President Donald Trump defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to order what the prime minister called “forceful” strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza on Tuesday in response to ceasefire violations by the terror group, dismissing concerns that the actions could upend the deal.

“They killed an Israeli soldier, so the Israelis hit back and they should hit back. When that happens, they should hit,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday evening. “Hamas is a small thing, but they kill people. They grew up killing people, and I guess they don’t stop. Nobody knows what happened to the Israeli soldier, but they say it was sniper-fire and it was retribution for that. I think they have a right to do that.”

“Nothing’s going to jeopardize that [the ceasefire],” he continued. “Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave. They’re on the rough side, but they said they would be good, and if they’re good, they’re going to be happy. If they’re not good, they’re going to be terminated. Their lives will be terminated, and they understand that.” 

The Associated Press reported at least 80 killed in the strikes, including dozens of children. The Israeli army said it had hit dozens of terror targets and struck over 30 terrorists holding command positions within terrorist organizations operating in Gaza.

Initial reaction to Netanyahu’s decision to strike in Gaza fell largely along party lines, with Israel’s Republican allies in the Senate defending the Jewish state’s actions as self-defense while Democrats expressed concerns that the ceasefire in Gaza could be in jeopardy. 

“You’re going to see a lot of this,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider of the renewed skirmishes in Gaza. “I mean, the Hamas soldiers are not terribly civilized, and the fact that there’s a ceasefire is of no moment to many of them. You’re periodically going to see them continue to shoot at the Israeli soldiers, and when they do, the Israeli soldiers are going to shoot back and kill them.”

“Eventually the really stupid Hamas members will stop doing it, because they’ll be dead,” the Louisiana senator continued. “But this is gonna happen. I mean, you’re not talking about sane people.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) suggested “we ought to expect” the Israelis to still conduct operations in Gaza given Hamas’ actions targeting IDF troops and Palestinian civilians since the ceasefire went into effect. 

“Hamas is a terrorist organization. They are going to continue to commit acts of violence, and Israel is going to need to respond,” Ricketts told JI. “That’s why it’s imperative that the Gulf states work together to get an international police force to be able to keep peace in Gaza while we go through this transition.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he felt it was “entirely appropriate” that Israel struck Hamas targets in order to protect Israeli forces.

“Because Hamas is attacking the IDF, that is entirely appropriate for Israel to defend itself — today, yesterday, tomorrow. If Hamas is attacking them, violating, obviously, the ceasefire and attacking IDF soldiers, Israel has been very clear: If you shoot us, we’re going to actually stop you,” Lankford told JI. 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who offered his support for further Israeli confrontation with Hamas earlier this week, wrote on X on Tuesday afternoon that he was in “total support” of “the recent military action by Israel against Hamas.”

“Without Hamas being disarmed and removed from power permanently, there will be no pathway to stability and peace in the Middle East. Hamas is killing their opposition and consolidating their power,” Graham wrote. “If Israel believes it is necessary to reengage Hamas militarily, so be it. They have my complete backing.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) concurred with his GOP colleagues, telling JI, “If Hamas is going to strike Israel, they [Israel] don’t have a choice. They have to strike back. It’s too bad, but they don’t have a choice.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) surmised that Israel launched the strikes because Hamas was not honoring their side of the ceasefire deal by refusing to disarm. 

“I think the reasoning for it was: Hamas is supposed to be planning on disarming, but I suspect that there’s probably some portions of Hamas that don’t want to disarm, and they’re probably regrouping,” Rounds told JI. “If [Netanyahu] can take out some more of those terrorists, I think he probably decided he would do it now as opposed to later.”

“We want that ceasefire to be successful, but it means Hamas has got to give up their weapons,” he added.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) wrote on X on Tuesday that, “Hamas is in direct violation of the ceasefire, including deceptively & cruelly obstructing the return of deceased hostages to their families. The @IDF’s actions are a result of Hamas’ repeated violations & their targeting of Israeli troops.”

The North Carolina senator declined to elaborate when asked by JI at the Capitol about the developments, noting that he wanted to hold off on commenting further until he had been fully briefed on the situation. 

Some Senate Democrats who have been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on the Jewish state said they hoped the latest developments would not completely upend the ceasefire deal. 

“It is very troubling,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said of Netanyahu launching the strikes. “I give President Trump a lot of credit for really working hard to get him [Netanyahu] to accept the deal. He wouldn’t have accepted it before.”

Kaine questioned if Netanyahu was aiming to derail the ceasefire, and noted that such a development would upend current efforts by the U.S. to bring more Gulf states into the Abraham Accords. 

