas officials; the WSJ reported that both Trump and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff “have privately complained in recent months that Netanyahu maneuvers them into difficult situations, often with little warning”…
Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said that Ottawa was reevaluating its ties with Israel following the Doha strike…
The House Appropriations Committee approved its 2026 funding bill for the Department of Education on Tuesday; in addition to new provisions on campus antisemitism and cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, the explanatory report accompanying the bill requests a report to Congress on antisemitism in health care and an update on the status of antisemitism investigations…
The New York Times looks at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s involvement in the Trump administration’s dealings with private corporations…
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer fired Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson over leaked messages from Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein in which the British envoy pledged his support for Epstein and attempted to arrange a meeting between the disgraced financier and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair…
Forbes spotlights Jared Kushner’s Brain Co., which he co-founded with Elad Gil and former Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray, following the startup’s announcement on Wednesday that it had raised $30 million in its Series A funding round…
OpenAI inked a $300 million, five-year deal with Larry Ellison’s Oracle to purchase cloud computing software from the tech company; Ellison then surpassed Elon Musk as the world’s richest person after Oracle’s quarterly earnings report exceeded expectations, pushing Ellison to a total fortune of $393 billion…
The New York Times looks at the deal taking shape between SkyDance’s David Ellison and The Free Press’ Bari Weiss that would give Weiss a C-suite role at CBS…
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who appeared at a Duke University event alongside former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, compared the “Free Palestine” movement to the KKK…
A Jewish Pittsburgh woman who pleaded guilty to vandalizing a Chabad house in the city earlier this year was sentenced to probation…
Police in New South Wales, Australia, charged a man with a series of antisemitic attacks in the Sydney area, including the vandalism of the former home of the head of the country’s Jewish community and the firebombing of a childcare center…
Tennis Canada announced that the upcoming Davis Cup match between Canada and Israel will take place inside a closed venue with no spectators, citing security concerns…
The victory of left-wing parties in Norway‘s national elections this week could usher in further anti-Israel boycott moves by the country’s government and sovereign wealth fund, Norges; a source who followed the election said that left-wing parties likely to be part of the coalition government will likely make demands for additional action against Israel in coalition talks. The issue became a significant one in the run-up to the election…
Israel struck Houthi military facilities in Yemen and a fuel station in the capital of Sana’a…
EU policy chief Ursula von der Leyen called for the bloc to suspend free trade ties with Israel…
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Tehran had not yet reached an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to allow international inspectors into Iranian nuclear facilities, and that more talks would be necessary to fully restore inspections…
Argentine human rights activist Rosa Roisinblit, who became one of the leaders and founding members of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo after her pregnant daughter was disappeared during the country’s dictatorship, died at 106…
Pic of the Day
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff met at the White House on Wednesday with the siblings of hostage Evyatar David as well as returned hostages Ohad and Raz Ben Ami.
Birthdays
Israeli journalist, political commentator and investigative reporter, Raviv Drucker turns 55…
Percussionist, the only Jewish member of the Grateful Dead, born Michael Steven Hartman, Mickey Hart turns 82… Wisconsin resident, Janis Gershon Kohlenberg… French physicist who was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for physics, Serge Haroche turns 81… 7-foot basketball center who played for the Bulls and Hawks in the NBA, David L. “Dave” Newmark turns 79… Senior U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of Ohio based in Cincinnati, Judge Susan J. Dlott turns 76… Pediatric nephrologist, Dr. Jonathan Heiliczer… Member of the New Jersey General Assembly since 2006, he is the first Orthodox Jew to serve in the New Jersey Legislature, Gary Schaer turns 74… Television producer and executive producer, Jon Meyersohn… Global real estate advisor at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, Rosy Lofer… Owner of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, he is the founder and president of global hedge fund Appaloosa Management, David Tepper turns 68… Director of sales and marketing at Hillcrest Royale Senior Living in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Marian Rubinstein… Senior judge in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, Ellen Ceisler turns 68… Co-founder of the U.K. hedge fund, Brevan Howard Asset Management, Alan Howard turns 62… London-based CEO and founding partner of Stanhope Capital, Daniel Pinto turns 59… CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz turns 57… CEO of NYC’s 92nd Street Y, Seth William Pinsky… Executive director at JP Morgan Chase, Daniel E. Berger… Former member of the Illinois Legislature, now the CEO of NYC’s Chevra Hatzalah Volunteer Ambulance Service, Yehiel Mark Kalish turns 50… Arbi Tatevosian… Artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky turns 46… Stand-up comedian and podcast host, his YouTube channel has almost 260 million views, Steven Ira Hofstetter turns 46… Author and social media personality in Israel’s religious-nationalist community, Rabbi Avraham Stav turns 39… Jessica Sebella Setless Spiegel… Co-founder and rebbetzin of the Altneu synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and news editor for The Real Deal, Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt… Chief of staff at The Jewish Agency for Israel, Gali Gordon… Betty (Yaira) Ilovici turns 31… Udi Ben Zeev…
Other passed amendments aimed to counter the BDS movement, strengthen the U.S.-Israel defense partnership and counter the Iranian regime
GETTY IMAGES
A general view of the U.S. Capitol Building from the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, May 29, 2025.
The House passed its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, including an amendment that would repeal the Authorizations for Use of Military Force that allowed for the Iraq war and the Gulf War.
The House also passed a series of amendments aimed at countering the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel and enhancing defense cooperation with Israel.
An effort to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by a bipartisan 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans voting with 212 Democrats in favor of the amendment.
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he agreed that there should be sunsets on AUMFs, but said that changes should not be made without discussions with key U.S. military leaders about how the repeal would impact U.S. activities and counterterrorism efforts and whether additional authorities would be needed to re-authorize ongoing U.S. operations.
“These are questions that were not asked, and the answers were not given,” Mast said. “We have, I think, probably large agreement on reasons to sunset things, but it should not be done in absence of doing something of this gravity in the proper way.”
Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the AUMFs are “long obsolete” and that keeping them effective “only risk[s] abuse by administrations of either party to sanction military force that Congress has not consented or approved.”
He said he’s committed to ensuring that the provision remains in the final version of the NDAA agreed to in negotiation with the Senate.
Repeal efforts for the AUMFs have seen substantial momentum in recent previous years.
Other amendments approved by voice votes as part of broader amendment packages aimed to counter international targeting of Israel, including banning the Defense Department from contracting with entities boycotting Israel, instructing the administration to monitor the impact of global arms embargoes, and other sanctions imposed on Israel, and determine how the U.S. can mitigate such issues. They also urged the administration to engage with allies to ensure they do not enforce International Criminal Court arrest warrants against Israeli officials and called on the Pentagon not to participate in defense exhibitions that exclude Israel.
To further reinforce U.S.-Israel defensive cooperation, other amendments would order the creation of a Defense Innovation Unit field office in Israel to engage with the government and private sector there on technological development and mandate that the U.S. and Israel study the possibility of integrating Israel into the U.S. defense industrial base.
Additionally, the House added requirements that the Pentagon report to Congress on the status of integrated air and missile defense cooperation in the Middle East, including lessons learned from recent attacks in the region; on joint U.S.-Israel efforts to increase production of Arrow missile defense interceptors, stockpiles of which were significantly depleted during the Israel-Iran war, including whether further authorizations or funding are needed; on U.S.-Israel joint military exercises, the missions rehearsed and how regional partners can be invited to join; and on the status of pending deliveries of military aircraft and air-launched munitions, including the reasons for any delays and how they can be resolved.
Other amendments would require the U.S, Egypt and Israel to study steps that they can take to block smuggling into Gaza from tunnels in Egypt or via the Mediterranean Sea and the Pentagon to report to Congress on the U.S.-Bahrain partnership agreement and possibilities for expanding it to include other regional allies.
Additional amendments seek to support Iranian dissidents and counter the Iranian regime: requiring a strategy on encouraging and enticing top Iranian officials to defect; requiring the Pentagon to help develop technologies to counter internet blockages imposed by Iran and other adversaries; requiring a strategy to counter Iran and Hezbollah’s operations in South America; and expanding reporting requirements regarding Iran’s terrorism strategy, proxies, relationship with Russia, supply chains and weapons production capabilities.
Another amendment would require the Pentagon to quickly release all files on the Iranian proxy attack on the Tower 22 facility in Jordan that killed U.S. service members in January 2024.
An additional amendment would award a medal to servicemembers involved in the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Two amendments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), which aimed to block U.S. support for Ukraine and Taiwan, were resoundingly defeated 372-60 and 422-9, respectively. An amendment proposed by Greene to strip out programs supporting Israel from the bill did not receive consideration or a vote on the floor.
Greene made similar efforts to block funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan during consideration earlier this year of 2026 Pentagon funding, which were defeated along similar lines.
The amended NDAA passed the House by a 231-196 vote, with just 17 Democrats voting for the bill as most voiced objections to provisions relating to transgender medical care and renewable energy, among other issues. The Senate is considering its own version of the NDAA this week as well.
Among a slew of other issues, a series of proposed amendments aimed at cracking down on Turkey were not approved for consideration on the House floor.
At the same time, the legislation cuts funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights by nearly $50 million
David Ake/Getty Images
U.S. Department of Education headquarters building in Washington, DC.
The House Appropriations Committee’s proposed funding bill for the Department of Education includes sweeping new provisions cutting off funding for colleges and universities that fail to address campus antisemitism, but would also cut $49 million in funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in 2026.
New language included in the bill states that no federal funding may be provided to institutions of higher education “unless and until such institution adopts a prohibition on antisemitic conduct that creates a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in all documents relating to student or employee conduct.”
The bill also bans funding to schools that have “failed to take administrative action against any student, staff member, or student group that commits acts of antisemitism while utilizing the facilities, grounds, or resources of such institution.”
The former provision would require schools to specifically implement anti-discrimination policies regarding antisemitism as a precondition of federal funding, while the latter could give the Department of Education additional latitude to cut funding to schools that have allowed antisemitic conduct to go unaddressed or unpunished.
At the same time, the bill would provide $91 million in funding for the Office for Civil Rights, down from $140 million provided in several previous years. The Trump administration, in its budget request to Congress, requested the same cut, as it looks to slash the size of the Department of Education while winding down the department.
The Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Programs voted along party lines to advance the bill to the full committee on Tuesday evening.
The funding proposal sets up a clash with the Senate, which proposed consistent funding at $140 million for the office in its own appropriations legislation, which the Senate Appropriations Committee passed at the end of July. The Senate bill does not include the new language relating to antisemitism.
A large coalition of Jewish community groups across the ideological spectrum previously urged the “highest possible funding” for the Office for Civil Rights, though others in the Jewish community have argued that the office does not require additional funding, instead needing only to better-prioritize resolving antisemitism cases.
House Democrats have frequently pointed to Republicans’ efforts to cut funding for the office as evidence that Republicans are not serious about confronting campus antisemitism. Key Republicans expressed support for the Trump administration’s proposal to cut funding for the office earlier this year.
“The Office for Civil Rights is on the front lines of the fight against rising antisemitism at universities and K-12 schools. It’s absurd to cut their budget when complaints are at an all-time high,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Republicans have no interest in the hard work of enforcing protections for Jewish students on campus.”
Lauren Wolman, the senior director of government relations and strategy for the Anti-Defamation League, expressed support for the new provisions on campus antisemitism while warning about the OCR cuts.
“We appreciate the committee’s focus on the crisis of antisemitism in education and commitment to ensuring there are consequences when antisemitism occurs. The Appropriations Committee underscores this point forcefully and urgently,” Wolman said. “But if Congress simultaneously defunds the very office charged with investigating and enforcing Title VI, those consequences may never be realized. Jewish students need real accountability, backed by resources, enforcement, and monitoring.”
A spokesperson for the Jewish Federations of North America said, “This is the first step in a long process of appropriations, and we look forward to working with Congress to ensure that OCR has the resources necessary to effectively fulfill its mission.”
Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism: ‘I was worried by this neo-Buchanan isolationism, but I look at President Trump's actions, they have no hold on him’
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
U.S. Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka walks outside the White House in Washington, DC, on May 7, 2025.
Seb Gorka, the White House senior director for counterterrorism and a deputy assistant to the president, aired his grievances with the anti-Israel faction within the Republican Party on Tuesday, alleging that the wing of the GOP aligned with podcast host Tucker Carlson is “basically Pat Buchanan in a new guise.”
Gorka made the comments in a conversation on counterterrorism and U.S. strategy at the Hudson Institute after being pressed on the foreign policy disputes within the MAGA movement and Carlson’s grievances with President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.
Asked by moderator Michael Doran, a Hudson senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, if he was comfortable addressing the growth of anti-Israel, antisemitic sentiment on right-wing podcasts and social media, Gorka replied, “Yeah, I am, because it bothers me immensely, but I’ve come to a certain realization with regards to that, that this wing of isolationism is nothing new. We had this 100 years ago.”
“This is just a poor, substandard repackaging of neo-Buchananite isolationism,” Gorka said, referencing Buchanan, the former Nixon communications director who became an outspoken critic of Israel. “It’s actually a more shallow version. Pat is far smarter than this version of isolationism.”
Gorka said that he is “actually in a better place with” the onslaught of anti-Israel rhetoric from Carlson’s wing of the party than he was previously, explaining that he realized that most of the rhetoric was coming from “probably half a dozen very loud people on Twitter and Rumble,” the right-wing video platform.
“You get out of the miasma, the cesspit that is social media, and you talk to representative MAGA voters, of the 80 million that put the president back in the White House, they don’t think that we should pull down the shutters on the Pacific and the Atlantic coast,” Gorka explained. “They don’t think that Israel is the reason for Oct. 7. They actually have a very special place in their heart for Israel, and they don’t think that hospitals being bombed in Ukraine is a good thing because somebody offered NATO membership to Ukraine, allegedly, a decade ago.”
“As an immigrant to this country, a legal immigrant to the United States, one of the most trenchant indicative characteristics for me of the American people is common sense. They understand who is responsible for Oct. 7. They understand who [Russian President] Vladimir Putin is. And as such, I was worried by this neo-Buchanan isolationism, but I look at President Trump’s actions, they have no hold on him,” he continued.
Gorka then pointed to the early days of the first Trump administration, alleging that at the time, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed hesitation about moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem out of fear that doing so would cause a third world war.
Gorka said that Trump told concerned members of his Cabinet at the time that they were going through with the move because, “A) We promised the people of Israel 23 years ago, and we’ve broken that promise every six months of 23 years. B) I promised the American electorate in the campaign. We’re doing it. And C) It’s the right thing to do.” He argued that the “moral clarity” shown by Trump on issues impacting Israel highlighted the contrast between the president and his detractors on foreign policy matters.
Earlier in the program, Gorka told Doran that the president’s approach to the Middle East was heavily focused on combating Iran.
“You need to understand one thing: When the president looks at the region, he doesn’t slice it down into cylinders of excellence. He doesn’t care if you’re the Syrian desk officer or the natural resources expert. He has one overlay for the whole AOR [Area of Responsibility], and that one metric, that one prism, is Iran, and he’s absolutely right,” Gorka said. “Iran is front and center in everything we do in the region, because they remain the greatest state sponsor terrorism, and the world would be a much safer place if that were not the case.”
Gorka noted that when Trump is asked by reporters about anything related to national security, “more than 50% of the time … the president will bring up Iran,” adding that this was “especially” the case “before [Operation] Midnight Hammer, because it really is on his mind that this is the threat. A nuclear Iran, an ideologically Islamo-fascist regime that wishes to acquire the most dangerous weapons in the world, is a threat to all decent peoples.”
Turning his attention to Israel, Gorka argued that the Jewish state’s “post-Oct. 7 operations have rewritten the map of the Middle East for the next 50 to 100 years.” He praised Israel’s military moves in Syria and Lebanon, crediting the IDF with taking down the Assad regime in Damascus and significantly weakening Hezbollah.
As for whether the U.S. will undertake additional operations in the region to target Iranian proxies, Gorka said the “jury is still out on that,” but praised Trump’s strikes against the Houthis.
“We had great success with our operation against the Houthis. Again, it wasn’t well understood by the so-called experts. For the president, the action against the Houthis was about one thing and one thing alone. When we told him there had been 150 attacks against U.S. vessels going through the Straits and that they’d actually fired on naval vessels as well, he said, ‘Well, that will not be allowed to stand.’ It’s not just about U.S. interests [but] about global freedom of maritime transport. So all of these things are connected,” Gorka said of Trump’s motivation to strike the Iran-backed Yemeni terror group.
Gorka also disputed the notion that the president was tied down by ideological labels, but rather that he’s focused on achieving results and fixing problems: “Here’s the trouble for the Beltway with understanding the current commander in chief: there is no ideological taxonomy into which he will fall.”
Tzvika Mor, head of the hawkish Tikvah Forum, a minority group of hostages’ families, calls to prioritize defeating Hamas, says putting hostages first is ‘indescribable stupidity’
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The parents of Eitan Mor, a security guard kidnapped on October 7 at the Supernova rave, wait to meet with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other fellow family members of kidnapped victims at the U.S. Capitol on February 06, 2024 in Washington,
The day after Israel’s Security Cabinet voted to seize control of Gaza City, the Hostages Families Forum organized a major protest in Tel Aviv against the decision, warning it would put their loved ones’ lives in danger.
But Tzvika Mor, father of hostage Eitan Mor, has been speaking out against the Cabinet decision for a different reason — he thinks the IDF should be pushing even more aggressively to take over the rest of Gaza.
Nearly two years since his son was kidnapped while working as a security guard at the Nova festival on Oct. 7, 2023, Mor, 48, has not wavered from his position that defeating Hamas must be Israel’s top priority in the war in Gaza, above the hostages.
Mor, who lives in Kiryat Arba, a settlement abutting Hebron in the West Bank, normally works as an ADHD coach. But since the Oct. 7 attacks, he has divided his time between advocating for the country’s victory over Hamas and serving as an IDF reservist in the Paratroopers’ Brigade. In the long term Mor wishes to see the entirety of Gaza become part of Israel, telling Jewish Insider in an interview on Sunday, “It is the land of the Tribe of Judah; it is ours.”
As chairman of the Tikvah Forum, a more hawkish minority group of hostage families than the larger and better-known Hostages Families Forum, Mor and several other hostages’ relatives oppose partial deals and the release of large numbers of terrorists, arguing that only sustained military pressure will bring all of the hostages home. Mor spoke out against the Israeli Security Cabinet’s recent decision in his interview with JI.
“The question isn’t what they’re going to do, but what is the goal. If the goal is to lead Hamas to negotiate, it will fail, just like in Gideon’s Chariots, which took five months and didn’t bring back the hostages and didn’t destroy Hamas,” Mor said, referring to the IDF operation that began earlier this year. “The goal cannot be to bring [Hamas] to talks; it must be to destroy them.”
Hamas, he said, is not motivated to return the hostages, because they have the food, fuel and water that they need to survive, but if they feared for their survival, the situation would be different.
Mor compared the situation to the story in Genesis in which Abraham’s nephew Lot is kidnapped by four kings, and Abraham took an army with him to fight the kings.
Abraham “didn’t talk to them. He didn’t pay them. He fought a war until they surrendered. That is the way,” Mor said.
Mor said fighting to pressure Hamas to return to the table reflects an order of priorities that is both wrong and ineffective.
“The war cannot be about the hostages, and I say that as the father of a hostage. How many soldiers should be killed for the hostages?” he asked. “You don’t go to war to bring back hostages. You go to war for sovereignty, for deterrence. Then, when you win, you get your captives back.”
Prioritizing the hostages “not only harms national security, but it also hurts the hostages, because Hamas learns that they’re the most important to us and raises the price all the time. It’s indescribable stupidity,” he lamented.
Mor warned that if Israel “concedes in Gaza, Hamas will never give up all of the hostages … And what would the message be to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria” – he asked, using the biblical name for the West Bank – “that kidnapping Israelis is the best thing to do?”
In the past, Mor said, “it was clear that there was no negotiating with terrorists. We would try to save our hostages and take risks, but we could not give in to terrorism.”
Mor cited research by the Yachin Research Center, which he said showed that four times more Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 2023 than in 1949-1992.
“That means that since Israel gave in to terrorism, more Israelis were murdered. It’s clear … That needs to stop,” he stated.
Asked about the concerns that other hostage families have expressed about expanded military action in Gaza putting their loved ones at risk, Mor responded with a question: “Is our war in Gaza necessary? If there weren’t hostages, would we still need to go to war?”
“The answer is yes, because [Hamas] cannot remain our neighbors after we saw what they can do, or they would do it again. They are religious people; they live for this. They don’t live for a nice house and a car and social status. Not for coffee shops and pilates. They live to kill Jews. They’re like zombies. You have to destroy them. The war would be necessary even if there were no hostages,” he said.
As such, Mor said, Israel must take the necessary steps to win the war in Gaza: “It cannot be that we will endanger 10 million Israelis because of the hostages. We need to solve that problem such that we are not harming national security.”
“We have fears, too,” he added, “but in war, some are hurt. Soldiers are injured in the war too.”
Mor and another one of his sons have been in combat units in the current war. Thirteen soldiers in Mor’s brigade have been killed.
Early in the war, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with members of the Tikvah Forum, Hebrew news coverage accused the forum members of being Likud plants or, at least, being easier for Netanyahu to talk to than the Hostages Families Forum, whose early leadership included political campaigners involved in protests seeking to bring down his government.
Mor, however, has been and continues to be critical of Netanyahu, who he said he hasn’t spoken to in six months, and of Likud ministers who he has spoken to more recently, including Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and Agriculture Minister and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter.
“I tell them these things, but almost all of the ministers in Likud align with the prime minister and say we have to agree to partial [hostage] deals,” Mor lamented.
Mor says that he has faced pressure for raising a different voice from the more prominent hostage relatives, and that “people defame and curse me.” In December 2023, the father of another hostage accused him on live television of giving up on his son, leading Mor to start crying.
“The Israeli media doesn’t help. They lead the campaign” against him, he said. “But I feel that I am a messenger of the people of Israel. It is clear to me that the people of Israel want to win … They are connected to their roots, to the Land of Israel and to Judaism. They don’t want to be sold dreams and delusions that ‘it will all be OK, we can give in to terror and then deal with it later.’ We can’t deal with it. If we surrender, we will pay a higher price.”
Mor has not seen pictures or videos of his son Eitan, 25, since Oct. 7, 2023, but he said that the most recent sign of life he received was from Israeli intelligence services in February this year.
“We don’t know anything except that he’s alive,” Mor said.
In May, Eitan’s mother, Efrat Mor, said she learned from another hostage released in the first deal in November 2023 that Eitan is using his “incredible social skills … both for himself and for the other hostages” to lift everyone’s spirits.
Eitan is the eldest of eight children.
“He is very strong, physically and mentally. He was very Zionist. He was a fighter and commander in the Golani Brigade” of the IDF, his father said. “He’s not soft; he doesn’t whine. He is strong; he’s a leader. We are sure that if he is with other hostages, he is helping them and strengthening them.”
When Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova rave, Eitan contacted an uncle because his parents do not use phones on Shabbat. He said that he and his friends were hiding, and sent videos of terrorists on pickup trucks. He also sent his location so that his uncle could pass it on to the IDF. The last time he was in contact with his uncle was at 10:04 a.m. His parents did not know that he was at the party, and they did not find out about the Oct. 7 attacks or that their son had been taken hostage until the evening.
Later, Nova survivors said that Eitan left his hiding place and saved their lives, which his father said “tells you the most about him.”
“He could have gone home at 6:29, but he stayed to save people,” Mor said. “He hid people and ran with them until he was kidnapped at 12:30, not by Hamas but by Gazan civilians.”
The Florida Democrat has shifted away from commitments he made to Jewish leaders during his first run for Congress, fueling frustration among former supporters
Courtesy
Maxwell Frost
When Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) won his first election to the House in 2022, Jewish leaders in his Orlando, Fla., district who had been encouraged by his personal outreach were optimistic he would follow through on a range of commitments he had made vowing to uphold support for Israel.
Despite some initial concerns about his history of involvement in pro-Palestinian demonstrations as well as relationships with anti-Israel activists, Frost had circulated a lengthy Middle East position paper in consultation, in part, with a top pro-Israel group that largely assuaged lingering reservations among Jewish community leaders over the sincerity of his views.
