American immigrants to Israel have played outsized roles in governing the Jewish state from its establishment: Golda Meir, born in Kyiv and raised in Milwaukee, was a member of the first Knesset, working her way up to become prime minister 20 years later in 1969. A few years after that, Marcia Freedman, from New Jersey, became a pioneer of Israeli feminism in the Knesset, and in the 1980s, Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane entered the Knesset as a one-man faction that was later banned because of its racist platform. 

Broaden that out to people who spent formative years in America or have American parents, and you have another two prime ministers: Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, respectively. 

Several of the parties likely to win Knesset seats in next Tuesday’s election have candidates who meet those criteria, and some of them spoke with Jewish Insider this week. The interviews have been condensed for space and clarity.

Jeremy Saltan, No. 23 on the B’Yachad list

Bennett’s B’Yachad has a record-breaking six American candidates: Bennett, whose parents moved to Israel from Berkeley, Calif.; Baltimore, Md.-born Yonatan Shalev, who at 24 is set to be the youngest Knesset member since 1959; longtime Bennett advisor Jeremy Saltan, who was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs; former Teva executive Mati Gil, who was born in Columbus, Ohio; Knesset member Moshe Tur-Paz was born in Philadelphia; and Member of Knesset Michal Slawny Cababia, a native of Blacksburg, Va.

Saltan, a fifth-generation Chicagoan, moved to Israel with his family at age 11, and spent many subsequent summers in the Windy City. He has been an aide to Knesset members from several right-wing parties, as well as an advisor to Bennett in formal and informal capacities since 2012. He is a major in the IDF who has served over 600 days of reserve duty since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.

Jewish Insider: Why did you decide to run for the Knesset? 

Saltan: The number one thing that brought me to accept Naftali’s offer to come from behind the scenes is to help those who serve. … I see the price that my soldiers have had to pay in this war, and I understand that if the current government remains in power, I’m going to have to do another 600 days in the next term. I’m looking at soldiers who I’m helping get through [military] medical committees, some for physical reasons, but many for mental health reasons. I think of my soldiers who [emigrated], five in a company of a little over 100 soldiers who left, because they can no longer carry what is on their shoulders. Bennett’s plan to flip the pyramid and stop giving money to those who don’t serve and give it to those who do — I want to be a part of that, not only for my soldiers, but for the entire IDF reservist community. When Bennett commits to giving NIS 4,000 towards daycare to anyone who is in active reserve duty, that’s a huge lifesaver. 

I’m bringing 17 years of experience in the Knesset and 20 years of military service as a reservist. I understand the problems and the solutions.

JI: How has being American influenced you?

Saltan: We’re all products of our upbringing and education. … The experience that I had going to Jewish day school where the size of the kippah or what synagogue you prayed at, if at all, didn’t matter, that we were all just Jews, is a very big part of my frame of thought. The values of liberty, freedom, accountability, transparency and representation are just second nature to me. The one thing that I find to be incompatible is that I have always worn a suit and tie to the Knesset, and many sabras [native Israelis] have a problem with that.

JI: If you become a member of Knesset, you will have to give up your American citizenship. How do you feel about that?

Saltan: I’m totally fine with it. I identify as an Israeli. My American upbringing is a big piece of me and will always be a part of me, but I’m first and foremost a Jew. I’m happy to be a citizen in the Jewish homeland and to have the chance to be a representative in today’s Knesset … is a privilege. 

Yair “Yaya” Fink, No. 5 on the Democrats list

Yaya Fink, whose parents and two of his older siblings moved to Israel from the U.S., has been a well-known political activist for nearly two decades, serving as chief of staff to Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich in 2011-2013, and leading several left-leaning organizations, as well as the “Social Justice” faction in Israel’s Histadrut national labor union.

Jewish Insider: Why did you decide to run for the Knesset?

Fink: I very much love this country. … As far as I’m concerned, we have to change the direction in which the country is going. It has massive potential, but the country is going to a very dangerous place of extremism, draft-dodging, running from responsibility, major failures, lack of security and religious coercion. We want to try to bring the country back on track in the directions of social justice, equality, diplomatic agreements, equality in the burden [of IDF service] and democracy. After what happened in the last four years, I think it’s my responsibility and ours to do this in the place where decisions are made.

JI: How has being American influenced you?

Fink: My parents moved to Israel at the end of the ‘60s, and my brother and sister were born in the U.S. We were a house of immigrants. It influenced us in understanding how much this place has to be a home for all Jews, not only those who live in Israel, but also those abroad. It also helped me understand what it means that Israel is a country of immigrants. … We are a varied, complex country, and that is part of its beauty and an opportunity.

I have a great appreciation of my parents and the many other Americans in my neighborhood in Jerusalem who gave up a lot … to move to Israel and take part in the Zionist project.

I think I better understand, thanks to [my parents], the importance of international relations. When I do reserve duty, my uniform, my helmet, my night vision goggles, my weapon are all American. It reminds me of the importance of good relations with other countries generally, and especially our best friend, America. Support [from America] has to be bipartisan, and it’s important to keep up the connection and be a home for American Jews.

I’m also named after my cousin, Shmuel Yair Landau, who was killed in the First Lebanon War a few years after he came to Israel from America. I understand the price of being here, but also want to ensure it’s not just a place of blood, sweat and tears, but also one where we reach diplomatic agreements and solutions.

JI: If you become a member of Knesset, you will have to give up your American citizenship. How do you feel about that?

Fink: I’m an Israeli citizen. I live in Israel. I visit the U.S. a lot, but I don’t have two homes; I have one home in Israel. I don’t have a deep connection with my American passport. I will try from within the Knesset to strengthen ties between Israel and the U.S., and Israeli Jews and American Jews. I love and appreciate the U.S. very much and I feel comfortable when I’m there; I have family and many friends there, but in the end, I have only one home.

Yishai Fleischer, No. 12 on the Otzma Yehudit List

Fleischer was born in Haifa to parents who were Russian refuseniks who arrived in Israel in the 1970s. They moved to New Jersey for work when he was eight years old. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, he served as a paratrooper in the IDF, during which time he was injured by a Hezbollah roadside bomb in Lebanon. He attended college and law school in the U.S. and returned to Israel, where he has served as the international spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, as well as informally advising Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir on foreign media and matters relating to the U.S.

Jewish Insider: Why did you decide to run for the Knesset?

Fleischer: Because I have a legal degree, I have been involved in trying to change Israeli policy for the better … I came up with the idea of the Biblical Highway project, renaming Rt. 60 [which spans from Beersheba, through Bethlehem and Jerusalem, to Nazareth], and now [since June], it’s the law of the land. 

I want to utilize Israeli law to make our country stronger and more Jewish. Two years ago, I was invited to work with Minister Ben-Gvir to head up his trip to the U.S., and that’s where we started forming a relationship. I was trying very hard to explain to people that Ben-Gvir’s policies are reasonable, so he tapped me to be No. 12 in this upcoming election. I really believe that Otzma is the law and order party. … For me, Oct. 7 and [riots] in Paris are indicative of a global trend … of jihadism in and around our land, and we have to stop that effort to undermine our sovereignty and also strengthen Jewish values.

JI: How has being American influenced you?

Fleischer: I didn’t just grow up in America, I purposefully went to American law school to understand the system and learn it to see if we can bring some of the good values of America to Israel. … There are many beautiful ideas that America has about liberty — things like the poisoned fruit doctrine of evidence, which is very important … a more open economy with less bureaucracy, freedoms like the right to bear arms. … We’d like to bring some of the more red-state ideas to Israel, and just a general sense of law and order and a much more limited Supreme Court that is not a free for all, but is bound by laws that limit its powers.

In general, when you have a perspective on a different system of governance and law, it gives you a way to measure how we’re doing.

JI: If you become a member of Knesset, you will have to give up your American citizenship. How do you feel about that?

Fleischer: It’s definitely not easy to swallow. It’s part of my identity, and I’m proud of it. I had to earn my American citizenship. If I have to give it up in order to serve the Jewish state and help it move forward, then I’ll do it, because that is the law and a superior value, to be able to serve the Jewish state, but I do it with a heavy heart. … I did call some well-known Israeli politicians who had to do it, and they said it’s not so bad. But it’s not something that I take lightly.

Simcha Rotman, No. 4 on the Religious Zionism list

Rotman was born in Israel, with a father who has U.S. citizenship, and has spent a lot of time with extended family in Cleveland. While Rotman does not have American citizenship, his children do, thanks to his wife, whose parents are American. “I know how to file taxes in both countries,” he quipped in a past interview. 

Rotman has been a Knesset member since 2021 and chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee in recent years, making him one of the leaders of the government’s controversial judicial reform push. Before entering electoral politics, he led an organization that opposed judicial activism.

Jewish Insider: Why did you decide to run for the Knesset? 

Rotman: I am running mostly on the topic of judicial reform, repairing the judicial system. The connection there to the U.S. is very strong, because what I’m trying to do in judicial reform is to introduce checks and balances into the Israeli system, more like the American style. In Israel today, there are no checks and balances on the court, and none on the deep state. 

I have a master’s degree from a joint program of Tel Aviv University and Northwestern University. I learned American constitutional law at an American university, which made even clearer to me that Israel must select its judges in a more democratic way, like the U.S., and have the power of the court checked and balanced to have better governance and preserve civil rights.

JI: How has growing up with American family influenced you?

I think the fact that large parts of my family live in the U.S. … really opened my mind to understand where parts of the Jewish people are … and how important aliyah is. … I have cousins who made aliyah, lived in Israel, and then returned. All of that back and forth from the U.S. showed me how hard we have to try to make Israel attractive for aliyah from the U.S. and other countries with strong economies. We don’t want to go back to the days where my great-grandfather was considered crazy [for moving to Israel]. We need Israel to be attractive, to be strong in its security and economy and to have a more organized government.

One of the things I did for immigrants to Israel is pass a law to stop double taxation of earnings from a country where they already pay [social security] for the first five years in Israel. I hope to pass a law so that can continue beyond five years.

**

No. 2 on the Yashar list, led by Gadi Eisenkot, is Chili Tropper, a former culture minister whose parents and two of his nine siblings moved to Israel from the U.S. Tropper’s office did not respond to interview requests, and the party did not make its U.S.-born No. 29, Alon Futterman, available for an interview.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Wednesday that the Labour party would not enter into a partnership with the left-wing Green Party while it maintains its recently adopted policy declaring Zionism a form of racism, condemning the motion as “antisemitic” while speaking in the House of Commons.

“It is wrong, it is antisemitic, and this side of the House will have nothing to do with it,” Burnham said in response to Conservative MP Dame Harriett Baldwin, who pressed him to rule out cooperation with the Greens following the adoption of the motion at the party’s annual conference earlier this month.

“We cannot support a partnership with a party that holds the position that has recently been adopted,” Burnham added. The statement marked a shift from his position last week, when he criticized the motion but declined to rule out a future coalition with the Greens.

Labour currently governs in coalition with the Greens on local councils in several cities including Sheffield, Lewes and Warwick, with the two parties also participating in broader governing coalitions in more than 10 other areas. A Downing Street spokesperson declined to clarify to the BBC whether Burnham’s position would affect those existing local partnerships or apply only at the national level.

The motion, approved by Green Party members at their conference in Brighton earlier this month, classifies Zionism as a form of racism and calls for a single democratic Palestinian state across historic Palestine. The decision drew condemnation from British Jewish organizations and criticism from within the Green Party.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski and several Green lawmakers, including former party leader Caroline Lucas, have also opposed the motion.

Two security incidents that were reported in the U.K. over the weekend are presenting Prime Minister Andy Burnham with some of his new government’s first major tests since taking power over the summer: how to address domestic counterterror threats and mounting issues related to asylum seekers, while also responding to concerns by British Jews over their safety and security amid growing tensions between London and Jerusalem.

On Sunday, U.K. officials arrested several individuals near a military base in Gloucestershire used by the U.S. for operations against Iran. A police statement released about the incident said that an ordnance disposal team had been dispatched to the area and that properties in the vicinity had been evacuated.

The incident occurred hours after a report in the U.K.’s Times that a former bodyguard for Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader who was killed by Israel in 2024, was granted asylum — and later citizenship — in the U.K., from which he plotted attacks across Europe. The man, identified as “Mr. X” due to a British court order protecting his anonymity, was arrested last year in connection with a plot to attack Jewish targets in Germany and Austria on the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

Ben Judah, who served as an advisor to former U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, said that the Times story “confirms a deep fear of mine. That out of a mixture of carelessness, incompetence, indifference and denial the Home Office is rubber stamping terrorists, that would like to kill people like me and my family, access to the country.”

Judah’s comments underscore the degree to which decisions regarding U.K. government policy on visa vetting and counterterrorism efforts intersect with Jewish communal concerns over safety. In the British Jewish community, concerns about rising antisemitism — deepened by a series of recent arson attacks against Jewish institutions — have intensified in the last year, since two men were killed in a terror attack at a Manchester synagogue during Yom Kippur, marking the first deadly attack on a Jewish community in the country since World War II. 

Adding to those concerns, a British national from Somalia pleaded not guilty on Friday to an April attack in which two identifiably Jewish men were injured in a knife attack in North London — one in a spate of antisemitic attacks that roiled the U.K. earlier this year. Read a first-person perspective on antisemitism in the U.K. from JI’s Tamara Zieve.

“If anyone doubted the specific terror threat facing the Jewish community, the last two weeks alone should have put paid to that,” Justin Cohen, the news editor and co-publisher of the London-based Jewish News, told JI on Monday. “A year after the first antisemitic murders of Jews in Britain in memory on Yom Kippur, another plot targeting the country’s Jewish community was disrupted. And now we discover that a bodyguard of the former Hamas leader was plotting to attack  Jews in Europe after being given asylum in the U.K. It’s little wonder that the community is feeling increasingly vulnerable and fear it’s a question of when, not if, another attack gets through.”

Earlier this month, U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband rejected a claim by the U.K.’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, that London’s policies against West Bank settlements could endanger British Jews. The exchange highlighted the differing views between Jewish leaders and government officials over the effect that London’s decisions vis-a-vis Israel have on the local Jewish community.

Across the Atlantic on Friday, Miliband met with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and told him that London would “not tolerate intimidation, threats or hostile activity on U.K. soil” — days after the U.K.’s cyber directorate accused Iran-linked actors of attempting phishing campaigns on Telegram and WhatsApp. The meeting was the first between the two since the U.K. in July designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a national security threat.

Alongside the designation of the IRGC, the U.K. also designated as a national security threat the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, believed to be an Iran-linked group that has claimed responsibility for more than half a dozen attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets across the U.K.

This is the backdrop against which London will have to make determinations in the coming months regarding counterterrorism efforts, vetting of asylum seekers and the ongoing concerns from the Jewish community over its safety and security — and their overlap.

Good Thursday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we preview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.N. General Assembly address, report on Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s invocation of the Holocaust to justify his anti-Israel rhetoric and cover Sen. Ted Cruz’s warning that Christian leaders are failing to address rising antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment among younger Christians. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Alina Habba and Wayne Rooney.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Tamara Zieve.

Today’s Agenda

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address the U.N. General Assembly around 2 p.m. ET today during his brief visit to the U.S.

Before departing for New York last night, Netanyahu traveled to Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, where Neria Leiter, a son of Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, was in critical condition after injuries sustained in a car-ramming attack at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in the day. More below.

Speaking to reporters earlier today at the hospital, Leiter said his son was still “hanging in the balance” but had been stabilized by medical workers. “The next few days will be critical,” the ambassador added.

Security in the area around the U.N. headquarters in Turtle Bay will be tight during Netanyahu’s speech, owing to several protests planned around the Israeli leader’s trip to New York. Read our previous coverage on how the NYPD is preparing to handle UNGA-related protests.

In Washington tonight, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will host a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, with a guest list that includes several tech and finance executives. 

An International Court of Justice panel could rule as soon as today on an effort to change the threshold for defining genocide in a case between Gambia and Myanmar that would have implications for South Africa’s case against Israel in the court.

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One Thing To Know

analysis

Attack on Ambassador Leiter’s son casts pall over Netanyahu’s abbreviated UNGA visit

By Gili Cohen

For a few hours, Israel’s deeply polarized political arena, just a month before the elections, found rare unity following the news that Neria Leiter, son of Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, was critically injured in a car-ramming terror attack in the West Bank.

But even before the attack, which could affect the content of Netanyahu’s speech, the prime minister’s trip to New York was set to be entirely different from prior UNGA appearances. The prime minister’s brief video message about his speech on Tuesday referenced only one individual: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Not Iran, not Hamas, nor Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Sources close to the prime minister claim Mamdani is the reason for Netanyahu’s unprecedented brief visit. The concern, his aides claim, stems from potential protests or political posturing by Mamdani, despite him admitting he has no authority to arrest Netanyahu, a key campaign pledge of the mayor’s. However, a former official involved in coordinating prime ministerial trips offered a different explanation: As long as Netanyahu remains in New York for only a few hours, the absence of a meeting with President Donald Trump becomes far less conspicuous.

Read the full analysis →

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The Big Reads

no compromise

El-Sayed refuses to tone down Israel attacks despite prompting from Democratic podcast hosts

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, refused to tone down his hostile rhetoric toward Israel, including his repeated accusations of genocide, during a newly released podcast interview, even as his stances risk alienating Jewish Democrats who are otherwise eager to support his campaign in a key battleground state, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. In an appearance on the “Raging Moderates” podcast hosted by Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov, who are both Jewish and disagree with his stances on Middle East policy, El-Sayed doubled down in defense of his repeated use of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, invoking the Holocaust to justify his position.

