A notable decrease in the number and frequency of Iranian missile strikes at Israel is the result of a focused strategy of hunting and aiming at launchers, Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, the IDF’s spokesperson for international media, said on Tuesday.

“The missile and launcher hunt is happening in real time,” Shoshani told reporters. “We have been able to narrow [Iran’s] capability to fire missiles toward us. … We are putting our focus on continuing to do so in the coming days.”

“We were able to take out dozens of launchers,” since the operation began on Saturday, Shoshani said.

Shoshani said that Iran currently has “a lack of capability to fire in large amounts” and that there is a diminished rate of fire.

“I’m sure all of you in Israel can feel it,” he added. “We have significantly limited their ability to fire toward our civilians and other civilians in the region.”

At the same time, Shoshani said part of the reduction in missile launchers may be attributed to Iran trying to ensure it can keep the war going over the coming weeks.

The IDF is also prepared for the war to continue for weeks, but “it is early to give estimates,” Shoshani said, adding that “we are in a more positive scenario than [what] we looked at in the beginning of the war.”

Israel has also destroyed hundreds of Iranian missiles, but “launchers, that’s the real thing that’s important,” the spokesperson said.

Shoshani did not have readily available information on how many missiles Iran has shot, because the Islamic Republic attacked several countries in the region and not just Israel.

Asked if he expects Israeli boots on the ground in Iran, following President Donald Trump’s remarks about deploying U.S. ground troops “if necessary,” Shoshani said he does not see such a scenario as realistic for Israel.

Most of the targets the IDF struck were found after Operation Rising Lion began on Saturday, including radar and detection arrays, surface-to-air missile launchers, surface-to-surface missile launchers and related infrastructure, command and control centers, strategic military bases in Tehran, and facilities belonging to the regime’s repression and enforcement mechanisms.

Among those targets was the Iranian regime leadership’s compound in Tehran, which includes the presidential office, national security council and a training facility for military officers.

Israel’s “aerial superiority now allows the IDF to continuously strike the Iranian regime’s terror infrastructure — including its command-and-control centers and other high-value assets — not merely through isolated sorties, but through sustained operations, fundamentally shifting the operational reality in Operation Roaring Lion and enabling the IDF and the Israeli Air Force to operate freely in Iranian airspace,” the military spokesperson’s office said.

About 30 female aircrew members, including pilots and navigators, have taken part in the strikes on Iran in recent days.

Combat Navigator Maj. S, whose name was kept anonymous by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, said that she and her crew “prepared for this operation for a long time — hours of training and briefings.”

Maj.-Gen. Shlomi Binder, the IDF’s intelligence chief, said on Monday, “In 40 seconds, we eliminated more than 40 of the most important people in Iran … and we are not finished. … We intend to add to the list every day.”

“We are sending a very clear message to our enemies — there is no place where we will not find them,” Binder added. “Anyone who chooses to engage in such actions against the state of Israel, against the residents of the state of Israel, against our future here, we will find them, and we will eliminate them.”

As Israeli strikes in Lebanon continue as far north as Beirut, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF will move to “take control of additional strategic positions in Lebanon in order to prevent attacks on Israeli border communities.”

The IDF holds five positions in southern Lebanon, as permitted by the U.S.-negotiated late-2024 ceasefire, and Katz said he “authorized the IDF to advance and secure additional strategic areas in Lebanon, and from there to defend the border communities.”

Shoshani said that while Israel’s main goal is to “remove the existential threat” emanating from Iran, it is doing “we are acting defensively on the northern front in order to focus our effort on Iran.”

He also noted that “Hezbollah’s main lifeline is Iran,” and said that in the last year, Iran sent over $1 billion to its proxies, with Hezbollah getting the majority of the money.

Israel does not plan to evacuate civilians from towns on the Lebanon border as it did in October 2023, though they have been dealing with frequent drone and rocket attacks in recent days, Shoshani said. 

The IDF struck over 70 weapons storage facilities, launch sites and missile launchers in Lebanon on Monday, the military said.

One target was Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters. The IDF killed Hussein Makled, Hezbollah’s chief intelligence official, a role he took on after Israel eliminated his predecessor in November 2024.

The IDF also said it eliminated the commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon, Abu Hamza Rami, who was “responsible for advancing and carrying out hundreds of terrorist attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians.”

Another target was the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association, which Hezbollah has said provides social services to the people of Lebanon. Al-Qard Al-Hassan has been sanctioned by the U.S. and others since 2007, and as such, deals exclusively in cash, which the IDF sought to destroy.

According to the IDF, “the terrorist organization uses these services to create economic dependency on the association and to exploit public funds for the purchase of weapons and the payment of salaries to its operatives.”

Also on Monday, the IDF Home Front Command extended restrictions until Saturday night, including closing schools and nonessential workplaces, and prohibiting large gatherings.

Two major missile barrages hit Israel on Tuesday, with two injured in the first one in Israel’s north, and no casualties in the second. Overnight Monday, Magen David Adom released its final casualty count for an Iranian missile strike on Beersheba, where 21 were injured. Since Operation Roaring Lion was launched on Saturday, there have been at least 371 casualties, including 12 fatalities and two severely injured.

Iran continued its strikes around the Gulf on Monday, with a drone causing minor damage to a U.S. Embassy building in Riyadh. Among the sites damaged by Iranian projectiles were three Amazon facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. 

Trump briefed leaders of two main Kurdish factions in Iraq on what may come next in the war, a step that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had encouraged him to take, Axios reported. Kurdish groups throughout the Middle East have had close security and intelligence ties with Israel for decades. The Kurdistan Freedom Party has also accused Iran of targeting them with missiles and drones.

President Donald Trump posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on Monday to Army Master Sgt. Roderick “Roddie” W. Edmonds, a World War II soldier whose defiance of a Nazi order saved more than 200 Jewish American prisoners of war.

“In 1941 Roddie Edmonds of Knoxville, Tenn., enlisted in the U.S. Army and soon rose to one of the youngest master sergeants in the military,” Trump said during the White House ceremony. “In 1944, he sailed to Europe to fight in World War II … and soon found himself on the front lines of the Battle of the Bulge.”

During the battle, Edmonds and his unit were captured by German forces and interned at Stalag IXA, a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. As the senior non-commissioned officer among more than 1,200 American POWs, Edmonds was responsible for the welfare of his fellow soldiers.

Trump recounted the pivotal moment that would define Edmonds’ wartime legacy: on January 26, 1945, an SS officer ordered “only American Jews” to assemble for roll call the next morning, warning that anyone who disobeyed would be shot. 

“There were more than 200 Jewish American soldiers in the camp,” Trump said. “Roddie knew their separation from the group would mean certain death, so that night, he summoned his team and devised a plan.”

Edmonds directed his senior leaders to have all 1,200 American prisoners present themselves for roll call. The next morning, the American soldiers “fell in line together, shoulder to shoulder.” The action enraged the Nazi commandant, who Trump said “pressed the barrel between Sgt. Edmonds’ eyes,” and demanded that Edmonds identify the Jewish soldiers or be shot. 

“Staring right back into the raging face of evil, Sergeant Edmonds replied fearlessly: ‘We are all Jews here,’” said Trump. Edmonds also invoked the Geneva Convention, warning the commandant that executing prisoners for refusing to identify their religion would constitute a war crime.

“The Nazi officer lowered his weapon and the soldiers erupted,” said Trump. “With total disregard for his own life, Roddie had saved over 200 of his fellow service members and their camp was liberated two months later.” 

Edmonds’ actions have been recognized as extraordinary moral courage. In 2015, Israel’s Yad Vashem awarded him the title Righteous Among the Nations, the highest honor for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Edmonds is one of only five Americans on that list and the sole U.S. serviceman so honored.

Edmonds died in 1985 without ever having received official recognition for the actions that saved hundreds of lives. In fact, the events had remained unknown, even to his family, until uncovered decades later by his son, Chris Edmonds. 

More than eight decades later, Trump said the Medal of Honor “so courageously earned” by Edmonds will not be forgotten. Edmonds’ son accepted the medal on his father’s behalf.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Thursday rejected the suggestion from some in the Arab world that the deaths of civilians in Gaza does not align with Christian values. Graham made the comments during an appearance on an episode of the “On The Record” podcast with Hadley Gamble, while discussing how Israel’s war in Gaza had impacted regional stability in the Mideast and delayed normalization efforts with the Saudis.

“I just don’t buy that at all, because what did we do in World War II? Did we think for one minute about starving the Germans? Did we bomb every city into smitherreens?” Asked if that meant he was comparing Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on the Jewish state to how the U.S. responded in World War II, Graham responded affirmatively.

“This is an absolute, existential threat to the Jewish people. What happened on October the 7th was 1,200 people were slaughtered, raped and murdered, and filmed by radical Islamists who would kill every Jew if they could.”

