American and Israeli officials expressed skepticism on Monday that Hamas would follow through with its pledge to dissolve its governing body that has ruled Gaza for over two decades.

Hamas announced the dissolution of the “Emergency Committee,” the terrorist organization’s governing body, and the resignation of Mohammed al-Farra as the committee’s chief on Monday. The terrorist group said that it was prepared to transfer authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee established under President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan and overseen by the Trump administration’s Board of Peace. 

The announcement did not address whether the terrorist group would disarm, a key facet of the Gaza peace plan. Hamas’ announcement came after the Board of Peace convened a series of meetings last week to advance plans for the NCAG to take over the governance of Gaza.

The Board of Peace said that it was withholding judgment on the announcement, instead vowing to assess Hamas’ “actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza.”

“Decisions must be comprehensive with respect to the requirements as set out in the Roadmap for advancing governance, security, and transition in Gaza,” the board said in a statement. “We look forward to the successful conclusion of discussions on this Roadmap, including on the implementation mechanisms necessary to enable the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza to assume full governing authority.”

The board’s statement also noted that the “core principle” of the ongoing peace efforts in Gaza “remains one authority, one law and one weapon,” and reiterated its position that Hamas must disarm. “A genuine transfer of authority must enable the NCAG to exercise its mandate independently, including taking the administrative and governance decisions entrusted to it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar dismissed the move outright, saying that Hamas had agreed to give up governing control of the Gaza Strip in a largely symbolic overture while sidestepping disarmament calls. 

“Hamas’s trick is simple. Hamas’s apparent willingness to ‘make room’ for a technocratic government is designed to prevent its own disarmament,” Sa’ar wrote on X. “Hamas seeks to replicate the ‘Hezbollah model’ in Gaza: a technocratic administration would be responsible for garbage collection and other municipal services, while Hamas would remain the dominant military force.”

“As long as Hamas retains its weapons, any civilian government will of course operate as Hamas dictates,” he continued. “This would allow Hamas to continue oppressing the Palestinian people in Gaza, while pursuing its jihadist war against Israel.”

Sa’ar went on to note that Israel “insists on the full implementation of the Trump plan, with its core principles being the disarmament of Hamas and all other terrorist organizations, and the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.”

Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy under the first Trump administration, similarly expressed doubt about the prospect of Hamas giving up its weapons and influence in Gaza. 

“In my view, this is Hamas trying to become Hezbollah,” Abrams told Jewish Insider. “Hamas used to run everything, up to and including garbage collection. They were the government of Gaza. Hezbollah uses a different mode: there is a Lebanese government providing public services, so Hezbollah can just concentrate on being an army and a terrorist group.”

“This offer by Hamas does not suggest that they will disarm, and as Board of Peace chairman [Nickolay] Mladenov has said, without Hamas disarmament there will be zero progress,” he continued. 

Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that he believes Hamas is seeking to retain power and authority in Gaza without having to govern or be held accountable for the new government’s potential shortcomings. 

“[Hamas] will cede governing to technocrats who represent no one but will retain its arms to ensure that Hamas remains the center of power and authority in Gaza,” Cook said. 

Analysts argued that unless Hamas disarms, the group will remain in power and progress on the president’s Gaza plan will remain stalled. Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, called the announcement from Hamas “fairly meaningless” without disarmament. 

“Hamas can proclaim it’s ceding administrative authority to technocrats, but it will retain de facto power in its slice of Gaza as long as it still has a monopoly on violence there,” Ruhe said. “Until and unless Hamas actually disarms, voluntarily or otherwise, anything else the group says or does is fairly meaningless in terms of the peace plan’s vision for stabilization, reconstruction, and new governance in Gaza.”

Ruhe also suggested that Hamas made the announcement in an effort to shift the pressure toward Israel without fulfilling its own commitments. 

“The group’s official line is telling. Hamas cynically frames this step as removing the pretext for Israel’s ‘occupation’ of Gaza, even though it knows full well that demilitarization is a two-sided commitment, not a unilateral obligation on Israel,” Ruhe said. “This shows how Hamas wants to cherry pick parts of the Gaza peace plan, in order to put pressure on Israel, but without fulfilling its own commitments to disarm under that same plan.”

Neomi Neumann, an adjunct fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, similarly argued that Hamas is seeking to put the “blame game into an Israel area.”

“I think their [Hamas] message is: ‘We have given up the government in Gaza, and now Israel is on the side of preventing the progress,’” Neumann said. “For Hamas, they understand that if they will stay with the same position. [At]  the end of the day, Mladenov will declare [Hamas] as a rejectionist organization, so as a result I think that Hamas is trying to frame the move … in order to survive.” 

Neumann expressed skepticism that Hamas would give up its weapons in addition to governance in Gaza, adding that there is a “very low” chance that Hamas changes its mind. However, she said, “you can never say never.”

“We also thought that [Hamas] will never bring back the hostages,” Neumann said. “I think that if the United States and Turkey and Qatar will push Hamas very hard and put pressure on Hamas, they will say they are willing to give up the heavy weapons, but they won’t find it easy to say they are willing to give up their guns because everybody can kill them and in the end of the day they know they need to continue to control the Gaza Strip with weapons.” 

Still, she noted that the situation remains a “disaster” from the Israeli perspective.

“From Israel’s point of view, I think it will be a disaster, because they [Hamas] just will get stronger.” Neumann said. “Iran will continue now to give much more money to Hamas. They [Hamas] won’t let any other power to emerge and to get strong, and it will be very complicated.”

The number of Israelis who believe President Donald Trump views Israel’s security as a central consideration has continued to fall to record lows after Washington signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran, according to a new survey from the Israel Democracy Institute.

The June 2026 Israeli Voice Index, conducted between June 28 and July 1, found that 28% of respondents — including 26% of Jewish Israelis and 36% of Arab Israelis — believe Israel’s security is a key consideration for Trump. 

Among Jewish Israelis, the figure dropped 15 percentage points from a month ago, when 41% of respondents said they felt Israeli security was a key consideration for Trump as his administration engaged in negotiations with Tehran. At the time, those findings marked the lowest levels of Israeli trust in Trump since the research center began tracking the metric when he was elected to a second term in November 2024.

Despite declining confidence in Trump, a majority of Israelis continue to view current tensions between Washington and Jerusalem as temporary rather than indicative of a meaningful deterioration in bilateral ties. Among Jewish Israelis, 54% said current disagreements represent a temporary crisis that will not harm the relationship, while 34% said they mark a longer-term shift for the worse.

Respondents were more divided when asked whether Israel’s strategic security situation was better or worse than it was before the Iran war. Thirty-six percent said Israel’s security situation is now worse, an increase of eight percentage points from April. Meanwhile, 38% said it is better, down six percentage points over the same period.

The survey also found strong support for maintaining an Israeli security zone in southern Lebanon, even if doing so conflicts with U.S. interests. Overall, 72% of respondents backed a permanent security zone in the area. Support was especially high among Jewish Israelis, at 80%, while a majority of Arab Israelis (58%) opposed maintaining a permanent Israeli presence in southern Lebanon.

Beyond military and diplomatic issues, the poll found that rising antisemitism and attacks targeting Israelis abroad were influencing travel decisions. Fifty-six percent of respondents said the threat environment has affected their travel plans, with 41% saying it has impacted where they choose to travel and 15% saying they plan to avoid traveling abroad altogether because of security concerns.

The director general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. (res.) Amir Baram, urged Israelis on Wednesday to understand Washington’s perspective as the U.S. and Israel negotiate the next memorandum of understanding, cautioning against judging American policy through a purely “provincial lens.”

“What some in Israel perceive as weakness or folly, an apparent disregard for every warning sign on the ground, is viewed in Washington as cold, calculated and clear-eyed risk management in an era of shifting global attention,” he said at the annual Herzliya Conference at Reichman University. 

The divergence between the two allies, he concluded, is not a misunderstanding of the fundamental threat, but rather a byproduct of different national security priorities.

“For us, Iran is an existential threat; for the United States, it is a chronic regional challenge, while China and the Indo-Pacific theater remain the core concern,” Baram said. “We think Tehran, they think Taiwan.”

“At the same time, based on my deep familiarity with the range of views within the American system, if there is one thing Americans hate more than this war that has dragged on for them, it is losing a campaign they have already won,” he added of the conflict with Iran.

Ultimately, Baram asserted that as Washington increasingly operates under an “America First” framework, the historic bilateral relationship must pivot toward concrete, mutually beneficial strategic dividends.

“Our partnership cannot rest on shared values alone. It must also rest on hard interests: a strong, independent, and proactive Israel that stabilizes the Middle East is the very asset that allows the United States to redirect resources toward Asia,” Baram stated. “This is the foundation of the next memorandum of understanding on security cooperation now being formulated. The agreement will need to generate security, economic, and strategic benefits for both countries for years to come.”

The director general also noted that he understands the differing strategic realities in Washington, including a growing American desire to avoid prolonged Middle East entanglements while prioritizing competing global theaters.

“From the Pentagon’s perspective, with American munitions stretched between supporting current wars and preparing for a potential confrontation in the Taiwan Strait, a prolonged war in the Middle East runs counter to America’s global posture,” Baram observed.

Baram emphasized that the war with Iran has fundamentally transformed Jerusalem’s strategic military calculus, warning that an escalating Iranian threat necessitates a sweeping, expanded regional security alliance.

“The war has sharpened, for every actor in the region, the price of Iran’s military buildup,” Baram said. “It has created a shared interest in forging a broader alliance, from India through the UAE to Greece and Cyprus. Israel’s strengths in technology, proven operational experience, and defense innovation, combined with the Gulf’s financial power, could enable a new security-economic front.”

Baram said that building these alternative multilateral partnerships is “not a substitute” for Israel’s bedrock security relationship with the United States. Rather, he argued, the strategy allows Israel to “broaden its room to maneuver and its standing on the international stage, and allow us to diversify our strategic footing.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a leading critic of Israel in the Senate, publicly confirmed for the first time this week, after visits to key primary states, that he is considering a 2028 presidential bid — and argued that criticism of Israel should be a key litmus test for the emerging field.

Van Hollen has become an increasingly outspoken and virulent voice against Israel in the Senate  and taken trips to states that will play a pivotal role in the 2028 presidential primary, fueling speculation that he is scoping out a presidential run. 

“I went to New Hampshire because I was invited, but I would say kind of kicking the tires a little bit,” Van Hollen said on the “On NOTUS” podcast this week.

Asked whether he thinks any Democratic presidential candidate will be viable without criticizing Israel and supporting conditioning aid to the Jewish state, Van Hollen responded, “I think a Democratic presidential candidate should believe in the United States’ foreign policy based on advancing our values and our interests. And if you want to advance our values, you cannot apply one set of standards just to our adversaries and another to our friends and be taken seriously in the world about it.”

“I think any credible Democratic presidential candidate has to be willing to hold the government of Israel accountable when it’s violating human rights and violating international law and violating US interests because the Israeli-Palestinian issue, conflict goes to the heart of so much of the instability that we’ve encountered and paid for in the United States over decades,” Van Hollen continued.

He also argued that any Biden-era officials who don’t “plainly acknowledge how wrong they were and make it clear that lessons have been learned and that they would follow a very different approach” toward Israel should not be able to serve in any future Democratic administration.

Van Hollen also defended Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee who has drawn controversy for his Nazi tattoo, far-left views and numerous scandals and controversies, as “the candidate in that race who is fighting for working people” and “somebody who’s going to shape things up and actually respond to the pocketbook issues of the people of Maine.”

Israeli national security expert Dan Schueftan said on Monday that President Donald Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran “proves nobody in the Western world is willing to fight. If we need to get permission from countries like Iran in order to use international waterways then we are in very deep trouble.” 

The one exception, according to Schueftan, is Israel, which he called the “only one power in the Middle East that can contain the radicals … the only real power in this region that is committed to fighting the radicals and will fight the radicals.”  

Schueftan, the chairman of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa, made the comments while appearing on British journalist Jonathan Sacerdoti’s YouTube show. 

Trump “built up the spirit of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians, the Houthis,” Schueftan asserted. The president’s proposal that the terrorist groups disarm was “ridiculous,” continued Schueftan, who said the agreement with Iran has surpassed former President Barack Obama’s “high bar” for bad diplomatic deals with Iran — undermining Israel and emboldening its enemies in the process.

Schueftan’s comments came shortly after the U.S. and Iran reached a tentative agreement to end the recent fighting and enter into talks. The White House shared in a call with reporters on Wednesday the official text of the memorandum of understanding, to establish a ceasefire with Iran, permanently end Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, reopen the Strait of Hormuz while ending the U.S. naval blockade and kickstart a 60-day negotiation period on the future of Iran’s nuclear program and the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Tehran.

On Wednesday morning, Trump said that the U.S. would resume military activity against Iran if he did not like the MOU. 

The deal could lead to confrontation between Israel and the U.S., Schueftan said. “If Israel responds in Lebanon, we have a major problem with the president of the United States,” he said. 

“I don’t believe this will remain because Israel cannot afford tension with the only friend it has on the international arena … this is the worst that can happen from an Israeli point of view,” he continued. “But it will not stop Israel from doing what is vital for the existence of Israel.” 

Schueftan further asserted that Trump betrayed and “abandoned” the Iranian people by failing to deliver on his promise that “help is on the way.” 

“Israel will survive it, but they were reduced,” Schueftan said. He noted achievements in destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities over the past year and policies adopted after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.

At the same time, he said, “the challenge now is more serious, therefore Israeli actions will have to be more serious, and I don’t believe Trump will go as far as trying to break Israel.” 

From an American perspective, Schueftan continued, such a move would be a strategic error; the U.S., he said, needs to shift its focus away from the Middle East and toward countering China. “Israel should be in a position where it can substitute the United States. When the U.S. leaves the Middle East, you can’t leave the Middle East alone,” said Schueftan. 

Former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer is launching the Dermer Consulting Group (DCG), a Jerusalem-based strategic advisory firm focusing on the U.S., Israel and the Middle East, Jewish Insider has learned.

Dermer, who has long been a part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle, officially departed the Israeli government in November, after twice extending his tenure. He returned earlier this year for what one official in the Prime Minister’s Office described as “reserve duty” amid the renewed fighting between Israel and Iran that began in late February.

Dermer previously served as Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., leaving the posting in 2021 after eight years. He was named strategic affairs minister the following year.

Yarden Golan, who previously served as Dermer’s chief of staff, is a cofounder of the firm and will serve as managing director. Golan, who is based in New York, has his own consulting firm, Golan Consulting, and joined deep-tech investment firm Deep33 Ventures as a venture partner earlier this year.

Israeli journalist Amir Tibon was awarded the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature on Tuesday for The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands, his harrowing account of survival on Oct. 7. 

The Gates of Gaza is Tibon’s first-person account of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and Israel’s Gaza policies as a resident of the border’s region. On the day of the attack, he, along with his wife and their two young daughters, spent 10 hours hiding in the safe room of their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, less than a mile from Gaza, as terrorists rampaged through the community. 

In the book, Tibon details efforts by his father, a retired major general in the IDF, traveled from Tel Aviv by car to rescue the family, stopping numerous times along the war to assist others and fight groups of terrorists. The Gates of Gaza intersperses Tibon’s accounting of the day, his parents’ experiences and Israeli government policy regarding Gaza over the years.

“The mission of the Rohr Prize has never been more important,” Tibon, a reporter for Haaretz, said, “as we confront a rising tide of antisemitism around the globe and its unique ripples within the world of books and literature.”

The book also received the 2024 National Jewish Book Award, the Wingate Prize and the Bernstein Prize.

After evacuating the kibbutz, Tibon and his family have lived in northern Israel since the attacks.

The awards ceremony, to be held at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on July 28, will mark the 20-year anniversary of the prize, which comes with a $100,000 award. 

The Rohr Prize honors emerging contemporary writers whose work shows promising continuing contribution to literature in the Jewish sphere. The award annually alternates between fiction and nonfiction. 

