Following the joy in Israel over the return of the remaining living hostages on Monday and President Donald Trump’s declaration that “the long and painful nightmare is finally over” came the letdown: Hamas, as of Thursday, had returned only nine out of 28 bodies of the deceased hostages and started to execute rivals and reestablish itself in the areas of Gaza from which the IDF withdrew. 

While Trump has repeatedly said the war in Gaza is over, when asked by CBS News if that’s the case, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel “agreed to give peace a chance,” and later in the interview said it still needs to “finish the war as speedily as possible.”

The future of Gaza remains unclear, despite Israel agreeing to Trump’s 20-point plan for the region. Hamas only agreed to the immediate steps in the plan: stopping the war, freeing the hostages in exchange for 1,950 prisoners, including those who killed Israelis in terrorist attacks, and Israel withdrawing to a specified line within Gaza. 

Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday that the plan’s second phase, which entails Hamas’ disarmament and demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, “begins right NOW!!!” Yet, an Israeli official confirmed to Jewish Insider a report that, with Hamas withholding most of the remaining hostages’ bodies, negotiations to continue to the next phase of the plan are on hold.

Disarming Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza are meant to take place “under the supervision of independent monitors,” but those monitors have yet to be selected and sent to the region. The Peace Board announced — and led — by Trump, with the involvement of former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that is meant to oversee Gaza’s administration by Palestinian technocrats has not yet been formed, nor has the temporary International Stabilization Force meant to train Palestinian police and be part of the “long-term internal security solution” for Gaza and Israel. 

Meanwhile, Hamas has entered the vacuum and, in recent days, has tried to consolidate its power by killing members of clans that it accused of collaborating with Israel. 

On Tuesday, Trump called the clans “gangs that were very bad,” adding that Hamas’ attacks “didn’t bother me much” and that the terror group had his “permission” to proceed; Trump compared Gazan opponents of Hamas to gang members from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally.

At the same time, Trump said that Hamas must disarm, threatening U.S. involvement if the group does not lay down its weapons. “They will disarm or we will disarm them,” Trump said. “If they don’t disarm, it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm.” 

Netanyahu told CBS News that he “hope[s] we can do this peacefully. We’re certainly ready to do so.”

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, told the Misgav Mideast Horizons podcast co-hosted by Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov this week that although Trump’s plan “has 20 articles, it is not very well-detailed. Actually, it is a framework … [Trump] isn’t very interested in the details. He is very focused on the final outcome, on the vision. He leaves the details for the professionals.”

“If President Trump will lose his focus, determination, decisiveness with regard to the further phases of his own plan — and I mean disarming Hamas, demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, and so on — [Israel] might find [itself] in a stalemate. This, I would say, is the main challenge of the State of Israel — keep President Trump focused,” Michael warned.

Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, told JI that Hamas reestablishing itself within the “yellow line” to which the IDF withdrew is “unpleasant but expected,” because “up until now, Israel refused to deal with all the systems we wanted to put in place instead of Hamas.”

“The technocratic administration, international forces, Palestinian police, etc. – these are just headlines with nothing behind them. We need to start building them. Some will only be relevant in weeks or maybe months,” Guterman argued.

Guterman also pointed out that, while the second phase of the deal may go into effect in the coming weeks, it will likely last for years.

“We need to remember that we are still in phase one,” he said. “Not all the hostages are back, and that influences the decision-making in Israel. … Our first, central goal is to bring back most, if not all, or the hostages’ bodies that remain there.” 

Former Israeli National Security Advisor Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror said that Hamas is likely to return most of the bodies to the best of its capability.

“Hamas understands that, without [returning the bodies], it will clearly not be fulfilling its obligation to the Americans and Qatar and other countries, and may find itself in a war in which it doesn’t have its main card, the hostages,” Amidror said in a Jerusalem Press Club briefing.

Michael warned that while countries such as Qatar and Turkey that support the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas “were clever enough to understand … what is important for President Trump is to release the live hostages and declare the end of the war, and when it comes to the other phases, President Trump will be much more tolerant and they will be able to convince him that they need more time and Israel has to make further concessions.” 

“Hamas does not intend to dismantle itself … [or] give up its influence and position, not only in the Gaza Strip, but the entire Palestinian arena,” Michael said. “The Qataris and the Turks are interested in keeping Hamas as a relevant player in the Gaza Strip, first of all, as a platform for increasing its influence on the entire Palestinian Authority.”

The priority in Gaza must be removing Hamas’ control over any part of the enclave, including humanitarian or civilian services, Amidror argued.

“The people of Gaza are suffering from the strong hand of Hamas,” he said. “Today, Hamas is killing many Gazans. … We have to find a way to disarm Hamas for them and for Israel.” 

Amidror also said that it is “clear that nothing can be done in Gaza, not to rebuild, not to bring in forces that will implement civilian change, if Hamas is still so strong. Hamas cannot attack Israel anymore, but it is the strongest force in Gaza, and in that situation, no one will rebuild Gaza.”

As long as Hamas does not disarm, Guterman said, “Israel must prevent the rehabilitation of the areas of Gaza controlled by Hamas.”

Michael pointed out that Trump’s plan allows Israel and partner countries to proceed with establishing a technocratic administration and International Stability Force in Gaza before Hamas is disarmed.

“If Israel will agree to do that in the southern part, the area between Khan Younis and Rafah, I think there is a high probability for the success of security personnel and the Palestinian Authority,” Michael said. “They will enter the region empty of Hamas, with the presence of the government of technocrats, and everything will be fully coordinated with the IDF. … Begin the reconstruction process there, and continue the war in the north against Hamas, until Hamas is dismantled.” 

In such a scenario, Michael posited that residents of Gaza will try to move south to the areas being rebuilt to try to make a better life than in the areas controlled by Hamas.

“Then Hamas will lose its strength, which [comes from] the population, and it will be much easier for the IDF to besiege the areas that Hamas is present in, to dismantle Hamas,” he said.

Guterman thought that Israel implementing the plan in only part of Gaza was the likely scenario, but that progress would halt there and there would be “two Gazas.”

“Hamas will be within the yellow line, trying to grow more powerful as we try to fight it, and Gaza will have a security corridor in over 50% of the territory, making it easier to defend the [Israeli] towns near the border and create a better base for actions against Hamas,” he said.

For there to be an alternative administration in the IDF-controlled areas of Gaza that would undermine Hamas’ legitimacy, run by countries in the region, Israel’s “concession will have to be … committing to a viable path to a two-state solution,” Guterman argued.

Hamas said in a statement on Friday night that it was ready to enter final negotiations over the Trump-authored peace plan and that it was willing to release all the hostages remaining in Gaza. 

The Palestinian terror group said it would release the living hostages and the bodies it has held hostage since the Oct. 7 attacks nearly two years ago. Twenty of the 48 hostages are believed to still be alive. 

Hamas added it is willing to hand over administration of the Gaza Strip to a “Palestinian body composed of independents.” But the terror group also insisted — contradicting the terms of the Trump proposal — that Hamas will maintain a role in discussions over the future of Gaza through a “comprehensive Palestinian national framework.”

The deal is not yet final, and in its response to the Trump plan, Hamas said that the group is ready to enter negotiations to discuss the remaining details.

In response, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he believes Hamas wants to make a deal, and called on Israel to “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza.” 

“Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump wrote. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly! Right now, it’s far too dangerous to do that. We are already in discussions on details to be worked out.”

A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy declined to comment.

This story was updated at 5:32 p.m.

A bipartisan group of House members urged the administration to “be very careful” in negotiations with Turkey about its potential re-entry into a program allowing it to acquire and potentially co-produce F-35 fighter jets, ahead of a White House meeting between President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday.

Trump said Friday that he would host Erdogan at the White House for trade and military talks, “including the large-scale purchase of Boeing aircraft, a major F-16 Deal, and a continuation of the F-35 talks, which we expect to conclude positively.” 

Lawmakers have been pressing for months for the administration to be cautious in allowing Turkey to acquire the advanced fighter jets, something it has been banned by law from doing since it purchased a Russian S-400 missile defense system. By law, Turkey must dispense with that system before it can be re-admitted into the F-35 program, but some lawmakers have pushed for additional conditions, given various conflicts with Turkey, including its hostile posture toward Israel.

“The United States must be very careful when engaging in negotiations particularly as it relates to discussions surrounding Turkey’s potential reentry into the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Turkey was rightfully removed from the program in 2019 following its acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system—a clear violation of U.S. law under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA),” Reps. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) and Dina Titus (D-NV), who chair the Congressional Hellenic Caucus, said in a joint statement on Monday.

They emphasized that the Turkish-Russian cooperation, in spite of Turkey’s NATO status, “directly undermines the security of U.S. defense technology and poses a threat to the strategic integrity of allied defense cooperation,” as well as “risks exposing sensitive U.S. military capabilities to Russian intelligence, eroding allied trust, and jeopardizing the development of next-generation military platforms.”

In addition to the formal legal obstacles that should ban F-35 acquisition under current conditions, the four lawmakers added that Erdogan has “consistently demonstrated a disregard for international norms and democratic principles.”

They said that upholding the sanctions law is critical both to protect U.S. defense technology as well as to demonstrate the U.S.’s commitment to the rule of law.

“Rewarding Erdogan’s government without meaningful changes in behavior would set a dangerous precedent and weaken the credibility of U.S. foreign policy,” the lawmakers wrote. “The United States must stand firm in defending its laws, its alliances, and the international order.”

In September 2016, when President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. and Israel had signed a 10-year deal pledging a total of $38 billion in military assistance to Israel, the news was generally uncontroversial and greeted with bipartisan plaudits — a striking contrast to the nasty presidential campaign playing out across the country at the time. 

That deal, known as the U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding, is now close to expiring, and the next one — if there is a next one — will be negotiated in an entirely different political environment. Israel remains deeply enmeshed in a nearly two-year war in Gaza, with little indication of an end in sight, making forward-looking negotiations more difficult. 

A new MOU is not a given. U.S. support for Israel has dramatically declined on the left, and it is fracturing in isolationist corners of the right as well. Even some staunchly pro-Israel Republicans have grown wary of foreign aid in general, a shift that could affect U.S. policy toward Israel. 

“When many of the threats that have faced Israel in the past have been largely neutralized, Israel will need to figure out how to make the case that it is in need of over half of the U.S. security assistance budget,” a former Biden administration State Department official told Jewish Insider. “They will need to demonstrate the threats that they face in order to warrant this level of funding when Hamas has been decimated, when Hezbollah is a shadow of what it once was, when Iranian air defenses are nonexistent and Israel has proven its ability to be able to infiltrate Iran.”