In the paper as well as a candidate questionnaire solicited by Jewish Insider during his first primary, the young progressive organizer, describing himself as both “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestinian,” voiced opposition to conditioning aid to Israel — arguing that the security threats facing the Jewish state are “far too grave” to enact such measures. In backing a two-state solution, he clarified that any agreement should require “the basic recognition that Israel has a right to exist” as well as “an end to the antisemitic rhetoric and positions of Hamas.” And if elected, he pledged to visit Israel — which he called “one of the United States’ most important allies and strategic partners.”
Now, almost midway into his second term, Jewish and pro-Israel leaders are expressing some buyer’s remorse as Frost, 28, has embraced positions that put him at odds with his past commitments, fueling frustration among those who had believed he would be a more dependable ally on key issues concerning Israel.
Frost, for his part, insists that the humanitarian conditions in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza have deteriorated so drastically during his tenure that he had no choice but to change his views, though that has not quelled discontent among his former allies.
“He has broken a lot of promises,” said one Jewish leader, echoing others who expressed dismay with Frost’s turn in Congress.
The most recent move to draw scrutiny from Jewish and pro-Israel leaders is a letter Frost signed urging the Trump administration to recognize a Palestinian state over growing concerns with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The letter, signed by several prominent House progressives and led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) — who plans to introduce a similar resolution — said such a state “will need to fully recognize Israel” and guarantee “the disarmament of and relinquishing of power by Hamas.” But pro-Israel activists broadly see the renewed effort as a misguided concession to Hamas amid the ongoing war — as the terror group seeks to leverage international outrage over Israel’s military conduct.
Democratic Majority for Israel, whose political arm had provided input on Frost’s position paper during his primary, took issue with his decision to join the letter. While the group felt sufficiently comfortable with Frost’s Middle East policy views when he first ran for Congress, opting not to intervene on behalf of a top primary rival who had won an endorsement from its super PAC, it has become dissatisfied with his approach as he has continued to stake out more adversarial stances toward Israel during his time in the House.
“We strongly support a two-state solution that ensures Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state with recognized borders and upholds the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own,” Brian Romick, DMFI’s president, said in a statement to JI on Tuesday. “But unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at this time — as the terrorist group Hamas still governs parts of Gaza and continues to hold Israeli hostages — would not advance peace. It will instead prolong the war by incentivizing Hamas to reject any ceasefire deal, and reward the terrorism we saw on Oct. 7 while making future acts of terror more likely.”
In addition to the letter — which followed a similar resolution he co-sponsored in 2023 during his first term — Frost in May joined legislation to place unprecedented new conditions on aid to Israel by withholding offensive weapons over its alleged violations of international law.
Last year, he also voted against a widely approved bill to provide supplemental aid to Israel six months after Hamas’ attacks. In a statement explaining his thinking at the time, Frost wrote that he was “only able to justify aid for defense, not offense, and this legislation did not allow me to separate the two,” as the war “has claimed the lives of countless innocent Palestinian civilians and brought us no closer to the return of innocent Israeli hostages held by Hamas.”
“For me, the North Star here is having a two-state solution, and everything, all the decisions we make, have to point to that,” Frost said, arguing that he has remained consistent in upholding his core beliefs on the conflict even as his positions on specific policies have changed since he launched his initial campaign for Congress. “The thing I have in mind is the safety and security of everybody, of Israel, of Palestinians — of everybody.”
Meanwhile, Frost has yet to fulfill his campaign vow to travel to Israel, and has declined invitations to do so while in Congress, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In an interview on Wednesday, Frost acknowledged that his approach has changed since he entered the House, attributing his new positions to his revulsion at Israel’s behavior in Gaza — which he described as “completely unacceptable” and “abhorrent” in light of the civilian death toll. “In terms of specific policy points, things have changed,” Frost told JI. “Things have changed a lot — and unfortunately, not for the better.”
“For me, the North Star here is having a two-state solution, and everything, all the decisions we make, have to point to that,” he added, arguing that he has remained consistent in upholding his core beliefs on the conflict even as his positions on specific policies have changed since he launched his initial campaign for Congress. “The thing I have in mind is the safety and security of everybody, of Israel, of Palestinians — of everybody.”
Even as he condemned Hamas and said the terror group should have no role in rebuilding postwar Gaza, Frost said the conflict has evolved into what he regards as a “war on innocent people,” resulting in “massive loss of innocent life” that has fueled his decision to speak up against the Israeli government and its ongoing military campaign.
In the Middle East position paper he wrote in his first primary, Frost had rejected placing additional conditions on aid to Israel because, he wrote at the time, it would “undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself against the very serious threats it faces.” But he explained on Wednesday he had also felt such measures were “already written into the law” and “we didn’t really need to go further” in enforcing it at the time.
Now, however, “I do believe that the law is being violated,” he told JI, clarifying his recent support for legislation that seeks to withhold transfers of offensive weapons to Israel. “Because of that, we have to look at the way that we are both complicit but also encouraging the current behavior of the Netanyahu government,” he said.
Unlike a handful of his far-left House colleagues who have accused Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Frost hesitated to use the term himself, calling it a “difficult” word because of its historical connection to the Holocaust. Still, he said he would not seek to discourage others from such charges. “I’m not going to sit here and defend what is going on right now in any way, shape or form,” he said. “I understand why people use that word. But when we see what’s going on, it’s hard to find the words for it.”
“There’s a lot of things to hold, but the main thing is, yes, there are many things that have changed,” he reiterated. “But for me, what has not changed is the main goal, which is making sure that everyone’s safe and everyone’s secure.”
Frost is hardly alone among Democratic lawmakers who in recent months have become more critical of Israel’s behavior, with even some of the staunchest supporters of the Jewish state struggling to defend the Israeli government as the humanitarian situation in Gaza has continued to worsen nearly two years into the war.
“It’s a radical shift,” one community activist told JI, voicing frustration with Frost’s positions, even as he described their ongoing conversations as “very open and honest.”
His vacillating stances also illustrate some of the cross-pressures facing progressive Democrats who are not completely aligned with the party’s far left on its hostility toward Israel. Pro-Israel Democrats have recently voiced their concerns that anti-Israel policies could become a litmus test for the left in the midterms, particularly amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s moves to occupy the enclave.
But Jewish community leaders in Frost’s district, who spoke on condition of anonymity to address what they characterize as an increasingly delicate relationship with the congressman, explained they are particularly disappointed with his evolution on Middle East policy, given their initial hopes that he would be among a dwindling number of progressive allies committed to defending Israel in the House.
“It’s a radical shift,” one community activist told JI, voicing frustration with Frost’s positions, even as he described their ongoing conversations as “very open and honest.”
The activist noted that Frost, who had been a prominent gun control advocate before he was elected to Congress, has “a good heart and doesn’t want to see people dying.” But “as a result,” he said, Frost has “a lot of blind spots” in his assessment of the conflict. The activist argued that Frost’s critique of Israel’s conduct in Gaza has ignored Hamas’ role in perpetuating the crisis as it refuses to surrender.
“At the end of the day, he very much comes from the ‘oppressor-oppressed’ worldview and sees Israel as the oppressor,” the activist said.
Frost, for his part, said his statements have been misconstrued by a wide range of critics across the spectrum, including pro-Palestinian activists who allege that he made separate commitments during his first primary bid that he has failed to uphold in Congress.
He stressed that he does not “do tit-for-tat stuff” while addressing the war. “Whenever I post about the hostages, I’ll have people sending me messages. ‘What about this?’ No,” he said. “Whenever I post about Palestinians, I’ll have people saying, ‘What about this?’ No, I will post about it all. I will talk about it all. I will say how I feel about everything.”
“I’m very firm in that, just coming from a place of, since I was 15 years old, being involved in the fight to end gun violence, and have grown up through a movement of death,” he told JI. “I just don’t think that’s the way to live as a human, quite frankly.”
“We’ve been disappointed that he has not met the commitments he gave to us,” one DMFI source told JI. “At the same time, we’re grateful that he has come to realize he made a mistake in at least one case, but members of Congress should think through their votes fully and discuss them with knowledgeable people before casting them.”
Even as Jewish and pro-Israel leaders say their relationships with Frost have worsened in recent months, frustration over his approach to Israel has been mounting since his first term, when he called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza just days after Hamas’ terror attacks. As a freshman, he also voted against a resolution condemning rising antisemitic activity on college campuses, but he later said that vote had been a mistake after meeting with Jewish students in his district.
While Frost had shown contrition for his vote on the resolution in November 2023, DMFI still expressed dissatisfaction with his initial decision at the time — alleging he had not performed proper due diligence beforehand. “We’ve been disappointed that he has not met the commitments he gave to us,” one DMFI source told JI not long after the vote.
“At the same time, we’re grateful that he has come to realize he made a mistake in at least one case, but members of Congress should think through their votes fully and discuss them with knowledgeable people before casting them,” the source stated.
A spokesperson for Frost told JI at the time that the congressman “is trying to hold multiple truths all at once” as he receives input from constituents pushing opposing interests.
“I’m very comfortable with the decisions I’ve made,” Frost said of his approach to Israel. “As I walk the streets of my district, as I speak with the people in my district, this is where I find most people are at. They’re not really at the extremes that I’ve heard from.”
Speaking with JI on Wednesday, Frost said he has appreciated his ongoing discussions with pro-Israel leaders in his district — even if they have not been aligned on major policy questions in recent months. “Hearing their perspective is really important,” he confirmed. “What I always tell people is I might not always come to the conclusion that you agree with,” he said, “but I hope you’ll always feel I’ve engaged in good faith.”
He suggested that Jewish community activists who have been irked by his approach to the Middle East have not fully reckoned with his belief that Israel’s military actions have damaged its reputation in the United States. “It’s palpable across the country, and I think a lot of this has to do with the decisions that are being made by Netanyahu,” he argued.
“I’m very comfortable with the decisions I’ve made,” Frost said of his approach to Israel. “As I walk the streets of my district, as I speak with the people in my district, this is where I find most people are at. They’re not really at the extremes that I’ve heard from.”
When he assumed office in 2023, Frost had sought guidance from pro-Israel Democrats including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who enthusiastically backed his campaign, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), one person familiar with the matter told JI. But the congressman has since drifted away from the two lawmakers on Israel while staking out positions that have put him more in line with the far left.
More recently, Frost has built closer relationships with such leading Israel critics as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the source told JI, even if he has resisted identifying as an official member of the so-called Squad of progressive House Democrats.
Owing in part to his network in Congress, Jewish community leaders are doubtful Frost will change his views on Israel. “It may be the best that we can hope is that he doesn’t become an actual member of the Squad,” said one activist, while noting that Frost is “totally safe” in his deeply blue district as he seeks a third term next year.
Still, the activist said, “his refusal to actually go and see” Israel “first-hand is a problem,” particularly in light of his primary vow to visit the Jewish state as a congressman.
Frost, who acknowledged the commitment that he had made, said he hopes to see the region “at some point,” but added that it has “been difficult to figure out the timing.”
After the interview, Frost asked his spokesperson to clarify that he would “like to travel to the region at a point where he’d be able to visit both Israel and the Gaza Strip,” indicating a potential visit is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future.
‘We need everyone who sees the difficult pictures of Evyatar to understand that we don’t have another minute. We don’t have another day. We can lose him in the coming days,’ Matan Eshet tells JI
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades/AFP via Getty Images
This screengrab from a video released on August 1, 2025 by Hamas, shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David looking weak and malnourished.
Days after Hamas released a video showing hostage Evyatar David emaciated and being forced to dig his own grave in a tunnel under Gaza, David’s family called on the Trump administration to do anything it can to ensure that the hostages are released.
“Evyatar is fighting for his life with what little strength he has left,” Matan Eshet, David’s cousin, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “You can see it in his eyes. You don’t need a medical degree to understand that Evyatar only has a few days to live.”
David, 24, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from the Nova Festival on Oct. 7, 2023.
In a video released over the weekend, an extremely gaunt David was shown in a tunnel under Gaza digging, with his bones protruding. He wrote on a calendar documenting the small amounts of food — either lentils or beans — his captors have given him on some days, and on other days he wrote “no food.”
At one point in the video, a Hamas terrorist reaches out from behind the camera to hand him a can of food, and the terrorist’s arm is visibly much thicker than David’s.
“This can is for two days, just to keep me alive,” David said of the food.
“I don’t know what I’m going to eat,” David said. “I haven’t eaten in days … I’m getting thinner and weaker by the day … What I’m doing now is digging my own grave … This is the grave where I think I’m going to be buried. Time is running out.”
Prof. Ronit Endevelt, the former head of the Nutrition Division at the Israeli Health Ministry now on the Hostage Families Forum medical team, estimated that David’s weight dropped about 41% to 40-45 kg.
Hamas released a video of David in February of this year, with hostage Guy Gilboa Dalal in a car, visibly distressed while being forced to watch other hostages being released. David’s health has visibly deteriorated since the previous video; he appears much thinner and paler in the new one.
Eshet said his family is “feeling broken” after seeing the new footage.
“It’s not Evyatar. He doesn’t look like that or sound like that. That’s not how he moves. We see the distress in so many ways. He looks like a shadow of himself,” Eshet said. “He has to get medical care and food already.”
The video of David describing his starvation at the hands of Hamas came as some of the world’s largest media outlets published photos of children in Gaza who they reported were starving, but failed to mention that they suffered from genetic diseases. More broadly, much of the media coverage of Gaza in recent weeks has been about the humanitarian situation and difficulties distributing food to the residents.
“It’s maddening,” Eshet said. “Hamas are the ones taking the aid instead of the civilians. And then they claim that [Israel is] starving them, not Hamas who is preventing people from getting the food, while Hamas is choosing not to let Evyatar receive food.”
Eshet noted that the arm of the Hamas terrorist who handed Evyatar the can of food was “much bigger and more muscular compared to Evyatar.”
“On the news, you can see people walking in the food markets in Gaza. People do not look the way Evyatar looks,” Eshet added. “No one was close to looking the way Evyatar does.”
Eshet called on “Israel and the world to demand that Evyatar come home already.”
“We need everyone who sees the difficult pictures of Evyatar to understand that we don’t have another minute. We don’t have another day. We can lose him in the coming days,” he added.
“The U.S. government succeeded in getting a deal on Day minus-One, before [President Donald] Trump’s inauguration,” Eshet said. “America needs to do the same thing again and stand up and insist that the hostages are freed now, regardless of whatever else is happening.
“They did it once. They made a deal happen. They need to use that power again to make sure Evyatar comes home,” Eshet added.
Asked about the reports that Israel plans to expand its military operations in Gaza, including in areas where the hostages are believed to be held, Eshet said he hopes “these are tactical tools to bring about a change, stand up to Hamas and reach a [hostage] deal from a position of strength.”
Eshet and David are first cousins. Eshet recalled that they “grew up together.”
“Evyatar is a charming and loving person, a good listener with a contagious smile,” Eshet said. “He was a middle child, and was friends with his big brother and little sister. He always paid attention to whoever needed help in the house.”
Eshet said that David loved to play guitar and that his music could always be heard in his parents’ house. Before Oct. 7, David planned to travel the world and try to make a living playing music.
“He had a smile and shining eyes, and we’re all waiting for him,” Eshet said. “He was a boy who became a skeleton in the Hamas tunnels. He needs to come home and be a regular person and live the life that is waiting for him.”
There are 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Hamas rejected the latest attempt by the U.S. and Israel to reach a temporary ceasefire and hostage-release deal late last month.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad also released a video of hostage Rom Braslavski last week, who was also emaciated.
The Hostages Families Forum released a report by its medical team on Monday “warning that the hostages still held alive in Gaza are suffering from deliberate, prolonged, and systematic starvation … causing multisystem damage and posing an immediate risk of death.”
Prof. Hagai Levine, head of the medical team, said that “the outcome of this cruel experiment is foreseeable — body and mind will gradually deteriorate until they collapse. Any further delay in rescuing the hostages may cost human lives. We must not stand idly by while our brothers vanish. We must act now to bring them all home.”
A lack of a ‘day-after plan’ and an unwillingness to address threats before they grew left Sharon’s 2005 promises unfulfilled. What has Israel learned since then?
AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti
A bulldozer breaks through the main gate as troops force their way into the Jewish settlement of Netzer Hazani, in the Gush Katif bloc of settlements, in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday Aug. 18, 2005.
Twenty years ago this month, Israel dismantled 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, forcing 8,000 Israelis to evacuate and demolishing their homes, in what was known as the disengagement. That process was met with mass protests on the streets and the splintering of the Likud party, whose leader, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, initiated and oversaw the disengagement.
While Sharon did not promise peace as a result of the disengagement, the plan was presented as a move to make Israel more secure, while fewer soldiers would have to die protecting a small number of residents in the Gaza Strip. The prime minister and his supporters said that if even one rocket was shot from Gaza after the pull-out, Israel would respond militarily. They also promised that the disengagement would ensure that “this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, [would be] removed indefinitely from our agenda … all with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress,” as Sharon’s senior advisor, Dov “Dubi” Weisglass, put it at the time.
Two decades later, Israel is fighting its longest war in Gaza, after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres and attacks perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization that has controlled Gaza since 2006. In the interim years, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza shot hundreds and sometimes thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers each year, prompting five major Israeli military operations in Gaza.
As to Weisglass’ 2004 promise that international pressure to reach a two-state solution would be put in “formaldehyde,” Sharon’s political protege and the Israeli prime minister immediately following him, Ehud Olmert, offered the Palestinians a state in 2008. Last week, 11 countries announced their intention to recognize a Palestinian state.
Key figures from that period told Jewish Insider that the Israeli government’s failure to formulate a day-after plan for Gaza — a criticism that has been leveled at Jerusalem in the current war — is in part to blame for the unfulfilled promises of the disengagement.
Gilad Erdan, a former senior Israeli cabinet minister and ambassador to the U.S., was a freshman Likud lawmaker when the disengagement was announced, and became a leading figure in the party’s rebellion against Sharon, which then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who voted in favor of the disengagement plan in early key votes — joined at a later stage.
Erdan noted to JI that Sharon not only claimed the disengagement would improve Israel’s security, he said that “if Israel doesn’t take this step, there will be other diplomatic plans [that the world will] try to force on Israel, and this step will free us of pressure from the international community. It’s clear that it didn’t reduce pressure, it increased it.”
“What happened then, and is still the case now, is that Israel didn’t have an alternative plan on the table, whether for the coming few years or the short term,” Erdan said. “This is something to consider as a lesson of the disengagement.”
“I think a Palestinian state is now off of the agenda for many years … Something we can consider a lesson of the disengagement is that we should say no withdrawals, no unilateralism, no to a Palestinian state. I think those lessons were learned over the years at a great cost in blood,” said Gilad Erdan, who was a freshman Likud lawmaker when the disengagement was announced, and became a leading figure in the party’s rebellion against Sharon.
Israel now has “an opportunity to present a plan … that puts Israel’s security and our right to the land at the forefront, but we are not presenting any diplomatic plan for the world to discuss. Even if the international community doesn’t accept it — so what? What looks crazy today could look different in 20 years. It’s not like we’ll have peace with the Palestinians in five minutes,” the former ambassador stated.
Erdan said that the aftermath of the disengagement underscored for Israelis the danger of a potential Palestinian state.
“I think a Palestinian state is now off of the agenda for many years … Something we can consider a lesson of the disengagement is that we should say no withdrawals, no unilateralism, no to a Palestinian state. I think those lessons were learned over the years at a great cost in blood,” he said.
Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security advisor to the George W. Bush administration at the time of the disengagement, told JI that Sharon did have a larger overarching idea behind the move, but subsequent prime ministers did not follow through with it.
“Sharon said at the time that Israel needs to establish its borders, and I think he would have done something … with the West Bank. Whatever the future of Israel is, it doesn’t include Gaza, which has no use economically and no significance religiously,” was the logic, Abrams said.
“Establish a border, build a wall, and maybe something will change in 100 years, but for now, try to have a border for Israel,” Abrams said. “It was a larger plan and then Sharon had his stroke” in December 2005, followed by another in January 2006 that left him in a vegetative state until his death in 2014.
“Sharon refused for domestic reasons to work with the Palestinian Authority at all on Gaza, because it would make it look like a reward,” following the years-long wave of Palestinian terrorism called the Second Intifada, Abrams recalled.
“Sharon wasn’t going to have anything to do with [the PA]; he was just going to leave Gaza,” Abrams said. “It’s a question whether it would have been possible to avoid a Hamas takeover in June 2006, followed by the complete collapse of the PA [in Gaza]. It’s a question worth asking. It is a fact that there was zero coordination.”
Though Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died after Sharon announced the disengagement, the Israeli prime minister did not reconsider his plan in light of the election of new leader Mahmoud Abbas — who remains PA president 20 years later.
Abrams argued that international pressure was not a major contributing factor to the disengagement, noting that the plan was entirely Sharon’s and not something Bush sought for him to do.
Still, Abrams said that “international pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians is Israel’s predicament. That is simply a fact … I don’t think this is a problem that has a solution. I think it’s a condition.”
“Israelis have to decide when they’re going to say ‘drop dead,’ when they’re going to say politely ‘no, we can’t do that,’ when to take half measures and when they’re going to agree,” he added. “Those questions have not changed much. They get worse for a while sometimes, and then better and then worse again, depending on how successful Arab propaganda campaigns are and how unsuccessful Israel’s campaigns are. It also depends on how strong the support is from the U.S. in resisting the other pressure.”
Erdan similarly said that “Sharon sent Dubi Weisglass to convince [Bush], one of the most supportive presidents ever, to support the disengagement. Bush didn’t want to support it at first … there wasn’t such significant international pressure.”
Rather, Erdan, who was Sharon’s political advisor a decade before the disengagement, said the debate was more of a domestic Israeli one, after Sharon “changed 180 degrees from all of the ideas he had presented to us about security and ideology, Judea and Samaria,” the Biblical term for the West Bank.
The disengagement came after “Israel was under pressure from terrorism,” Erdan said.
“The disengagement was a terrible, historic mistake that inspired the Oct. 7 massacre,” Erdan argued. “It not only gave [Hamas] the opportunity to dig tunnels and arm itself, it gave them the motivation, the desire and the belief that they could do it. That the strong Israel, led by the decorated General Ariel Sharon, retreated unilaterally when facing terrorism strengthened the extremists in Palestinian society and led to the loss of deterrence we experienced two years ago.”
Erdan also argued that the disengagement did not reduce Israeli deaths, saying that the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians killed in attacks emanating from Gaza in 1967-2005, when Israel controlled the territory, was smaller than in the ensuing years 18 years before the latest war.
Abrams pointed out that Sharon and Olmert did not fulfill their promise of striking back if any attacks came from Gaza.
“The problem began very quickly,” Abrams recalled, “because Sharon in the first few months, and then after he had a stroke it was Olmert, never enforced their own statements about Gaza.”
Two Qassam rockets were shot from Gaza into Israel while the disengagement was still taking place, and another 33 during the remainder of that year. From 2005 to 2006, the number of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on Israel rose 42% to 1,777. Hamas also began building tunnels into Israel at that time.
Abrams recalled that when Sharon initiated the disengagement and presented it to Bush and then the public, Sharon argued that “if Israel got out of Gaza, there would be no excuse for any attack from Gaza on Israel, and if there were attacks, they would be met with the strongest, most forceful military reaction. It never happened.”
“Don’t let your enemies get into a position where they can do you great harm. That was learned, and that explains the attacks on Hezbollah and Iran. That is the right lesson. That is the lesson Israel did not seem to learn when it got out of Gaza,” said Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security advisor to the George W. Bush administration at the time of the disengagement.
Israel at the time, he said, “had an opportunity to respond very strongly to Hamas right away, and it would have had considerable American and international support … It was an opportunity that was missed … by Sharon, Olmert and later [since 2009, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. It was a continuing problem.”
Abrams said that after the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel learned at least one lesson it had failed to internalize after the disengagement: “Don’t let your enemies get into a position where they can do you great harm. That was learned, and that explains the attacks on Hezbollah and Iran. That is the right lesson. That is the lesson Israel did not seem to learn when it got out of Gaza.”
“Israel is a democracy and the whole Jewish people debate about everything nonstop,” Erdan said, but “the lessons of the disengagement are growing over the years. It didn’t happen overnight.”