Nonfiction authors Laura Hobson Faure, Shaul Kelner and Jordan Salama were on the shortlist of finalists for this year’s prize. Winners from previous years include Sasha Vasilyuk for her novel Your Presence is Mandatory, and Oren Kessler for his Palestine 1936.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that, though Israel is “holding its fire” against Iran, Jerusalem has “a full right to self-defense” and is “exercising it to the extent necessary.” 

The prime minister warned that if Iran resumes its attacks on Israel, the IDF would respond with “overwhelming force.”

Netanyahu’s statement follows a series of tit-for-tat exchanges between Israel and Iran and its proxies that began with Hezbollah’s fire on northern Israel on Sunday. After Israel struck Hezbollah targets in Beirut, Iran fired a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel, prompting the IDF to strike military targets, as well as a petrochemical facility, in Iran.

Netanyahu also suggested he had pushed back on President Donald Trump’s request for Israel to not respond to Iranian strikes on Sunday. He said he had relayed to the White House the message about Israel’s right to self-defense “with appreciation and respect in my good conversations with my friend President Trump.”

Trump asked Netanyahu on Sunday to keep Israel’s strikes against Iran limited to prevent escalation, once it became clear that Israel would not stand down, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. On Monday, Netanyahu agreed to a second request from Trump to halt Israel’s attacks, sources told the outlet.

There’s a mantra in the Israeli startup world that its founders are months behind their American counterparts. New York Tech Week gave them a chance to close that gap, according to investors who descended on Manhattan last week. 

Michael Morgenstern, head of startups at financial technology platform Airwallex, which teamed up with Andreessen Horowitz — one of the world’s leading venture capital firms — to bring a delegation of Israeli founders to tech week for the first time, told Jewish Insider that VCs are looking to see more AI products come out of Israel, which historically has been security focused. 

“It would be interesting to see an AI lab out of Israel,” he said. “Why haven’t we seen an OpenAI or Claude, something of that status, coming out of the Israeli ecosystem? It makes me wonder if we are stagnating as an ecosystem. So exposing the Israeli market to what’s going on on the ground gives Israeli entrepreneurs the chance to get months ahead.” 

“The mantra in the Israeli startup market right now is that Israeli founders and entrepreneurs are nine months behind the Americans,” he continued. “So if we can fly them here, make sure that people with low budgets — that will soon have high budgets — come to the U.S. and get on the ground, they’re going to get back to Israel with a whole new set of insights that are going to prepare them and be on par with the American companies versus the ones in Tel Aviv.”

“So it’s a very strategic play for them to come, get the experience and do the pitches. Ultimately, the U.S. is the ultimate market for most Israeli founders so if we can be the corridor at Airwallex and I can be the shepherd, it’s a delight to do so,” he said. 

The 12 Israeli founders included in the delegation said they felt widely embraced at last week’s New York Tech Week, overwhelmingly saying that they felt no need to hide their roots. 

“I feel I can be openly Israeli in the U.S. — specifically at tech week,” Aviv Shamny, founder of Limy AI, an Israeli startup that helps brands and products show up on AI search engines, told JI.  “I didn’t feel any antisemitism at all at tech week.” 

Shamny, who recently moved to the U.S. from Israel to grow his company — and served in combat following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks — said the idea for his startup “came to me in the trenches of war.” For the past year, Limy has been part of A16Z Speedrun, an elite, highly competitive 12-week startup accelerator program operated by Andreessen Horowitz. 

“People are really hustling,” said Morgenstern. “Last week was Boston tech week, next week is London. New York is the primo one. People are enjoying it. It’s decentralized as there’s what feels like thousands of events all over the city for every stage and profile.” 

Morgenstern led several events throughout the week, including taking founders who recently moved to New York in a helicopter to give them their first tour of Manhattan. “We did a pitch in the air called ‘Up in the Air with Airwallex,’” he said, adding that amid historic rates of antisemitism, “I’ve only heard positive things from Israelis meeting with non-Israelis.”  

The Israeli delegation consisted of entrepreneurs launching new startups — many of whom declined to speak with JI due to their companies’ stealth status.

“It was a very selective process,” said Morgenstern. “There were hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. Andreessen Horowitz picked the founders, and we’re strategic partners with them. We’re the ones supporting the founders with their banking and corporate operations. This is the first time we’ve done this and we plan on doing it again.” 

Much of the A16Z delegation is composed of deeper infrastructure companies, working on AI tools, cybercompanies, fintech and defensetech.

“Historically, cyber is what Israelis have been known for, but it’s interesting to see the early-stages people try to zig when everyone’s zagging and look a little different to stand out,” said Morgenstern. “So an Israeli founder doing a consumer company, selling to individuals is very unique. Healthcare and fintech also. We’re also seeing some big rounds happening. A lot of Israeli teams are raising $10, $20, $30 million-plus out of stealth mode. It’s interesting they don’t want anyone to know what they’re doing, but at the same time they’re raising a lot of money and growing their balance sheet. From my seat in the VC land, I see an incredible demand and the resilience of Israelis right now is showing why they’re such an investable asset.” 

“Generally, Andreessen Horowitz has a unique stance,” said Shamny, who was not part of the A16Z delegation since the firm has already invested in his company.  

“On one hand, they don’t take sides, they take the side of innovation. They see Israel as one of the main innovation hubs and are really doubling down on it. We’ve been getting positive feedback from the firm. I do think this contributes to us being able to position ourselves as still the startup nation, regardless of all the antisemitism going on in the world. I think the war — regardless of what is wrong and what is right — has been impactful on Israel’s presence and what people think about us as Israelis. Andressen’s push toward Israeli innovation has been helpful in positioning ourselves.” 

“As Israelis we are very proud to take part in this unique group of people and companies. It’s fun to be a part of.”  

Yair Vardi, an Israeli American venture capitalist and founding partner of Fusion, Israel’s leading pre-seed fund, produced several events during tech week.

“I didn’t see reluctance to work with Israelis this week,” Vardi told JI. “On the contrary, New York is the home to over 400 Israeli startups. In the last few years, New York has become even more attractive for Israeli startups. I don’t see that changing even with politics. New York is home for the stock exchange and many Fortune 500 companies and a big Jewish community. [Israelis] aren’t happy with the new mayor [Zohran Mamdani], but I don’t think it pushes them not to come. This week we saw the numerous delegations coming out of Israel [including the one from] A16Z. I’ve attended a dozen events with Israeli entrepreneurs, from cybersecurity to legal and finance,” said Vardi. 

A jam-packed week of networking ended with a Friday night Shabbat dinner organized by Brex and Tech Tribe, a New York-based community for Jews in tech and digital media, part of the Chabad Young Professionals network, founded by Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone. 

“We try to create a Jewish community for people who work in startups and try to give them the tools and skills they need for what they create,” Lightstone told JI. “We constantly have conversations around the intersection of technology and Judaism; can you ask halachic questions to ChatGPT instead of a rabbi, those types of things.”  

“New York Tech Week is something that has grown over the past couple years in general,” he said. “The city is booming with excitement and energy, much more than previous years.” 

“Jews in tech have woken up and realized they have to really represent it, to go out there and say I’m Jewish, I have Jewish values and I’m proud of it. In the past three years we’ve seen a lot of that, and this week has been an expression of that,” said Lightstone, who hosted the first Tech Week Shabbat dinner just weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks. “At the time, it was a very cathartic experience for everybody to be together and feel comfortable when people were very on edge and felt they couldn’t speak in the workplace,” he said. 

“There have been incidents of antisemitism in tech since Oct. 7, especially in the big companies. They didn’t always handle antisemitism well. They’re very careful with [diversity, equity and inclusion], but when it came to Jews [they] were lacking,” continued Lightstone.  

About 100 VCs and founders attended the Shabbat in downtown Manhattan, which Lightstone called an opportunity for an “un-networking experience to connect and unwind from the week.” Guests were served arak and whiskey made by the Israeli startup Verstill, which utilizes AI technology in its spirits creation and maturation process, and Israel’s Jezreel Winery sponsored the wine. American Friends of Reichman University co-sponsored the meal.

Ahead of the dinner, Noga Sapir, the founder of a mental health startup called Reflect, who came from Israel for her first New York Tech Week, told JI the week was “great.” 

“I’m fundraising right now so I’ve been looking at the events where founders and fundraisers meet,” she said. “I did have concerns [coming as an Israeli] but I was completely embraced. There has not been one person that when I told I’m Israeli didn’t say that’s amazing and awesome. I think because Israel is such a powerhouse for tech companies, people in the startup environment have come to expect an Israeli presence.” 

For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has relied on a small, passionately loyal inner circle of advisors — Ron Dermer foremost among them — to provide a sounding board on some of the country’s thorniest security matters.

Now, with Dermer (mostly) gone, new elections looming and Israel fighting a multifront war and isolated on the world stage, that inner circle is nearly empty. And the departures of key security advisors have left the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history arguably more alone than ever.

​The position of head of Israel’s National Security Council has been unfilled on a permanent basis since October 2025, when Netanyahu dismissed Tzachi Hanegbi from the role. It is currently held in an acting capacity by Gil Reich, a former senior official at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, who will move to a different role within the defense establishment on Monday. 

Just a day later, the director of the Mossad, David Barnea, will also step down after completing a full five-year term. He is set to be replaced by Netanyahu’s military secretary, Gen. Roman Gofman.

​However, in the Israel of 2026, nothing is straightforward. High Court justices must soon rule on whether Gofman’s sensitive appointment for the Mossad will be approved. This comes after the head of the Senior Appointments Advisory Committee — the Israeli version of a Senate hearing for high-ranking civil service roles — opined that Gofman’s appointment was flawed on ethical grounds.

Netanyahu believes Gofman has been wronged, and that right now, amid a “seven-front war,” as he noted in a recent press release, this appointment is critical.

​But Gofman’s departure will mark a farewell to one of Netanyahu’s closest advisors and currently the most influential security figure in his orbit — and at a time when Netanyahu’s post-Oct. 7 relationship with the military echelon remains exceptionally complex. 

​”The role of the national security advisor and head of the NSC is critical and central for shaping, planning and overseeing the execution of Israel’s national security policy,” Eyal Hulata, who served as head of Israel’s NSC from 2021-2023, told Jewish Insider. 

“The fact that the prime minister is not appointing a replacement for this role is, unfortunately, yet another example of a disregard for organized staff work and another blow to the professionalism required when working with the defense establishment,” Hulata continued. Sources close to the prime minister told JI that Netanyahu intends to fill these soon-to-be-empty positions shortly.

​So, who are the candidates for head of the Israeli NSC? According to sources familiar with the matter, there are two front-runners: Reuven Azar, Israel’s ambassador to India, and Col. (res.) Gabi Siboni, a hawkish commentator on military strategy. 

Azar, who previously served as Netanyahu’s foreign policy advisor, was involved in the brokering of the Abraham Accords and is considered a highly professional diplomat. As President Donald Trump has made a priority of advancing the Abraham Accords 2.0, now with additional countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Azar’s experience could be an asset to the NSC. 

Siboni is a military strategy expert who frequently provides commentary in the Israeli media, and is known for his hawkish views. He has a significant vulnerability, however: He is close friends with former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who is running against Netanyahu in the upcoming elections. 

​An Israeli source who worked for the current government claimed that while Netanyahu has other candidates in mind to be the next NSA, they don’t stand a real chance. “There are a little over three months left until the elections in Israel. Stepping into such a role when you know your tenure is about to end simply makes no sense,” the source told JI. “Moreover, Netanyahu is deeply suspicious when it comes to choosing the people he lets into his inner circle.” 

​Until recently, Netanyahu could rely on his loyal confidant Ron Dermer to serve as a de facto national security advisor, even though he held the title of minister of strategic affairs. Dermer left the role this year after an exhausting stretch of public service, but Netanyahu continues to invite him to security briefings, including highly classified ones.

​While the Prime Minister’s Office promises that the vacant positions will be filled soon, Netanyahu likely won’t be looking for another trusted figure like Dermer. Instead, he will be seeking someone like the Israeli version of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, an official who can juggle multiple roles at the same time without causing the boss any political headaches.

Speaking at a House Education & Workforce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, a doctor accused his union of engaging in systemic discrimination against Jewish and Israeli health providers, supporting terrorist sympathizers and making “its obsession with a single geopolitical conflict a defining future of its identity” — all while he’ll be forced by federal law to fund it.

Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at a major medical institution in Philadelphia, testified alongside several other experts on antisemitism at a hearing focused on anti-Jewish hate in the medical field — which both Jewish medical providers and patients report as a growing problem since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

The hearing focused in particular on the role of healthcare worker unions, such as the Committee of Interns and Residents, of which Agronin is set to be a member, in spreading antisemitism and their failures to stand up for Jewish union members.

CIR has adopted a series of resolutions condemning Israel for genocide and calling for divestment from Israel, including “human capital.” The organization has also offered its institutional support for a physician who expressed support for Hezbollah and for anti-Israel Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.

“CIR has formally recommended that hospitals exclude my Israeli colleagues from employment, and then compels dues from those same colleagues to fund that position,” Agronin said. “If any employer in this country adopted that policy, we would call it what it is: discrimination.”

He said that members of the union feel afraid to speak out. Agronin also emphasized that his salary, which will help fund the union, comes in part from Medicare graduate medical education funding. 

Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, said that her organization is encountering a new era in which “Jew hatred hides behind the guise of anti-Zionism.”

“We are seeing calls to fire Jewish doctors, the praising of terrorist groups in and outside of clinical settings, the refusal to treat patients because of their faith, national origin or Zionist identity, and the demand that Jewish colleagues renounce Israel as a condition of workplace acceptance,” Shekhman said. “This is antisemitism, this is discrimination, and it is a distraction. It has no place in medicine.”

Any disruption to the clinical environment can impact patient care, she said.

She added that employees should be able to rely on their unions to support them when their employers fail to do so in such an environment, but that many unions themselves “have created an environment where Jewish professionals no longer feel welcome” and where they are forced to fund such activities with which they disagree.

In addition to CIR, Shekhman said the National Nurses Union has also been advancing anti-Israel activity, including providing a guide for members to bring anti-Zionism into the clinical setting, where Shekhman argued such activity is irrelevant and has no place.

Deena Margolies, an attorney for the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said that efforts like these from healthcare unions place Jewish and Israeli professionals “in an impossible position: The union that is supposed to represent them is also helping to create the hostile work environment they must endure.”

“Antisemitism can be dressed as labor solidarity or political language, but the effect is the same. Jewish and Israeli healthcare professionals and patients are treated as morally suspect and unable to participate fully yet equally in clinical settings,” she continued.

Agronin told Jewish Insider after the hearing that there is a “fairly silent majority” that opposes the actions the union is taking but is afraid of backlash if they speak out.

Shekhman told JI that she appreciated that all of the lawmakers expressed concern about the trend of antisemitism in healthcare, and said that that is a promising sign of possibilities for progress going forward. 

She said that lawmakers’ support can be helpful when working with institutions to address these issues, and said that the hearing can be the first of “a lot more conversations that need to be had.”

Agronin emphasized that “it’s not just a Jewish issue. This is really an issue that affects all Americans.”

“This is discrimination, as it would be for any other group of people by race, sexual orientation, national origin, anything,” he said. “None of us want to be forced to pay even a single dollar to this organization, especially when it … certainly doesn’t serve our interests — actually quite the opposite. So, I’d hope that there’s some solution to have an option for those that want nothing to do with unions.”

Throughout the hearing, Democrats questioned the motivation of the inquiry, accusing Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism as a cudgel against union organizing generally.

“It is irresponsible and unproductive to take the words and actions of a few and broadly categorize labor unions as fostering discrimination,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), the ranking member of the subcommittee, said.

Jamie Beran, the CEO of the progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc, testified that antisemitism in the healthcare setting is “heartbreaking” and “leaves many Jews feeling isolated and unsure who to trust.” But she also attacked the Trump administration and descriptions of labor unions as institutionally antisemitic.