The conversation about the next U.S.-Israel MOU came to the fore last month, when Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, became the first prominent Democrat to say the U.S. should not enact another 10-year military aid deal with Israel. 

No other potential Democratic presidential contenders have weighed in on the issue, though it could become a litmus test for a party whose base is steadily turning more hostile to Israel.

The current U.S.-Israel MOU, which expires in 2028, is the countries’ third. President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak signed the first 10-year MOU in 1999. It was meant as a way to phase out U.S. economic aid to Israel, which Jerusalem no longer needed as an emerging economic and technological powerhouse. Another MOU was negotiated by President George W. Bush and completed in 2007. 

“Ten-year MOUs have communicated an ongoing, consistent and bipartisan commitment to support Israel’s security by crossing administrations and demonstrating that it’s an ongoing relationship,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro. “It allows planning for big ticket acquisitions.”

The long-standing commitment allows Israel to plan to make large purchases that could take several years to acquire, such as fighter jets. 

The MOU is not actually a binding agreement, it’s a framework. Congress must still approve the $3.3 billion in military financing and $500 million in missile defense laid out in the MOU each year during the annual appropriations process, and could do so even in the absence of an MOU. 

“It’s simply a political commitment that Congress and the president can honor or not honor, and not having an MOU does not necessarily mean that we won’t have foreign military financing,” said Brad Bowman, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former national security advisor to Sen. Todd Young (R-IN). 

“But if we’ve had MOUs with Israel for so long under presidents of both parties, to not have one, I think, would really be quite a political statement about what’s going on with Israel, and would undermine the efforts of both Americans and Israelis to do necessary planning,” Bowman added. 

“Both the left and the right are having deep reservations about the U.S.-Israel relationship, and that could very much have negative consequences for the MOU,” a former Biden administration State Department official said. 

Congress has in the past weighed in to signal its support for the MOU. In 2016, Congress voted overwhelmingly to endorse the new MOU, with 405 members of the House voting for the measure. Just four representatives — all Republicans — voted against the bill. Only one of them, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), is still in the House.  

Since then, American support for Israel has shifted significantly, particularly since Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023. A Quinnipiac poll released in August found that 60% of voters oppose sending more military aid to Israel for its war with Hamas, while only about one-third (32%) support it. 

Meanwhile, only 13% of Democrats say their sympathies lie more with the Israelis than the Palestinians, a decline from 34% when asked the same question in November 2023. Far more Republicans side with the Israelis — 66% — but that’s down from 80% in November 2023. 

“Both the left and the right are having deep reservations about the U.S.-Israel relationship, and that could very much have negative consequences for the MOU,” the former Biden State Department official said. 

Congressional efforts to place conditions on American military aid to Israel have gained steam since Oct. 7. 

Twenty-seven Senate Democrats voted last month on a resolution to block the shipment of certain weapons to Israel. The measure was largely symbolic and destined to fail in the Republican-led Senate. Still, even with an MOU, Congress would not be prevented from passing a bill further restricting U.S. aid to Israel. 

“We continue to have an interest in ensuring that Israel can defend itself. They continue to be an important partner in the Middle East addressing many threats that threaten them, but also threaten us,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro. “If our relationship with Israel were to become far less supportive and far less intimately connected, we would quickly see a decline in our influence much more broadly in the region. That doesn’t mean we can’t also have critical conversations and use our leverage as a provider of assistance when we have concerns about Israeli military actions.”

That’s not considering the leeway given to the State Department, which approves arms sales. Last year, President Joe Biden held up a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs for months over concerns about Israel’s incursion into Rafah. 

The Trump administration, which would be the one to negotiate and sign off on a new MOU before its expiration, has not yet indicated any reservations with the process.

Israel is by far the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military financing. The U.S. and Jordan have their own security MOU, though Jordan receives roughly a tenth of the annual military aid that Israel gets. Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said the reason for the high level of support goes beyond Israel, and deep into the Middle East. He urged the U.S. to raise concerns with Israel about its conduct when issues arise, but not to cut into the aid itself.

“We continue to have an interest in ensuring that Israel can defend itself. They continue to be an important partner in the Middle East addressing many threats that threaten them, but also threaten us,” he said. “If our relationship with Israel were to become far less supportive and far less intimately connected, we would quickly see a decline in our influence much more broadly in the region. That doesn’t mean we can’t also have critical conversations and use our leverage as a provider of assistance when we have concerns about Israeli military actions.”

It would be tempting for Israel to try to increase its defense production to account for such a turbulent political environment. Israel has grown its military exports substantially in recent years and some Israeli lawmakers have indicated they’d like to phase out reliance on U.S. aid, but it would be very difficult for Israel to domestically produce everything it needs.

“The problem is that’s never going to happen,” Bowman said. “Israel, as impressive as it is, is never going to be completely self-sufficient in producing its own weapon systems. The United States is not. If we’re not, Israel never will be. Israel is a technology superpower. It’s not an industrial superpower.” 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Tuesday he is “optimistic” while also remaining “realistic,” about the latest round of ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations with Hamas. 

“I want to be optimistic about a deal with Hamas but I’m also aware of who we are dealing with, we’re not dealing with a nation state. We’re dealing with savages,” Huckabee said during an online briefing co-hosted by the American Jewish Congress and World Zionist Organization. 

The former governor of Arkansas’ comments come as Hamas has reportedly agreed to a 60-day ceasefire proposed by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, during which some of the remaining 50 hostages would be released. Israel had not responded to the proposal as of Tuesday afternoon. 

“Whether or not [Hamas is] serious about bringing this to a close, all I can tell you is I hope so. But what’s happened before, even when they say they are thinking seriously about bringing this to a conclusion, making a deal, they always add one or more things that are completely unacceptable, bring those to a table, then it all starts over again,” he continued.

“So I’m not going to give up, I’m always going to be optimistic, but I’m also realistic,” Huckabee said. “These are not people that come to the table because they are reasonable,” he said referring to Hamas. 

Huckabee also spoke about what Gaza could look like after the war ends. “It’s going to be a very different future and we don’t know exactly where it’s going,” he said, claiming that most Gazans he’s met with do not want Hamas in control, nor do they want the Palestinian Authority, Palestine Liberation Organization or Fatah in power.

“One thing we can agree on is Hamas can’t win, they can’t stay, they must disarm,” he said. The ambassador condemned France and the United Kingdom for their intent to formally recognize a state of Palestine. Doing so, he said, is “empowering and emboldening Hamas.” 

Huckabee lauded the June 22 U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which “obliterated their nuclear capacity,” but he cautioned that Iran still has “nuclear aspirations.” 

“You would think they would give those up in light of what happened to them,” Huckabee said.  

“Iran is still talking about how to get nuclear capacity. I would say to them, ‘You’ve been kicked once you don’t want to go through it again.’ But if it has to be, it will be.” 

Israel’s Security Cabinet is set to vote this week on occupying the remaining parts of Gaza that it does not currently control, after Hamas refused last month’s ceasefire and hostage deal proposal and did not return to negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir and Defense Minister Israel Katz held a three-hour meeting on Tuesday, which was reportedly very tense due to disagreement over the plan, though Zamir ultimately said he will follow through with the government’s decision. 

Zamir argued that the IDF should surround the areas in Gaza in which it currently does not have a presence, including Gaza City and towns in the center of Gaza in which hostages are believed to be held. Entering those areas, Zamir warned, would endanger the lives of the 20 hostages who are thought to be alive. Hamas has threatened to kill hostages if the IDF approaches, as it had executed six hostages a year ago. 

Beyond the fraught issue of the hostages, there is the matter of what “occupation” means. 

Broadly, the war in Gaza was initially conducted via raids in which the IDF would warn civilians to leave a given area, enter, destroy terrorist infrastructure and combat terrorists, and eventually leave to move to a different part of Gaza, letting the population return. Hamas terrorists would also end up returning to those areas, leading the IDF to have to enter some of the same places repeatedly.

In March, Israel embarked on Operation Gideon’s Chariots, in which Israel entered Gaza from its perimeter on all sides, and moved inwards, capturing territory and maintaining control of it, in contrast to its previous strategy. That operation has, in effect, resulted in Israel controlling 75% of Gaza. 

The remaining 25% is what Israel would move to control under the plan Netanyahu supports.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the former head of research for IDF intelligence, told the Misgav Mideast Horizons podcast this week that the commonly used 75%-25% formulation is “a misrepresentation.”

“Almost all the population of Gaza is in areas controlled by Hamas, which allows Hamas to keep its grip over the population, and this is the source of its power … It’s not about the percentage of the area, it’s about who controls the population,” he said.

While “occupation” is the correct military term for what Israel would be doing by taking control of territory, the connotation of the word in the Israeli context tends to be the West Bank, which Israel has controlled since 1967 and where over half a million Jewish citizens of Israel live. 

Some Cabinet ministers have advocated for allowing Israelis to move to Gaza, where 21 Israeli settlements were forcibly evacuated in 2005; Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected such a plan.

What senior Israeli officials have long said is that, while Israel seeks to have other countries and some Palestinians administer Gaza, they will not do so until it’s clear that Hamas has been ousted. As such, Israel may have to take control for some time until other arrangements are made.

Kuperwasser said that while Netanyahu’s decision may be risky, Zamir’s preference of surrounding the remaining 25% of Gaza is more of the same.

“In Gaza, there are no good options,” he said. “The option of continuing what we have done for the last 22 months is not a good option, because it didn’t put enough pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and accept the idea that they should give up their arms. The option of succumbing to Hamas demands … is a very bad idea, too. And taking over Gaza is also a bad idea, because you end up being responsible for the population of Gaza and there is going to be a lot of criticism around the globe … you cannot guarantee that you are going to get the hostages alive.” 

Kuperwasser argued that the only way at this point for Israel to move towards freeing the hostages and removing Hamas from power is if Hamas is “convinced that we are about to take over Gaza by force and remove them from power by force … So we have to make this decision, and yes, it comes with a price.”

Starting on the new strategy may be enough to convince Hamas to reach a deal, Kuperwasser said, but in order to get to that point, he argued, Israel has to prepare to actually occupy Gaza. 

“We have to convince Hamas that we are serious, that we are really preparing for this eventuality,” including for civil administration of Gaza, he said.

Since his arrival in Israel in April, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has made his mark as the first evangelical U.S. ambassador to Israel — and possibly the most effusive in his remarks about the Jewish state.

That may be why a leaked letter he wrote to Israeli Interior Minister Moshe Arbel last week, expressing “profound disappointment” that an issue delaying work visas for Christian organizations had gone unresolved and suggesting that Israelis may be treated in kind by the U.S., drew so much attention.