“In the early years after the disengagement, we realized the Palestinians had the ability and desire to launch missiles and rockets, so we can’t live in the delusion that [Gaza would be] the Singapore of the Middle East,” he said. “Only on Oct. 7 did many more people in Israel believe that not only unilateral but any withdrawal is bad. Israelis totally lost trust in the Palestinians and realized that Jewish settlements have a great and significant security value … We cannot only rely on technology and smart cameras; physical presence is essential … I think a lot of us woke up from our delusions on Oct. 7 that withdrawals will lead the Palestinians to reconcile with us.”
Still, Erdan said, “there are people who continue to claim that the price of staying in Gaza would be even higher, so I can’t say all the lessons were learned. With time, more are learned.”
“Having settlers in Gaza [would be] insane. It was a tremendous strain on the IDF. Do we really want to add that strain? It seems insane to me,” said Abrams.
It appears likely from Israeli leaders’ statements and positions in ceasefire negotiations that, at the end of the war, Israel will retain some of Gaza as a buffer zone between Israelis and Palestinians.
Beyond that, many on the Israeli right have called for Israel to retake part or all of Gaza. Some called for annexation as a military tactic to pressure Hamas, which was discussed in recent Israeli Security Cabinet meetings, and others have been calling from the beginning of the war to reverse the disengagement and for Israelis to be allowed to settle in Gaza again.
Abrams said that “having settlers in Gaza [would be] insane. It was a tremendous strain on the IDF. Do we really want to add that strain? It seems insane to me.”
Despite the lack of follow-through to reap the possible security benefits of the disengagement, Abrams said “Sharon was right.”
“First, we need to win the war,” Erdan said. “We are in a different situation today. Israel, unfortunately, already uprooted the [Israeli] towns and we are in a war with consequences for our future. I don’t think bringing the issue of settlements into it now contributes to our effort to win the campaign … We don’t have to give the international community more tools to make the matter of total victory in the war more complex … Israel should look at its interests and its priorities.”
“I personally do not believe that maintaining 7,000 [Israeli] settlers in the middle of 2 million hostile Arabs in Gaza, and using a substantial part of the IDF to protect them, was a sensible plan for Israel,” he said.
Abrams also took issue with the idea of annexing parts of Gaza to pressure Hamas: “It strikes me that that’s not going to move the remaining Hamas leadership living in tunnels in Gaza to agree to let the hostages out. They don’t seem to care about anything. It is truly a death cult … It doesn’t seem to me — putting aside the legality or illegality — that it would work.”
Erdan said that, in principle, he believes “Jews have the right to live anywhere in the Land of Israel, and a solution to a conflict must include the moral principle that every population can choose where to live and the other side must accept it.”
However, he said that Israeli resettlement of Gaza is “not the most urgent or central thing.”
“First, we need to win the war,” Erdan said. “We are in a different situation today. Israel, unfortunately, already uprooted the [Israeli] towns and we are in a war with consequences for our future. I don’t think bringing the issue of settlements into it now contributes to our effort to win the campaign … We don’t have to give the international community more tools to make the matter of total victory in the war more complex … Israel should look at its interests and its priorities.”
Abrams called the idea of maintaining a buffer zone “very sensible to protect Israelis in Israel.”
Erdan also favored Israel retaining a buffer zone in Gaza, because “even if Hamas isn’t there anymore, we don’t know who will be.”
“I don’t think the end lines of the war need to be the Sharon disengagement lines,” he said. “We don’t need to leave the Philadelphi Corridor [along the border with Egypt] and we don’t need the people of Gaza to return to live so close [to Israelis], almost up to my parents’ house in Ashkelon.”
Johnson will not be addressing the Knesset on this visit to Israel, as had been planned for a postponed June trip
Western Wall Heritage Foundation
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) visits the Western Wall on August 3, 2025.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and a group of House Republicans are visiting Israel this week, in Johnson’s first visit to Israel since becoming speaker.
Johnson was set to visit Israel in June to address the Knesset, but postponed his visit after the war between Israel and Iran began. He will not be addressing the Knesset on this visit, a source familiar with his plans told Jewish Insider.
Johnson and those in his delegation — Reps. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Michael Cloud (R-TX) — have prayed at the Western Wall and met with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
“We’re so grateful to be in Israel, particularly on this day, recognizing the destruction of the two Temples … it is such a moving time for us to be here at the Wailing Wall. We’ve offered our prayers, we’ve put our notes into the wall,” Johnson said in brief video remarks from the Kotel, which he visited on Tisha B’Av. “We’re so moved by the hospitality of the people and the great love of Israel.”
“Our prayer is that America will always stand with the people of Israel and we pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem,” Johnson continued. “That’s what scripture tells us to do, it’s a matter of faith for us, and commitment that we have.”
Katz said in a statement that he thanked the lawmakers “for their unwavering support and moral clarity in standing with Israel against its enemies, and for their vital voices in the efforts to bring all the hostages home and defeat the murderous terrorist organization Hamas.”
Sa’ar said the group discussed global antisemitism, anti-Israel efforts by countries like Ireland and the attacks on the Druze in Syria, which Sa’ar said were “same kind of barbarism perpetrated by Hamas.”
The trip was organized by the U.S.-Israel Education Association.
In comments on CNN last week, Johnson raised concerns about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that “it is quite sad and quite alarming to see” and that he’d like to see the war in Gaza end soon.
Johnson’s office did not share any further details of his itinerary while he’s visiting the Jewish state.
The bill includes a total of $80 million in additional funding, as compared to 2025, for several cooperative programs with Israel
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
From left, Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., attend the Senate Appropriations Committee markup of the "Department of Defense Appropriations Act, and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act," in Dirksen building on Thursday, July 31, 2025.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s draft 2026 defense funding bill, approved by a broad bipartisan committee vote on Thursday, includes increases to several U.S.-Israel cooperative defense programs.
The bill includes a total of $80 million in additional funding, as compared to 2025, for several cooperative programs with Israel. It offers a total of $75 million for counter drone and missile programs, $47.5 million for cooperative programs in emerging defense technologies like artificial intelligence and $80 million for counter-tunneling programs, according to a summary released by the committee.
The bill includes $500 million for cooperative missile defense programs including Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow provided annually under the terms of the U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding.
It also offers additional security assistance funding for Bahrain and Jordan.
The committee debated and rejected two amendments by Democrats addressing the administration’s plans to retrofit a gifted Qatari jumbo jet to serve as Air Force One.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) amendment would have prohibited funding to modify or operate the Qatari jet, highlighting security and corruption concerns about the gift; the unclear costs and timeline associated with the retrofit; and comments by the secretary of the Air Force indicating that the administration plans to pull funding from a nuclear missile program to fund the overhaul.
Recent reports suggest that renovations could cost close to $1 billion.
“This jet was just delivered to the Department of Defense. We need to have a classified briefing to understand any proposed modifications and the risk of not applying them,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) responded, opposing the amendment. “The aircraft timeline is such that it’s not going to be modified with fiscal [year] [20]26 dollars in any event, making this a poison pill political amendment better suited for the [National Defense Authorization Act].”
President Donald Trump said that the plane could make its first flight in February.
Shaheen withdrew the amendment due to Republican comments that the amendment would kill the defense spending bill.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) offered a more limited amendment that would have blocked the administration from transferring the plane to a private entity before the end of its useful life, an attempt to head off reported plans to transfer the plane, after Trump’s term, to his presidential library, potentially for his personal use, after his presidency.
Republicans again argued that a full briefing is necessary on the administration’s plans before making any such moves, and that the amendment would kill the defense spending bill.
“To address this claim that’s been made a few times that this is a poison pill, if I understand correctly, that means that the Senate would refuse to fund the Pentagon unless it allows the president to accept a jet from a foreign prince. If that’s true, I’d like to understand why that is the line in the sand that would be drawn,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) responded. “The only other argument that I can conceive is that we think the President would veto the entire Pentagon budget unless he’s able to accept a jet from a foreign prince. I’d like to see him make that argument to the American public.”
The committee rejected the Murphy amendment by a party line vote.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she opposed the two amendments to ensure the bill as a whole could still pass, but said, “I don’t want my ‘no’ vote to be assumed that I’m OK with where we are with this transfer, that I’m OK not knowing the numbers behind it, that I am perhaps OK with the appearances — because I have concerns about them.”
The Senate bill would provide billions in additional funding for air and missile defense systems and to replenish U.S. stockpiles of air defense interceptors, which saw heavy use during the recent war in Gaza.
“Recent operations in the Middle East illustrate how quickly modern warfare can exhaust our arsenal of critical [interceptor] munitions,” McConnell, who chairs the Defense Subcommittee, said. “The administration’s request did not fully maximize production capacity for certain critical munitions.”
“We made lots of improvements in the [administration’s] request given the challenges with missile stockpiles that we’re seeing in Ukraine and the Middle East,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), the subcommittee ranking member, said. “I can’t explain why the administration didn’t propose to buy every single missile it could on existing production lines and expand others, but it didn’t.”
Generally, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle argued that the administration’s defense funding request was too low, and agreed on a bipartisan basis to propose providing $852.5 billion, 2.6% or nearly $22 billion above the administration’s request and the House’s draft of the bill, which the lower chamber approved last month.
Rep. Madeleine Dean described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a ‘death trap for starving Palestinians’
DIRK WAEM/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images
The UNRWA logo is seen on the vest of an employee during a visit to the Jabal El Hussein refugee camp of UNRWA, , part of a diplomatic mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories, in Amman, Jordan, Wednesday 15 May 2024.
Democratic members of the House Appropriations Committee criticized Republican-led efforts to dismantle the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the House’s draft 2026 budget bill for the State Department and other foreign programs.
The exchanges underscore the continued support among some prominent Democrats for restoring the U.S. relationship with the scandal-plagued UNRWA, more than a year after U.S. aid to the group was first halted following allegations that UNRWA staff participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel. The budget bill includes a continued ban on aid to the agency and calls on the State Department to put together a plan to replace it.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the committee, pushed for the restoration of support to UNRWA.
“The bill scapegoats our international partners, U.N. agencies and NGOs that deliver life saving aid to the most vulnerable people around the globe,” DeLauro said. “Organizations like UNRWA will be destroyed, leaving children and families in Gaza and other places around the world to starve and to die.”
DeLauro also pushed back on provisions in the bill that would withhold funding from the U.N. Secretariat until the U.N. and U.S. government take certain steps to pursue accountability for UNRWA members involved in the Oct. 7 attacks.
“I do not believe the language matches the intent,” she argued. “The provision is overly broad. It penalizes important U.N. entities until specific actions are taken by the United States government. This makes no sense.”
She argued that a provision demanding that the U.N. waive immunity for U.N. employees involved in the attack is unnecessary.
“U.N. immunity is already waived in cases where it would impede the course of justice or where someone has committed human rights violations or engaged in or supported acts of terrorism,” DeLauro said. “We all want justice for the horrific attacks on both Americans and our friends in Israel and indeed, the Justice Department has a task force already investigating this issue. We should work together to address this in a manner that achieves true justice.”
Reps. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) introduced an amendment that would halt future U.S. aid to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation until the State Department transmits to Congress all evidence provided by Israel and all U.S. assessments about the diversion of United Nations humanitarian aid by Hamas in Gaza.
It would also require the State Department to report to Congress on deaths at or near GHF distribution sites and plans to minimize such deaths, as well as on fraud and antiterrorism safeguards, before any further aid is provided to the GHF.
Dean accused the GHF of “violating core humanitarian principles” and described the system as a “death trap for starving Palestinians,” urging the U.S. to return to previous U.N. and NGO-run distribution systems.
She said she’s been shown no proof that Hamas had diverted aid provided under previous distribution systems, though she said that it “could be” doing so.
Dean claimed that “not a single refugee was gunned down as they attempted desperately to retrieve aid for their family with UNRWA or [the] World Food [Program] or other U.N. programs” and alleged that “more than 1,000 Gazans have been killed — shot and killed — by the IDF by trying to simply get food” at GHF sites. Israel has denied claims that it is targeting aid recipients at GHF sites, and some reports of such activity have been disproven.
Dean withdrew her amendment without requesting a vote.
Dean and Watson Coleman introduced another amendment to encourage the State Department to continue to support the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, which the committee rejected by a party line 35-26 vote.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) argued against the amendment, saying that no provisions of law would otherwise prohibit aid to the hospital network and that the decision should be left to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to assess where and how humanitarian funding would be best spent.
As part of an amendment package, committee Republicans called for an additional $2 million to be provided in the coming year for the implementation, enforcement and renewal of sanctions on Iran.
The amendment package also included language expressing concern about the Muslim Brotherhood, and requesting a report to Congress on how the State Department is countering “the threats posed” by the group, including visa restrictions.
The amendment package was adopted by a 34-27 vote.
Democrats more broadly criticized Republicans for the significant cuts the bill would enact on the State Department and U.S. foreign aid programs formerly run through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Against the backdrop of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations, Israeli actions in Gaza draw widespread condemnation
BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images
A Palestinian Hamas fighter carries a rifle as terrorists and people gather at the site of the handing over of Israeli hostages at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on February 22, 2025.
It’s a scenario that has played out many times over since Oct. 7, 2023: Against the backdrop of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations, Israeli actions in Gaza draw widespread condemnation. World leaders call for a ceasefire. Amid that growing criticism, Hamas, sensing increased pressure on Israel, responds by escalating its demands or backing away from negotiations entirely.
This week is no different, with Israel’s launch on Monday of a ground operation in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, where it had not previously operated, the same day that more than two dozen Western countries released a joint statement calling for “unconditional and permanent ceasefire.” Hamas negotiators in Doha, Qatar, have reportedly spent the last two weeks dragging out ceasefire talks, over issues ranging from the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released to the areas where the IDF is allowed to operate.
In yesterday’s statement, the countries’ demand of Hamas is only for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the remaining 50 hostages, with no mention of disarmament or the terror group’s removal from power — key Israeli demands since Hamas’ brutal attacks on the Jewish state almost two years ago.
Hamas has since October 2023 faced limited pressure to acquiesce to Israeli and American demands. The terror group’s backers in Doha, where senior Hamas officials have long lived in opulence and security, have similarly faced little international pressure — even as Qatar plays a key role in negotiations. Israel has not been a perfect actor, and at times has walked away from the negotiating table. But Jerusalem’s refusals have been outpaced by Hamas’ intransigence, the latter of which has frustrated White House officials in both the current and former administrations.
At his final press briefing as secretary of state in January, Tony Blinken warned that Hamas benefitted from international pressure on Israel, saying, “Hamas held back [from agreeing to deals] at various points because it saw or hoped that public international pressure was mounting on Israel, and it could just wait it out and that pressure would get to a point where Israel would have to accede to all of Hamas’ demands.”
And in a Washington Post op-ed shortly after leaving the White House, Brett McGurk acknowledged that “throughout the ceasefire negotiations, Hamas consistently held back on a commitment to release hostages and aimed to ensure that it remains in power after the war ends.”
What’s more, McGurk wrote in his op-ed, Israel faced demands in the weeks and months after the onset of the war “that the only way to stop the fighting was for Israel to accept all of Hamas’s terms. Calls to restrict weapons shipments to Israel, or to increase pressure on Israel (rather than on those who kept attacking it), or to back U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding ‘unconditional’ ceasefires with Hamas, discounted this regional equation and the intent of Israel’s adversaries.”
There is a popular adage that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For nearly two years, Israel, Hamas and the international community have fallen into an endless cycle of talks, official statements and Hamas backtracking. Far from getting a different result, the world has seen more of the same: the continued captivity of the hostages, deepening global ostracization of Israel, ongoing death and destruction in Gaza and a Hamas that feels emboldened to up its demands.
The amendment sought to cut $500 million in cooperative missile defense funding
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks at the U.S. Capitol on May 07, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The House of Representatives on Thursday rejected, in a 422-6 vote, a bid by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to block the $500 million in cooperative missile-defense funding the U.S. provides annually to Israel.
Greene’s amendment sought to strip the funding, provided annually under the terms of the U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, from the House’s 2026 Defense funding bill. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), had introduced a similar amendment.
Greene, Omar and Reps. Al Green (D-TX), Summer Lee (D-PA), Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) voted for the aid cutoff.
The House also defeated Greene-led amendments that would have cut military funding for Jordan by a 400-30 vote, for Ukraine by a 353-76 vote and for Taiwan by a 421-6 vote. Only Republicans voted for each of those amendments.
Legislators also rejected, by a 355-76 vote, an amendment by Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) to cut funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces. All of the votes in favor came from Republicans.
Steube has long opposed funding for the LAF, arguing that it is complicit in Hezbollah’s actions against Israel and infiltrated by Hezbollah members and sympathizers.
Greene argued on the House floor that the Israel funding is “money we don’t have” and that Israel is “very capable of defending themselves.”
Referring repeatedly to the Jewish state as “nuclear-armed Israel,” Greene suggested that Israel’s undeclared nuclear capabilities should deter any threats — even though that has not been the case in the past. Israel has long maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying its possession of a nuclear arsenal.
She also highlighted the U.S.’ extensive use of its own ballistic missile interceptors to defend Israel during the recent Iran-Israel war.
Greene noted Israel’s bombing this week of a church in Gaza, for which the Israeli government apologized, calling it a mistake, and said that “an entire population is being wiped out as they continue their aggressive war in Gaza.”
The funding in question supports programs including Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling that are jointly developed by Israel and the United States. The systems, designed to intercept threats like missiles and drones, do not have offensive applications.
Reps. Ken Calvert (R-CA) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee, both spoke on the House floor against Greene’s amendment, as did Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL).
Calvert said that Israel’s success in intercepting ongoing attacks has come partly as a result of the U.S. missile-defense funding provided in past years. He highlighted that the funding supports the U.S.’ defense industrial base, funding production of the systems in both the U.S. and Israel and joint technological development.
McCollum is a vocal longtime critic of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and the Israeli military operations in Gaza.
“To be clear, I have disagreements with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government,” McCollum said, describing the war in Gaza as a “tragedy.” “But the funding in this bill does not support offensive weapons for Israel. … This bill provides for defensive measures only.”
McCollum said that everyone in the region deserves safety and that “Israeli children deserve to go to bed at night knowing that missiles from Yemen, Iran or from the Houthis or anywhere else in the region will not rain down on them.”
Fine highlighted that there is a significant American population in Israel under threat from air attacks. He said the co-development of missile-defense programs with Israel helps support America’s own air defense, including President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome proposal for a national air-defense infrastructure.
Addressing Greene’s comments, he noted that America has nuclear weapons, but that hasn’t deterred some adversaries from trying to attack it.
“When we oppose this amendment, when we vote it down, we are not only standing with Israel, we are standing with the best interests of the United States,” Fine said.
Israel used Syrian airspace for its strikes on Iran last month, and the two countries are discussing a non-aggression pact that would lead to a return to pre-2025 borders
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The President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, delivers a speech at the People's Palace during the swearing-in ceremony of the new government, in Damascus, Syria, on March 29, 2025.
The goodwill gestures toward Israel from Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa began modestly.
In a surprise move that came only months after he and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group toppled the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president — “a jihadi in a suit,” as Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called him over past ties to Al-Qaida — gave Israel Syria’s archive of documents relating to captured Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was captured and executed in Syria in 1965, and the remains of soldier Zvi Feldman, who was killed in battle in 1982.
Then, al-Sharaa pressured the terrorist groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to disarm, leading some of the groups’ leaders to flee the country.
And when Israel sent its bombers streaking toward Iran’s nuclear sites last month, Syria did not intervene with or publicly oppose Israel’s use of its airspace.
Taken together, these steps and others are leading to a warming of relations between Israel and its northern neighbor, a reality that seemed almost unthinkable just a few months ago. While officials and analysts are stopping short of calling the rapprochement peace talks, there is a new optimism — albeit cautious — following the strikes.
While at the White House on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke positively about an “opportunity for stability, security and eventually peace” with Syria. He said that prospect stems from “the fact that [President Trump] has opened up a channel … and the change of security situation brought about by the collapse of the Assad regime.”
Last week, Sa’ar said in a press conference that Israel “would like to have all our neighbors … in the camp of normalization and peace in the region. That includes Syria, as much as it includes Saudi Arabia … It is too early to prejudge what will happen in the future. We have certain security needs and interests, which we must take into account.”
A senior official in Netanyahu’s delegation to Washington emphasized this week that talk of peace between Israel and Syria is premature, saying that “agreements with Lebanon and Syria are not a matter of the short term, but they’re possible.”
“There are a lot of challenges,” the official said. “It would be irresponsible to talk about Syria entering the Abraham Accords or normalization at this time. We aren’t there.”
Still, the official said that opportunities opened up after the successful Israeli and American strikes on Iran, among them an agreement with Syria.
One way the 12-day Israeli operation against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs may have contributed to Israel’s cautious optimism about reaching understandings with Syria is that its airspace played an important role in Israel’s strikes and defense during that time — and Damascus did not get in the way.
Carmit Valensi, head of the Syria program at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told Jewish Insider that “there was intensive Israeli activity in Syria’s airspace on the way to attack Iran, and Israel shot down [Iranian] drones and missiles over Syrian territory.”
While al-Sharaa’s view of Iran as a “strategic threat to the entire region” is not unique among leaders in the Middle East, Valensi pointed out, “unlike other Arab countries that condemned Israel [for the strikes on Iran], al-Sharaa was totally quiet.”
Israel and Syria “have a shared goal to weaken Iran and its influence,” Valensi said. “I think that gave another push for the interests to bring relations closer.”
Ronni Shaked, a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University, views Syria’s willingness to allow Israel use of its airspace to strike Iran as the most significant of a number of “goodwill gestures” from Damascus to Jerusalem that may be contributing to Israel’s shifting approach to Syria.
Letting Israel use Syrian airspace during its war with Iran “gave Israel unusual freedom of action to easily reach the Iraqi border and then Iran, which took a great weight off of Israel,” Shaked said.
“He [Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa] is showing signs that he knows he has to change to get help from the West and so the world will recognize him as the legitimate leader,” said IDF Maj.-Gen. (res.) Ya’acov Amidror, a former Israeli national security advisor. “It’s also clear that Arab leaders are not willing to live next to a Taliban state.”
Other gestures in the months since al-Sharaa’s rise included giving Israel Syria’s archive of documents relating to Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was captured and executed in Syria in 1965, and the remains of soldier Zvi Feldman, who was killed in battle in 1982.
In addition, Shaked noted that al-Sharaa pressured the terror groups Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to disarm, leading some of the groups’ leaders to flee the country.
IDF Maj.-Gen. (res.) Ya’acov Amidror, a former Israeli national security advisor, told JI that the main reason for the shift was that “time passed, that’s all.”
“In the beginning, he was a mystery. No one knew who [al-Sharaa] was, only that he came from Al-Qaida, and we only saw Al-Qaida-type people around him,” Amidror said.
Since assuming leadership of Syria in December, however, Israel has seen that al-Sharaa “is trying to build something else in Syria,” Amidror said. “He is showing signs that he knows he has to change to get help from the West and so the world will recognize him as the legitimate leader. It’s also clear that Arab leaders are not willing to live next to a Taliban state.”
“Taking all of that together, Israel is willing to talk,” he added.
Trump’s May meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia also motivated Jerusalem and Damascus to enter talks.
Shaked said that Syria “jumped on [the opportunity] … and said, ‘If Trump is willing to recognize us, then we can get rid of the sanctions and receive grants’” to help rebuild the country.
The meeting between Trump and al-Shaara “was the breakthrough that set the path we are on,” he added.
Valensi concurred, saying that “the direct motivation for Israel to change its approach is the Americans’ embrace of al-Sharaa.”
After Assad’s fall in December, Israel struck Syria’s air defenses, missile stockpiles and other military capabilities, and moved into the buffer zone between the countries. Valensi said that the “hawkish approach to al-Sharaa came from … the trauma of Oct. 7 [2023 terror attacks]. Israel is much more determined to stop threats that may develop on its border. And paradoxically, Israel had a feeling of increased self-confidence, strength and power after its significant military achievements against the axis of resistance and Hezbollah, including the beeper operation and killing [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah.”
Even before the May meeting in Riyadh, Valensi said, Israel had begun to soften its approach, with indirect talks between the countries, fewer military strikes and talks about deconfliction with Turkey, mediated by Azerbaijan.
“I think Israel started to understand that there were risks to its approach, and was starting to create a hostile dynamic to Israel” within Syria, Valensi said.
Amidror stopped short of describing the current situation as a shift in Israel’s approach: “There isn’t a change yet. We aren’t giving anything up, but we are in talks … We’re not withdrawing [from the Syrian Golan] so fast.”