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sanctions push

Coons, Senate Democrats introduce sanctions bill aiming to block E1 settlement construction

Nineteen Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), introduced a bill on Wednesday that would impose sanctions on companies, individuals and others involved in the construction and development of Israeli settlements in the E1 area of the West Bank, which the lawmakers argue would be a severe blow to the viability of a Palestinian state, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The far-reaching sanctions would also target financial institutions and government officials and entities involved in supporting or facilitating E1 settlement construction.

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wake-up call

Cruz warns Christian leaders are ‘asleep’ on antisemitism among Christian youth

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned on Wednesday that Christian leaders are “asleep” and failing to recognize the degree to which antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment have spread among Christian youth, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. The Texas senator made the comments while accepting the leadership award at the American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) annual Lamplighter Awards in Washington. Cruz voiced concern that older Christian leaders, specifically evangelicals, were not acknowledging that younger adherents have ideologically drifted from previous generations. “If you look at the polling, young evangelicals are turning systematically against Israel, and there are millions of dollars that are being spent to turn them against Israel,” he said.

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The Rundown

alternate reality

Pezeshkian denies Iran seeks nuclear weapons at UNGA

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security advocacy

‘Life and death’: Survivors of antisemitic attacks lobby Congress for security aid

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envoy debate

Congressional Jewish Caucus opposes proposal to combine State Dept. Holocaust, antisemitism offices

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memorial event

State Department plans memorial for American victims of Oct. 7 attack

See all of today’s JI stories →

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On Our Radar

● The Live Briefing. Word on the street, clips, podcasts and quick updates — the items we’re tracking all day in our Live Briefing on the app (on Apple and Android) and website.

Oman and Azerbaijan halted flights to and from Iran, in accordance with a deadline set by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Economic Outcast; Iraq, whose president pledged last week to crack down on Iran-backed militias operating in the country, also suspended flights from Baghdad.

Tehran, meanwhile, threatened to paralyze the airports of countries in the region who comply with the U.S.’ block on flights to and from the Islamic Republic…

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Donald Trump to press Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to the White House this week on Chinese companies’ provision of satellite imagery to Iran that helped the regime target American military installations in the Middle East, and China’s continued evasion of U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil…

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the war with Iran needs to be brought “to a resolution,” arguing that the U.S. has achieved its objective of preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear capability and pointing to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as driving up gas, fuel and grocery costs…

American Priorities PAC, which backed several successful Democratic socialist congressional campaigns, said it plans to target nine House Democrats in 2028; the group will focus on challenging Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), George Latimer (D-NY), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Greg Landsman (D-OH) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), as well as current candidates Melissa Bean, Adrian Boafo and Ben McAdams, all of whom won their primaries and are expected to join the next Congress…

Florida’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against The New York Times on behalf of a group of shareholders alleging that the newspaper’s board of directors failed to hold the Times newsroom to its own editorial standards regarding its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war; the lawsuit claims that the paper’s editorial standards were “weaponized within the company to serve the personal agendas of unchecked editors”…

The attorney general of Missouri launched an investigation into Students for Justice in Palestine’s fundraising activities in the Show-Me State, saying, “We will use every tool the law allows to expose deceptive fundraising, trace where the money goes, and stop any effort to channel charitable donations to violent or terror-linked actors”…

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the repatriation of three dozen antiquities to Syria, more than a dozen of which had been housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art…

A federal judge sentenced a Massachusetts man to nearly 10 years in prison for making interstate threats targeting Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) and his family in August 2024…

Alina Habba, a former lawyer for Trump who briefly served as acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey last year, is reportedly set to marry Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, whose company has overseen projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela…  

A Philadelphia educator and anti-Israel activist who claimed to be Black and Palestinian publicly acknowledged that she was Jewish, with family living in the West Bank, prompting local activist groups with which she was affiliated to distance themselves from her…

Sunkist Fruit Gems, a staple at many a Jewish simcha for the last half century, has been discontinued, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher reports…

A 19th-century Albert Lang painting was restituted to the descendants of the German-Jewish art collector who owned the work, which was determined by authorities in Germany to have been looted by the Nazis, before she fled the country in 1938…

The Netherlands will rejoin the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027, after its Avrotros public broadcaster refused to take part in this year’s competition as well as the one slated for next year over Israel’s participation; the umbrella body of Dutch broadcasters determined that the NOS will provide coverage instead of Avrotros, while a Dutch contestant will be selected by an independent panel…

Longtime Manchester United star Wayne Rooney, who played for D.C. United after leaving Manchester United in 2017, said in a new docuseries, which includes a trip with his wife and sons to Auschwitz, that his Polish-born maternal great-grandmother was Jewish…

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Worthy Reads

Find more Worthy Reads in our Live Briefing via our app (on Apple and Android) and website.

Iran’s BFF: The Wall Street Journal’s Rory Jones, Jon Emont, Vera Bergengruen and Summer Said look at how China is quietly assisting Iran as it faces crippling sanctions spearheaded by the U.S., even as the White House prioritizes good relations with Beijing. “Washington has launched hundreds of sanctions targeting Iran since the war began on Feb. 28, including penalties against companies and individuals in China it believes are helping Tehran. Those steps, along with an embargo of Iranian trade, have caused a contraction of Iran’s economy. But the White House has proven reluctant to more seriously confront Beijing over its support for Iran, which has continued launching attacks on U.S. forces and oil infrastructure in the Middle East.” [WSJ]

Regional Realignment: In an excerpt from his new book The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East, published in The Atlantic, Simon Sebag Montefiore considers the evolution underway in the Middle East. “The United States, Russia, and China still intervene in the Middle East, but in a manner that is Olympian, erratic, and inconsistent. Behind them lurks a deeper conflict of entire systems: the open world, still (just) led by America, versus the closed world that is the axis of China and Russia. A parallel, simultaneous battle, centered within the Middle East, rages among different versions of, or attitudes toward, the practice of Islam and its complex relationship with the West.” [TheAtlantic]

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Picture of the Day

Nova music festival survivor Shalev Biton (right) appeared onstage at yesterday’s rally against antisemitism near the U.N. headquarters in New York alongside Yunes Alkarnawi (left), a Bedouin from southern Israel who saved Biton and dozens of others during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. Read more about Alkarnawi’s rescue of Biton here. Michael Priest Photography

Birthdays

Marc Guggenheim, screenwriter, television producer, comic book writer and novelist, turns 56

Joanne Greenberg, author of 26 books, best known for the semi-autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, turns 94

Judith Margolis, artist working visually in paintings, drawings, artist’s books and multimedia collages, turns 82

Rafael Eldad, retired Israeli diplomat who served as Israel’s ambassador to Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, turns 77

David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, publisher of celebrity and health and fitness magazines, turns 75

Franz Lidz, feature writer for Sports Illustrated for 27 years, he is a 2015 inductee into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, turns 75

Michael Weiss, attorney and former judge advocate

Jeffrey Hecktman, founder, executive chairman and CEO of Hilco Global, turns 73

William Gross, lead public safety success manager at FirstNet by AT&T

Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of Princeton University since 2013, in his mid-40s he discovered that his mother was Jewish, turns 65

Alan Popovsky, co-founder and principal at DC-based PRG Hospitality

Chanina Sperlin, EVP of governmental affairs at the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council

Noreena Hertz, economist, best-selling author and a great-granddaughter of former British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, turns 59

Yael Goldman-Pfeffer, Israeli television host, actor and model, turns 48

Jessica Schumer, Yale Law graduate and head of New York policy and community engagement at Amazon

Alexandra Jaffe, former White House reporter at the Associated Press, now editorial manager at Elastic

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the U.S. should take a “very tough position” if Israeli voters reelect the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s upcoming elections, but said a new Israeli government could provide opportunities for more constructive progress.

“If the Israelis want to vote for that again, then I think the United States has to take a very tough position,” Clinton said during an appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.” “I think we could work with a new government.”

She argued that it “really does make a difference” who leads the Israeli government and who is in the coalition, highlighting the issue of settler violence in the West Bank.

“There should be no impunity for that kind of violence. It is not just about the death and destruction of the Palestinians, their property, and all the rest of it,” Clinton said. “Any time you let people have that level of violence in a society that you don’t stop, that creeps into the whole society. So it’s unfair, bad and wrong for the Palestinians, and it’s also very dangerous to Israel.”

"If the Israelis want to vote for [Netanyahu] again, then I think the United States has to take a very tough position," former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.” “I think we could work with a new government.”

Read more: https://t.co/xVSAkOpe90 pic.twitter.com/ksUIsfWclQ

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) September 10, 2026

The former secretary of state highlighted a report this week in Haaretz that alleged that Netanyahu had been warned that Hamas was planning an attack, and said that Netanyahu “either … didn’t believe it or he — it’s horrible to say — he wanted to see what they could plan so that he could then come down hard and it would enhance his position.” Netanyahu has vehemently denied the reporting. 

She called the result a failure of “imagination,” “leadership” and to protect the Israeli people.

Clinton emphasized, “I love Israel and I hate Netanyahu’s government and his policies,” arguing that the current state of affairs is bad for both Israel and the United States.

She said that securing peace would require “tough love” from Washington, “not rejection and not total agreement.”

Clinton also emphasized efforts by her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to broker agreements between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which were consistently rejected by the Palestinians.

“We did a lot over many years to try to resolve this very difficult situation,” Clinton said, pointing to her husband’s efforts to broker a two-state solution which were rejected by Yasser Arafat, the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and her own work to secure a settlement freeze during her time in office which was met largely with silence from the Palestinians.

“They could not figure out how to take advantage of this opportunity, like they couldn’t figure out how to take advantage of a state that would have been in existence now for 25 years,” she continued.

The countdown to Israel’s October elections has begun, bringing with it a central question: Will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who, against all odds, remains in office three years after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks took place under his tenure — remain Israel’s leader?

Israeli governments have often faced political upheaval after major wars or security crises, but Netanyahu’s current government completed a full term —  the first time a government has done so in nearly four decades. But Netanyahu is not out of the woods yet.

“Oct. 7 serves primarily as a reminder that the stakes are genuinely high. Israel is a country where elections are fought over matters of life and death in the most literal sense,” Shmuel Rosner, a pollster and analyst for Israel’s Channel 13, told Jewish Insider.

The leading candidates of the major parties all have defense bona fides: Netanyahu, who has been out of power for only a single year in the last 15 years, has overseen wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran; Gadi Eisenkot, who is projected to lead the largest party according to most polls, served as IDF chief of staff from 2015 to 2019 and lost his son, Gal, in Gaza combat; and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who served as a cabinet minister for nearly a decade.

So how is it that the average Israeli voter — with plenty of experience at the ballot box, having endured six election cycles in a decade — is largely maintaining the same voting pattern?

“The discussion is always framed in terms of alternatives. People used to say: ‘What, rockets are being fired at Sderot again and again, and people still vote for Likud?’ It seems crazy, but the answer is yes, indeed,” a political strategist who has worked for Likud and several other parties told JI. “Ultimately, right-wing voters tend to be pragmatic. As a result, they assess the available alternatives. When the alternative is perceived as worse, they will go with the option that feels more natural to them, despite their anger.”

Many Israelis view the upcoming election in this frame of tradeoffs: What is more concerning — another term under a Netanyahu-led government that includes the ultra-Orthodox parties as they continue to push for draft exemptions for their constituents, or a new government that might rely on Arab parties to reach the magic number of 61 members of Knesset needed to form a coalition?

“First, there’s the question of whether a potential voter wants the current coalition to return in an identical or similar composition. Next is whether they want the prime minister to continue in his role. And as usual, there’s the element of fear: How much do they fear the ‘other side’, meaning the possibility of an alternative coalition forming?” Rosner explained. “‘A coalition with Arab parties is the demon of the right; a coalition of ‘extremists’ is the demon of the smaller centrist parties; a ‘coalition with the Haredim’ is the demon of many voters, particularly in the anti-Netanyahu camp, and so on.”

If there is one thing both the Israeli right and left agree on, it is that security issues will dominate this election. In a poll conducted last July and published by Kan 11, voters were asked what key issue would determine their vote in the October elections: One-quarter of respondents cited security issues, while an almost equal share (24%) cited the Oct. 7 failures and the establishment of a commission of inquiry into the terror attacks. 

Economic matters trailed in third place at 22%, while judicial reform — an issue that dominated Israeli politics just a few years ago — stood at just 12%.

“Economics isn’t playing a major role in these elections. Security definitely is,” Rosner noted. “Netanyahu faces a challenge partly because he made far-reaching promises that even his supporters realize were not delivered on. If he could show Hamas raising a white flag, or Iran doing the same, or boast a stable peace agreement with Lebanon without Hezbollah on the horizon, he would have something to sell.”

Yossi Tatika, a pollster and strategic consultant at Tatika Consulting and Research, also believes that defense issues remain “the top priority for the Israeli voter, but their meaning has shifted. In my view, the Israeli voter is prioritizing security figures who are not directly tied to Oct. 7. There is a strong appetite for figures perceived as ‘fresh faces.'”

One new candidate on the scene is Ofer Winter, a former high-ranking IDF officer who historically maintained ties with Netanyahu, Avigdor Liberman and Bennett (though some of those relationships have cooled) and has a strong animosity towards Eisenkot, who refused to promote him to a general when he was the IDF chief of staff. Winter announced the launch of his new right-wing party, People of Israel, last week, and some polls project the new contender winning between four and six seats. In an election campaign that feels increasingly unpredictable, he could emerge as the wild card.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has publicly urged his far-right Cabinet ministers, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to merge their parties to hopefully gain more seats in the election, but they have remained defiant.

Still, Netanyahu remains a powerful brand among large segments of the Israeli public, and his entire campaign rests on what he markets as Israel’s achievements over nearly three years of war, including, the assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, while touting deterrence this has brought Israel in the region. 

Can the Israeli electorate overlook the fact that Netanyahu was in charge during the Oct. 7 massacre and was responsible for some of the mistakes leading up to it? That is precisely what Likud is betting on. The answer will begin to come clear at 10 p.m. on Oct. 27, when the exit polls are released.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Jerusalem “does not accept the 15-point document” agreed to last month by the U.S.-led Board of Peace and Hamas that would see the eventual disarmament of the terror group and withdrawal of the IDF from the Gaza Strip — a rare public break with the White House, which has touted the plan since it was announced.

In comments to his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel “would not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.”

The White House and Jerusalem have largely been in lockstep on issues related to Gaza. The rupture over Hamas’ disarmament is one of the more significant policy breaks between President Donald Trump and Netanyahu.

Trump announced in late July what he described on his Truth Social site as a “HISTORIC” agreement, saying that the parties, through mediation by Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, had achieved a “critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people.”

Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesperson who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that the mediating countries benefit from Hamas’ continued rule in the Gaza Strip and have no urgency to press for the terror group’s disarmament. 

That lack of seriousness, he added, makes it unlikely that Hamas will take the necessary steps to disarm. “It’s all a show, it’s a charade, a spectacle,” Conricus said. “The only way that Hamas really ceases to control the Gaza Strip is if all of their weapons are handed in — not stored, not temporarily safeguarded somewhere else, but actually handed in, and if that is verified. As long as we won’t see that happening, I don’t think that Israel is going to agree with any charade.”

The agreement released by the Board of Peace states that none of Hamas’ weapons “shall be transferred or handed to Israel or non-Palestinian parties” and they will instead “be decommissioned and stored” by the Palestinian technocratic government in Gaza.

Conricus described the dynamic as “a very unfortunate diplomatic situation” in which Israel is being “presented as the side that is turning down the 15-point deal, [at the same time as] Hamas appears to be getting away with not implementing the deal.”

But Netanyahu’s response, Conricus said, “reeks of petty Israeli politics” and was “much more political posturing for local politics than anything else.”

Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told JI that the break between Trump and Netanyahu was “inevitable” — and that Jerusalem and Washington have differing approaches to the future of the Gaza Strip.

“U.S. policy in the region is a circus, with grifters, diplomats, terrorists and a few well-intentioned bit players all making occasional appearances,” she said. “At the end of the day, the Board of Peace is a game for Washington, and life or death to Israel.” 

Similarly to Iran, Pletka continued, “Israel is in it to win it. The Trump administration’s intentions are less clear. As a result, there are going to be public breaks, reconciliations and more breaks. Each country will pursue its interests as it sees them. That’s the way it has always been, and it isn’t going to change.” 

Netanyahu is also running up against the deadline of the Oct. 27 election in Israel, walking a political tightrope as he aims to preserve his close public ties with the White House while running a reelection campaign.

The Israeli leader, Israel Policy Forum senior analyst Dan Rothem told JI, “is carefully maneuvering between Trump and the constraints of Israeli politics. 

“The sequencing in the 15-point roadmap on withdrawal and disarmament does not directly contradict the 20-point plan [Netanyahu] endorsed in October 2025, and Israel was briefed throughout the negotiations,” Rothem said. “Yet three years of a ‘total victory’ narrative, combined with the political pride taken in the IDF’s control of roughly 60% of Gaza, has sharply narrowed his room to maneuver. Publicly rejecting the document lets him signal toughness to his base ahead of elections while still keeping channels open with Washington.”

Rothem added that the on-the-ground reality will matter more than election-season rhetoric. “The public rejection [by Netanyahu] serves clear electoral needs,” he said, noting that Israel had scaled back its attacks in Gaza in recent days following a meeting between Netanyahu and Board of Peace head Nickolay Mladenov, and that the Israeli Cabinet signed off on the framework for the Board of Peace’s International Stabilization Force.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Washington on Monday, where he will meet with President Donald Trump and attend the funeral of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), his office announced on Friday. 