A day after the letter leaked, the ambassador visited Taybeh, a Palestinian village in the West Bank where there had been a fire in a field near a church, writing on X that “desecrating a church, mosque or synagogue is a crime against humanity and God,” and “I will demand those responsible be held accountable.” With Taybeh church leaders blaming settlers, Huckabee’s comments were interpreted in many media accounts as doing the same, though he later clarified that he was not attributing the fire to anyone. 

But with the visa issue resolved and the world’s attention on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the latest round of collapsed negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, Huckabee was back to standing firmly behind Israel in an interview with Jewish Insider in his office at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Thursday. With an a guitar hanging on the wall behind him emblazoned with an American flag and President Donald Trump’s slogan “make America great again,” Huckabee pinned the humanitarian issues in Gaza on Hamas and the U.N and the failure of negotiations on Hamas, and was critical of other Western countries that have come out against Israel, accusing them of emboldening the Gazan terrorist group. 

The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jewish Insider: There’s a lot of pressure on Israel over humanitarian aid in Gaza and claims that residents of Gaza are starving. Israel says that they are letting more food in but no one is distributing it, while much of the world doesn’t believe that. I want to ask you: Do you think there is really starvation in Gaza? What is really happening?

Ambassador Mike Huckabee: This very morning, I had a visit from someone who returned yesterday from three days in Gaza. He firsthand went and saw the [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] feeding sites, talked to people, not only from the staffing and the distribution, but he talked to people in Gaza … He came to the conclusion, first of all, that absolute lies that are being told, not only about GHF and what they’re doing, but are also being told about the deprivation. 

There are clearly people who need food and medicine. That’s not a doubt. But the biggest reason that people are not getting the food and medicine they need is that Hamas is doing its best to cause the people to suffer. They want to get the photos of the most disastrous consequences possible. 

The photos that I also saw, which were very disturbing but also revealing, [were of] hundreds and hundreds of pallets of food that are sitting out in the sun ready to be distributed, but the U.N. won’t move them. Hundreds of trucks filled with food and medicine, and the U.N. claims that they’re trying to help. No, they’re not. They are as much a part of the problem, if not the biggest part of the problem there is. And this food could be distributed right now, but the U.N. isn’t doing it. The NGOs aren’t doing it, and the World Food Program isn’t doing it, because they just drop it off. Then, basically, they’re waiting on Hamas to come and steal it so [the group] can turn around and sell it to the people that ought to be getting it for free. It is a scam. 

It is a disgrace and an outrage that the story that is being told is that GHF is killing people, and they’re not. They haven’t fired one round at anybody … It’s simply not true. It is sadly being reported sometimes because Hamas will release a news story and the Associated Press, CNN, The Washington Post, will gobble it up. They’ll print it without any verification … That’s what Israel is up against. It’s what the U.S. is up against every single day, with really, really horrible misinformation about what’s happening.

JI: Why do you think countries that purport to be friends of Israel and the U.S. — 26 countries signed a letter to Israel about the aid including the U.K., Canada, France — are believing Hamas?

MH: It’s hard for me to understand why they would do that without doing a little better job of verifying the information. If they would, they would have a totally different picture…

The other day there was the story of the 26 countries that came out and did this condemnation of Israel. If you read the news release, it’s all about Israel, all about what they haven’t done right, and a lot of the things in the story are just untrue. The biggest just shocker of it all, was that there was one brief mention of the fact that the war was started by Hamas on Oct. 7, as a passing reference, without really giving the qualifier that this war should have ended on Oct. the 8th, but Hamas doesn’t want it to, and they’re doing everything they can to make sure it doesn’t…

I’ve been shocked that very few other nations and even nonprofit organizations have been willing to stand up and help in the distribution of the food through the GHF, because the whole model was based on … No. 1, get food to people who are hungry, and No. 2, do it in a way that it doesn’t get stolen by Hamas. That’s been accomplished; over 85 million meals now have been served and continues to operate at almost 2 million meals a day.

It hasn’t been perfect. There have been hiccups, but [that happens] when you have that many people coming to a site and trying to get that much food out to people. Heck, you can go to Walmart on Christmas Eve … and it’s bedlam. Sometimes you stand in the long line and sometimes they ran out of what you wanted, but that’s true in the most efficient retailer on the planet. This is being done out in the middle of a desert for heaven’s sakes, and has really worked pretty doggone good. 

Well, we just want people to get the truth and to get the food, but we don’t want Hamas to steal it, which is what they have done through the U.N. model, which has been an absolute disaster. 

Maybe the U.N. is more interested in preserving the machinery of the U.N. than they are in feeding people. And I know that sounds harsh, but I absolutely am on the record for that, because when I see just thousands of pallets, thousands of tons of food sitting that could be consumed by people, it’s sitting there because the U.N. doesn’t really have any incentive to go out and actually get it to the people. They can just present that ‘We carried X number of trucks in.’ How many people got fed from that? Bigger question is, how many of those trucks or pallets are going to be looted by Hamas, who will then sell it to the people that are hungry?

JI: Do you think that there’s something that Israel needs to be doing differently at this point with regards to humanitarian aid? 

MH: Get their message out more strongly. You know, they have a good message about what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to protect the people who are delivering the food. Food isn’t being delivered by the IDF. That was one of the key points; they didn’t want the military giving the food, because there’s a distrust, and we understand that, so we brought our own contractors in. But you can’t give food away in a war zone without having the military who’s prosecuting the war involved, at least on the perimeter, so that they can make sure that there’s a secure route in and a secure route out … Israel has a much better story to tell than the world is hearing, and it’s very frustrating, especially when so-called allies are attacking Israel and not even really mentioning Hamas. 

JI: Hamas is degraded, but it’s still a force in Gaza and it’s still holding hostages. We’re talking a day after Hamas essentially rejected the temporary ceasefire and hostage deal being offered. But there was talk before that of turning the proposed 60-day ceasefire into a permanent one, even though Hamas has not been eliminated. How does the Trump administration see things going forward?

MH: The president has said repeatedly, without any equivocation, that Hamas can’t stay, and they can’t govern. … And frankly, it’s the right message. They can’t stay, they can’t govern. It would be like saying the Nazis can stay in Germany after World War II and have a hand in governing the future; nobody would have thought that was a good idea … Hamas built tunnels bigger than the London Underground so they could kill Jews. It’s a horrible, horrible story, and people need to put the blame where it falls, and that’s on Hamas and not on Israel.

JI: The negotiations seem to have reached a dead end. What more do you think that could be done to get the hostages home?

MH: If everyone in the world puts enough pressure on Hamas and says it won’t be just Israel and the U.S. coming to get you, it’ll be the whole world coming to get you. It’s like in the movie “Tombstone” and Wyatt Earp says, “I’m coming for you, and hell is coming with me.” That’s the kind of message that we need to say. The problem is Israel has made concession after concession. They have made offer after offer. The U.S. has intervened time and time and time again and gone to, I don’t know how many different talks, meetings and negotiations, but every time you will hear “we’re close,” we think we’re about there, and then Hamas changes all the conditions at the last minute, or just outright rejects them…

[On Wednesday, Hamas] went back to a position that [it] had abandoned in the past. So when there’s not a good faith negotiation going on, and then you have to ask: Whoever thought there was going to be? These are the people that murdered pregnant women in front of their families, and that raped women in front of their children. When people do things like that, these aren’t people you sit down and work out a negotiation to buy a home from or sell a car to. So, while everybody has hopes that this is going to end and soon, all the hostages returned and Hamas is gone, it’s up to Hamas whether or not that’s going to happen.

JI: Do you think the letter from the 26 countries emboldened Hamas to harden its position? 

MH: That’s the real tragedy. It’s not just that they’re condemning Israel, but by condemning Israel and barely mentioning Hamas, they’re empowering Hamas to just keep hanging on. 

There needs to be a collective across-the-whole-globe condemnation of Hamas with this clarity of message that what they’ve done is evil and holding hostages for nearly 700 days can’t be justified under any conditions … The families who have been put through a living hell over this deserve to be relieved. 

JI: What about the Qataris? Do you think that the U.S. is doing enough to put pressure on them? It seems that they are doing everything they can to try to stay on President Trump’s good side.

MH: One thing they could do — if that’s their goal, to be in the president’s good graces — would be to be key in bringing this to a resolve. And I hope they do. I hope they use every influence they have, and they truly have some. I mean, they’ve been housing some of the Hamas leaders since all of this started. And Al Jazeera, which is one of the most despicable propaganda machines in the world, is financed by them…

I’ll leave [the details] to the headquarters in Washington, but nobody would be disappointed if [Qatar] did more.

JI: There’s also President Trump’s plan to to turn Gaza into a ‘riviera.’ There has not been a lot of progress. Where do things stand? Is the U.S. asking any countries to accept Gazan refugees?

MH: I think it’s more of an Israeli mission to make that decision. What the president has said is U.S. policy is that people who are there who want to leave should be free to leave. They shouldn’t be forced to leave and face expulsion, but neither should people be forced to stay. It ought to be an individual, personal decision on the part of the people who are right now living in what is anything less than an ideal circumstance. 

JI: So you’re saying the U.S. is not involved in trying to find countries that will accept them?

MH: It’s not something that has been shared with me as to being an immediate issue. I know that there is definitely talk that this would be a great opportunity for people to have a fresh start that has been discussed at both the U.S. and Israeli levels. And I think everybody thinks that would be a wonderful thing if people had that option, and if countries were willing to say, “Hey, we’d love to have people come and be part of our labor force and immigrate to our country.” But I don’t know that there’s any specific plans that the U.S. has made on that…

The U.S. took a position several months ago when the president said … ’We’ll just take [Gaza] over. Immediately, within 24 hours, you had four or five Gulf countries saying, “Oh no, no, we want a piece of it. We’ll help govern.” People who don’t understand the president and how he works probably didn’t get it that the whole point was to force people to pony up and get in the game, and that’s exactly what happened…

What he does want to do is to see that these people have a chance for a better life, economically, and just from a security standpoint, they’re never going to have it under Hamas … Who runs [Gaza in the future]? Good question. Maybe it comes to the place where there’s a number of Middle Eastern countries that come and really make a partnership and a coalition and invest the money to rebuild it and give people an opportunity to have a decent and deserved life.

JI: There have been terrible clashes and massacres of the Druze minority in Syria in recent weeks. It seems from U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who’s also envoy to Syria, that the Trump administration still wants to give new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa a chance. Is that causing friction with Israel, which tried to stop the violence against the Druze with airstrikes?

