Eighteen Republican senators are calling for an inquiry into whether Colin Kahl, the Biden administration’s embattled nominee to become under secretary of defense for policy, released classified information on social media after leaving his position as Biden’s national security advisor in 2017.

In a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray sent Tuesday morning, the senators accuse Kahl of disclosing classified and otherwise controlled information, as well as discussing the information with government officials and soliciting it from them.

The fallout from Sunday’s blackout at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran continued Monday, with some congressional Democrats warning of potential setbacks in negotiations, while policy experts suggested the incident provides the Biden administration with additional leverage as it attempts a rapprochement with Tehran. 

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who recently led a bipartisan letter calling for the Biden administration to reach a more comprehensive agreement with Iran than the 2015 nuclear agreement, said that the incident, reportedly the result of an Israeli attack, may have “thrown a monkey wrench” in the negotiations, although “probably temporarily.”

The Anti-Defamation League is calling on Congress to appropriate more than $750 million for programs to combat hate and extremism and improve law enforcement procedures for dealing with hate crimes following the release on Friday of the White House’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget proposal to Congress.

For the second consecutive year, the ADL is requesting that congressional appropriators double funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) to $360 million from $180 million. The NSGP is a Department of Homeland Security-administered program which provides funding for nonprofits, including synagogues, to enhance their security.

On this week’s episode of Jewish Insider‘s “Limited Liability Podcast,” hosts Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg are joined by both actress, producer and author Noa Tishby and New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman. 

Glass ceiling: Tishby, an Israeli native who now calls Los Angeles home, joined the podcast to discuss her new book, out this week, titled Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. She said it was “shocking” to discover how few women have written about Israeli history. “I realized very early on that this is the first history book about Israel to be written by a woman.” Tishby said her book was written “with a younger, liberal crowd in mind,” but initial feedback has made her realize it has “a wider net.” In the book, she said, “I do not gloss over Israel’s problems. There isn’t a single country in the world that doesn’t have problems. There isn’t a single country in the world that is unblemished with past actions. And even when you weigh everything together, you still have a good case for Israel.”

When Adolf Eichmann’s trial began in a Jerusalem courtroom on April 11, 1961, the world was about to reckon — in an infinitely deeper and more meaningful way than it had before — with the blinding horror of the Nazi genocide. Eichmann, a major architect of the so-called Final Solution to exterminate the Jews, had been hiding in Argentina before he was captured by Mossad agents, brought to Israel and cross-examined from within a bulletproof booth in what was the first televised trial in history. 

The prosecution, however, was about more than just one perpetrator as witnesses who never encountered Eichmann came forth to testify. “It was the first time that the world heard from survivors of the Holocaust — most of whom were young men and women — in such a concerted fashion,” historian Deborah Lipstadt, the author of The Eichmann Trial, told Jewish Insider. Not that they hadn’t spoken before: The English translation of Elie Wiesel’s Night, for instance, had been published a year earlier. “But in this case,” Lipstadt said, “the whole world was watching.”

Some of the aid the Biden administration plans to provide to Palestinians may violate the Taylor Force Act, which restricts U.S. funding to the PA until it stops making payments to the families of terrorists, 18 Republican senators claimed in a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken Thursday afternoon.

The letter highlights concerns about $75 million in United States Agency for International Development (USAID) economic support funds that the administration plans to provide for a range of infrastructure, community development and other initiatives in the Palestinian territories. It comes a day following the administration’s announcement that it will provide more than $235 million in aid to the Palestinians.

First Lady Jill Biden recorded a message for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which spotlights the ongoing difficulties some Holocaust survivors living in the U.S. face.

“This day, each year, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the lives of six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims who were killed in one of humanity’s darkest hours,” Biden said in her message, which was recorded for the Jewish Federations of North America. “We also honor the resilience of those who lived. They are the living testaments that good can triumph over evil. Their lives and those of the second, third and fourth generations that followed are a rebuke of antisemitism and hate and violence.”

The Biden administration announced Wednesday it would provide at least $235 million in aid to the Palestinians, reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump to halt U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and organizations that provide services and support to Palestinians.

Wednesday’s announcement follows a series of quiet steps taken by the administration in recent weeks to restore aid to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.