Gamble then pressed Graham on Israel “flattening Gaza,” which the South Carolina senator said he took no issue with.

“Just flatten it. We flattened Berlin. We flattened Tokyo,” Graham said. “Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror? Were we? In my view, if I were Israel, I would have probably done it the same way. Without military victory, there is no hope of breaking radicalism. We flattened Germany. We flattened Japan.”

“It’s a TV war. We didn’t have TV in World War II. The behavior of the United States was to pursue total destruction of the enemy. That was our behavior. Take Tokyo and Berlin,” he added. “Those people who are trying to say this is just another conflict, it’s not another conflict. It’s existential to the Jewish state.”

Graham, who is in the Middle East for meetings with Israeli, Emirati and Saudi officials, also criticized Saudi Arabia for “attacking the United Arab Emirates pretty viciously for being in the Abraham Accords” and questioned assertions that the kingdom’s ongoing dispute with the Emiratis was solely based on differences in Sudan and Yemen. 

“Saudi Arabia is now moving backward. They’re attacking the United Arab Emirates pretty viciously for being in the Abraham Accords,” Graham said. “There is no good reason for this. You can have disputes about Sudan and Yemen, but they’re basically declaring war.”

Asked if he believed the dispute “is all about Israel,” Graham replied: “I don’t know what this is about. I know the consequences. [Mohammed bin Zayed], the president of the United Arab Emirates, I’m going to meet him, you could not ask for a better partner. You could not ask for a better partner than the United Arab Emirates. They’ve stuck with the Abraham Accords through Gaza.”

In a post on X after his meeting on Thursday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Graham praised the kingdom while acknowledging his concerns about achieving normalization with Israel. 

“The Crown Prince is dealing with the aftereffects of October 7 like all leaders in the region, particularly with the tremendous loss of life in Gaza,” Graham wrote. “Having said that, his vision for the region is for conservative Islam to coexist — with tremendous economic opportunity — for the people of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, and the entire world. He is the first Arab leader in modern history that’s expressed a vision not only for the faith, but for economic empowerment that is simply stunning when absorbed, and will set the tone for the region for generations to come.”

Graham criticized Gulf state opposition to regime change in Iran over fears about potential fallout as politically weak.

“That is a short-sighted view of the problems you face over here,” he said. “You’ve got domestic problems, so do I. I’ve got domestic problems. It’s probably better for me to be at home than it is here, so I don’t have a lot of tolerance anymore for people having to make uncomfortable decisions, because I have to make them all the time.”

Pressed on Saudi concerns about oil prices and regional instability, Graham said all of the Gulf states needed to “suck it up.”

“I’m telling everybody over here to suck it up. You’ve got to suck it up to bring about real change. Real change doesn’t come without sacrifice. Now, this region is going to change one way or the other,” Graham said. “There are two scenarios. … The inflection point is weeks away, not months away. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I haven’t slept, because it’s either going to go really good or really bad.” 

Later Thursday, Graham warned in a post on X that the U.K. should not deny the U.S. the ability to use British military bases to attack Iran. 

“If it turns out to be true that Britain is denying the United States the ability to use British bases against Iran if there is a necessity for an attack – it would be beyond surprising,” Graham tweeted. “I’ve been a military lawyer most of my adult life. What they’re saying about the status of Diego Garcia, the joint US-UK military base, is a huge question.”

“To my friends in Britain, sitting this one out puts you on the wrong side of history and is yet another example of how much our alliances throughout Europe have degraded,” the tweet concluded.

South Africa and Israel banished each other’s highest-ranking diplomat serving in each country, after a video of Israel offering water technology and medical aid to minority tribes angered Pretoria last week.

The diplomatic row took place days before Congress is expected to vote on renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which would allow many products from the continent to enter the U.S. duty-free. The Trump administration has considered removing South Africa from the program because it is a “unique problem,” as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer described it in December. Removal from AGOA would adversely affect about half of South Africa’s exports to the U.S., its second-largest trading partner, Bloomberg reported.

Pretoria declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata on Friday, and hours later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar expelled South African envoy Shaun Edward Byneveldt, whom they called “the senior diplomatic representative of South Africa.” Byneveldt is South Africa’s “ambassador to Palestine,” but he was based in Tel Aviv, and diplomats serving the Palestinians are accredited by Israel.

Israel and South Africa have not exchanged ambassadors in recent years. South Africa announced in 2019 that it had downgraded its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office. Israel maintained an ambassador in Pretoria until South Africa petitioned the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in 2023.

However, with an active Jewish community of over 50,000, Israel has dispatched Amb. David Saranga, the Foreign Ministry’s director of digital diplomacy and a former ambassador to Romania, to be a kind of ambassador-at-large, visiting South Africa for specific meetings and projects. 

Saranga visited South Africa’s Eastern Cape last Sunday, as a guest of King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, the monarch of the AbaThembu people. The group is part of the Xhosa nation, the second-largest tribe in the country. Dalindyebo had visited Israel weeks earlier. The largest tribe, the Zulu, dominates South African politics through the African National Congress, the largest party in the country’s parliament.

In a post on X, Saranga characterized the Eastern Cape as “a region rich in heritage, poor in infrastructure,” noting that in some areas, “access to clean drinking water remains a luxury rather than a given” and “healthcare challenges are equally severe.” Saranga helped arrange partnerships between Innovation:Africa, Israel’s Sheba Hospital, Dalindyebo and other traditional leaders in the region. 

Saranga and Dalindyebo held a joint press conference with other traditional leaders outside the tribal leader’s home during the Israeli diplomat’s visit last week, videos of which were posted to social media by the Israeli embassy. In one of them, Dalindyebo said of the South African government’s opposition to cooperation with Israel: “They can go to hell if they wish.” Saranga can be seen chuckling next to him. 

“As a king, I am a bona fide head and owner of the land. If any government, if any constitution disputes that, someone must educate me afresh,” Dalindyebo said, asserting his authority to accept aid from Israel if he so chooses.

Days later, the Eastern Cape province’s premier, Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, expressed “shock and concern” that Israel acted without consulting his office, calling it “a clear breach of diplomatic protocol.” Israel argued to the South African Jewish Report that it was acting within diplomatic norms. 

On Friday, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) gave Seidman a 72-hour deadline to leave the country following what it called “unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa’s sovereignty.” According to DIRCO, the violations included a failure to inform the department of visits by “senior Israeli officials” and insults to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on official Israeli social media accounts.

South African political news site The Common Sense reported that the ANC, of which Mabuyane is a member, was “panicked by an Israeli effort to expand a service delivery programme in the Eastern Cape and the positive reception to that programme by communities,” and “feared that positive imagery of ordinary South Africans cooperating with Israelis would be very damaging to the government’s hostile foreign policy towards Israel.” 

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies contrasted DIRCO’s actions against Israel with its “willful blindness toward ongoing international atrocities [in Sudan and Iran] … This glaring inconsistency exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of DIRCO’s actions.” 

“Given the dire lack of basic services for countless South Africans, it is striking that just days after Israel offered water solutions to a desperate community in the Eastern Cape, DIRCO expelled the Israeli charge d’affairs, diverting attention from real domestic issues,” the SAJBD added.

The South African Zionist Federation said that the expulsion of Seidman “is an act of staggering moral bankruptcy — a choice that exposes a ruling party more committed to ideological hostility than to the welfare of the people it has so profoundly failed.”

SAZF argued that DIRCO’s actions were “never truly about process, protocol, or sovereignty.”

“A diplomat was declared persona non grata not for espionage, not for misconduct, not for breaching protocol — but for the unforgivable crime of helping South Africans get water. Clean water,” the organization stated. “In a country where taps run dry, where children walk kilometers with buckets, where elderly women queue for hours at communal pumps, and where the state has normalised collapse, neglect, and decay, the ANC chose to punish the one party actually delivering solutions. … When water flowed where excuses had ruled, the ANC did not respond with humility or gratitude. It responded with expulsion.”

SAZF also accused the government of corruption: “What the ANC cannot tolerate is … aid that bypasses the patronage machine. Help that cannot be claimed, captured, or corrupted. … The message sent by this government is as obscene as it is clear: if assistance cannot be politically owned, it must be destroyed, even if people suffer.”

Representatives 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.”

Tensions escalated between Washington and Jerusalem this week over Israel’s handling of Syria and negotiations for a possible agreement to renew the 1974 ceasefire between the two neighboring countries, with adjustments.

Speaking at The Jerusalem Post conference in Washington on Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, said the time is ripe for Israel and Syria to reach an agreement: “It’s the easiest place to show the world a soft hand and bridge grievances.”

In Barrack’s telling, an agreement between Syria and Israel will only be possible with an immediate, complete Israeli withdrawal from the buffer zone between the countries. The IDF has held the 155-square-mile area since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago, and Israel has sought to withdraw incrementally and remain at the peak of Mount Hermon.