MH: Right now, the ceasefire has held for two days, which doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but in Syrian time, that’s a lot of time. There were some horrific things that have happened, especially to the Druze. The Israelis were very bold in standing up for the Druze and showing their support … literally going in and trying to help them with supplies and standing up assistance in every way they could. I thought it was an admirable thing, because the Druze have stood with Israel.

The head sheikh of the Druze community [Muwaffaq Tarif] was sitting right where you are on Tuesday afternoon. We had a very candid meeting about the situation they faced. They’re deeply grateful for Israel’s support. It did mean a lot to them that they weren’t just left hanging…

I’ve had several conversations with Ambassador Barrack over the course of the last week and before. It’s a fragile situation. Nobody’s going to deny that al-Sharaa is not exactly the person the U.S. would have picked … but he’s who we got.

What the president [Trump] did was, I think, bold, but also brilliant, at a time when al-Sharaa realized he doesn’t have the military or economic capacity to make Syria viable. He’s got to find a partner. He’s like the kid that goes to the prom and doesn’t have a date. Somebody’s going to go over there and say, “Would you dance with me?” Do we want it to be Iran, Russia, China? Absolutely not. President Trump comes in and says, “You can dance with me, but if you do, terrorism has to go away.” We can’t have these relationships with bad guys and remilitarize Syria and turn it into another nightmare like Assad. [Al-Sharaa] wisely decided that that was a better partnership than any offer he had. That’s where we are now. 

Everybody has anxieties about where this could go, but we also are in a place where it could turn the corner, go very well, and we could see normalization between Syria and Israel, and that would have looked really unthinkable two years ago.

JI: You don’t think that the last couple weeks have taken a Syria-Israel agreement off the table?

MH: No, I don’t at all. I think it showed some of the challenges that we face. A lot of things happened because of misunderstanding and lack of communication. When [the Syrian military] went south of Damascus with artillery and tanks, it looked like they were getting ready for a military operation. They should have better communicated to the Israelis [and said,] “This is not a threat to you. We’re not moving this equipment in there because we’re going to come across the border.” You know, everybody should have talked to each other better.

JI: But Israel wants that part of Syria, the south, entirely demilitarized. Do you think that’s something that Syria would agree to?

MH: Yes, I do. You want Syria to have some security forces, you’ve got to have that, but they don’t need a full-scale military with an air force and all the others. I think there are regional interests that would help provide a level of security for them that does not require the standing up of a navy and army … The ideal is to help them to become stable economically.

JI: There was reporting after the Israeli strikes in Syria that some people in the Trump administration called Netanyahu a madman and asked, “What country are they going to bomb next?” Does that ring true to you?

MH: I think that people who know don’t talk, and people who talk don’t know … I hate this kind of stuff where a person pretends that he knows something and blabs it out. The president has been very clear, again, without equivocation, that he and [Netanyahu] are very close friends. I saw with my own eyes and was in the room when there was an extraordinary level of camaraderie and cooperation … For all this talk about how there’s this terrible clash and all I would say, look at what is on the record, what is sourced with firsthand source, and dismiss the nonsense that people say … I discount it as somebody who’s trying to be important when they’re not that important.

JI: Still, it seems like there’s a kernel of truth to there being some sort of push and pull within the Trump administration, and even more so within the broader Republican Party, about foreign policy and how to relate to Israel. Do you think this is going to be a problem for Israel? 

MH: I really don’t see that. I mean, are there moments where Israel and the U.S. will disagree? Of course, [it] happens in partnerships, whether you’re in business or in marriage. I’ve been married 51 years. I guarantee you, my wife and I have had disagreements, sometimes, some pretty strong ones. She would tell you that she’s right and I’m always wrong. That’s part of the way we’ve stayed together 51 years. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t love each other and that you don’t stay together. 

It’s part of the process of being adults that you hash out your differences. So I don’t have any doubts that there are times they may have a conversation that they’re not on the same page …  I haven’t been privy to those, but that would be normal. 

JI: We’re coming out of a complicated week for Israel and Christians. There was an issue with work visas for people working in Christian organizations. How is that going to work going forward?

MH: It really wasn’t a big issue, except within that one area. And fortunately, we have it all resolved, and everybody’s happy … Really the new arrangement is the old arrangement, and that was that the process through which people would be granted visas coming to teach or to be a part of a Christian organization. It’s been handled the same exact way for decades, and we were very clear. We didn’t want anything new … Just do what you’ve been doing. It’s been working very well. There have been no problems with it. And then all of a sudden, in January, before I came, apparently there was a change in the way it was processed, and it was creating an enormous level of bureaucratic problems for the organizations, and they were frustrated, and it involved deep investigations and a lot of paperwork and cost…

So we had a meeting with a minister. Thought it went well and thought everything was resolved. The problem continued to happen. So if we would call with one specific case, it would get resolved, but then another one would come up, and then another … So I sent a letter. It was terse, but I felt it was an honest assessment of, look, we thought this was fixed. It isn’t. Here’s the problems it’s causing. We did not leak the letter, but it got leaked. I don’t know who sent it out, but that’s beyond the point. It resulted in immediate attention…

The point that I was making was that at a time when Israel needs all the friends it can get, and some of the best friends you have, the evangelical Christians in America, you really don’t want to tell them they’re not welcome, and that’s the message that’s being sent … We have to get it fixed. So we did, so everybody’s happy.

JI: By unfortunate coincidence, this was the same week where an IDF shell hit the church in Gaza, and then there was a fire near a church in Taybeh that Palestinians blamed on Israel.

MH: I think that it was unfortunate they were all happening at the same time, but they’re totally separate and not tied together in any way. The State of Israel didn’t do anything in Taybeh. And you know, [the shelling of] the Church of the Holy Family was a horrible thing, but to their credit, [the IDF] admitted that it was a terrible mistake and they apologized for it. It’s not something you would ever want to see happen. But Israel doesn’t get enough credit for owning up to a mistake when they make one and trying to make it right, and I appreciate that about them.

JI: You hear these voices of people saying Israel is going to lose Christian support. And there are polls that show young evangelical support for Israel in decline. Do you think that Israel needs to be doing something differently or reaching out more?

MH: I think there is some lessening of the support … There are several things at play. One is the advent of a lot of Middle Eastern studies on college and university campuses, highly funded by Gulf states that are pouring billions of dollars into these programs, and they’re somewhat indoctrinating influences … That’s part of it, and a lot of it is that maybe there’s just not a good historical context for some of the younger people that they don’t know. 

I’m convinced that one of the most important things people can do is to come to Israel and see for themselves. Don’t even take my word for it. You just come. That’s what I’ve been doing for 52 years. When I tell people my views of Israel, I tell them, look, it’s not something I read in a book or watched on a documentary or listened to some people give lectures. I’ve been coming here for 52 consecutive years. I’ve watched this country develop and grow and change … which I think had more credibility than just “I was at a march somewhere in Palo Alto [Calif.] and carried a sign for a few blocks. That’s something I hope happens more and more. The Jewish community has Birthright that brings a lot of young Jewish people here. There’s now an organization called Passages, and it’s bringing a lot of Christian kids here. I think that’s the most wonderful thing that can happen.

JI: Is the Trump administration still trying to negotiate with Iran? The Europeans said they will snap back sanctions if there isn’t an agreement by the end of August, and an Israeli official recently said the U.S. was hoping they would do it sooner. Is that true?

MH: I don’t know whether there’s any U.S. policy on hoping it would come sooner. Frankly, I’m just glad to hear the Europeans stand up for something that is right for a change. You know, they’ve been beating up Israel instead of Hamas for a while, and it’s kind of refreshing for them to realize that Iran’s playing games, and they’re still beating their chest and making threats that make no sense in light of what they’ve just been through.

In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” King Arthur cuts off [the Black Knight’s] arm, then his other arm, and then his legs. And the guy says, “‘tis but a scratch.” I mean, that’s Iran. They got their arms and legs cut off, and they’re hollering, “Just a scratch, you didn’t get me’” … And you just want to say to them, “Did you not get the message? You just got your brains kicked out, and this would be a good time for you to experience a little humility and recognize you’re never going to have a nuclear weapon. Everybody’s telling you this, even Europe is telling you this. They’re about to put sanctions on you because of it, and this might be a good time to reassess your aspirations to be a nuclear-weapon country.” So I’m grateful that Europe is talking this way, and if they do it in August, wonderful. That’s better than not doing it at all. And maybe — probably not, but maybe — Iran comes to [its] senses.

JI: You recently made an appearance in the courtroom for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s trial with a Bugs Bunny doll. Was that something that the president wanted you to do, or was that your idea? Some Israelis are concerned that the country or the judiciary could be penalized over Netanyahu’s trial the way President Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Brazil over the corruption trials against former President Jair Bolsonaro. Is that a possibility?

MH: I have not heard anything like that … [Trump] had two very significant, substantial statements about the trials here because he himself has been put through an extraordinary level of lawfare. It’s just been shocking as an American citizen, to watch this, where they try to file charges, both civil and criminal, anywhere they can find a court that’ll take him, New York, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida…

I think what he’s trying to say is that if you’re going to want to change the government, do it at the ballot box. You don’t do it in the courtroom. What he saw happening to the prime minister here, he saw as a mirror reflection of what was going on there [in the U.S.]. And it’s not so much that it’s an accusation about the courts or their integrity here, but the act of prosecuting and the tenacity of prosecution while a prime minister is going through the middle of two wars and trying to get hostages released. 

As far as my being there, I hadn’t seen a circus in a long time, so I decided to go.

The IDF entered the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah for the first time on Monday, amid stalled hostage and ceasefire negotiations in Doha, Qatar.

The maneuver in Deir el-Balah began a day after an evacuation order from the central Gaza city, built on the Mediterranean coast around an UNRWA refugee camp. Israeli officials believe some of the remaining 50 hostages may be being held in the area. In June 2024, the IDF freed four hostages, Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov in a raid in adjacent Nuseirat. 

Deir el-Balah has been relatively unscathed during the war that began after the Hamas terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The April 2024 incident in which the IDF killed World Central Kitchen aid workers whom it had mistakenly identified as terrorists took place near Deir el-Balah.

Before the latest operation in the Gaza war began in May, a senior defense official told Jewish Insider that the plan was to start from Gaza’s perimeter and work its way to the center, which the military now appears to be doing.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that relatives of the 50 remaining hostages in Gaza — 20 of whom are thought to be alive — were “shocked and alarmed” to learn of the maneuver and demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other senior officials tell the Israeli public “why the offensive in the Dier al-Balah area does not put the hostages at serious risk.”