Slated for Tuesday, the Oval Office meeting — Trump and Netanyahu’s first in-person sitdown since the start of the Iran war in late February — comes amid escalating U.S.-Iran hostilities and heightened Israeli readiness for potential strikes from Tehran. 

Trump told Axios on Thursday that he’s considering restarting major combat operations in Iran — including strikes larger than those carried out by the U.S. and Israel against Iran before the ceasefire began in early April. 

Netanyahu said that “Israel lost one of its greatest friends” after Graham died suddenly on July 11. The South Carolina senator’s funeral is scheduled for Tuesday at the National Cathedral in Washington.  

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Thursday blamed Iran for what he described as “ruthless” cyberattacks, warning that Tehran has sowed unrest and amplified false information about environmental protests over a new luxury development project in the country from President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

Kushner’s investment firm has moved forward with a luxury project in Albania that includes a coastal development in the Narta Lagoon area — a wildlife reserve — and a smaller resort on the nearby uninhabited island of Sazan. The project has yet to be approved and has not obtained building permits, but has drawn fierce backlash and sparked daily protests from thousands of demonstrators outside Rama’s office due to environmental concerns. 

Speaking at the FII Priority summit in Rome, Rama confirmed that the land has been “bought by investors” and is undergoing an “environmental impact assessment.” However, he claimed that the uproar is not what it seems and is being fueled by misinformation and cyberattacks from Iran, which he described as Albania’s “enemy” in the Middle East. 

“The amount of posts that have been entering there from our enemy, we have only one enemy, which is the [Islamic] Republic of Iran, and they are engaged in three years in a ruthless cyber-attack against Albania,” Rama said. “They [Iran] entered also in this game…freedom of reach is what every regime, through every propaganda, has done to go in every brain and to put the lie in the brain.” 

In 2022, Albania was the subject of an Iranian cyberattack after the country hosted members of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group. The disruptive attack compromised Albanian government systems and forced the country to temporarily sever digital services. The attacks also led Albania to break diplomatic relations with Iran. 

The issue remains a sore point between the countries, with Rama saying earlier this month that the Albanian people were “the target of a cyberterror campaign that aimed to cripple an entire country.” Tehran has denied the allegations. 

Rama has also claimed that antisemitic narratives, as well as resentment over the project’s ties to Kushner and Trump, are behind the opposition.

“The digital outrage, of course, has been provoked, mostly because Kushner and Trump’s shadow are behind it, enough to bring a lot of people from a lot of ways of like from a lot of continents jumping,” Rama said. “The amount of falsehoods, the amount of fake videos that were taken from protests in different countries that were pushed as protests in Albania.”

Speaking on a podcast hosted by David Senra earlier this month, Ivanka Trump said, “there’s nothing uglier than a beautiful nonfunctional space,” describing the project as “architecturally incredibly meaningful and beautiful and intentional with a highly functional space.”

Rama argued that the project would be transformational for Albania’s tourism industry and GDP. A BBC report indicated that the project could bring in up to €4 billion of investment, a major mark for a country that consistently ranks among the poorest in Europe. Rama said that the “big business and investment” can offer the country a “bigger vision than the usual small investments.” 

The Albanian leader has also dismissed environmental concerns, arguing that the project would show that “nature and people can coexist.” 

“There is nothing that has to worry any environmentalists,” Rama said. “And, yes, Albania will go forward. The majority of the Albanian people want the project.”

As Albania seeks European Union membership, EU officials have reportedly urged Albanian authorities to ensure that the project aligns with the bloc’s environmental regulations, warning that failing to do so could jeopardize the country’s accession bid.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a strange moment when the leader of the free world explains to a reporter why he cursed out the prime minister of a major ally.

But we live in an increasingly strange moment, one in which President Donald Trump confirmed to the New York Post this week that he had indeed called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” during a discussion about Israel’s plans to expand operations in Lebanon, even as he stressed that he and the Israeli leader have “worked very well together.” (Trump’s confirmation came after Netanyahu’s office denied the remarks.)

The tense nature of the Trump-Netanyahu call this week underscores the increasingly divergent tactics the two are taking to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East as Trump leans into diplomacy while Netanyahu pushes for intensified military action — and as questions loom over the future of U.S. aid to Israel.

With the House’s passage of a war powers resolution yesterday (with four Republicans breaking with House GOP leadership), and a Senate vote on the issue still pending, the Trump administration’s appetite for a resumption of hostilities is even smaller than it was last month (when, as we reported, it was already quite low, owing to rising gas prices and the approaching midterms). 

And it’s not just Trump distancing the U.S. from renewed all-out conflict. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that the Iran war was “over.”

The comments come even as Iran continues to scale up its attacks in the region, in some cases prompting a U.S. response. Early Wednesday morning, the Islamic Republic launched a drone attack targeting Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person and injuring at least 60.

Trump has reportedly set a red line on Iran, telling aides that he could end the ceasefire — which, while not a technical halting of all fire, has resulted in far fewer exchanges of fire and destruction than at the height of the war in March and early April — if U.S. troops are killed.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu told CNBC on Wednesday that he wants to start the process of winding down U.S. military aid to Israel over the next two years — the final years of Trump’s term — in a way that would shift the relationship, according to the prime minister, “from aid to a partnership where we both invest equal amounts and both share equally in the fruits of our innovators and technologies.” Such a move, Netanyahu added, “will also take away the myth that Israel is depleting America’s coffers” — a popular talking point among opponents of U.S. aid to Israel on Capitol Hill and beyond.

On paper, Washington and Jerusalem do appear in lockstep — alongside Beirut — on deepening relations between Israel and Lebanon and rooting out Hezbollah. To that effect, the White House announced in a joint statement with Lebanese and Israeli officials on Wednesday that the parties had agreed to a renewed ceasefire — though it is contingent on the cooperation of Hezbollah, which did not take part in the talks and continues to launch drones and missiles at northern Israel.

But even as officials in Washington reach an accord on Lebanon, the challenges on the ground remain much the same. It was, after all, the issue of Lebanon — and Netanyahu’s announcement that the IDF would attack Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut — that triggered Trump’s expletive-laden outburst on Monday, causing Netanyahu to walk back Israel’s military plans in Lebanon.

And while Netanyahu needs to stay in Trump’s good graces, it is voters in Israel — including those in the country’s north who are living under daily Hezbollah fire — whom Netanyahu will need to sway ahead of the fall elections. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 11, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Jewish Insider (@jewishinsider) May 11, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Friday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at what the results of yesterday’s local elections in the U.K. portend for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s premiership and the future of the Labour Party, and report on the introduction of an AUMF by Rep. Tom Barrett, a swing-district Republican facing a tough reelection bid. We interview Rabbi Mike Uram, the incoming chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, about his vision for the institution, and report on the decision by the Sen. Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution to back Alex Bores in the NY-12 congressional race. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Francie Harris, Hussain Abdul-Hussain and James Packer.

Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with an assist from Danielle Cohen-Kanik. Have a tip? Email us here.

For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: How Yossi Farro, the 22-year-old tefillin wrapper, chases influential Jews from coast to coast; How Rahm Emanuel is recalibrating on Israel ahead of 2028 and CNBC anchor Sara Eisen confronts antisemitism — on air and online. Print the latest edition here.

What We’re Watching

• We’re watching the unfolding situation in the Middle East after clashes between the U.S. and Iran broke out late yesterday, threatening to end the tenuous ceasefire that went into place last month. President Donald Trump told ABC News on Thursday that the strikes did not constitute a breakdown of the ceasefire, but served as a “love tap.”
• The president took a more hard-line approach on his Truth Social site, writing, “A normal country would have allowed these destroyers to pass, but Iran is not a normal country. They are led by LUNATICS, and if they had the chance to use a nuclear weapon, they would do it, without question. But they’ll never have that opportunity and, just like we knocked them out again today, we’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their deal signed, FAST!”
• The strikes came shortly after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait lifted their restrictions on the U.S. military’s use of the countries’ airspace and bases that went into place earlier this week with the start of the Trump administration’s Project Freedom. 
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio wraps up his two-day trip to Italy and the Vatican today.
• In Geneva, the World Jewish Congress will kick off its three-day governing board meeting on Sunday and will also hold a meeting of special envoys and coordinators combating antisemitism. 

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

All politics is local, as the saying goes. And if true, that could be very bad news for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer following yesterday’s local elections across the country that saw significant losses for his Labour Party — a showing that could prompt party officials to reassess the party’s direction.

With partial results in shortly after polls closed, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform U.K. Party appeared to have made significant gains in working-class areas of the country, while Labour lost hundreds of local seats. Farage, who has faced multiple allegations of antisemitism — including bullying Jewish classmates as a teenager and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, as well as his multiple appearances on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show — was the night’s clear victor. 

All told, Labour did not lose as badly as some polls had predicted, but the significant losses it did suffer, compared to Reform’s gains, portend future challenges for Starmer as he works to hold onto the premiership, less than two years into his term. 

The other big loser in the day’s elections was Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party, which, aside from reclaiming London’s Wandsworth and Westminster districts (both of which it lost to Labour in the 2022 elections), made few significant gains, while the Green Party fared better than Labour and the Tories, pulling out modest wins and gaining at least a dozen seats. 

That the two parties claiming the best outcomes fall on opposite — and extreme — ends of the political spectrum is deepening concerns among British Jews, who are already on edge amid spiking antisemitism and a wave of violent attacks targeting Jewish communities around the country. The country’s Jewish leaders have not come out in force against Farage, who is broadly supportive of Israel, and his Reform Party in the same way they’ve raised concerns about antisemitism in Labour and the Greens.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

GA STATE OF PLAY

In Georgia’s 10th District, a GOP establishment favorite takes on a controversial outsider

State Rep. Houston Gaines, the 36-year-old Georgia native who has served in the Statehouse since 2019 and has the backing of President Donald Trump, faces a potentially potent challenge in Tuesday’s GOP primary race to replace Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA). Ryan Millsap, a real estate and film industry executive is pumping $4 million of his own money into his congressional bid and made a name for himself locally in a protracted legal battle against far-left agitators who camped out on his land to protest a proposed police training center. The race has turned into a heated battle between the two men, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Matchup: Gaines is leaning on his background in the state Legislature in his run, arguing to JI in an interview that “we need folks in Congress who know how to get things done” and that he’s “proven in my time in the state Legislature” that he delivers results on a variety of issues. Millsap told JI in an interview that his interest in running for office started with his “five-year war with Antifa.” He said, “We can’t just sit around as a society and let violent criminals rule our political process and take over our lands because we’re afraid of violence.”

Read the full story here.

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EYE ON NOVEMBER

Swing-district Republican introduces war authorization to limit Iran operations

Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI) on Thursday introduced an authorization for use of military force (AUMF) in Iran that would limit the length and scope of U.S. military operations, dismissing assertions by the administration that the operation that began in February had already concluded, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The AUMF marks one of the most concrete actions by congressional Republicans thus far to limit U.S. operations against Iran, and may preview further action by Republicans wary of the undefined and unclear scope of and plans for U.S. action against Iran.

Details: The AUMF would authorize the administration to use U.S. military force against Iran’s nuclear program, against “imminent threats” to U.S. forces or facilities by Iran or its proxies, to blockade Iran’s ports and to protect safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — but that authorization would terminate on July 30, which falls 90 days after the initial start of operations in Iran, irrespective of the current tenuous ceasefire agreement. Barrett’s AUMF provides a 30-day wind-down period “only as necessary to end the deployment or engagement of the Armed Forces.”

Read the full story here.

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Q&A

Chancellor-elect Rabbi Mike Uram envisions ‘new chapter’ for JTS, Conservative Judaism

Amid intensifying polarization of the American Jewish community, Jewish Theological Seminary Chancellor-elect Rabbi Mike Uram is putting forth his own vision for Conservative Judaism: “the muscular middle,” a movement that can offer a middle ground for all types of Jews. Uram, who assumes the role on July 1, sat down with Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy to discuss his strategy for cultivating the next generation of American Jewish leaders at a fraught time.  

Vision: “In terms of how I imagine being able to help JTS go from good to better, I have a strong background in how to use relationship-based engagement to transform outcomes of Jewish organizations,” Uram said. “There’s an opportunity to both cast a wide net to recruit outstanding candidates for rabbinical school but I also would imagine trying to integrate JTS into the larger Jewish ecosystem in different ways and start to focus on centers where there is a high density of outstanding Jewish leaders.”

Read the full interview here and sign up for eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

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SIGNALING SUPPORT

Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution backs Bores in race for Nadler seat

A left-wing group aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and fiercely critical of Israel has backed Assemblymember Alex Bores in the race to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in a heavily Jewish Manhattan district, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports.

Backing Bores: Our Revolution, an advocacy group spun off Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, endorsed Bores on Wednesday, news first reported by Politico and subsequently shared on both Bores’ and Our Revolution’s social media pages. Following Sanders, Our Revolution has aligned with student anti-Israel protesters and advocated against military aid to the Jewish state. The group’s endorsement of Bores, who worked for Palantir, emphasized his signature issue: regulating artificial intelligence.

Read the full story here.

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PODCAST PLAYBACK

Hussain Abdul-Hussain’s long, strange trip from Israel critic to making ‘The Arab Case for Israel’

Hussain Abdul-Hussain has an unusual story: A Shia Muslim raised in Iraq and Lebanon and taught to hate Israel and the West, he is now a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies living in Washington, and the author The Arab Case for Israel. In an interview with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov and Asher Fredman, executive director of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, on the “Misgav Mideast Horizons” podcast this week, Abdul-Hussain discussed the journey that transformed him into a prominent Arab advocate for normalization and peace with Israel.

A new perspective: When Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, Abdul-Hussain was covering the events for the now-defunct Daily Star in Lebanon, and drove to the border. “At the time, the border was just a flimsy barbed wire. You could see Israelis on the other side, and I stood there and I watched Israeli families in Metula and all these towns … mothers driving their children to school, men working the fields, some guy driving a tractor. This was the first time that I saw Israelis as humans … as people like us, and this made me so curious,” he recalled.

Read the full interview here.

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Worthy Reads

Financing Foreign Policy: The Economist looks at the Development Finance Corporation and its CEO, Ben Black, describing the agency as “the muscular new finance arm” of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. “Now money will go wherever America competes with China, and to projects with Mr Trump’s other foreign-policy goals. Do-goodery is out; hard-nosed geopolitics is in. The board, which approves new investments, includes Marco Rubio and Howard Lutnick, secretaries of state and commerce, respectively. … [T]he DFC will operate like a Wall Street investment firm, insiders say. In February Mr Black opened an office in New York. This makes it easier to work with hedge funds, which the DFC favours as partners over development institutions.” [TheEconomist]

Pregnant Pause: In Newsweek, former White House Middle East Envoy Jason Greenblatt considers President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran. “The pause is not capitulation. It is not President Trump’s fear. It is not a response to media criticism. And while some will connect it to gas prices and the approaching midterm elections, I do not believe that is what is driving this. What it is, is a high-stakes decision made under pressure, pressure that President Trump himself has been applying to Iran, not the other way around.” [Newsweek]

Seeing Red in Golders Green: The Atlantic’s Yair Rosenberg observes the challenges in addressing the U.K.’s antisemitism problem amid regular attacks on the country’s Jewish community. “The responses to the stabbings in Golders Green help explain how this predicament arose — and why it continues. Even as the victims were still in the hospital, an array of online apologists associated with Britain’s ascendant hard-left explained away the incident and its implications. … Whatever the alleged perpetrator’s internal demons, he didn’t travel across London to attack Presbyterians.” [TheAtlantic]

Cleric’s Calling Card: In The Wall Street Journal, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a district court judge presided over the case of the “Blind Sheikh,” on whose behalf New Jersey congressional candidate Adam Hamawy testified, raises concerns about Hamawy’s ties to the radical cleric. “Mr. Hamawy was more than a casual traveling companion of Abdel Rahman. He met the Blind Sheikh in 1991 after the cleric had already been charged with providing the spiritual authority for the 1981 assassination of Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat, although an Egyptian court acquitted him of direct involvement in that crime. Mr. Hamawy attended several of Abdel Rahman’s sermons, visited the cleric in his home before his trial and provided him with translation services.” [WSJ]

A Gulf Between: In the Jewish News Syndicate, Betsy Berns Korn, the chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, reflects on the differences in Israel’s positioning between the 1991 Gulf War and the present conflict with Iran. “Sustained threats from Iran and its proxies have forced countries across the Mideast to reassess both risk and partnership. That reassessment has brought Israel into a more central role, not as a symbol, but as a proven contributor to regional security. This does not resolve the region’s conflicts. … It does, however, mark a shift that few would have anticipated a generation ago. A story that once centered on Israeli restraint now includes Israeli capability. A region that once treated Israel as a liability now increasingly turns to it in moments of danger.” [JNS]

Word on the Street

The Trump administration signed off on the sale of $17 billion in air defense missiles and related weaponry to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain despite dwindling U.S. stockpiles…

The Economist reports on a proposal from the Russian army’s intelligence unit suggesting that Moscow would offer Iran thousands of high-tech drones for use against U.S. targets in the Gulf; the outlet said it could not confirm if the document, which was undated, was ultimately presented to the Iranians…

The Financial Times spotlights Hezbollah’s scaled-up efforts to attack Israel despite the severe blows it was dealt before the November 2024 ceasefire, finding that the Iran-backed terror group used the period of calm to rebuild and rearm…

In The Washington Post, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who has long faced calls to switch his party affiliation, explains why he intends to remain a Democrat, but warns that the party’s “catering to the fringe” has resulted in a scenario in which “once-common views,” such as support for Israel and secure border, “have become increasingly toxic”…