Instead, Barrack said, “Let’s not fight over geography. What we’re concerned about is we’re not going to let Oct. 7 happen ever again,” so the focus should be on demilitarizing the area south of Damascus. “Syria knows its future depends on a security and border agreement with Israel. Their incentive is non-aggressive toward Israel,” Barrack said. However, he added, “After Oct. 7, Israel doesn’t trust anybody. … The Syrians have been unbelievably cooperative.” 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, however, was skeptical in his remarks at the same event: “The gaps between us and Syria have widened. They have new demands. Of course, we want an agreement, but we are further from one now than we were a few weeks ago.”

Since Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa toppled and replaced Assad, Israel has been extremely skeptical about the former leader of Syria’s branch of Al-Qaida, whom Sa’ar and others have branded a “terrorist in a suit.” The concerns have not dissipated over the course of the last year, even as President Donald Trump embraced al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy” with a “tough past” and dropped sanctions, Europe moved towards lifting sanctions, as well, and Abraham Accords countries have accepted him.

“The train has left the station; the whole world accepts al-Sharaa as the legitimate leader of Syria and is ignoring his jihadi background as well as that of the people heading his military – but we can’t ignore it,” Sarit Zehavi, founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on Israel’s north, told JI.

In late November, during an IDF raid on the town of Beit Jinn to arrest two Syrian terrorists, a firefight broke out, leaving 13 Syrians dead and six IDF soldiers injured.

In a celebration of a year since Assad’s fall, the Syrian Army paraded through the streets of Damascus, chanting “Gaza, Gaza, our rallying cry … From your blood I forge my ammunition.” Israel’s bellicose Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli shared the video with the message: “War is inevitable.”  

Zehavi quipped about the celebrations: “I’m not sleeping any better at night. The message is ‘we will save Syria from the Zionist occupation.’ A regime that wants peace doesn’t do these things, nor does a regime that is disconnecting itself from Islamism.” 

Beyond the concerns about al-Sharaa’s jihadi past seeping into the present, Jerusalem is skeptical about the longevity of his regime and the stability of Syria as one, cohesive political entity. 

Shira Efron, distinguished Israel policy chair and senior fellow at RAND, told JI that “the hilltops Israel is holding now in Syria, especially the Hermon, are really strategic, security-wise, and it doesn’t make sense to withdraw when you have a neighbor who is still unstable.” 

Israel is also concerned about the Druze minority in Syria, which has close ties to Israeli Druze, who are an important political constituency and hold prominent positions in the Israeli security establishment. Israel has pledged to protect the Druze in Syria, and the IDF has acted to that end.

“The greater mindset in Israel post-Oct. 7 is that we messed up so badly reading the intentions of an adversary that we are not taking any chances,” Efron said. “We are preemptively taking out their capabilities because we cannot trust their intentions, let alone when we are talking about a controversial figure with a very complicated past – and that’s the understatement of the century.”

While Efron acknowledged that “Israel has valid concerns,” she warned that time is not on its side. She said that Israel may have missed an opportunity to use the leverage it had to reach better terms earlier this year, when al-Sharaa was more eager to reach an agreement, the West had not fully embraced him and Trump was not cracking jokes with him in the Oval Office. 

Now, Zehavi said, “Israel thought it would be able to withdraw [from southern Syria] and stay in Hermon, widen the buffer zone and al-Sharaa doesn’t want either.”

That being said, Efron posited that Israel has room to maneuver within what appear to be the current parameters of the talks, including asking for American guarantees, negotiating timelines for withdrawal with stages conditioned on Damascus keeping its commitments to demilitarize southern Syria and demanding protections for the Druze.

Zehavi, however, said any agreement would be “with someone Israel can’t trust. It can only be based on guarantees. The worst-case scenario would be if, in the end, Syria is an Islamist state with Western support. That is what needs to be prevented.”

More broadly, Efron said, “it doesn’t make sense to get into battles with the Americans” or for Israel to “act like it’s being dragged kicking and screaming into agreements, like we forgot how to use the diplomacy muscle.” She was optimistic that an agreement could “pave the way to water cooperation and maybe further cooperation.”

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar of being a “war criminal” after Sa’ar spoke about connections between Caracas and Iran and the latter’s terrorist proxies. 

Sa’ar made the remarks on Monday in a speech before a joint session of Paraguay’s National Congress in Asunción.

“In South America,” Sa’ar said, “criminals are building narco-terror alliances with the Middle East terror states. The nexus of this network is Venezuela.”

Sa’ar added that Venezuela is driving a destabilizing refugee crisis and serving as a base for Hezbollah terrorists.

In addition, he pointed out that Venezuela hosts an Iranian weapons production facility.

“Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said openly that Venezuela is part of ‘the axis of resistance,’” Sa’ar added, referring to Iran’s partners in terrorism against Israel. “He said that this axis exists in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. When he says this, we should believe him.”

Gil, who represents the Maduro regime, which remained in office despite losing an election last year, used his social media accounts to call Sa’ar “a war criminal and a genocider.” 

“What he should be doing is not mentioning Venezuela, but preparing to stand trial for the crimes his government commits against the Palestinian people,” he said. “The name of Venezuela is too great for your filthy mouth and hands stained with innocent blood.” 

Gil said that Sa’ar represents “the barbarism and systematic violation of all the rules that govern civilized humanity. We don’t care about your opinion … Sooner than later, you will have to answer to international justice.”

Hezbollah is involved in organized crime in Latin America to fund its terrorist operations worldwide. It has long operated in the border area between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, which has a large Lebanese population, and later expanded into Venezuela amid deepening ties between Caracas and Tehran. The Iranian proxy is designated a terrorist organization in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay, but not in Venezuela or other Latin American states.

A new federal lawsuit filed on behalf of families of victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks accuses the crypto giant Binance of knowingly facilitating the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S.-designated foreign terror organizations on an “industrial scale,” helping contribute to the deadly incursion in Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.

According to the complaint, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, “deliberately” failed “to monitor inbound funds” to such terror groups as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ensuring “that terrorists and other criminals could deposit and shuffle enormous sums on the exchange with impunity.”

“Moreover, when specific customers were designated or particular accounts were subject to seizure orders, Binance allowed those customers and accounts to shift the assets into other Binance accounts, thus negating the effect of any ‘blocking’ or ‘seizing’ of the account,” the complaint states.

Such a policy “demonstrates Binance’s deliberate and conscious effort to enable users to operate on the Binance platform and clearly helps facilitate financial crime on an industrial scale,” the filing adds. 

Among the 306 American plaintiffs are the families of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage murdered by Hamas in Gaza; Itay Chen, an Israeli-American IDF soldier whose body was returned to Israel this month; Eyal Waldman, an Israeli philanthropist whose U.S.-born daughter, Danielle, was killed at the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attacks; and Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

“The lawsuit details how Binance knowingly facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars between 2021 and 2023 that helped enable the terrorist organizations responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks,” Gary Osen, an attorney representing the plaintiffs who specializes in civil terror cases, said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “One of our goals is to cast a public spotlight on specific ways in which the Binance platform has been used by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to finance terrorism.”

The 284-page complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota under the Anti-Terrorism Act, targets Binance as well as its founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, and Guangying Chen, a close associate of Zhao whom the lawsuit identifies as the crypto exchange’s “de facto chief financial officer.”

Zhao and Chen could not be reached for comment regarding the lawsuit.

A Binance spokesperson said the company “cannot comment on any ongoing litigation.” 

“However, as a global crypto exchange, we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws, consistent with other financial institutions. For context, the heads of the U.S.Treasury’s FinCEN and OFAC have confirmed that cryptocurrency is not widely used by Hamas terrorists,” the spokesperson told JI in a statement, referring to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Most importantly, we hope for lasting peace in the region.”

The company’s “conduct was far more serious and pervasive than what the U.S. government disclosed during its 2023 criminal enforcement actions,” the complaint says, claiming that Binance “knowingly sent and received the equivalent of more than $1 billion to and from accounts and wallets controlled by the FTOs responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks.”

That figure, the filing states, vastly outnumbers a previous amount of more than $2,000 in known transactions for Hamas disclosed by the federal government in 2023.

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and agreed to step down from his executive role. He served four months in federal prison and was pardoned last month by President Donald Trump. Binance itself also pleaded guilty to federal charges and paid over $4 billion in fines.

Last May, Binance participated in a $2 billion business deal with World Liberty Financial, a new crypto company founded by the families of Trump and Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy.

“To this day,” the complaint states, “there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.”

Citing a complex forensic money laundering analysis, the lawsuit identifies a wide range of Binance accounts with alleged terror links and spanning multiple locales, including Venezuela, Gaza, Lebanon and even North Dakota, where an account connected to Hamas was accessed several times from a small city outside Fargo.

The suit refers to Gaza money exchanges, a gold smuggling operation in South America with ties to Hezbollah and a purported Venezuelan livestock entrepreneur allegedly moving millions of dollars for known terror organizations in the Middle East, among other illicit transactions.