“We have received no official, organized updates or satisfactory answers on this matter,” the forum added. “The people of Israel will not forgive anyone who knowingly endangered the hostages, both the living and the deceased. No one will be able to claim they didn’t know what was at stake.”

Despite optimism in Jerusalem and Washington in recent weeks about the prospects for a 60-day ceasefire in which half of the remaining 50 hostages would be released, talks have been on hold for the past week. Hamas representatives in Doha, Qatar, are reportedly unable to contact the terrorist group’s leaders in Gaza. 

The Word Health Organization said Tuesday that the IDF hit the residence compound belonging to local staff members and its main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday. The organization also said that two of its staff and two family members were detained, three of whom were later released. The WHO demanded the immediate release of the staff member who remained in detention.

In a statement released Tuesday, the IDF said troops identified shots being fired toward them in the Deir al-Balah area, and responded toward the area from which the shooting originated. The army highlighted that, “Prior to the start of IDF activities in the area, the IDF warned the civilian population to evacuate from the area for their safety, and was in contact with the international organizations working in the area.” 

It also noted that the troops detained several individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism and after questioning in the field, the majority were released and evacuated from the area in coordination with the international organizations. 

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said during a multi-arena situational assessment on Monday that “the IDF must be prepared for a continued wide-scale and comprehensive campaign, while managing a complex and challenging reality that requires multi-arena operations.”

“The war in the Gaza Strip is one of the most complex the IDF has ever known,” Zamir said. “We have achieved significant accomplishments – Southern Command continues to lead with regular and reserve brigades operating every day in both offense and defense.”

Also Monday, 25 countries — including most of the European Union, the U.K., Canada and Australia — called for an end to the war in Gaza and for the flow of humanitarian aid.

“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous,” the countries said, apparently referring to the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that was installed as part of an effort to thwart Hamas’ practice of stealing and hoarding humanitarian aid.

The countries called for the hostages to be released immediately and expressed concern about the undermining of a two-state solution.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the statement, “as it is disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas,” which welcomed the international statement.

“All statements and all claims should be directed at the only party responsible for the lack of a deal for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire: Hamas, which started this war and is prolonging it,” the Foreign Ministry stated.

The statement also argued that “Hamas is busy running a campaign to spread lies about Israel. At the same time, Hamas is deliberately acting to increase friction and harm to civilians who come to receive humanitarian aid.” 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the 25 countries’ statement “disgusting” in that it “puts pressure on Israel instead of [the] savages of Hamas. Gaza suffers for one reason: Hamas rejects every proposal. Blaming Israel is irrational.”  

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) told Jewish Insider on Friday that he’s inclined to view the Trump administration’s strikes last month on Iran’s nuclear facilities as a “success,” if negotiations with Tehran resume and barring substantial future retaliation from Iran.

His comments largely echo sentiments shared earlier in the day by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) at the Aspen Security Forum, suggesting an increasing willingness by moderate, national security-minded Democrats to publicly acknowledge positive outcomes of the strikes, even if they maintain other concerns about the process that produced them.

“I will acknowledge the successfulness of the Israeli attacks and how back-foot the regime was. The fact that they didn’t launch the thousands of missiles,” Warner told JI on the sidelines of the forum. “I was concerned about an attack that didn’t bring Congress along. And I do think there was a huge process foul when the Gang of Eight wasn’t notified and the Republicans [were]. Trump[’s first administration] never did that — but I have never contested the success.”

Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s been pleased that there has not been ongoing asymmetric retaliation against the U.S. by Iran, such as cyber, sleeper cell or Iraqi militia attacks.

“If the current status quo is the same a year from now and it actually leads towards further negotiation — success.”

Warner, Coons and other top Democrats had cautioned the administration against unilateral action against Iran without congressional approval just days before the attack.

“Let’s make no doubt that the Iranian regime [are] bad guys, and that is why I’ve been such a consistent supporter of Israel,” Warner told JI.

“Iran’s, at least so far, been shown to be more of a paper tiger,” Warner said. “If we could just get to the resolution in Gaza, there really could be a fresh start.”

The senator said that his ongoing concern is how President Donald Trump has responded to the attacks, declaring that Iran’s nuclear program had been completely obliterated.

“The president, within two hours of the strike, set an arbitrary, almost impossible standard to meet, in terms of ‘total obliteration,’” Warner said. “To get the enriched uranium you’re going to need troops on the ground. And there are more than three sites — the vast majority [of the activity] was [at] those three, but there was some bad stuff happening elsewhere.”

He said the intelligence community had also been pressured to “contort itself to meet” the assessment Trump put forward.

In the immediate aftermath of the strikes, Warner and other Democrats expressed frustration that the Trump administration took days to brief Congress about them. Warner said he’s received “some additional clarity” in the weeks since the strikes about their effects. But he said that without physically sending operatives into the facilities, it’s difficult to know for sure the impacts of the strikes.

“Other nations have made assessments that were more in the multiple months” of delay to Iran’s nuclear program, “but I’m not even sure that’s the right metric,” Warner said. “It was a success. So the question is, what’s next? That, I don’t have visibility on.”

Going forward, Warner emphasized the need for negotiations to bring International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back into Iran, adding that he wants to look further into the source of the delays in resuming talks.

Warner said he’s also seeking information on the timeline on which Iran would be able to build a less sophisticated nuclear device that could be delivered in a truck, rather than via a ballistic missile.

Though he noted that U.S. intelligence had not assessed that Iran was actively constructing a nuclear weapon, he said he had heard reports about an Israeli assessment that offered a different view and that he is looking further into it.

Asked about the fluid situation in Syria, in which Israel went, in the span of just a week, from floating normalization with the new Syrian government to bombing key government facilities in response to attacks on the Druze population, Warner indicated he’s still gathering information.

He said that Israel is “appropriately … very protective of its Druze population,” adding that he does not know at this point whether the Syrian government forces attacking the Druze population are doing so at the orders of that government. 

He said he’s hopeful that Israel and other parties involved will not miss an opportunity to find a peaceful resolution that could defuse a major longtime threat to Israel’s north.

Warner said he also wants to see Trump use his “enormous influence in Israel” to “[force] Bibi’s government into a return of the hostages, a ceasefire,” saying that would open up opportunities for transformational change in the region, including Saudi-Israeli normalization.

Warner said that while he’s been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel and the IDF deserve credit for their surprise accomplishments in taking down Iran’s proxy network and in their strikes against Iran itself.

“The [Jewish community’s] concern is real and understandable,” Warner said. He said that he has been struck by the “level of anger, animosity, vile things said” in anti-Israel protests that have targeted him — “and I’m not Jewish. And I can only imagine.”

“Iran’s, at least so far, been shown to be more of a paper tiger,” Warner said. “If we could just get to the resolution in Gaza, there really could be a fresh start.”

Asked how concerned he is about the possibility of homeland attacks against the Jewish community carried out by or in the name of Iran, Warner said that U.S. intelligence monitors potential threats fairly comprehensively, but indicated that he’s most worried about radicalized lone-wolf attacks, like those in Washington and Boulder, Colo.

“The [Jewish community’s] concern is real and understandable,” Warner said. He said that he has been struck by the “level of anger, animosity, vile things said” in anti-Israel protests that have targeted him — “and I’m not Jewish. And I can only imagine.”

Warner expressed frustration at the way that the Palestinian cause has crowded out other global issues on college campuses. He said that it “would be healthy” if young people “have the chance to get exposed to other things in the world,” offering as examples the conflict in Sudan — which he said has been more deadly than Gaza and Ukraine combined — and the military junta in Myanmar.

On the subject of the Houthis, who have ramped up attacks against commercial shipping and Israel in recent weeks, Warner called the group a “tough nut to crack,” noting that a protracted Saudi and Emirati campaign against the Iran-backed terrorist group in Yemen had failed to put the issue to bed. But he said that the U.S. can’t rule out further military action against the group.

“I hope that those plans would be kept classified and not shared … on a device that’s not secure,” he quipped, referencing the Signalgate scandal, which he said had prompted concern from the Israeli government.

******

Last week’s Aspen summit, which typically prioritizes bipartisan and nonpartisan discussion and solution-making, became particularly politicized after nearly all Trump administration speakers canceled their participation, followed by a handful of foreign and private sector leaders and former government officials disappearing from the week’s agenda.

The issue was a frequent topic of discussion both on the main stage and across the Aspen Meadows campus last week, seen by many as a sign of the ways that intense partisanship has infiltrated U.S. foreign policy, once seen as a less antagonistic space.

Warner’s own panel featured himself and Coons, but not a Republican senator, as has been tradition.

Nevertheless, Warner said that bipartisanship on foreign policy issues still lives in the Senate, noting that the Intelligence Committee had passed an Intelligence Authorization Act recently in a nearly unanimous vote.

Looking ahead, he said the “easiest place to rebuild that consensus is around China,” which he described as an unprecedented competitor. He said there has been a long and difficult journey across multiple administrations to refocus on China, but he said there has been bipartisan success in pushing back against China.

He also argued that the Trump administration’s transactional and short-sighted approach to foreign policy goes against a longtime bipartisan tradition of viewing U.S. international relationships as an effort in “mutual trust-building.”

He said that his Republican colleagues privately disagree with many of Trump’s more outlandish foreign policy efforts — like annexing Canada. “At some point, there’s got to be a break,” he responded, when pressed on the fact that some Republicans defend Trump’s policies publicly despite those private disagreements.

Warner told JI that the bill the Intelligence Committee recently passed would cut the size of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But, despite offering biting criticisms of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Warner said that the reform efforts are not a reflection of or specifically prompted by concerns about her conduct in the role.

“I’m very comfortable with the idea of bringing the mission closer to what it was originally, but also making sure that people who are at the ODNI get returned to their original home agency and don’t get [fired],” Warner said.

Clarifying comments that he made on the panel about close U.S. intelligence partners in the Five Eyes group curtailing their intelligence sharing with the United States, Warner said he was not aware of specific instances in which that had happened, but said that U.S. partners are concerned about the state of the U.S. intelligence community.

“The challenge about intelligence sharing is [that] this is all based on trust,” Warner said.

As negotiations continue for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, in which half of the remaining 50 hostages are expected to return to Israel over 60 days, families of those still being held are  waiting to learn if their loved ones will be among those coming home soon. About 20 of the hostages are thought to be alive, but the families of the 30 others are also hoping to have a measure of closure, with their loved ones’ remains returned to be buried in Israel.

Rabbi Doron Perez told Jewish Insider that this period, in which there is constant discussion of a possible deal with hostages’ bodies returned to Israel, “is very nerve-wracking. … It aggravates the wound.”