Puck looks at concerns around the reemergence of National Security Action, the foreign policy group started by former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Obama administration official Ben Rhodes, as former Biden and Obamaworld staffers attempt to influence the Democratic Party’s foreign policy direction…

The Egyptian man who firebombed a hostage-awareness march last year, killing one person and injuring a dozen others, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole…

Authorities in Chicago charged a second man with battery and hate crime charges in connection with the assault of two Jewish students at DePaul University in late 2024…

Cornell University is investigating the circumstances around a confrontation between the university’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, and students who followed him to a parking lot after an event on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; video of the incident showed that Kotlikoff, who said he was harassed by the group, subsequently bumped students with his car as he attempted to leave the premises…

The Free Press interviews GG Gilbert-Soto, the girlfriend of Google co-founder Sergey Brin; in the interview, Gilbert-Soto suggested that Brin, who is Jewish, had been put off by the Democratic Party’s leftward shift, noting that “October 7 was also a big deal for him”…

Australian businessman James Packer is among the backers of Architect Capital’s bid to purchase a 15% share in OnlyFans at a valuation of $3.1 billion following the death of the platform’s owner, Leonid Radvinsky, in March…

Jillian Segal, Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, testified before the royal commission into last year’s Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack as the commission held a fourth day of public comments, during which it heard from a restaurant owner whose business had been damaged in an arson attack; the commission also heard from the head of a Jewish soccer club who detailed the “unprecedented” number of antisemitic incidents club members faced, among other witnesses…

Police in north London are investigating what they called a “religiously aggravated assault” in which a car veered toward a small group of Jewish students near the city’s Hasmonean High School for Boys; no injuries were reported in the incident, which comes amid spiking antisemitism in the country…

The United Arab Emirates sent $100 million to the Board of Peace — the largest sum the group has so far received — to fund training for a Palestinian police force that will operate in Gaza…

A report from the office of USAID’s inspector general found that four additional staffers from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency — three teachers and a social worker — participated in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel…

Talks between Wizz Air and Israel’s Transportation Ministry to create a hub for the discount airline have broken down amid Wizz’s hesitance to restart flights to Ben Gurion Airport in accordance with an advisory from the EU Aviation Safety Agency that instructed European airlines to avoid Israeli airspace amid the war with Iran…

Israel’s Health Ministry said there were no reported cases of hantavirus in the country following a report in Ma’ariv that an individual had been hospitalized with the virus…

An Israeli court indicted a West Bank settler a week after his arrest for the filmed assault of a Catholic nun near Jerusalem’s Old City…

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum’s Koum Family Foundation is making a $200 million donation to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center for the construction of a new medical tower at the hospital’s Jerusalem complex; the donation is the largest ever given in Israel’s healthcare system…

Francie Harris, an alumna of EMILY’s List and the energy, commerce and state departments, has joined Democratic Majority for Israel as chief of staff…

Wine of the Week

JI wine columnist Yitz Applbaum reviews the Shoresh 2024:

Spending one’s days at the source of fine wine is, I confess, the calling I should most like to claim in another life. A recent afternoon at the wonderful Tzora winery in the Judean Hills, in the company of my new friend Nathan, only reaffirmed the conviction. Misty Hills has long enjoyed its reputation as one of Israel’s finest wines, yet the true discovery of my visit lay elsewhere: in the Shoresh 2024, a wine of uncommon grace and quiet authority. It brought me considerable pleasure at the table, and as I had the foresight to acquire the better part of its production, I expect its company for some years to come.

The Shoresh 2024 is a thoughtful blend of syrah, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, petit verdot and cabernet Franc, aged for 14 months in French barrique. The nose opens with gentle notes of cedar. The first sip suggests rose petals; the mid-palate yields to the firmer presence of the petit verdot, lending welcome structure beneath the polish. The finish is, in a word, beautiful: long, refined and quietly composed. Pair it with a well-made quiche or fresh brioche, and it should drink wonderfully through the latter half of the decade.

Song of the Day

Iranian rapper 021kid released a Persian remake of the Israeli war anthem “Harbu Darbu” earlier this week. The London-based artist, whose real name is Tony Mohraz, told Haaretz he reached out to Ness and Stilla, the Israeli artists behind the original, in order to rework the song into a protest song against the Iranian regime.

Birthdays

British actress, she is a vocal supporter of Israel, Dame Maureen Lipman turns 80 on Sunday…

FRIDAY: Senior judge in the U.K., Baron Leonard Hubert “Lennie” Hoffmann turns 92… Former president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Stanley A. Rabin turns 88… International chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, he is a past president of the Canadian Jewish Congress and former Canadian minister of justice and attorney general, Irwin Cotler turns 86… MIT biologist and 2002 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, H. Robert Horvitz turns 79… Former MLB pitcher who played for the Angels, Rangers and White Sox, Lloyd Allen turns 76… Chief rabbi in Dusseldorf until moving to Israel in 2021, Rabbi Raphael Evers turns 72… CFO for The Manischewitz Company for 13 years until 2024, Thomas E. Keogh… Retired USDOJ official, for many years he was the director of the Office of Special Investigations focused on deporting Nazi war criminals, Eli M. Rosenbaum turns 71… Former president of Congregation B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs, Ga., Janice Perlis Ellin… Third-generation furniture retailer in Springfield, Ill., Barry Seidman… Former president of Clayton, Mo.-based JurisTemps, Andrew J. Koshner, J.D., Ph.D…. CEO and founder of NSG/SWAT, a high-profile boutique branding agency he launched in 2011, Richard Kirshenbaum turns 65… Novelist, author of If I Could Tell You and movie critic for The Jerusalem Post since 2001, Hannah Brown… Co-founder and director of the Mizrahi Family Charitable Fund and a Maryland Climate Commissioner, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi turns 62… Israeli journalist, anchorwoman and attorney, she is best known as host of the investigative program “Uvda” (“Fact”) on Israeli television, Ilana Dayan-Orbach turns 62… Longtime litigator and political fundraiser in Florida, now serving as a mediator and arbitrator, Benjamin W. Newman… Canadian social activist and documentary filmmaker critical of corporate capitalism, she is now teaching at the University of British Columbia, Naomi Klein turns 56… Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2015 to 2020 and again since 2024, Ambassador Danny Danon turns 55… Stand-up comedian, writer, actress and author, known for appearing on the ninth season of “America’s Got Talent,” Jodi Miller turns 55… Novelist and memoirist, Joanna Rakoff turns 54… Senior advisor at West End Strategy Team, Ari Geller turns 53… Council member of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s Voice of the People initiative and election committee member for the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, David Wiseman… Director of strategic initiatives at J Street, based in Los Angeles, Josh Lockman turns 44… Ice hockey player, Samantha Faber turns 39… Former international spokeswoman for then-Israeli prime ministers Lapid and Bennett, Keren Hajioff turns 37… Founder and CEO at Axion Ray, Daniel First… Canadian beach volleyball player, he competed in the 2016 and 2024 Summer Olympics, Sam Schachter turns 36… Former White House senior policy advisor, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Amiel Fields-Meyer…

SATURDAY: Holocaust survivor, philanthropist and social activist, she marched in Selma, Ala., with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965, Eva Haller turns 96… Academy Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter, James L. Brooks (family name was Bernstein) turns 86… Guitarist and record producer, best known as a member of the rock-pop-jazz group “Blood, Sweat & Tears,” Steve Katz turns 81… Israeli rabbi who is a co-founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion and the settlements of Alon Shevut and Ofra, Yoel Bin-Nun turns 80… Mashgiach ruchani (spiritual guide) of Baltimore’s Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Beryl Weisbord turns 79… Winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Michael Levitt turns 79… Pianist, singer-songwriter and one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, Billy Joel turns 77… Physician in Burlington, Vt., she was the first lady of Vermont from 1991 until 2003, Judith Steinberg Dean turns 73… Sharon Mallory Doble… Co-founder and board member of PlayMedia Systems, Brian D. Litman… Founding executive director of Chai Mitzvah, The Resource Center for Jewish Engagement, Audrey B. Lichter turns 71… Nursing home entrepreneur, he was nominated last October to become the U.S. ambassador to Hungary, Benjamin Z. Landa turns 70… Film director and producer, Barry Avrich turns 63… Staff writer at The Atlantic and author of five books, Mark Leibovich turns 61… Senior advisory partner of Bain Capital and owner of a minority interest in the Boston Celtics, Jonathan Lavine turns 60… Chief global affairs officer at Meta / Facebook, he was previously the White House deputy chief of staff for policy and a law clerk for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Joel D. Kaplan turns 57… NYC-based celebrity chiropractor, Arkady Aaron Lipnitsky, DC… and his twin brother, managing director at Baltimore’s Pimlico Capital, Victor “Yaakov” Lipnitsky both turn 53… SVP at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Lesli Rosenblatt Gillette… Owner of NYC’s Dylan’s Candy Bar, which claims to be the largest candy store in the world, Dylan Lauren turns 52… Executive director of the Richardson Center and former IDF paratrooper, he has negotiated the release of political prisoners worldwide, Michael “Mickey” Bergman turns 50… Senior policy advisor on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Aaron Scheinberg turns 45… Legal director at the State Democracy Research Initiative, Danielle Elizabeth Friedman… Opinion columnist and podcast host at The New York Times, he was a co-founder and editor-at-large at Vox, Ezra Klein turns 42… Jenna Weisbord… Principal at Blackstone Growth Israel, Nathaniel Rosen… Graduate of Harvard Law School, Mikhael Smits…

SUNDAY: Scion of a Hasidic dynasty and leader of the Beth Jehudah congregation in Milwaukee, Rabbi Michel Twerski… and his twin brother, who is a professor at Brooklyn Law School, following a career as dean at Hofstra University School of Law, Aaron Twerski, both turn 87… Real estate developer, his projects include NYC’s Deutsche Bank Center, he is the principal owner of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins, Stephen M. Ross turns 86… Leading Democratic pollster and political strategist, Stanley Bernard “Stan” Greenberg turns 81… Israeli businessman and philanthropist, his family founded and owned Israel Discount Bank, Leon Recanati turns 78… Founder and CEO of OPTI Connectivity (Operational Productivity Tool, Inc.), Edward Brill… CEO of Medical Reimbursement Data Management in Chapel Hill, N.C., Robert Jameson… American-born Israeli singer, songwriter and music producer, Yehudah Katz turns 75… Claims examiner at Chubb Insurance, David Beck… Anchor for “SportsCenter” and other programs on ESPN since 1979, Chris “Boomer” Berman turns 71… Former NBA player whose career spanned 18 seasons on seven teams, Danny Schayes turns 67… U.S. senator (R-MS), Cindy Hyde-Smith turns 67… U.S. senator (R-UT), John Curtis turns 66… Reform rabbi living in Israel, she is the sister of actress Laura Silverman and comedian Sarah Silverman, Susan Silverman turns 63… Brazilian businessman, serial entrepreneur and partner with Donald Trump in Trump Realty Brazil, Ricardo Samuel Goldstein turns 60… Neil Winchel… Attorney general of Colorado, elected in 2018 and reelected in 2022, he is now running for governor, Philip Jacob Weiser turns 58… Senior rabbi of Houston’s Congregation Beth Yeshurun, Brian Strauss turns 54… Israeli rock musician, singer-songwriter, music producer and author, Aviv Geffen turns 53… Editor-in-chief, recipe developer, art director and food stylist of Fleishigs, a kosher food magazine, Shifra Klein turns 44… Israel-based reporter for the Associated Press, Melanie Lidman… Video games reporter at Bloomberg News, Jason Schreier turns 39… Partner at Converge Public Strategies, Fara Klein Sonderling… Associate director of communications in the D.C. office of Pew Research Center, Rachel Weisel Drian… Freelance reporter, he is the author of a book on the Obama-Biden relationship, Gabriel Debenedetti… Editorial director at The Record by Recorded Future, Adam Janofsky… Actress who has appeared in many films and television series, Halston Sage (born Halston Jean Schrage) turns 33… Scriptwriter and actress, she is the daughter of Larry David, Cazzie Laurel David turns 32… Mollie Harrison…

BIRTHWEEK: Jane Daroff, retired social worker in Cleveland, turned 88 on Wednesday…

All politics is local, as the saying goes. And if true, that could be very bad news for U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer following yesterday’s local elections across the country that saw significant losses for his Labour Party — a showing that could prompt party officials to reassess the party’s direction.

With partial results in shortly after polls closed, Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform U.K. party appeared to have made significant gains in working-class areas of the country, while Labour lost hundreds of local seats. Farage, who has faced multiple allegations of antisemitism — including bullying Jewish classmates as a teenager and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, as well as his multiple appearances on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show — was the night’s clear victor. 

All told, Labour did not lose as badly as some polls had predicted, but the significant losses it did suffer, compared to Reform’s gains, portend future challenges for Starmer as he works to hold onto the premiership, less than two years into his term. 

Starmer on Friday morning called the results “really tough,” adding that the outcome “hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility.” He insisted he had no intention of leaving 10 Downing St., telling BBC News repeatedly, “I’m not going to walk away.”

The other big loser in the day’s elections was Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party, which, aside from reclaiming London’s Wandsworth and Westminster districts (both of which it lost to Labour in the 2022 elections), made few significant gains, while the Green Party fared better than Labour and the Tories,pulling out modest wins and gaining at least a dozen seats. 

The Greens’ rise comes as the party investigates more than two dozen members for antisemitism, and as its leader, Zack Polanski, draws heavy criticism for making inaccurate claims about police actions during last week’s terror attack targeting two Jewish men in the London suburb of Golders Green, for which he ultimately apologized.

That the two parties claiming the best outcomes fall on opposite — and extreme — ends of the political spectrum is deepening concerns among British Jews, who are already on edge amid spiking antisemitism and a wave of violent attacks targeting Jewish communities around the country. The country’s Jewish leaders have not come out in force against Farage, who is broadly supportive of Israel, and his Reform Party in the same way they’ve raised concerns about antisemitism in Labour and the Greens.

“Many British Jews have looked on with horror as the traditional domination of two political parties has been disrupted by the rise in support for populist parties on the extremes — both right with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and left with Zack Polanski’s Greens,” Justin Cohen, the editor-in-chief of the U.K.’s Jewish News, told JI. “Both parties have had to remove candidates during this election campaign over antisemitic rhetoric, although the issue does appear more pronounced within the latter.”

“That’s not to dismiss the meteoric rise of Reform,” he added, “which was formed just four years ago and has now for the first time won considerable support at the ballot box. And it would be wrong to claim that the party’s positions on Israel — and claims of easy solutions to the extremism that threatens our community — haven’t attracted support in large sections of the community at a time of unprecedented attacks and fears for the future.”

Ultimately, Cohen said, “Just as there other Jews consider the party’s rhetoric to be utterly abhorrent. Where’s some of the community are happy to dismiss claims of Farage’s own antisemitic comments as a teen, others refuse to do so. Many of them will be hoping that the extra scrutiny that comes with this week’s electoral success, combined with the pressures of power they now hold at local level, will be their undoing before the next general election scheduled for three years time.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced several new policies aimed at protecting British Jews, including a ramped up security presence, a tightening of immigration laws and a crackdown on extremist charities, in a speech on Thursday following the stabbing of two Jewish men in a suburb of London. 

Starmer denounced the rise in antisemitic attacks, naming several that have occurred in recent months, and fear that British Jews experience while conducting everyday life. He listed new government priorities including increasing visible police presence in Jewish communities; increasing investments in Jewish security services; introducing new legislation to prevent “hate preachers” from entering the country and speaking on college campuses; and working to speed up sentencing for perpetrators of antisemitic attacks.

Starmer further condemned those who participate in protests with antisemitic themes. “Of course we protect freedom of speech and peaceful protest in this country, but if you are marching with people wearing pictures of paragliders without calling it out, you are venerating the murder of Jews,” he said.

He added that demonstrators who use the phrase “globalize the intifada” are “calling for terrorism against Jews” and should be prosecuted.

As British authorities are investigating whether a recent surge of attacks targeting Jewish institutions in the country is linked to Iran, Starmer added, “We need stronger powers to tackle the malign threat posed by states like Iran because we know for a fact that they want to harm British Jews, which is why we will fast-track the necessary legislation.”  

British Jews have been raising the alarm on rising antisemitism in the country and government inaction to combat it. On Wednesday, two Jewish men, one in his 70s and one in his 30s, were stabbed in the heavily Jewish London suburb of Golders Green. Both were hospitalized in stable condition, according to the Metropolitan Police, which declared the attack a terrorist incident. 

The stabbing is the latest in a string of violent attacks against Jewish individuals and sites around London in recent months, which U.K. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has called a “sustained campaign of violence and intimidation.” He said following Wednesday’s attack that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.”

Last week, an arsonist who pleaded guilty to attacking a London synagogue was released on bail. Also this month, two suspects in an arson attack on another London synagogue were similarly released on bail, and a building that used to house the Jewish Futures charity and still bears its name on the side was targeted in a separate arson attack the same week. 

Antisemitic attacks in the country have extended beyond London. Last year, during Yom Kippur, two men were killed at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester in a car-ramming and stabbing attack. At the time, Starmer promised to do “everything” in his power to protect the Jewish community, including allocating $13 million in emergency funds to provide greater security.

The end of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s 16-year tenure following his electoral defeat on Sunday to center-right rival Péter Magyar has sparked immediate questions regarding the future of one of Jerusalem’s most reliable, yet complicated, alliances in Europe. 

While Orbán’s departure removes a reliable ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu within the European Union, experts suggest Jerusalem’s standing in Europe and bilateral relationship with Budapest will not be significantly set back. 