“The Trump administration is using Jewish safety as a pretext for policies that endanger our neighbors and our democracy, and as a Jewish leader, that angers me,” she continued. “Unions and professional organizations are engaged in the same debates happening across America. These disagreements are not inherently illegal antisemitism or harassment. … [T]o smear the institutions themselves as antisemitic because of what some members say is politically motivated. It’s gross governmental overreach to constitutionally protected speech among adults.”

Beran also condemned the administration for cutting funding for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, and for restricting abortion access.

Shekhman and Agronin insisted to JI after the hearing that the issue should be a nonpartisan one, and that they’re not targeting unions broadly. Shekhman emphasized that it’s a “patient care crisis issue” that impacts all Americans, regardless of their background. And Agronin said he did not believe that similar behavior would be tolerated if other groups were being targeted.

Shekhman said she did not have the opportunity during the hearing to emphasize the “true impact of BDS on healthcare overall” — including a loss of access to research, technology and collaboration across a range of different areas, as well as losing the support of Israeli physicians.

She said that lawmakers and the public may not understand the scope and volume of the problem: in the past two weeks AJMA received 26 incidents of various natures, from a car being vandalized with a swastika in a hospital parking lot to a kippah being knocked off. And, she continued, most of the victims are afraid to discuss the issue publicly.

Agronin said that CIR’s protestations that it is anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic are a ruse, and that “anti-Zionism is 1940s Jew hatred that’s rebranded for the 21st century.”

Senior Israeli and Lebanese officials will reconvene on Friday at the State Department to continue peace talks, a State Department official said, after the parties concluded the first day of negotiations in the third round of the U.S.-led talks on Thursday with no further agreements secured. 

The official said in a statement, “We had a full day of productive and positive talks that lasted from 9 a.m to 5 p.m. We look forward to continuing this tomorrow and hope to have more to share then.”

Israeli and Lebanese officials did not speak to the media on their way out of the Harry S. Truman Building, though all parties are expected back at the State Department headquarters at 9 a.m. ET on Friday to resume talks. 

The talks come three days before the three-week ceasefire which was extended during the second round of talks late last month is set to expire. 

Participants on Thursday included U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter; Brig. Gen. Amichai Levin, the IDF’s chief of strategy; Brig. Gen. Erik Ben-Dov, the acting Israeli military attaché in the U.S.; Yossi Draznin, Israel’s deputy national security advisor; U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa; Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadah; Simon Karam, Lebanon’s former top envoy to Washington; and Brig. Gen. Oliver Hakmeh, Lebanon’s military attaché in Washington. U.S. State Department Counselor Michael Needham, a close Rubio advisor, was also present, as were other senior Israeli military representatives.

Ahead of Thursday’s talks, Lebanese officials told the Associated Press that their main objective  was to get their Israeli counterparts to agree to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanese territory, and that they would address the domestic political issues in Lebanon surrounding Hezbollah’s disarmament after that.

Israeli officials, on the other hand, have described disarming Hezbollah as a necessity to furthering an agreement with Lebanon.

As was the case with prior rounds of talks, representatives for Hezbollah were not invited to participate. The terrorist organization has condemned the Lebanese government for engaging directly with Israel and refused to participate in the U.S.-led ceasefire. 

President Donald Trump said while announcing the three-week ceasefire extension that he would not prevent the Israelis from responding if under threat by Hezbollah, and the parties have continued to exchange fire regularly throughout the ceasefire. 

The president also expressed his hope that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun would meet in person during that three-week period, a prospect which Aoun has thus far continued to reject. 

The United Arab Emirates denied a report by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday that the Israeli leader secretly traveled to the UAE during the war with Iran to meet with Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed, which would have marked the first known meeting between the two leaders since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020.

The Prime Minister’s Office said that the meeting “resulted in a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.” However, the UAE’s ministry of foreign affairs released a statement hours later calling the claims “entirely unfounded.” 

“The United Arab Emirates denies reports circulating regarding an alleged visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE, or receiving any Israeli military delegation in the country,” the statement read. “The UAE reaffirms that its relations with Israel are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements.”

According to Ziv Agnon, who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff until early April, bin Zayed picked Netanyahu up in his own car and drove him to the palace.

During the conflict in Iran, Israel and the UAE have seen a marked increase in military and intelligence cooperation. Mossad chief David Barnea also quietly visited the UAE at least twice over the course of the war with Iran to directly coordinate regional security strategies, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee confirmed this week that Jerusalem dispatched an Iron Dome missile-defense battery to the UAE along with Israeli military personnel to operate it in order to shield the Gulf nation from Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. 

Two Israeli jets landed in the city of Al-Ain in Abu Dhabi in late March, according to flight radars, and headed back to Israel after an apparent four-hour visit. 

The Israeli and Emirati leaders also reportedly met in secret in 2018, two years prior to the signing of the Abraham Accords.

Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column alleging widespread Israeli sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners was certain to generate intense debate and scrutiny, given the sensitivities involved in covering such a highly charged subject.

But after it was published on Monday, his opinion piece, headlined “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” has faced particularly heated backlash, including accusations of antisemitism and claims Kristof relied on discredited sources to advance his message.

Kristof, a veteran Times opinion columnist who has frequently reported on atrocities in far-flung locales, argued that Israeli leaders have ignored what he calls a well-documented pattern of sexual violence against Palestinians, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “rightly” beseeched “civilized leaders” to “speak up” after Hamas was found to have engaged in a campaign of gender-based rape and brutalization targeting women during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

Citing recent interviews with 14 Palestinian victims, including men and women, some of whose accounts he says he corroborated, Kristof relays a number of graphically detailed stories implicating members of the Israeli security forces and settlers whom he claims have escaped accountability.

Despite the direct testimonies he presented, critics have countered with a range of rebuttals, claiming that he drew a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas, that his column overstated the existence of alleged misconduct and that his broader assessment rests on questionable data and sources that weaken his central thesis.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was quoted in the column as saying he was not surprised to hear about accounts of sexual violence, also wrote in a statement to the Times obtained by the journalist Eli Lake that “the positioning” of his comments “after pages of such allegations misrepresents my views.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Ministry, in a social media post on Monday, dismissed Kristof’s column as “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press,” saying it “will fight these lies with the truth.”

On Tuesday, echoing others who took issue with the column, the ministry said that Kristof had referenced a report by a Geneva-based NGO, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, whose founder “has documented ties to senior Hamas leaders,” raising questions about the accuracy of its conclusion that Israel uses “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”

The American Jewish Committee also expressed concerns about Kristof’s decision to cite allegations that Israel had trained police dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, a claim that critics have rejected as a thinly sourced conspiracy theory. The AJC, for its part, said the allegation represented “a modern-day blood libel in the ‘paper of record.’”

“Allegations of abuse toward Palestinians deserve serious, rigorous investigation,” the organization wrote in a social media post on Tuesday. “Yet this piece, while opinion, appeared to be presented as an investigative report and fell alarmingly short of that standard while amplifying inflammatory narratives that have real-world consequences in a time of surging hatred toward Israelis and Jews worldwide.”

Kristof, who has defended his column in several social media posts, questioned “those who say that canine rape is impossible, despite the many Palestinians who have described it.”

“I’d note that at least three different medical journal articles discuss rectal injuries in humans from anal penetration by dogs,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Sigh.”

In a separate post after publication, Kristof voiced appreciation for “the intense interest in” his column. “For skeptics, why not agree on Red Cross and lawyer visits for the 9,000 Palestinian ‘security’ prisoners?” he replied. “If you think these abuse allegations are false, such monitoring visits would be protective. So why not?”

He also dismissed a viral but unverified social media post alleging Times discussions about “retracting” the column as “completely untrue,” a response backed up by the newspaper itself. 

“There is no truth to this at all,” a spokesperson for the Times said in a statement posted to social media, adding that Kristof “traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse, and his article collects accounts in the victims’ own words, backed by independent studies.”

The Times did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider regarding other reactions to the column and how or if it is now weighing the criticism.

Haviv Rettig Gur, an Israeli journalist, criticized the column as “obvious propaganda,” but acknowledged that “there really is abuse” that Israel must confront.

“The problem is real,” he said in a lengthy post. “It’s far smaller than they claim, but real nonetheless. And when discipline and morality break down, it can only get worse. We either crack down now or we watch it fester and grow.”

He also noted that the column had overshadowed a comprehensive new report, released on Tuesday by an independent Israeli group, concluding that Hamas had committed “systematic” and “widespread” sexual violence on Oct. 7 as part of a “calculated strategy.”

The Times spokesperson said in a statement that the report “had no bearing on” Kristof’s “opinion column or its publication timing.”

Michael Cohen, a pro-Israel political commentator based in New York City, argued in social media post that “two things can be true at the same time.”

“Kristof’s piece properly highlighted the horrible prison conditions for Palestinian detainees in Israel (which are well documented) while also leaning into arguments (the dogs’ story in particular) that are based on weak evidence from unreliable sources,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Lots of people are focusing on the latter and ignoring the former — and vice versa.”

“I know it’s verboten on this website (or elsewhere) to suggest nuance in anything related to” Israelis and Palestinians, Cohen added, “but that’s usually where the truth lies.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday that the war against Iran is not yet over, in spite of the weekslong ceasefire and assertions by the U.S. administration that the operations that began in February have concluded.

In the interview with Major Garrett, Netanyahu also reiterated his call to end direct U.S. financial aid for Israel over the next 10 years.

Netanyahu said that, while the joint U.S. and Israeli operations in Iran accomplished much, the war is “not over,” with nuclear material still in Iran, and certain Iranian enrichment sites, proxies and ballistic missile efforts surviving.

“We’ve degraded a lot of it. But all that is still there, and there’s work to be done,” he said, adding that any diplomatic agreement with Iran should address all of those areas. Netanyahu said that he would be happy to see an agreement, if it covers those areas, but that both Israel and the United States are prepared to re-engage militarily if it does not.

The Islamic Republic regime, he added, is at its “weakest point” but “it’s not over.” Asked whether there is anyone on the Iranian side capable of negotiating a durable deal, Netanyahu declined to disclose his views publicly, but said he had shared his opinion with Trump.

Netanyahu denied reports that he had assured Trump prior to the beginning of the war that the Iranian regime would fall.

“[We] both agreed that there was both uncertainty and risk involved,” Netanyahu said. “And I remember … I said, and he said that there’s danger in action, in taking action. But there’s greater danger in not taking action.”

Addressing a question about the physical condition and influence of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly seriously wounded at the beginning of the war and has made no public appearances since, Netanyahu said, “I think he is alive.” 

“What his condition is, it’s hard to say,” Netanyahu said. “You know, he’s holed up in some bunker or in some secret place and he’s, I think he’s trying to exert his authority. I don’t think he has the same authority that his father had … that’s also creating the disruptions in the regime.”

Asked whether the U.S. and Israel had underestimated the likelihood that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, he said that they came to understand the issue over the course of the war. But he argued that Tehran’s decision to close the Strait has proven costly for Iran, in light of the U.S.-imposed blockade.

He also declared that Iran would have had a nuclear weapon now, or within two months, if Israel and the U.S. had not carried out their operations in 2025 and 2026.

“The most pointed success is knocking out 20 top nuclear scientists who were working on the atomic bombs to be used against Israel, America and anyone else,” Netanyahu said.

🇮🇷WATCH: Iran might already have a nuclear bomb, had Israel not launched its two military operations, Israeli PM Netanyahu said on his "60 Minutes" CBS interview.

Read more here: https://t.co/ABBvkCPGHp pic.twitter.com/chDlNiYKeB

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 11, 2026

“I think taking out that amount of know-how — it doesn’t eliminate the know-how but it sets them back,” he continued. “Does it mean that they can’t produce a device? No. But it means that if they planned this arsenal of nuclear atomic bombs that they thought they’d have by now — that’s gone, that’s been pushed back, and it’s important they don’t have an atomic arsenal. But they would have had it and we would have faced certain death. So the greatest accomplishment is we’re alive.”

Netanyahu recounted conversations in 2016 and 2024 with Trump in which Trump expressed concern about Iran’s nuclear program. Asked why the U.S. had not acted militarily until 2025, Netanyahu said that Trump had been hopeful that sanctions imposed in his first administration would stop Iran’s nuclear program, but they did not fully do so.

Netanyahu reiterated his call to draw down and ultimately end direct U.S. financial support for Israel over the next decade — despite tensions that his stance has caused with supporters of Israel on both sides of the aisle. He also said he wants to begin drawing down financial support now, rather than waiting for the next Congress, adding that “it could go down very fast.”

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu: "I want to draw down the American support to Israel to zero."

In a "60 Minutes" CBS interview, Netanyahu reiterated his call to end direct U.S. financial aid for Israel over the next 10 years.

Read more here: https://t.co/4AXZP3RyUc pic.twitter.com/3NI5nWNW47

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 11, 2026

He said that the future of the relationship should be focused on joint projects equally funded by both Israel and the United States, from which the two countries would share equally. Such a system is how missile defense funding is currently provided, among other projects, but that funding has also come under attack by some in the U.S.

Netanyahu blamed social media, and the manipulation of American social media users by hostile foreign actors using bot farms, for cratering support for Israel among the American people.

“While they’re attacking us with the equivalent of F-35, we’re trying to fight them with a Polish cavalry,” Netanyahu said. “So I think we have to engage on that front, not by censorship but by finding ways that are applicable to democracies. … We have a problem. I recognize it. And we have to get our act together.”

Asked about Gaza, Netanyahu said that Hamas still must be disarmed, demilitarized and deradicalized, and that he has asked the U.S. to provide names of countries that are willing to send in their own troops to carry out that effort, given that Hamas has reneged on its ceasefire obligations. He suggested that Israel may ultimately need to carry out that mission itself.

“If it comes down to us, then we’ll have to do it, but we’ll choose the time and the circumstances in which to do it because we’ve got a few other things,” he said. “But we are not going to let Hamas ever threaten Israel again.”

The Israeli prime minister said that Israel had destroyed more than 90% of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket stockpile, but that the group still maintains thousands of such weapons. He said that an invasion of Lebanon was necessary to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas incursions into Israel from Israel’s north.

Asked about Russian and Chinese support for Iran during the current war, Netanyahu largely dodged the question. He argued that an emboldened Iran is not in China’s best interests, and said that Russian military support to Iran has “not been a big issue” — while declining to comment on intelligence support, which Moscow has reportedly provided Tehran in the form of targeting data for missile and drone attacks throughout the region.

Jewish Insider’s Israel editor Tamara Zieve contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump convened senior U.S., Israeli and Lebanese officials at the White House on Thursday for the second round of Israeli-Lebanese peace talks, during which the parties agreed to a three-week extension of the ongoing ceasefire. 

The talks were originally slated to be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department, but the president had the summit moved to the Oval Office in order to participate and lead the negotiations. Trump and Rubio were joined at the meeting by Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa and Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadah Mouwad. U.S. State Department Counselor Michael Needham was also in the room.

Trump announced the ceasefire extension in a post on his Truth Social platform at the conclusion of the talks. “The Meeting went very well! The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah,” Trump wrote on the platform. “I look forward in the near future to hosting the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu, and the President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun. It was a Great Honor to be a participant at this very Historic Meeting!”

Speaking afterward to press alongside Vance, Rubio and the four ambassadors, the president expressed his hope that Israeli and Lebanese leaders would meet during the ceasefire, ideally at the White House. 

Vance and Rubio both credited Trump as the catalyst for securing the ceasefire extension at the meeting, with each asserting that the president’s direct participation pushed all sides to want to leave with deliverables. “The president wanted to be personally involved, and I’m glad he was because it made it possible to get this extension,” Rubio said.

Trump said that Hezbollah’s refusals to disarm and cease attacks on Israel and its forces were main topics during the talks, and noted that he would not prevent the Israelis from responding if hit by Hezbollah. Still, he said, Israel’s overall approach to the war against Hezbollah would shift to a more “surgical” approach.

