As the international community looks to advance the ceasefire plan in Gaza, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) emphasized the need for continued pressure from countries like Turkey and Qatar on Hamas to comply with the terms of the ceasefire requiring it to disarm.

But he also warned that there should be limits on the ways in which Turkey and Qatar are involved in the future of Gaza, arguing that they should have no role in certain sensitive areas, even as they remain involved in reconstruction work.

Lankford, in an interview with Jewish Insider this week, said that Hamas’ release of the final remaining deceased hostages will be an inflection point necessitating movement into the next phase of the ceasefire plan presented by the United States.

“The requirement for Hamas to disarm is still there. It has to be there, both for the people that live in Gaza that are Palestinian and for the security of the entire region,” Lankford said.

He said that ensuring that Hamas disarms, something it has thus far refused to do, will require  military, diplomatic and financial pressure, particularly from countries like Turkey and Qatar that have been Hamas patrons. 

“If the Turks want contracts to be able to rebuild in Gaza, which they do, then that’s not going to happen until Hamas is actually disarmed, so Turkey’s got to decide, ‘Do you want those contracts to be able to rebuild or not?’ If they do, then here’s what that requirement is going to be,” Lankford said.

He said that providing a higher level of security and freedom of movement on the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza will also help to increase pressure on Hamas. And he said that any further violations of the ceasefire agreement by Hamas should be met with “immediate, serious consequences.”

Turkey and Qatar’s roles in the future of Gaza should be limited to certain sectors, Lankford added, given the countries’ hostility to Israel and support for Hamas. He said he’s comfortable seeing Ankara assist with reconstruction, but it should not be involved in running hospitals, schools or mosques or in rebuilding the economy.

“We’re going to have to figure out what are roles that they can do and they cannot do,” Lankford said. “There are certain roles they just should not be a part of.”

He said he’s not yet able to name specific countries that he would be comfortable seeing taking on more sensitive tasks — though he noted Indonesia’s interest — and said it’s “going to take a multinational force.”

“It’s going to be a trusted force. It’s not going to be American forces in the middle of that. It needs to be a trusted force from the region as much as possible, but that’s going to have to be somebody that’s tenacious enough to say, ‘No, we’re going to actually bring some stability to this area,’” Lankford said. “And I don’t know who that is yet.”

He said that there are “plenty of Arab countries that don’t like the Muslim Brotherhood and don’t like all of its offshoots” — including Hamas — but the question will be whether they’re “willing to be able to put their sons on the line” to confront the terrorist groups in Gaza.

Asked about efforts to counter the Muslim Brotherhood at home — several of Lankford’s colleagues have introduced legislation to designate the group as a terrorist organization and have pushed for similar action by executive order from the White House — Lankford said that supporters of the effort have more work to do to raise awareness.

“I think the first issue for me is really to keep raising it, to be able to continue to raise awareness of it, because you’re not going to build momentum among 100 senators if it’s the first time they thought about it,” Lankford said. “So we’re going to have to build some of that momentum for a while.”

The Oklahoma senator, a co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force, has also been outspoken about rising antisemitism on the “New Right” and was critical of the Heritage Foundation’s response to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes’ recent appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast.

Asked about Carlson, Lankford said that he “can say whatever he wants to … but we also have a protected right to be able to speak back and to say we disagree on areas.”

“I think the worst case scenario is to just be able to leave it out there,” Lankford continued. He argued that providing counter-narratives to antisemitic talking points is crucial to stemming the tide of antisemitism on both sides of the aisle. 

“If you get loud voices that say it and repeat it, people that just see it and don’t see a counter-narrative just accept it,” Lankford said. “We’ve got to make sure a counter-narrative is out there so that people actually hear a different opinion on it.”

Lankford, a Southern Baptist minister, objected to Carlson’s comments condemning Christian Zionists.

“To say those that support Israel that are Christians are ‘heretics,’ and are ‘the worst’ — I guess worse than Hamas and Hezbollah,” Lankford said. “That’s a bit of a bizarre statement to make, and I think we have a responsibility to be able to speak out and say, ‘Hey, I don’t agree with that.’” 

“It seems that he is defining what Christianity is. And he has a right to be able to say whatever he wants to, but I also have a right to be able to live biblical Christianity as well, and to be able to see the scripture in the full context of what it says,” Lankford continued. “So I want to speak out on that as well.”