Under Orbán, Hungary frequently broke ranks to block anti-Israel statements and actions from the EU. The former leader maintained a warm posture toward Israel and voiced opposition to terror organizations. He also initiated the process to withdraw Budapest from the International Criminal Court after it issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Orbán called the court “political” and defied the ruling by welcoming the Israeli prime minister for a visit. 

“Israel is losing a close friend with the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán,” David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider. “His willingness to defy EU consensus shielded Israel from many hostile actions. The Central and Eastern European states are far friendlier to Israel than their Western counterparts, and that will likely continue under Peter Magyar — though to what extent remains unclear.”

Magyar has vowed to maintain Hungary’s “special relationship” with Israel, calling the Jewish state an “important economic partner.” However, he has also called for “pragmatic relations,” including returning Hungary to the ICC and suggesting that Budapest will likely move away from the reflexive veto that characterized the Orbán era, replacing it with a case-by-case approach to EU measures concerning Israel. 

“We do not know much about Péter Magyar’s policy views on Israel,” said Ferenc Németh, an international relations expert and Fulbright visiting researcher at Georgetown University. “Politically speaking, I do not expect relations to worsen or for Magyar to have a cold or hostile position toward Netanyahu; rather, Hungary will align with the views of its partners on key issues concerning Israel.”

Németh added that Israel will remain “an important partner for Hungary, especially given the economic ties and the shared Jewish heritage.” He noted that Magyar’s desire to rejoin the ICC is likely aimed at strengthening “Hungary’s position among its most valuable Western partners and to achieve full alignment with their views.”

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, also suggested that significant change in posturing is unlikely. He noted that Orbán’s defeat is “easily overstated in terms of likely impact on Israel.” 

“Israel’s standing in Europe won’t be dimmed by Orbán’s departure,” Ruhe said. “Israel has reliable partners like Germany, Czechia, Greece and Cyprus. Germany in particular has been a firewall against a lot of European anti-Israeli actions, and Magyar has suggested he’ll follow Germany’s lead here.”

Experts also noted that Orbán’s actions did not carry as much weight as they appeared and expressed concern over the former Hungarian leader’s preference for Moscow in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and complex relationship with Tehran. 

“Orbán blocked primarily statements critical of Israel, not concrete measures — with the exception of a sanctions package targeting violent settlers and organizations targeting Palestinians in the West Bank,” Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. “And Hungary did not always act in Israel’s interest under Orbán, such as when Hungary offered Iran intelligence support after the pager attack against Hezbollah in September 2024.”

May similarly noted that Orbán was “not without controversy.”

“His close ties with Russia — and sometimes strong bonds with Iran — at times placed the Hungarian leader at odds with Israeli and U.S. interests,” May said. “Orbán’s proximity to antisemites and his antidemocratic tendencies also made him a less than desirable ally.”

Ruhe said that Orbán’s actions in support of Israel should be “weighed against everything he did to whitewash Hungary’s role in the Holocaust, engage in antisemitic dog-whistling, roll back democracy and essentially serve as an agent of Moscow — Iran’s partner in crime — inside the EU.”

“Magyar has pledged to maintain his country’s ‘special relationship’ with Israel, but without Orbán’s significant baggage that far outweighed the few concrete steps he took in support of Israel,” Ruhe added. 

Németh said that Hungary will remain “a country with a strong zero-tolerance policy against all forms of antisemitism,” noting that Orbán, despite his often vocal support for Israel, engaged in actions that could be perceived as triggering “antisemitic views.” 

“Orbán has used coded messages to trigger antisemitic views, [such as] making George Soros, an American-Hungarian businessman of Jewish heritage, a central figure in propaganda,” Németh said. “Magyar has pledged not to do that.”

Amid the ceasefire with Iran, new Israeli polls were split on the outcome for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and coalition. Three television polls showed Netanyahu losing significant support as a result of the unpopularity of the ceasefire, while polls from two right-leaning networks projected he would still have a majority in the Knesset to form a coalition. 

The election is currently slated for the end of October. Israeli Channels 12, 13 and Kan 11 projected Netanyahu’s coalition would not receive enough votes to stay in power, but they also found that center-left parties — excluding Arab parties, which most Zionist parties have said would not be invited to join their coalition — would not get the 61-seat majority to form a winning coalition. 

Channels 14 and i24NEWS news projected that the coalition would be able to remain in power, but with a smaller majority than it received in 2022, as it has consistently received in polling since then.

Netanyahu appeared defensive in a televised statement on Saturday night, during which he argued that the results of the nearly six-week war against Iran had been positive, and the ceasefire may not be final: “There are people who say ‘we have no achievements.’ There are giant achievements.”

“The campaign is not yet over, but even now it can be clearly stated: We have achieved historic accomplishments,” Netanyahu continued. “Iran tried to squeeze us in a stranglehold; Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Assad regime in Syria, the militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran itself. They wanted to choke us, and we are choking them. … Those who threatened to destroy us are now fighting for their own survival.” 

Netanyahu went on to list the war’s achievements: “We succeeded in crushing the nuclear program, crushing the missile program,” and brought Iran’s regime “to its lowest, weakest level since the establishment of the regime 47 years ago.” He also listed dozens of senior officials and military commanders who had been killed by Israel and weapons sites that had been destroyed.

Still, the prime minister acknowledged that the enriched uranium in Iran must be removed “either … by agreement, or it will come out in other ways.”

Netanyahu also spoke at length about negotiations with Lebanon as the IDF continued operations against Hezbollah. He said the talks would be about the disarmament of the Iran-backed terrorist group and “a real peace agreement” with Beirut.

In polls released the night before, Israeli channels 12 and 13 and public broadcaster Kan found that a narrow majority of Israelis (from 51% to 56%) said they oppose the two-week ceasefire with Iran. In addition, in a poll published Sunday by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, 61% of Israelis opposed the ceasefire, and less than a third (31%) said they believed that the Iranian regime was significantly harmed in the war. 

Elie Pieprz, an international political consultant who has worked on Likud campaigns, argued that Netanyahu doesn’t need the war to come to a conclusively positive end for Israel for him to use it to his political advantage.

“The prime minister has always thrived when something tantalizing is very close, and [he can say] ‘if you just give me another term, I can bring this home,” Pieprz said. “I think regime change [in Iran] is exactly one of those things.”

Conversely, Nilly Richman, a strategist who has worked with President Isaac Herzog and launched Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, told Jewish Insider that “there is no doubt that Netanyahu is stressed, and he is broadcasting it.” 

According to Richman, the stress comes from the fact that “the polls aren’t bringing [Netanyahu] to the point he hoped to be in after this war” and that he will have to testify again in the corruption trials against him this week, now that Israel is no longer in a state of emergency.

According to Kan’s poll, the current coalition parties were projected to receive 51 seats, while Zionist opposition parties got 59. Likud received 25 seats, down from 28 in the previous week’s polls, while former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s yet-unnamed party was steady at 19.

On Channel 12, Israel’s most-watched news broadcast, Likud was projected to drop to 25 from 27 last week, and Bennett to rise from 20 to 22 seats. The coalition would get 50 seats, and the Zionist opposition 60, according to the poll.

In Channel 13’s poll, the coalition got 54 seats and the Zionist opposition received 55. Likud received 22 seats, up from 25 last week, and Bennett went from 18 to 21.

Newer, more right-leaning channels 14 and i24 News, however, showed Netanyahu would be able to form a majority coalition with his current partners. They did not ask about support for the ceasefire.

In i24’s poll, Likud received 32 seats and former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar Party led the opposition with 14 seats. The coalition would win 64 seats and the Zionist opposition received 45.

Pro-Netanyahu Channel 14, whose pollster, former Netanyahu aide Shlomo Filber, most accurately predicted the results of the last election, found that the right-wing bloc received 66 seats while the Zionist opposition received 42. The poll also gave Likud 36 seats and Bennett’s party 10, with Yashar leading the Zionist opposition with 11 seats.

Filber’s poll was also the only one asking about the Joint List — a bloc of all four Arab parties, which they have said they plan to form — rather than polling them as the two separate blocs they have in the current Knesset – and found that the singular bloc received 12 seats, more than any Zionist opposition party.

Former Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s party did not pass the electoral threshold in any of the polls, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s party passed it in the polls from Channels 13 and 14 and i24.

Pieprz said that “polls taken six months out [to the election] are not super-relevant, [though] there is value to tracking polls.”

Richman argued that “polls taken a moment after something happened are meaningless. It takes a moment for everything to sink in.” She also noted that “people want to see what will happen in two weeks,” when the current ceasefire with Iran is due to expire.

However, she pointed to a poll Channel 12 took of residents of Israel’s north as especially significant. Residents of the north are worth about 35 Knesset seats, and continue to be attacked by Hezbollah multiple times a day. The poll found that 70% of them — including a third of those who voted for the coalition in the last election — give the government a bad grade in dealing with their issues. While in 2022, the number of coalition and Zionist opposition voters in the north were about even, the Zionist opposition is now leading in the north by eight points.

Richman estimated that “three to four seats could move between the blocs.”

Much of that movement is from Likud to former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Israel Beytenu party, which is “on the right, but against Bibi,” Reichman said. She said that Liberman has kept his distance from the center-left and right-wing blocs, saying that he can be part of a coalition without Haredim or Arabs or the left-wing Democrats Party, a claim that appeals to moderate right-wing voters.

Pieprz said that, in line with Liberman’s more independent messaging, he may be signaling that he would be willing to join a coalition with Netanyahu but without Haredi parties, and that Netanyahu may be willing to do that rather than enter another cycle of multiple consecutive elections. “I don’t think Bibi will feel indebted to the Haredim,” he said.

Richman said moderate right-wing voters who don’t want to vote for Netanyahu are not moving toward Bennett, who is hawkish and holds right-wing positions on settlements, the economy and more. “Bennett will have to betray the left so that the right will forgive him” for forming a coalition with left-wing parties and an Arab party in 2021, she argued.

Pieprz said that Bennett is “moving in a downward trend” in the polls, and that “people in the opposition express frustration that he’s not going after voters on the right, and instead trying to concretize a base on the left, creating a problematic dynamic. I don’t think he can maintain it for six months.”

Pieprz noted that there has been a lot of infighting within the Zionist opposition, especially between Eisenkot and Bennett for dominance in the bloc.While calling the infighting “a bad look, they will never win that way,” he said they “have enough time to reconfigure and get on the same page and act in a way that shows the Israeli public that there is a legitimate alternative to Netanyahu.”  

He posited that Netanyahu “is in relatively good shape, primarily because there is not a robust and developed opposition. … People supporting the prime minister are pretty solid. It would take a lot to dislodge [their votes]. In the opposition, there is fluidity.” 

Pieprz, however, said that Netanyahu “squeezed out a lot of the political benefit of the war itself” — such as passing a budget that will allow his coalition to survive months longer than it may have — “and now he has to frame [the war] properly over the next six months. … He can make that case ‘allow me and the team that got us to this point to push it over the top.’”

Richman noted that the successful attacks on Iran’s nuclear program during last year’s 12-day war did not impact Netanyahu’s political standing much, but projected that after this war, the prime minister is likely to decline further in the polls.

“Bibi built [a monster] that ate him,” she said. “If Iran is so scary … Well, [Israel] attacked Iran and not much happened to us, Israel wasn’t destroyed, so we don’t need [Netanyahu] anymore. It’s like [former UK Prime Minister] Winston Churchill” — who lost an election right after World War II and Netanyahu is known to admire — “Be careful what you wish for, Bibi.” 

Israel is working to launch direct negotiations with Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Thursday.

“In light of the repeated requests from Lebanon to open direct negotiations with Israel, I instructed the Security Cabinet yesterday to start direct negotiations with Lebanon as soon as possible,” Netanyahu said in a statement from his office.

Netanyahu’s announcement came as President Donald Trump said in a call with Israel’s Channel 13 that he told the prime minister to scale back its strikes on Lebanon. 

A source familiar with the matter told Jewish Insider that talks would begin next week in Washington, with the U.S. facilitating. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter and his Lebanese counterpart, Nada Hamadeh Moawad, will represent their countries in the talks.

The negotiations, Netanyahu said, will focus on disarming Hezbollah and making peace between Israel and Lebanon.

“Israel appreciates the call today by Lebanon’s prime minister to demilitarize Beirut,” Netanyahu stated.

Minutes after Netanyahu’s announcement, Hezbollah shot rockets at northern Israel. 

Earlier Thursday, the Lebanese cabinet told the armed forces to ensure its monopoly on force in Beirut, meaning that Hezbollah would not be able to operate in the city. 

“The army and security forces are requested to immediately begin reinforcing the full imposition of state authority over Beirut Governorate and to monopolize weapons in the hands of legitimate authorities alone,” Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.

Meeting a day after Israel struck 100 targets in Beirut, the cabinet also decided to lodge a complaint against Israel with the United Nations Security Council. It called for Lebanon to be included in the current ceasefire in the Iran war.

Jerusalem and Washington have said that Israel’s war against Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire. 

Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire deal at the end of 2024, which was brokered by the Biden administration and supported by the incoming Trump administration. As part of the agreement, the Lebanese Armed Forces were meant to ensure Hezbollah was disarmed south of the Litani River, however, proved incapable of doing so, and the Shi’ite terrorist group amassed arms and fighters near the Lebanon-Israel border. 

The current round of fighting began soon after the war with Iran in late February, when Hezbollah began launching rockets, missiles and drones at Israel. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the Iranian proxy had shot 6,500 projectiles at Israel in 40 days.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has called to hold direct negotiations with Israel repeatedly over the past five weeks, including on Thursday.

Good Thursday afternoon!

This P.M. edition is reserved for our premium subscribers — offering a forward-focused read on what we’re tracking now and what’s coming next.

It’s me again — Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider and curator, along with assists from my colleagues, of the Daily Overtime. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts and feedback by replying to this email.

📡On Our Radar

Notable developments and interesting tidbits we’re tracking

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again voiced skepticism about the U.S.’ ability to reach an agreement with Iran as he departed Joint Base Andrews today, reports Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov, who is traveling with the prime minister’s delegation.

A day after his White House meeting with President Donald Trump, Netanyahu told reporters, “The president thinks the Iranians understand who they’re dealing with. He thinks the conditions he is setting, combined with their understanding that they made a mistake last time not reaching a deal, could bring them to agree to conditions that will allow a good deal to be reached.”

The prime minister’s view was more reserved: “I do not hide my general skepticism about the possibility of any deal with Iran.” Netanyahu said he told Trump that if a deal is indeed reached, “it must include the components that are important to us, the State of Israel, and, I think, the entire international community: not just the nuclear matter, but also ballistic missiles and Iranian proxies in the region.”

The Prime Minister’s Office also said Netanyahu will not be returning to Washington next week as scheduled, in order to speak at an AIPAC conference, and will instead appear virtually…

At a press conference this afternoon, Trump said the timeline for a potential deal with Iran is “over the next month … should happen quickly.” Asked why Netanyahu wants him to stop negotiating, Trump said, “He didn’t say that, we didn’t discuss that. I’ll talk to [Iran] as long as I like.” Trump additionally said Israeli President Isaac Herzog “should be ashamed of himself” and called him “disgraceful” for not issuing a pardon to Netanyahu…

The Trump administration smuggled around 6,000 Starlink terminals, used to establish internet connection, to activists in Iran during the regime’s violent suppression of nationwide protests, which included internet blackouts, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal…

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his team refused to condemn antisemitic and pro-Hamas social media posts from the co-founder of the group ‘Hot Girls for Zohran’ when pressed by JI’s Will Bredderman and other reporters today.

Speaking from City Hall, Mamdani would only stress that Gilani’s organization operated independently of his official election effort: “This was an individual leading an outside group and was never paid for by our campaign,” said Mamdani. “If New Yorkers want to know my views then they can hear it directly from me.

But when JI pressed the mayor directly whether he condemned the content of Gilani’s posts, he refused to respond and left the room, similar to how he fled questions on the matter from Politico on Wednesday…

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) urged the Trump administration today to investigate reports that a clique of radical staffers at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had launched an anti-Israel “working group” inside the agency, JI’s Will Bredderman reports.

In a letter addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stefanik decried reports that employees had met during work hours at the city bureaucracy’s Queens headquarters. She raised the possibility that the department’s federal funding might have gone toward a prohibited political purpose — or that the gathering may have violated civil rights protections by creating a discriminatory environment for Jewish New Yorkers…

The nomination of Jeremy Carl, tapped to be the assistant secretary of state for international organizations, appears bound to fail after Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) announced his opposition to Carl’s confirmation following his contentious hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

Curtis and a series of Democrats questioned Carl over past antisemitic, anti-Israel and otherwise inflammatory comments that the nominee had made online and in a series of podcast appearances, including his assertion that the U.S. spends too much time and energy on Israel “often to the detriment of our own national interest” and that “the Jews love to see themselves as oppressed”…

CENTCOM announced today it had completed a “deliberate and conditions-based” withdrawal of U.S. forces from al-Tanf Garrison in Syria, handing control of the site on the country’s border with Iraq and Jordan to forces aligned with the Syrian government. The U.S. has had a presence at the base since 2016 as part of its fight against ISIS; over 7,000 ISIS detainees are also being transitioned out of Syria into Iraq, while the U.S. troops were relocated to Jordan…

Germany joined the growing calls today for U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to resign, after France did the same yesterday, over her recent speech at the Al Jazeera Forum where she called Israel humanity’s “common enemy.” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul wrote on X, “I respect the system of independent rapporteurs of the UN. However, Ms. Albanese has already repeatedly failed in the past. I condemn her recent statements about Israel. She is untenable in her position”…

Israeli authorities arrested several people, and indicted one army reservist and one civilian, for allegedly using classified information to place bets on the popular prediction market Polymarket around the timing of Israel’s war with Iran last June, the Shin Bet announced today. The bets all correctly predicted the timeline of the strikes, raking in more than $150,000, Israeli media reported…

⏩ Tomorrow’s Agenda, Today

An early look at tomorrow’s storylines and schedule to keep you a step ahead

Keep an eye out in Jewish Insider for reporting on the race to succeed Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, where the congresswoman is coming out forcefully against the lone Jewish candidate in the race — for being too supportive of Netanyahu.

