House Democrats pushed back on Wednesday against Republican attack ads accusing them of not supporting Israeli security after their votes on a GOP procedural motion last week.

The controversy centers around a failed motion to recommit introduced by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) last Thursday which would have blocked passage of a supplemental funding bill for Capitol security — which House Republicans opposed — by returning it back to the Appropriations Committee, potentially killing it entirely. 

Twenty-five years after American yeshiva student David Boim was killed in a terrorist attack at a West Bank bus stop in 1996, oral arguments are set to begin Thursday in an appeal over whether the teenager’s family can collect a monetary judgment ordered by a court in 2004. The family is looking to collect from groups linked to now-defunct organizations accused of providing material support to Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for Boim’s murder.

The Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals is hearing an appeal in Boim v. American Muslims for Palestine, in which Stanley Boim, David’s father, alleges that the organization, founded by University of California professor Hatem Bazian in 2006, has direct ties to the now-shuttered organizations that sent tens of millions of dollars to Hamas, which was determined to have carried out the attack that killed Boim.

In an apparent effort to push Democratic colleagues to express their views on U.S. arms sales to Israel, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a resolution Wednesday in support of two upcoming sales.

The resolution, co-sponsored by Sens. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Barrasso (R-WY), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), comes in response to aborted efforts by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Israel critics in the House, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), to force votes on blocking a $735 million arms sale to Israel.

Amid a wave of domestic and international antisemitism in the wake of the recent Israel-Hamas conflict, including multiple incidents of violence against Jews, House and Senate Republicans have introduced legislation aimed at tackling antisemitism, and are accusing House Democrats of helping to drive the trend.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN) — one of two Jewish House Republicans — announced legislation aimed at combating antisemitic hate crimes. In his announcement, McCarthy criticized a range of Democrats by name as partially responsible for anti-Jewish violence.

The Republican primary in Ohio’s open-seat Senate race has in many ways come to represent a fierce battle for Donald Trump’s loyalty. The former president, who has yet to make an endorsement, remains popular in the state, and most of the leading candidates, including Josh Mandel and Jane Timken, are eager to prove that they will be best suited to advance an “America First” agenda as outgoing moderate Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) prepares to step down at the end of his term in 2022.

Cleveland-based investment banker Mike Gibbons, who entered the race in mid-April, is taking a different approach. While he says he supported the former president’s policies, he claims the race is about more than Trump. “I am a Trump supporter, but I’m not into the cult of personality,” Gibbons told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “If he wouldn’t have done what he did when he was in there, I wouldn’t have supported him. It’s not about Donald Trump, it’s about America.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) latest comments, in which she compares COVID mask and vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, are highlighting a debate within the Jewish community on when and how to respond to antisemitic comments from legislators on the fringes of their party.

Greene’s tirade began last week during a podcast appearance, in which the Georgia legislator said that House of Representatives rules regarding masking and vaccines were “exactly the type of abuse” that Jews faced during the Holocaust. 

With a little over a week until Yair Lapid’s mandate to form the next government expires on June 2, the Yesh Atid leader has vowed to continue his efforts until the very last minute, despite his predicted failure. 

Marathon talks: Lapid restarted coalition negotiations on Monday, three days after the cease-fire between Israel and Gaza took effect. He admitted that his chances of forming a government are not high, but that he would “leave no stone unturned,” adding: “In the coming days I’ll do everything to form a government.” Yamina leader Naftali Bennett has not fully ruled out joining Lapid, but the chances of such a government appear slim after the recent round of violence. Yamina No. 2 Ayelet Shaked told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that “I don’t see it happening.” Still, Bennett himself wrote on Facebook over the weekend that: “There remain a number of options for forming a government.” 

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) condemned the vandalism at Tucson’s Congregation Chaverim — where his wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, (D-AZ) is a member — in a statement to Jewish Insider on Friday.

“This act of vandalism in Tucson is personal for Gabby and me. We continue to keep Arizona’s Jewish community and the members of the congregation in our thoughts,” Kelly said in a statement on Friday evening, in response to a JI inquiry a day earlier. “Anti-Semitic attacks fly in the face of who we are as a country and as a state. There is no place for hate in Arizona.”