British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, setting up a leadership battle within the Labour Party and raising the question of how his likely successor will deal with one of the issues that brought Starmer to office in the first place: combating antisemitism.

Starmer was elected as leader of the Labour Party in 2020, inheriting a party in disarray after it had faced electoral losses the year before and was navigating an internal crisis over former party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to antisemitism. In his victory speech in April 2020, Starmer pledged to address the deep-seated antisemitism that had led many Jews to exit the party. 

Starmer’s successor is likely to be Andy Burnham, a newly sworn-in Labour MP representing a district that includes parts of the Greater Manchester region. He spent the last nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, the city with the second-largest Jewish community in the U.K. He declared his intent to run for Labour leader on Monday and quickly earned the backing of Wes Streeting, a former health secretary who was rumored to also be considering a run. 

In 2019, as Corbyn’s leadership faced an antisemitism scandal, Burnham met with 80 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the community’s largest institutional voice. 

“It is inconceivable to me that a party which has prided itself on its record on racism could have become embroiled in an antisemitism crisis,” Burnham said at the meeting. “Racism needs to be dealt with firmly, quickly and decisively. I’m afraid that this hasn’t been the response so far and I hope from this point forward this has been understood.” 

He said at the time that he still supported Corbyn, “but that support is not unconditional or unchallenged.”

Jewish community leaders in Manchester have close ties with Burnham, whom they view as an ally. In particular, he earned praise for strongly supporting the community after a terror attack on Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation last year on Yom Kippur, in which two congregants were murdered.

“In the aftermath of the Heaton Park synagogue terrorist attack, which was incidentally my synagogue, he was an incredible support to the community,” Raphi Bloom, director of fundraising and marketing at the Fed, a Jewish social services charity in Manchester, told Jewish Insider. “He has been an excellent friend to the Jewish community.”

Burnham’s record on Israel is relatively short — he has not brought Middle East politics into his mayoralty in the way that some other local leaders have focused on the issue. He spoke at a vigil days after the Oct. 7 attacks in 2023, but he also butted heads with the local Jewish Representative Council when he signed onto a petition calling for a ceasefire less than three weeks later. 

“At a moment when we felt isolated and vulnerable, he demonstrated that Greater Manchester’s leadership understood the scale of the tragedy and how it affects Jewish people in the U.K.,” Mark Adlestone, chair of the Manchester JRC, wrote in an op-ed in Britain’s Jewish News on Monday. “However, it would be disingenuous to suggest there have not been times when there have been disagreements. Andy led a call from local authority leaders calling for a ceasefire post 7 October, whilst hostages remained in captivity.”

Burnham also served in Parliament from 2001 to 2017, and when he unsuccessfully ran for Labour Party leader in 2015, he expressed strong support for Israel. “I’ve always been a friend of Israel and the Jewish community — that will never change,” he said at the time, and promised that his first foreign trip as party leader would be to Israel. 

But even his supporters in the Jewish community acknowledge that the politics surrounding the issue have changed a great deal since then. While remaining outspoken against antisemitism, Starmer has sought to cut off some arms sales to Israel. In September 2025, the U.K. unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state, and Starmer presided over sanctions against Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right ministers in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Ccabinet. 

“I think he’ll be strong on antisemitism, on Holocaust education and on tackling Jew hatred, but it remains to be seen about Israel. I don’t think he’ll change the government’s position much, if at all,” said Bloom, who directs the Fed’s My Voice project, which preserves and shares the stories of Holocaust survivors. “We’re not looking at Andy with rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to Israel, and we will deal with that when it happens as a community.” 

In the final days of his recent campaign for Parliament, Burnham was asked if Israel’s actions in Gaza amounted to a genocide, a word Starmer declined to use. Burnham similarly declined to answer but hinted that he may be more willing to engage on the issue once he enters Parliament.

“I can’t judge things of that enormity from where I am as mayor of Greater Manchester,” he said. “But I do have concerns about the disproportionate nature of what has happened in terms of the destruction, and there has to be a full process of investigation and accountability.”

Starmer, in an emotional speech announcing his resignation on Monday, touted his record on antisemitism as one of his signature achievements. Jewish communal leaders said they don’t expect Burnham to return to the Corbyn era, but questions remain about his approach to the party’s past fissures over antisemitism and Israel.