The Munich Security Conference kicks off tomorrow, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio leading the U.S. delegation and speaking from the main stage on Saturday. Dozens of members of Congress were also expected to attend — official travel was canceled due to the impending shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security tomorrow, but members still may attend on their own. One member making a foray into foreign policy is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who will be speaking on two panels at the high-level summit. Other Democrats in attendance will be California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

In observance of President’s Day, we’ll be back in your inbox with the Daily Overtime on Tuesday. Shabbat Shalom!

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced a last-minute trip to Washington on Wednesday to discuss talks between the U.S. and Iran, a day after President Donald Trump praised the negotiations with Tehran.

“The Prime Minister believes any negotiations must include limitations on ballistic missiles and a halting of the support for the Iranian axis,” the statement, sent Saturday night, read.

White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Oman on Friday.

Later Friday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that the talks had been “very good.” 

“Iran looks like it wants to make a deal very badly,” he said. “We have to see what that deal is, but I think Iran wants to make a deal very badly, like they should. Last time, they didn’t want to make a deal, but I think this time they feel differently.”

Asked about Iran’s demand that the talks only be about nuclear weapons, Trump said, “That would be acceptable. One thing, right up front, no nuclear weapons. … They weren’t willing to do that [last year]; now they are willing to do much more.” 

The president also said that he is in “no rush” in the negotiations, adding, “If you remember in Venezuela, we waited around for a while.”

Trump indicated that the military threat to Iran still stands: “We have a big armada, a big fleet heading in that direction that will be there soon, so we’ll see how that works out. … If they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.” 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed skepticism that the negotiations would bring about an acceptable agreement, and called for Congressional review and approval, which the 2015 Iran nuclear deal lacked. 

“I hope it can meet our national security objectives and the needs of the people of Iran through diplomacy,” Graham wrote on X. “Given Iran’s behavior regarding deals, it could be a tough sell. However, I am open-minded, understanding [that] any agreement with the Islamic Republic and the United States must come to Congress for review and a vote.” 

Meanwhile, in Iran, videos and photos were posted online of Iranians once again protesting the regime using methods other than mass demonstrations, The Wall Street Journal reported, including shouting slogans at funerals, doctors condemning the arrest of colleagues for treating wounded protesters, hosting memorials for wounded protesters and more. 

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign affairs minister, said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace represents the only viable path forward for Gaza, confirming that Doha has been invited to join the initiative.

“Yes, we were invited to the board,” Al Thani said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We are happy to be a contributor to peace and stability in our region. There are a lot of challenges in the implementation, but we have no alternative paths to seek right now.”

Al Thani emphasized that any participating countries would need to “work hard” to ensure the board functions effectively and serves as a stabilizing force.

“President Trump has proposed this path to move forward. We have a lot of work to be done,” said Al Thani. “I think that the most important thing right now is to ensure that Gaza is stabilized and we ensure that the withdrawal of the Israeli forces happens as soon as possible, and ensure that the people can get their life back as soon as possible. That should be the key focus for the Board of Peace.”

Trump has invited a range of countries to join the board, including the U.K., Canada, France and Jordan, as well as China and Russia. As of Wednesday, confirmed participants included Israel, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Belarus, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Under Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan, the board was initially created to oversee post-Hamas governance in Gaza and supervise a committee of Palestinian technocrats. However, the group’s new charter does not mention Gaza or the United Nations. Critics have argued that the board’s expanded mandate, along with Trump’s ramped up criticism of the U.N., are signs the group could evolve into a larger international authority intended to rival or sideline existing institutions.

Asked at a press conference on Wednesday if he intends for the body to replace the U.N., Trump said it “might.” “Wish the United Nations could do more, wish we didn’t need a Board of Peace,” he said. 

Al Thani also addressed rising tensions with Iran, urging regional leaders to remain “cool-headed” and “resort to wisdom” amid the unrest inside the country in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Israel and regional partners watched closely as the Trump administration weighed — and ultimately held off on — military strikes in response to Tehran’s crackdown on protesters, which Trump had described as a red line.

While the president has not specified what steps the U.S. may take next, reports have indicated that Israel and Arab states, including Qatar, conveyed concerns about military action. Asked whether Doha had clashed with Washington over the issue, Al Thani suggested otherwise.

“We didn’t argue with the Americans,” he said. “What we offer, as a partner and as an ally of the United States, is honest advice that the best way forward is to find a diplomatic solution.”

Al Thani said Qatar and the U.S. remain in “continuous dialogue,” but reiterated Doha’s opposition to military escalation, even as a means of addressing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“We don’t want to see military escalation in our region,” said Al Thani. “We always believe that there is a room for diplomacy, and that’s been our approach in the State of Qatar, and we will always keep advocating for peaceful resolution. We need to understand that any escalation will have consequences.”

In the last decade and a half, Hungary has gained a reputation as the most conservative European nation, a distinction happily touted by the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has been in office since 2010. 

In building that reputation, Orbán has courted controversy — with inflammatory comments about racial minorities and the LGBTQ community, by taking measures that critics say erode the country’s democracy and by adopting a more pro-Russia stance than most of the rest of the European Union. His hard-line policies are part of why Orbán and President Donald Trump have been able to cultivate a close relationship, with the U.S. and Hungary now far more aligned than they were during the Biden administration.

“That’s an understatement,” János Bóka, Hungary’s minister for EU affairs, told Jewish Insider with a laugh during a visit to Washington last week. 

But if Trump has taken a page from Orbán’s conservative governing playbook, bringing the two countries closer together, Bóka said there is one political trend playing out among American conservatives that he hopes Hungary avoids: the rise of antisemitism on the political right. 

“I am aware of the discussion that you are now having in the States on the reviving of antisemitism on the right. One of the added values of my trip in the U.S. is that I can study this firsthand and can discuss this with people so I have a better understanding,” Bóka said. “This phenomenon is something that is very difficult for me to understand, because at least in Hungary and in most parts of Europe, it doesn’t have a parallel, or at least not yet.”

That’s because Bóka says Hungary has all but eliminated right-wing antisemitism and the lingering vestiges of Nazi ideology, or at the very least that the country has made it “politically irrelevant.” 

“I cannot pretend the 20th century did not happen,” said Bóka, who as of May also serves as Hungary’s special commissioner tasked with fighting antisemitism. But, he added, “this government has basically expelled political antisemitism from the political discourse.” 

The situation in Hungary is more complicated than Bóka let on. Orbán has faced criticism from Jewish organizations for years over his targeting of Hungarian Holocaust survivor and financier George Soros, with the Anti-Defamation League writing in 2018 that the Hungarian campaign against Soros is “chilling.” Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian who served as the State Department’s antisemitism envoy during the Biden administration, said in 2022 that Orbán’s rhetoric warning against racial mixing “clearly evokes Nazi racial ideology.” 

Bóka, who was in Washington to meet with American Jewish communal leaders, said Hungary has adopted a “zero-tolerance policy toward antisemitism,” and said the allegation that Orbán is antisemitic is “wrong” and “a misunderstanding of what he does.”

Similar to Trump, Budapest has adopted the stated goal of combating antisemitism, even if its approach is controversial and targeted toward one particular political ideology. And like Trump, Bóka views the fight against antisemitism as tied to the country’s broader efforts to limit migration. 

“We see some elements coming from the far left and as a part of a European network that is becoming more active and vocal in Hungary as well in the past few months. But I think this is very limited,” said Bóka. “We haven’t seen violent incidents that are in any way similar to what we see in some Western European cities because of the strict migration policy we have in place. And also because of the zero tolerance policy on antisemitism, we don’t see radical Islamism as a political factor in Hungary.” 

Because his job description includes Hungary’s relationship with the EU, Bóka sees his purview as broader than just antisemitism in Hungary. He called it a “European challenge” that must be addressed together. “Antisemitism exists in all EU member states, including Hungary,” Bóka acknowledged. He thinks he — and Hungary — have something to offer other European nations as they seek to combat antisemitism. 

His first lesson to them is about Israel: If you are serious about fighting antisemitism, Bóka argues, attacking Israel’s actions in Gaza in EU forums will undermine that goal. Israel has leaned heavily on Orbán as a pro-Israel bulwark in the EU. Hungary announced earlier this year that it would leave the International Criminal Court to protest its treatment of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an arrest warrant from the body. 

Jewish communities “will never believe that you are credible, that you have a real political commitment for fighting antisemitism, if at the same time you send very mixed messages as far as your relationship with the State of Israel is concerned,” said Bóka. “If you start speaking the language of isolation, sanctions and so forth, then you will lose the opportunity to cooperate with the State of Israel on fighting antisemitism in Europe, which is indispensable.” 

During his time in Washington, Bóka met with Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. antisemitism special envoy. Kaploun had his Senate confirmation hearing last week but has not yet been confirmed. Bóka also met in New York with Jeff Bartos, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for management and reform. He said he is “convinced” that the U.S. and Hungary can collaborate on fighting antisemitism. 

“I believe that we have a very similar strategic view on objectives and the ways and means to get there,” said Bóka. “I think there’s a lot of openness on both sides to cooperate.”

Israel’s influential minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, resigned from his post on Tuesday, three years after assuming the role.

“This government will be defined both by the attack on October 7th and by the prosecution of the two-year, seven-front, war that followed,” Dermer, widely regarded as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisor, wrote in his resignation letter.

Israeli media had reported for months that Dermer’s departure was expected.

Dermer noted that he had initially promised his family to work in the position for two years only, but extended his tenure twice, with their blessing, “first to work with you [Netanyahu] to remove the existential threat posed by Iran’s military nuclear capability and second to end the war in Gaza on Israel’s terms and bring our hostages home.” 

Dermer has led Israel’s ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations since February. He is expected to stay on as Netanyahu’s envoy to continue handling the future of the Gaza portfolio, political sources recently told Jewish Insider. U.S.-born and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Dermer has long played a central role in managing Israel’s relationship with the U.S.

“What the future holds for me, I do not know. But I do know this: No matter what I do, I will continue to do my part to help secure the future of the Jewish people,” Dermer said.

Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.

Majed al-Ansari, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman and advisor to the prime minister, praised Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers in social media and blog posts prior to taking up his post in 2022.

Al-Ansari is one of the Qatari government’s most public faces, hosting regular press briefings and giving interviews about the Gulf state, including to Israeli media. 

In May 2021, when Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched 130 rockets at Israel, Al-Ansari posted his support on X, saying that “Palestine emerges to remind this nation of its glory and the greatness of its message.” Al-Ansari added the hashtag #Tel_Aviv_is_burning to his post.

During the ensuing 11 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, and rioting by Israeli Arabs in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel, Al-Ansari posted: “Jerusalem, the interior [of Israel], the West Bank, Gaza … rise with one voice against the occupier. This unity is what terrifies the enemy the most. Oh Allah, unite their word and guide their aim.” 

The posts were resurfaced by analyst Eitan Fischberger.

Al-Ansari also maintained a blog, which he linked to on his verified X account. 

In one blog post, Al-Ansari praised the Second Intifada — the 2000-2005 Palestinian terror campaign — against the “Zionist enemy” and its “martyrdom operations,” a euphemism for terrorist attacks. He credited the intifada with leading Israel to pull out of Gaza in 2005. 

In an overview of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis in recent decades, Al-Ansari argued that “the Israeli military losses were great, but the most important loss was Tel Aviv’s loss of a large part of its narrative and story of its victimhood in the West, following the spread of images of the brutal aggression throughout the world.” 

Al-Ansari encouraged “a celebration of the continued march toward victory in the conflict,” praising what he described as the Palestinians’ advancement from “resistance with stones and bare chests [to] the launching of 3,000 rockets in ten days toward the entity’s [Israel’s] cities.” 

In another blog post, in which Al-Ansari wrote about the Israeli Arab riots in May 2021, which included burning down Jewish-owned businesses and a synagogue, he falsely claimed that “the occupation forces were forced to withdraw” from Lod — a central Israeli city in which Ben Gurion Airport continued to operate normally and most neighborhoods continued to function peacefully. 

The blog and X posts were written when Al-Ansari was the head of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies. The blog was deleted after Jewish Insider sent a request for comment about the matter to the Qatari Embassy, which the embassy did not respond to.

In earlier posts on an unverified Facebook account under Al-Ansari’s name, the Qatari spokesman repeatedly called President Donald Trump a racist.

In 2015, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, Al-Ansari wrote, “We call on the board of directors of Qatar Airways to cut ties with Trump and his racist empire.” Also that year, he lamented that the head of Qatar Airways “brags about his friendship with this racist.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like any former Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen has long been a relatively elusive figure in Israeli public life. So his recent embrace of the spotlight has left Israeli politicos wondering whether he will run for prime minister in the next election. 

While the name “Yossi Cohen” is so generic in Israel that one may think it’s an alias akin to “John Smith,” it is, in fact, the real name of the intelligence officer who was nicknamed “Callan” for his favorite British spy show, and “the model” for his dapper style and perfectly-gelled coif. He first received public attention as deputy Mossad chief known only as “Y,” and emerged from the shadows with his real name and face in 2013 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed him national security advisor. Cohen was appointed head of the Mossad two years later, a job he retained for six years.

Cohen received attention for commanding ambitious Mossad operations, such as smuggling Iran’s nuclear archive to Israel, and for Netanyahu reportedly naming him as one of his possible heirs, but he rarely gave interviews — until now. 

Cohen has been on a Hebrew media blitz ahead of Tuesday’s release of his new book, The Sword of Freedom: Israel, Mossad and the Secret War, in Hebrew and English.

The book is a mix of memoir, in which he discusses becoming the first kippah-wearing graduate of the Mossad cadets’ course and his undercover missions, recruiting spies within Hezbollah and the Iranian nuclear program, as well as his rise to head the organization and lead major operations. It also includes commentary on recent events, including the failures of the defense establishment — and less so of politicians, in his description — on Oct. 7, 2023, the ongoing war and hostage negotiations. Cohen laments that things would have gone better if his advice in past years had been heeded.  

It reads, in many ways, like the kind of book a politician would publish before a big run, to let potential voters get to know him — albeit with the much more exciting elements of spycraft. 

Yet, in an interview with Jewish Insider last week at his office in a Tel Aviv high-rise, where Cohen’s day job is representing the Japanese investment holding company SoftBank in Israel, he dismissed the idea that his book was the first step in a political campaign.

“That was not the reason for me to write the book,” he said. “I started writing the book something like three years ago, much earlier. I decided to [publish the book] now, because I believe that now is the time … Since I started the book we had the judicial reform, the seventh of October, a war against Hezbollah and the Iranian events. Each of those chapters had to be updated.”

Still, Cohen added, “I can’t say that one day it will not serve my political goals if I will decide to go into politics.”

Thus far, Cohen has kept politics as an “if.” In the past, it was a “no,” he said, but now, he’s thinking about it.

“I am not entering any politics right now,” he clarified. “I stay uninvolved in this kind of politics because nothing is happening. The entire Israeli political system is a little bit stuck. I’m not assessing that any kind of election will happen before the end of next year, November 2026 as planned,” when the next Israeli elections are scheduled to occur. 

Cohen said he does not have a team ready for a political campaign, and that all he is doing currently is promoting his book.

The former Mossad chief said that “I was always a Likudnik,” identifying with ideas of the party’s ideological forebear Ze’ev Jabotinsky, but “all options are open” as to whether he would join an existing party or start his own.

He would not join Likud in its current iteration unless it is “reshaped,” he said, in an apparent reference to the vocal populism from within the party’s ranks in the Knesset.

“I don’t want to criticize people personally … but it’s a different party today. It’s not the party that I grew up on. It’s so totally different.”

As to whether he would wait for Netanyahu to leave the political scene, Cohen said, “Definitely this is not the time. …Currently, I am staying in business, 100%.”

Cohen and Netanyahu have not spoken in over a year and a half, when several months into the war the former intelligence chief warned the prime minister that senior defense figures may try to manipulate investigations into the failure of Oct. 7 to exonerate themselves. 

Despite the long disconnect, Cohen said that there is no rupture between them, because they had an excellent working relationship, but they were not personal friends. He noted that before the war they had not spoken for a long time; Netanyahu offered him the role of defense minister in late 2022, but Cohen could not legally take it because of a required cooling-off period between serving as a senior defense officer and entering politics.

Cohen has somewhat shielded Netanyahu from blame for the failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks, referring in his book to the security establishment’s failure and asserting that “there is no one else to blame.”

He clarified in his interview with JI that “the political leadership always has responsibility” for events such as Oct. 7 and called for a state commission of inquiry to be established, something that Netanyahu has sought to avoid.

“We must make sure to investigate what has to be investigated,” Cohen said. “The intelligence level was poor. It was either not gathered properly or not interpreted properly, but the result was super poor. We didn’t give the State of Israel any alerts about a major attack. … We didn’t have any workable defense lines operating correctly at our borders.”

“There’s the Shin Bet and IDF intelligence who have to know these things, and since they didn’t, and they didn’t push back the enemy when it entered the State of Israel or counter the enemy before it entered Israel, that’s a failure. You don’t need an investigation to know that. Then, of course, I think that the government was responsible for everything that happened under its auspices,” he said.