That could change in the future, however, Amidror added, saying that if al-Sharaa “really distances himself from where he came from and goes to a less extreme and more normal place, there is no reason for Israel to ignore it.”
Syrian media describes the talks as a “non-aggression pact,” Valensi said. Damascus has said it is looking to return to the 1974 ceasefire agreement that went into effect after the Yom Kippur War, which would entail Israel withdrawing from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights to where it was before the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad last year, and for there to be a buffer zone with U.N. forces between the countries.
Valensi was skeptical that Israel would be willing to withdraw from the peak of Mount Hermon, a point in Syria which the IDF deployed troops to shortly after the fall of Assad, after so many senior Israeli security figures have called it a strategic achievement.
“Peace with Syria removes the entire threat from the eastern front, which is Israel’s longest front and a strategic one. We have peace with Jordan, and if we had peace with Syria, it would be the greatest gift to Israel,” said Ronni Shaked, a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Hebrew University.
“Israel may want a more gradual formula, a withdrawal in stages. I don’t know if al-Sharaa will accept that, and [withdrawal] is his basic condition,” she said.
Shaked argued that “Israel has no need for the Syrian Golan. I don’t know what we’re doing there. It’s nonsense, it’s a symbol. If we want peace, we need to stop conquering territory.”
“Peace with Syria removes the entire threat from the eastern front, which is Israel’s longest front and a strategic one. We have peace with Jordan, and if we had peace with Syria, it would be the greatest gift to Israel,” he said.
While talks are not focused on a comprehensive peace treaty yet, Shaked said anything is possible: “It was a great surprise when [former Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat came to Israel. We pinched ourselves and asked when we’re dreaming. New realities are created by brave leaders. If Netanyahu will be brave enough, he can give a little attention to this issue and make advances towards peace.”
Valensi, however, argued that “the conversation about expanding the Abraham Accords or normalization is not relevant now.” She noted that al-Sharaa has said that public opinion in Syria would not support normalization with Israel, and it would be too drastic of a shift. “Al-Sharaa is a new leader with very limited legitimacy. It’s a fragile situation … It’s unclear that al-Sharaa would want to take on that political risk,” she said.
Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader and director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation who met with al-Sharaa last month, told the “Misgav Mideast Horizons” podcast last week that he “absolutely believe[s] that there will be peace between Syria and Israel. No question. It’s just a matter of time.”
As to an unconfirmed report that Netanyahu and al-Sharaa will meet in September before the U.N. General Assembly, Valensi said that “so many things can change in two months … Reality is so dynamic so I would not go that far. But if things continue on this trajectory, then it is possible.”
Still, al-Sharaa would have to do a lot of work on Syrian public opinion before being photographed with Netanyahu, she added.
Johnnie Moore, an evangelical leader and director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation who met with al-Sharaa last month, told the “Misgav Mideast Horizons” podcast last week that he “absolutely believe[s] that there will be peace between Syria and Israel. No question. It’s just a matter of time.” (The writer is a co-host of the podcast.)
Al-Sharaa, Moore said, is part of a new generation of Middle Eastern leaders who are “future-oriented” and focused on solving problems, in contrast with “older leaders who think only about the past.”
To get there, however, Moore said “there are practical things that have to be done, and there are things that will make the Syrians uncomfortable and things that will make Israel uncomfortable. And yet, I think it will be done.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to be done as quickly as everybody wants it, but I am certain it’s not going to take as long as people think it might,” he added.
After the state’s largest teachers’ union opposed the bill, Democratic leadership said they will be working to amend the legislation
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A view of the California state capitol building.
California’s state Senate has delayed consideration of a bipartisan bill meant to strengthen statewide protections against antisemitism, four key senators announced on Tuesday, days after the state’s largest teachers’ union announced its opposition to the legislation.
The bumpy road for the bill, which is focused on countering antisemitism in K-12 education, stands in contrast to its earlier passage in the state Assembly. In May, the body voted unanimously to pass the legislation.
It was slated to be debated by the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday in a hearing that has now been postponed indefinitely.
“Antisemitism must never be normalized, and we must put a stop to it in our schools,” wrote Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire; Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, the education committee chair; and Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, co-chairs of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. All are Democrats. “We are committed to doing so and will be working overtime with a broad coalition over the summer to send an antisemitism bill to the governor by the end of this year’s legislative session in September.”
Wiener told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that the delay is “good news for the bill.”
“We just need more time, and now we have it,” said Wiener, who represents San Francisco. “I’m optimistic we’ll pass a strong antisemitism bill this year to protect Jewish students in our schools.”
The Senate has until Sept. 12 to pass the bill and send it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. It is not expected to be considered again until mid-August, after a monthlong summer recess.
A spokesperson for the California Teachers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Leading Jewish communal groups in California sharply criticized the CTA on Monday and pledged to lobby hard for the bill’s passage.
David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California — the umbrella group leading Jewish advocacy efforts for the bill — said the fact that the leader of the Senate and the chair of the education committee signed onto the statement signals that Democratic leadership is taking the bill seriously, though he acknowledged that passage is not guaranteed.
“We lose a little bit of the tangible reassurance, but we’ve gained some significant commitments from Senate leadership, which might be even more important,” Bocarsly told JI.
Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat and the bill’s co-sponsor, said the delay will also allow the Legislature to consider concerns from some in the Jewish community that the measure does not go far enough in actually addressing “the kinds of harm, ostracism and incidents that are actually occurring in the schools.”
Navigating the competing concerns of the teachers’ unions and the Jewish community has already been a balancing act for the bill’s authors. When asked if he thinks the bill can pass without the support of the CTA, Zbur did not offer a firm answer.
“I think we are committed to doing what we need to do to get the bill passed,” he told JI. “It can’t wait another year and I think we’ve got the entire Jewish caucus — this is our highest priority, and we’re determined to get this bill passed, and that means doing everything we can to help everyone understand that this is a problem and that there are things that we need to do to try to rectify it.”
The texts from Claire Shipman, published in a letter by the House Education Committee, call a Jewish board member a ‘mole’ and ‘extremely unhelpful’
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Acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman testifies before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce at Rayburn House Office Building on April 17, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce published in a letter on Tuesday revealed that Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy and called for an “Arab on our board,” amid antisemitic unrest that roiled the university’s campus last year.
“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, wrote in a message to the board’s vice chair on Jan. 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.”
Shipman said in a follow-up message days later that Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish board member who frequently condemned campus antisemitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful” and said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”
In another communication on April 22, 2024, according to the texts obtained by the committee, Wanda Greene, vice chair of the board of trustees, asked Shipman — referring to Shendelman — “do you believe that she is a mole? A fox in the henhouse?” Shipman agreed, stating, “I do.” Greene added, “I am tired of her.” Shipman agreed, “so, so tired.”
The messages were referenced in the letter, first obtained by Free Beacon, sent to Columbia on Tuesday by the committee’s chairman, Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the school is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allowing harassment of Jewish students.
The lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Shipman, “These exchanges raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.”
Columbia responded to the letter, in a statement to Free Beacon, claiming that the text messages were taken out of context.
“These communications were provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024 and reflect communications from more than a year ago,” the university said. “They are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the University when leaders across Columbia were intensely focused on addressing significant challenges.”
Shipman, a former ABC News reporter, stepped into the role in March after interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation. At the time, Stefanik called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” On campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.
Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing regarding antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her post in August, and board co-chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee at the time that she knew Columbia had “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.”
The White House denied Trump’s comments signaled any policy change or the lifting of U.S. sanctions
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Oil tanker SC Hong Kong is seen off the port of Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, on July 2, 2012.
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would allow China to continue to purchase oil from Iran, though a senior White House official denied there had been any change in policy or that sanctions would be lifted.
Trump’s comments appeared to many observers to be a reversal of his own administration’s actions just months ago and in contravention of congressionally approved sanctions designed to cut off the Iran-China oil trade, one of Iran’s most critical sources of funding.
Trump’s comments drove concern among supporters of the sanctions and Iran analysts, who believe that loosening sanctions on Iran now will help it gather funding to rebuild its nuclear program.
“China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday morning, following the implementation of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. “Hopefully they will be purchasing plenty from the U.S., also. It was my Great Honor to make this happen!”
Congress last year passed two separate bills with broad bipartisan support, the SHIP (Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum) Act and the Iran China Energy Sanctions Act, which were specifically designed to choke off the oil trade between Iran and China. A third bill, the Enhanced Iran Sanctions Act, to place additional sanctions on the trade, has been advancing in the House with strong bipartisan support.
Trump’s announcement appears to mark a striking turnaround from his commitment to “maximum pressure” on Iran. Just months ago, the administration imposed sanctions on Chinese “teapot” refineries for importing Iranian oil for the first time, with the goal of pressuring Iran.
“The President is committed to drive Iran’s illicit oil exports, including to China, to zero,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in April. “All sanctions will be fully enforced under the Trump Administration’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran.”
A senior White House official told JI on Tuesday that “The President was simply calling attention to the fact that, because of his decisive actions to obliterate Iran’s nuclear facilities and broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz will not be impacted, which would have been devastating for China.”
The official continued, “The President continues to call on China and all countries to import our state-of-the-art oil rather than import Iranian oil in violation of U.S. sanctions.”
“China is the main consumer of Iranian oil. Enabling China to continue purchasing Iranian oil violates existing sanctions and will allow Iran to rebuild its capabilities, including its nuclear program,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), the lead Democratic sponsor of the Iran China Energy Sanctions Act, told Jewish Insider.
“With the regime now significantly weakened, we must continue applying maximum pressure and cut off its sources of funding. Doing so will help protect America, our military and diplomatic assets, and our allies around the world.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), the lead sponsor of both bills, did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s announcement is also driving concern from Iran analysts.
“China purchasing oil from Iran allows it to rearm, refinance and rebuild making future conflict with Israel more likely. It also gives Tehran resources to rebuild its nuclear program,” Jason Brodsky, the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, warned. “Also if your goal is zero enrichment in Iran, allowing China to flood Iran with resources makes that goal harder to achieve.”
Brodsky added: “The calculus behind getting China to curtail its purchases of Iranian oil is to achieve zero enrichment in Iran, which has been the president’s longstanding and rightful position.”
“If ever there was a time for more maximum pressure, it would be in a post-strike scenario to contain or roll back the Islamic Republic and prevent China and Russia from helping it ‘build back better,’” Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said.
Ben Taleblu also noted the sanctions “[undermine] the spirit and letter” of the administration’s executive order and national security memorandum on oil sanctions, while FDD’s CEO Mark Dubowitz highlighted that the trade “violate[s] U.S. sanctions — passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis.”
AIPAC, which urged lawmakers to support the SHIP Act, said in a statement, “We must continue to apply maximum pressure on Iran to ensure that it cannot rebuild its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.”
This story was updated at 5:50 p.m. on Tuesday to include comments from a White House spokesperson.
The Jewish Republican had previously expressed concerns about his personal safety in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel
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Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) leaves for a break during a House Republican Steering Committee meeting at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), one of four Jewish Republicans in the House, said on Thursday that his car was run off the road by a pro-Palestinian activist who threatened his and his family’s lives, earlier in the day.
“If you have an issue with a legislator, your city councilman, your mayor, anyone like that, the appropriate thing to do is to reach out to them for a phone call to set up a meeting at one of our district offices,” Miller said in an angry video posted on Thursday afternoon on X. “What is not OK is to assault anyone, whether you’re a member of Congress or anybody else within our district while you are driving to work.”
Miller said in the video that on his way to work in his district on Thursday morning, an “unhinged, deranged man” leaned on his car horn and ran Miller off the road “when he couldn’t get my attention, to show me a Palestinian flag, not to mention ‘death to Israel, death to me’ — that he wanted to kill me — and my family.”
He explained in the X post that the man threw a Palestinian flag out of his car before driving off and threatened his life and his family’s lives. Miller did not specify what the individual said.
Miller said that he had reported the incident to local and U.S. Capitol Police, and that the individual had been identified and would face consequences. Local and Capitol Police did not respond to requests for comment and no announcements of any arrests have been made so far.
“We will not hide, and I will continue to fight against antisemitism, Islamophobia and all other forms of hate,” Miller said. “You have an issue? Take it to our office. You want to run me off the road? That’s a different story.”
The incident comes just days after a man shot two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses at their homes, killing Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, impersonating a law enforcement officer; the man carried with him what authorities have characterized as a target list containing the names of lawmakers, including numerous House Democrats, from Minnesota and other nearby states.
It also comes amid a string of violent antisemitic attacks by anti-Israel extremists that have targeted Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington and a hostage awareness event in Boulder, Colo.
Multiple Jewish House members, including Miller, have expressed concerns for their personal safety since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, and the Minnesota shootings have sparked broader concerns about lawmaker safety this week.
House leaders condemned the incident.
“What happened to Max this morning is yet another outrageous example of unhinged rhetoric inspiring unstable people to threaten and attack elected officials who are serving their communities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said. “We must turn down the temperature in this country.”
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on Congressman Max Miller and his family and are thankful they are safe,” Democratic leaders Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Katherine Clark (D-MA) and Pete Aguilar (D-CA) in a joint statement. “The rise in political violence in this country is unacceptable. This is a moment of crisis that requires Congress to act decisively in order to ensure the safety of every single Member who serves in the People’s House.”
Proponents on both sides of the aisle say that repealing the Caesar Act sanctions will remove obstacles to reconstruction and stabilization efforts in post-Assad Syria
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
The U.S. Capitol Building is seen at sunset on May 31, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Bipartisan groups of House and Senate members have introduced legislation to repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, sanctions legislation passed in 2019 targeting the former Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad, a step that proponents say will help remove obstacles to reconstruction and stabilization efforts in post-Assad Syria.
The administration recently announced that it would be lifting all sanctions on Syria, but the Caesar Act sanctions can only be temporarily waived, for periods of 180 days, barring a full repeal by Congress. Administration officials have indicated that they’d support such a step, and sanctions relief, in principle, has broad support on both sides of the aisle.
The sanctions, named for a pseudonymous individual who documented the Assad regime’s torture of civilians, also targeted Syrian critical industries, individuals and businesses that supported or did business with the Syrian government and Iranian and Russian entities that supported the Syrian government.
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced legislation on Wednesday to repeal the sanctions.
Reps. Joe Wilson (R-SC), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Marlin Stutzman (R-IN), Lou Correa (D-CA), Jack Bergman (R-MI), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Mike Levin (D-CA) introduced a similar bill in the House last week.
“We can keep the new Syrian authorities accountable without decimating the economy,” Shaheen said in a statement. “Sustained diplomatic engagement can yield tremendous results.”
Paul argued against the Caesar Act sanctions in principle, saying they had been too broadly targeted.
“While the Caesar Act was intended to isolate the Assad regime, it has ended up punishing everyday Syrians — fueling poverty, crippling recovery, and blocking progress toward peace,” Paul said. “This repeal is about restoring a more targeted, principled approach that holds bad actors accountable without inflicting unnecessary suffering on the very people we claim to support.”
The timeline for the repeal effort is somewhat unclear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified in May that the administration’s ultimate goal would be to repeal the act, conditioned on the new Syrian government “mak[ing] enough progress” on U.S. priority issues.
But U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as U.S. envoy to Syria, indicated greater urgency, calling for Congress to repeal the sanctions within the first 180-day waiver period, which is renewable if the sanctions are not repealed before then.
“I promise you the one person who has less patience with these sanctions than all of you is President Trump,” Barrack said during a visit to Syria to meet with President Ahmad al-Sharaa last month.
The House lawmakers leading the repeal legislation represent a broad spectrum of the House, ranging from a former chair of the House Progressive Caucus to a former House Freedom Caucus member, and including Israel hawks on both sides of the aisle.
“The Assad regime sanctioned by the Caesar Act no longer exists, and it is time to repeal the law to provide long-term certainty to those who would like to invest in the reconstruction and rebuilding of Syria,” Wilson said in a statement.
Panetta said that repealing the sanctions would help the U.S. “position itself as a partner for continued progress” as adversaries aim to gain a foothold in Syria.
“The repeal of these broad sanctions will give foreign partners the certainty they need to invest in the Syrian economy and give their new government a chance to succeed,” Jayapal said.
Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said he’d presented a ‘wide range of options’ for strikes on Iran’s nuclear program if talks fail to achieve dismantlement
Department of Defense/EJ Hersom via AP
U.S. Army Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee, March 21, 2024, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, said on Tuesday that he had provided “a wide range of options” to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump for carrying out U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program if negotiations with Tehran fail to achieve the dismantlement of its nuclear program.
Kurilla affirmed, under questioning from the House Armed Services Committee, that the military is prepared for a strong show of force against Iran if it refuses to give up its nuclear program. He said that Iran is continuing to increase its stockpiles of uranium enriched to 60% purity, for which he said there are no legitimate civilian uses.
Kurilla added that Iran is in a “weaker strategic position” than it was pre-Oct. 7, but still maintains “a lot of operational capabilities, in terms of their long-range weapons.”
He also emphasized that China, in purchasing the majority of Iran’s exported oil, is “effectively supporting and financing Iran’s malign behavior.” He said that the administration’s moves to sanction “teapot refineries” in China were a major step.
Kurilla said that a stand-alone Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program would increase the risk of attacks on U.S. forces in the region, but added that “every day, we’re making assessments of our posture and our risk to force, and we made adjustments based on those. We’re fielding new systems and new equipment and making adjustments every single day.”
Pressed by Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) about Michael DiMino, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, who had previously downplayed U.S. interests in the region and opposed action against Iran and its proxies, Katherine Thompson, the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, largely demurred, saying that she was not involved in DiMino’s hiring and could not speak to his positions.
She said that her superior, Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy who himself made comments opposing strikes on Iran, which he walked back during his confirmation process, is in line with the administration’s policy.
“We support the president’s objective to not only, first and foremost, defend the State of Israel but second, of course, deny Iran the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon. That is something that we are 100% committed to,” Thompson said. “I will also note that we support the president’s objectives and stand ready to provide military options should his strategy of pursuing peace with Iran through a negotiated solution [fail].”
Ryan said that he was concerned that “dissonance” and “lack of clarity” in the administration’s public statements on its willingness to allow Iran to enrich uranium as part of an agreement was signaling “division and weakness to our adversaries.”
Asked about the U.S. ceasefire with the Houthis, Kurilla and Thompson said that the U.S. bombing campaign had achieved the goal Trump had set out of restoring freedom of navigation for U.S. ships through the Red Sea. Kurilla pointed to a recent transit of U.S. and allied naval vessels through the Red Sea as evidence.
While the ceasefire made no provisions to halt Houthi attacks on Israel, which have continued, Kurilla insisted that the U.S. is continuing to defend Israel through the operation of an American THAAD missile defense system in Israel and other efforts to intercept Houthi missiles and drones fired at the Jewish state.
He acknowledged that normal commercial traffic through the region has not yet resumed, but said that it would be a “lagging indicator” that would increase over time as insurance rates for commercial ships transiting the region drop.
Thompson said that the U.S. is not fully withdrawing from the Houthi issue, noting that the group is still designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S., and said the administration continues to pursue a “whole of government approach” to the Iran-backed group.
She said the U.S. is working to have Gulf partners take a greater role in countering the Houthis and “develop a regional solution that empowers our Gulf partners … to tackle the long-term elements of the problem set.”
Kurilla said that permanently ending the Houthi threat will require stopping covert shipments of weapons and weapon components from Iran to Yemen.
“They would die on the vine without Iranian support,” Kurilla said, adding that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel remain on the ground in Yemen assisting with assembling and operating those weapons.
Pressed at one point by Rep. Derek Van Orden (R-WI) on why the U.S. is not sinking ships bringing weapons to the Houthis, Kurilla responded that the key challenge has been identifying the ships and the weapons among the many ships transiting the vast area of the Red Sea. But he said that when such ships are identified, the U.S. can and has intercepted and captured them.
Thompson said that European allies have taken positive steps toward collaborating on this mission and Kurilla said that the United Nations’ inspection mechanism for Yemen had also recently taken steps to increase inspections of containers, though he said that it should require the full unloading of all containers to verify their contents.
He also noted that the Houthis have been spreading across the region their knowledge and expertise gained from upgrading Iranian drones to attack Israel. He said the group and its personnel have a presence in Iraq and are sharing technical expertise with Iranian personnel as well as members of Iranian proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanese Hezbollah.
He said that the Houthis also maintain cells in Syria and Lebanon and have conducted diplomatic outreach to Russia and China.
But, Kurilla continued, Iran’s vision of a “Shia crescent” through the Middle East has collapsed with the fall of the Syrian government — ”probably the single biggest event that has happened in the Middle East” — and the degrading of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies.
He praised Israel’s success against Iran’s proxies, at one point describing its “disintegration” of Hezbollah as “brilliant” and saying that it should be studied by every military in the world.
He said that Iran is attempting to make inroads into Iraq, but that the Iraqi government has largely rejected them.
“I would offer there has rarely been a time with greater opportunity to protect [our] national interests [in the Middle East], but only if we have the courage to step through that window,” said Kurilla, who will soon be retiring after 37 years in military service.
According to public reporting, Kurilla has largely been seen as a hawkish voice in the Trump and Biden administrations and a close ally of Israel.
Kurilla said the U.S. is “transitioning from security guarantor to security integrator” in the Middle East, which requires the U.S. to maintain a “sufficient and a sustainable posture” in the region, as well as to improve foreign military sales to partners in the region.
Asked at multiple points about Qatar’s reliability as a U.S. ally, Kurilla defended Doha as a reliable and eager partner. He said that the U.S. is working to bring Qatar into the military supply chain to repair and manufacture shared weapons systems, noting that it had been enlisted to repair a component of a Patriot missile defense system the previous week.
“We have a phenomenal relationship with them, military-to-military,” Kurilla said. “They have been incredibly supportive of everything we do. Generally, the answer is, ‘Yes, what is the question,’ when I talk to them.”
Kurilla said that U.S. partners are also critical to anti-terrorist missions in places such as Syria and Iraq, and allow the U.S. to keep its operating force in the Middle East relatively small, even as those troops in the Middle East have repeatedly been on the front lines in the past year.
In Syria, he said that the U.S. is working with Kurdish partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, to integrate them into the new Syrian government, and said that Turkey is playing a positive role in those efforts.
But he also warned that the current Syrian government is being run by a small group of individuals and that he is deeply concerned about its stability, saying President Ahmed al-Sharaa may also bring foreign terrorist fighters, who helped bring his government to power, into the fold.
He said that U.S. troops remain in-country for counterterrorism missions, including one carried out against ISIS forces the morning of the hearing. But he said the U.S. is currently undertaking a process to review and consolidate its forces inside Syria into a smaller number of bases.
Kurilla further said that a key obstacle for U.S. relationships and goals in the region has been delays in U.S. foreign military sales to allies, frustrating those partners and imperiling efforts to integrate U.S. and allied systems across the region. He cited obstacles in the Defense Department, Congress and the defense production industry.
For the U.S.’ own purposes, he also noted that U.S.-produced air-defense systems are significantly more expensive than systems such as the Arrow, which is co-produced with Israel.
He added that the U.S. had learned much, particularly in improving technical and software capacities for air defense systems, from its ongoing operations in the Middle East.
Multiple Democrats pressed Kurilla on what role the U.S. military could play in delivering aid to civilians in Gaza. Kurilla said that the U.S. government is currently not involved in aid delivery, but highlighted the efforts of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a positive step.
“Hamas hates that because Hamas no longer has control over that distribution,” Kurilla said.
He said the military would be prepared to assist if asked to do so.
One resolution, which praised ICE and highlighted the need for vetting visa applicants, split House Democrats
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The U.S. Capitol is seen on June 13, 2024 in Washington, DC.
The House voted on Monday to pass two resolutions condemning recent antisemitic attacks. One, led by Republicans, which focused on the Boulder, Colo., attack and immigration issues, and split the Democratic caucus. The other, which was bipartisan and highlighted a series of antisemitic attacks, passed nearly unanimously, with just two lawmakers voting present.
The first resolution attracted controversy among Democrats ahead of the vote, but it passed by a 280-133 vote. Seventy-five Democrats, mostly moderates and pro-Israel members, ultimately voted in favor of the resolution and 113 voted against it.
Another five Democrats, Reps. Herb Conaway (D-NJ), Shomari Figures (D-AL), Sarah McBride (D-DE), Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) and Dina Titus (D-NV), and one Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), voted present.