“Israel is going to have to defend itself if they’re shot at, and they will. I would never say that they can’t,” Trump said. “It’d be nice if they wouldn’t have to bother with that, but if something happens, they’re going to have to defend themselves, as you know, but they’re going to do it carefully and they’re going to be surgical as opposed to beyond surgical. There’s a lot they can do, but Israel is going to have to defend itself.”

Despite the ceasefire announcement, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel, with Hezbollah taking credit for an attack on Shtula, a border community in northern Israel as officials gathered at the White House for peace talks. On Friday morning, the IDF said that in response to those rockets, it struck Hezbollah military structures used to plan and carry out terror attacks in the areas of Kherbet Selem and Touline in southern Lebanon.

Leiter praised the Trump administration’s efforts to reach a diplomatic solution and improve relations between Israel and Lebanon, though he noted that such a goal could not be achieved without making the defeat of Hezbollah a core focus.

“To put the emphasis repeatedly in our talks on Israeli withdrawal is to fall into the trap, once again, of putting the emphasis in the wrong place. If we continue down that path, we are doomed to failure, and failure, friends, is not an option,” Leiter said. “If, on the other hand, we put the focus on the root problem, Hezbollah and its murderous intentions with regard to Israel, I have no doubt that we will succeed in eliminating the Hezbollah menace and achieving peace between our two countries.”

The president insisted the Iranian leaders would need to cut off its funding for Hezbollah to secure a peace deal to end the U.S. war in Iran, responding affirmatively when asked if that was “a must” for him. 

Trump also said he would “make sure” that Lebanese laws criminalizing official communications with Israel were “ended very quickly,” criticizing the policy as “crazy.”

“I think we’ll have to end that. That’s something we’re gonna have to end,” Trump told reporters after being asked about the laws. “That’s a good start. It’s a crime to talk with Israel? Well, I’m pretty sure that that will be ended very quickly, OK? I’ll make sure of that. And I know Lebanon doesn’t want that. We’ll end it. Will you work on that please, everybody? That’s crazy.” 

Rubio touted the ceasefire extension in Lebanon as a win for all parties involved, arguing that the pause in fighting “gives everybody time to continue to work on what’s going to be a permanent peace between two countries who want to be at peace.” Still, he warned that Hezbollah remained a significant barrier to achieving that aim.

Israel and Lebanon, Rubio argued, “are victimized by the same terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that no doubt has victimized Israel, but has also victimized the people of Lebanon. The people of Lebanon deserve to live in a country that’s peaceful and prosperous. They have an opportunity to do that. They have a history of that, and what’s standing in the way is a terrorist organization that operates within their national territory. That threat needs to be eliminated.”

UCLA’s student government condemned a recent campus event featuring former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, labeling the speaker selection as “selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence” and “a troubling disregard for Palestinian life.”    

In an undated letter to UCLA administration, as well as the organizers of the event — UCLA Hillel and the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies — and “affiliated campus stakeholders,” the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council wrote that it “condemns” the April 14 event, held on Yom HaShoah, which was titled “505 Days in Captivity: Omer Shem Tov’s Testimony of Resilience.” 

The council represents over 29,000 undergraduates at UCLA. 

“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence. Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon. In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities,” the letter states.

“Institutional sponsorship of this event reflects a troubling disregard for Palestinian life … Universities must not be complicit in the production or amplification of one-sided narratives that erase systems of oppression and occupation,” the letter continued. “USAC calls on UCLA to immediately reconsider its role in sponsoring future programming that advances incomplete and harmful representations of ongoing violence.” 

“Hillel at UCLA would like to apologize for absolutely nothing,” the group’s executive director, Daniel Gold, told Jewish Insider. 

“Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student, and anti-Jewish in condemning our beautiful event last week with Omer Shem Tov,” Gold said.

Shem Tov was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive in Gaza for 505 days. 

A spokesperson for UCLA told JI, “The event’s message was one of resilience and respect for human rights and dignity — a message we support. We stand by UCLA Hillel, UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and the UCLA Chapter of Students Supporting Israel’s invitation to have this very important dialogue.” 

“We will review the process by which this letter was issued. The condemnation of such a peaceful event to share a story of resilience in the face of extreme suffering is antithetical to the values of our Bruin community,” the spokesperson said.

UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk spoke at the event, introducing Shem Tov.

The federal government has been in a monthslong legal battle with UCLA, including a February lawsuit alleging that the campus failed to protect Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff in accordance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination. 

Israeli singer Hananel Edri discovered his love for food and his family’s Moroccan traditions in his grandmother’s kitchen, where he found solace after the trauma of a rocket strike on his family home in Kiryat Shmona, near Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, at age 10.

Meanwhile, Merav Oren — founder and CEO of Foodish, the culinary department of Tel Aviv’s Anu Museum of the Jewish People — grew up between Atlanta and Israel, rooted in a different culinary tradition: Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. 

This year, the two brought their worlds together to form “Soul and Roll,” a new immersive culinary and musical experience designed by Oren and Edri — a self-proclaimed “foodie” and singer who has performed on some of Israel’s most prestigious stages including Habima National Theatre. “We talk, Hananel sings and at the end people do a hands-on experience making ma’amoul,” a traditional Middle Eastern pastry often served at Mimouna, the Moroccan-Jewish celebration to mark the end of Passover, Oren told Jewish Insider on Sunday at an event to launch Foodish’s international expansion.  

Held at the Washington home of documentary filmmaker Aviva Kempner, some two dozen attendees got a taste of a Soul and Roll show, including Edri’s rendition of “Jerusalem of Gold” and a Moroccan song dedicated to his grandmother, followed by a lesson in making date-filled ma’amoul pastries to bring home. The invitation-only event also featured remarks from Israeli chef and food writer Vered Guttman and Jewish cookbook author Joan Nathan.  

“Anu strengthens the Jewish belonging through history and art. We at Foodish do that through food — we tell the story of the Jewish people through food, through events and festivals,” said Oren.      

Edri and Oren, both of whom reside in Tel Aviv, met during a visit to Warsaw, Poland, working with Jewish communities through food and music, just days before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. After Hamas’ massacre, the pair reunited to lead food therapy workshops.

“Just after Oct. 7 we went down to the south where evacuees were staying and started doing culinary workshops with them,” Oren recalled on Sunday. One moment that still stands out to her, she said, was when she began doing dishes after the workshop and an evacuee insisted on helping because what she missed most about home was “the basic stuff like washing dishes, baking or cooking.”

Also in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, Foodish ran a pop-up exhibition with 14 of the leading chefs in Israel, including Eyal Shani, pairing each with a famous Israeli artist. Each illustrator designed artwork for a chef coat based on the chef’s personal story, which was then sold in an exhibition. Funds raised went towards expanding the food therapy workshops. 

Foodish has since launched several other programs, including one that invites high school students to taste cultural, and sometimes unpopular foods like chopped liver, “that are kind of disgusting, but through that we tell the story of specific communities,” said Oren. 

Another program designed to alleviate loneliness among the elderly sends volunteers to their homes and to document their history as they cook together. “Then we have an event where they invite their families, go onstage and tell their stories. The food helps them tell their stories, which otherwise probably no one would have asked them about,” said Oren.  

The newest projects, which Oren said are “going global,” include Soul and Roll, as well as one designed for schools that focuses on teenagers and young adults to assist them in documenting their family’s food stories, both online and in print.   

“All of these are examples that explain to us food is not just food, it’s so much more engaging. We deal with Jewish identity through food,” said Oren. “We want to take what we do to Jewish communities all over the world.”

Noting Israel’s war with Iran and the countless hours they have spent in Tel Aviv bomb shelters over the past month, both Oren and Edri said that the launch of Foodish’s latest programs comes amid a challenging period. 

“This is a difficult time for us. Growing up, the rocket situation was my reality,” said Edri. “Today, I live in Tel Aviv and we are facing the same reality. Doing what we do, and to be able to come here and share our stories with you, is even more important [than ever] for me because we are strong only if we stay together. Our existence really depends on each other,” he told the American Jewish audience. 

Although the war forced the cancellation of two of their three scheduled shows in Israel, Edri told JI that Soul and Roll is persevering, adding, “It’s difficult, but we’re getting it out there.” The pair’s trip to the U.S. also included a Mimouna show in New York.

“My background is mainly onstage and I’m a big foodie,” continued Edri, adding that what draws him to the program is the combination of “kitchen, memories, Jewish identity brought all together with music and what Anu does, and people leaving with cookies, music they can sing to and memories.” 

Edri, who runs his own culinary-musical web series called “Cooking with Hananel,” shared the reason each Soul and Roll show begins with the same song, “Jerusalem of Gold,” the iconic Israeli tune written by Naomi Shemer in 1967: “Merav’s family came from Poland, my family came from Morocco,” he said. “Our grandmothers were in very different situations and settings, but they all prayed and longed for the same place, which is Jerusalem.” 

As the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran extends into its sixth week, the next 36 hours may be some of the most pivotal, offering clarity as to whether an end is in sight — or whether an escalation is imminent.

On the table now, according to Axios, is a proposed two-phased ceasefire deal, lasting 45 days, that would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and give negotiators two to three weeks to reach a broader agreement to end the war. As a signal that the U.S. is open to the agreement, President Donald Trump extended by 24 hours the deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait, setting a new deadline of Tuesday night ET.

The core issues remain: Tehran’s closure of the key waterway, and the fate of the country’s enriched uranium. But a deal between Washington and Tehran would include broader issues, including potential sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran’s promise that it will not pursue nuclear weapons. Iran has signaled that it will not reopen the Strait for a temporary ceasefire and is seeking a more permanent resolution.

The president paired threats with optimism, leaning into the current debate with a mix of tough talk — warning yesterday that strikes targeting Iran’s power plants and bridges would take place on Tuesday in the absence of a deal — and hopes of an 11th-hour diplomatic breakthrough. 

Trump doubled down on both sentiments yesterday in a flurry of interviews with reporters. “If they don’t make a deal, and fast, I am considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil,” Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst on Sunday morning. Yet the president said there was a “good chance” that a deal would be reached today — even as he posted “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!” on his Truth Social site, a reminder of the new deadline he had set for the Islamic Republic to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

In comments to The Wall Street Journal, the president said that if the Iranians “don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country.”

Trump made the comments on the heels of the daring weekend rescue of an American weapons system operator who had been shot down inside Iran — the details of which the president is expected to share at an afternoon press conference today alongside senior military officials. 

A diplomatic agreement would see a winding down of the war that would likely allow Iran to retain some of its ballistic missile capabilities — a compromise that is unlikely to sit well in Israel, which continues to face fire from Iranian forces. 

On the other hand, Trump’s threatened destruction of key Iranian infrastructure could further deteriorate conditions in the Islamic Republic, where a regime-imposed internet blackout has ensured minimal on-the-ground reporting on weeks of war. And as always, the president has one eye on the markets, which will open today after the holiday weekend.

The U.S. and Israel have already made serious strategic strides by killing dozens of members of Iran’s senior leadership and severely crippling Tehran’s nuclear program. The question now is whether that will be enough for Trump to declare victory in accordance with the rough timeline he’s given for U.S. operations in Iran — or whether the U.S. will double down on its military operations.

Israeli-American comedian Modi Rosenfeld, known simply as “Modi,” pulled out of a Passover-themed benefit Monday after his manager revealed that the entertainer had been “blindsided” with the news that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would participate in the Lower Manhattan event.

Quoting Jewish Insider’s initial report on the mayor’s scheduled involvement in the 33rd Annual “Downtown Seder” at impresario Michael Dorf’s venue City Winery, Rosenfeld’s official Instagram account announced the Tel Aviv-born, Long Island-reared performer had withdrawn from the event.

“We were not told Mamdani was participating in this event until today,” the post read. “Modi will no longer be attending.” 

Reached by phone, Rosenfeld’s manager told JI that they had committed to featuring in the festivities months ago — and said the venue should have notified them earlier that the mayor, whose political initiation began with anti-Israel campus activism, would be part of the program as well.

“It’s just inappropriate to be blindsided with that information the day of the event, regardless of anyone’s political feelings,” said Leo Veiga, who is also Rosenfeld’s husband. “That’s a very polarizing thing right now, so it’s not appropriate for us to be attending.”

Veiga declined to elaborate further on his and Rosenfeld’s feelings toward the mayor and the event, and expressed hope that any controversy provoked would “die down.”

Still set to appear alongside Mamdani is Israeli musician David Broza, while Israeli-American Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie will participate via a livestream from Israel. Broza and Lau-Lavie are both well-known liberals and peace activists, while Rosenfeld is known for performing to religious audiences.

“The Seder is about asking urgent questions — about freedom, responsibility, and how we care for one another,” said Dorf in the initial press release announcing the event. “Each year, we bring together voices who challenge, inspire, and reflect the world as it is — and as it could be.”

Dorf, who previously hosted then-candidate Mamdani for a Yom Kippur event last year, has criticized IDF policy in Gaza — but has rejected allegations that Israel has committed “genocide,” a claim the mayor makes frequently. 

Net proceeds from the already sold-out tickets will go toward Seeds of Peace, an organization known for hosting Israel and Arab youth at dialogue forums in Maine, the press release said.

Other celebrities on the bill include Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner, news anchor Don Lemon, musician Meg Okura and comedienne Olga Namer.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition narrowly beat a deadline that would have led to an early election, passing the 2026 state budget early Monday morning, a day before the March 31 deadline.

The budget passed after the coalition granted NIS 800 million ($255 million) in benefits to Haredi institutions, and promised Shas and United Torah Judaism that the government would pass a law that, in effect, would continue yeshiva students’ exemption from military service, even as Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, raised “10 red flags” about insufficient military manpower.

According to Israeli law, state budgets are meant to be passed by the end of the previous fiscal year, on December 31, but an extension is permitted to the end of March. If no budget is passed by the final deadline, the Knesset is automatically dissolved and an election is called for three months later.

This government had used that extension amid disputes over legislation reducing the penalties on Haredi yeshivas and young men who do not enlist in the IDF such that it would effectively continue their blanket exemption from military service. The matter remained unresolved, with Haredi parties threatening to vote against the budget, as the war with Iran began at the end of February.  

Two weeks into the war, Netanyahu and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that the coalition would set aside legislation under dispute, including Haredi conscription, in order to pass the budget.

As part of the conditions for Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism to drop their demand to pass the conscription exemption bill, the budget included an increase of over NIS 1 billion (approximately $319 million) for Haredi yeshivas and other institutions. The funding would offset much of the sanctions on Haredi individuals and institutions in recent years, after the High Court of Justice struck down their exemption from IDF service.

Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara had blocked most of the funds from being included in the draft of the budget that went to a vote, because it was meant to circumvent the law, but the coalition voted it in soon after midnight Sunday as an amendment to the budget bill. 

In addition, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth, of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said last week that the Haredi IDF exemption bill would be back on the Knesset agenda in two weeks, after Passover — meeting another demand by the Haredi parties that the exemption from the IDF be legislated as soon as possible after the budget.

Bismuth’s remarks about the return of the Haredi exemption bill came on the same day as a report on Israel’s Channel 13 that Zamir warned in a Security Cabinet meeting that the “IDF is going to collapse in on itself” if it does not increase its ranks. 

In addition to the likelihood of Haredim no longer facing penalties for failing to serve, a law reducing mandatory IDF service from 36 months to 30 months is set to go into effect in January 2027. Zamir asked the government earlier this year to revert to the previous length of mandatory service.

”I am raising 10 red flags,” Zamir reportedly said. “The IDF needs a [Haredi] conscription law, a reserve duty [extension] law and a law to extend mandatory service. Before long, the IDF will not be ready for its routine missions and the reserve system will not last.” 

The 2026 budget is the largest in Israel’s history, reaching NIS 850.6 billion ($271 billion), with an unprecedented NIS 143 billion ($45.8 billion) for the defense budget alone, amid the war with Iran and Hezbollah and continued operations in Gaza.