“He probably is more to the left than Starmer is, and so perhaps the people that he will surround himself with, some of them will be more to the left of Starmer, and how that plays out for the Jewish community and for Israel is unknown at this stage,” said Bloom. “I’m 100% sure he won’t be reopening the door to Jeremy Corbyn or Corbynistas to come back into the party.” 

Ella Rose-Jacobs, national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, urged Burnham to follow Starmer’s path.

“Keir Starmer did a lot of the institutional work, but any future leader of the party will also need to vanguard and safeguard the process and the progress that has been made. Progress can be backslid,” Rose-Jacobs told JI on Monday. “The thing that I hope for the future government — and obviously there might be another contender in the race, we don’t know that yet — is that it doesn’t import the politics of foreign conflicts to our shores.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning effective June 30, citing her husband’s recently diagnosed “extremely rare form of bone cancer,” she wrote in a resignation letter.

“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in her letter, which was first reported by Fox News Digital. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”

President Donald Trump posted Gabbard’s resignation letter publicly, and thanked Gabbard for her service.

“Unfortunately, after having done a great job, Tulsi Gabbard will be leaving the Administration on June 30th,” Trump said. “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.”

He announced that Gabbard’s principal deputy director of national intelligence, Aaron Lukas, will take Gabbard’s place in an acting capacity. Lukas, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer, served in the first Trump administration for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that Gabbard had been forced out of her role.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has been one of the most prominent isolationist members of Trump’s inner circle, but has not been part of various key meetings related to the war in Iran.

Trump publicly broke with Gabbard over her public assessments of Iran’s nuclear program: She testified in March 2025 that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, which Trump said ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 was “wrong.”

Top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long been skeptical of the former DNI. During her term, Democrats accused her and her office of politicizing intelligence and her role.

Gabbard’s staffing choices have also raised eyebrows. Earlier this year, one of her top deputies, Joe Kent, resigned as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, claiming that Israel had tricked Trump into the war in Iran and blaming Israel for U.S. operations in Syria.

Kent has since become a prominent right-wing opponent of the war in Iran, including spreading false Iranian propaganda at one juncture.

Gabbard has staffed up the ODNI with a series of other isolationist figures. Daniel Davis, an anti-Israel commentator, was briefly tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence, but the administration backed away from hiring him amid public scrutiny and criticism.

She ultimately hired William Ruger, another outspoken opponent of military operations against Iran’s nuclear program, for the same role.

And Dan Caldwell, a vocal Republican critic of the administration’s Middle East strategy and isolationist, was also hired to a job under Gabbard earlier this year.

One former administration official told Jewish Insider earlier this year they saw Ruger and Gabbard as undermining Trump, the U.S. operations against Iran and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, who served in three roles as a senior aide to Gabbard, in the Office of Management and Budget and on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, resigned earlier this week. Kennedy is the daughter-in-law of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy sought to become the deputy CIA director, but ran into opposition from top Republican senators.

“I thank Tulsi Gabbard for her service in this administration and in uniform, and I wish her the very best as she supports her husband Abe in his battle with cancer,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the committee’s ranking member, offered his prayers to Gabbard’s husband, but also told a reporter, “this position, now more than ever, needs to be an experienced intelligence professional that will know their lanes; that understands the Director of National Intelligence should be focusing on foreign intelligence and not involving himself or herself in domestic election incidents.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also offered condolences over Gabbard’s husband’s illness but said, “Tulsi Gabbard’s only positive contribution [to] our nation’s national security is her resignation. She politicized intelligence. She dismantled critical agencies keeping Americans safe. She weaponized the IC to pursue baseless election fraud claims. And more.”

Joe Kent, who resigned earlier this week from his role as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over his opposition to the war in Iran, offered a litany of baseless accusations about Israel while defending the Iranian regime in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s program on Wednesday.