“My question is: Is he trying to undo the deal?” the Virginia senator asked of Netanyahu. “If he’s trying to undo the deal, then he’s got another problem, which is [that] they [the U.S.] want more nations in the Abraham Accords, and those nations have said we’re not coming in unless there is a path forward to Palestinian autonomy.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told JI that he was waiting to be briefed before speaking publicly, but said it would be “unfortunate if we wound up in a situation where this unravels.”

Middle East experts with whom JI spoke described Israel’s strikes against Hamas as necessary for its security, and dismissed concerns that Israel was acting without U.S. involvement or trying to disrupt the deal, while others expressed concern regarding Washington’s ability to constrain the Israelis. 

“Israel has shown considerable patience and restraint in the face of multiple Hamas violations of its ceasefire obligations, but attacks on its personnel are something no government can accept,” Rob Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told JI. “Hamas’ violations are real and serious, deserving of an appropriate response.”

Mona Yacoubian, director and senior advisor of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, remained skeptical over Israel’s decision to strike. She said the operation could reflect a developing pattern where Israel takes military action with or without U.S. cooperation, and argued that Washington should be willing to adjust accordingly to “enforce” and monitor the ceasefire arrangement.

“Although we are still very much in the ‘fog of war,’ it does not appear that the United States approved the strike or necessarily even agrees with Israel’s interpretations that Hamas violated the ceasefire,” Yacoubian told JI. “We are likely seeing the beginnings of a ‘new normal’ where Israel strikes as it sees necessary. The key question is whether or not the United States will acquiesce to that.”

Gaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, predicted that the breakout of strikes was an isolated episode that would be “contained.” 

“The current escalation is concerning but not surprising. Ceasefires take a while to solidify and stabilize, whether because of accidents or because the sides testing the limits of the ceasefire,” al-Omari said. “The challenge facing the U.S. now is how to balance supporting Israel’s right to respond to Hamas’ violations while at the same time ensuring that this round of escalation does not spin out of control.”

With a cryptic video that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard posted on X on Tuesday morning, the Democratic-congresswoman-turned-America-First-advocate reignited simmering concerns about the unorthodox intelligence chief among both her longtime detractors and some Republicans who voted to confirm her earlier this year.

“She obviously needs to change her meds,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider of Gabbard. Kennedy, like all Republicans except Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to confirm Gabbard in February. 

“I only saw a post that she did, which I thought was a very strange one since many people believe that, unfortunate though it was, the nuclear bomb that was dropped in World War II at Hiroshima actually saved a lot of lives, a lot of American lives,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told JI of Gabbard’s video. 

In the social media video, Gabbard describes a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan, where she learned about the toll of the atomic bomb dropped on the city by American troops in 1945, which spurred a Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. She warned that the world faces another “nuclear holocaust” unless people “reject this path to nuclear war.”

“This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” said Gabbard, not specifying who she was referring to by “political elite warmongers” or which countries she may have been calling out. 

Gabbard’s video decrying “warmongers” prompted concern from Republicans seeking a more traditionally conservative foreign policy worldview. 

“She seems to be doing her best audition to be head of the Quincy Institute,” a senior employee at a pro-Israel advocacy group said of Gabbard.

One Senate Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned Gabbard’s logic in raising the human toll of Hiroshima and her “warmongers” comment.

“I’m not sure I understand why the DNI would even need to make that point,” the senator said of the Hiroshima focus, later adding: “I don’t seek nuclear war. I don’t know anyone who wants nuclear war. There’s plenty of ideological diversity here, but pretty much universal opposition to that.”

Since taking office, Gabbard, who in 2020 was a surrogate for progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign, has generally been aligned with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which is increasingly ascendant in the Trump administration. William Ruger, the official she tapped for the high-level position that prepares the president’s daily intelligence briefing, came from Koch-affiliated institutions and has called for “American restraint” on the world stage. 

During her nomination battle, Gabbard faced criticism, including from some Republicans — focused in particular on a congressional trip to Syria in 2017 when she met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, her parroting of Russian propaganda about the country’s war with Ukraine and her defense of Edward Snowden, the former intelligence official who leaked classified information before fleeing the country. 

“It defies belief that someone would be criticizing [President Harry] Truman’s act of winning a war. We really need to get back to winning wars when we fight,” Eric Levine, a prominent Republican fundraiser in New York who urged senators to oppose Gabbard’s confirmation, told JI on Tuesday. 

Levine raised concerns about Gabbard’s ability to influence President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran, as nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are set to continue this weekend. He said that if Trump does the “right thing” — meaning he ends the Iran negotiations and supports a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure — then the U.S. will “save a lot of lives, just like Harry Truman did, and will not require the dropping of a nuclear bomb.” 