All other ministries were cut by 3% to fund the extra wartime spending.

The budget was passed in a final vote after over 13 hours of opposition filibustering, as well as repeated missile sirens stopping the proceedings, during which lawmakers voted from a fortified room, as opposed to the regular Knesset plenum.

Current and former Israeli and U.S. officials suggested that an Israeli strike on an Iranian gas field on Wednesday that prompted the Islamic Republic to strike Qatar was coordinated with the White House, despite President Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S. “knew nothing about this particular attack.” 

Trump made the remarks in a Truth Social post, in which he threatened that the U.S. would bomb the South Pars gas field, the Iranian portion of the larger field shared with Qatar, if Iran does not stop attacking Qatar. 

“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape or form involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen. Unfortunately, Iran did not know this … and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar’s [liquid natural gas] facility,” the president wrote.

If “Iran unwisely decides to attack a very innocent, in this case, Qatar,” he added, the U.S., “with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”

An Israeli official told Kan News, Israel’s public broadcaster, that the attack on the South Pars gas field was coordinated with the U.S.

Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Pentagon official in the Biden administration, wrote on X, “Trump can post whatever he likes. But there is zero, I mean zero, chance the IDF would conduct a strike in that location without giving CENTCOM full visibility.”

“Trump knew (and approved),” Shapiro added. “Now he realizes it caused a major escalation with Iran’s (entirely unjustified) attacks on Gulf energy targets.” 

Shapiro later clarified that the Israeli strike “could not have been carried [out] without U.S. knowledge and explicit or implicit approval.” 

“It was predictable that strikes on Iranian energy facilities (by US or Israel) would lead to Iranian strikes on Gulf energy facilities,” he wrote. “There is a narrow window following the Israeli and Iranian strikes, and Trump’s Truth Social Post (untrue, but possibly useful in this context), to de-escalate away from further strikes on energy industry targets in either direction. That will still leave a very challenging situation to unwind, but [it] would be the best near-term development.”

Gilad Erdan, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington and a former member of Israel’s Security Cabinet, told Jewish Insider that it was highly likely the U.S. knew about the strike, saying that Trump did not criticize Israel in his post, and “in the same breath” as saying the U.S. was unaware, “[Trump] himself threatened to erase the [gas] field.”

Erdan noted that the South Pars gas field is “used for Iran’s domestic energy needs [and] doesn’t harm the international energy market.”

“Israel took upon itself to be at the front [of the situation] in my estimation because the field is also Qatari,” Erdan, who is also a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security, said. “Someone had to send the deterrent message about the energy field to the Iranians, that if they continue, then all options are open against them and they will be hurt badly.” (The writer is a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute and cohosts its podcast.)

Yaakov Katz, an Israeli military expert and author of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, told JI that he agreed with Shapiro’s assessment. “There is no way Israel would attack such a strategic facility [without coordination] because they know it would draw the Iranians to attack the Gulf states,” he said. 

Katz pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s behavior since the war with Iran began late last month as further indication that Israel was unlikely to make such a move without coordinating with the U.S.: “Why would Netanyahu who behaved so carefully all throughout the war, coordinating with Trump to not upset him so he keeps the war going … do something that would anger Trump and potentially lead him to do something brash and declare the war is over?” 

“It was coordinated, and now Trump is saying what he’s saying to distance himself, but it was done to send a message to the Iranians,” Katz added.

Also Thursday, Saudi Arabia released a statement with the foreign ministers from Azerbaijan, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon and Egypt urging Iran to stop its attacks.

“The participants held Iran fully responsible for the losses and called on Iran to immediately and unconditionally cease its aggression and to comply with UN Security Council resolutions. The meeting also emphasized the dangers of supporting militias and destabilizing security, stressing that Iran must seriously reconsider its miscalculations,” the statement read.

If Iran continues, the foreign ministers stated, there will be “serious consequences for Iran and the security of the region, and will exact a heavy price, casting a shadow over its relations with the countries and peoples of the region, who will not stand idly by in the face of threats to their capabilities.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that the U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran have largely destroyed Tehran’s “power projection capabilities” in the region, but that the regime remains standing, if weakened.

“The [intelligence community] assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and continued with the 12-day war last year, resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies,” Gabbard said at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats on Wednesday. 

“The IC assesses the regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” she continued. “Its conventional military power projection capabilities have largely been destroyed, leaving limited options. Iran’s strategic position has been significantly degraded.”

If the Iranian regime survives the current war, Gabbard said that it would “seek to begin a yearslong effort to rebuild its military, missiles and UAV forces.”

She further said that, if the regime remains standing, internal tensions and resistance to the regime inside Iran are likely to increase as the country’s economy continues to struggle under U.S. and international sanctions.

Gabbard said in her opening statement that Iran “was trying to recover from the severe damage to its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-day war, and continued to refuse to comply with its nuclear obligations” to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Democratic senators pressed her throughout the hearing on apparent differences between those comments and her written remarks provided to the committee before the hearing, in which Gabbard said that Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was “obliterated” and that it had made “no efforts since then to try to rebuild” its enrichment capacity.

Under questioning, Gabbard affirmed that stance, but said Iran “maintained the intention to rebuild” its nuclear capabilities. She said she had omitted those remarks from her oral testimony for time reasons.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe throughout the hearing appeared to take a more aggressive and assertive stance on Iran than Gabbard, an isolationist and longtime opponent of war with Iran, offering a clear explanation and justification for the U.S. strikes. 

Ratcliffe said that Iran was continuing its nuclear and ballistic missile development, and that he disagreed with an assessment by former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent that Iran did not pose an imminent threat, which Kent alleged in his resignation letter.

“I think Iran has been a constant threat to the United States for an extended period of time, and posed an immediate threat at this time,” Ratcliffe said.

Ratcliffe said that the U.S. operation was “detailed” and “thoughtful” with specific goals to address a long-running and growing threat.

He said that Iran was continuing to build and develop missiles “at alarming rates” such that its offensive capabilities were on track to outpace and overwhelm the U.S.’ ability to build defensive weaponry.

At the same time, Ratcliffe said the U.S. strikes last summer were a “wild success” and that Iran was “unwillinging and incapable” of enriching uranium to 60% purity since those strikes.

Gabbard, meanwhile, repeatedly declined to say whether the intelligence community had assessed Iran to be an imminent threat to the United States, asserting that only the president has the ability to determine whether any threat is imminent, to the frustration of committee Democrats.

In her opening statement, Gabbard also said that Iran’s space launch capabilities would allow it to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035, if Iran decided to pursue that, though that assessment is pending updates after U.S. military operations.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Intelligence Committee, suggested in his question that the timeline was much shorter, and that Iran actually could have had an ICBM that could threaten the homeland in six months.

Ratcliffe did not explicitly confirm that timeline, but emphasized that Iran’s missile program was a present and growing threat, which “if left unimpeded … would have the ability to range missiles to the continental U.S.”

“It’s one of the reasons why degrading Iran’s missile production capabilities that is taking place right now in Operation Epic Fury is so important to our national security,” Ratcliffe continued.

Pressed repeatedly by Democrats on whether the intelligence community had warned the President Donald Trump of the likelihood — as previously assessed by intelligence officials — that Iran would attack Gulf states and close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a war, Gabbard and Ratcliffe both emphasized that the administration was aware of and had taken steps to prepare for those threats, despite comments by Trump that such moves by Iran were unanticipated.

Gabbard also described “the spread of Islamist ideology, in some cases, led by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood” as “a fundamental threat to freedom and the foundational principles that underpin Western civilization.”

She said that Islamists are using such ideologies to recruit and solicit financial support for terrorism globally, and that such activity has been increasing in Europe.

Gabbard called the Trump administration’s designation of certain Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations, “a mechanism to secure Americans.”

Ratcliffe said the CIA is “very focused” on counterterrorism, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and that the administration has had significant success, which he could share further in a classified setting.

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DOMESTIC FRONT

As war wages in Iran, Justice Dept. reaches ceasefire with Tehran-backed network in Manhattan

Eighteen-year legal fight over the Iran-tied Alavi Foundation ends with a new group with similar leadership taking over its assets — and NYC skyscraper

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NAMING NAMES

Jonathan Greenblatt calls out Chris Van Hollen, Ro Khanna at ADL’s national conference

The ADL’s annual summit comes amid high-profile antisemitic attacks during the Iran war

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BREAKING POINT

Antisemitism meets America’s ‘thoughts and prayers’ ritual

Democrats began calling out those who traffic in antisemitic rhetoric when they offered platitudes after an attack on a Michigan synagogue

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UNDER PRESSURE

Ro Khanna facing new Democratic challenger hitting him from the political center

Tech entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal: ‘He thinks being racist against Jewish people is going to help him win the American left. I don’t care if he’s right. I just think it’s unethical and immoral’

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As Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro eyes a 2028 presidential run, he is using a series of big-name podcast interviews to refine and test out his messaging on Israel — and taking aim at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential rival, in the process. 

In interviews with the “Pod Save America” and “Higher Learning” podcasts that dropped in recent days, Shapiro put himself in the line of fire from interviewers with more left-wing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than he holds. In response, he made the case that, as the starting point for any public political conversation about Israel, the fact of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state must be respected.

“I think what is dangerous here, and I’m not accusing you of this by any stretch, is for those who think Israel doesn’t have a right to exist in [the] conversation. That to me is a recipe for permanent war,” Shapiro told “Higher Learning” host Van Lathan, who said a national conversation about Israel is needed. (“Higher Learning” is part of a podcast network from the digital media company The Ringer.) 

The point of the discussion seemed to be to demonstrate a kind of modeling — that Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat who has long been both a supporter of Israel and a critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, can show Democrats how to have a difficult yet transparent and empathetic conversation amid deep disagreements over Israel’s actions in Gaza. 

Shapiro is making clear that if he runs for president, he does not intend to sidestep the party’s most fraught foreign policy debate. He intends to shape it.

In the “Higher Learning” interview, Shapiro laid out his views on Israel while taking flack from Lathan, who called Israel “one of the worst human rights violators” and said he is worried that in describing Israel as an “apartheid state,” people will think he is saying he hates Jews. 

“I fundamentally disagree with your viewpoint, but I don’t think you’re an antisemite. I think that you are learning and struggling and grappling with issues that are really, really tough, and you formed an opinion, one that I disagree with, that you seemingly hold very honestly,” said Shapiro. “I don’t think that you’ve got hate in your heart toward someone because they’re Jewish. I think you’ve got different views, say, than I do about Israel or about the Middle East.”

Shapiro drilled down into the conversation he said often plays out about Israel, and drew a red line that he believes should not be crossed.

“Usually the conversation starts around the idea of does Israel have the right to exist, right? And exist as a Jewish state,” he said. “Peace to me are two nations, Israel and a Palestinian country, living side by side in peace with full recognition for one another, an acknowledgment that both have a right to exist and an acknowledgment that the goal of each country is not to wipe out the other … I think if one doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, then you’re — not you, then one is in effect for really just permanent war, because you’re effectively saying Israel’s got to go, and Israel’s not going anywhere.” 

Shapiro’s podcast tour came amid a similar media blitz for Newsom. Both governors recently published memoirs outlining their political origin story, a move widely seen as a first step for politicians with national ambitions. 

At an event earlier this month, Newsom said that Israel could “appropriately” be described as an apartheid state. 

In response to a question about Newsom’s comment from “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Lovett, Shapiro castigated the California governor — without invoking his name — for using inflammatory language.

“If we really want peace, and I believe you want that, then we’ve also got to be acknowledging that language matters here, that words matter. And that we’ve got to use words that are actually rooted in reality and are able to bring the temperature down to create a space for that peace,” Shapiro told Lovett.

“I just think we’ve got to be really thoughtful and careful and not just look for buzzwords and not just sort of follow what’s going to get maybe some likes on Twitter,” Shapiro added. “But we’ve got to be thoughtful about a debate that is really, really hard to have, and we’ve got to have it.”

On “Higher Learning,” he more directly took on the apartheid allegation.

“You use the word ‘apartheid.’ Take a look in Israel. Someone who would identify as Muslim, someone who would identify as a Palestinian Christian. They live in a society with all of the same rights and legal responsibilities as Israelis,” said Shapiro. “They get elected to the Knesset, which is their parliament. They pay taxes. They can serve in the military. They are citizens in the world in a way that a true apartheid state would not allow for.”  

Public opinion polling has shown declining support for Israel among Democrats. As Shapiro’s national profile has grown, he has not shied away from his Jewish background or his support for Israel, both of which he discussed at length in his memoir, Where We Keep the Light. 

The interviews with two major progressive podcasts suggest that Shapiro wants to proactively share his views on the Middle East with potential future voters — and that he does not view his position as something to hide from a Democratic base that may be less amenable to those views than in the past. 

In both interviews, he outlined his staunch opposition to the policies of Netanyahu and President Donald Trump on Israel. He criticized Israel’s actions in the West Bank and the violence by some Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians. He also sought to make clear that although he is a supporter of Israel, his main goal is advancing America’s interests in the region.

“I don’t think that if you are critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, you’re an antisemite. By the way, I’m critical of Benjamin Netanyahu. And I have been for years and years and years, even predating Oct. 7. I think his approach has made Israel less safe. I think it’s undermined U.S. national security interests, which is my primary concern,” Shapiro said on “Higher Learning.” 

On “Pod Save America,” Shapiro called for the Trump administration to investigate the death of Nasrallah Abu Siyam, a Palestinian-American teenager from Philadelphia who was killed in the West Bank last month, reportedly by Israeli settlers, and he said Netanyahu must take the threat of settler violence more seriously. But when Lovett asked what to do about these challenges beyond “calling for [Trump and Netanyahu] to become different people,” Shapiro responded with an argument about democracy.

“These are the leaders that each country has chosen. I’m not going to speak to what the people in Israel chose. They’ll have an election. They’ll figure that out,” he said. “Here in the United States of America, we need to have more of a check on this administration.”

This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.

POLITICAL TIGHTROPE

Pro-Israel Democrats walking a fine line on U.S. operation in Iran

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she would likely have voted to authorize force against Iran if the administration had approached Congress properly before launching the war

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FEELING THE HEAT

UAE, more than Israel, absorbing bulk of Iranian strikes in war’s early weeks

Republican senators argued to JI that the war will ultimately be to the Gulf’s benefit, even if they’re feeling the pain now

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PRIMARY PRESSURE

DMFI focusing ire on anti-Israel Democrats running in swing districts

The pro-Israel Democratic group warns that nominating far-left candidates will cost the party winnable seats against GOP incumbents

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DEMOCRATIC DIVIDE

John Fetterman again offers scathing criticism of his own party’s foreign policy views

The Pennsylvania senator told JI about the U.S. military operation’s successes: ‘Why can’t a single Democrat agree that this is a good thing for the world and the region?’

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Police in San Jose, Calif., are investigating a violent attack against two adult men outside an upscale restaurant as an antisemitic hate crime, a spokesperson for the police department confirmed on Tuesday.

On Sunday afternoon, three assailants approached the two victims outside Augustine, a restaurant and cafe located in the Santana Row shopping mall. The two men — Israeli Americans — were speaking Hebrew when the attackers allegedly overheard them, according to the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council. 

“The victims alleged that the suspects used antisemitic language during the altercation. The incident is currently being investigated by the Assaults Unit as a possible hate crime,” a spokesperson for the San Jose Police Department told Jewish Insider. 

A video shows the three young men repeatedly punching and kicking the victims directly in front of other diners and as bystanders walked past. The assailants then fled before police arrived.

Tali Klima, a spokesperson for the grassroots advocacy group Bay Area Jewish Coalition, urged elected officials in the Silicon Valley community to speak out against the attack. 

“We call on our local elected officials to finally take a strong stand against this hatred using not only their words but also concrete actions. It is time to take threats to the Jewish community seriously,” Klima said on Tuesday.