Soon after Oct. 7, Netanyahu tasked Cohen with trying to find a way to get Palestinian civilians out of Gaza so Israel would be able to fight Hamas with fewer civilian casualties.

“The Mossad and I were trying to convince [Egypt] to let the Palestinians leave, even for a short time, only the civilians … without anything, no cellular, no electronics, no armaments, no physical threats, to the Egyptian side,” he recalled. “Take them into the Sinai Peninsula for six months, one year at a time, a million or a million and a half people. …That was the plan. It didn’t work because [Egyptian President Abdelfatah] Sisi and his consultants said it will cause a kind of revolution in Egypt because of the hatred of Hamas…and their [affiliation] with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Nearly two years later, Cohen says “it’s hard to explain why … the world does not really embrace any Gazan immigrants. Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar even, or Egypt and Libya — a long list of Muslim countries — could say ‘I would take 50,000,’ ‘I would take 100,000,’ ‘Come live with us.’ No one said that, not even Muslim countries. Even if … they would all be sent back home.”

Cohen said the story demonstrates the lengths to which Israel went to protect Gazan civilians from the war.

“Israel does not mean to harm civilians,” he said. “We do not starve them, we do not fight a war against any of the civilians. We keep the international war laws very tightly. But now they’re in [Gaza] and we can’t do much. We try to help them, but it’s a war zone. What I was trying to do is send them away from a war zone.”

As to how the war in Gaza should end, “the best case scenario should be connected to a hostage deal. If there is a hostage deal today, Israel should take it,” he said, days before Israel attempted to strike Hamas leaders in Qatar, which has mediated the hostage and ceasefire talks. 

While Cohen said he is not privy to the details of the talks, he said “if there is a deal that gets some of our hostages home and for this we have to pay a price of pausing our military action as we did in the past, I will be very much in favor.”

At the same time, he said “the State of Israel cannot afford to not complete the defeat of Hamas.”

Cohen said he did not have an answer as to who should administer Gaza after the war. He dismissed the control some Gazan families have of small areas, saying “it’s two and a half people … Someone has to take care of them, to supply them with … social services, health services. 

He was, however, certain that the Palestinian Authority should not be involved, because it is not capable of managing Gaza. “We tried that,” he said, referring to Hamas deposing the PA in Gaza in 2006. He also noted that Israel has been protecting PA President Mahmoud Abbas: “We’re fighting for him and with him against Hamas in his territories.” 

Cohen wrote in the book about his involvement in another element of the war in the past two years: the pager attack in which Israel detonated hundreds of beepers belonging to Hezbollah terrorist operatives in Lebanon.

“It started 25 or so years ago, when I was the head of a division in the Mossad,” he recounted. “We understood … there is something new that we can do, and that is selling to our enemies tampered, manipulated equipment. That is the family of the pagers and walkie-talkies.”

One of the early operations in that vein was the sale of a special calibrated table sold to Iran for use in its nuclear program, which later exploded, but the pager operation was the largest in magnitude. Other tampered equipment was used for surveillance or for tracking locations.

“These are things we learned to do 20 years ago,” he said. “Building up this kind of relationship with the buyers is something very hard to do because they check you … they go into everything, so you have to be real. The concept was invented, and now you see the results.”

Cohen said that the IDF and Mossad “did a beautiful job” in the 12-day war against Iran in June: “We prepared a lot of capabilities inside Iran to allow for that and it was operated correctly during the war.”

Israel must always be prepared for the next round against Iran, he added.

“We’re not sure that Iran will not go back and try to enrich uranium again,” he said. “They claim that they can rebuild their sites …They [the West] said the destruction was huge, and I believe the Western side on that. Nevertheless, if they [rebuild] and there is a threat coming from that direction, the only thing that I can suggest my government and the administration [do] is to attack it.”

Cohen frequently lamented in his book that the Israeli defense establishment is insufficiently aggressive and overly cautious.

The former Mossad chief said he felt that his “responsibility was to counter our enemies brutally. If I see terrorism, I have to counter it. If I see Iranian nuclear sites, I have to counter them. If I see someone anywhere, anyhow trying to plan something against the State of Israel, I have to counter it. And I did not always feel that this was the methodology being practiced in other bodies.”

By not nipping growing threats in the bud, Cohen argued, Israel allowed them to grow to a magnitude that it became too hesitant to act against. 

The war in Iran, however, was an example of a positive change, Cohen said.

“I think that [Eyal] Zamir as [IDF] chief of staff is doing an amazing job,” he said. “He’s much more aggressive. He’s telling the government … ‘Yeah, there will be some missiles coming back to our side, but we can deal with it.’”

“Now, on the Iranian side, they know we can do it and we may do it again,” Cohen added.

Cohen has been deeply involved in Israel’s unofficial relations with Arab states, and said he is still optimistic that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will seek normalization with Israel, but only after the war ends.

“They cannot make a peace treaty with a country at war. It doesn’t work in the Muslim world. … He would be very cautious entering these kinds of negotiations right now, because people are saying about Israelis, ‘Look what they do to our brothers in Palestine.’ But the minute the whole war will be over, I expect that he will sign an agreement with us,” Cohen said.

As to the Saudi demand for concrete steps towards Palestinian statehood in exchange for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, Cohen said “a Palestinian state is something that is not realistic anymore,” again citing the PA’s inability to govern Gaza.

At the same time, Cohen opposed Israeli annexation of parts or all of the West Bank and said he finds it unlikely that the government will do it.

“Countries that have an agreement with us don’t want that to happen because it kills the idea of any future Palestinian negotiations and they can’t live with that,” he said. 

Cohen posited that Israel will not annex parts of the West Bank because it “closes the door” on an eventual arrangement with the Palestinians.

“The reality is that since 1967, we haven’t annexed anything in the West Bank, right?” he said. “And why is that? … Because we want to leave a door open for negotiations with the Palestinians. That is why any government, even the right of [Menachem] Begin and Netanyahu, have not annexed anything in the West Bank.”

Cohen predicted that will continue to be the case for decades.

“I’m not sure how long it will take to create something better with the Palestinians that we see today, that will transform them into a friendly country and territory. They’re a deadly enemy, this is what we have, even in the West Bank. And on the other hand, this is territory that we cannot confiscate.”

“I think the status quo should be kept,” he added.

Early in the book, Cohen expressed his appreciation for Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him “a deeply strategic thinker and natural leader,” and in the interview last week, he stuck with that position, despite the ongoing war in Ukraine and Russia’s turn away from Israel and alliance with its enemies in recent years.

Cohen said that “many things that the State of Israel has done with Putin are unknown to the public. When I stated that, I based it on things that we have done with the Russian administration for many years, and Syria is an example,” referring to the deconfliction mechanism between Jerusalem and Moscow when the Russian Army was in Syria to prop up then-President Bashar al-Assad.

“The only mediators [between Israel and Syria] were the Russians, and what we saw happening was that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah terrorists were coming down to our borders,” Cohen recalled. “We didn’t want that, and we couldn’t speak to Hezbollah or to the IRGC. So the only one that was taking part in these negotiations was Putin, who eventually pushed [Iran-backed troops] back 40 kilometers. … We needed him to be on our side, and he was.” 

Cohen also spoke of Russia finding and returning the body of IDF soldier Zachary Baumel, which had been missing in Syria since 1982.

“The operation that [Putin] conducted inside Syria … was amazing. I was there in the Russian Ministry of Defense in a ceremony where we got the body of an Israeli soldier to be brought back to a Jewish grave… I was in Moscow and Jerusalem on the same day. We had a ceremony late in the afternoon to bury him. I was involved in looking for his body my whole life, and here Russia did it for us. … That’s a big thing,” Cohen said.

Cohen also mentioned the criticism of Israel soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Israel cannot fight all wars. [The Biden administration] said we have to support Ukraine with more weapons. Come on. If you want to support Ukraine with more weapons, you’re welcome to do that. I mean, Israel has other interests in the region, like with Russia. [Israel is] a small country at the end of the day … and very vulnerable.” 

When confronted with the idea that American audiences may not appreciate his praise of Putin, Cohen said “you don’t have to agree with everything Russia does, and they will conduct their own policies if you agree to it or not.”

Israel needs to “negotiate, engage with leaders on the other side, to make sure that good things happen,” Cohen said. “This is what I cherish, the way President [Donald] Trump conducts things with Russia, because disengagement with them will not make the war [in Ukraine] end just because you wish for it to end. … You have to know how to conduct your international relationships, and somehow you have to conduct them with your enemies … that are not in line with your values.” 

Asked why he first wrote his book, together with a team, in English and then had it translated into Hebrew, Cohen said that the American audience is important to him because “America is the only friend we have” in Israel.

The book, he said, “is not only about me, it’s about the world and international relationships, and I thought America is the right place to [publish] that first.”

In addition, Cohen said he wanted to communicate to the Jewish communities in the U.S. and other countries “to tell them what the State of Israel is and how important the relationship with Jewish communities is to me. They are very dear to me. … I know there is a lot of work that’s missing recently with the Jewish communities in the U.S. and I want to be a positive player.” 

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent announcement of a Cabinet reshuffle comes at a tense time for British Jewry and the U.K.-Israel relationship, but experts in London told Jewish Insider on Sunday that new appointees in the Foreign Office and Home Office are likely to maintain the status quo, despite scrutiny of new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s past participation in anti-Israel activism. 

Absent from a Sunday gathering of tens of thousands of demonstrators in London to protest against antisemitism was any senior representative from Labour, a party whose previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had a history of antisemitic remarks and supporting antisemites, the rally’s organizer, Campaign Against Antisemitism, said. 

A new YouGov poll commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism found that the Jewish community is currently experiencing “the worst antisemitism in the U.K. in living memory”: One in five Britons holds antisemitic views and 45% believe Israel treats Palestinians like Nazis treated Jews.

A day earlier, about 1,500 people took part in a protest against the ban on Palestine Action — a group that broke into a Royal Air Force base earlier this year and damaged two planes — and its declaration as a terrorist group. Most of the attendees were arrested, as it is illegal to express support for terrorist organizations in the U.K. 

Meanwhile, Starmer made new Cabinet appointments, including Mahmood, the first woman of Pakistani Muslim origin in such a senior Cabinet post, who was scrutinized for her past participation in anti-Israel protests, raising questions on how she would address the frequent demonstrations in the U.K. 

A 2014 video of Mahmood resurfaced on X over the weekend, where it received millions of views. Mahmood made the selfie video during Operation Protective Edge, launched by Israel in Gaza after Hamas kidnapped three Israeli teenagers, at a protest outside a Sainsbury’s supermarket in Birmingham calling on the store to boycott Israeli products. Mahmood’s comments at the time, when she was already a member of parliament, focused on boycotting products from Israeli settlements, yet the viral post, boosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), falsely claimed she called to “globalize the Intifada.”

Days after the 2014 supermarket protest, Mamhood spoke against Israel at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign rally in London. She told Britons to start “getting involved with the boycott campaign,” and was met with cheers when she said the demonstration outside Sainsbury’s shut down the store for five hours. 

“Israel’s actions, killing our children, bombing our schools and hospitals, must be condemned. We know what they do in Israel. If [Prime Minister] David Cameron fails to speak up, it’s a moral outrage. … We will never stay silent,” she said.

In July of this year, Mahmood, who was justice secretary at the time, abstained on the parliamentary vote to ban Palestine Action, though she indicated on Sunday that she would uphold her predecessor’s decision, writing on X that “supporting Palestine and supporting a proscribed terrorist group are not the same thing.” The Home Office, which is responsible for the police, among other things, posted that “she backed [police] officers for arresting those who support … Palestine Action.” 

Jonathan Sacerdoti, a British Jewish journalist and columnist for The Spectator, argued that “there is no getting away from who she is and where she comes from.”

“She is not inspiring confidence in any Jews I know,” Sacerdoti added. “She appeals to the more antisemitic elements in the country. She is no friend of Israel and has never been shy about that … Her views are aligned with the Muslim electorate and community in the U.K. and beyond.” 

Sacerdoti argued that all Labour politicians face pressure “to placate the Muslim vote and the hard Left.”

“They won’t suddenly find their conscience on Israel,” he added.

Alex Hearn, a director of Labour Against Antisemitism, said of Mahmood: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much misinformation about someone.”

Hearn argued that not only was the video of Mahmood at the protest taken during her “pre-government, pre-political life,” but noted she has taken a more nuanced approach as a member of parliament and has “no red flags” in her record on Israel.

“She has attended Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests, but on Oct. 13, [2023], she wrote a letter to her constituents denouncing Hamas and saying, ‘I unequivocally condemn the despicable actions of Hamas,’ and talking about the hostages,” he said.

Of the letter, U.K. Jewish News’ deputy editor, Daniel Sugarman, said that “you can’t take that for granted in this country.” 

“I’m not with people saying it’s a disaster and she’s so anti-Israel,” he said. “I don’t think that at all. The reason she got this job is she’s been the most effective member of the government in its first year. She was a big success in her role [as justice secretary] … taking a hard line on criminality.”

Sugarman said “in some ways it doesn’t really matter who’s in those positions. … Every single Labour MP knows they are a potential target in the next election. The last general election was the first time there was a proper effort particularly from the Muslim community to field candidates to challenge Labour candidates who they felt weren’t sufficiently anti-Israel.”

Sugarman called the handful of those candidates who made it into parliament “Gaza independents,” and said that Mahmood only narrowly defeated one in her race. 

As home secretary, Mahmood “will be a major target,” he said. “Mahmood is now the face of [the Palestine Action] proscription and will be targeted politically by the wider anti-Israel brigade.” 

Hearn argued that “the claim that she harbors Islamist sympathies [is] contradicted by … [the fact that she was] attacked by Islamist groups in the last election … The idea that she supports those harassing, intimidating and threatening her doesn’t seem right at all.” 

More broadly, Mahmood is on the more conservative wing of the Labour Party when it comes to crime and immigration, Hearn noted, and expressed optimism that she will “do the right thing.”

Daniel Ritterband, director of communications for the pro-Israel group BICOM and a former political campaign director for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, similarly said that Mahmood’s record “exposes the tensions of the Muslim vote. Muslims are conservative in every aspect of their lives, yet they made strange bedfellows with progressives and socialists … [Mahmood] is quite conservative at heart. She has been a loyalist to Keir Starmer and helped rebrand the party and get it into a more centrist space.” 

In the decade since Mahmood appeared in the video calling to boycott Israeli products, she “learned how to be a politician. I think she is pragmatic,” Ritterband said.

As such, “there is no reason speaking to Jewish community groups engaged with the Home Office and counterterrorism police wouldn’t continue. It’s beneficial for both sides.” 

Mahmood’s predecessor in the Home Office was Yvette Cooper, whom Starmer appointed as foreign secretary succeeding David Lammy, who was named deputy prime minister on Friday – which Ritterband said was a demotion. 

Lammy’s ouster as foreign secretary likely had more to do with his past negative statements about President Donald Trump than Israel, Sugarman said.

Lammy was confrontational towards Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to meet with him when he visited Jerusalem. Cooper, Hearn said, “is more nuanced. … She is suited to approaching complex challenges, and there is no challenge more complex than the current-day Middle East.”

Ritterband said that Cooper has a better understanding of the Jewish community’s concerns, noting that her husband, Ed Balls, put Holocaust education into U.K. school curricula when he was education secretary.

According to Sugarman, “Yvette Cooper has a good relationship with people in the [Jewish] community and understands what we’re going through, but I don’t think there will be a magical change of the U.K. stance on Israel from what it has shifted to.”

“I don’t think the U.K. is going to magically not recognize a Palestinian state, unfortunately. Yvette Cooper is coming in the middle of this and she is not going to back out of a policy this government is committed to,” he said.

Similarly, Ritterband said that “it’s fair to say all of Starmer’s decisions on Israel are done for a domestic audience and have nothing to do with Israel.”

“Realistically,” Ritterband added, “Foreign Office civil servants are very anti-Israel and it takes a strong foreign secretary to resist the urges. Lammy made no signs of trying to do that. Cooper has more experience and probably knows how to manage.”

Hearn was optimistic about Cooper: “I think she seems positive towards Israel. She voted to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organization … She’s got a really strong parliamentary voting record. She didn’t sign letters calling for sanctions or to uphold [International Criminal Court] arrest warrants. She’s probably more friendly, even generally supportive, with a track record of opposing extreme pro-Palestinian activism.”

Sacerdoti, however, noted that in her first post on X since becoming foreign secretary, Cooper mentioned Russia and Ukraine, as well as “famine and conflict in Gaza.”

“Not hostages and not Hamas — an imaginary famine,” Sacerdoti said. “It’s clear the agenda won’t change in the Foreign Office … which is traditionally quite Arabist and not in favor of Israel.”

Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador in Canberra as well as three other embassy staffers on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accusing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of orchestrating attacks on a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher restaurant in Sydney.

Albanese, speaking at a press conference alongside the country’s top intelligence official, foreign minister and home affairs minister, called the plots “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil.” The expulsion of Ahmad Sadeghi marks the first time Australia has expelled a foreign ambassador since World War II.

Canberra also withdrew its diplomatic staff from Iran and has encouraged Australian citizens to leave the country if they are able.

Australian intelligence indicates that Tehran was behind additional antisemitic attacks in the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. The country has seen an explosion of antisemitism, with a 316% year-over-year increase in antisemitic incidents in the year following the attacks.

Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, said that the plots were carried out “through a series of overseas cut-out facilitators to coordinators that found their way to tasking Australians,” describing the scheme as a “layer cake” of middlemen originating with the IRGC.