“I’m very concerned about the isolationist wing of the Republican Party,” Levine continued. “I don’t know who’s winning out, because we don’t know what the end result is in Iran yet.”

Several Republican senators questioned why Gabbard would make the video in the first place.

“I thought it was not appropriate,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told JI.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the impact of the bomb as “horrible” but said it was necessary to end the war, in which his father had fought. 

“Dropping those bombs probably saved a million servicemen’s lives. If you don’t want to get nuked, don’t start barbaric wars,” Graham told JI. “I think it’s a horrible thing to happen to people, but it was brought on by Japan, and if I were Harry Truman, I would have done the same thing because the casualty estimates were a million dead Americans invading mainland Japan.”

Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, declined to say whether Gabbard was referring in the video to a specific nation or to specific people. 

“Acknowledging the past is critical to inform the future. President Trump has repeatedly stated in the past that he recognizes the immeasurable suffering, and annihilation can be caused by nuclear war, which is why he has been unequivocal that we all need to do everything possible to work towards peace,” Henning said in a statement. “DNI Gabbard supports President Trump’s clearly stated objectives of bringing about lasting peace and stability and preventing war.”

Despite the criticism coming even from some allies, Gabbard’s views do not appear to have gone outside the realm of what Trump hopes to see from her. 

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a personal friend of Gabbard’s from their shared time in the House, defended Gabbard’s post and her service as DNI. 

“I think she’s doing a great job … She’s doing exactly what the president wanted her to do,” Mullin told JI. “People have been critical of her, and this is D.C., right? You’re going to get criticized for walking down the stairs wrong, so criticism is part of the job.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans penned a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Thursday to request that he hold a hearing on how the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses is violating the civil rights of Jewish students. 

The letter was led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the top Republican on the committee, and signed by every Republican who serves on the panel, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Kennedy (R-LA), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). They urged Durbin, who chairs the committee, to convene a hearing “on the civil rights violations of Jewish students” and “the proliferation of terrorist ideology — two issues that fall squarely within this Committee’s purview.”

“With this current state of inaction, it is incumbent upon this Committee to shed light on these civil rights violations,” the group wrote. “This Committee owes it to Jewish students, and all students who attend universities with modest hope of having a safe learning environment, to examine these civil rights violations.”

“Our committee should examine why more is not being done to protect the civil rights of innocent students across America,” they added. “We must also examine the threat to national security posed by the proliferation of radical Islamist ideology in the academy. These pressing issues demand our immediate attention.”

A spokesperson for Durbin did not immediately respond to JI’s request for comment on the letter, which came the same day as a missive from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) requesting a similar hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. 

Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, sent a letter to Sanders on Thursday urging him to convene a hearing in his capacity as committee chairman on the uptick in antisemitism on college campuses. 

Cassidy’s letter, first obtained by Jewish Insider, marks the second time in six months that the Louisiana senator has written to Sanders requesting that he allow for a full committee hearing “on ensuring safe learning environments for Jewish students, as required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Cassidy released a statement last week re-upping his call for a hearing, though he told JI that effort got no response.

“It is our duty to ensure federal officials are doing everything in their power to uphold the law and ensure students are not excluded from participation, denied the benefits of, or subject to discrimination at school based on race, color, or national origin,” Cassidy wrote to Sanders. “In the six months since my last letter requesting a hearing, the situation has only gotten worse.”

While Republicans have generally been more vocal about their concerns on the issue of antisemitism on college campuses, there have been bipartisan calls for action in the upper chamber. 

Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) have also asked Sanders to hold a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in his capacity as HELP chairman. Similar to Cassidy, they have also not heard back from the Vermont senator. 

Separately, Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) requested a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser’s response to protests at The George Washington University’s campus this week. 

The duo penned a letter on Thursday to Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who chairs the committee, requesting he bring in Bowser and D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith to testify on their respective responses to university requests to bring DCMP onto campus to clear out an anti-Israel encampment, requests Bowser denied. 

On the House side, where Republicans are in the majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) launched a chamber-wide effort to address all elements of the campus unrest. 

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee, revealed that in addition to her ongoing probes, she will have the presidents of three other schools testify next month on their responses to protests and instances of antisemitism on their campuses. The presidents of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Michigan; and Yale University will be brought in to testify before Foxx’s committee on May 23. 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that her panel “oversees agencies that dole out massive amounts of taxpayer funded research grants… We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his panel was reaching out to the State Department and Homeland Security Department to find out “how many students on a visa have engaged in the radical activity we’ve seen now day after day on college campuses.”