The resolution stated that the Boulder attack, perpetrated by an Egyptian national who overstayed a visa and work permit who threw a Molotov cocktail at activists raising awareness for the hostages in Gaza, “highlights the need to aggressively vet aliens who apply for visas” and “demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas.”
It also praised law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and emphasized the need for “free and open communication” between state and federal law enforcement — an apparent reference to Colorado sanctuary state policies that limit such cooperation.
Prior to the vote, Republicans softened the resolution amid strident criticism from Democrats, stripping out one section that described the slogan “Free Palestine” as antisemitic and another one that explicitly condemned Colorado’s sanctuary state policies.
The second resolution, which condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” including the attack in Boulder, the Capital Jewish Museum murders and the arson targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, passed with 400 votes in favor. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Greene voted present. No members voted against the latter resolution.
“We cannot ignore these attacks or dismiss them as isolated incidents,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), who led the bipartisan resolution, said in a statement. “They are part of a serious and dangerous trend that must be condemned by all of us. Today, the House stood firmly in support of respect and dignity for everyone because we know that every American deserves to live without fear in their own community.”
Greene said in an X post that “antisemitic hate crimes are wrong, but so are all hate crimes. Yet Congress never votes on hate crimes committed against white people, Christians, men, the homeless, or countless others.”
She objected to the fact that Congress has voted on “endless resolutions” on antisemitism while “Americans from every background are being murdered — even in the womb.”
“Prioritizing one group of Americans and/or one foreign country above our own people is fueling resentment and actually driving more division, including antisemitism,” Greene continued.
Ahead of the vote, a group of Jewish House Democrats had urged congressional leaders to take substantive action beyond passing nonbinding resolutions to combat antisemitism, primarily by passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act and bolstering Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding.
The university organizations 'endorse[d] the Trump Administration’s priority of eradicating antisemitism' but said its tactics 'endanger' academic freedom
Cody Jackson/AP
American Jewish Committee (AJC) CEO Ted Deutch is seen during an interview, Friday, Feb. 8, 2024 in Boca Raton, Fla.
The American Jewish Committee — together with major groups representing U.S. universities — on Tuesday released a statement asking the Trump administration to reconsider its approach to combatting campus antisemitism, which it said involves steps that “endanger” academic freedom.
“America’s higher education and Jewish communities share and endorse the Trump Administration’s priority of eradicating antisemitism. We come together to ask the Administration to pursue this important goal in ways that preserve academic freedom, respect due process, and strengthen the government-campus scientific partnership,” said the joint statement, which was co-signed by American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, American Association of Community Colleges, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
The groups — which together represent more than 1,000 colleges and universities — called antisemitism “a plague on humanity” which “has found unacceptable expression on U.S. campuses in recent years, as it has elsewhere in American society, on both sides of the political spectrum.”
The statement continued, “In the name of combating antisemitism, the federal government has recently taken steps that endanger the research grants, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy of America’s higher education sector.”
It urged the U.S. government to instead address antisemitism “through the nation’s powerful anti-discrimination laws, which allow for vigorous enforcement while providing due process rights that are essential to ensure fair treatment of individuals and institutions.”
The groups pledged “continuing consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses.”
The Trump administration has cut — or threatened to cut — more than $12 billion in research funding from elite schools including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Northwestern. The moves to rescind billions in federal funding from colleges and universities, as well as to detain and deport foreign students, have ignited debate in the Jewish community in recent months, with many stressing a need for due process.
“Our democratic values are not at odds with our vision for classrooms and campuses free from antisemitism – in fact, each is necessary for the other,” Ted Deutch, CEO of the AJC, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Deutch told Jewish Insider last month that the group is trying to take a nuanced approach to the White House’s response to campus antisemitism.
“There are campuses [where] so many of the challenges should have been addressed by universities, and weren’t. We’ve been clear that it’s really important that the administration, that the president, is making this a priority,” Deutch said. “At the same time, as we’ve said, due process matters and obviously our democratic principles matter as well, we have to be able to both express appreciation and, when necessary, express concern.”
“When the hammer [of funding cuts] is dropped in a way which winds up cutting life-saving cancer research, that’s when we have concern, which we’ve expressed,” Deutch warned.
Barbara Snyder, president of AAU, an organization of 69 leading research universities, said in a statement that “cutting funds for life-saving research and threatening academic freedom and constitutional rights such as freedom of speech do nothing to make students safer. Fighting discrimination and supporting due process are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other.”
The Democrats also condemned J.D. Vance for declining to rebuke Carlson, while Republicans are privately fretting the Trump campaign’s handling of the controversy
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(L-R) Tucker Carlson, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) appear on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Every Jewish Democrat in the House signed onto a joint statement issued Monday night condemning Tucker Carlson for amplifying the views of a Holocaust denier and blasting Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential nominee, for failing to denounce the interview.
The letter comes amid growing GOP alarm at the indulgence of antisemitism within their own ranks and concern about the political implications of the Trump campaign’s continued embrace of Carlson.
Joint statements from every Jewish Democrat — ranging from some of the most conservative Democrats in the House to committed progressives — are rare. This one was organized by Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI).
The Democrats condemned Vance by name, for having “refused to condemn Carlson for promoting” Darryl Cooper, a self-proclaimed historian, “when given the opportunity to do so. Acceptance of hateful ideologies by people in power puts Jews and other targeted minorities across the world at great risk.”
“The normalization of Nazism is unacceptable and dangerous, and must be forcefully condemned,” they continued. “Americans deserve to know that their leaders will rebuke the cancers of antisemitism and Nazism whenever and wherever they appear.”
The lawmakers said that Cooper’s “revisionist and morally repugnant retelling of history” presented in the Carlson interview “is an insult to the six million Jews who were methodically murdered at the hands of the Nazi regime and is especially dangerous now as antisemitism is on the rise globally.”
They also criticized Carlson for praising Cooper: “Not only did Carlson provide a platform for Cooper’s ignorance and hate to millions of viewers, he also promoted Cooper by calling him ‘the most important popular historian in the United States.”
And they blasted billionaire Trump backer and X owner Elon Musk for his now-deleted post calling the interview “very interesting.”
A source familiar with the situation said the Democratic lawmakers thought it was important to call out Carlson and Cooper, as well as bring attention to Vance and Musk’s connections to the controversy.
Several high-ranking Republicans also privately expressed deep concern about the Trump campaign’s failure to distance itself from Carlson and the interview.
“They ignore this at their own peril,” one senior lawmaker told Jewish Insider of the campaign’s dismissive posture toward the situation.
“The political implications of Trump and Vance handling this Tucker thing incorrectly are huge,” another member of Congress and a supporter of the campaign, told JI. “Every respected operative in this business could recognize how problematic this could become. This election will be won on the margins by swing voters in the suburbs. It’s nonsense to think something this outrageous couldn’t swing the race by alienating just enough people.”
“This is not the behavior of a winning team,” a third GOP lawmaker said of the situation. They added that they hoped the campaign would reverse course but had little optimism that a shift would happen.
In a statement provided to JI by a Vance spokesman last week, the Ohio senator declined to distance himself from Carlson but spoke out against Cooper.
“Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson. There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump,” a Vance spokesman said at the time.
Later at a campaign stop in Arizona, Vance told a gaggle of reporters: “Agree or disagree with anything Tucker Carlson or his guests say, we believe in free speech. We believe if you don’t like an idea and – obviously the Holocaust was a terrible tragedy and it’s something that we have to make sure doesn’t get repeated anywhere in the world — the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to debate and push back against bad ideas. It’s not to suppress and censor them.”
Vance is scheduled to be interviewed by Carlson during the talk show host’s nationwide tour on Sept. 21 in Hershey, Pa. Sources close to the campaign have told JI that there are no plans to cancel Vance’s appearance.
Many of the Republicans who spoke to JI for this story expressed discomfort about criticizing Carlson publicly for fear of retribution or harassment.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) dismissed antisemitic elements of the right wing as a small fringe after he was asked about the subject during an interview at the MEAD Summit in Washington. Cotton said he does not “see it much from Arkansans,” who he said largely support Israel and “see the difference between right and wrong.”
“We should not truck with or tolerate that kind of Holocaust denialism or antisemitism, no matter what quarter it comes from, and whether it’s based on that kind of historical denialism, or what you see in certain quarters in America today, especially on our campuses,” Cotton said.
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Rep. Brad Sherman said the Jordanian monarch is ‘quite favorable’ to the new government
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Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) questions witnesses during a U.S. House Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee hearing on the "Burma's Brutal Campaign Against the Rohingya" in Washington, United States on September 27, 2017.
Jordan’s relations with Israel have improved since the new Israeli coalition government took office, Jordanian King Abdullah II told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a meeting last Thursday.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a longtime member of the House committee, recounted the committee’s conversation with Abdullah in an interview on Friday with Jewish Insider.
“He was quite favorable to the new government,” which is made up of an ideologically diverse coalition led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Sherman said. “In general, the theme was that he was able to work things out with the new government better than he had in the prior two years under what turned out to be the last two years of the Netanyahu administration.”
Sherman said he questioned Abdullah about the U.S.’s efforts to extradite Ahlam Tamimi — a Jordanian national convicted by an Israeli court in the 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two Americans, who was released in a 2011 prisoner swap — but said the king “didn’t give a substantive response.”
Although Israel was a prime topic of conversation — including tensions in Jerusalem and Jordan’s water dispute with Israel — Sherman emphasized that “[Jordan’s] relationship with Israel is just one of the things that the king and his government have to deal with,” and the committee’s meeting addressed other issues including Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
Sherman said Abdullah expressed support for the Iraqi government, which faces threats from Iranian-backed militias.
“It went well,” Sherman said of the meeting overall. “I’ve been in so many meetings with King Abdullah. [I] kind of regard him as an old friend.”
The California congressman emphasized that Jordan maintains broad bipartisan support in Washington.
“One comment I made is that support for King Abdullah and Jordan is like the last bipartisan thing in Washington. I mean — make a list of everything that has more bipartisan support than support for Jordan. I wish support for Israel were quite at that high a level,” Sherman said. “Part of that is derivative — a lot of the support for Jordan comes from those who support Israel. But then King Abdullah is able to pick up a little bit of support from people who are not always supportive of the U.S.-Israel alliance.”
Sherman noted that Abdullah’s son, the 27-year-old Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, was present in the meeting — as he was in all of the king’s meetings on Capitol Hill last week — although he was not an active participant in the discussions.
The crown prince “is clearly being educated at a young age,” Sherman said. “Perhaps only in a monarchical system does anyone as young as the crown prince sit in on such a meeting… It’s a different system. And it doesn’t always work well, but it’s working well for Jordan right now.”
Sherman added that the lawmakers did not discuss the “disagreements and unpleasantness among the powers that be in Amman from a couple months ago” — referring to a wave of high-profile arrests following an attempted coup in April, including of Prince Hamzah, the brother of King Abdullah, and several of Hamzah’s associates.
Reps offer praise for new Israeli government, but indicate minimal progress in conversations with PA, Qatar
U.S. Embassy/Twitter
Months after partisan fights over Israel reached a fever pitch during the recent war between Israel and Hamas, seven House lawmakers who traveled to Israel, the West Bank and Qatar last week told Jewish Insider that they were heartened by the new Israeli government’s commitment to ensuring that the U.S.-Israel relationship remains bipartisan.
The weeklong trip by members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, from July 6 to 11, was the first House delegation abroad since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks’s (D-NY) first as chairman. Meeks was joined by six other Democrats and three Republicans.
The delegation met with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, MK Mansour Abbas, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials, Palestinian business leaders and Qatari officials. The trip also included a July 4 celebration at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, attendance at the inauguration of Israeli President Isaac Herzog and a visit to the U.S. Central Command airbase in Qatar.
Trip participants consistently praised the new Israeli government’s frequent commitments to maintaining a bipartisan U.S.-Israel relationship.
“One of the things I take great encouragement from was the commitment of everyone we spoke to within the government, to ensuring that support for the U.S.-Israel relationship within Congress remains a bipartisan issue,” Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told JI.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) added that “there is a sense of excitement of the possibilities that our two [new] administrations may bring to the table… there is a feeling of hope and optimism.”
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Israel’s opposition to the agreement, was also a primary topic of conversation with Israeli leaders, according to several lawmakers on the trip, as were concerns about how U.S. aid to Gaza might end up inadvertently benefitting Hamas.
Multiple members highlighted the unlikely nature of Israel’s new governing coalition, which includes a spectrum of parties from the right wing to a left-wing Arab party, but expressed confidence that it could hold together.
“I’m going to give [Bennett] the benefit of the doubt,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), the most senior Republican on the trip. “I’m optimistic that they can [hold together]… It’s not that they agree on everything, it’s that their tone was upbeat, positive. You can tell there’s a genuine affinity for one another. And let’s face it, Prime Minister Bennett, his survival [politically] depends on making this work.”
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) — who was visiting Israel for the first time — said she appreciated that coalition members were upfront in acknowledging that the political grouping is unorthodox.
“Sitting down and having very human conversations with all these people I have read so much about was the most remarkable part of the meetings for me,” she said. “Hearing them all actually say, ‘We know that this is an interesting coalition… We know that it’s going to be difficult,’ helps make sense of something that on paper seems very confusing.”
The group met for approximately two hours with Bennett, who received high praise from both Republicans and Democrats.
“Prime Minister Bennett is really committed to ensuring an open and honest relationship with the United States as the close friends and allies with shared values that we have,” Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) said. “We had a terrific conversation with him about both the challenges that Israel faces, especially on the security front… but also about the promise and the optimism from the high-tech industry, to working hard to ensure opportunity for all Israelis, Jewish and Arab.”
Republicans, with whom former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had forged increasingly close ties, said they were confident that the relationship between Republicans and Israel would remain strong amid the change in government.
“We still admire Prime Minister Netanyahu on [the security] front. But I was impressed with Naftali Bennett. I really was,” Barr said. “I saw a similar strength and resolve on countering terrorism and countering Iran in Bennett.”
Republicans who spoke to JI were somewhat less effusive in their praise of Lapid— who is center-left politically, in comparison with the right-wing Bennett — although Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) noted that the group’s meeting with Lapid was much shorter than the meeting with Bennett.
Barr called Lapid “charismatic, jovial, committed to the U.S. alliance and friendship” but added that “clearly he does have a different kind of approach than Bennett and Netanyahu.”
“My hope would be that we would have a continuity of the friendship and the security relationship under Lapid as well,” Barr continued.
The new Israeli government, and Lapid in particular, have made it a priority to repair bipartisan relations with the U.S., which became strained under the Netanyahu government. Democrats said they have every expectation those efforts will succeed.
“We had some frank conversations [with Lapid] about how that has ebbed and flowed over the past couple of years, and how, in some circumstances, the United States’ relationship with Israel was used as a bit of a wedge issue back home here in the United States,” Spanberger said. “He made clear his honest appreciation of the fact that we had come with a bipartisan delegation and his desire to see the U.S.-Israel relationship be one that is firmly bipartisan.”
When the delegation traveled to Ramallah, the PA’s “pay for slay” programs to the families of imprisoned and deceased terrorists were a major focus in a three-hour conversation with PA leadership, lawmakers said, although they offered differing accounts of the PA’s receptiveness to those discussions.
“I heard a lot of doublespeak,” Barr said. “What Abbas said was, ‘We will work with the new administration to address their concerns about martyr payments.’ And then in the same breath they said, ‘What do you expect us to do? We’re going to help these families who longer have a support system.’”
Some Democrats offered a more optimistic readout.
“They understand that that is central to really moving forward in their relationship with the United States. They understand that and they’re working toward addressing it,” Deutch said. “This is an issue that exists in law… and they acknowledge that that has to get addressed.”
Schneider added that “from other conversations that I’ve heard and had, my sense is that there has been some movement.”
Rep. French Hill (R-AR) fell somewhere in the middle, saying that the officials initially appeared to have softened on the issue, compared to previous conversations, but backpedaled during the meeting to a more hardline stance.
“As the meeting went on… other people responded to that question and they were much more aggressive saying, ‘You can’t expect us to change that. That would have a major impact on our population’ and sort of retracted some of the technical speak about reforming it,” Hill said.
The Arkansas congressman said that Abbas also voiced strong opposition to the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations.
“He said that there is no other substitution or approach acceptable to them beyond the 2002 Beirut [Arab League] agreement,” he said.
A number of the lawmakers indicated that they did not find the PA meeting to be productive.
Schneider said that he “heard the same thing we always hear from them,” and Manning emphasized she “didn’t hear much movement from [Abbas]… or from any of his leadership team” on the PA’s demands for a two-state solution along 1967 borders.
Many of the lawmakers appeared more enthusiastic about a visit with Palestinian business leaders from the Palestinian American Chamber of Commerce. Hill said the conversation included a discussion of problems for West Bank businesses with both the Israeli government and the PA.
According to Spanberger, “They were talking about economic prosperity as a counterpoint to the message of desperation. That the economic investment and the strength of the internal economy that the West Bank could have — that they’re trying to create — how that can function as an inoculating factor against the way Hamas was able, at least in Gaza, to really integrate.” The Virginia Democrat added that the business leaders also supported peace with Israel.
Hill said that the businesspeople also indicated little “faith in the Palestinian Authority’s ability to change the current political direction.”
During the Qatar leg of the trip, lawmakers raised the question of normalizing relations with Israel with Qatari officials, but they did not seem amenable to the idea.
“Qatar views its position as being a neutral arbiter between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Manning said. “They think their current positioning works to everyone’s advantage.”
According to Malliotakis, Israeli officials said they’re looking to countries like Oman and Indonesia for potential future normalization agreements, as well as Saudi Arabia in the longer term.
Meeks, Deutch, Manning, Schneider, Spanberger, Barr, Hill and Malliotakis were joined on the trip by Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) and David Cicilline (D-RI), who did not respond to interview requests.
Two Republican lawmakers — Reps. Peter Meijer (R-MI) and Joe Wilson (R-SC) — who told JI ahead of the trip that they would be participating in the delegation did not ultimately go. For Wilson, the trip conflicted with a delegation to Norway for the Helsinki Commission, for which he is a commissioner. A Meijer spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
The Congressional Jewish Staff Association has big post-pandemic plans
Panoramic view of the United States Capitol and waving american flag in Washington DC
For many of the thousands of Jewish young people who have traveled to Israel with Birthright Israel, the free 10-day trip has led to lasting friendships and even marriages.
Because this is Washington, a fateful 2019 Birthright trip led to professional advancement.
In this case, friendships formed on the trip proved useful for the Congressional Jewish Staff Association, a nonpartisan organization that provides programming and mentorship for the hundreds of Jewish Capitol Hill staffers. Charlotte Kaye, a Republican, and Justin Goldberger, a Democrat, hit it off and befriended their trip leader, Joel Cohen. Cohen, who now works for Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), was finishing up a stint as president of CJSA, and he thought Kaye and Goldberger were the right people to take over leadership of the group. “Our Birthright leader actually passed it on to Charlotte and myself,” said Goldberger.
In a recent interview with Jewish Insider at a Capitol Hill cafe, Kaye and Goldberger suggested that the vicious partisanship of the past year has amplified the need for CJSA’s cross-party relationship-building. The Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Kaye said, made it “easier” for the organization to bring people together. “It was a traumatizing experience,” she explained. “I think we were all looking for some sort of healing and peace — not peace fully, but some sort of understanding of how to move forward.”
Among members of Congress, across-the-aisle collaboration can be hard to come by these days, particularly after Jan. 6. Democrats and Republicans have been sparring this week about funding for Capitol Police in the wake of the Jan. 6 events. But the policy experts, schedulers, speechwriters and chiefs of staff who handle the day-to-day business of Congress see friendships with aides of the opposing party as a good thing. CJSA, which was founded in 1998 and adopted its current name roughly a decade ago, seeks to create opportunities for those relationships.
“I remember being intimidated coming to D.C. when I was 22, a staff assistant on the Hill, desperately trying to find some sort of group to fit in with,” said Kaye, a staff member on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). She discovered the group two years ago at a lunchtime Passover Seder the organization hosted at the Capitol. “Finding out the CJSA existed and you could start to recognize faces and know people was comforting,” said Kaye.
Some of CJSA’s bipartisanship is strategic. It’s Washington, after all; young staffers know they need allies to make it in the cutthroat world of Capitol Hill.
There are no exact numbers on how many Jewish staffers work on the Hill, but CJSA’s email listserv has more than 500 members. “The advice I always give entry-level staffers is to build your network, because you never know who will be your first foot in the door,” said Goldberger, senior policy advisor for Rep. Donald McEachin (D-VA). “I have friends who are Republicans on the House side, and it’s a lot easier to find sponsors for a bill if you have a relationship with them prior.”
But groups like CJSA also help young people find community at a workplace that pays little and requires long hours. “My best friends still are people that were in entry-level jobs answering phones when we first came to D.C. and bonding over that,” said Kaye.
CJSA has existed for more than 10 years, but Kaye and Goldberger took over with the hopes of formalizing some of its programs and increasing its offerings.
“We started realizing that other staff associations were a lot more legitimate,” said Kaye, referring to groups like the Congressional Women’s Staff Association and the Congressional Black Associates. (In years past, a Staff Association Fair — the grown-up, Washington version of a college extracurricular fair — has been held to introduce Hill employees to different membership groups.) “We wanted to bring that organization to CJSA, because there’s such a big Jewish community and it’s kind of a loss if we don’t take advantage of that,” Kaye explained.
“I think making [the group] more formal hopefully will cover everyone and be a little more inclusive,” said Goldberger. He wants CJSA to be an organization that actively brings in new people, so that if a new staffer shows up to an event for the first time, they won’t feel awkward lingering on the outside of a circle of older staffers who all know each other. “I wish there had been, when I was a young staffer, someone who would actively reach out and be like, ‘Hey, we’re having a Pride Shabbat, you should show up.’ Or, ‘Hey, we have a mentor-mentee program, we’d love for you to sign up.’”
The big changes Kaye and Goldberger hoped to make when they took over as co-presidents last year included hosting more regular programming and events with members of Congress, creating a mentorship program and instituting dues. But then the COVID-19 pandemic began, and CJSA had to pivot to virtual programming.
“It was tough,” Goldberger said. But CJSA managed to keep members engaged throughout the pandemic. A number of Zoom cooking classes with popular Jewish food institutions in the District included a bagel-making class hosted by Bethesda Bagels and a kugel-making class with Schmaltz Brothers, a kosher food truck. CJSA hosted mindfulness and meditation workshops in the wake of Jan. 6 and joint events with other groups such as the LGBT Staff Association. Some CJSA members convened regularly for a “Booze With Jews” virtual happy hour, and at times members of Congress — including Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) — joined in.
“Something too that was really cool to see was we had a lot of district staffers and state staffers join us for the virtual events,” said Kaye. “That was nice, for them to be able to connect with the D.C. staff and other Jewish staffers from back home in the district.”
Although most visitors are still barred from Capitol Hill because of COVID restrictions, many staffers have begun to return to the Capitol and surrounding offices. At the end of this month, CJSA will hold its first in-person happy hour in a year and a half. “We’re excited to get off the screen,” Goldberger noted. “We saw a drop off of attendance in our virtual events. People just don’t want to do it anymore,” Kaye added.
Also in the works is a mentorship program, where senior Jewish staffers will be paired with a younger aide to mentor. CJSA also hopes to restart “staff dels,” or staff delegations, where staff members visit a particular part of the U.S. to learn about a topic (such as national parks) or another country, similar to the “codels” — congressional delegations — that regularly take legislators to particular areas. Kaye said CJSA hosted staff trips to Israel and Japan several years ago.
“We have the opportunity to start traditions that we didn’t have before,” said Goldberger. “I know personally I would love a Hanukkah CJSA party… similar to the White House [that] has a Hanukkah or Christmas party — like that, but more for staff.”
And one goal that they know is a long shot: getting Jewish members of Congress to host parties or Shabbat dinners for Jewish staffers. Before Kaye or Goldberger were on the Hill, members occasionally attended CJSA-affiliated Shabbat gatherings.
“I heard that [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer used to have these epic Jewish happy hours to set up Jewish singles on the Hill,” said Kaye. “He’s notorious for setting up a bunch of Jewish singles,” added Goldberger. (This is true — a 2012 report in The New York Times found that 12 couples who met in Schumer’s office had gotten married. He signed a ketubah, a Jewish wedding contract, for one couple, and another named their dog after him. “Forget Master of the Senate. This is the Yenta of the Senate,” The Times wrote.)