Kent doubled down in the interview on an allegation made in his resignation statement that Israel coerced the U.S. into the war for its own benefit. As evidence, Kent and Carlson — a friend of Kent’s and a leading critic of the Trump administration’s approach to Iran in the conservative movement — pointed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying earlier this month that the “imminent threat” that prompted the U.S. to take action was the foreknowledge that Israel was going to strike, likely resulting in retaliation against American targets by the Iranian regime. 

“So, the imminent threat that the secretary of state is describing is not from Iran,” Carlson mused. “It’s from Israel.”

“Exactly,” Kent replied. “And I think this speaks to the broader issue, who is in charge of our policy in the Middle East? Who’s in charge of when we decide to go to war or not?”

Kent argued that the Israelis “felt emboldened that no matter what they did, no matter what situation they put us in, they could go ahead and take this action and we just have to react.”

He suggested that the U.S. could have threatened to cut off Israel’s military aid, including defensive weapons, in order to prevent them from attacking Iran. 

“We could have said to the Israelis: ‘No, you will not and if you do, we will take something away from you,'” Kent told Carlson. “It’s fine that we offer defense to Israel but when we’re providing the means for their defense, we get to dictate the terms of when they go on the offensive.”

Kent also raised questions during the interview about possible foreign ties to the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk last fall. He told Carlson he tried to investigate Kirk’s killing, at a Turning Point USA event at a Utah college, last fall because of the pressure Kirk was facing over backsliding GOP support for Israel, but was blocked by the Justice Department and FBI. Kent said that the last time he saw Kirk was last summer at the White House, and claimed that the final message Kirk gave him was to “stop us from getting into a war with Iran.”

“One of President [Donald] Trump’s closest advisors was vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis. And then he’s suddenly publicly assassinated and we’re not allowed to ask any questions about that?” Kent said. “The investigation that I was a part of [with] the National Counterterrorism Center, we were stopped from continuing to investigate. And the FBI will say that they stopped it because they wanted to have everything turned over to the Utah state authorities. Everything is going to trial, it’s very sensitive. But there was still a lot for us to look into that I can’t really get into. There were still linkages for us to investigate that we needed to run down.”

Kent said that while he was “not making any conclusions … Charlie was under a lot of pressure from a lot of pro-Israel donors. And again, we know, because of the text messages that have been made public, that Charlie was advocating to President Trump against this war with Iran.”

On Iran, Kent alleged that the regime and assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were not interested in acquiring a nuclear weapon, while acknowledging that Iran’s strategy had been “to not completely abandon the nuclear program.”

He cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa on the production or use of nuclear weapons, arguing that there is “zero U.S. intelligence suggesting it’s been lifted or ignored in a way that changes the posture. Iran knows what happens when you openly pursue or acquire nukes or even give them up.”

Kent went on to claim, despite reports to the contrary, that Khamenei was working to keep the regime from becoming a nuclear power.

“I’m no fan of the former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, however, he was moderating their nuclear program. He was preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon,” Kent said. “If you take him out, if you kill him aggressively, people are going to rally around that regime.”

The former Trump administration official later told Carlson that “a good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion” to Trump prior to the start of joint U.S. and Israeli military operations targeting Iran.

“In the lead-up to this last iteration, a good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come and express their opinion to the president,” Kent said, arguing that this was a contrast from the “robust debate” that took place ahead of Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear sites last June. 

Kent said that efforts by the intelligence community to offer the president a “sanity check” during briefings “were largely stifled in this second iteration.” 

“They had that discussion behind closed doors, and there wasn’t a chance for any dissenting voices to come,” Kent said.

Asked about his resignation, Kent told Carlson that he spoke to Trump prior to announcing his decision publicly and said he believes they “departed personally on good terms.”

“I spoke with him before I departed the administration,” Kent said. “It went great. I mean, not the best conversation ever. I told him why I was leaving. He heard me out.”

Kent’s appearance on Carlson’s show came as sources told Semafor that the FBI began investigating Kent weeks ago for allegedly leaking classified information. 

The WH and FBI declined to comment when reached by Jewish Insider. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s newly tapped director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned on Thursday afternoon after her history of antisemitic online posts — including complaining about “money hungry Jews” — was exposed.