“Every tunnel, every missile, every bullet, every attack is paid for by someone,” Izhar Shay, a plaintiff whose son Yaron died defending Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in Israel on Oct. 7, said in a statement shared with JI. “Companies like Binance cannot keep profiting if they enable terrorists to operate in the shadows. This case is about making sure that those who enabled Hamas’ evil are held to account.”

New Jersey’s largest teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, cut ties with an editor of its magazine on Friday, following criticism from top state officials over her antisemitic and pro-Hamas posts on social media.

Ayat Oraby’s since-deleted posts on X, screenshots of which were viewed by JI, claimed Israel “killed many of its citizens” during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks and voiced her support of Hamas, praising its actions on social media as “resistance,” among other views.  

Oraby, who started at the NJEA Review magazine in August, told the New Jersey Globe, the first outlet to report her termination, that her “intent has always been humanitarian: to stand against the killing of civilians and to advocate for peace. When compassion is politicized, even empathy can be misread.” 

Local Jewish elected officials voiced worry about Oraby’s appointment in October, sending a letter to NJEA with 24 signees, expressing “deep concern.” 

“We are disappointed that no corrective action has yet been taken despite clear evidence and mounting public concern. Words matter and silence in the face of hate speech is complicity,” the signatories wrote. “We strongly urge you to act immediately to remove Ms. Oraby from any editorial or leadership role within the NJEA and to reaffirm the Association’s commitment to ensuring that all educators, students, and families regardless of religion or background can feel safe, respected, and represented.”

The letter followed one sent by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) to the NJEA, also voicing concern.  

“Ms. Oraby has an extremely troubling public record of promoting divisive, violent, and hate-filled rhetoric that has no place in our great state, and that must be addressed immediately,” Gottheimer wrote on Oct. 6. “It is clear that Ms. Oraby should not be involved in any publication sent to New Jersey’s educators or, for that matter, have any role in educating our teachers or children.”

Oraby told the New Jersey Globe that Gottheimer was unfair to condemn her for a post she deleted that compared Israel to Nazi Germany, a claim she said “reflects public opinion and legitimate criticism, not hatred.”

Gottheimer also denounced NJEA earlier this month over its plans for an anti-Israel “Teaching Palestine” session scheduled during the union’s November conference. 

NJEA’s parent organization, the National Education Association, has also faced scrutiny for anti-Israel and antisemitic actions, including a vote, which was eventually overturned, to disassociate from the Anti-Defamation League. 

Antisemitism is on the rise within 20 major U.S.-based professional academic associations, according to a study published Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League.

The research, conducted in September, found that 42% of surveyed Jewish faculty members who belong to an association report feeling alienated because they are Jewish or perceived as Zionist; 25% report feeling the need to hide their Jewish or Zionist identity from colleagues in their association; and 45% report being told by others in their associations what does and does not constitute antisemitism. The data was collected using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.  

Among the associations the report profiles is the Association of American Geographers, which faced pressure from members to adopt a boycott of Israel in August. Other organizations in which the ADL reported antisemitism include: National Women’s Studies Association, American Public Health Association, American Psychological Association and American Educational Research Association. 

A Jewish member of the American Anthropological Association interviewed for the study said that the organization’s 2023 conference, held one month after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, “was one of the first times I felt afraid professionally as a Jewish person. I felt very vulnerable … if I had been wearing a Star of David, which I wasn’t, I would have taken it off. I did not feel safe.” 

“Antisemitic biases in professional academic associations are widespread and reveal a problem that goes far beyond traditional scholarly circles,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. 

“When antisemitism and biased anti-Israel narratives are normalized within these influential spaces, they seep into curricula, research, and public discourse, quietly but profoundly shaping how students and future professionals interpret the world,” continued Greenblatt. “By assessing these associations and how they are responding, we are delineating a path forward to ensure that academic spaces remain intellectually rigorous, inclusive and free of antisemitism and accountable to the public they serve.” 

The report outlines suggestions for reform, based on practices implemented by associations that have successfully mitigated the spread of antisemitism within their organizations. These guardrails include anti-harassment policies and guidelines preventing an association from straying from its stated mission. 

The study follows one published in September by the ADL and Academic Engagement Network that found much of the antisemitism on college campuses is fueled by faculty and staff — both on campus and within professional academic organizations. 

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, who has hosted Holocaust deniers and antisemitic influencers on his podcast, used his address at the memorial for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday to compare Kirk’s assassination to the killing of Jesus. 

The former Fox News host began his remarks to the more than 70,000 people in attendance at State Farm Stadium in Glendale by noting that the political engagement brought on by Kirk’s killing “actually reminds me of my favorite story ever,” before offering an account of how Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. While he never brought up the Jewish people by name, he made references to Jewish culture to suggest that he was referring to the antisemitic trope that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. 

“It’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do: just telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up,’” Carlson said.

“I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him. That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.’ It doesn’t work that way,” he continued.

Carlson, who spoke for just under six minutes, then quoted the beatitude from Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He connected the passage to Kirk’s political message, making the argument that the slain conservative activist “was bringing the gospel to the country. He was doing the thing that the people in charge hate most, which is calling for them to repent.”

“How is Charlie’s message different? Charlie was a political person who was deeply interested in coalition building and getting the right people in office, because he knew that vast improvements are possible politically, but he also knew that politics is not the final answer. It can’t answer the deepest questions, actually, that the only real solution is Jesus,” Carlson said. “Politics at its core is a process of critiquing other people and getting them to change. Christianity, the gospel message, the message of Jesus, begins with repentance.”

Carlson went on to praise Kirk for not having “hate in his heart” and being able to “forgive other people” by following “a call to change our hearts from Jesus,” before acknowledging his own shortcomings.

“Charlie was fearless at all times, truly fearless. To his last moment, he was unafraid. He was not defensive, and there was no hate in his heart. I know that because I’ve got a little hate compartment in my heart, and I would often express that surely about various people,” Carlson said. “He would always say, ‘That’s a sad person, that’s a broken person, that’s a person who needs help, that’s a person who needs Jesus’. He said that in private, because he meant it.” 

Columbia University’s new hire for senior associate dean of community and culture was a signatory of a 2021 letter supporting the Palestinian “indigenous resistance movement” and rejecting the “the fiction of a ‘two-sided conflict.’” He is tasked with leading “meaningful dialogue” in his new position. 

Jonathon Kahn signed on to the “Vassar Community Members’ Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” while a professor of religion at Vassar College. 

“We affirm that the Palestinian struggle is an indigenous resistance movement confronting settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the letter read. It came amid the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, in which at least 13 Israelis were killed by Hamas rocket fire. The open letter also “includes a commitment to academic BDS, which, if put into effect, would restrict the educational opportunities and academic freedom of students and faculty who want to study about or in Israel.” 

In his new role at Columbia, Kahn will “build and lead initiatives that cultivate curiosity, civic purpose and meaningful dialogue — facilitating student engagement with faculty outside the classroom, and helping reimagine what a liberal arts and sciences education can be in the next century,” Josef Sorett, dean of Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education, said in a statement announcing the appointment on Tuesday. 

Columbia University did not respond to an inquiry from Jewish Insider asking whether the school was aware of the petition before hiring Kahn.

The senior associate dean of community and culture role is a new position, created in the wake of increased antisemitism that has plagued Columbia’s campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel.  

Kahn, who has no known social media presence, said in a statement sent to the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday regarding the petition that he is “a Zionist” who “believe[s] deeply in Israel’s right to exist and thrive as a Jewish state” and also “deeply value[s] Palestinian life and Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood.”

“My beliefs are not fully captured in this letter that was authored more than four years ago,” he said. “I didn’t agree with every sentence then, and I still don’t. But I put my name to that letter at a time when I felt in deep disagreement with actions taken by the Israeli government and I wanted to signal my support for the Palestinian civilians who were suffering.”

Kahn’s appointment comes just over a month after Columbia reached a deal with the Trump administration, in which it has to pay a $200 million dollar settlement, to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday that the “case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” adding that he now backs such efforts.

“The thing that we were grappling with throughout all of 2024, which is not the case today, is that Israel was under attack from multiple fronts,” Sullivan, who served under President Joe Biden, told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. “It was under attack from Hezbollah, from the Houthis, from Syria, from Iraq, obviously from Hamas and from Iran itself. So the idea of saying, ‘Israel, we’re not going to give you a whole set of military tools’ in that context was challenging.”

“The case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” Sullivan added. “One, they don’t face the same regional threats. Two, there was a ceasefire hostage deal in place and the ability to have negotiations, and it was Israel who just walked away from it without negotiating seriously. Three, there is a full-blown famine in Gaza. And four, there are no more serious military objectives to achieve. It’s just bombing the rubble into rubble.”