His son Daniel was a 22-year-old officer in the IDF armored corps on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. For five months, the family thought Daniel had been kidnapped, before learning that he had been killed on the day of the terrorist attacks and his body taken to Gaza.

When there is no talk of negotiations, Perez said, “You start thinking again, ‘Where is Daniel? Where is his body? Where is he being held?’ Some were found in cemeteries, some in tunnels, some in cupboards. You try to put it out of your mind, the vivid thoughts of where he may be, but [news about negotiations] brings it up again.”

Yafa Rudaeff is the wife of Lior Rudaeff, who was 61 years old and a member of the emergency squad in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, where they lived. He was killed by terrorists on Oct. 7 while defending the kibbutz; his body was taken to Gaza. He is survived by his wife, their four children and three grandchildren.

Rudaeff described the constant news about hostage talks to JI as emotionally wrenching. “It’s a roller coaster; sometimes yes, sometimes no,” she said. “It’s crazy.”  

She was skeptical even as she called for a deal that would bring home all of the hostages.

“I live near the Gaza border, I hear what happens every evening [in Gaza] and wake up every morning to hear of another soldier killed,” she said. “I think that the best thing would be to get them all out in a deal so no more soldiers are killed.” 

Rudaeff called for all of the living hostages to be released as soon as possible: “You cannot divide them. There is no one hostage whose situation is better or worse after so much time. They must all come home now.”

Perez said that the families of living hostages are going through “unimaginable suffering” and that he is praying for them, but he emphasized that it is important that the bodies not be left for the end, “because then you’ll never know if you’ll get them back.”

He noted that negotiations take a different view of living and deceased hostages. 

“For a body, [Israel] gives something appropriate for a body, not a live, murderous terrorist,” he said, referring to some of the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for living hostages. “It’s not bodies [of hostages] returning in place of those alive.”  

In the past Israel has exchanged live terrorists for soldiers, such as in 2008, when it gave up five Hezbollah terrorists, including the infamous Samir Kuntar, who murdered Israeli children, in exchange for the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. 

Even if a temporary deal is reached, only half of the remaining hostages would be freed. Perez said that “in an ideal world, I would hope and pray that they can all come out, but I don’t think that is going to happen … because I don’t think Israel and Hamas can see eye-to-eye over what is considered the end of the conflict.” 

But he is hoping for some degree of closure if Daniel’s body is returned.

“As a parent of someone deceased, you know the best you can hope for is to get a body back in a coffin,” he said. “There is no joy. … It is looking forward to something painful, which is an unusual thing, but it’s the end to an ongoing saga.”

Perez said his family is relatively lucky because they have a gravesite to visit, which they find to be “very meaningful.” Daniel’s bloodied uniform was found and buried, because under Jewish law all parts of the body, including any blood found, must be interred. 

“There is a measure of comfort in that,” he said. “We don’t have a body, but we have a place. For people who don’t have a grave, it’s even worse. They have nowhere to go to pay respects.”

Rudaeff, however, has no gravesite for her husband. “We had a parting ceremony, but we haven’t really parted from him. We don’t have anything tangible.” she said. “I’m not delusional; I don’t think he’ll return, but we need the closure to successfully move forward.”

“This situation is not natural in any way,” she added.

Rudaeff expressed concern that her husband’s body will not be found “after all of the destruction in Gaza.” 

She said the families of the deceased hostages “want to be able to end this chapter and start building something else without our loved ones. Now, we can’t do anything; we don’t know how to behave. To successfully rise up from this situation, we have to end it.”

Shlomi Nahumson, CEO of the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, has been advocating for Rudaeff, whose husband is considered an IDF fallen because he was in the emergency squad, and five others widowed on Oct. 7 whose husbands remain in Gaza. There have been 317 new IDF widows and 735 new orphans since Oct. 7. 

“These men put everything on the line to protect our future,” Nahumson said. “But until they can lay their loved ones to rest, they remain trapped in a tormenting state of uncertainty. It is imperative that we bring all their loved ones home — so that these families can find closure and begin to heal.” 

Perez, who serves as the executive director of the World Mizrachi movement, said that in the nearly two years of advocating for his son’s return, he has seen that some cultures do not value the sanctity of a body after death, and he has had to explain this Jewish value to ambassadors and heads of state.

“I often quote Deuteronomy 21:24, which says you are not allowed to leave a body hanging, because it has the curse of God on it,” he said. “Our sages say the body has the image of God, a soul. A human body is not just a physical entity; it was infused during its life with something godly, soulful, beyond the physical world.”

“By not respecting the body, you are not respecting life, because a body is a receptacle of life, a fusion between heaven and earth. If you leave a body hanging, it is sacrilege … The desecration of the human body is a desecration of God’s name and the spirit and value of life,” he added.

A breakthrough in negotiations between Israel and Hamas for a temporary ceasefire and hostage-release deal is likely to take longer than expected, a senior Israeli official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s delegation to Washington told reporters on Monday, after Netanyahu’s dinner with President Donald Trump.

“We hoped that [a deal] would take a few days, but it may take more time,” the official said.

The negotiations in Doha, Qatar, are “fully coordinated” with the Trump administration, and Netanyahu and Trump may meet again “if necessary” while the prime minister is in Washington this week, the official said. Netanyahu is expected to return to Israel on Thursday afternoon, but in the past, he has extended his visits.

Israel and Hamas have been in negotiations mediated by the U.S. and Qatar for a 60-day ceasefire, in which Hamas would gradually free half of the 50 remaining hostages, approximately 20 of whom are thought to be alive, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. In addition, Israel would withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip, while keeping troops in the area’s perimeter and along key corridors.

Hamas responded to the temporary ceasefire proposal over the weekend, asking for many changes, the senior Israeli official said, to the extent that  “Hamas’ answer was essentially no.”

Hamas previously rejected a similar proposal when Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff presented it earlier this year, but now, the official said, “the gaps are small enough for there to be talks.”

A second official on the delegation said the current proposal presents Israel with “80-90% of what it wanted to get.”  

In addition to a continued presence on the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Gaza-Egypt border, where Israel has insisted on maintaining control since it reached the area in May 2024, the senior official said that Israel is demanding to keep troops along the Morag Corridor, slightly north of Philadelphi, which separates the southern Gazan cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.

A deal to end the Gaza war is not on the table because “Hamas is not responsive to the conditions that would allow a comprehensive agreement,” such as demilitarization for Gaza and exile for remaining Hamas leaders, the senior official explained. Without those conditions, “Hamas could do [the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks] again.” 

“The conversation in the [news] studios that we can finish the war now is delusional. [Hamas] would see that as a major victory that could allow Iran to recover and Hezbollah to recover. I believe that with military and diplomatic pressure, we can bring back all of the hostages. Our pressure is neutralizing Hamas’ ability to control [Gaza],” the official said.

Israel’s vision for Gaza after the war is that “there is no more Hamas; Hamas is dismantled. Another force takes over the territory, the leaders are exiled and Hamas lays down its weapons … I need Gaza demilitarized, and I mean it.”

The senior official did not rule out the possibility that forces affiliated with the Palestinian Authority could be part of the other force, noting that there may be Fatah members in the existing militias that are pushing back against Hamas in Gaza.

“There needs to be another system that administers life [in Gaza]. I’m not certain that it won’t be [Israel], maybe it will be for some time and then we’ll pass it to someone else,” the senior Israeli official said.

The senior Israeli official addressed a plan, previously proposed by Trump, in which the population of Gaza is relocated outside of the Strip, saying that after the meeting between the president and Netanyahu, the official is convinced that the president was serious.

“The plan is alive,” he said. “What is needed is operational coordination, not just in the goal but how to achieve it, and that is what we discussed. The will is there.”

When it comes to Iran, the senior Israeli official said that Jerusalem and Washington are now working “to preserve our achievements against Iran, to prevent uranium enrichment and ballistic missile [production].”

According to the official, there has never been a time in which the governments of Israel and the U.S. have been more coordinated, and that the sides trust each other.

Israel “didn’t ask for and didn’t receive a green light from Trump to attack Iran. There is a different relationship now,” the official said. “We agree on things … You also don’t need to get approval. He understands that we have existential needs.” 

A second Israeli official said Netanyahu and Trump’s administrations “had diplomatic coordination before the attack, military coordination during the attack, and now diplomatic coordination again.”

After Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, the U.S. is now demanding that Tehran return to the negotiating table. 

“Told you so,” many prominent Democrats — including architects of Iran policy in both the Obama and Biden administrations — are saying in response, arguing they were right all along about the power of negotiations. But in doing so, they are also overlooking the impact of President Donald Trump’s military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities on the regime’s negotiating calculus. 

The Pentagon is now saying the strikes set back the Iran nuclear program by two years. Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, said that Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state as a result of the U.S. and Israeli attacks.

But those assessments, among other similar analyses, have done little to change the minds of some of the leading Democratic foreign policy hands who have long argued for diplomacy above all else.

Susan Rice, who served as national security advisor during President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran, said this week that Trump’s use of military force in Iran was a “strategic mistake,” because “diplomacy had not been exhausted.” President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, was skeptical that the impact of the brief war with Iran will be long-lasting. 

“OK, then what?” he said in an interview with CNN last week. “We still need a deal.” 

Former Secretary of State Tony Blinken was more circumspect. He called the U.S. strike on Iran “unwise and unnecessary.” But, he wrote in The New York Times, now that it happened, “I very much hope it succeeded.” 

The White House hopes that the military successes — and threats of further strikes if needed — will translate to a tougher negotiating position and garner more concessions from Iran.

It has at least one prominent Bidenworld name on its side: Brett McGurk, Biden’s top Middle East advisor. (McGurk has worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations.)

“This has been a remarkable feat of Israeli military and intelligence proficiency, together with American military power that is unmatched globally,” McGurk wrote in a CNN analysis. 

But even McGurk, a rare Biden appointee who offered praise for Trump’s actions in the Middle East, warned that it will take time to know just how successful the U.S. and Israeli efforts will be, though he argued that they dealt Iran its “greatest military setback” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. 

“No doubt, this short crisis was well managed and well handled by Trump and his national security team, but the ultimate judgment is far from rendered,” McGurk wrote. “The question now is whether this tactical success will translate into strategic gains.” 

The looming question is whether the strikes will push Iran closer to — or further from — the negotiating table. And the answer to that relies on the degree to which Iran believes that the U.S. and Israel will mount further attacks on its nuclear program — or if they are satisfied with the time bought by last month’s strikes.

The Knesset on Thursday struck down a bill that would have called an election later this year, with Haredi parties agreeing to another week of negotiations on penalties for yeshiva students who avoid the IDF draft.