“Catherine expressed her deep remorse over her past statements and tendered her resignation, and [Mamdani] accepted,” Dora Pekec, the mayor-elect’s transition team spokesperson, said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

Da Costa, who previously served as executive assistant to former Mayor Bill DeBlasio and was appointed by Mamdani on Wednesday, posted a series of antisemitic comments in 2011 and 2012, which were shared by the Anti-Defamation League. Da Costa’s account — and the posts, which had remained online — was deleted once the antisemitism watchdog published her posts on Thursday. 

“Money hungry Jews smh,” Da Costa posted on X in January 2011, according to screenshots. 

“Woo! Promoted to the upstairs office today! Working alongside these rich Jewish peeps,” she posted in June 2011.

In June 2012, Da Costa wrote that the “Far Rockaway train is the Jew train,” a reference to the neighborhood’s sizable Jewish population. 

Da Costa resigned on Thursday, saying that she “spoke with the Mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements. These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”

Sara Forman, executive director of the New York Solidarity Network, praised “cutting ties” with Da Costa as” the right thing to do,” but added that “had she said ‘Zionist’ instead of ‘Jew’ the response from the incoming Mamdani administration and the outcome we just witnessed would likely have been quite different.”

“This is why we have been telling Mr. Mamdani all along that all anti-Jewish rhetoric, including anti-Zionist dog whistles, cannot just be ‘discouraged,’ it must be rejected and condemned outright,” Forman said in a statement.

The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey condemned the posts on X before Da Costa’s resignation, writing that they “echo classic antisemitic tropes and otherwise demean Jewish people.” 

“We appreciate Da Costa has relationships with members of the Jewish community, but her posts require immediate explanation — not just from Ms. Da Costa, but also from the Mayor-Elect,” the ADL said in a statement. 

The recently unearthed posts come as several of Mamdani’s transition appointees have drawn scrutiny from Jewish leaders, who remain skeptical of the mayor-elect, who takes office on Jan. 1, and his commitment to fighting antisemitism. 

Among the most controversial of his appointments is Tamika Mallory, a former Women’s March leader who stepped down from its board amid allegations of antisemitism, to a newly established community safety committee.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who entered office in 2021 with a record of espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories and emerged since Oct. 7, 2023, as one of the most vocal opponents of Israel in the House Republican conference, announced on Friday that she will resign her seat, effective Jan. 5, 2026.

Greene’s announcement comes a week after President Donald Trump disavowed her, calling her a “traitor” and indicating that he would endorse a primary challenger, if a viable one emerged.

The Georgia congresswoman rose to political prominence due to her long history of promoting various antisemitic and otherwise fringe conspiracy theories. Greene was elected in spite of efforts from fellow Republicans to defeat her after she won the GOP primary in her district in 2020. She continued to face accusations of antisemitism during her time in office and repeatedly invoked a range of antisemitic tropes.

Though she initially cast herself as a supporter of Israel, she more recently flipped on the issue, now condemning the Jewish state, accusing it of genocide in Gaza and repeatedly attempting to pass measures to cut off all U.S. aid.

In her farewell message, Greene repeatedly railed against U.S. foreign engagement and “foreign interests.”

“Americans’ hard earned tax dollars always fund foreign wars, foreign aid, and foreign interests,” Greene said in a lengthy resignation letter. “America First should mean America First and only Americans First, with no other foreign country ever being attached to America First in our halls of government,” Greene said.

Jewish Republicans have long opposed the congresswoman, and the Republican Jewish Coalition repeatedly backed challengers to her. The RJC responded mockingly to her announcement with a gif of Trump waving, with the caption, “And we say bye bye.”

The controversial Georgia congresswoman spent much of her first term in office in the political wilderness, sidelined by her own party and expelled from her committee assignments by bipartisan House votes led by Democrats.

But she later emerged as a key ally of Trump in the House after Republicans retook the chamber in the 2022 midterms, and also became a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Greene’s influence waned, however, after McCarthy was booted from the speakership in 2023, and she has more frequently been relegated to the sidelines as a hard-right opponent of the House Republican leadership’s agenda. She contemplated a run for Senate or governor in Georgia, but Republican leaders declined to back those efforts.

In recent months, she has grown increasingly critical of key elements of the Republican and Trump agendas, including his support for Israel and attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.