Sullivan, who was tapped as the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School, suggested that the political makeup of the Israeli government could affect the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“If nothing changes in their government — if it continues to be a far-right government that pursues the same policies — then it won’t be the Israel we’ve known,” Sullivan said. “I think a lot of Israelis would say they wouldn’t recognize that Israel. And obviously, that should have an impact on the relationship.”

The unrest could be felt everywhere — in traffic jams, on the airwaves, in WhatsApp groups, even in the waiting room of a dental clinic.

Across Israel yesterday, hundreds of thousands joined a nationwide unofficial strike, led by hostage families and bereaved families, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the immediate release of the hostages still held there. According to the Hostages Families Forum, over 1 million people participated in protests throughout the day. As the government plans to escalate its military campaign against Hamas, emotions ran high across towns, cities and online spaces, deepening a national rift.

Police clashed with demonstrators blocking roads. In Ra’anana, a truck driver was arrested after allegedly attacking a protester. In a Tel Aviv neighborhood mothers’ WhatsApp group, several members condemned local cafés for staying open, while another defended them for “not strengthening Hamas.” At a dental clinic, a man berated staff for opening their doors, shouting, “What about the hostages!?”

At the heart of the tensions is a painful divide: protesters — including the majority of the hostage families — argue that rescuing the captives must come before all else. Meanwhile, the government and its supporters, and even several hostage families, claim such demonstrations weaken Israel’s negotiating hand and embolden Hamas. Israeli President Issac Herzog, speaking at Hostages Square, said “There’s no Israeli who doesn’t want them back home. We can argue about philosophies, but truly, the people of Israel want our brothers and sisters back home.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his government’s stance in a public statement, warning: “Those who are calling for an end to the war today without defeating Hamas, are not only hardening Hamas’s stance and pushing off the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of October 7 will recur again and again … to advance the release of our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel, we must complete the work and defeat Hamas.”

Yet recent polls show that a majority of Israelis support prioritizing the hostages’ release and bringing an end to the war.

Israeli journalist and commentator Ben Caspit wrote on social media: “To join the protest strike, you don’t have to be a leftist. Nor a centrist. Nor a rightist…  You need a heart. There on the left side, between the ribs and the lungs. A beating heart that feels the need to express solidarity with our kidnapped brothers, with their families, with the terrible suffering.”

“And no, don’t believe the spin that it ‘helps Hamas.’ It doesn’t. Hamas doesn’t need strike X or demonstration Y to get to know Israeli society. Hamas knows us very well, just as we know them. They are death eaters. We seek life. That’s the whole difference.”

Meanwhile, Amit Segal — a reporter and political commentator often seen opposite Caspit on Channel 12 — offered a more sober take in his newsletter on Sunday: “While the strike will help many Israelis express their frustration and desperation to bring the hostages home, it won’t bring Israel closer to achieving the very thing they’re protesting for.”

Even if that may be, the protests reach further than home: former hostages have recounted the strength they gained from witnessing the demonstrations on the news while in captivity in Gaza. In Tel Aviv, as night fell, thousands of protesters raised their phone flashlights in Hostages Square and the surrounding streets, creating a moment of visual unity. The sea of lights stretched across the plaza and beyond — a simple gesture that carried a message of solidarity for the hostages still held in Gaza.

At the same time, the wheels of war are already turning. While Israelis grappled with grief, anger and hope in the streets, the military was preparing for its next incursion. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, declared yesterday from the Gaza Strip: “Today we are approving the plan for the next phase of the war.”

“We will maintain the momentum of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ while focusing on Gaza City. We will continue to strike until the decisive defeat of Hamas, with the hostages always at the forefront of our minds,” Zamir said, adding, “Soon we will move on to the next phase” of the operation.

More than 30 anti-Israel demonstrators who occupied a University of Washington engineering building at the end of the spring semester — causing more than $1 million worth of damage — are now being investigated by the university and local attorney’s office for potential criminal charges, Jewish Insider has learned. 

The investigation comes after a recent report put a spotlight on a link between the radical student group that led the takeover and the U.S. designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

“We have taken this incident very seriously, including having issued emergency suspensions for all students who were arrested in the building and working with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on potential criminal charges,” a University of Washington spokesperson told JI on Wednesday, referring to the demonstration in May in which masked demonstrators blocked entrances and exits to the building and ignited fires in two dumpsters on a street outside. 

The newly constructed engineering building had been partially funded by Boeing, which the student protest group, Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), said makes UW a “direct partner in the genocide of the Palestinian people” due to the IDF’s use of Boeing products. Days later, the university suspended 21 students who were arrested during the anti-Israel protests, a marked shift from the school’s reaction to previous anti-Israel activity. 

The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

The Seattle public university’s investigation into criminal charges comes as the Secure Community Network (SCN), a safety and security network for American Jewish communities, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024. 

“The fact that this action was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity is gravely concerning and should be an alarm for the broader community,” Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, told JI. “When foreign terrorist organizations are allowed to infiltrate university campuses the implications are significant and we hope the university leadership will continue to follow-up on this incident seriously and with consequences for those responsible, after appropriate due process.”

Miriam Weingarten, co-director of Chabad UW with her husband Rabbi Mendel Weingarten, said she hoped that those responsible for the damage from the May protest would be “held responsible in a way that would deter any future actions.” She said doing so would help Jewish students feel safe and comfortable on campus, and, in the meantime, “Chabad continues to be open as a space for Jewish students to become more confident in their Jewish pride.”

Kerry Sleeper, SCN deputy director of intelligence and information sharing, warned in June at a congressional hearing about the rise of antisemitism that the terror ties associated with UW demonstrators are part of a larger pattern at protests on campuses around the country — claiming that “this is not a protest in the traditional sense; it is an information and intimidation campaign targeting Jewish students and institutions, often through violent tactics.”  

“These trends are fueled by a persistent ecosystem of anti-Israel networks operating in the U.S. and online,” Sleeper said. “Groups such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, Unity of Fields, and online propaganda hubs such as the emerging ISNAD Network consistently amplify messaging aligned with Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Iranian-backed information operations.” 

“While not all are directly tied to designated foreign terrorist organizations, they help blur the lines between protest and incitement, justifying, glorifying and promoting violence against the Jewish community in the name of Gaza.” 

In a statement to JI, Michael Masters, SCN national director and CEO, said that as students return to campus in the coming weeks, “these threats are not dissipating; they’re evolving.”

“These incidents are not isolated; they are part of a coordinated effort, which has included the circulation of terror toolkits, to intimidate Jewish students and disrupt Jewish life.” 

Masters called for universities to “do more to protect their students and secure Jewish spaces, including allocating the necessary resources and funding for security. Jewish students should never have to choose between their safety and fully participating in campus or religious life.”

The rise of antisemitism has dominated breaking news headlines, films and books in recent years. But two leading journalists noticed a void — a lack of resources in how to address the subject matter with young readers. 

Concerned about what they observed, CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga and Yonit Levi, an anchor on Israel’s Channel 12, joined forces to write Don’t Feed the Lion, a new novel geared towards middle schoolers. 

The book tells the story of three children in Chicago who experience antisemitism firsthand at school when a soccer star makes an antisemitic remark and a swastika appears on a locker. Theo, his sister Annie and their new friend Gabe each struggle with how to speak up and confront hate. 

The book comes as antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment has increasingly impacted K-12 classrooms nationwide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel and ensuing war in Gaza. 

“We approached this project wearing three hats: as journalists who seek clarity, as Jews who feel the weight of history, and as mothers who want our children to live in a world that is kinder and more just,” Golodryga and Levi, both first time authors, told Jewish Insider in a joint statement. 

“Empathy doesn’t happen in silence. We wrote this to help open dialogue between kids, parents, teachers, and communities, especially in times like these,” the veteran reporters said.

Don’t Feed the Lion, published by Arcadia Children’s Books, goes on sale Nov. 11. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to ask the Security Cabinet to back expanding Israel’s military efforts in Gaza, Israeli media reported on Monday.

“We are going to conquer the [Gaza] Strip,” a senior source in Netanyahu’s office told Israel’s Channel 12. “The decision was made. Hamas will not free more hostages without us fully surrendering, and we will not surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will die of hunger and Gaza will remain under Hamas’ control.”

A few caveats: Netanyahu did not use the term conquer or occupy with all of the Cabinet ministers to whom he conveyed his position, according to Israeli public broadcaster KAN. Maariv reported that Netanyahu has not made a final decision yet about whether the IDF should take control of all of Gaza, and noted that legally, he cannot decide on his own without the Security Cabinet. 

“Netanyahu realized … that there is no point anymore in waiting for Hamas [to agree to a deal], and therefore a decision about the next stage of the war must be made quickly,” a source involved in the matter told Maariv. “The dispute now is not about whether to act or negotiate, because a deal with Hamas is no longer on the table. Rather, it’s about how to act without a deal, whether to go for full conquest or for a siege and increased pressure.”

IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir reportedly favors a siege over occupying all of Gaza.

The IDF currently controls about 75% of the Gaza Strip, and the new plan would bring the entire area under Israel’s control. Among the areas the IDF would enter would include Gaza City, where the IDF has not maneuvered in a year and a half, and towns in central Gaza, where some 20 remaining living hostages are believed to be held.

The military’s hesitation to enter those areas was, in part, due to a concern for the hostages’ safety. Last year, Hamas executed six hostages when the IDF approached their position and former hostages have said that their captors said they would kill them if the army approached the location where they were held. Hamas has also warned the IDF that attempts to rescue hostages would result in death.

Senior officials were quoted in multiple Israeli news outlets saying that Zamir should resign if he disagrees with Netanyahu’s decision to take control of the remaining 25% of the Gaza Strip. 

Netanyahu is expected to bring the proposal to a Security Cabinet vote on Tuesday. 

The move comes two weeks after Hamas rejected a partial ceasefire and hostage-release deal, and Israel and the U.S. said they would only pursue comprehensive agreements to free all of the hostages moving forward. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published videos in recent days of hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David who appeared to be starving; the latter was filmed digging his own grave.

In addition to Zamir, others expected to argue against conquering the rest of Gaza, according to Channel 12, are Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Shas leader Arye Deri, National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi and Mossad chief David Barnea, among others.

Netanyahu has the support of Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Military Secretary Maj.-Gen. Roman Gofman and Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs.

The Prime Minister’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on the reports. 

Rather than confirm or deny that he had made a decision about Israel’s next military steps in Gaza, Netanyahu posted a video to X after Hebrew media reported on the matter, which focused on Israeli efforts to get food and medicine to residents of Gaza, and compared claims that Israel was starving Gazans to antisemitic conspiracy theories. 

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.

In a move called for by pro-Israel students at Columbia University, the school announced on Friday that disciplinary action and rules surrounding student protests would be moved out of the purview of the faculty-run University Senate and into the provost’s office.

“This is the most encouraging and commendable action taken by Columbia’s administration to address the systemic problems within the university since [the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks],” Noa Fay, a graduate student entering her last year in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told Jewish Insider. 

“Revoking the University Senate’s power over disciplinary and rule-making procedures has been top of the institutional reform list for many Columbians who wish to see our university restored to order and excellence.”

Critics of the University Senate say that since Oct. 7 and the ensuing protests that have roiled Columbia’s campus, the 111-elected member body has blocked discipline against anti-Israel protesters and removed protest regulations aimed at protecting Jewish students. 

Earlier this week, when the university released a list of commitments to address antisemitism on campus, several Jewish students expressed concern that structural reform to the University Senate was missing. 

Fay, a student member of the Columbia-SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force, suggested to JI earlier this week that changes to the University Senate are one of the most important measures that could create a safer climate for Jewish students “as it has served most reliably and forcefully to protect those guilty of antisemitic racism at school.” 

Last August, the University Senate passed revised guidelines for the Rules of University Conduct that removed an interim demonstration policy that the university implemented following disruptive — and sometimes violent — Gaza solidarity encampments that spring, put in place to restrict the location and times that protests were allowed.  

Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history, wrote in a 2024 Columbia Spectator op-ed that the University Senate had refused to let Jewish students share their experiences of antisemitism on campus when the university’s task force on antisemitism presented its second report to the body. 

“I was one of the students asked by the task force to speak,” Baker wrote. “However, when the task force co-chairs informed members of the Senate leadership of their desire to bring students, those Senate leaders dismissed the idea outright.” 

The Senate has been under university review since April. The decision by Columbia’s trustees to diminish the Senate’s power comes as university leadership is in the final stages of talks with the Trump administration to make a deal that would restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism.

Around 400 Jewish organizations and synagogues signed onto an Anti-Defamation League backed letter Monday expressing concern over the “growing level of antisemitic activity” within teachers’ unions, which recently escalated with the National Education Association’s adoption of a measure targeting the leading Jewish civil rights organization, Jewish Insider has learned.  

Signatories include the American Jewish Committee, Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, National Council of Jewish Women, Orthodox Union, Rabbinical Assembly and Union for Reform Judaism. 

The letter, addressed to Rebecca Pringle, president of the NEA — the largest teachers’ union in the U.S. — comes on the heels of a measure passed last week by the association that bars the union from using any teaching materials from the ADL. 

The letter urges Pringle to reject the measure, referred to as New Business Item 39, as well as to issue a condemnation of and plan of action to address antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric in the NEA.

“The ADL has been a national leader in anti-hate education in K-12 schools for decades and is widely recognized as one of the country’s foremost experts on antisemitism,” the letter states, raising concern that, “although NBI 39 does not explicitly say so, we understand that much of the underlying concern prompting this resolution is directed at ADL’s Holocaust education materials.” 

“That reality makes this proposal especially disturbing,” the letter continues. “This is precisely the kind of education that is vital not only to combat antisemitism, but also to fighting hatred and intolerance of all kinds. The effort to exclude ADL’s voice from educational spaces at a time of skyrocketing antisemitism — including in K-12 classrooms — speaks volumes about the climate within NEA that allowed this measure to pass, and the lack of understanding, if not outright hostility, behind it.”

The letter also references several Jewish teachers who spoke out against the resolution at the Representative Assembly, claiming that they were “harassed and shouted down during the proceedings.”

“It is our belief that the goal of those who introduced NBI 39 is to marginalize mainstream Jewish voices within this country’s public school systems and to limit the ability of educators to address the growing threat of antisemitism with their students,” the letter states. 

The ADL has criticized the vote, calling it “profoundly disturbing that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students.” 

“Excluding ADL’s gold-standard educational resources is not just an attack on our organization – it’s a dangerous attack on the entire Jewish community,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “We urge the NEA Executive Committee to reverse this biased, fringe effort, and reaffirm its commitment to supporting all Jewish students and educators.”

Even outside of the recent measure, antisemitism and anti-Israel activism in teachers’ unions has been increasing since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel. At their conventions last year, both the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers’ union in the U.S. — which together represent 4.7 million members — made anti-Israel resolutions a notable part of both gatherings. In July 2024, the NEA signed a joint letter calling on President Joe Biden to halt all military aid to Israel amid its war against Hamas. 

Also in July of last year, at the AFT convention, members voted on a total of seven resolutions regarding Israel, including one against the “weaponization of antisemitism” to defend Israel. One of the seven proposed resolutions critical of Israel at the AFT convention passed.

Israel struck a centrifuge production site in Tehran early Wednesday, after successfully intercepting more than two dozen missiles launched by Iran toward Israel in the preceding hours.

Over 50 Israeli Air Force jets flew to Iran, where they struck a facility in which centrifuges were manufactured to expand and accelerate uranium enrichment for Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said.

”The Iranian regime is enriching uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear power for civilian use does not require enrichment at these levels,” the IDF said.

The IDF also said it struck several weapons manufacturing facilities, including one used “to produce raw materials and components for the assembly of surface-to-surface missiles, which the Iranian regime has fired and continues to fire toward the State of Israel.” Another facility that the IDF struck manufactured components for anti-aircraft missiles.

IDF Spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Wednesday that the IDF “attacked five Iranian combat helicopters that tried to harm our aircraft.” 

“There is Iranian resistance, but we control the air [over Iran] and will continue to control it. We are deepening our damage to surface missiles and acting in every place from which the Iranians shoot missiles at Israel,” Defrin added.

Defrin said on Tuesday evening that, as a result of Israel’s air superiority in western Iran and the Tehran area, the Islamic Republic’s military efforts “have been pushed back into central Iran. They are now focusing their efforts on conducting missile fire from the area of Isfahan.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “a tornado is passing over Tehran. Symbols of the regime are exploding and collapsing, from the broadcast authority and soon other targets, and masses of residents are fleeing. This is how dictatorships collapse.” 

Most of the projectiles fired from Iran toward northern and central Israel overnight were intercepted, and no injuries or fatalities were reported. 

In addition, Iran launched over 10 drones at the Galilee and the Golan on Wednesday morning, all of which the IDF intercepted.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel is running low on Arrow interceptors used to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles from Iran. Israel also uses the David’s Sling system against Iranian missiles. The Arrow is manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries. The U.S. has augmented Israel’s air defenses with its THAAD system, but is concerned about its own stock of interceptors. The IDF told the Journal that “it is prepared and ready to handle any scenario.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on X that Iran “must give a strong response to the terrorist Zionist regime. We will show the Zionists no mercy.” On his Persian X account, Khamenei evoked Khaybar, the site of a massacre of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century, along with an image of a man with a sword entering a burning castle. 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that it shot Fatah-1 hypersonic missiles at Israel, which move faster than the speed of sound and cannot be detected by missile defense systems. However, there is no evidence on the ground in Israel of that being the case. 