“We want to have that tradition and camaraderie,” said Kaye, “more so than we’ve ever been able to do in the past.”
The House select committee must also probe the rising tide of antisemitism in the U.S., the Virginia congresswoman told JI
Steve Helber/AP
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) speaks to participants at a USO event in Virginia Beach, Va., in 2019.
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), one of the eight lawmakers appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the House’s select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, told Jewish Insider she is prioritizing the probe over her reelection prospects in 2022.
Luria, who hails from Virginia’s 2nd District, a swing district, is among the most electorally vulnerable members of the panel. She’s almost certain to face attacks in the 2022 election based on her role on the committee, the creation of which was opposed by most congressional Republicans.
“I think that this work is important and necessary and much more important than whether I get elected again or not in the next election,” Luria told JI late last week. “I’m honored to be part of this committee. I think the work is incredibly important.”
The Virginia congresswoman and 20-year Navy veteran added that the panel has “a very, very big task ahead.”
Luria said the committee’s work must include probing the disinformation that spurred the events of Jan. 6, the logistics of how the riot was organized and how information was disseminated, the potential financing of the incident, what warning signs law enforcement and intelligence officials missed ahead of the attack, failures in the responses by the Capitol Police and other law enforcement and the delay in the deployment of the National Guard.
She added that the committee must also “try to understand why there is this rising tide of instances of antisemitism, and the close examination of all the factors that went into what happened on Jan. 6 could potentially lead to ways to prevent or stem that in the future.”
Luria said that her membership in the House Homeland Security and House Armed Services committees was a primary factor in Pelosi’s decision to select her for the committee.
“In my comments to her, I spoke about my concerns about the number of veterans and active-duty service members who are disproportionately represented so far in the number of people who’ve been charged for their actions at the Capitol,” Luria continued. “I also spoke about the rise of antisemitism, the antisemitic symbols that were on display.”
Luria added that there are a number of geographic connections to her home state on display at the Capitol — including a rioter from Virginia who was photographed wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt. The congresswoman further argued that there is a “clear arc” from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., to the Jan. 6 riot.
Asked whether she thinks the committee will need to subpoena testimony from former President Donald Trump or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Luria said it is “too early to tell,” but added, “nothing has been ruled out at this point.”
“We will follow the information where it leads us, and time will tell what witnesses are important to the work of the committee,” she said.
It also remains to be seen who, if anyone, McCarthy will recommend for the five remaining committee spots, and whether those appointees will participate in the committee’s investigative work or seek to obstruct it. Pelosi also appointed Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). Liz Cheney (R-WY), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to the committee.
“I hope it will be people who want to do an investigation that’s grounded in facts, who are pragmatic and who are not going to try to turn this into a sort of partisan spectacle,” Luria said.
House Democrats, with the support of some Republicans, initially sought to create a nonpartisan independent commission to investigate the insurrection, rather than a select committee, but Republican leadership in the House and Senate opposed the idea, ultimately blocking it.
Luria said she “very much would have liked to see the independent commission” and was “disappointed [it] was not established.”
“But you know now I think that this work is so important that we need to continue forward in the way that we can,” she added.
The trip will depart in July and include meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders
Bebeto Matthews/AP
Congressman Gregory Meeks, D-NY, Wednesday, May 22, 2019, at LaGuardia Community College in New York.
An upcoming congressional delegation to Israel will be an opportunity for legislators to “be focused on support for Israel and its security and at the same time focused on the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinians,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY), who is leading the delegation, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday.
The trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories will be Meeks’s first as chairman.
Meeks, who took over the committee in January, replacing pro-Israel stalwart former Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), cited last month’s war in Gaza, the Abraham Accords and the new Israeli government as having shaped his decision to prioritize traveling to Israel.
“To have an opportunity to sit down with this new government in Israel and bring together a bipartisan delegation from the United States Congress, where we can be focused on support for Israel and its security and at the same time focused on the humanitarian concerns of the Palestinians, it seems to me to be the right time and the right message to get that done,” Meeks said. “I just think that it’s really important to do.”
The group is also planning to meet with Palestinian leadership. Meeks, who represents parts of Queens and Brooklyn, said multiple committee members had already joined the trip, which is set to depart sometime in July, but did not name any of the legislators who had already signed onto the delegation, deferring to the members themselves.
“We have a lot of members who want to go, so that’s not an issue,” he added.
No committee members contacted by JI have confirmed participation so far.
Meeks said he hopes to hear how the U.S. can help keep Israel safe and address Palestinians’ humanitarian concerns.
“We’ve got to try to figure out how to move forward with a two-state solution,” Meeks said, adding that he sees the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab states, as “a window of strong opportunity to have change.”
Two prominent critics of Israel’s policies during the recent conflict — Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Joaquín Castro (D-TX) — are members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Meeks said he hopes that representatives who oppose some of Israel’s positions will join the delegation.
“Hopefully we’re going to have a cross-section of members from all different viewpoints. I think that’s what’s good about our committee,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to be looking to travel with so that everybody can get information and ask questions.”
Rep. Elaine Luria told JI the attacks are ‘a flat-out lie’ and ‘disgraceful,’ and Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux said they are ‘nonsense’
Steve Helber/AP
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) speaks to participants at a USO event in Virginia Beach, Va., in 2019.
House Democrats pushed back on Wednesday against Republican attack ads accusing them of not supporting Israeli security after their votes on a GOP procedural motion last week.
The controversy centers around a failed motion to recommit introduced by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) last Thursday which would have blocked passage of a supplemental funding bill for Capitol security — which House Republicans opposed — by returning it back to the Appropriations Committee, potentially killing it entirely.
Gonzales also proposed an amendment to the bill for Appropriations Committee consideration that would have entirely replaced the Capitol security funding with additional funds for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. The House vote, however, was only on sending the security supplement bill back to the committee, not on the Iron Dome amendment.
The motion failed largely along party lines, with all Democrats present voting against it, as well as one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) did not vote on the measure.
House Republican leadership has sought to use the vote to paint House Democrats as unsupportive of Israel. Meanwhile, the conservative group American Action Network launched a five-figure ad buy, according to Fox News, claiming four Democrats — Reps. Elaine Luria (D-VA), Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA) and Susan Wild (D-PA) — abandoned Israel while it was under attack by voting against Gonzales’s motion.
Luria called the attacks “disgraceful” and “a flat-out lie.”
“The Republicans have taken this as a vehicle to just create a narrative that’s false and say that based on this procedural vote we — being every Democrat — were somehow voting against Israel and against supporting the Iron Dome,” Luria told Jewish Insider. “It’s absurd, it’s harmful, to try to make an issue that’s important to the security of Israel, to our strongest ally in the Middle East, and to try to use it as a political tool, especially when it’s just a straight-out lie.”
Bourdeaux similarly characterized the attacks as scurrilous.
“I voted to provide critical funding for law enforcement at the Capitol after 140 officers were injured in the January 6th attack,” Bourdeaux explained to JI. “Republicans opposed funding for the Capitol Police and our National Guard, and in a bizarre procedural gimmick, tried to make this about funding for Iron Dome. This kind of nonsense is why Republicans lost in Georgia.”
The motion to recommit was one of multiple attempts by Republicans last week to put Democrats in a bind on matters relating to Israel. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) unsuccessfully attempted to use a procedural maneuver to scuttle planned votes on opioid addiction treatments and condemning anti-Asian hate crimes and instead hold a vote on sanctioning Hamas — legislation that passed the House in 2019.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), who was leading House Democrats on the floor at the time, called Mast’s move a “red herring” which “would hand control of the House over to [Republicans].”
“Let’s not distract from the bills that we’re here to move forward today,” Scanlon added. House Democrats voted unanimously — with the exception of Golden, who again did not vote — to proceed with business as planned.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) attempted to capitalize on the Gonzales procedural vote, alleging that “Instead of standing with Israel, Democrats continue to stand aside.” And on the Mast legislation, he told The Washington Free Beacon: “Today every member in the House will have a choice between siding with our ally or siding with a status quo that will only perpetuate the unrest… the House should make it clear to the world that we stand united in support of Israel.”
Luria criticized the attacks as a transparent campaign tactic.
“This is to go after Democrats [in] seats they think they can and want to win back so that they can hand the gavel to McCarthy,” Luria said. “It’s purely a political maneuver. I think this is an issue that shouldn’t be politicized. I can understand policy differences, but strong bipartisan support of Israel in the U.S. Congress is not something that should be politicized because I think it sends the wrong message to the rest of the world.”
“The fact that anyone wants to send a message that our Congress is somehow divided on [Iron Dome] is really damaging,” she continued.
Luria emphasized that she has introduced and supported a range of measures intended to bolster Israel’s security and combat regional threats and supports the $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. sends to Israel annually. All four members targeted in the attack ads also signed onto a bipartisan letter earlier this year expressing support for continuing unconditioned U.S. aid to Israel.
AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JI the organization “[does] not take a position on these types of procedural motions. We are confident that there will be overwhelming bipartisan support when Congress votes on funding for Iron Dome.”
Eight candidates have entered the unusual Democratic primary in the deep-blue district
Courtesy
Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
Rep. Deb Haaland’s (D-NM) historic confirmation on Monday as the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary set off a mad scramble to claim her seat in the House of Representatives. The race, already in motion, is a crowded one, with eight Democratic candidates now jockeying to succeed Haaland, a one-term congresswoman and former state party chair, in New Mexico’s 1st congressional district, which covers most of Albuquerque. Because the district is reliably blue, whoever earns the nomination is all but assured safe passage in the general election.
But overcoming the state’s somewhat unusual candidate selection system presents its own set of challenges in a special election with no primaries. Instead, candidates from each party will be chosen, as New Mexico law mandates, by a group of elected state central committee members — a process upending the traditional campaign dynamic because it requires that candidates earn favor with party insiders rather than appealing to voters and soliciting donations in order to get on the ballot.
The selection process has earned critics on the left and right who allege it is undemocratic, and a bipartisan bill that would establish a primary system to fill congressional vacancies is currently making its way through New Mexico’s state legislature. But state representative Daymon Ely, a co-sponsor of the legislation, believes it has little chance of passing with just four days remaining until the state’s two-month legislative session comes to an end. “I’m not hopeful,” he said in a recent interview with Jewish Insider.
“If the legislation doesn’t pass then it will be a popularity contest among the Democratic Party insiders on the central committee,” said Fred Nathan, executive director of Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in Santa Fe.
Lonna Atkeson, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, echoed that view. “You’ve got a really inside election,” she told JI. “They’re going to want one of their insiders.”
So which candidate has the edge? Political strategists in New Mexico who spoke with JI divide the eight Democrats currently vying for the seat, most of whom are women, into separate tiers, with a trio of formidable candidates viewed as most likely to prevail: Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, a 63-year-old state senator and former law professor who ran against Haaland in the 2018 primary, pulling in more than $1 million in donations; Melanie Stansbury, a 42-year-old rising star in local politics who serves as a state legislator and previously worked on Capitol Hill; and Randi McGinn, 65, a prominent trial lawyer and confidante of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Melanie Stansbury
“They’re the most well-known and have the most momentum in the party right now,” said Matt Gloudemans, a Democratic campaign consultant in New Mexico who is not working for any of the candidates.
The wild-card candidate is Georgene Louis, 43, a state representative whose compelling personal story will no doubt appeal to central committee members who are looking for continuity now that Haaland, one of the first Native American women in Congress, is moving on. Louis, a Native American who currently practices tribal law, was born and raised on the Acoma Pueblo reservation, about 70 miles west of Albuquerque.
“My view is that a progressive native woman’s seat probably should be replaced, ideally, by another progressive native woman,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, who lobbied for Haaland’s confirmation.
The four remaining candidates, all of whom are regarded as relative underdogs despite their unique credentials, include Selinda Guerrero, Patricia Roybal Caballero, Victor Reyes and Francisco Fernández. Guerrero, a 44-year-old community organizer who identifies as Chicana, Black and indigenous, argues that she is running to represent a “new wave” of the working class, while Roybal Caballero, a 70-year-old state representative, has deep connections with progressive activists in the state. “She has consistently been a grassroots campaigner,” said Dede Feldman, a political consultant and former New Mexico state senator.
Reyes, 28, is a former legislative director for New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and has been endorsed by Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Marc Veasey (D-TX) and David Cicilline (D-RI). If elected, Reyes boasts that he would be the youngest Democrat in the House as well as the first openly gay congressman to represent New Mexico. So would Fernández, a 39-year-old former TV and film industry worker who is HIV-positive and vows to provide a voice “for those who are most marginalized,” including people with preexisting conditions.
Randi McGinn
“I am very much a political outsider,” Fernández told JI in a recent phone conversation, adding that he is a “lifelong social justice advocate.”
In interviews with JI, the candidates were eager to highlight their progressive policy agendas on issues like universal healthcare, climate change and the $15 minimum wage hike in a race where it is politically expedient to lean left, given the partisan makeup of the district.
But their views on foreign policy, particularly around Israel, are less predictable — and illustrate a growing tension between progressives who are supportive of the Jewish state and those who are more critical of the longstanding U.S.-Israel relationship.
Sedillo Lopez is perhaps the most interesting test case. In 2018, she earned an endorsement from Justice Democrats, the influential progressive political action committee which previously characterized Israel as a “human rights violator,” and was recently backed by the People for Bernie Sanders. But speaking with JI, she emphasized that she is a staunch supporter of the Jewish state. “Israel is crucial, spiritually as well as politically,” said Sedillo Lopez, who traveled to Israel three years ago on a Latino leadership tour with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.
“It was transformative to me in so many ways,” she recalled. “I learned so much, and I know that sounds lame, but the biggest thing was how close everything is together. I live in New Mexico, and it’s a day’s drive to get out of the state. So it was amazing to me to see why security is so crucial.”
Since then, Sedillo Lopez has learned through a genealogy research initiative conducted by the Jewish Federation in New Mexico that she descends from Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain. “I’m very proud of that, although I have to say, like most Latinos, I have Indian blood, but I don’t have any culture,” she said, noting that while she appreciates her Jewish heritage, she doesn’t claim it.
Despite her affiliation with Justice Democrats — a spokesman for which did not respond to requests for comment about whether it would be making an endorsement in the race — Sedillo Lopez believes that Israel has a strong progressive record. “A lot of the things that I advocate for are in place there,” she said, referring to the state’s universal healthcare system along with its relatively enlightened approach to LGBTQ rights. “I was impressed,” she said. “I was like, ‘Hey, it works, this can work.’ You know, these ideas are progressive ideas.”
Sedillo Lopez rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as continued aid to Israel.
Stansbury, by comparison, was less well-versed on such matters. Though she spent some time backpacking through Israel in her early 20s, she was unfamiliar with the BDS movement and declined to comment on the 10-year memorandum of understanding guaranteeing military assistance to Israel. “I haven’t dove into this issue,” she said.
More broadly, she expressed a desire to “lead with diplomacy” in the Middle East, “restore the Iran deal” and recognize the “special relationship” with Israel. “But I also am a major proponent of the basic self-determination and human rights of Palestinians and their ability to establish a sovereign state,” Stansbury added. “So to the extent that, as a congressperson, I weigh in on these issues both in terms of legislation and the budget and the way in which the U.S. supports both Israel and aid to Palestine, that’s the kind of lens that I look through all this.”
Georgene Louis (Courtesy)
Stansbury, a scientist who is deeply invested in water resource management in New Mexico, sees parallels between her state and Israel — and hopes to learn more about the connection if she is elected. “There’s a lot we can learn from the innovation that’s been happening in Israel,” she said. “How do we modernize our infrastructure? How do we help farmers make the transition to more water-efficient agriculture? The work that’s been done at universities like Ben-Gurion and folks in the Negev is world-class,” she added. “That is the beacon.”
Because of her experience on such matters, John Feldman, a rabbi in Albuquerque, believes Stansbury is strongly positioned to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Her expertise in water as a scientist and her concern for human rights and her support for Israel all dovetail in such a way that, I think, she could really be a constructive mediator in terms of our U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said, adding that water and science “could well be a bridge for peace.”
McGinn, who supports continued aid to Israel and opposes BDS, said she has had conversations with J Street in her time as a candidate. “Israel will always be our biggest ally and our friend,” she said, but added her concern that the Trump administration had destabilized the region. “This has been a problem for thousands of years, and I think this last administration has actually harmed the peace process,” she said. “They keep saying they’re doing great. But in fact, I think they’ve gone backwards, and we’re stoking the fires and making things more difficult.”
She endorsed a two-state solution as the “only way forward to peace,” but said it would be difficult to get there given the charged geopolitical dynamic. “I’m just afraid that we are farther away from that than we were four years ago,” McGinn, who has never been to Israel, told JI. “That’s my concern about the region.”
Patricia Roybal Caballero
Perhaps because Israel is unlikely to be a major subject of debate in a race that is expected to be centered on domestic policy matters, the other candidates displayed varying levels of familiarity with issues of concern to Jewish community members as well as pro-Israel advocates — though all made clear their desire to take an active role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Roybal Caballero expressed a strong kinship with Jewish community members in the Southwest, noting that she was a founder of the Mexican American Jewish Relations Coalition in El Paso. “We met for the express reason of trying to improve relationships in our communities,” she recalled, “because we found out that we didn’t know enough.”
Though she has no position on BDS, she said she was eager to visit Israel, describing a trip there as a “dream.” Roybal Caballero, who favors a two-state solution, added that she would support President Joe Biden’s approach to the conflict as he hones his Middle East foreign policy agenda during his first term. “I think a two-state solution is probably the best hope, and as the settlements continue, it’s going to force a solution, and we’ve got to be attentive to that,” she said. “We’ve got to continue to create an approach or relationships from mutual respect.”
Francisco Fernández (Courtesy)
“History is important,” she added. “Israel’s role in that history, and Palestine’s role in that history, just as our tribal nations’ role in that history, and our Western role, has all been a fight for survival, but not at the exclusion of each other.”
Fernández, who has never visited Israel, was less familiar with a number of the issues, including the memorandum of understanding, during the interview. “I can tell you that I don’t believe in withdrawing aid,” he said. Fernández later emailed his thoughts on the BDS movement after speaking with JI. “While my knowledge regarding the BDS movement is limited, I’d like to make it clear: I would not support it or anything like it,” he said. “Boycotts, divestments and sanctions are not the best means to productively foster peace between Israel and Palestine.”
Louis was also unacquainted with BDS but said she was learning more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as she pursues higher officer. “I’m not the expert, but I have been reading up,” she said. “I have been also talking to members of my community about it. But it’s my understanding that the U.S. and Israel just share an unbreakable bond. We have built on a commitment to our common history, values and interests, where Israel is our most important ally in the region, and one of our most important in the world.”
“I will support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and I think, from what I understand, the two-state solution is the one that seems to be most beneficial,” Louis added. “I just think the United States has a responsibility to work with Israelis and Palestinians, as well as regional and international partners, to reach a peaceful end to the hostilities that are going on right now.”
Reyes and Guerrero were more critical of Israel. Reyes, who supports a two-state solution, told JI that he had not yet made up his mind as to whether he would back the BDS movement as a member of Congress and suggested that he would support conditioning aid.
Victor Reyes (Courtesy)
“Following the Oslo agreement, Israel made a commitment to the U.S. that it would not build new settlements or expand existing ones,” he said. “There are current violations of this treaty. The United States must lead with a human rights-centered approach when evaluating appropriations. Our budget should reflect our commitment to human rights and conditions should be set, as they are in trade agreements and other international commitments, that require an adherence to these values.”
Guerrero went a step further, calling directly for the U.S. to condition aid to Israel. “I am not in support of U.S. tax dollars being used to oppress and harm,” she declared. “We have seen the oppression of Palestinian people for far too long,” Guerrero said, “and we know that Palestinians across the region are suffering greatly.”
The community activist also supports BDS. “Divestment is a primary thing that I would be advocating for as a U.S. congressperson,” she said, “because we have to be able to support diplomacy and not violence.” Guerrero added that it was not for her to decide whether the Israelis and Palestinians pursue a two-state solution. “I feel like my role is to support equality for all of the people, for all of its citizens,” she said. “This has been a long fight, and so it’s time for us now to stop the violence. We must support them, whether it’s a one state, two state, a confederation, some other form.”
Selinda Guerrero
“The reason I support the boycott and the divestment is because, in particular, we want to put enough pressure so that the violence and the harm can stop,” Guerrero, who said she is actively involved with Jewish Voice for Peace, told JI. “I think it’s important. And so my position is to advocate and support Palestinians and Israelis to make determinations for their own selves with the full rights and support to be able to do so.”
Despite her support for the boycott, Guerrero said she was open to visiting Israel. “I would be honored,” she said. I’ve been invited by many of the people that I do work with in the region.”
Pro-Israel groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, have yet to make endorsements in the race. But Jeff Mendelsohn, executive director of Pro-Israel America, told JI that he was watching with interest. “Pro-Israel America is paying close attention to the upcoming special elections, including the expected race in NM-1 to replace Rep. Deb Haaland,” he said. “While we don’t get involved in every race, we will continue to support candidates who understand and value the U.S.-Israel relationship, particularly when running against candidates who would weaken our strategic alliance.”
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s secretary of state, said on Monday that the special election will be announced within 10 days, after which it will take place in a few months or so.
The Democratic Party of New Mexico is now electing new central committee members who will pick the next candidate, with Bernalillo County concluding its ballot counting process on Monday and Santa Fe County on Tuesday, according to Miranda van Dijk, a state Democratic Party spokeswoman, who said a member list was not immediately available. The process for all counties in the district will conclude on April 3.
Brian Colón, New Mexico’s Democratic state auditor, said he was energized by the number of candidates who have entered the race, but discouraged by the process through which the winner will be chosen. “As a former state party chair and statewide elected official, I’m inspired by the abundance of riches we have in terms of the field of candidates,” he told JI. “It is striking, however, that in this situation so few people will get to determine the next representative.”
The House released a draft of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that Democrats are hoping to expedite through Congress
House Television via AP
Members of the House of Representatives vote on legislation at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 27, 2020.
The House Budget Committee released a draft of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on Friday that House Democrats are hoping to push through the lower chamber by the end of the week. But some Jewish groups are hoping to see further changes in the legislation.
The current 591-page draft of the bill includes, among other provisions, $1,400 checks for Americans, an extension of federal unemployment benefits and additional funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses — including nonprofits, funding for schools and vaccination efforts and an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour — which seems unlikely to survive the Senate.
This week, the House will further revise the bill before moving it on to the Senate, where it is likely to undergo a range of additional changes.
Shortly after the draft bill was released, the Jewish Federations of North America sent a letter to government affairs professionals calling on them to join a letter from the National Council of Nonprofits and a JFNA campaign advocating for changes to the COVID bill.
The Orthodox Union, JFNA, Agudath Israel of America, Jewish Community Centers Association of North America, Jewish Art Education Corporation, New York’s Jewish Museum and numerous local Jewish organizations signed the Council of Nonprofits letter in late January.
The letter calls for full unemployment benefit reimbursements for self-insured nonprofits. The current bill includes 75% reimbursements — up from 50% previously — but Nathan Diament, the director of the OU’s Advocacy Center, said the OU is pushing for further increases in the Senate.
Another major request made in the letter — increased charitable-giving incentives — is not included in the bill draft, and is unlikely to be added.
“That’s not in this package, frankly, because it’s expensive,” Diament said. “And even though $1.9 trillion is a lot of money, that would make it even more expensive. So that’s not in the cards.”
JFNA’s campaign focuses on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — otherwise known as food stamps.
The current bill increases federal contributions to Medicaid home and community-based services by 7.35%. JFNA is calling for a 10% increase. The bill also increases Medicaid and SNAP funding, but to a lesser extent than JFNA requested.
The Jewish organizations backing changes to the legislation are also pushing to increase the funding available for Jewish elementary and secondary schools. The current bill allows non-public schools, including parochial schools, to receive funds designated for addressing learning loss and other academic, social and emotional impacts from the pandemic — including funding for additional instruction sessions like summer school or extra tutoring programs.
Under the bill’s current language, this fund will make up at least 20% of the total $128 billion being provided to the Department of Education.
Diament said the OU is advocating for non-public schools to be given access to a larger slice of the COVID relief funding, not just the learning loss fund. The restrictions introduced in the latest bill were not part of the original CARES Act passed last March.