Following Trump’s break with Greene last week, she implied that Israel and pro-Israel interests had pressured him into disowning her.

In her resignation letter, Greene was defiant, insisting that she could beat back any primary challenger but saying that she did not want to put herself, her family and her district through such a challenge.

“I have too much self respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms,” Greene said. “And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.”

She said that she is being cast aside by “MAGA Inc” to be replaced by “Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class.”

But she also teased plans for a political comeback. Greene has been rumored to have aspirations for a presidential run in 2028, something she has denied.

“When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it,” Greene said.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of the few Jewish Republicans in the House, said on X, “One antisemite down. One to go.”

Robert George, a prominent board member of the Heritage Foundation, said on Monday that he was resigning from the conservative think tank, in the latest sign of continued fallout over its president’s controversial defense of Tucker Carlson after his friendly interview last month with a neo-Nazi influencer.

“I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th,” George said in a Facebook post Monday morning, referring to the group’s president. “Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

His decision to step down indicates that Roberts is likely secure, for now, in his role atop Heritage, as its board remains split about his future, according to a former Heritage staffer familiar with internal discussions.

“It’s a good sign for Kevin, that’s for sure, because Robbie was clearly upset about the mistake Kevin made and thought there really needed to be drastic action to correct it,” the former staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue, told Jewish Insider on Monday. “This means there’s now one less vote on the board for removing Kevin.”

George, a Heritage board member since 2019 who serves as director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions at Princeton University, reportedly lobbied for Roberts’ removal behind the scenes.

In his announcement on Monday, George called Roberts “a good man” and said that he had “made what he acknowledged was a serious mistake,” but added, “What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.”

He said that he was “sad to be leaving the” think tank and still had “great affection and esteem for” his “board colleagues,” wishing Heritage “the very best.”

He did not respond to a request for comment from JI.

“We are thankful for Professor George and his service to Heritage,” a spokesperson for Heritage said in a statement Monday. “He is a good man, and we look forward to opportunities to work together in the future. Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish. We are strong, growing and more determined than ever to fight for our republic.”

George had argued in a social media post last month, in response to Roberts’ defense of Carlson, that “American conservatism today faces a challenge” from “those who reject our commitment to inherent and equal human dignity,” adding, “I will not — I cannot— accept the idea that we have ‘no enemies to the right.’”

“The white supremacists, the antisemites, the eugenicists, the bigots, must not be welcomed into our movement or treated as normal or acceptable,” he wrote.

Roberts, for his part, has apologized for his video remarks standing behind Carlson and refusing to “cancel” Nick Fuentes, whom the former Fox News host had interviewed in an amiable discussion that failed to challenge his admiration for Adolf Hitler, Holocaust denialism and other antisemitic views.

The Heritage president has also voiced regret for dismissing Carlson’s critics as part of a “venomous coalition,” claiming that he did not intend to invoke an antisemic trope, and denounced Fuentes. But he has otherwise continued to back Carlson, a personal friend, and declined to delete the video featuring his initial comments on the matter.

Some conservatives criticized the foundation on Monday for contributing to George’s departure.

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a social media post that George “was the head of the ‘Kevin Roberts showed terrible judgment and there need to be consequences’ camp, which has apparently lost out to ‘everything is well, nothing to see here’ camp.” 

“Heritage will now decline as an institution (or we will decline as a nation). Sad,” Shapiro lamented.

George’s resignation marks the latest defection from Heritage in recent weeks, as the think tank continued to face backlash over Roberts’ handling of the controversy. Last week, for instance, a legal expert resigned from his role as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, citing Roberts’ video and “subsequent interviews, videos, and commentary.” 

Earlier this month, an antisemitism task force that worked with Heritage cut ties with the organization, saying it “cannot allow the conservative movement to be corrupted and destroyed by those consumed with attacking America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and values, thereby distracting us all from the real challenges facing our nation.”

The former Heritage staffer told JI that there are still “a lot of conservatives inside the” foundation “who are not comfortable with the trajectory of the organization,” noting that George’s departure could fuel further resignations. “It feeds the narrative that movement conservatives feel they’re being squeezed out.”