The bill to disperse the Knesset was voted down 53-61 at about 3 a.m., and as a consequence, opposition parties will not be able to propose similar legislation for six months. The Haredi parties, however, could still submit a bill to call an early election should negotiations not go their way.

Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein was optimistic that the sides would come to an agreement, announcing shortly before the vote that “agreements about the principles on which the conscription bill will be based,” had been reached. 

“Only a real, effective bill that will expand the IDF’s basis of enlistment will come out of a committee that I lead,” Edelstein added. “We are on the way to a real repair of Israeli society and the security of the State of Israel.” 

Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism had threatened to bring down the government over legislation regarding the draft of yeshiva students into the IDF. 

The High Court of Justice ordered the government last year to actively conscript Haredi yeshiva students after they were exempted for decades. Leading Haredi rabbis have said they oppose any young men from their communities enlisting in the IDF, even if they are not learning Torah full time.

The bill in question sets rising target numbers for Haredi conscription, reaching 50% in five years. The dispute between Edelstein and Haredi parties centered around the penalties for Haredi men aged 18-26 who do not report to the IDF after receiving draft notices. 

Edelstein reportedly agreed to delay some of the sanctions on yeshiva students who do not enlist. The new version of the bill will include immediate bans on receiving drivers licenses and leaving the country and canceling affirmative action for government jobs and subsidies for college degrees for those who do not report for IDF service. However, the discount on daycare tuition will remain in place for six months after a missed draft date, and welfare payments will continue for a year. Housing subsidies would not be canceled for two years after avoiding the draft. 

Yeshivas with students that avoid conscription will lose government subsidies; if 75% of the annual draft target is not met, the government will stop subsidizing all Haredi yeshivas.

Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “spitting in the faces of IDF fighters. Once again you sold out our combat soldiers  — for what? For two more weeks? Three more? … The government allowed [the Haredim] to ignore the reservists and help them [ensure] draft avoidance for tens of thousands of healthy young people.”

President Donald Trump confirmed reports that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call last week not to proceed with plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities while the U.S. and Iran continue negotiations, saying that he told the Israeli leader a strike “is not appropriate right now.” 

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president responded to a question about the validity of the report by saying, “I’d like to be honest. Yes, I did.”

Pressed about the nature of the conversation, the president clarified, “It’s not a warning, I said I don’t think it’s appropriate. We’re having very good discussions with them [Iran] and I don’t think it’s appropriate right now.”

Trump suggested the U.S. may strike a “very strong document” with Iran “where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want but nobody’s getting killed. We can blow up a lab but nobody’s going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right? Two ways of doing it.”

He affirmed he told Netanyahu to hold off “because we’re very close to a solution. Now, that could change at any moment. It could change with a phone call. But right now I think they want to make a deal and if we can make a deal, save a lot of lives.”

He said a deal with Iran could be reached “over the next couple of weeks.”

Netanyahu, for his part, denied a New York Times report that he had been pressing for military action against Iran, which could upend the talks, calling it “fake news.” 

On the new U.S.-Israel aid distribution mechanism in Gaza that went into effect this week, Trump said, “We’re dealing with the whole situation in Gaza. We’re getting food to the people.” 

Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking beside Trump, added, “I think that we are on the precipice of sending out a new terms sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today. The president is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution — temporary ceasefire and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict.” Witkoff did not expand on the details of the “terms sheet” nor to whom it will be delivered. 

Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on how Israel is responding to wildfires that disrupted the country’s Yom Ha’atzmaut events, and do a deep dive into Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s handling of negotiations with Russia, Iran and Hamas and the real estate experience he brings to the negotiating table. We cover a bipartisan call from lawmakers for Wikipedia to address antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in its entries, and report on yesterday’s Senate Aging Committee hearing on antisemitism targeting older Americans. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Amos Hochstein, Ruby Chen and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

What We’re Watching

• Today is Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. More below on how the country is marking the day.
• Elsewhere in Israel, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee will attend a Yom Ha’atzmaut event at the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem hosted by United Hatzalah.
• Stateside, the Jewish Democratic Council of America is holding its annual summit today in Washington. Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Haley Stevens (D-MI) and former Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), as well as Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, are slated to speak.
• This year’s Tony Award nominees will be announced at 9 a.m. ET today.

What You Should Know

As Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, turned into Yom Ha’atzmaut, the country’s Independence Day, much of the fanfare and revelry was absent after wildfires shut down the country’s main highways and prompted the evacuation of some areas around Jerusalem, stranding many for hours, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.

The government scrapped plans for its annual Yom Ha’atzmaut ceremony at Mt. Herzl, opting to air a dress rehearsal that was recorded earlier in the week. Across the country, municipalities canceled events. A flyover to express solidarity with the hostages in Gaza, scheduled for Thursday morning, was also canceled.

At least one person was arrested on suspicion of attempting to ignite a fire in a field in the Jerusalem District. The man, from east Jerusalem, was apprehended with a lighter and flammable materials after police received a tip from a witness who had seen him attempting to ignite vegetation. Amid claims of arson terrorism, including from far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, officials said that the origins of the blazes remained unclear and under investigation.

Hostage families and returned hostages had, prior to the rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, called for the country’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations to be canceled, arguing that celebrations are moot while hostages remain in Gaza for a second Independence Day.

“On Israel’s 76th Independence Day, I was in a tunnel and didn’t think that Israel was celebrating Independence Day while at war and with hostages in captivity,” Yarden Bibas, whose wife and children were killed in captivity, said on social media. “This year, I cannot celebrate my independence because I have brothers and sisters who are still being held hostage and my heart is still there with them.”

The widespread cancellation of festivities — already contentious due to the country’s ongoing war in Gaza — against the backdrop of the destructive wildfires, underscores a fundamental challenge that Israel faces: the failure to address a threat before it spirals out of control. 

During the Los Angeles wildfires that devastated portions of Southern California, Israeli officials cautioned that they would be ill-equipped to handle a similar challenge, citing budgeting issues, a lack of manpower and the drain on resources resulting from the fires that Israeli firefighters battled the previous summer, when Hezbollah rockets ignited portions of the country’s north.

A lack of preparedness was a key factor in the IDF’s failure to protect Israel’s border communities and army outposts on Oct. 7, 2023 — despite warnings that had been ignored. A year and a half later, the failure to prepare for wildfire season raises similar questions about accountability, readiness, and apparently unheeded warnings.

As Israel rings in 77 years, it continues to face challenges key to its survival. How it chooses to approach those challenges — face on, or by kicking the can down the road — will determine its future.

CONDOS TO CONCESSIONS

Witkoff’s zeal for deals faces geopolitical reality

When the billionaire developer Steve Witkoff was tapped as the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy last November, several of his former associates in real estate applauded the unorthodox appointment to a high-profile role overseeing some of the most sensitive foreign policy issues facing the United States. Even as he had no diplomatic experience, Witkoff, a close friend of President Donald Trump, won praise as a shrewd negotiator and creative dealmaker who could draw on decades of experience navigating New York City’s cutthroat real estate market, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. 

Negotiation risks: But more than three months into his role, Witkoff, whose portfolio has expanded beyond the Middle East, critics are now casting doubt on his qualifications as he assumes a leading role in nuclear negotiations with Iran as well as discussions with Russia to end its war with Ukraine. Among some of Witkoff’s fellow developers who are souring on his early tenure as Trump’s top envoy, there is skepticism his insistent focus on striking a deal above all else, an asset in his former job, may be a liability as he engages in high-stakes talks with bad-faith actors seeking potentially dangerous concessions from the United States.

Read the full story here.

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on shaky ground

Antisemitism Awareness Act’s future in question after committee approves amendments, postpones vote

Senators on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee postponed a final vote on advancing the Antisemitism Awareness Act after approving four amendments that could jeopardize GOP support for the bill and leave its future passage once again in question, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.

What happened: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the committee’s chair and a major proponent of the legislation, told JI after the meeting that he needed to postpone the vote because Republicans could not return to the committee room quickly enough to vote for it, with just minutes remaining before a two-hour cut-off to the meeting. Democrats refused requests to waive the two-hour limit. “I couldn’t get my people back. And Democrats have limited debate until noon as an obvious tactic to defeat the bill,” Cassidy said. “They don’t care if Jewish students are harassed on college campuses. And so that is a procedural way in which, if you limit the two hours and we can’t get our votes back, then we can’t have the vote.”

Read the full story here.

What they’re saying: Multiple Republicans on the committee said that they will not support moving the Antisemitism Awareness Act forward in its amended form, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

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EXCLUSIVE

Lawmakers press Wikipedia to clarify and enforce editorial oversight to prevent anti-Israel bias

A bipartisan group of 23 members of Congress sent a letter on Thursday to the foundation that oversees Wikipedia, expressing concern about antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on the platform and seeking answers about how the influential online encyclopedia will work to combat prejudice and abuse by editors. The letter, authored by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Don Bacon (R-NE), comes after the Anti-Defamation League published a report in March detailing allegations of Wikipedia editors conspiring to impose an anti-Israel bias across the site, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

What they’re asking for: “It is clear that more needs to be done to ensure Wikipedia remains free of bias, antisemitism and pro-terrorist content,” the signatories wrote to Maryana Isakander, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the San Francisco-based nonprofit that oversees Wikipedia’s operations. The letter asks Wikimedia to explain its oversight processes “to prevent biased or coordinated manipulation of content,” and to identify whether it takes specific measures to prevent antisemitic bias among its editors. The legislators also ask Wikimedia to take steps to prevent foreign interference “on behalf of adversaries of the United States,” such as Hamas and Iran, and to take steps to increase transparency. The edit history of all pages on Wikipedia is technically public, but the labyrinthine process is nearly impossible to understand for those without deep editing experience.

Read the full story here.

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on the hill

Senate committee hearing highlights antisemitism’s toll on older Jews

The Senate Aging Committee convened a hearing on Wednesday on the recent surge in domestic antisemitism and its impact on older Americans, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), the committee’s chairman, said in his opening statement that he organized the hearing to highlight the fear permeating elderly Jewish communities in Florida and nationwide. “Older Jewish Americans overwhelmingly recognize the increasing threat of antisemitism. In fact, according to the American Jewish Committee’s 2024 State of Antisemitism in America report, 96% of Jewish Americans over the age of 65 recognize that antisemitism is a problem in the U.S. today,” Scott said.