“Here as currently drafted, it’s only for a very, very small part. So we’re trying to see if in the Senate, we can get that revised, so it follows the CARES Act precedent, and frankly so it’s more fair to Jewish, Catholic and other non-public schools,” Diament told Jewish Insider on Friday.
Despite the concerns, the current version of the bill does include many provisions that Jewish groups and other nonprofits had hoped to see.
Diament applauded Congress for expanding PPP eligibility for nonprofit organizations, another goal laid out in the Council of Nonprofits letter. Larger nonprofits had previously been mostly excluded from the PPP, a restriction which JFNA president Eric Fingerhut also previously bemoaned.
“This is something we and the Jewish Federation and others have been working on for months and months,” Diament said. “We’re thankful that now that’s been mostly corrected in this new legislation.”
According to Diament, the PPP changes are largely thanks to action from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Small Business Committee Chair Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY).
Diament further praised increases to the child tax credit — to $3,600 for children under age 6 and $3,000 to children up to age 17 — as particularly impactful for the Orthodox community.
“The $3,600 tax credit is also going to be of significant help especially to larger families in the Orthodox community that have lots of kids and who are lower and middle income,” he explained.
Senate Democrats are optimistic that Congress can pass the bill — which will, at a minimum, require 50 Democratic votes in the Senate, plus Vice President Kamala Harris — and send it to President Joe Biden before March 14, when federal unemployment benefits are set to expire.
Some new faces and some veterans are among the House Democrats and Republicans on HFAC’s subcommittees
Nuclear Regulatory Committee
House Democrats and Republicans are picking their leaders on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittees. Here’s a rundown of who is in charge of the committee in the 117th Congress:
Full Committee
- Chair: Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY) is the new chairman of the committee, and has promised “a leap towards a new way of doing business.”
- Vice chair: Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), a former assistant secretary of state, told Jewish Insider, “The job of the committee is not to be a cheerleader. Our job is to conduct oversight” on issues like the Iran nuclear deal.
- Ranking member: Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who is entering his second term as the committee’s ranking member, had a collaborative relationship with former chairman Eliot Engel.
Middle East, North Africa, and International Terrorism subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) will serve another term at the top of the subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes Israel and its neighbors.
- Vice chair: Freshman Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), the former chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, told JI shortly after her election that getting placed on the House Foreign Affairs Committee would give her the opportunity “to stand up for” the U.S.-Israel relationship.
- Ranking member: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is entering his second term as ranking member on the subcommittee.
Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) has been the top Democrat on the subcommittee since she was first elected to Congress in 2011.
- Vice chair: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who previously faced calls for her removal from the committee following 2019 remarks that invoked antisemitic tropes, was appointed vice chair last week, and some repeated their concerns.
- Ranking member: Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), who has been in Congress for more than 40 years, was the subcommittee’s chairman when the GOP controlled the House.
Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA) was reelected to chair the subcommittee, with plans to focus on China, North Korea and democratic decline in the region.
- Vice chair: Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) emphasized his commitment to protecting Tibet and democracy in India when he was appointed as vice chair.
- Ranking Member: Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) chaired the subcommittee from 2013 to 2014.
Europe, Energy, the Environment, and Cyber subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. William Keating (D-MA) was reelected to a second term leading the committee.
- Ranking member: Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) is a former FBI agent in his third term in Congress.
International Development, International Organizations, and Global Corporate Social Impact subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) was one of three members seeking the top spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He was the committee’s vice chair in the 116th Congress.
- Ranking member: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) told JI she hopes to preserve and advance the Trump administration’s “significant inroads” on economic and national security issues.
Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, Migration, and International Economic Policy subcommittee
- Chair: Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ), a refugee from Cuba, chaired the subcommittee in the previous Congress.
- Ranking member: Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) is a U.S. Army combat veteran who participated in the capture and interrogation of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Quotable: “I’m delighted to be chosen to serve as the vice chair of the Middle East, North Africa and Counterterrorism Subcommittee,” Manning told Jewish Insider. “Israel is one of our most important allies and I will advocate for policies that ensure Israel’s long-term safety and security. I am also committed to addressing Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region, including their continuing efforts to become a nuclear power and their fostering of terrorism around the world, including funding of Hezbollah and Hamas. In addition to these priorities, the Subcommittee must also work to root out antisemitism and to advance human rights across the globe.”
This post was updated at 11:35 on 2/18/21.
The speaker of the House is expected to struggle to maintain tight control over the Democratic caucus
Perry Bindelglass
Although Democrats will enter the 117th Congress in January with a significantly narrower House majority than they have enjoyed for the last two years, House staffers say they are not expecting Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to significantly change her strategy in the next term.
Pelosi will likely continue to keep a firm grip on her caucus to manage the ongoing rift between the progressive and moderate wings of the party, three House staffers told JI.
“I think Pelosi and [House Majority Leader Steny] Hoyer continue to be effective notwithstanding their age because they are extraordinary bridge-builders,” one aide said. “They are able to coalesce and bring disparate parts of the caucus together in ways that few people can… I don’t see leadership changing their modus operandi much.”
A second aide agreed, noting that Pelosi “demands loyalty and… perfection.”
The aide predicted Pelosi will be willing to cut deals with both the progressive members in her party and moderate Republicans — when needed — to pass bills. But they also acknowledged that the Democrats’ smaller majority will create “legislative barriers.”
“I think the goal will be to pass legislation, so however that gets done,” the aide said. “Whether that’s through progressives demanding change or compromise with Republicans, I think she’ll know when to make that judgement.”
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), a conservative Chicago-area Democrat who has served in Congress since 2005 and who lost his primary race earlier this year to a progressive challenger, said Pelosi will have a tough challenge holding her caucus together during the upcoming term.
“The narrow House majority is going to make things incredibly difficult,” Lipinski said. “There will be a lot of interesting politics going on in the House as Speaker Pelosi tries to keep both the left flank and the right flank of the Democratic Party on board for any bipartisan legislation that comes out of the Senate that President Biden really wants to get passed into law.”
He predicted that the Senate will likely be the main engine of legislation in the upcoming term, and that President-elect Joe Biden will likely have a significant role to play both in helping to wrangle House Democrats and in encouraging Democrats in both chambers to moderate their stances.
“The question is going to be how does the House… pass what the Senate passes,” Lipinski said. “President Biden is going to have to step in and really ask the Democratic Caucus in the House to go along with some legislation that probably the progressives are not going to be happy with in the House. And if they don’t, [Democratic leaders will] probably have to reach out to moderate Republicans in the House.”
The House’s approach to Israel going forward will be set in large part by new House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the second aide told JI, but said prior to Meeks’s election that they “don’t anticipate that much will change on the big issues.”
The first House aide also noted that the Democratic leadership “feel a debt of gratitude towards the frontline vulnerable members who flipped the Republican seats [in 2018] upon whose backs we kept the majority” — several of whom voted against Pelosi’s speaker bid in 2019.
While Pelosi is expected to retain the gavel, her position is dependent on the support of a handful of her previous rivals — as of now, she can only afford to lose four votes in the race for speaker, Lipinski noted.
Three of the Democrats who voted against Pelosi in 2019, Reps. Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Jason Crow (D-CO) and Jim Cooper (D-TN), told JI they will vote for Pelosi, while several other members who opposed her last bid lost their seats in last month’s elections.
Two legislators — Reps. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Jared Golden (D-ME) — have publicly said they will not vote for Pelosi, but others have yet to publicly commit either way.
A spokesperson for Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) — who helped lead the insurgency against Pelosi in the 2019 election — did not comment when JI asked if she’d vote for Pelosi in January, and several others have declined to say how they plan to vote.
Following a tough reelection, the Democratic congressman spoke to JI about his victory and close friendship with the incoming secretary of state
April Brady
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ)
It took just over two weeks for Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) to be formally declared the winner in New Jersey’s 7th district election. The Associated Press called the race for Malinowski hours after polls closed, but his sizable lead over State Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., shrank from 28,000 votes to just 5,314 — a 1% margin — by November 24. The first-term incumbent, who beat longtime incumbent Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) by more than 16,000 votes in 2018 is, nonetheless, satisfied with the win.
In an interview with Jewish Insider on the eve of Thanksgiving, Malinowski sounded relieved. “I had a tougher challenge than many people,” said Malinowski, one of roughly a dozen Democrats reelected in districts that went for President Donald Trump. “[The Republicans] really put up a strong opponent, spent a lot of money. So I feel like we overcame a lot.”
Malinowski is also grateful that during his second term, he will serve both in the House majority and alongside a White House he feels he can work with, opening the door to collaborate on issues important to the New Jersey congressman.
President-elect Joe Biden’s recently announced pick for secretary of state, Tony Blinken, added to the New Jersey congressman’s excitement. Malinowski and Blinken are longtime colleagues, having both served together under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The pair were also teammates on the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington, D.C.’s indoor soccer team.
Last week, when reports emerged that Blinken had been nominated to be the country’s top diplomat, Malinowski tweeted a picture of the team after their only championship win, from the the winter of 2005, with the caption, “[Blinken] will be joining the best foreign policy team since this one… which was undefeated!”
“You don’t realize. This is a great honor for you,” Malinowski gleefully bragged in his JI interview. “You are talking to the goalie of the D.C. Jewish community center championship indoor soccer team.”
“We were just awesome. We were just so good,” Malinowski said of his team, which also included former Obama administration officials Robert Malley and Philip Gordon.
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and Anthony Blinken on the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington, D.C.’s indoor soccer team in 2005. (Twitter)
Malinowski first met Blinken at the State Department in the Clinton administration during the tenure of former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Malinowski was Christopher’s speechwriter, while Blinken worked in the European Bureau. In 1994, Blinken left Foggy Bottom to become Clinton’s chief foreign policy speechwriter and director for speechwriting at the National Security Council, a role Malinowski took over four years later.
Malinowski shared with JI that while serving in the Clinton White House, he and Blinken “teamed up” to write “parody versions of famous songs, where we changed the lyrics to make fun of our foreign policy” and “directed a couple of self-parody movies together.” When pressed, Malinowski declined to leak the revised lyrics or share footage of the films — at least not before Blinken’s Senate confirmation.
The two friends later “revived the band” when they served together in the State Department under Obama.
“Tony and I share a sense of humor about the world, a belief that the more serious your job, the more important it is to find some humor in it,” Malinowski explained.
Blinken is “a great diplomat,” Malinowski said of his close friend. “He has the right personality for the job. He will be a good leader for the people at the State Department who have been disparaged and dismissed by the current [Trump] administration.”
“I think this is the first president in my lifetime who is appointing, from my point of view, the perfect person for every job,” Malinowski added, speaking more broadly about Biden’s key administration appointments.
Malinowki said that both Blinken and Jake Sullivan, who was tapped as Biden’s national security advisor, “are strong believers in the idea that American power comes from American principles, and that there has to be a moral component to our foreign policy if we are to advance our interests effectively. They both have a tendency to challenge conventional wisdom. They are comfortable with being challenged by others, and I think they’ll always tell the president what he needs to hear, not just what he wants to hear.”
Even if Republicans maintain control of the Senate following two Georgia runoffs in early January, Malinowski predicted a smooth confirmation process for Biden’s foreign policy team. “I’m sure the Republicans will suddenly rediscover their obligation to conduct oversight now that there’s a Democratic president,” he quipped. “But so far the people Biden has nominated are people who enjoy broad bipartisan respect in Washington.”
The Democratic congressman — who was endorsed for his reelection bid by J Street, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and Democratic Majority for Israel — sought to reassure supporters of Israel that as the chief diplomat representing the Biden administration, Blinken “is always going to listen” on issues affecting Israel. Malinowski also noted that there are “few leaders in the Democratic Party, or any party, who will be more grounded in a traditional American approach in support for Israel security, who understand more clearly the moral and historical basis for America’s relationship with Israel.”
“And if you come to him with a thoughtful and principled argument, he’s going to hear you out,” Malinowski emphasized, “Tony’s not an ideologue. He’s not insecure in the way I think [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo was.”
Still, Malinowski cautioned that the Israeli government “has to understand that there are going to be significant changes” in the Biden administration’s approach in the Middle East, particularly toward Saudi Arabia. “I think it would be a very serious mistake for the Israeli government to think that they can somehow shield a guy like [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] from that change, solely because he has — for pragmatic and self-interest reasons — moved closer to the Israeli perspective on some issues,” Malinowski warned. “This is an administration that is going to care about human rights, for example. It is going to care about the plight of civilians in Yemen. It’s not going to tolerate governments in the Middle East that kidnapped and chopped to pieces journalists,” referencing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
According to Malinowski, the recent secret meeting between bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is not an alignment that is in Israel’s medium- to long-term interests.”
“This is the administration that will be very pro-Israel,” he continued, “but that alignment has to be disentangled from our relationship with Gulf states that have been behaving in many ways that are directly contrary to U.S. interests.”
The former congressman is poised to represent the historically conservative 50th district of California, which includes a large swath of San Diego County
AP Photo/Gregory Bull
Former congressman Darrell Issa listens during a news conference Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019, in El Cajon, California.
After a brief spell in the political wilderness, Darrell Issa, the former longtime California congressman and car alarm magnate, is now preparing to rejoin his Republican colleagues in the House — and he wants to make clear that he hasn’t gotten rusty in the interim.
“I’m just a little bit more refreshed,” he said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Friday.
The past two years have been unusually sedate for the 67-year-old Issa, who established a reputation as one of the Obama administration’s most dedicated adversaries during his combative tenure chairing the House Oversight Committee, where he led the Benghazi investigation. In 2018, however, he gave up the fight, relinquishing his seat in California’s 49th congressional district when it looked as if he would lose to a Democrat — ending a nearly two-decade run in the House.
Issa had set his sights on the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, thanks to an appointment from President Donald Trump in 2018. But his nomination was stonewalled in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by ranking member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) over an FBI background check, and he was never confirmed. “I think Bob Menendez was just looking to get a pound of revenge,” Issa speculated in an interview with JI last March.
If Issa is still sore about losing the post, he also sought to convey the impression that he had by no means been defanged. “I was supposed to have a hearing, and Sen. Menendez blew up the hearing,” he said on Friday afternoon. “I went back to the White House the following day and told the president I thought I should switch to holding this seat for my party, and he agreed.”
The congressman is poised to represent the historically conservative 50th district of California, which includes a large swath of San Diego County. Issa was accused of opportunism as he campaigned in a district that sits adjacent to his old one, but he said his priorities have always remained the same and rejected the notion that congressional lines had much meaning.
“The idea that you represent some very fine lines drawn by some gerrymandering authority, I think, just wouldn’t be appropriate,” he said. “I think anyone would say, wait a second, you represent your country first, your state second and a region third.”
Despite polling that suggested Issa would have a close race, he prevailed over his Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, by more than eight percentage points in the November 3 election.
Issa, for his part, said he never doubted that he would defeat Campa-Najjar — who told JI that he is now planning to write a book about his complex relationship to his late Palestinian grandfather’s alleged involvement in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. But Issa nevertheless acknowledged that he had to fight for the seat after a contentious primary battle that hobbled him leading into the general election.
“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, and I’m not, to know that when $5 million is spent bashing you in the primary you have some work to do in the general to fix that,” he said, alluding in part to an attack ad from American Unity PAC that took aim at some of his past statements on Israel. “It’s not only not my first rodeo,” he added, “but it’s not the first time the bull threw me either.”
The general election battle was also strained as Issa and Campa-Najjar, both of Arab descent, took turns attacking one another over, among other things, their fealty to Israel — even though, according to questionnaires solicited by JI, they hold largely the same views when it comes to the Jewish state.
While Issa, whose paternal grandfather was born in Lebanon, accused his opponent without evidence of being against a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Campa-Najjar charged that Issa had called Israel an “apartheid state” and expressed sympathy for Hezbollah.
Issa has denied the allegations, noting that some of his comments have been taken out of context. “Whether someone agrees with me or not, I have two things I’m consistent about,” he said. “I’m an unapologetic supporter of Israel, and I’m willing to go and meet with any leader any time to be better educated without necessarily agreeing with them, but at least hearing them out.”
During his time in Congress, Issa noted, he met with Muammar Gaddafi as well as Yasser Arafat and Bashar al-Assad. “I’m not afraid to listen to people that I disagree with in the hopes that they will listen to me and their ways will be changed.”
It was such an attitude, Issa believes, that allowed the Trump administration to broker historic normalization deals with Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, which he supports enthusiastically. “For Jared Kushner and the rest of the team,” he said, referring to Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, “it happened because they believed in it and because they were willing to go anywhere, meet with anyone, to try to achieve it.”
Issa supports a two-state solution and claims that he is “perfectly willing” to engage in good faith with the Palestinian Authority, but he is doubtful that he will be able to do that in the immediate future. “I view these normalizations as an opportunity for the Palestinians to say we would like to normalize relations, let’s sit down and really make that effort anew, and do it sooner rather than later,” he said. “But so far, I see no movement.”
He amended his remark by pointing out that he has seen “a lot of good people within the Palestinian community who want to go a different way.” But, he added, “I don’t see a Palestinian Authority that’s geared to do it, and obviously, as long as Hamas is funded, and well-funded, by Iran, and Hezbollah is still a reality, I’m not sure where we go except to have those conversations and tell them that these are the changes that are needed if they’re going to enjoy what they tell us is their goal.”
President Donald Trump greets Rep. Darrell Issa at a White House event on August 14, 2017. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Though he was initially cold to Trump at the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign, Issa has since embraced the president wholeheartedly (and the feeling is apparently mutual). In conversation with JI, he singled out Trump’s approach to Israel for praise, commending his decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“President after president promised to move the embassy to the building we built for that purpose,” Issa said. “Even though it was called a consulate, that building was built to be the embassy just waiting for a president to issue the order.”
Issa refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election, even as the president’s increasingly desperate legal efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters have been struck down in the courts and condemned by a smattering of Republican leaders.
“We don’t know the outcome of the legal battles, so I don’t want to be presumptuous beyond what’s fair, but I think the one thing that we can know is that President Trump has grown the party,” Issa said, citing the president’s strong showing with Latino voters this cycle. “He’s given us an opportunity to continue reaching out to people who became Trump voters.”
Still, Issa seemed willing to allow for the possibility that Trump wouldn’t be in the White House next term. “I would be much happier if President Trump prevails in these legal challenges,” Issa said, “but for a moment, assuming he didn’t, then our job is to work with the president but not to work for the president.”
One issue on which he isn’t willing to budge is the Iran nuclear deal. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to return to the agreement brokered by his old boss, former President Barack Obama, and which Trump abandoned in 2018. But Issa, who described Iran as “an existential threat to the region,” said that he would fight to keep the United States out of it.
“The undoing of that agreement, and the successes based on a much closer relationship with Israel and asking for and getting Arab nations to come to the table, has worked,” he said. “So, with all due respect if Biden becomes president, the failed policies of President Obama should not be considered for a return. I mean, they’re just that, they’re proven to have failed, versus the policies that have gotten us a lot further down the peace trail.”
That isn’t to say he doesn’t envision reaching across the aisle on occasion. Issa expressed admiration for some Democratic members of his California congressional delegation, including Reps. Juan Vargas (D-CA) and Scott Peters (D-CA). On foreign affairs, he said, “Juan and I see eye-to-eye with some frequency, and Scott and I have done immigration reform and other issues together.”
On the Republican side, Issa said he is looking forward to reengaging with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as well as minority whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). “They early on endorsed me and supported me,” Issa said, “and that makes a difference when it’s not a close call in the beginning.”
Issa told JI that the leading Republicans on the three House committees he previously sat on — including judiciary, oversight and foreign affairs — have all asked him back. “The intent,” he said, summarizing his approach as he readies himself for a new term in Congress, “is to return to the committees of jurisdiction I’ve historically been involved with and continue a lot of the work that I was doing on transparency.”
“I always tell people, the idea that you’re going to do something new after 18 years — the only thing new is that two years of sitting on the sidelines, waiting to be confirmed, gave me a perspective,” he said. “But it’s not going to change the basic goals that I had when I was in Congress.”
The letter, led by Rep. Mark Pocan, was signed by more than 40 Democratic members of Congress
USDA
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI)
A letter sent by several dozen congressional Democrats to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week raises concerns about the Israeli government’s demolition of a Palestinian Bedouin community earlier this month.
The Israeli government demolished the Khirbet Humsah village in the West Bank, displacing 73 Palestinians, in early November. The Israeli military claimed the settlement was illegally constructed in a firing range in the Jordan Valley.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) urges Pompeo, who is visiting Israel this week, to communicate U.S. disapproval of the demolition to the Israeli government, and push the Israeli government to cease similar actions going forward.
The letter — which describes the demolition as “a serious violation of international law” and a “grave humanitarian issue” — also requests information on whether Israel used military equipment it received from the U.S. in the demolition.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), one of the letter’s signatories, told Jewish Insider he signed on because he sees the Israeli government’s actions as impediments to peace.
“I think these Israeli demolitions bring us further away from a two-state solution at a time when we need to see both sides moving in the opposite and more peaceful direction,” Lowenthal said. “We do not believe the U.S. should support, directly or indirectly, any action which undermines a two-state solution.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) characterized Pompeo’s failure to address the demolitions as particularly concerning given his upcoming visit to a West Bank settlement.
“For the secretary of state to visit the West Bank without even acknowledging the home demolitions, that’s counter to American values and our framework for a two state solution,” Khanna said. “The only way we’ll make progress in the region is by standing up for both Israel’s security and the human rights of Palestinians.”
Other notable signatories include Reps. Joaquín Castro (D-TX) — a candidate for the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairmanship — Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Nydia Velázquez (D-NY).
The outgoing congressman, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, reflects on his recent electoral loss and decades-long tenure in the House
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., walks through the Hall of Columns at the Capitol as House Democratic chairs gather for a meeting with Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in Washington, Wednesday, March 27, 2019.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) admits that he has some regrets about his performance in the June 23 Democratic primary, when the 16-term congressman lost in an upset to Jamaal Bowman, the former Bronx principal and political upstart who is heading to Congress next year.
“There are always things you would have done differently, things that you see that might have been changed,” Engel explained in an interview with Jewish Insider on Tuesday. “I think we should look to the future. I can’t change the past. I’m obviously disappointed that I didn’t win reelection.”
Engel said there was “absolutely no indication beforehand” that he should have worried about the race, but he offered one explanation for why Bowman may have beaten him by double digits. “We had these terrible killings, George Floyd and whatever, and that seemed to stir the pot,” Engel said, alluding to mass protests against police brutality that took place over the summer and appear to have given momentum to a number of progressive candidates. “I think that played a role in this race.”
As Engel prepares to step down, the congressman, who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, reflected not only on his recent electoral loss but also his decades-long tenure in the House. “I’ve been in Congress for 32 glorious years,” he said. “I grew up in a Bronx housing project. We didn’t have much money, and we didn’t have any contacts.”
Engel, 73, still seemed somewhat gobsmacked that he had managed to get elected to Congress in 1989, and that he had risen through the ranks to become chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a position he achieved in 2019 and which, coupled with his strong support for Israel, he views as one of the crowning accomplishments of his legacy.
“I said when I ran that I would be the best friend that Israel ever had in Congress, and I think that I have kept up that bargain,” he told JI, adding his belief that the U.S.-Israel relationship is in better shape than ever. “It’s no longer built on security and cultural ties, but on economic ties and cooperation in every sector, supported not just by Jewish Americans but by all Americans, or many Americans, and Israel is a strategic partner in every sense of the word.”
The recent normalization deals between Israel and Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, according to Engel, have positively changed the geopolitical calculus in the Middle East. “It used to be where the Palestinians blocked everything,” he said. “They complained and whined and cried that they weren’t being treated fairly, and then when we tried to get together to treat them fairly, they rejected everything we did.”
“The old fights are really antiquated,” Engel said. “I would always talk to the Arab leaders and say, ‘You and Israel sound very much alike, why do you continue to be enemies?’And I think that the Arabs are finally realizing this, and that’s why you’re having diplomatic relations with all these different [Arab] countries.”
The congressman added his belief that U.S.-Israel relations would be in good shape going forward, and that both parties would be able to work together in a bipartisan manner, at least with regard to the Jewish state.
“We have a situation now where, if you think of one thing where there’s bipartisan consensus, it’s Israel,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that everybody feels the way I feel. I mean, I think that Israel is one of our most important strategic partnerships, and I think that people understand that the relationship is very important. I don’t like when one side tries to politicize. It’s a nonpartisan issue, and I think it shouldn’t be used as a political football.”