“What you’re not yet seeing is a mass exodus in terms of the scholars inside the organization, but that could be coming,” the former staffer predicted. 

In his resignation note on Monday, George expressed hope that “Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.’”

“The anchor for the Heritage Foundation, and for our nation, and for every patriotic American is that creed,” he wrote. “It must always be that creed. If we hold fast to it even when expediency counsels compromising it, we cannot go wrong. If we abandon it, we sign the death certificate of republican government and ordered liberty.”

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.

Former IDF Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested on Sunday evening, reportedly on grounds of obstruction of an investigation, after disappearing and leaving behind a note raising concerns of a potential suicide. The arrest came two days after she resigned her post following a determination by police that she had leaked sensitive materials showing alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at Israel’s Sde Teiman prison to the media.

Police found Tomer-Yerushalmi’s car at a beach north of Tel Aviv, hours after relatives reported that she was missing. According to Israeli media, she had left a note to her family. The ensuing manhunt involved police, the Israeli Navy, drones with geothermal detection and more.

Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested after police found her safe, but without her phone, which had last been tracked near her car and then turned off. The disappearance of the phone raised police officers’ concern that she had possibly staged a suicide attempt to cover up the destruction of evidence caused by the disposal of her phone, Ynet reported. 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Monday that Tomer-Yerhushalmi remains on suicide watch in jail. The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court extended her remand until Wednesday.

Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned from the IDF on Friday following her suspension in light of a criminal investigation by police that found that she had leaked surveillance video purportedly showing abuse at the Sde Teiman detention facility, in which terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks were held, and that members of the MAG corps lied to the High Court of Justice about it.

“I approved the release of material to the media in an attempt to counter the false propaganda directed against the military law authorities,” Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote in her resignation letter. “I bear full responsibility for any material that was released to the media from within the unit.” 

Masked military police officers entered the Sde Teiman facility last July, arresting several prison guards for alleged abuse after a doctor found wounds possibly indicating rape of a Palestinian prisoner. Ultimately, five of them were charged this year with abusing the detainee, a Hamas police officer who allegedly attacked a guard who was searching his person, but not with rape. According to the indictment, the soldiers tased the prisoner, kicked him and stepped on him while he was handcuffed, breaking his ribs.

The arrest sparked protests at the detention facility, with demonstrators — including three far-right lawmakers — at one point breaking into Sde Teiman, arguing that the IDF soldiers were being mistreated. The MKs and others on the right have frequently accused the MAG of not protecting IDF soldiers and endangering the hostages. One right-wing commentary outlet called the MAG corps “a chapter of [the International Criminal Court in] the Hague, a hostile body bringing foreign interests into the army” and leading a “campaign against the soldiers.” 

In August last year, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast the video at the center of the scandal, purporting that it showed sexual abuse. The video showed a detainee lying on the floor, while soldiers surrounded him with riot shields, such that their treatment of him could not be seen in the clip. The IDF said the video had been misleadingly edited. 

The video was distributed widely by international news organizations as well as on social media.

Following petitions to Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding an investigation, Tomer-Yerushalmi’s deputy, Gal Asael, ordered a probe of the leak by Military Police. A report provided by Asael to the Supreme Court and the Knesset stated that the leak did not come from the MAG corps, but that “hundreds of people were exposed to the materials, and therefore we cannot know who is the leaker.” 

Army Radio reported in recent days that Asael has said he did not know the leak came from within the MAG corps. He is not currently a suspect.

Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara approved Asael taking command of the investigation, and backed up his report. In September, the Attorney-General’s Office told the High Court that “there is not even a preliminary indication pointing at the source for transferring the information.” Justice Minister Yariv Levin – who has attempted to fire Baharav-Miara – accused her of conspiring with Tomer-Yerushalmi in the obstruction of justice and said she cannot be involved in the ongoing proceedings relating to this case.

Police arrested former IDF chief prosecutor Matan Solomesh on Sunday night, alleging that he knew about the leak and did not report it.

Senior government figures blasted Tomer-Yerushalmi in public statements in recent days.