Asked about Vice President JD Vance’s exchange last week with a student who asserted that Jews are seeking to persecute Christians — a narrative that Vance did not address or dispute — Lankford said that leaders, including in the White House and the Trump administration, need to speak up “for the most basic issue of religious liberty.”

He said it’s important for people to be able to hold and live their own faiths and to also protect the ability of others to practice different faiths. “What’s interesting on that dialogue is, I’ve literally not met a Jewish person that wasn’t very protective of religious liberty,” Lankford added. “It’s literally the opposite of that question.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) warned on Monday against the mainstreaming of antisemitic figures within the conservative movement in response to Tucker Carlson’s platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

Hawley, an ally of the national conservative movement who has advocated for the Trump administration to take an aggressive approach to combating campus antisemitism, made the comments while speaking to Jewish Insider about the controversy surrounding Fuentes’ appearance on Carlson’s podcast late last week. 

“I just think on the substance of what he says, I mean, it’s antisemitic. Let’s just call it for what it is, let’s not sugarcoat it,” Hawley said of Fuentes. 

“That’s not who we are as Republicans, as conservatives. Listen, this is America. He can have whatever views he wants. But the question for us as conservatives is: Are those views going to define who we are? And I think we need to say, ‘No, they’re not. No. Just no, no, no,’” he continued. “We need to be really clear, and I say that not only as a conservative, but also as a Christian. There is no place for antisemitic hatred, tropes, any of that stuff. I just think we’ve gotta say that stuff.”

The Missouri senator drew a parallel between the antisemitism seen at universities across the country since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel and Fuentes’ views. 

“Do we really want to be part of what we’ve seen happen on college campuses, for instance, in this country in the last two or three years? Conservatives have been decrying that,” Hawley said. “Are we now to believe that, oh, actually, we have no problem with that? And that all of the things they were saying about Jews and Jewish Americans, that was fine? That’s not my view. I wasn’t fine with it then, I’m not fine with it now.”

“I thought it was morally repulsive then, I think it’s morally repulsive now. I’m not going to change my opinion on that. I want to be really clear: that’s above all a moral issue,” he added. 

Hawley was not the only Republican senator to voice their objections to a GOP embrace of Fuentes or the avowed antisemite’s appearance on Carlson’s program.

The fallout now involves the Heritage Foundation, the result of its president, Kevin Roberts, coming to Carlson’s defense in a video last Thursday that called out the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson and warned that “their attempt to cancel him will fail.” Roberts has since clarified that he and Heritage do not support Fuentes’ antisemitic views, though he refused to disavow him, and is facing growing calls to walk back his comments. 

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force, told JI that he was “a little surprised that Heritage jumped out in support of [Carlson] and Nick Fuentes to say, ‘Hey, we want them in our camp’ after the statements that were made.”

“Heritage could have just sat back and not said anything, but instead, they chose to jump out on their side,” Lankford continued. “I don’t get that.”

He, like Hawley and other Republican lawmakers, warned that the right faces a similar crisis of antisemitism as is roiling the left if conservatives do not proactively confront and shun antisemites in their midst.

“The left has seen an implosion of their party based on antisemitism rising in their party. I don’t want to see the same thing on the right,” Lankford said. “To say the least, I want to make it very, very clear we are not the party of antisemitism. We’re not the party that believes Hitler was a good guy and that Winston Churchill was the bad guy. We’re not the party that blames media issues on the Jews and all these weird tropes that are out there. That’s not who we are, that’s not what we stand for, nor what we should stand for.”

He said that he does not understand the impulse to “allow it to be a big tent and allow antisemitism in our party. If there are [antisemites] that are there, we should call it out and say that’s wrong.”

“What I’ve tried to be very clear on is [that] the ‘New Right’ is now quoting an old wrong. It’s wrong,” Lankford continued.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) offered a similar message.

“The Democrat Party — we already have a party that’s for antisemitism [and] is against Israel,” Scott told JI. “The Republican Party [is going to] stand for Israel and we’re going to stand against antisemitism. I don’t think there’s any question.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JI that Roberts’ message “was the most tone-deaf comment, in both its content and its timing, that I’ve ever heard from a major Washington organization on any political side.” 