A day after Republican senators blocked a vote to end the U.S.-Israeli operations in Iran, the House voted 219-212 to defeat a similar war powers resolution, with four Democrats breaking with their party to oppose an immediate end to the war, and two Republicans voting with other Democrats to oppose military action.

Reps. Greg Landsman (D-OH), Jared Golden (D-ME), Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) were ultimately the only Democrats to vote against the resolution, which was led by Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who said they would oppose the resolution before the war began, ultimately voted in favor.

On the Republican side, Massie and Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), both of whom have isolationist leanings, were the only members of the GOP to support the resolution.

Moskowitz had argued before the war that voting preemptively on the resolution would remove U.S. leverage in negotiations, but argued that the situation has since changed and that the U.S. is now in a full-scale war.

“I didn’t flip at all,” Moskowitz told Jewish Insider. “Circumstances have changed since my first statement two weeks ago.”

In a statement, he condemned Iran and its regime, saying he is “happy that [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] is no longer able to reign terror on his country,” but added, “Regardless of how one feels about this war, or this President, Congress’s constitutional role in any declaration of war is a completely separate issue,” expressing concern at the erosion of congressional war powers over the past year. 

“We must reestablish our Article I authority which grants Congress all legislative powers,” Moskowitz said, adding that he did not believe the resolution would prevent continued efforts to protect U.S. bases and personnel nor intelligence sharing with allies.

Gottheimer emphasized in a statement that the U.S. “simply can’t afford to get this wrong — we must win and crush” the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, emphasizing that he is not, in principle, opposed to military action against Iran and that the regime “deserves the punishment they’re receiving.

“With the defeat of the War Powers Resolution in the Senate, the vote in the House today shifted from an unacceptable call that could put our troops in harm’s way to a clear call for this Administration to articulate the goals for the mission, the end game, and their plan to avoid a protracted conflict,” Gottheimer continued — suggesting that he voted for the resolution because it was, in essence, symbolic given that it did not pass the Senate.

“Unlike some of my colleagues who are opposed to combatting the Iranian regime, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, I’m supporting this resolution to send a clear message to the Administration: the American people deserve a coherent explanation of what precipitated this war, what success looks like, and how we will know when the mission has been achieved,” he continued, criticizing “shifting justifications and objectives” from the administration. “I’m not opposed to taking action against Iran. I believe that steps to address the persistent threats are merited and necessary to protect our broader national security interests.”

He pledged to make sure the military has sufficient resources, signaling that he may support supplemental funding for the mission if and when requested.

The beginning of combat operations, the loss of some American soldiers and the administration’s inconsistent messaging and strategy — as well as an aggressive push from Democratic leadership — likely helped Democrats close ranks on the war powers resolution.

After the vote, Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that he would call up another war powers resolution 60 days from the start of the war, the limit under which an administration can conduct military operations without congressional authorization under the War Powers Act.

“Members who voted against today’s WPR on the assumption that Trump’s war will be swift or limited will not have that excuse once we’ve entered the third month of open-ended hostilities,” Meeks said.

Like Moskowitz and Gottheimer, a handful of other Democrats who have offered a degree of support for the U.S. operations in Iran ultimately voted for the resolution. Some have pointed to concerns about constitutional process and the administration’s failure to seek congressional approval for the war, rather than opposition to the war in general.

“I will vote for the war powers resolution because I cannot support unchecked authority for the administration to engage, indefinitely, in an already deadly war with unknown size and scope, especially considering Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth’s suggestion that he is willing to” use ground troops in the operation, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), a moderate House Democrat, said.

At the same time, Suozzi said that “Iran is weaker and the regime’s leadership has been decimated — those are good things. If these operations make the region more secure and America safer, those would also be good things.” He added that the war powers resolution would not prevent Congress from authorizing the use of force in Iran “if necessary and properly presented to Congress.”

Davidson, one of the two Republicans who voted for the resolution. said on the House floor on Wednesday that operations against Iran were just, and potentially necessary, but unconstitutional.

“For some this debate will be about whether we should even be fighting in Iran. For me, the debate is more fundamental: is the president of the United States, regardless of the person holding the office, empowered to do whatever he wants?” Davidson said. “That’s not what our Constitution says. … I rise in support of this war powers resolution today because the moral hazard posed by a government no longer constrained by our Constitution is a grave threat.”

Davidson argued that his Republican colleagues were ignoring the clear definition of what constitutes a war, and repudiating Trump’s campaign promises.

The House resolution, unlike the Senate version, included no specific protections to allow for continued U.S. intelligence sharing with Israel and other allies, and defensive operations to protect allies like Israel and U.S. forces.

Earlier this week, Gottheimer, Landsman, Suozzi, Cuellar, Golden and Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Jim Costa (D-CA), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) and Adam Gray (D-CA) had introduced an alternative resolution that would give the administration 30 days from the start of the war to wind down operations in Iran, rather than demanding an immediate halt, while banning any ground operations.

Gottheimer said in his statement he plans to call up his resolution during the week of March 23, but he hopes that, “Between now and then, I hope either the conflict has reached its objectives or the Administration has made a strong case to Congress and the American people for why this mission must continue.”

But most ultimately voted for the Massie-Khanna resolution.

Suozzi said that the Gottheimer resolution “would prevent a reckless and potentially unsafe removal of our forces and allow us to continue to protect American troops and our allies in the region during this perilous time,” a seeming indictment of the war powers resolution he nevertheless supported.

Top lawmakers supporting the war powers resolution have largely failed to articulate what the implications of immediately ending operations would be, with some claiming, in spite of the resolution’s language, that U.S. forces would be allowed to finish their mission and wind down.

Some former Democratic officials argued that Gottheimer’s alternative effort would be a more prudent path, with U.S. forces and embassies under fire from Iran, and that any realistic and safe withdrawal would take time. One also argued that the resolution, if brought to a vote, might pick up enough Republican support to pass.

Daniel Silverberg, a former advisor to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), emphasized that a similar effort to cut off the U.S.’ Libya operations led by “one of the most ardent anti-war activists in the House,” then-Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), included a 15-day wind-down provision.

“The Massie-Khanna resolution lacks it. The notion that Democrats would not, at a minimum, support that amendment to allow for a responsible withdrawal of forces is problematic from a national security perspective and from a messaging perspective,” Silverberg said.

Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency under the Obama administration, told JI that the Khanna-Massie resolution “requires [a] very strange outcome” that would be “dangerous for our troops” and that it was not “credible” because it lacked any buffer period.

The joint U.S.-Israeli military operation targeting Iran is already changing the dynamics of Democratic congressional primaries in which Middle East policy and the role of pro-Israel spending have featured prominently — as some progressive candidates seek to capitalize on the conflict to bolster their anti-Israel messaging.

In hotly contested House races in North Carolina and Illinois, for instance, the widening war is now emerging as a closing topic of conversation, providing some early signs of how it could reshape the leading issues in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections. 

Nida Allam, a far-left Democrat and antagonist of Israel, who is challenging Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), released a closing message focused on her opposition to the Iran war, linking her rival to defense contractors and pro-Israel backers.

In a direct-to-camera message, Allam denounced the strikes for “killing over 100 elementary school children,” a claim yet to be confirmed by the United States or Israel, and accused Foushee’s campaign of accepting contributions from defense contractors and a super PAC linked to the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, whose technology was reportedly used to aid the attacks.

“I have opposed these ‘forever wars’ my entire career,” Allam said in the ad. “If you believe we need to do things differently, and you, like me, are praying for peace and demanding accountability, please consider voting for me.”

Foushee, who was elected to Congress in 2022 with support from the pro-Israel advocacy group AIPAC — backing she has since walked away from — disputed Allam’s criticism, and echoed other congressional colleagues in casting the strikes as an “illegal” overreach by President Donald Trump.

“I do not support Trump’s illegal war with Iran and will do everything I can in Congress to support War Powers Resolutions to stop it,” she said in an X post Saturday. “The American people are tired of endless wars and we cannot put our servicemembers at risk — period.”

But political observers said the Iran war could give a final jolt of momentum to Allam, who is seeking the nomination in a left-leaning district where her rhetoric might appeal to activist-minded voters who are increasingly wary of new foreign entanglements in the Middle East and beyond.

“Given the leftward lean of the 4th Congressional District and Allam’s positioning to the left of Foushee — particularly on Middle East policy — it could very well make a difference,” Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “Thousands of votes have already been cast, but for late deciders, this is exactly the kind of issue that could help tilt a voter to one side or the other. It’s hard to get more salient than war.”

Meanwhile, in a crowded open-seat primary for a progressive House seat in the Chicago suburbs, one candidate, Kat Abughazaleh, is likewise indicating that she intends to highlight her opposition to the ongoing Iran strikes as the March 17 race enters its final stretch, saying she “will be talking about it very vocally and often because this is very much a topic on people’s minds.”

One of Abughazaleh’s top primary opponents in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, Laura Fine, a pro-Israel Democrat who voiced support for Israel’s June 2025 bombing of Iran, also came out strongly against the new strikes, but framed her criticism as a response to Trump’s executive overreach and called for his impeachment.

“Donald Trump is leading us into another military conflict to distract from his own failures that puts American lives at risk and threatens to send the Middle East into further chaos,” Fine, a moderate state senator supported by pro-Israel voters, wrote on social media over the weekend. “He simply cannot be trusted and must be impeached. Congress needs to do its job and rein in Trump’s corruption and abuses of power.”

Frank Calabrese, a political strategist in Chicago, questioned the sincerity of Fine’s new rhetoric on Iran. “The reason why she’s doing that is because that’s what the polls are saying,” he told JI Monday. 

The conflict “raises Middle East issues much more so than previously” in the race, he said, speculating that it would likely benefit Abughazaleh’s campaign “because she’s staked out a position that makes her different” than Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston and another leading primary rival who is sharply critical of Israel. 

The Iran war “generally benefits progressives or liberals,” Calabrese said, “because people on the left end of the spectrum don’t like Donald Trump acting aggressively.”

For pro-Israel Democrats who have long criticized Iran, the war poses some unique complications, as the party tries to take advantage of widespread discomfort with Trump’s unilateral decision to pursue the strike without first having sought authorization from Congress. Other top pro-Israel candidates in congressional races in New York and Michigan, where Middle East policy has been a prominent source of debate, have made sure to distance themselves from the conflict, even if they are likely relieved the ayatollah is no longer in power.

For example, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), facing a primary challenge from a progressive Israel critic, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, wrote in a statement that Trump “is defying our Constitution to spend billions of dollars overseas while working families struggle to make ends meet at home.”

While he called Iran “a treacherous regime that represents a direct threat to the democratic world order and our own national security,” he said that “recent history has taught us that toppling Middle East dictators in the name of regime change is the beginning — not the end — of a process that too often results in expensive and deadly forever wars.”

Lander, for his part, was more forceful in his own comments, calling the strikes “an illegal war being waged by a sociopathic president whose goal is to distract people from his failing administration.”

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), the pro-Israel moderate in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, said that Trump had “once again put Americans in harm’s way without consulting Congress — the latest in a series of grave violations of our Constitution by this administration.”

She acknowledged, however, that “Iran’s state sponsorship of terror across the globe has led to chaos and unchecked violence.”

“We cannot ignore that an armed and nuclear Iran would bring even more violence and chaos to the Middle East and the entire world,” Stevens said in her statement. “We also cannot ignore the imperative to achieve freedom for the people of Iran, who have bravely spoken out through protest in recent weeks.”

Political strategists who spoke with JI said that the war, which early polling has shown is unpopular with voters, could help to broadly elevate progressives in key races — if the conflict remains a salient topic of conversation in the coming weeks and months.

Adrian Hemond, a political consultant in Michigan, said much depends on whether the war ends quickly or grows into a “protracted military effort” involving more American casualties. As of Monday afternoon, the U.S. had lost six servicemembers.

“That’s a horse of a different color,” he told JI. “If we’re still talking about this months from now, then it will have a huge impact on the primary and will probably benefit” Abdul El-Sayed, a far-left Senate candidate in Michigan campaigning on a stridently anti-Israel platform.

In a statement on the strikes, El-Sayed called Trump “a failed president” who is now “committing us to spending billions of our taxpayer dollars in yet another war with no aim.”

Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist in New York City, cautioned it was too early to predict how the war could shape the primaries or general election. 

Still, he suggested that the conflict, which has also faced blowback from influential right-wing figures, “could have negative consequences” for Republicans in the midterms, particularly if it “drags on” and more American servicemembers are killed or oil prices continue to spike before November.

“It’s too soon to tell,” Coffey told JI on Monday. “If you open up a Pandora’s box, you don’t know what’s going to come out of it.”

President Donald Trump said over the weekend that Iran’s new leadership has made overtures to restart diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. — which he plans to accept — after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country. 

Still, the president warned that strikes would continue until their objectives had been achieved. 

Trump made the comments while speaking to The Atlantic on Sunday morning, one of a series of interviews he gave after launching a joint military operation against Iran alongside Israel on Saturday. The president has been touting Operation Epic Fury to journalists as an immediate success, arguing that the removal of Khamenei and 47 others in senior Iranian leadership has provided a window for diplomacy as the U.S. military operation swiftly advances.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

The commander-in-chief declined to say when he plans to begin engaging with the Iranians, instead noting that most of the Iranians involved in past negotiations with the U.S. are now deceased.

“Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big — that was a big hit,” Trump said. “They should have done it sooner. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”

Asked if he was willing to extend the bombing campaign in order to support a popular uprising in Iran, should it unfold, the president was similarly coy, telling the outlet: “I have to look at the situation at the time it happens … You can’t give an answer to that question.”

In a video posted to his Truth Social platform on Sunday afternoon, however, Trump spoke directly to the protesters, calling upon “all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”

Further illuminating his thinking, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday shortly after the killing of Khamenei, “We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us … Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves. That process should soon be starting.” 

“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective” of world peace, he wrote.

In an interview on Saturday evening with CBS News’ Robert Costa, Trump said he believes that the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed Khamenei made diplomacy “much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously, because they are getting beat up badly.”

As for the military operation itself, Trump suggested in subsequent conversations on Sunday with The Daily Mail and The New York Times that the U.S. could be involved for another four to five weeks. 

“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so,” Trump told the U.K. tabloid. “It’s always been about a four week process so — as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks or less.”

He repeated the four to five week timeline in interviews with Axios’ Barak Ravid on Saturday and The New York Times on Sunday.

“I can go long and take over the whole thing,” Trump told Ravid by phone, “or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs].’”

Trump later predicted to Ravid that, “In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) echoed the president’s predictions, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump has “no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside Iran.”

“The president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that’s designed not only to continue to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile arsenal, many more missiles than the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability,” said Cotton, one of the president’s more hawkish GOP allies on Capitol Hill. 

“Now obviously one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down, and the president would never leave a pilot behind,” he continued. “So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any downed pilot. But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.”

At least nine people were killed in an Iranian missile strike on a residential neighborhood in Beit Shemesh, about 35 miles west of Jerusalem, the Israeli emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, reported on Sunday, bringing the Israeli death toll from the war with Iran launched a day earlier to 12.

Another 28 people, including young children, were injured, with two in serious condition. 

The missile barrage on the mostly Orthodox Jerusalem suburb directly struck a public bomb shelter under a synagogue, among other sites.

Yehuda Shlomo, an MDA EMT, said that when he arrived on the scene, he saw “heavy structural damage, smoke in the air and a great deal of chaos with dozens of frightened casualties emerging from the damaged buildings.” 

Another EMT, Tzvi David, said that he rescued a woman in her 60s trapped under a slab of concrete and that firefighters extricated three children from a locked room.

Photos and videos taken by MDA show buildings destroyed to their foundations, others heavily damaged, and burned-out cars. 

IDF International Media Spokesperson Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani posted on X that “since the beginning of Operation ‘Roaring Lion’ the Iranian regime has been targeting civilians, we know that this is their strategy. In their recent attack they killed many civilians in the community of Beit Shemesh. The Iranian regime is a terror regime.” 