Iranian state media reported on Wednesday the interception of an Israeli drone near Isfahan, with footage of an aircraft that looks like an IAF Hermes 900. The IDF declined to comment. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote a letter updating the U.N. Security Council on Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against Iran. The operation is “aimed to neutralize the existential and imminent threat from Iran’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs” and “specifically targets military facilities and critical components of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as well as key individuals involved in Iran’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons.” 

Sa’ar noted the Islamic Republic’s “public threats to eliminate the State of Israel, in stark violation of the UN charter, and its continued attempts to achieve the means to accomplish this by rapidly developing military nuclear capabilities, as well as its ballistic missile program.” He pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency censured Iran in a recent Board of Governors decision for its non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Sa’ar’s letter came after two missives from Iran to the UNSC about Israel’s strikes on the country.

Also Wednesday, the first Israeli rescue flights arrived from Cyprus, meant to help some of the over 100,000 Israelis stuck abroad while Israel’s airspace is closed. Israel Airports Authority said that 2,800 Israelis were expected to return on Wednesday. Israeli airlines El Al, Arkia, Israir and Air Haifa will be making further emergency flights to repatriate Israelis.

China’s foreign ministry said that it was telling citizens to leave Israel and Iran, and Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, said that the families of Russian diplomats left Israel via Egypt on Tuesday. 

Iran has launched about 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel, hitting 40 impact sites since the beginning of the operation on Friday, according to the Israeli Government Press Office. There have been 24 fatalities and over 804 injured, eight of whom are in serious condition. About 3,800 people have been evacuated from their homes and 18,766 damage claims were submitted to the Israel Tax Authority.

Protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations that have engulfed San Francisco’s streets this week took an antisemitic turn on Monday night when a local Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space had its windows smashed and walls defaced with slurs including “Die Zio,” “The Only Good Settler is a Dead One,” “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Intifada.” 

“There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish,” Manny Yekutiel, owner of the Mission District event space Manny’s, which is in disrepair following the vandalism and break-in, told Jewish Insider. “My business is not a pro-Israel business. I am not Israeli. This is not a space that represents Israel in any way.”

The space was also the target of antisemitic graffiti in October around the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The most recent attack is currently being investigated as a hate crime. 

In the Bay Area, over 150 people were arrested on Sunday and Monday following protests against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, latest immigration policies and ICE raids. Similar protests spread across the country — including in Los Angeles where 4,000 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines were deployed on Monday. 

Yekutiel believes the protests against ICE are “necessary” because ongoing deportations are “stoking hatred” and “we need to stand with immigrants.” While Yekutiel says he will continue identifying with left-wing causes, he also said the attack on his business makes the protests concerning for Jews.

The attack on Manny’s “undermines the very values such movements claim to uphold” such as “justice and welcome the stranger,” the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said in a statement.

Monday’s vandalism in San Francisco comes as the Jewish community faces an “elevated threat” following a surge of violent antisemitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week. Last month, two Israeli Embassy employees were killed in a shooting in Washington. Days later in Boulder, Colo., 15 people advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza were injured in a firebombing by an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa in the U.S. 

Trump announced his travel ban — which bars nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. — last week following the Boulder attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said. “We don’t want them.”

The IDF found and returned the bodies of U.S.-Israeli citizens Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai, who were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday.

The Haggais were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ onslaught targeting Gaza border communities. Their bodies were held by Hamas, the PMO said.

The couple was on a morning walk when they were shot by terrorists on motorcycles. Weinstein-Haggai called emergency medical services, but the ambulance that was traveling to help them was hit by a rocket, according to her daughter. 

Gad was 72 and Judith, a New York native who also held Canadian citizenship, was 70; they are survived by four children and seven grandchildren.

The Weinstein-Haggai family released a statement via the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, saying that their return “is painful and heartbreaking, yet it also brings healing to our uncertainty. Their return reminds us all that it is the state’s duty to bring everyone home, so that we, the families, together with all the people of Israel, can begin the process of healing and recovery … A grave is not a privilege. A grave is a basic human right, without which personal and national recovery is impossible.”

The family called on leaders to “do everything necessary to reach an agreement that will return all 56 remaining hostages — the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for burial.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the IDF soldiers and Shin Bet fighters who recovered the bodies and added, “We will not rest until we bring all of our hostages home, living and deceased.” 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz sent condolences to the Weinstein-Haggai family and said that “the State of Israel is morally and nationally committed to returning our brothers and sisters, living and not living, and we will continue acting with determination until the mission is complete.”

The bodies of two American hostages, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, remain in Gaza, out of a total of 56 hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

One of Hamas’ top three sources of funding is the U.K., where it is a banned terrorist organization, an investigation from Israel’s Channel 12 found. That funding includes 25% of Hamas’ donors from non-state actors, as well as tens of millions of dollars from the government of the U.K. to a UNICEF program whose beneficiaries are determined by Hamas.

The U.K., France and Canada threatened Israel last week with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies to distribute it.

The U.K., Canada and the European Union — of which France is a member— as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Mauritius and Croatia, sponsored a project through UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, for which a Hamas-run ministry provides a list of people to receive funding.

The program provides cash payments of $200-$300 per month to 546,000 needy people in Gaza. UNICEF said that it works with a “beneficiary list from the MoSD,” meaning the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, to determine who receives the cash. The program uses a digital platform funded by USAID to distribute the cash. UNICEF published an update on the program as recently as November 2024. 

MoSD is led by Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo, designated a “senior Hamas official” by the U.S. Treasury Department. 

A 2022 document from the U.K. Foreign Office, uncovered by NGO Monitor, showed that London was aware of Hamas’ involvement with the program and that it had the potential for “severe” reputational damage. 

“The cash assistance component will be implemented in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development MoSD. The MoSD in Gaza is affiliated with the de facto authorities and thus UK Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” the document reads.

The U.K. gave about $23.1 million to UNICEF projects in the West Bank and Gaza in 2024, and $4.8 million in 2023. 

NGO Monitor’s legal Advisor, Anne Herzberg, noted that it is unclear how much of that funding went to the Gaza cash program.

“There is very little detail from the U.K. side about how much is going in, what oversight is in place, what exactly they are doing to mitigate the risk” of money going to Hamas, Herzberg told Jewish Insider on Sunday. “A lot of countries are giving funds to the U.N. and just leave it in their hands.” 

Herzberg said that while a lot of attention has gone to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which was recently banned from Israel after some of its employees participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, “UNRWA is just the tip of the iceberg, because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

“Aid diversion is the main problem and why there have been so many issues with humanitarian aid in Gaza,” she said. “It’s inconceivable to me that these governments refuse to deal with this issue. They claim they want to help Palestinians, to end the conflict and bring peace, yet they don’t want to tackle this issue.” 

Beyond government aid going to Hamas, what qualifies the U.K. as the leading non-Muslim country funding Hamas is nongovernmental contributions, Channel 12 reported.

In 2001, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi founded the Union of Good, a coalition of 50 Islamist charities with connections to Hamas and other proscribed terrorist groups. The group raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas during the Second Intifada.

The organization was banned in the U.S. and U.K., and Qaradawi, who is Egyptian and lives in Doha, Qatar, has been barred from the U.S., U.K. and France.  

Yet the organizations making up the Union of Good continued their fundraising activities.

The Channel 12 report names specific Hamas operatives based in the U.K., including Zahar Birawi, who is the head of the Palestinian Return Center in London, leads Hamas activities in Great Britain and has been instrumental in organizing weekly anti-Israel protests in London. Issam Yusef Mustafa, a former member of the Hamas politburo, is a U.K. citizen and is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe as the head of “Interpal,” a former Union of Good group sanctioned by the U.S. and Israel.

Herzberg explained that many of the organizations funneling money to Hamas are registered as businesses so they can avoid scrutiny from the Charity Commission.

“The monitoring in the U.K. does not seem as robust as what you see in the U.S., where there are many more investigations going on at the governmental level and more reporting, even though the U.K. government says it has robust control in its laws,” Herzberg said. “It’s unclear how those laws are being enforced.” 

Erez Noy, a former Shin Bet official dealing with terror funding, told Channel 12 that “Hamas is strong in Britain because over the years they got used to being able to do almost anything they want there, compared to other countries in Europe … For years, Britain, for whatever reason, did not handle preventing and taking care of these systems [to fund terror]. When Hamas realizes there is a permissive arena, it tests the limits.” 

Hamas petitioned the U.K. last month to be removed from the country’s list of banned terrorist organizations. 

According to Udi Levy, the former head of the Mossad’s department for fighting terrorism funding, “these are businesses that raise funds under the guise of humanitarian aid, and reach Hamas in Gaza, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and anywhere else around the world.”

Levy told Channel 12 that “total victory over Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip. We are making a huge mistake because even if we kill every last ‘soldier’ in Gaza, there is still a massive Hamas infrastructure that will continue to act and even rehabilitate its activities, unless we start taking care of it.” 