The expulsion of the Iranian diplomats comes shortly after the arrests of two individuals in connection with the December 2024 Melbourne synagogue attack, in which a synagogue was firebombed while nearly two dozen people were inside. 

The arson at Sydney’s Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, which took place in October 2024, caused $1 million in damage to the kosher restaurant. Court documents released earlier this month indicate that a middleman, Sayed Moosawi, who was directing the Sydney attack, was to receive $12,000 for his work. Prior to the fire at Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, two men directed by Moosawi mistakenly set fire to a brewery with a similar name to the restaurant.

Israel’s decision to take control of Gaza City is meant to prevent further prolonging the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday. 

The prime minister’s comments come as elements of the Israeli right and nearly all of the left have railed against the decision, further destabilizing the prime minister’s hold on Israel’s leadership.

In a video statement on Saturday night, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he had “lost trust that the prime minister can and wants to lead the IDF to a decisive victory.”

At the same time, tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets of Tel Aviv to protest against the Cabinet’s decision, calling for an immediate hostage deal.

Speaking Sunday at a press conference for foreign media in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that “Hamas still has thousands of terrorists in Gaza … Hamas is refusing to lay down its arms, so Israel has no choice but to finish the job.”

”Contrary to false claims,” the prime minister argued, “this is the best way to end the war and to end it speedily.” 

Rather than take control of Gaza City, part of the remaining 25% of Gaza that Israel does not control, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir presented to the Security Cabinet on Thursday night a strategy of surrounding those areas, while expressing concern about the safety of the 20 hostages believed to still be alive if a military takeover is attempted.

As to whether Israel’s new plan puts hostages in further danger, Netanyahu said that “the option of just doing a war of attrition from a defensive position has not proved itself. It won’t bring [the hostages] out … [It will lead to a] protracted conflict that won’t bring the war to an end.”

”I don’t want to prolong the war. I want to end the war, and I think the other option would have prolonged the war,” he added. “Prolonging the war means that many of them could be starved to death.” 

Netanyahu also emphasized Israel’s “five principles for concluding the war,” authorized by the Security Cabinet, which he said were his “day-after plan” for Gaza. They consist of disarming Hamas, returning the hostages, demilitarizing Gaza, Israeli security control of the enclave and establishing a civilian administration for Gaza led by neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.

Though Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News last week that Israel plans to take control of all of Gaza, the Security Cabinet decision announced early Friday morning fell short of that. 

The Security Cabinet voted early Friday, after a 10-hour meeting that began the previous day, for the IDF to “prepare for taking control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside the combat zones.” 

Netanyahu continued to speak of the IDF seizing all of Gaza on Sunday, presenting an image of the “remaining Hamas strongholds” of Gaza City and the “central camps and Moassi,” a second enclave. A spokesperson for the prime minister clarified to Jewish Insider after the press conference that “the decision that was authorized is about Gaza City. Later, if needed, the central camps as well.”

Netanyahu said that, as Israel did before maneuvering into Rafah over a year ago, it plans to move the population out of Gaza City, “safeguard the civilian population and let us go, at last, into the most important stronghold of Hamas.” 

Gaza City is only part of the remaining 25% of Gaza not currently controlled by the IDF. Reports indicate that the IDF said  it will take two months to move the civilian population out of the city; Netanyahu said he instructed the military to do it in less time because he wants to finish the war as soon as possible.

That two-month window leaves an opening for another ceasefire deal as Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. are reportedly working on reviving negotiations.  

The plan was supported by “a decisive majority of Security Cabinet ministers,” according to the Prime Minister’s Office. 

Smotrich accused Netanyahu of “making a U-turn” from a plan they devised together “to go all the way,” involving “dramatic moves to bring victory in Gaza, a combination of a quick military victory and an immediate diplomatic move to exact a painful price from Hamas, destroy its military and civilian capabilities, and put unprecedented pressure to free the hostages.” 

Instead, Smotrich argued, the Security Cabinet chose to support “an immoral, unreasonable folly,” that would involve “sending tens of thousands of fighters to maneuver in Gaza City while endangering their lives and paying heavy diplomatic and international prices, only to pressure Hamas to free hostages and then retreat.”

“I cannot back this decision. My conscience doesn’t allow it … No more stopping [the war] in the middle … We must make a clear, sharp move to defeat Hamas and bring the hostages home all at once,” he stated.

Despite saying that he lost trust in Netanyahu, Smotrich did not say he was leaving the coalition. Instead, he called for another Security Cabinet meeting to further discuss Israel’s next steps in Gaza.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who, like Smotrich, has pushed for more aggressive moves in the war in Gaza, told Army Radio on Sunday that Smotrich turned down his offer to present an ultimatum to Netanyahu to quit the government if it does not accept a plan to “go in, destroy, conquer.” Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have called for Israel to fully occupy Gaza and build Israeli settlements in the enclave.

Smotrich’s outspoken criticism is a signal of the growing leverage he holds within Netanyahu’s volatile government. Netanyahu currently has a minority coalition, holding just 60 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, making his political situation tenuous. The United Torah Judaism and Noam parties left the coalition last month over disputes relating to sanctions for Haredim who do not serve in the IDF.

Tzvi Sukkot, a lawmaker from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, wrote in a post on X on Sunday morning, “if we are going back to Oct. 6, 2023 and decide to give up on the war aims, it is an existential threat to the State of Israel. If that is the situation, in my humble opinion, we must go to an election.” 

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote Smotrich a letter asking for his support for a bill to disperse the Knesset, which would trigger an election.

“You admitted that the prime minister’s policy is not bringing a decisive victory in Gaza, is not bringing back our hostages and is not winning the war,” Lapid wrote. “You added that you cannot stand behind the prime minister and back him anymore. In light of this, I call you to join me in a letter to the Knesset speaker in which we can say there was a significant change in circumstances that justifies bringing up the bill to disperse the Knesset again.”

At the same time, the political opposition and the Hostages Families Forum spoke out against the more aggressive approach in Gaza approved by the Security Cabinet, pointing to Zamir’s opposition to the move.

Lapid called the decision “a disaster that will lead to many additional disasters.” 

“In total opposition to the opinion of the military and security levels, without consideration for the exhaustion and attrition of the fighting forces, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich dragged Netanyahu to a move that will take many months, will lead to the death of hostages, to many soldiers killed, will cost tens of billions of Israeli taxpayer money and will lead to diplomatic collapse. That’s just what Hamas wants,” Lapid said. 

“As we approach the tragic one-year anniversary of the murder of six hostages who were executed by their captors, the expansion of fighting only further endangers those still held in Gaza’s tunnels,” the forum stated. “Hamas continues to exploit military escalation as justification for its brutal treatment of our loved ones … Our government is leading us toward a colossal catastrophe for both the hostages and our soldiers. The Cabinet chose last night to embark on another march of recklessness, on the backs of the hostages, the soldiers, and Israeli society as a whole.”

Tens of thousands gathered for the weekly demonstrations in central Tel Aviv Saturday night, blocking the city’s central artery, the Ayalon Highway. Some of the hostages’ relatives called for a general strike on Sunday and for soldiers to refuse orders.

Shai Mozes, nephew of released hostage Gadi Mozes, said that following the Security Cabinet decision, “the mission you’ll be given is participation in killing the hostages. In this situation, there is no choice but to refuse.” 

Several hostages’ relatives expressed support for a general strike, as did Lapid. The Hi-Tech Forum, representing dozens of Israeli tech companies and hedge funds, said they would allow their employees to miss work if a strike is held.

The Histadrut, Israel’s national labor union, declined to support a strike, following a court ruling last year that they can only strike for explicitly labor-related reasons.

Netanyahu also discussed the humanitarian situation in Gaza in the press conference Sunday, saying that Israel’s “policy throughout the war has been to prevent a humanitarian crisis while Hamas’ policy is to create it.”

Israel is working to avoid a humanitarian crisis by designating safe corridors for aid distribution, increasing safe distribution points managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and continuing airdrops by Israel and other countries, he said.

”The only ones being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” Netanyahu argued, displaying a screenshot from a video Hamas released last week of hostage Evyatar David and contrasting his emaciated arm with the much thicker one of his captor.

Netanyahu also displayed photographs of children from Gaza who appeared in the foreign media alongside claims that they had been starved by Israel, and listed the congenital diseases from which they suffered that were not originally reported. He said his office is looking into whether Israel can sue The New York Times over the matter.

The prime minister compared the claims to blood libels: “We were said to be spreading vermin in Christian society; we were said to be poisoning the wells; we were said to slaughter Christian children for blood. That was followed by massive violence, pogroms, displacement, followed by the worst of all, the Holocaust.”

”The international press is falling for Hamas propaganda, hook line and sinker,” he added, standing next to the text “Open your eyes to Hamas’s lies.” 

Netanyahu also said he had ordered the IDF to allow more foreign journalists into Gaza.

However, he stated, “We will not commit suicide to get a good op-ed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement on Thursday that Israel plans to take control of additional parts of the Gaza Strip before handing it over to an unspecified Arab governing authority is being met with hesitation from even some of Israel’s most stalwart defenders. The Security Cabinet voted early this morning to take control of Gaza City, stopping short of the full occupation previously discussed.

Throughout much of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli public broadly supported the military effort, even as progressive lawmakers such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) painted the war as “Netanyahu’s war,” and the Israeli prime minister as the bogeyman-in-chief. 

But in recent months, public sentiment in Israel has shifted noticeably. With most of Hamas’ senior military leadership eliminated, growing numbers of Israelis have begun to question the feasibility of Netanyahu’s goal of “total victory” over Hamas, given the terror group’s hold on the Gazan population and a lack of clarity on what’s left to accomplish militarily. Instead, polling shows that a large majority of Israelis prefer prioritizing a diplomatic resolution that secures the release of the remaining hostages, rather than expanding the military occupation of Gaza in hopes of complete surrender.

Netanyahu’s plan this week to occupy more of Gaza has begun to sap Israel’s political capital even among some of its closest allies on Capitol Hill, not to mention the isolation the Jewish state is facing from less-friendly European capitals. Even within the American Jewish community, as the war drags on into its 23rd month and with mounting IDF fatalities and no living hostages having been released since May, splits have emerged over the wisdom of Netanyahu’s double-down strategy.

Indeed, while the official Israeli position on its war against Hamas in Gaza has hardened, the approach in the Diaspora, both from Jewish groups and leaders and elected officials, has also shifted — in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, the families of hostages, whose desperation has been deepened by recent videos and images of emaciated captives, have escalated their efforts, taking to the sea in a flotilla that sailed toward Gaza on Thursday in an effort to raise awareness about the plight of their loved ones.

Netanyahu, still mired in legal issues, finds himself in a bind of his own making amid mounting global pressure to end the war and let aid flow freely into Gaza — which contrasts sharply with right-wing members of his coalition who loudly call for the opposite, even as top IDF brass opposes a full Gaza takeover. Speaking from the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem earlier this week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Israel to “conquer all of Gaza, declare sovereignty over the entire Strip, eliminate every Hamas member, and encourage voluntary emigration.”

On Capitol Hill, Israel’s traditional allies in the Democratic caucus — including some who have given Netanyahu leeway to press forward in Gaza in the past, even when it meant butting heads with the Biden administration — are beginning to shift. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod that Israel is ultimately responsible for making its own decisions, but said he’d advise the Israeli government to seek an end to the war once the remaining 50 hostages are freed.

“The war fatigue and post-traumatic stress in Israeli civil society and in the Israeli military — as well as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza — have become unbearable,” Torres said. “Israel has degraded Hamas. And so once Israel has secured the release of the hostages, it should declare victory, end the war and focus on expanding the Abraham Accords to include relations with the likes of Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.” More reactions from Torres and other Democratic lawmakers here.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said in a statement on Thursday that “Netanyahu’s personal and political interests are guiding Israel’s actions” and slammed the prime minister’s “ineffective military operation in Gaza,” which, he added, “has only led to more unnecessary deaths.”

Earlier this week, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC) – who in 2022 was one of the first major recipients of support from AIPAC’s super PAC— announced she was signing onto legislation to ban offensive arms sales to Israel.

The New York Times’ Bret Stephens warned this week, “If Netanyahu makes the colossal mistake of trying to reoccupy Gaza for the long term, then no thoughtful person can be pro-Israel without also being against him.”

The new shift in tone — exacerbated by mounting concerns about humanitarian aid in Gaza and bolstered by Netanyahu’s recent efforts to prolong the war in Gaza — extends beyond Washington and the media elite to some of the leading Jewish communal organizations, figures and philanthropists, dozens of whom signed onto a letter to Netanyahu this week, condemning his government’s policies and rhetoric for causing “lasting damage” to Israel and Diaspora Jewry and calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war. Read more in eJewishPhilanthropy here.

Mainstream groups and officials, such as the American Jewish Committee and U.K. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, have in recent days expressed deep concern about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the prosecution of the war.

Israel finds itself, 22 months after Hamas’ attacks, at war at home and abroad. Hamas’ attack didn’t resolve the issues that had caused divisions in Israeli society in the months leading up to Oct. 7, 2023. The national cohesion following the horrific attacks has dissipated, and now segments of Israeli society are again at odds with each other, as Israel finds itself needing to win back invaluable political capital even as its leadership is taking it for granted. 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that young people in America are won over “pretty quickly” by the truth about the situation in Israel, when discussing New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on a podcast released Monday, and suggested that Mamdani’s policies would be unpopular if he’s elected.

“A lot of people have been taken in by this nonsense,” Netanyahu said, on the “Full Send” podcast, hosted by a social media influencer group called the Nelk Boys popular with young men.

“Sometimes folly overtakes human affairs for a while, but not for long, because reality steps in,” Netanyahu said. “I’m obviously not happy with it, but I’m less concerned with it, because I think if we can speak the truth to the young people of America, they wise up pretty quickly.”

The Israeli leader also addressed other policies supported by Mamdani, including the Democratic mayoral nominee’s past support for defunding the police and raising taxes.

“You want to defund the police? You want to have people go into stores and rob them and be free? You think that really creates a good society? You want to crush all enterprise? You want to tax people to death?” Netanyahu said. “That’s a one-term effort, but sometimes you have to get mugged by reality to understand how stupid that is. So that’s silly.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s third visit to Washington since the start of the Trump presidency kicked off Monday with closed-door meetings with President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Trump and Netanyahu were on warm terms during remarks to the press ahead of their dinner. Netanyahu offered effusive praise for Trump for the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and said he nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, as well as following Trump’s lead in expressing openness to the new Syrian government.

Trump, for his part, deferred to Netanyahu on a question about a two-state solution, “We’ll work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors, those who don’t want to destroy us,” Netanyahu said, while adding that in any future peace agreement, “the sovereign power of security, always remains in our hands.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters earlier in the day that Trump’s “utmost priority … is to end the war in Gaza and return all of the hostages” and that Trump and Netanyahu would discuss “peace in Gaza and ending that conflict.”

But that agenda item saw little discussion in Trump and Netanyahu’s public remarks. Asked about talks with Hamas, Trump instead spoke about Iran.

At the same time, the differences between the two leaders’ comments on potential further strikes on Iran indicated a possible point of friction in the future.

Asked about further strikes, Trump said he “can’t imagine wanting to do that” and maintained that Iran’s nuclear program had been “knocked out completely.” Trump added, “I think they want to make peace and I’m all for it,” while also suggesting that there is no need for negotiations or a deal, saying “What’s the purpose of talking?” He said that the U.S. is “ready, willing and able” if further strikes are necessary, “but I don’t think we’re going to have to be.”

Netanyahu seemed somewhat less certain that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs had been permanently stopped, even as he called the strikes a “historic victory.” “When you remove a tumor, that doesn’t mean that it can’t come back,” the Israeli prime minister said. “You have to constantly monitor the situation to make sure that there’s no attempt to bring it back.”

The two leaders downplayed another potential test of U.S.-Israel relations, the potential election of Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, who has pledged to arrest Netanyahu — following the International Criminal Court’s warrant against him — as mayor of New York City. Netanyahu dismissed the notion as “folly.”

Trump interjected that he’d “get him out of there” and suggested that he could use federal funding to force Mamdani to “behave.” Both men also said that Mamdani’s election is not guaranteed.

Trump also said that he would send more weapons, particularly defensive weapons, to Ukraine, shipments reportedly halted as a result of a push by top Pentagon official Elbridge Colby. Hours later, the Pentagon confirmed it would send additional defensive weapons to Ukraine.

It’s another sign that Trump’s instincts on foreign policy don’t always line up with those of vocal isolationist members of his team. Colby also reportedly resisted moving U.S. systems and personnel, including missile defense platforms, from Asia to the Middle East.

Today, Netanyahu heads to Capitol Hill, where he’s set to sit down with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and a group with Senate leaders including Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-ID).

Most House members will likely not be in town to meet with the Israeli leader this week, with the House out of session. The Israeli prime minister will return to the Capitol on Wednesday for one-on-one meetings with several close allies in the Senate.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House next Monday, a Trump administration official confirmed to Jewish Insider. 

The visit, which will come just two weeks after Trump announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, will be Netanyahu’s third Oval Office meeting this year. 

Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, is in Washington this week for White House meetings about efforts to end the war in Gaza. “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!” Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend. 

The Trump-Netanyahu meeting also comes after a lengthy post from the president slamming Israeli prosecutors’ corruption case against Netanyahu. 

“It is terrible what they are doing in Israel to Bibi Netanyahu. He is a War Hero, and a Prime Minister who did a fabulous job working with the United States to bring Great Success in getting rid of the dangerous Nuclear threat in Iran,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday.

An Israeli court canceled hearings scheduled for this week in the case after Netanyahu requested a delay for classified security and diplomatic reasons.