“I send my deepest condolences to the families. We will continue to do everything we can to remove these capabilities from this bloodthirsty terror regime,” Shoshani stated.

Late Saturday night, a missile strike in the Tel Aviv area killed two women, one a Filipina caregiver aged 32 and the other aged 68 who died of respiratory issues while moving to a shelter, and injured 121 people.

A 102-year-old man in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv, also died after falling down the stairs on his way to a protected space during an incoming missile siren, Ichilov Hospital announced Sunday.

About 40 buildings in Tel Aviv sustained damage from the missile strikes, with one deemed uninhabitable, the municipality stated. Over 200 residents were evacuated to hotels in the city.

The most heavily damaged building did not have its own safe room and most residents had evacuated to a public bomb shelter, Israel’s Home Front Command said. 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the impact site in Tel Aviv and called on the people of Israel and the region to “stay strong.”

“This is a historic effort to change the trajectory in the Middle East to a different future — a future of peace,” Herzog said. “We’ve been confronted by an empire of evil for a generation.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Israel killed on Saturday, “spent a whole generation taking his people’s resources and directing them towards terror, bloodshed, pain and horror. And what we are doing here, together, all the allies, the United States, leading this effort … towards a vision of peace in the region,” Herzog said.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani slammed joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran in a statement Saturday — without placing fault with Tehran in his reaction. 

Mamdani released a statement that reiterated his police department’s earlier pledge to boost local security, and also attacked Israel and the United States for “an illegal war of aggression.” But unlike other Democrats who have spoken out against the air campaign, he mentioned neither the atrocities committed by the Iranian regime against its own citizens, nor President Donald Trump, with whom he met just days ago.

“Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war,” he wrote. “Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace.”

The NYPD declared Saturday morning it was “closely monitoring” the situation in the Middle East and working with federal and international law enforcement. It further promised pre-emptive steps to increase security at potential targets, though it did not indicate whether it was aware of any specific threat.

“As is our protocol and out of an abundance of caution, we will be enhancing patrols to sensitive locations throughout the city, including diplomatic, cultural, religious, and other relevant sites,” the department tweeted.

The NYPD did not respond to queries about specific actions, but videos on social media showed members of the department’s Counter-Terrorism Task Force at Manhattan’s iconic Temple Emanu-El as well as outside the Iranian consulate. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly vowed that she would deploy state troopers to guard vulnerable sites, even as she said “there were no specific, credible threats to New York.” She noted the impending start of Purim Monday night as cause to coordinate with the leaders of the Jewish community.

“State Police are increasing their presence at religious, diplomatic, and cultural sites statewide in coordination with federal, state, and local law enforcement partners,” the Democrat wrote in a statement. “Additionally, in advance of the Jewish holiday of Purim, State Police remain alert and have already begun outreach to religious organizations to offer support.”

Meanwhile, organizations affiliated with China-based left-wing tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham — known for promoting geopolitical narratives favorable to Beijing and its allies in Moscow and Tehran — including the People’s Forum and CODE PINK kicked off a protest against the strikes in Times Square on Saturday  afternoon.

Joining them, according to promotional materials, are the Democratic Socialists of America, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and the National Iranian American Council, known as the country’s de facto lobbying group in the United States.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries planned attacks on Iran for months, marking “unprecedented cooperation,” Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, said on Saturday, hours after the launch of what Israel has called Operation Roaring Lion and the U.S. has called Operation Epic Fury.

“In recent months, under the direction of the political leadership, I have led — in coordination with my counterparts, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of CENTCOM — a deep and comprehensive joint operational planning process. This reflects unprecedented cooperation between the IDF and the United States military,” Zamir said.

An IDF official speaking on condition of anonymity said that the two militaries “worked for thousands of hours” to increase its target bank “by hundreds of percent.”

The plan centered on “an intelligence effort … to identify an operational opportunity at the moment when senior regime officials would convene,” the official said. The IDF struck three such gatherings simultaneously and killed “several senior figures.”   

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in a video statement that one of those targets was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, saying that the IDF likely killed him.

“Today, in a surprise attack, we destroyed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound in the heart of Tehran,” he said. “For three and a half decades, this tyrant sent terror throughout the world, immiserated his nation and worked all the time on his plan to destroy Israel.”

“That plan is gone and there are many signs that the tyrant is gone,” Netanyahu said. President Donald Trump later confirmed the news.

Netanyahu said that Israel plans to hit “1,000 terror sites” in the coming days.

Directing his remarks at the people of Iran, Netanyahu said, “Soon your moment will come in which you must go out on the streets … Help has arrived and now the time has come for you to unite for a historic mission … to bring down the regime and ensure your future.”

The strikes on Iran’s missile array and air-defense systems by 200 fighter jets were the Israeli Air Force’s largest-ever flyover, the IDF Spokesperson’s office said.

The IAF fighter jets struck 500 targets throughout western and central Iran, such as one in Tabriz, which was used for Iran’s surface-to-surface missiles. Another strike targeted an advanced SA-65 aerial-defense system near Kermanshah in western Iran, the IDF said.

The IDF sent warnings via social media to Iranian civilians living near weapons production and military infrastructure facilities: “Dear citizens, for your safety and well-being, we urge you to immediately evacuate these areas and remain outside of them until further notice. Your presence in these locations puts your lives at risk.”

Iran launched missiles and attack drones at Israeli population centers throughout the day, including ones that include cluster munitions, the IDF said. 

“Cluster weapons are designed to disperse over a large area and maximize the chances of a harmful strike. Iran goes to great lengths in trying to maximize harm to Israeli civilians,” Nadav Shoshani, the IDF international media spokesperson, stated.

Zamir said that Operation Roaring Lion is “a significant, decisive, and unprecedented operation, to dismantle the capabilities of the Iranian terrorist regime — capabilities that constitute an ongoing existential threat to the security of the State of Israel. This is an operation to secure our existence and our future here, in the land of our forefathers, for generations to come.”

Since last year’s Operation Rising Lion, as the IDF called the 12-day war with Iran, “the radical Iranian terrorist regime has not abandoned its vision or its hostile intentions to advance its plan to destroy Israel. It has continued to promote its nuclear project, restore and accelerate ballistic missile production, and destabilize the region through the funding and arming of terrorist proxies,” Zamir said.

The IDF chief of staff also tied the operation to the holiday of Purim, which begins on Monday night, and celebrates the Jews of the Persian empire overcoming an attempted genocide. 

“The Book of Esther teaches us that responsibility for our destiny rests first and foremost in our own hands — in courage, initiative, unity and the willingness to fight for our right to live here in freedom and in peace,” Zamir said. “Soldiers and commanders of the IDF… carry with you the vision of our forefathers.”

Shoshani wrote in a blog post that the timing of the operation was due to “a dangerous acceleration in [Iran’s] capabilities,” including long-range missile production and continued proxy funding.

“Israel reached a point where the threat was no longer ‘developing,’” Shoshani wrote. “The threat was direct and imminent.”

The objective of the strike, Shoshani said, was to “fundamentally reduce and degrade Iranian terrorist regime capabilities, eliminating long-term existential threats to the state of Israel.” 

The IDF also called up 70,000 reservists to serve on Israel’s borders, the West Bank and Gaza to stop any infiltration attempts, as well as search and rescue forces prepared to go to the site of any Iranian missile strikes.

Israelis throughout the country spent the day going in and out of safe rooms and bomb shelters at the sound of air raid sirens, which blared more frequently in Israel’s densely populated center, reflecting the area Iran targeted. 

IDF Home Front Commander Maj.-Gen. Shay Kleper said that “past experiences prove that the public’s strict following of protocol has saved many lives. The grit and responsibility of everyone is a key element in countering the threat.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke about Israel’s decision to strike Iran and the operation’s objectives with 17 of his counterparts, in phone calls to Argentina, Austria, Germany, India, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, the European Union, France, Canada, Australia, Ecuador, Greece, Ethiopia, Singapore and North Macedonia.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran and the country’s highest political and religious authority, was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead. This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” Trump wrote. 

Israeli media reported he was killed in an Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. He was 86.

Khamenei had led Iran since 1989, succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took over the country as part of his Islamic Revolution in 1979. Over more than three decades in power, he oversaw major shifts in Iran’s domestic politics, military posture and regional strategy, moves that resulted in the Islamic Republic becoming the world’s leading exporter of terrorism through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

As supreme leader, Khamenei exercised ultimate authority over the armed forces, judiciary, state broadcasting and key political appointments. He maintained final say over defense and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program, and appointed top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

The IRGC became the primary instrument of Khamenei’s rule. He cultivated and empowered it for decades, and the IRGC in turn underwrote his domestic authority and Iran’s regional ambitions across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza through what he called the “Axis of Resistance.”

His foreign policy was defined by two poles of opposition: the United States, which he called Iran’s “No. 1 enemy,” and Israel, whose destruction he repeatedly called for in rhetoric that mixed geopolitical calculation with antisemitic tropes. Under his leadership, Iran became what the U.S. State Department designated the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

No successor has been publicly named, and with much of the IRGC’s senior leadership also reported killed in Saturday’s strikes, the question of who fills the vacuum left by Khamenei will mark a pivotal moment in Iran’s history.

American, Israeli and African officials gathered with little fanfare but big plans on Wednesday, coming together in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city, for a trilateral summit on issues including technology, innovation and national security.

The Kigali Security Summit was the first of its kind, one participant told Jewish Insider, a historic strategic dialogue and “opportunity for government and nongovernment officials to talk about key issues that frame this trilateral relationship.”

Hosted by the International Security Conference on Africa, a Rwanda-based think tank, participants included officials from 10 African countries — including Kenya, Ethiopia, Morocco and Togo — as well as Israeli Ambassador to Rwanda Einat Weiss, local Christian faith leaders and representatives of Washington-based think tanks including the Atlantic Council, Hudson Institute, AIPAC and American Foreign Policy Council. 

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) provided prerecorded remarks, as did former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. 

“This conference represents something powerful: a strategic alignment rooted in shared security interests, innovation and moral clarity in a complex and evolving world,” Cruz said in his remarks, calling Africa “vital to our national interests” as it’s at the forefront of U.S. competition with China. Part of the U.S. strategy on the continent, he added, “should include our Israeli allies, which are central to Africa’s integration and success.”

Cruz said the U.S.-Israel-Africa trilateral relationship “offers a powerful framework for development. For the United States, it strengthens trusted partnerships and advances our values. For Israel, it develops strategic relationships and expands its global contributions. And for African nations, it expands access to cutting edge technology, defense collaboration, agricultural innovation and investment capital, while protecting the sovereignty and dignity of African nations.”

“Today’s summit is bringing together the United States and countries in Africa and the Middle East to advance cooperative and sustainable partnerships in the areas of energy security, water infrastructure, cybersecurity and ever-important emerging technologies. In doing so, we can strengthen the bonds between Israel and the rest of the world, boosting security for America’s No. 1 ally in the region,” Rosen said.

Also participating in the summit were Saul Singer, co-author of Start-up Nation, and his wife, Wendy Singer, the founding executive director of Startup Nation Central, who also previously led AIPAC’s Israel office. Speaking on a panel, the two discussed the potential for cooperation between Israel and Rwanda through deepening tech and innovation partnerships.

Shiri Fein-Grossman, CEO of the Israel-Africa Relations Institute, an Israel-based think tank, told JI, “At a time of growing geopolitical fragmentation, the strategic partnership between Israel and African nations is not peripheral, it is central to building a more stable and values-based international order.”

Israel and Rwanda have “profound similarities,” she said. “Both are small nations in complex neighborhoods, both have faced existential threats, both carry the living memory of genocide, and both understand the imperative of strong border defense and antional resilience. That experience creates not only empathy, but strategic clarity. Security is not theoretical for us, it is foundational.”

Senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting.

Israeli basketball sensation Deni Avdija has been selected as a Western Conference reserve for the NBA All-Star Game, becoming the first Israeli-born player to earn an appearance in the league’s marquee midseason showcase.

The reserve selections were revealed on Sunday evening following the announcement of the starters on Jan. 19. Avdija was one of 14 players to be named a reserve and one of seven from the Western Conference, joining a star-studded group that includes Anthony Edwards, Jamal Murray, Chet Holmgren, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and LeBron James.

Avdija is now the 17th player in Trail Blazers’ franchise history to be named to the NBA All-Star game and the first since Damian Lillard made an appearance in 2023. 

Already the only Israeli-born player to record a triple-double and having surpassed Omri Casspi as Israel’s all-time leading NBA scorer – Avdija now adds another historic milestone to his six-year career. The selection also marks a significant moment for Israeli representation on one of the NBA’s biggest stages.

Following the announcement, the Trail Blazers posted a photo on social media of Avdija with “All Star” written on the back of his jersey and the caption: “DENI AVDIJA. ALL STAR.” 

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter also celebrated the announcement, congratulating Avdija in a post on X on Sunday evening. 

“Congratulations Deni Avdija, on becoming the first Israeli ever voted into the NBA All-Star Game,” Leiter wrote. “We’re excited to watch your career grow and will be cheering you on every step of the way.”

Avdija has seen a significant jump in his stats and playing time this season, notching a career year and setting both Israeli and franchise records. Averaging 25.5 points, 7.1 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game, he ranks top 15 in the league in total points (11th) and total assists (13th) and has entered discussions for the league’s Most Improved Player award. 

Responding to some of the hate he has received over his nationality, Avdija has called on the critics to become “more educated” on the Middle East, telling The Athletic last month that fans should respect him “as a basketball player.” 

“Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is?” Avdija said. “You don’t have to love what I stand for or how I look, but if I’m a good player, give props.”

Throughout the season, Avdija has received praise from prominent and seasoned players around the league. The Israeli sensation has been called a “star” by Durant, and was the topic of conversation on James’ “Mind the Game” podcast with NBA legend Steve Nash.  

Now, Avdija will follow in their footsteps, taking a step no Israeli player has before and donning the NBA All-Star threads for the first time in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 15, at 5 p.m. ET.

The IDF announced on Monday that it had uncovered the remains of deceased hostage Ran Gvili at a Muslim cemetery in eastern Gaza City and would be bringing them back to Israel for burial — recovering the final hostage of the Gaza war and marking the first time since 2014 that no Israeli captive, alive or deceased, is being held in the enclave. 

Gvili, a 24-year-old member of the Israeli Police Special Forces, died in combat while protecting Kibbutz Alumim in southern Israel during the morning of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. His body was then abducted by Hamas and taken into the Gaza Strip where he was buried by the terrorist group.

Dentists and forensic experts deployed to the cemetery were able to identify Gvili’s remains after the IDF had tested hundreds of bodies, according to The Times of Israel. In return, Israel is prepared to hand over at least 15 Palestinian bodies to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

“Following the completion of the identification process by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, in cooperation with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, IDF representatives informed the family of the deceased hostage Sergeant First Class Ran Gvili, that their loved one has been identified and will be returned for burial,” the IDF said in a statement. 

Addressing members of the Knesset on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “My friends, members of the Knesset, a short while ago we returned Ran Gvili, a hero of Israel. I commend the commanders and soldiers of the IDF and the ISA [Shin Bet intelligence agency] for the perfect execution of this sacred mission … We all wore the [hostage] pin, and now that the mission is complete, the time has come to remove it.” 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog also thanked those “involved in the operation,” adding that the people of Israel are “moved to tears” and removed his own yellow hostage pin in a video. 

“Finally, Ran has been returned home to his family in Israel,” said Herzog. “After many difficult years, for the first time since 2014, there are no Israeli hostages in Gaza. An entire nation prayed and waited for this moment.” 

Hamas had held several Israeli hostages for over a decade, including Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed into the Gaza Strip in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and were held alive by the terror group, as well as the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were killed during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. All four were returned to Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7, either through hostage-release deals or recovery efforts by the IDF.

Prior to Gvili’s return, Hamas had been accused of intentionally delaying the release of the Israeli hostages in order to prolong its survival and gain leverage. However, Trump told Axios that the terrorist group helped locate Gvili’s remains.