At a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident at Sde Teiman “the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” and said that it “caused immense damage to the image of the State of Israel and the IDF, to our soldiers.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz accused Tomer-Yerushalmi of a “blood libel against IDF soldiers and preferring the good of [Hamas] terrorists over [the soldiers].”

Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir have begun the process of finding Tomer-Yerushalmi’s replacement.

By law, the MAG is appointed by the Defense Minister to protect her independence, even though the IDF chief of staff is technically her commanding officer. The MAG is the ultimate authority on what is legal or illegal in the IDF, and has broad discretion over law enforcement matters, including investigations and indictments.

The MAG corps’ independence within the IDF system is often described as the soldiers’ “bulletproof vest,” helping protect them from international courts, which are supposed to respect existing domestic legal proceedings.

Eran Shamir-Borer, the director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Security and Democracy Center and the former head of the IDF International Law Department in the MAG corps, expressed concern that the ongoing scandal relating to Tomer-Yerushalmi “might have broader implications for Israel’s legal resilience and ability to protect its soldiers and commanders against legal risks overseas.”

“What’s happening now threatens to cast a big shadow over the military’s ability to do this,” he added. “It’s a real earthquake. … A unit of the IDF entrusted with enforcing the law has been very much contaminated.” 

At the same time, he stressed that “this should not taint the entire unit, comprised of hundreds of professional legal officers with strong commitment to ensuring Israel’s security and maintaining the rule of law.” 

In addition, Shamir-Borer cautioned against public pressure to drop the charges against the soldiers who allegedly abused the Palestinian detainee in Sde Teiman, saying that “the current scandal should not be used as a pretext to further erode the rule of law.” 

Shamir-Borer said that Katz and Zamir now have an “enormous task” to “rebuild trust in this unit within Israeli society, but also overseas.” 

Michael Schill, the Northwestern University president who announced his resignation last week amid widespread controversy over his tenure, appeared unfazed to hear that a Palestinian professor he hired as part of a deal with encampment protestors had once met with the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, an interview with the House Committee on Education and Workforce, released on Thursday, reveals. 

In the Aug. 5 interview, which was released as a response to Schill’s resignation announcement on Thursday, House investigators pressed Schill on the hiring of Mkhaimar Abusada as a visiting associate professor of political science. 

Abusada, who Schill described as “someone who is regularly quoted as an authority on Palestine governance and politics,” published a piece in Haaretz last year about his 2018 meeting with Sinwar. 

“Hypothetically, if somebody, you know, 4 years, 5 years before Oct. 7 has met with someone who — and, I mean, I’m not sure — my guess is — I’ve never been to Gaza, but it’s a pretty small place, and that you are going to meet people and talk to people,” said Schill, who claimed to not be aware of that meeting when he hired Abusada but noted in the interview that the professor’s position had been extended to August 2026. “I don’t know whether a seasoned professor who is doing the politics of Gaza could avoid getting to know some of these people, or whether that would be not doing his job right.”

Schill, who will remain as president in an interim role until his successor is chosen, oversaw a period of antisemitic turmoil on the Chicago-area campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and was accused of failing to respond in an adequate manner, leading some lawmakers to call for his resignation. 

The 135-page interview transcript provides new, detailed information on Schill’s response to years of campus turbulence, including his controversial handling of a violent anti-Israel encampment in spring 2024 and the university’s close ties to Hamas-allied Qatar. 

The interview comes as Northwestern is in talks with the Trump administration to restore $790 million in funding for the university that was pulled by the federal government over an alleged failure to protect Jewish students.

Jewish alumni expressed optimism that Schill’s resignation, and the interview being made public, would lead to Northwestern leaders making necessary reforms. 

“Northwestern’s board needs to take control of the situation in a way they have declined to until now [and] clear out all other administrators who have been part of this culture of enabling antisemitism on campus,” Rich Goldberg, a senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern, told Jewish Insider. 

“Those who are negotiating on behalf of the Trump administration, now seeing this transcript, will need to review any additional information that’s come to light, additional questions that they might have for the university, see if this changes anything that’s been under negotiation to date, and with Schill stepping down, hopefully signaling the board of the university wanting to see real changes made,” Goldberg continued.

Michael Teplitsky, president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism At Northwestern, said that Abusada “should never have been at Northwestern.” 