Bowman, 44, has called for conditioning aid to Israel, which Engel regards as foolhardy. “We support Israel because Israel supports us, and we have values that we stand for, and Israel stands for the same values,” Engel told JI. “So to treat our closest friends the way we would treat our adversaries and condition aid on this or that is just ridiculous. It’s just absolutely ridiculous. And if people are going to push that, I don’t think it’s going to pass.”
Engel said he had called Bowman after the primary to congratulate him on his victory and to wish him good luck, but that otherwise, the two haven’t spoken. “I know that some of the things he’s been saying about Israel or whatever are inaccurate and just plain wrong, and I hope that he takes the time to learn the issues, so that he wouldn’t make the statements that he has made,” Engel said. “That’s really not helpful to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2011. (Facebook)
Engel is leaving Congress during a tense moment for the Democratic Party as moderate candidates in swing districts have butted heads with progressives over messaging on issues like defunding the police and socialism. For his part, Engel hopes that such “infighting” will “fall by the wayside” and that Democrats can work together to achieve what he described as shared goals around job creation and raising the federal minimum wage.
“By and large, there’s not that much difference between members of Congress,” Engel said, while cautioning, “I do think that we have to be careful. You talk about defunding police or any of these other things, they are not correct, in my opinion, and they are not good issues for the country and we need to be careful. We need to show people that we want to have a big tent. I think that’s important. And we want to show people that they can feel comfortable in the Democratic Party.”
“Of course, there are going to be different people who are going to have different ideas on different things,” Engel added. “We need to be careful, that’s all. A freshman in New York is different than a freshman in middle America somewhere. So we need to be doing everything we can to help get our new people reelected, not fighting and then insisting that people pass some kind of purity test.”
In the last six weeks of his final term, Engel told JI that he is most focused on helping his constituents as the coronavirus pandemic enters a third wave.
While a number of Democratic congressmen are vying to succeed him in the Foreign Affairs Committee — including Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and Brad Sherman (D-CA) — Engel declined to offer his endorsement.
“I’ve stayed out of it because I think it’s not right for me as I’m leaving to say who I want to replace me,” he told JI. “I think they’re all capable people doing it. I’ve done lots and lots of things with Gregory Meeks through the years, we both represent districts in New York. Brad Sherman has been a good friend. So, we have competent leadership.” (He did not mention Castro in his appraisal.)
As for his next move, “I figured I would let the term end, and then I would sit down and try to figure out what makes most sense for me,” he said.
“I know one thing I’m not going to do is retire.”
Engel did express an interest in joining President-elect Joe Biden’s administration, but was vague on details.
“That’s certainly something I’d consider. People have said to me, would you want to be an ambassador, would you want to be an undersecretary?” Engel told JI without going into specifics. “I’ll see. When Congress ends, I’ll step back and I’ll see what makes most sense for me. I still want to contribute.”
Asked if he had any plans to challenge Bowman when his term expires in two years, Engel was tight-lipped. “I think it’s really too early to see,” he said, adding, “Let’s look at him and let’s see what he does. There are lots of people that I didn’t care for who turned out to be good and a lot of people I liked who turned out to be not so good.”
“Let’s see who he reaches out to,” Engel said of Bowman. “I made it a point to reach out to everyone. Hopefully, he’ll do the same, and we’ll see. That’s the last thing on my mind, worrying about what’s going to happen in two more years. I think that we have a lot of work to do now.”
The newly elected congresswoman says 'it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild' foreign relationships post-Trump
Gerry Broome/AP
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC)
As the first woman to chair the Jewish Federations of North America, Congresswoman-elect Kathy Manning (D-NC) is no stranger to big jobs. But during orientation for newly elected members of the House of Representatives — which began last week — she’s come to terms with just how busy her schedule as a congresswoman will be.
“One of the things I’ve learned is how precious a commodity my time will be,” Manning said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Tuesday afternoon. “Because there’s so much to get done, and so many ways to approach the problems that we want to solve for the American people. So managing my time is going to be a challenge.”
With her limited time, Manning said her top priority is to assist in efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic, but she’s also eyeing a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in part because of her commitment to and “deep knowledge” of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
“Being on that committee would allow me, I think, to stand up for what I believe is such an important relationship,” she said.
“The other reason I find that committee interesting is that President [Donald] Trump had done a lot of damage to the relationships with our allies around the world,” Manning continued. “And it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild those very important relationships. And I wouldn’t mind being part of that work.”
Although all incoming members of Congress are meeting together at orientation events, bipartisan cooperation for the incoming class may be hampered by coronavirus concerns.
“It’s been a little difficult to get to know the Republican members in our new class. We are trying to social distance. There have been some different approaches to mask wearing and social distancing that have made it difficult for me to get to know some members on the Republican side,” Manning said.
“On the other hand,” she added, “I have really been able to get to know and bond with the Democratic new members. And that’s been a big advantage.”
Manning was one of a small number of Democrats to flip a Republican-held House seat blue this cycle — although her victory is due in no small part to a court-mandated redrawing of the now-blue district.
Manning seemed relatively sanguine about Democrats’ losses in House and Senate races across the country, noting that many of them were in districts and states that were previously considered reliably Republican.
“They were very, very difficult races. So I think there was always a risk that we would lose some of those seats,” Manning said. “I think the good news is that we won the presidency. And that was the big prize that we were all hoping we would be able to accomplish. And we feel great about that.”
The newly elected congresswoman told JI she believes Democrats can shore up their House majority in 2022 by focusing on controlling the pandemic, facilitating better health care access, decreasing unemployment and improving education over the next two years.
Manning’s former colleagues at JFNA say she’s well placed to get things done in Congress.
“I couldn’t be more proud that a former chair, the first woman chair of JFNA, is continuing her service as an elected member of Congress,” JFNA President and CEO Eric Fingerhut, a former congressman, told JI. “It’s a testament to her leadership and that our leaders continue their love of public affairs in the elected realm. I couldn’t be more excited for her, she’ll make a great representative. It’s a moment of great pride.”
If elected, Strickland would be the first Korean-American woman in Congress and the first Black representative from the Pacific Northwest
Courtesy
Marilyn Strickland
In Washington’s 10th congressional district, two Democratic candidates are competing to succeed outgoing Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) in a race that is viewed as representative of the growing ideological rift between moderates and progressives.
Marilyn Strickland, the former mayor of Tacoma, has earned establishment support from local and national leaders, among them two former Washington governors as well as Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Most recently, she was CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, where she led the opposition to a head tax on businesses that her opponent holds up as evidence of Strickland’s fealty to corporate interests.
Meanwhile, Beth Doglio, a community organizer and climate activist who serves in the Washington House of Representatives, has pulled in endorsements from labor groups along with progressive stalwarts like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
“We are running a very good campaign that highlights the differences between myself and my opponent,” Doglio, 55, told Jewish Insider in a recent interview, arguing that her support for such progressive policies as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal stands in contrast to Strickland’s more measured approach to healthcare and the environment.
But in conversation with JI, Strickland rejected the notion that she is on the moderate end of a binary that many have put forth, she suggested, to create false distinctions.
“We love labels because it makes it easy,” Strickland, 58, said in a phone interview earlier this month. “As a woman who is Black and Korean, I’ve been labeled my entire life, or people have been trying to assign a label to me. My lane is left-of-center. There are times when I am very progressive on issues, and there are times when I’m more moderate — it really depends on the needs of the people that I want to represent.”
On Israel and the Middle East, however, both candidates seem to hold relatively similar views that are common among the vast majority of Democrats. Strickland and Doglio both support rejoining the Iran nuclear deal and back a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither candidate has been to Israel, but each expressed a strong desire to visit if elected to Congress. Both say that they do not support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, though the candidates speak differently about the reasoning behind their decisions.
While Strickland worries that BDS could cause damage to Israel’s economy, she believes that it has failed to gain enough traction to do so. Her larger concern is that the movement “paints an inaccurate picture of Israeli life,” she told JI. “It’s antisemitic.”
For her part, Doglio also firmly renounced the movement. “I don’t support what BDS stands for because it would eliminate the Jewish state, which is not a two-state solution,” she said matter-of-factly. Still, Doglio noted that even though she won’t back the movement, she respects BDS as an organizational effort given her background in community activism. “It’s hard for me to take tools out of the toolbox for people who feel strongly about something,” she said.
According to Doglio, many activists in the Evergreen State are supportive of BDS, which she described as a “tough issue” in her community because of a young Washington native, Rachel Corrie, who in 2003 was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while defending Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip. Though a court ruled in 2012 that Israel was not at fault for Corrie’s death — and an appeal also was later rejected — Doglio said the issue is still a raw one at the local level.
“There’s a strong BDS presence in Washington because of that,” she told JI.
Doglio said she has had several discussions with community members as part of an evolving effort to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “There is not a consensus around what a solution looks like,” she said. “The range of views on that within the Jewish community is big, and so I’ve been taking that in and learning as much as I can.”
Doglio, whose Jewish husband has family in Israel, described her “strong connection” to the Jewish state despite never having visited. Doglio said she met with AIPAC about the possibility of going this past December but wasn’t able to make it happen. She told JI that it would be a priority if she is elected.
Washington State Representative Beth Doglio and her family. (Courtesy)
Strickland, though, is the candidate who appears to have garnered more support from the pro-Israel community. Last month, she earned an endorsement from the grassroots advocacy group Pro-Israel America, whose executive director, Jeff Mendelsohn, described Strickland as a “strong champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship” in a statement to JI. “There has never been a more critical moment to elect officials to Congress who support clear and consistent pro-U.S.-Israel policies.”
In her interview with JI, Strickland made clear that she was committed unequivocally to such policies, which she came to support after having spent time with members of the Jewish community in Washington who are pro-Israel. “It has just given me the opportunity to learn a lot more about the history,” she said.
“I have an understanding now that the U.S. and Israel have a deep and abiding commitment to supporting democracies around the world,” she said. “This is a very special relationship between the two nations, and it’s important to strengthen this relationship, to partner, to ensure that we are sharing our goals of peace and free speech and democracy.”
Her own identity as a Black and Korean woman, she added, has led her to feel a “shared experience of bigotry and prejudice” with the Jewish people as antisemitism is on the rise. “We just want to make sure that, as I have the chance to serve in Congress, my door will always be open,” she said, “and I’m going to be a friend of Israel and a friend of people who want to support Israel.”
“At the end of the day, we all want peace and prosperity, and that is both for Israel and for the Palestinians,” Strickland said, noting that that she was currently reading Yossi Klein Halevi’s Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor to gain more insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jessyn Farrell, a member of Seattle’s Jewish community and a former state representative, said that Strickland brought a similar sense of care to her position as Tacoma’s mayor. “She’s been a real leader on issues that Jewish community leaders have focused on,” said Farrell, who has endorsed Strickland.
Former Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland. (Courtesy)
According to Farrell, gun violence is a major concern among Washington Jews after a deadly shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation in 2006 — and as mayor, Strickland passed a resolution supporting universal background checks that Farrell found reassuring. Shortly after President Donald Trump’s election, Farrell recalled, Strickland also reintroduced a resolution to reaffirm Tacoma’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.
“It was important to me to make sure that the people of the city I represented understood that we were not going to waver on treating all people with respect and dignity,” Strickland said.
Doglio, who lives in Olympia, has served as a state legislator since 2017 and for the past 13 years has been a senior advisor and campaign director for Climate Solutions, a nonprofit advocating for clean energy. She announced her bid for Congress in February, joining a crowded primary election.
Strickland would be the first Black representative from the Pacific Northwest and also the first Korean-American woman in Congress if she prevails on November 3. Born in Seoul, Strickland moved to Tacoma with her family in the late 1960s. She was on the Tacoma City Council before being elected as the city’s mayor in 2010 and served in that role until 2018. She announced her candidacy in December 2019, shortly after the incumbent, Denny Heck, said he would retire.
The candidates are vying to represent a district in the western portion of the state that includes the capital of Olympia. There is scant polling in the race, though one internal survey conducted in late August for Strickland’s campaign suggests that she is the favorite, leading Doglio by a margin of 21 percentage points.
“I feel like, win or lose, we’ve raised really, really important issues,” Doglio told JI.
Michael McCann, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Washington, said that Doglio’s support from organized labor has helped her stand apart from Strickland, whose ties to business when she led the Seattle Chamber of Commerce have been an issue in the race.
“That said, the difference on policy issues and ideology are not great,” McCann told JI in an email, “a moderate progressive vs. more progressive.”
The internal poll puts Mace two points ahead of Joe Cunningham
Mace for Congress
A new internal poll shows Republican state Rep. Nancy Mace and incumbent Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) in a statistical tie in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district, despite some indications that the race has been trending toward Cunningham.
The poll of 400 likely voters, conducted by landline and cellphone calls between Oct. 14 and 16, showed Mace with support from 47% of likely voters, compared to Cunningham’s 45%. The poll had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
This poll is a welcome sign for Mace compared to another internal poll three weeks ago, which showed Mace 6 points behind Cunningham, according to a polling memo shared with JI. Yet another poll, commissioned by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released last week, gave Cunningham a whopping 13-point lead.
Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston, told Jewish Insider last week that he expects the final race to be close, predicting a single-digit margin of victory for Cunningham.
The new polling numbers also arrive shortly after Mace announced strong third-quarter fundraising, beating Cunningham by $500,000 and giving her a $500,000 cash-on-hand advantage heading into the race’s final weeks.
‘We know that what may begin as online threats in the virtual world can lead to violence in the real world,’ Rep. Ted Deutch tells JI
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Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL)
A bipartisan group of members of Congress will announce on Tuesday the creation of a new global inter-parliamentary task force to combat digital antisemitism.
Members of the task force include Reps. Ted Deutch (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), along with elected officials from major parties in Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Another member of the panel is member of Knesset Michal Cotler-Wunsh from Israel’s Blue and White Party, the daughter of former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler. In July, Cotler-Wunsh challenged a Twitter spokesperson during a Knesset hearing over the company’s decision not to delete or flag a post by Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that she said was “calling for genocide.” In a May tweet, Khamenei called for “firm, armed resistance” to bring about the “elimination of the Zionist regime.”
In an interview with Jewish Insider, Deutch said the lawmakers coalesced around the issue of online antisemitism because as social media continues to grow, “it’s unfortunately more and more being used to spread hatred and antisemitism. And we know that what may begin as online threats in the virtual world can lead to violence in the real world.”
Deutch said conversations about combatting global antisemitism began when he attended the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem earlier this year, and felt “compelled to move forward” with more action after social media platforms — including Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Google — failed to counter it. “We are aware that there are efforts by multiple groups, and non-governmental organizations who are trying to address this,” Deutch said. “We think that it’s important for elected officials from countries that are experiencing concerning and really upsetting increases in antisemitism to speak out.”
The goals set by the task force, as reviewed by Jewish Insider, include raising awareness about online antisemitism and establishing a consistent message in legislatures across the world to hold social media platforms accountable. The group will also work to adopt and publish transparent policies related to hate speech.
“Always and at this time in particular as we stand united in fighting a global pandemic, another virus rages that requires global collaboration and cooperation,” Cotler-Wunsh said in a statement. “By working with multi-partisan allies in parliaments around the world, we hope to create best practices and real change in holding the social media giants accountable to the hatred that exists on their platforms.”
Deutch maintained that “the power of having a group of elected officials” from different parties across the globe come together on this issue “will highlight the need for action by the companies and the need for action by our respective legislative bodies.” He added: “And most importantly, we hope this will help advance the conversation that’s premised upon the fundamental understanding that we just shouldn’t accept this spread of antisemitism that we’ve seen on social media platforms.”
The Florida congressman told JI that as the group gains traction, its organizers will look to expand “into many more countries.”
Resolution honors Teaneck, N.J., resident Sara Duker — killed in a Jerusalem bus bombing in 1996
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) holds a news conference in the Capitol on Wednesday, December 4, 2019.
A resolution introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) criticizes the Palestinian Authority for payments to terrorists and honors a woman from his district killed in a suicide bombing.
“I think you need to keep a spotlight on this until the Palestinian Authority comes out and renounces martyr payments to terrorists,” Gottheimer told Jewish Insider. “And I just don’t understand why that hasn’t happened. And we need to keep the pressure on to get them to do that.”
Sara Duker, 22, of Teaneck, N.J., was killed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem on February 25, 1996, which also took the lives of 25 other people. Two other Americans were also killed in the attack, and are referenced in the bill, which is cosponsored by Reps. Tom Reed (R-NY) and Max Rose (D-NY).
Gottheimer linked the bill to this week’s divestment referendum at Columbia University. Duker graduated from Barnard College the year before her death.
“The BDS movement, which many, like me, believe is antisemitic, are trying to praise and trying to make it as if the Palestinian Authority is being attacked,” he said. “But actually the Palestinian Authority is the one that continues, as we see in this case, to reward terrorists with payments.”
Gottheimer said he sees a “double standard” at play in this incident and other scenarios involving the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which he said turns “a complete blind eye on rewarding terrorists.”
“The reality is there’s still so much that we must stand up to when it comes to the [Palestinian Authority],” he continued, “and this is just an example of that.”
The resolution calls on the international community to condemn Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists and reaffirms the penalties for such activity as laid out in the Taylor Force Act.
“I think you’ve got to continue to shine a spotlight on the behavior,” Gottheimer said. “And the fact that this individual, this terrorist who killed Sarah Duker — the family’s still getting money every single month while in jail because of the pay schedule. I don’t think people realize that.”
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and Rep. Scott Perry are in a close race to represent the state’s 10th congressional district
Courtesy
The Harrisburg, Penn., Jewish community was shook in early August when the Kesher Israel synagogue was vandalized with a pair of swastikas painted on its entryway.
Following the incident, community members and local officials came together to offer their support. Among those who offered their help to the synagogue were Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who are in the midst of a tight congressional race in the state’s 10th district, which includes Harrisburg.
DePasquale told Jewish Insider that he was angered by the incident, describing his reaction as a “surprise on one hand, but on the other hand not completely shocked.”
“This stuff tragically happens. And sometimes it happens in your own backyard,” DePasquale, who is not Jewish but grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Pittsburgh, said. “We have to do our best to root it out.”
Kesher Israel’s Rabbi Elisha Friedman said that both DePasquale and Perry expressed outrage after the incident.
“That’s exactly the kinds of people that you do want to make sure that they’re very concerned about it and you want them speaking out against it, but on a practical level it was being handled by other government agencies,” he said.
Perry did not respond to JI’s request for comment.
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DePasquale’s congressional run comes after a long career in state-level elected office. He first ran for the state legislature in 2006 on a platform of governmental reform, alternative energy and education reform — DePasquale and Perry entered the Pennsylvania House of Representatives the same year, and both concluded their terms in 2013.
DePasquale emphasized that he has pushed for government accountability throughout his career — he said he was the first legislator to post his expenses online, and, as auditor general, helped clear a backlog of untested rape kits and improved child protection services.
DePasquale is running on a moderate platform against Perry, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus. The House Freedom Fund PAC has contributed nearly $200,000 to Perry’s campaign.
“My style of leadership [is] needed at [the] Capitol. Being tough and fair on both parties,” DePasquale said. “Certainly I’m a proud Democrat, but… I’ve looked out for what is right, not necessarily just what’s right for the Democratic Party. And I thought our nation could use some of that right now.”
Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (Perry for Congress)
He drew a stark contrast between himself and Perry, who he described as “an ideologue that is more focused on representing an extreme ideology as opposed to representing the district.”
Many of the issues on which DePasquale is campaigning are personal to him. His family was never able to obtain health insurance for his younger brother while he struggled with — and ultimately died of — muscular dystrophy.
“At least through all [the Affordable Care Act’s] strengths and weaknesses, that type of situation will not happen for a family member again,” he said. “[Perry] actually voted to take away those protections for people with pre-existing conditions. This fight on healthcare is personal for me.”
The devastation of his brother’s death was compounded by other family tragedies. DePasquale’s father, a Vietnam War veteran, became addicted to painkillers prescribed for gunshot wounds he suffered during the war. To finance his addiction, he sold drugs, eventually landing in prison.
“He actually had to come to my brother’s funeral in shackles,” DePasquale said. “So criminal justice reform, treating drug addiction — these are also high priorities for me.”
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DePasquale visited Israel on a trip with the Philadelphia Jewish Coalition in 2019, while he was in the state legislature. In Israel, the group met with members of the Knesset, military and security officials, small business owners and environmental leaders, among others, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The group also visited areas bordering Gaza and the West Bank.
DePasquale described the trip as “life changing” and “eye opening.”
“I don’t think you can truly appreciate Israel’s challenges until you’re there and you see how close everything is,” he said.
DePasquale added that he also took time away from the group to visit local spots. “Just talking to average everyday folks, whether they were Palestinian or Jewish or whomever else may have been there… the people there desire peace. And they’re exhausted by this and they want it to change,” he said.
DePasquale supports a two-state solution, and believes the United States has a major role to play in brokering such a deal. “The United States needs to make clear not only are we a friend of Israel, but we’ve got to be a fair negotiator among both sides to reestablish credibility,” he said, “so that we can get these sides to the table and try to negotiate.”
DePasquale expressed concern that the U.S.’s credibility as a negotiator has been undermined in recent years by “unilateral actions” that go “well beyond political parties.”
“Our friendship and alliance with Israel is non-negotiable,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean we can’t sit at the table and try to make sure that everyone is negotiating fairly.”
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. (Courtesy)
DePasquale said he works in all aspects of his life — both with his family and in his position as Auditor General — to consistently push back against hate and extremism of all kinds, including antisemitism.
As a member of Congress, he said he would continue these efforts by reiterating his support for Israel and speaking out against those who express antisemitism.
Perry voted in favor of last year’s House resolution condemning antisemitism, but also criticized it at the time, saying it had been watered down.
Members of the local Jewish community praised DePasquale’s stance on Middle East issues, and said he’s been very open to discussing these issues, as well as other topics, with members of the Jewish community.
“I came away being very impressed with his views and his knowledge of the Middle East and Israel issues,” said Arthur Hoffman — a Harrisburg, Pa., attorney who organized a fundraiser for DePasquale. “He’s willingly spoken and been open to anyone approaching him with concerns.”
Both Hoffman and Harvey Freedenberg, another Harrisburg attorney backing DePasquale, praised him as a centrist and as more representative of the district than Perry.
“He is somebody who is very much committed to representing all the people of the district, as opposed to the incumbent, who I think has a very narrow ideology… [that] I think is really out of step with a growing number of people in the district,” Freedenberg told JI.
Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania, a local PAC, also endorsed DePasquale during the primary. “We know he cares deeply about the Jewish community,” Jill Zipin, the PAC’s chair, told JI. “From our view, DePasquale is a man of integrity, he is a man of character, and he is a man who cares about the constituents of [the 10th district.]”
Eric Morrison, a longtime Perry supporter, praised DePasquale’s work as auditor general, but will be supporting Perry again this cycle.
“I’ve known [DePasquale] for a while as well… I hold him in high esteem,” Morrison told JI. “My concern is when you go to Washington, in the House or Senate, you tend to fall into the majority leader, speaker of the house platform regardless.”
Morrison praised Perry’s stance on Israel issues and said Perry has a “fantastic” relationship with the local Jewish community.
“He is very much involved in listening to AIPAC and we have meetings with him, he always avails himself, he wants to listen, he wants to learn,” he said. “He’s a tremendous advocate and ally for issues pertaining to Israel.”
Elliott Weinstein, a member of AIPAC’s national council, likewise described Perry as strong on Israel issues.
“He’s a friend of all of the things that we support,” Weinstein told JI. “He understands the issues that we bring forward to him.”
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Recent polling indicates a tight race heading toward election day in the 10th district, which the Cook Political Report rates as a tossup.
A late August and early September York Dispatch poll of 1,100 voters showed Perry leading DePasquale 44.7% to 38.4%, but 10% of voters said they were undecided. But a poll of 500 voters by GBAO Strategies found the two in a statistical tie, with DePasquale at 50% and Perry at 46%, with a margin of error of 4.4 points.
Monetarily, the candidates are fairly evenly matched — Perry had banked $1.9 million and DePasquale had raised $1.6 million by the end of the June. Both had approximately $990,000 in the bank as of the end of June.
But DePasquale is optimistic.
“We’ve been on the air for three and a half weeks and his first ad went on the air as a negative ad, and we’ve been positive,” he said. “So that lets me know that they know they’re in trouble.”