Menken resigned from Heritage’s Project Esther, the group’s antisemitism initiative, last week in response to Roberts’ video message defending Carlson. Along with Menken and CJV, several other groups have also publicly disaffiliated from Heritage’s antisemitism task force, including the National Jewish Advocacy Center, the Zionist Organization of America and Young Jewish Conservatives.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) urged the Trump administration to offer clearer incentives, including favorable trade and tariff treatment, to countries that normalize relations with Israel.

“The United States needs to make a clearer statement to the world that, ‘If you join the Abraham Accords, this is what happens to trade. We change the rules on what we do, on trade, on tariff, on relationships — it’s different for this group, so wouldn’t you like to join this club?’” Lankford said at an American Jewish Committee event in Washington marking the five-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords. “I think that’s something that we’ve yet to define clearly as an American government and as a State Department and our Commerce [Department], and I think it’s an area that is unfinished business.”

He also urged other countries in the region not to give Hamas the result it sought, through the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, in scuttling regional normalization efforts and isolating Israel globally.

“I think one of the biggest challenges right now is communicating to other nations, ‘Don’t show Hamas they were successful based on what your behavior changes now, and your relationship with Israel in the future. Don’t allow that terrorist extremist group to be the one that speaks for you and your nation,’” Lankford said. “If you say you oppose extremism, then don’t support their methods.”

He said that’s “a hard conversation to have among friends. I think it’s also difficult because we have broken relationships with multiple nations. That means sitting down with people you don’t normally sit down with and saying, ‘How do we get past this?’ And those are not simple conversations.”

Lankford said that offering favorable trade terms and offering a “package of what it means to be a part of this club” would help “smooth some of that.”

Asked by Jewish Insider about the Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar, Lankford said that Israel has been “very, very clear. It has been for decades. If you kill us and … [in] an act of terrorism, we don’t care where you are anywhere in the world, we’re going to come after you.”

“Their statement is pretty clear: ‘We had an opportunity, we’re going to take the opportunity,’” Lankford said. “An air strike may not be the most elegant way to be able to do that. And so I think there’s some disagreement on that. There’s not disagreements on, if someone is trying to kill you — it’s been American policy as well — we’re going to find you.”

He added that Qatar is an ally of the United States, but also of Iran.

On the issue of recent Israeli strikes on Syria, Lankford largely defended Israel, saying that Israel had been clear that it not allow Turkey to take over Syria and that it would protect the Druze population. He said that Israel’s focus on the atrocities against the Druze had raised that issue to global attention.

“Syria and its disjointed government at this point, as they’re trying to be able to form, has either allowed or encouraged the attack on the Druze in the south, that can’t be allowed,” Lankford said. “The leadership in Syria needs to control its own military and militant factions to be able to make sure they’re not slaughtering the Alawites, as it was allowed just a few weeks before that, or the Druze.”

Lankford, who recently visited Lebanon, said he remains encouraged by the progress that it has made toward eliminating Hezbollah, particularly setting an end-of-year deadline to disarm the terrorist group and moving to secure its banking system to prevent Hezbollah’s financing.

Lankford said he believes Lebanon is on track to meet the deadline the country set to disarm Hezbollah.

“I think that’s one of the greatest opportunities for peaceful connections between two neighbors that say they don’t want war with each other,” Lankford said, referring to potential relations and a stable, established border between Israel and Lebanon. “Good fences make good neighbors at times, and this is a good spot to be able to do that.”

A top Senate lawmaker indicated on Thursday that he’s open to resumed U.S. involvement in the campaign against the Houthis, amid a ramp-up of the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Israel that comes two months after the U.S. and the Houthis reached a ceasefire that ended the American bombing campaign against the group.

The Iran-backed Yemeni terrorist group has attacked and sunk two cargo ships passing through the Red Sea this week, killing several members of the ships’ crews and wounding and kidnapping others. The Houthis have also launched new strikes on Israel.

“The Houthis need to be totally eliminated,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Jewish Insider. “They have no purpose other than to kill free people.”

Asked if the U.S. should become involved directly against the Houthis again, Wicker said, “I wouldn’t rule that out.”