The British Embassy in Israel said in response to a query from JI that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K. and funding or supporting it is a crime. We categorically reject the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation that the UK Government funds Hamas run agencies in Gaza. No UK funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza … We are clear that Hamas must play no role in the future of Gaza. FCDO [the Foreign Office] conducted a thorough due diligence assessment of UNICEF, and we identify how U.K. funds are transferred until they reach the final beneficiaries.”

The embassy interpreted the claim made by the U.K. Foreign Office that “U.K. Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” as referring to the Ministry of Social Development in Ramallah run by the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, the embassy stated that it does “not recognize the claim that 25% of Hamas’s non-state funding comes from the U.K. To our knowledge, no official Israeli body has ever made such a claim.” 

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is denying claims that it violated the religious rights of Muslim detainees at a Florida detention center by failing to provide them with halal meals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ICE policy stipulates that detainees must receive “a reasonable and equitable opportunity to observe their religious dietary practice,” but conditions that requirement “within the constraints of budget limitations and the security and orderly running of the facility.” 

In a letter, signed by attorneys from Muslim Advocates, Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ) and King and Spalding LLP, the groups allege that officers at the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami consistently served Muslim detainees “rotten and expired” halal meals, at times forcing them to choose between eating pork-contaminated meals or expired meals.

The facility, like many institutions, has transitioned since the start of the pandemic to a satellite meal preparation and service model that provides pre-portioned meals to all detainees in an effort to limit the risk of infection. According to the letter, Muslim detainees have been served pork meals, including sausages and ribs, despite officers knowing their religious requirements.

When detainees brought their complaints to a chaplain, according to the letter, they were told: “it is what it is.”

The groups called on the agency and the Department of Homeland Security to “immediately address this unlawful pattern of religious discrimination” and “ensure that no detainee at Krome or any other ICE facility across the United States is forced to choose between their faith and starvation.”

Citing First Amendment protections and the Religious Freedom Reformation Act, the letter calls on DHS and ICE to immediately “train, supervise, and discipline all personnel involved in this systematic denial of detainees’ rights.”

According to Lily Hartmann, a Human Rights advocate at AIJ, many of the Muslim detainees, who come from Somalia, Jamaica, Tunisia, Egypt and Guatemala, have been in ICE custody for over a year. “The immigration detention system is meant, through its abuses, to wear people down so that they give up fighting their immigration case.” Hartmann told Jewish Insider, adding of the Krome incidents: “This is just one example of how that is done.”

Nimra Azmi, a staff attorney at Muslim Advocates and a signatory to the letter, told JI in an email, “officials at Krome know these are Muslim detainees who are being served rotten meals or meals that violate their faith and they do not care.”

In a statement to JI, an ICE spokesperson denied the allegations. “ICE’s Performance Based National Detention Standards cover all aspects of detention, to include reasonable accommodation of religious dietary practices. Any claim that ICE denies reasonable and equitable opportunity for persons to observe their religious dietary practices is false.”

ICE policy only requires religious dietary accommodations “within the constraints of budget limitations and the security and orderly running of the facility.” The spokesperson did not explain if the alleged conduct could be permissible under those constraints.

Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee and Bend the Arc, condemned the allegations. In a tweet, AJC wrote “If these allegations are true, they are beyond despicable!  No one should be forced to choose between food and their religious beliefs. We call on @ICEgov to change this inhumane and un-American policy.”

“The Song of Names,” due in theaters December 25, is a poignant, haunting and memorable film. It is also the first feature movie ever allowed to film on the grounds of Treblinka.

The film, starring Tim Roth and Clive Owen, darts back and forth between 1938, 1951 and 1985, following the lives of two young boys brought together just before the onset of the Holocaust. Dovidl Rapoport, a Jewish violin prodigy from Warsaw, is taken in as a lodger in London by the family of young Martin Simmonds. 

The two young boys quickly become fast friends as they survive the London blitz together, though Dovidl never learns the fate of his parents and sisters left behind in Poland. On the day he is slated to make his musical debut at a London concert hall, Dovidl disappears without a trace. Decades later, Martin is still searching for him, hunting down clues to find the man he loved as a brother.  

The film was directed by Francois Girard, set to a haunting and pivotal original score from Oscar-winner Howard Shore and produced by Robert Lantos, the Hungarian-born son of Holocaust survivors who has called Canada home for more than 50 years. 

Lantos spoke with Jewish Insider recently about his work on the film, the troubling rise in global antisemitism and the lessons movies can teach about hatred and prejudice. 

“This is a story that — in the climate in which we live today — absolutely has to be told,” Lantos said. “It’s a way to remember, it’s a way to honor the two key words in my entire vocabulary, which are ‘never again.’”

The screenplay for “The Song of Names” was written by Jeffrey Caine and adapted from a novel by Norman Lebrecht of the same name. When Lantos first read the book, he knew immediately that he wanted to bring it to the silver screen. The storyline, he said, is a way of telling a Holocaust tale “in an original manner and an emotionally compelling manner.” The musical-themed plot, he noted, is a conduit for “bringing the horrors of the Holocaust back to a contemporary audience without forcing people to come face to face with living skeletons and images of horror.”

Martin (Tim Roth) in a scene set at Treblinka.

The cast and crew spent just one day filming at the site of the Treblinka extermination camp, where close to a million people were murdered in its just over one year of operation. Today, nothing remains of the original camp, and the site is marked with a haunting memorial to the dead. 

“We asked for a permit and the authorities read the script and surprisingly they said yes,” Lantos recalled. That single day of work was the most difficult and disturbing day on set, he said.

“It was like being in a state of altered reality,” he told JI. “We only shot there for one day. And frankly, I can’t imagine spending more than one day there. The weight of the place is unbearable.”

Caine’s original screenplay contained dialogue for the scenes set in Treblinka. But once the filmmakers arrived on location, they changed the plan entirely. 

“Once we were there, we all felt that the dialogue had to go, because there’s nothing to say there,” Lantos said. “There’s nothing that can be said that wouldn’t be trivial in the context of what we were seeing with our eyes.”

While the original novel told a story of two young Jewish boys living through World War II, the film chose to make Martin and his family not Jewish. 

“The character of Martin provides an access point” to a wider audience, Lantos said. “I thought it’d be important to bring to it the point of view of someone who wasn’t steeped from birth in Jewish rituals and tradition.”

Dovidl (Jonah Hauer-King) enters a synagogue in London in the 1950s.

Dovidl’s connection to religion is a key plot point throughout the film. In one emotional scene, he reflects on the ideas of Judaism as a faith and as an ethnicity — a debate that still resonates strongly today. 

“Ethnicity isn’t soluble in water, Motl,” Dovidl tells Martin, using his affectionate nickname. “It’s a skin you’re born in and wear until the day you die. Now religion — that’s a coat. When it gets too hot — you can take it off.”

Lantos said they consulted with rabbis from Reform to Orthodox to “try and get every detail that had to do with religion and the period this film was set in” as authentic as possible.

Work on “The Song of Names” began several years ago, but Lantos has felt its importance and significance only grow as a rash of antisemitic incidents creeps across North America. 

The scene that was filmed in Treblinka, Lantos said, “is the reason that I felt that the film had to be made. Because in the world in which we now live in, where Jew hatred has found brand new ammunition, and it is firing on all cylinders, and it’s sweeping across Europe and on our campuses in North America, anything that we can do, to not forget… the consequences of that hate and human suffering — anything that I can do to remember, has to be done,” he continued. “If we don’t remember the past, we’re guaranteed to repeat them, to repeat all of its tragedies.”

Dovidl (Clive Owen) performs a solo violin concert.

Lantos has enjoyed a long and storied career as a filmmaker in Canada. His works include the critically acclaimed 2004 film “Being Julia,” starring Annette Benning; 2007’s “Eastern Promises” with Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts; and 2010’s “Barney’s Version,” starring Paul Giamatti. 

But many of Lantos’s films, particularly his recent ones, have dealt with the experiences of Jews during the Holocaust. Those include 1999’s “Sunshine,” starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz; 2003’s “The Statement” with Michael Caine; and 2015’s “Remember,” featuring Christopher Plummer. 

Lantos said his parents, both Hungarian Holocaust survivors, opted to hide their Jewish identity when he was a child, hoping that “the solution to sparing their son of the horrors and persecutions that they had lived through was to forget all about being Jewish.” 

The award-winning producer said that for decades he made films that had nothing to do with the Holocaust or with his Jewish identity — which finally changed with 1999’s “Sunshine,” which follows five generations of a Hungarian Jewish family and in many ways mirrors his own life story. 

“Up until that point, I didn’t feel that compelling need” to tell stories of Jewish persecution, Lantos said. And since then, as he watches a resurgence of antisemitism across the world, “I can’t think of anything that is more important to deal with than that in my life. I happen to be a filmmaker. That gives me a way of dealing with it that could possibly make a difference.”