“[Hamas] worked very hard to get the body back,” Trump said in an interview on Monday. “They were working with Israel on it. You can imagine how hard it was.”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said that the recovery of the final hostage body proves the group is committed to the terms of the Gaza ceasefire. 

“The discovery of the body of the last Israeli captive in Gaza confirms Hamas’s commitment to all the requirements of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, including the prisoner exchange,” Qassem said in a statement. “Hamas will continue to adhere to all aspects of the agreement, including facilitating the work of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza and ensuring its success.”

White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff announced earlier this month that President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan is moving into Phase 2, a shift from a ceasefire and hostage release to the demilitarization of Hamas and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip — a pivot that could be accelerated by the recovery of the last hostage.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement to Jewish Insider, “At long last, after 843 days, the body of Ran Gvili, the last Israeli hostage held by Hamas, is home. It has taken far too long, but finally, all those who fought of the release of hostages can breathe a sigh of relief.”

“I will never forget meeting with the hostage families for the first time in Israel just days after Oct. 7. They have fought bravely and tirelessly for the return of hostages and did not give up until every single hostage was brought home. Today my heart is with all of the hostages, their families, and those who advocated for their return who can finally begin on the path to recovery and healing,” Schumer continued.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also expressed relief for Gvili’s return on social media, noting that the former policeman “epitomizes the heart and soul of Israel.”

“It is with joy and deep sadness that the body of Ran Gvili has been recovered by the Israeli government, allowing him to go home and receive a dignified burial,” Graham wrote. “He fought like a tiger and to the death, taking terrorists down with him. His love for Israel, the one and only Jewish state, consumed his being, and he made the ultimate sacrifice.” 

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, also welcomed Gvili’s return in a post on X, adding that “healing can begin.” 

“This is the moment we’ve prayed and fought for over the last agonizing 843 days,” Deutch wrote. “I’ve come to know so many families of the hostages over the past two years and I hold them all in my heart today.”

A Manhattan comedy club canceled Israeli comedian Guy Hochman’s show on Tuesday night after pro-Hamas groups protested outside of the venue. 

“The owner of the place was afraid and canceled the show,” Hochman told Jewish Insider, referring to Broadway Comedy Club, located near Times Square. “So, I did an alternative show for my audience outside freezing to death.”

“We are not giving up,” Hochman continued, adding that “another, big show” was planned for Wednesday evening. He did not disclose the location of the rescheduled show.  “We are the Jewish people and we want to live and laugh,” said Hochman. 

The owner of the venue, Carolyn Martin, did not respond to a request for comment from JI. 

City College of New York’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was among the groups promoting the Tuesday demonstration on social media. It shared a post from the New York City chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement that said “victory” was achieved by the cancellation. CCNY SJP, which remains a registered student group, also participated in this month’s pro-Hamas protest in Queens that caused nearby schools and a synagogue to close early.  

Outside the comedy venue, masked demonstrators banged on drums, chanted and held signs that read “clean up the trash,” “death to the IDF” and “no war criminals in our city.” A heavy NYPD presence was called to monitor the protest. 

Hochman was reportedly detained at the airport for six hours of questioning on Monday when he arrived in Toronto after the anti-Israel group Hind Rijab Foundation filed a complaint about his service in the IDF. He was released after intervention from the Israeli consulate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes the composition of the executive board meant to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, his office said on Saturday.

“The announcement regarding the composition of the Gaza Executive Board, which is subordinate to the Board of Peace, was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy,” the Prime Minister’s Office stated. “The Prime Minister has instructed the Foreign Affairs Minister to contact the U.S. Secretary of State on this matter.”

Netanyahu emphasized his objection in a speech to the Knesset on Monday, saying that “there will be no Turkish or Qatari soldiers in Gaza. We are currently in a dispute with the U.S. over the makeup of the advisory council for Gaza.”

Though Netanyahu said the board was not coordinated with Israel, he spoke with President Donald Trump twice in recent days, and Mossad Chief David Barnea met with White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff on Friday. The calls and meetings were reportedly about Iran.

The White House announced on Friday that several committees to govern Gaza and oversee its reconstruction and administration had been formed, including the Gaza Executive Board.

The Gaza Executive Board is meant to support the office of the high representative for Gaza and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which is made up of Palestinian technocrats. It includes Witkoff, Jared Kushner, former U.K. Prime Minister U.K. Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, Israeli-Cypriot businessman Yakir Gabay, head of Egyptian intelligence General Hassan Rashad, UAE Minister for International Cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Sigrid Kaag, and the previous holder of that position, Nickolay Mladenov, who will serve as the high representative for Gaza.

The board also includes Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi. Israeli officials have previously spoken out against Turkish involvement in Gaza’s reconstruction. Qatar has funded Gaza reconstruction in the past, with significant funding and dual-use materials reaching Hamas; the terrorist group’s leaders have also resided in Doha.

A Trump administration source characterized Netanyahu’s statement to Jewish Insider as a minor issue that would likely be smoothed out within days. 

The source noted that Turkish and Qatari representatives were key to negotiating the ceasefire in Gaza, which took effect in October, and that they call Witkoff and Kushner daily, and therefore have an influence on the process regardless of the titles they are given. He also added that Netanyahu has a direct line to Trump.

“It’s all based on whether Hamas demilitarizes or not,” he added. “If Hamas demilitarizes, that is what’s most important [above the composition of the board]. If Hamas doesn’t demilitarize, none of this matters. … The prime minister has a commitment from the president that Hamas will demilitarize.”

Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said that “Netanyahu is allowing Turkey and Qatar into Gaza. That endangers Israel’s security. That is not what our brave soldiers fought for for two years.

“Instead of releasing panicky statements of protest, Israel should offer a clear alternative, for Egypt to administer Gaza for the next 15 years, for Hamas to be disarmed, and work with American partners to strengthen Israel’s border,” Lapid added.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that he supports Netanyahu’s “important message.”

“Gaza does not need an ‘executive board’ that will supervise its ‘rehabilitation,’ it needs to be cleaned of Hamas terrorists who should be destroyed, along with encouraging massive voluntary emigration, in accordance with President Trump’s original plan,” Ben-Gvir said. “I call on the prime minister to instruct the IDF to prepare to go back to war in Gaza using great force in order to achieve the central goal of the war, the destruction of Hamas.”

The White House also announced the members of the founding executive board of the Trump-chaired Board of Peace, whose purview is not limited to Gaza. Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday that the board is meant to serve as an alternative to the United Nations, 66 of whose organizations the U.S. left earlier this month. The board is composed of Secretary of State Marc Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner, Blair, Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga and Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gabriel. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Argentinian President Javier Milei also accepted invitations from Trump to join the board, while Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had yet to respond. French President Emmanuel Macron declined to join. Netanyahu was invited to join or send an Israeli representative, according to Ynet. Russian President Vladimir Putin was invited, as was President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky received an invitation on Tuesday, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Kornichuk told JI. China, Germany, Australia, Albania, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain reportedly received invitations, as well. 

Membership on the Board of Peace is for three years; Trump asked countries to pay $1 billion for a permanent seat, Bloomberg reported.

Trump appointed Aryeh Lightstone and Josh Gruenbaum, members of Witkoff’s team, to be special advisors to the Board of Peace, “leading day-to-day strategy and operations, and translating the Board’s mandate and diplomatic priorities into disciplined execution,” the White House stated.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar made a historic diplomatic visit to Somaliland on Tuesday, marking the first official trip by an Israeli Cabinet minister to the territory and the latest move to strengthen bilateral ties following Israel’s recognition of Somaliland’s independence last month.

In the capital city of Hargeisa, Sa’ar met with Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, with both sides pledging to open embassies in the near future. Somaliland’s foreign ministry said the two delegations held “constructive discussions on strengthening bilateral relations,” focusing on cooperation in diplomacy, security, trade and investment, as well as regional peace and stability.

Sa’ar’s visit came after Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland since it announced its independence from Somalia in 1991, a move that elevated long-standing quiet engagement into an open diplomatic partnership. No other U.N. member state has formally recognized Somaliland as an independent country, despite its functioning as a de facto state with its own government, elections and security forces for more than three decades. 

The trip also drew criticism from regional and international actors, particularly Somalia, which considers Somaliland an integral part of its sovereign territory and rejects its independence. Somalia’s foreign ministry condemned Sa’ar’s visit in a statement released Tuesday, calling it an “unauthorized entry.”

Somalia’s Foreign Minister Abdisalam Dhaay also convened what he described as an “emergency virtual session” of the African Union Peace and Security Council to address what he called “developments affecting Somalia’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” while rejecting what the government characterized as “external interference.”

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has also stirred unease across parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Qatar and 21 other countries in the region, including Jordan, Egypt and Iran, issued a joint statement last month expressing their “unequivocal rejection” of the move.

Supporters of recognition argue that Somaliland’s stability and democratic governance distinguish it from other states and its positioning would provide key benefits for pro-Western countries in a volatile region — including strategic access to the Gulf of Aden, which sits across parts of Yemen controlled by the Houthis.

In a post on X on Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said recognition of Somaliland “isn’t charity.” 

“It aligns with America’s security interests and the ‘America First’ doctrine by strengthening an ally that shares our values in a region vital to global trade and counterterrorism,” Cruz wrote.

However, President Donald Trump has thus far downplayed the prospect of the United States following Israel’s lead.

“Somaliland has every moral and legal claim to nationhood status as the successor state to British Somaliland, which was granted independence in 1960 and has functioned as a de facto independent democracy since 1991,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in a brief released Tuesday.

“The truth is that Turkey, Egypt, and a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries will always corral global Islamist opposition to anything that benefits Israel,” Fitton-Brown added. “These voices should be ignored, and the United States should itself recognize Somaliland.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified his remarks that Israel’s economy may “need to adapt to … autarkic characteristics” on Tuesday, after a dip in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Netanyahu made his original comments at a conference held by the Israeli Finance Ministry on Monday, where he said that “Israel is in a sort of isolation,” and that he hates the idea that Israel will have to behave like an autarky, or self-reliant economy.

“I believe in the free market, but we may find ourselves in a situation where our arms industries are blocked. We will need to develop arms industries here — not only research and development, but also the ability to produce what we need … There’s no choice,” he said, adding that Israel will need to be “Athens and super-Sparta.” 

Israeli markets dropped in response, and business and industry leaders came out against Netanyahu’s remarks, saying that “an autarkic economy will be a disaster for Israel,” and “this vision … will make it hard for us to survive in a developing globalized world.” 

A day later, Netanyahu called a press conference to do damage control amid the widespread concern in Israel, clarifying that his comments were specific to the Israeli defense industry. 

In the defense industry, he said “there are limitations that are not economic, but political.”

“If there’s one lesson from this war, it is that we want to be in a situation where we are not limited. We want to defend ourselves by ourselves and with our own weapons,” Netanyahu stated. “We are going to produce an independent arms industry that is very strong that can withstand any political constraints.”

Israel will “build a defense industry that will match the best in the world,” he added. “You saw some — not even all — of it in the 12-day war with Iran.”

The prime minister also talked about Israel working on technology for underground warfare.

Netanyahu said western European countries implementing arms embargoes against Israel are  “pressured by minorities in which some are very extreme,” as well as “advanced propaganda against us.”

Netanyahu said that his intention in the speech at the Finance Ministry was to tell its workers that “we are aiming for security independence and I asked them to cut bureaucracy.”

“Within that [speech], there was a misunderstanding,” he said.

“A concentrated, closed market is not what I usually like,” he said. “I turn to the markets. But we are using all of the means needed to create a strong defense industry.”

Netanyahu expressed “full faith in Israel’s economy.” 

“Israel’s economy is very strong,” he said. “It has amazed the whole world in recent decades and more than amazed the world in the last two years, in which we are fighting a war. … Against all predictions, the shekel is stronger than it was before the war … Unemployment is at a historic low. In recent months, there is a large flow of investors in the Israeli economy.”

Netanyahu presented graphs showing the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange rising at a higher rate than the S&P, that the shekel is strong against the dollar and GDP per capita is rising, that Israel’s debt to GDP rate is lower than that of the U.S. and the average for advanced economies, and that Israel is second in the world — after the U.S. — in receiving foreign investments for research and development.

“I don’t underestimate the attempts to economically isolate us, but the world wants the products that Israel makes,” he added, mentioning artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. “This is the health, the vibrancy of Israel’s economy. This is a very powerful economy, an economy of 10 million people, but very gifted people.” 

In the press conference, Netanyahu also said he had spoken on the phone with President Donald Trump several times since Israel’s strike aimed at Hamas leaders in Qatar last week, including one in which the president invited him to the White House.

Netanyahu said he will be meeting with Trump in Washington on Sept. 29.

Following the press conference, Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, said that Netanyahu “lost contact with reality.”

“You cannot run a market when there is no trust in the government and no trust in the prime minister,” Lapid said. “On Netanyahu’s watch and that of the current government, Israel’s credit rating was lowered for the first time in history, and then it happened again. There is a sharp reduction in Israeli exports. There is a sharp decrease in investment from abroad. High-tech, the engine of the market, is in an unprecedented crisis.”

Matt Duss, a foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders, discussed the 2020 frontrunner’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and relations with Israel during the Quincy Institute leadership forum, held in conjunction with Foreign Policy, in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Vocal and critical: “Senator Sanders has been clear about the principles that he supports and the goal and it’s a goal that is shared by — I think — a clear majority of Americans,” Duss said. “I think he’s been willing to be more critical of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in particular, as he has been more vocal and critical about right-wing nationalists around the world, recognizing that is a global trend that is very problematic for those of us who support human rights and democracy. At the end of the day, the Israeli government is full of professionals who understand Israel’s security needs. There are longstanding relationships at various levels between the U.S. and Israel. And we don’t think we’ll have a problem moving forward in trying — trying at least — and probably finding very quickly some common ground.”

Jerusalem reaction: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted on Wednesday to Sanders’s constant attacks against him, most recently calling him a “reactionary racist” during Tuesday night’s debate in South Carolina. “What I think about this matter is that he is definitely wrong,” Netanyahu said during an interview with Army Radio. “No question about it.” Netanyahu pointed out that the reason he withstood pressure from the Obama administration for eight years was because he was able to influence U.S. public opinion, “and if we will be pressured into doing dangerous things, I will know how to oppose that — and I am not afraid of a showdown.” 

Bonus: Jeremy Burton, head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, tells Washington Post reporter Michelle Boorstein that the common theme he’s hearing is anxiety among American Jews about having a Jewish nominee or president, whether the person is Bernie Sanders or Michael Bloomberg. “At the end of the day, Jews know antisemitism is part of the DNA of Western civilization,” he explained. 

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer suggested on Wednesday that Israeli political and defense leaders are now united in opposing the terms of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.

In a conversation with Ambassador Dennis Ross at the United Against Nuclear Iran annual summit in New York, Dermer stressed that while some former high-level government and security officials expressed support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “today you cannot find security and intelligence officials in Israel — I’m not aware of any of them — that would go back to the exact same deal.” 

“The United States has got enormous leverage, and I think the idea of going back into the same deal with Iran, it gives them a clear path to nuclear weapons,” he explained.

Asked if Israel’s position on Iran would change if a national unity government is formed following last week’s redo election, Dermer said that “any new government” would continue to support Israel’s longstanding opposition to the JCPOA and be in favor of economic pressure on Iran “to ensure that: A, that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, and B, that everything is done to roll back Iran’s aggression.” 

Dermer also noted that Blue and White leader Benny Gantz said earlier this year at the Munich security conference that there was no difference between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the topic of Iran. 

During the election, Netanyahu slammed his chief rival for “supporting the Iran nuclear deal” in 2015. 

Dermer said that Israel “could live with” a new nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S. — but only if it addressed the sunset clause. “The one problem that you have to address is you have to prevent Iran from ever being a military nuclear power,” he stated. “And if you have a sunset clause, that’s a date certain for when you want to would be a military nuclear power, and that has enormous consequences for our region.”