“There must be a massive turnaround and restructuring at the university and they have to make meaningful changes,” said Teplitsky. 

When anti-Israel encampments emerged on college campuses across the country in spring 2024, Schill, who is Jewish, became the first university president to strike a deal with demonstrators. The deal included no disciplinary action taken against students and acceded to several demands of the protesters, which drew strong condemnation from many Jewish leaders. Among other concessions, Schill committed to hire two Palestinian professors, which would include Abusada, and offer full scholarships to five students from Gaza. 

Schill acknowledged in the interview that — despite telling Congress that “discipline has been meted out to many of those students” who participated in the encampment and other antisemitic incidents on campus — no students had actually faced disciplinary action for anti-Israel activity on campus. Schill said that the university had reason to believe some demonstrators could be armed and claimed that university leadership had no option but to negotiate with the encampment organizers because they were dangerous. The university was afraid to send in the police to remove them, he said. 

“We didn’t think our students were armed, but we didn’t know,” Schill told the House committee. “There was a suspicious tent off to the side, and we knew that our students were trying to avoid the people in that tent, and we didn’t know what was inside the tent. And so we were concerned about that.”

The released testimony also puts a spotlight on Northwestern Provost Kathleen Hagerty’s support for the encampment and BDS activism on campus, which Schill argued she may have viewed as a “teachable moment.”  

In a series of exposed text messages, Hagerty wrote that “if the students really cared about actual divestment, then they need the patience to do the work to actually make it happen.” 

In an April 27 text exchange with a professor, Hagerty wrote that for Northwestern to boycott Sabra, an Israeli hummus company that is sold at the university, it would “probably be pretty easy,” adding that she is “all for making a deal.” 

Schill responded to the text messages by highlighting his support for the Jewish state. “I view Israel as our number one strategic partner in the world,” he said. 

“I don’t think [Schill] is the only administrator that needs to go,” said Goldberg. “Clearly the provost needs to follow him out the door as someone who is also chiefly responsible for the culture of enabling antisemitism at the university and implementing the encampment appeasement.” 

The interview also raised new questions around Northwestern’s relationship with Qatar. Schill said that students on Northwestern’s Qatar campus are exempted from completing the university’s mandatory antisemitism training and acknowledged several examples of professors on the Qatar campus engaging in extreme pro-terrorism and antisemitic activism and speech on social media. 

He said that Northwestern’s contract with Qatar prevents it or its affiliates from criticizing the country. “NU, NU-Q, and their respective employees, students, faculty, families, contractors and agents, shall be subject to the applicable laws and regulations of the State of Qatar, and shall respect the cultural, religious and social customs of the State of Qatar,” said Schill. He said that Qatar has given Northwestern $737 million since 2008. 

“The initial deal to put a campus out in Qatar was put together, it was in the era after 9/11,” Teplitsky told JI. “I think people had hopes and ambitions to build bridges in the Middle East, in Qatar. It had wonderful intentions. I think now looking back and looking at it specifically through the lens of Northwestern University… looking at it from a perspective of … values that Northwestern lists on its website, that relationship has not been a good one. It’s been one of failure. 

Teplitsky continued, “Should Northwestern be registered, as long as they continue to have this campus, with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent? I believe that they should have to register as a foreign agent if they choose to continue to have this campus.” 

Jewish Insider Senior Congressional Correspondent Marc Rod contributed reporting. 

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer is considering resigning from the Israeli government in the coming months, Israel Hayom reported on Monday. 

Dermer, a close advisor of Prime Mister Benjamin Netanyahu, has in recent years worked primarily on the issue of the Iranian nuclear threat. He began contemplating his exit after Israel degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities in June, senior government sources told the outlet. 

It wasn’t clear when he would resign, though the sources indicated it would likely be before Israel’s next elections. Elections are currently scheduled for October 2026, but could be held sooner, depending on Netanyahu’s ability to keep his 60-member coalition together.  

Since February, Dermer has also led Israel’s ceasefire and hostage-release negotiation efforts, a role that has engendered criticism from elements of the Israeli public, including hostage family members who called for his resignation from the negotiating team in May over the lack of progress toward a deal.