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) told JI that if the Houthis continue to block Red Sea shipping, “we’ve got to figure out a path forward on how to respond. It can’t be a long-term thing for ships to go around the Horn of Africa.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he wouldn’t, at this point, discuss possible American action, but emphasized that any Houthi activity has Iran’s hand behind it.

“The Houthis have decided the war against Israel is not over, and that doesn’t happen without Iranian support,” Lankford said, noting Iran’s assistance in providing intelligence, training and arms to the Yemeni terror group. “That would tell me Iran’s not done with their acts of terrorism in the region. … We have to decide, and Israel has to make a determination — as they have, of late — to be very, very clear. And Israel has carried out additional strikes on the Houthis to try to make that stop.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “I’m not sure what our interests are there right now, but most certainly, we have told them in the past that if they want to have a ceasefire, we’ll support a ceasefire. If they want to get back in the middle of it, I suspect that the administration may very well have a response to that.”

He said that he couldn’t discuss the possibility of a U.S. response without having been briefed on the situation.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) said he would need to think further about what circumstances would require American intervention.

“You’ve seen their main source, of Iran, be taken offline,” Budd told JI. “It remains to be seen what Iran is going to do in connection with the Houthis, but they’re a malevolent force that needs to be dealt with.”

Asked for comment on whether the Houthis’ strikes violated the group’s ceasefire with the U.S. or what might prompt further American action against the terrorist organization, the White House referred JI to a State Department press release condemning the attacks.

“These attacks demonstrate the ongoing threat that Iran-backed Houthi rebels pose to freedom of navigation and to regional economic and maritime security,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. “The United States has been clear: we will continue to take necessary action to protect freedom of navigation and commercial shipping from Houthi terrorist attacks, which must be condemned by all members of the international community.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), one of the leading Senate advocates for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, told Jewish leaders on Wednesday that he is working with administration officials to ensure that NSGP funding moves forward quickly, but acknowledged that it had already taken too long.

Though the administration recently released freezes on reimbursements for past NSGP grants, it still has yet to announce awards for a supplemental grant round for which nonprofits applied in the fall of 2024, and has not yet opened the application for 2025 grants.

“That funding is not at risk. It is going to be let go, and it should be let go very, very quickly,” Lankford told an advocacy group organized by the Jewish Federations of North American and Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

He continued, “We do have wide agreement to be able to say this needs to be done. It needs to be done faster, rather than slower. It’s already been held up too long. It’s June, almost July. The decision should have already been made to be able to move this.”

The Oklahoma senator, a co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force, said he’s been in regular contact with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought — seen as a key fiscal hawk inside the administration — about moving the funding ahead.

“He has assured me again that it is moving,” Lankford said, who spoke to Vought on Wednesday. “They are getting all the details worked out. They continue to be able to work with DHS to be able to make sure that funding is moving. That is not at risk. It is caught up in all the initial – we’re holding everything to be able to look at it. But that funding is not at risk.”

Lankford said he’s continuing to engage with the OMB and other parts of the administration, communicating “this is just common sense, that we need to be able to do this.” The senator urged advocates to keep calling their representatives to continue pushing the issue.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the chair of the House Rules Committee and former chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, also addressed the group, and said she plans to introduce legislation regarding Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policies on college campuses, which is “going to hold the schools responsible for any BDS activity.”

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) warned that he plans to excoriate the president of Georgetown University at a congressional hearing next month if the school hasn’t fired a university professor who urged Iran to attack U.S. forces in retaliation for the U.S. strikes on Iran.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is mounting a bid for Senate, told the group that she’s a “proud Zionist” who “stand[s] with the Jewish community to call out rampant antisemitism, disgusting and egregious antisemitism.” 

“My name is Haley Stevens, and you will always have a fierce ally in me,” she said. 

She said she’s working to increase funding for the NSGP, noting that an attack like the one in Boulder, Colo., could happen at a synagogue in her district or anywhere in the country.

Other lawmakers who attended the meeting included Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Lisa McClain (R-MI), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Celeste Maloy (R-UT), Gabe Amo (D-RI), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), George Latimer (D-NY), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Scott Franklin (R-FL), Joe Morelle (R-NY), Randy Weber (R-TX), Gary Palmer (R-AL) and Lois Frankel (D-FL).