Testimonies: Witnesses at the hearing included David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA (HSF); Rabbi Mark Rosenberg, a Florida law enforcement chaplain and director of Chesed Shel Emes Florida; American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch; and Rebecca Federman, senior director of the security desk for the Community Security Initiative. “Survivors suffer from extreme physical and mental-health challenges due to the long-term effects of starvation, beatings, disease, malnutrition and the murders of our loved ones. I am here to remind everyone that there are still thousands of survivors alive today who are in desperate need, and who cannot be forgotten,” Schaecter said in his introductory remarks, going on to tout his support for the HEAR Act “and other legislation that will enable families to recover their property from those who still want to profit from the Holocaust.”

Read the full story here.

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REPORT REFLECTIONS

Jewish leaders claim double standard with Harvard antisemitism, Islamophobia reports

Harvard University’s long-awaited twin reports on campus antisemitism and Islamophobia, which depicted an academic year marked by strife for Jewish and Muslim students in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, was largely praised by Jewish leaders — both on and off campus — as an “overdue and important step.” But when comparing the two reports side-by-side, some raised concern that there are “major holes” and “asymmetry,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

Asymmetry observation: “My general take is that they did a good job in detailing what happened and in making recommendations about how to fix the immediate problems,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a former visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School, told JI of the more than 300-page antisemitism report released on Tuesday, authored by the 15-member task force which was formed in January 2024. Wolpe was a former member of a separate antisemitism advisory group that the elite university formed last year as a response to record-high levels of antisemitism that roiled the campus. But after reading the nearly as lengthy 200-page Islamophobia report, Wolpe noticed a “a real difference in tone” between how the two were written, calling the report on Muslim students “more disparaging and negative about Harvard than the antisemitism report.”

Read the full story here.

Seeing Crimson: The Harvard Crimson’s Jacob Miller argues that the university’s task force on antisemitism fails to address deeper moral issues surrounding anti-Israel activism on campus, focusing instead on whether such actions constitute antisemitism.

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BANKING ON THE MIDDLE

Sen. Jim Banks lays out his vision for the future of Republican foreign policy

Speaking on Wednesday at an event organized by the Vandenberg Coalition, Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) attempted to lay out a middle path forward for conservative foreign policy balancing elements of the internationalism that has long dominated the party and the more restrictionist sentiments that have been ascendant in the Trump era, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Mideast matters: The first-term Indiana senator argued that the U.S. has critical interests in the Middle East, in countering the threat from Iran and supporting Israel, even as he leaned into elements of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy that are controversial among Republican traditionalists. He framed that policy as a return to a Reaganite peace through strength approach. Banks said that the U.S. “cannot accept another bad deal with Iran,” adding that he does not believe Trump would be interested in returning to a deal similar to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Talking Trump: The New York Times’ David Brooks considers the driving factors behind President Donald Trump’s policy moves since taking office. “I have come to think of the Trump team less as a presidential administration or even as representative of a political party and more as a revolutionary vanguard. History is filled with examples of passionate minorities seizing power over disorganized and passive majorities: the Jacobins during the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, Mao’s Communist Party in China, Castro’s 26th of July Movement in Cuba. These movements did not always possess superior resources; they possessed superior boldness, decisiveness and clarity of purpose.” [NYTimes]

Witkoff’s Way: In The New York Post, Douglas Murray looks at Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s handling of numerous high-profile diplomatic issues. “If Trump wants to stop a lineup of broken foreign-policy promises, he should sideline Witkoff as soon as possible. Or blame him for the failures and move on. There’s no job in government that is good to learn from scratch. But learning foreign affairs against regimes with long memories is the worst role of all. I once asked a great expert on the Middle East what one thing he wished people outside the region understood. It was this. Countries like America think in two-year electoral cycles — four years at the absolute most. But all the time, we have to try to understand and negotiate with groups and governments that think of a decade as the smallest fraction of time. … Trump himself has made great promises and great statements. But his negotiator has been hooked into negotiations. And the Kremlin, Iran, Qatar, Hamas and the rest of them have reckoned that they can string America along very nicely. A few more weeks will become a few more months and then a few more years. And then — no Trump — and behold a weaker American leader who will lead America and the world into a far worse place.” [NYPost]

Jewish Unity: In the Jewish News Syndicate, William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, reflects on the meaning of Yom Ha’atzmaut during a time of challenge for both Israeli and Diaspora Jewry. “At a time when antisemitism is surging — from elite university campuses to the halls of international institutions — Israel stands as a powerful reminder of Jewish dignity, perseverance and the eternal capacity for renewal. It is not merely a geopolitical entity. It is a civilizational statement: The Jewish people are not relics of the past but builders of the future. Despite immense challenges, the people of Israel rise each morning with resolve — to defend their communities, to mourn their losses and to rebuild with hope. Across the Jewish world, Israel continues to inspire and anchor Jewish life. This Yom Ha’atzmaut, we rededicate ourselves to the enduring bond between American Jewry and the State of Israel — and to the vital partnership between our two nations. Ours is not a transactional relationship. It is familial, forged by shared values of democracy, freedom, innovation and a belief in the sacred worth of every human life.” [JNS]

A Father’s Plea: In Haaretz, Ruby Chen, whose son Itay was killed on Oct. 7 and his body taken to Gaza, makes a plea for unity in an effort to bring the remaining 59 hostages home in the coming weeks. “I would like to ask us all to remember one word this week: unity. The Jewish people have prospered and survived for over 5,000 years on the principle of taking care of one another and not leaving anyone behind. This unity has been missing in Israel for the last few years. We must take a stand and demand the Israeli government prioritize this unity, the backbone of the Jewish faith. Prioritize the release of all the hostages and set a clear goal: That the very last hostage is home before the end of May. Work backwards knowing there is a difficult price to pay for the release of the last hostage, but that this is what is required to allow Israel to begin to heal and rebuild. We need a deal immediately, to release all of the 59 remaining hostages.” [Haaretz]

Conference Concern: In the Baltimore Sun, Rabbi Chai Posner raises concerns about an upcoming Jewish Voice for Peace conference in Baltimore, slated for this weekend. “JVP’s radical agenda is not just confined to inflammatory rhetoric — it is translated into real-world harassment, interruptions and public disturbances, such as violent and illegal demonstrations and snarling rush hour traffic, for which it is currently facing legal action. This extremism is consistent with JVP’s unwavering opposition to the existence of a Jewish state within any part of historic Israel. By distorting Judaism to minimize, or even erase, the Jewish connection to Israel, JVP seeks to undermine one of the most sacred tenets of our faith and identity. Their position rejects the possibility of compromise and coexistence, choosing radical zealotry instead. Despite JVP’s efforts to present itself as a significant voice within the Jewish community, its ideology is far from mainstream.” [BaltimoreSun]

Word on the Street

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Iran that it “will pay the consequence” for its “lethal” support to the Houthis in Yemen… 

A State Department official speaking at the International Court of Justice backed Israel’s opposition to working with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency to deliver aid to Gaza…

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Josh Kushner, Ruth Porat, Safra Catz, Alex Karp, Shaun Maguire were featured speakers at the Hill & Valley Forum in Washington on Wednesday…

A federal judge in Vermont ordered the immediate release on Wednesday of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports… 

TWG Global is taking a $2.5 billion minority stake in Mubadala Capital; Amos Hochstein, a senior advisor in the the Biden administration, joined the firm as a managing partner in March…

The Wall Street Journal looks at the relationship between the global Jewish community and the Catholic Church in the wake of the death of Pope Francis…

Israel said it conducted a strike on an extremist group that was poised to attack a Syrian Druze community amid growing violence targeting Druze areas south of Damascus…

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed that the next round of nuclear talks with the U.S. will occur on Saturday in Rome…

Iran executed a man who was convicted of working with Israel’s Mossad and assisting in the 2022 assasination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei…

The weekend explosion in an Iranian port originated in a facility owned by a charity overseen by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the challenges facing the new Syrian government as it formulates a strategy for dealing with the thousands of foreign fighters with hard-line and extremist views who helped overthrow the Assad regime and want to stay in Syria…

A Lebanese security official confirmed that the Lebanese army has dismantled the vast majority of Hezbollah installations across the country’s southern border with Israel…

Andrew Karpen, the founder and CEO of Bleecker Street Media, died at 59…

Thriller writer Andrew Gross, who coauthored five books with James Patterson, died at 72…

Pic of the Day

Israeli President Isaac Herzog held a ceremony at the president’s residence honoring 120 soldiers across the Israeli Defense Forces who were identified for their exemplary service.

“Even on our national holiday – and especially on our national holiday – we cannot celebrate independence with a whole heart when our brothers and sisters are not with us. Israel as a nation longs for them, for their freedom,” Herzog said.

Birthdays

Retired national director of the Anti-Defamation League, now national director emeritus, Abraham Henry Foxman turns 85…

Assistant professor at Yeshiva University and editor emeritus of Tradition, an Orthodox theological journal, Rabbi Shalom Carmy turns 76… Deborah Chin… Boston-area actor, David Alan Ross… Brigadier-General (res.) and former chief medical officer in the IDF, he was also a member of the Knesset for 10 years, Aryeh Eldad turns 75… Of counsel at D.C.-based Sandler Reiff where he specializes in redistricting law, Jeffrey M. Wice… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CO) from 2007 until 2023, Edwin George “Ed” Perlmutter turns 72… Israeli entrepreneur and software engineer, founder and CEO of Conduit, Israel’s first billion-dollar internet company, Ronen Shilo turns 67… Austrian-Israeli singer-songwriter, Timna Brauer turns 64… Real estate entrepreneur based in Southern California, Eli Tene turns 62… Member of the board of governors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, Rina F. Chessin… Member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT, David R. Karger turns 58… Israeli judoka, she is a member of the International Olympic Committee and the head of the merchandise division of Paramount Israel, Yael Arad turns 58… Majority leader of the Washington state Senate until this past January, he is a co-owner of minor league baseball’s Spokane Indians, Andrew Swire “Andy” Billig turns 57… Senior attorney in the Newark office of Eckert Seamans, Laura E. Fein… Staff writer at The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait turns 53… Radio personality and voice-over artist, Gina Grad turns 47… Former professional tennis player with 23 USTA Pro Circuit singles titles, now a tennis coach, Michael Craig Russell turns 47… Attorney and co-founder of I Am a Voter, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization, Mandana Rivka Dayani turns 43… D.C.-based political reporter, Ben C. Jacobs turns 41… Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative producer at NBC News, Jonathan Gerberg… Member of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Marina Tauber turns 39… Operations manager at GrowthSpace, Jenny Feuer… Principal at Forward Global, Omri Rahmil… Photographer known for incorporating Jewish culture into her work, she is the digital media editor at the Jewish Women’s Archive, Hannah Altman… Hudson Bay Capital’s Sam Zieve-Cohen…