The survey, which was conducted by Sense Worldwide and commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation, found that 39% of respondents have engaged less, engaged more selectively or disengaged entirely from Jewish spaces due to “events affecting Jewish people in the last few years.” 

Among those nearly 40% of respondents, 42% of them said that it was because their “views don’t align with how Israel/Palestine is discussed, and I don’t feel there’s room for nuance,” and 40% said they engaged less because they did not want to “experience biased, one-sided messaging.” Forty-eight percent said it was because “conversations often feel hostile, toxic, or unproductive.”

And among all respondents, when asked what would make Jewish experiences more appealing to them, 30% said that they would be attracted to experiences that were more cultural and less religious, and 26% said “spaces where non-Zionist and anti-Zionist views can be expressed without being labelled antisemitic.”

At the same time, the study found that young Jews have hardly abandoned Jewish life. Three-quarters of Jewish young adults in the United States say they regularly do something Jewish, though most are finding their connections outside of synagogues and traditional Jewish institutions, according to the study. 

A small group of participants, 4%, also offered an explanation of the lasting impact that Jewish experiences had had on them. The study found that the clearest negative theme among those respondents was disillusionment around Israel and Zionism and the way it was presented in Jewish education or community spaces.

“A negative legacy I have been reflecting on is what I now understand to be a biased education/perspective on Israel,” one respondent wrote.

The study surveyed 2,071 Jewish adults aged 22 to 40 from December 2025 through April 2026. Respondents were sampled from panels created by NORC and GenLabs, and the margin of error was +/- 3.4%. 

The survey found that 75% of Jewish young adults say they regularly do something Jewish in their lives, with 45% saying their only form of participation was informally, often at home with family or friends. 

Just 30% said they regularly participate formally in Jewish life, including through institutions or organizations.

That divide was also reflected in where respondents said they most often feel a sense of Jewish connection. Fifty-five percent cited family and 44% cited Jewish friends, compared with 19% who cited Jewish community organizations or groups. 

Sixteen percent said they found connection through social or political causes connected to Jewish identity, and 13% said they felt most connected through experiences related to Israel.

“The research gives us a much fuller and accurate understanding of where, how, and why Jewish young adults seek out and experience Jewish life,” said Stacie Cherner, the director of research and learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation, in a statement. “Now, importantly, we can begin to translate these insights to action.”

The Jim Joseph Foundation, which commissioned the survey, is a funder of 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company.

Another study of Jewish engagement across generations by the Jewish Federations of North America in March found that 40% of Jewish American adults describe themselves as engaged with their local Jewish community, while 60% were unengaged. 

When asked how often they take part in “anything that feels Jewish,” 20% of respondents said very often or often, while 24% said sometimes, 33% said rarely and 22% said never, the new survey found. Those without earlier Jewish experiences were much less likely to participate at all.

Among those who rarely or never participate in Jewish life, 52% said it was because they “don’t feel a strong connection to Jewish life,” while 38% said it “feels too religious” and 36% said it “doesn’t feel relevant to my life right now,” the survey found.

Among the 11% who have engaged more with Jewish spaces in recent years, the most common reason was wanting to feel a stronger sense of solidarity with the Jewish community, cited by 71%. 

And of that 11%, 61% said they wanted to “be around people who understand what I’m feeling,” and 54% said Jewish spaces felt safer or more supportive than other spaces. Eight percent said they sought spaces where non-Zionist and anti-Zionist views can be expressed without being labelled antisemitic.

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The judge, Richard Stearns, ruled Thursday that the government’s evidence for Harvard having committed Title VI civil rights violations were “too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.”

In a statement, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the government disagrees with the ruling and is “assessing next steps.”

Trump’s suit against the Ivy League school, first filed in March, was a cornerstone of his administration’s aggressive and contentious fight against campus antisemitism. Harvard was among the most prominent schools to have experienced severe tensions, including incidents directly targeting Jewish students and “Zionists,” in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. The school settled cases with some Jewish students and put forward its own plans to fight antisemitism.

Yet unlike some other schools, Harvard resisted the government’s efforts to make concessions and pay a fine in order to resolve Title VI cases. The school also fought the Trump administration’s 2025 freezing of more than $2 billion in federal funds to Harvard, which the government argued was punishment for failing to address campus antisemitism.

Sterns wrote that the government’s case in the Title VI suit was flawed because it relied on incidents almost entirely from the 2023-24 school year and couldn’t be considered “ongoing.” 

He also criticized the Trump administration’s practice of withholding funds from schools accused of Title VI violations, writing, “Congress’s intent was not to penalize a wayward funding recipient but instead to incentivize it to bring itself into compliance with TItle VI.” Title VI is the section of the Civil Rights Act requiring institutions that receive federal funds not to discriminate on the basis of race, color or national origin.

A spokesperson for Harvard did not immediately return a request for comment.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard alum who has become a prominent conservative campus activist on antisemitism issues since Oct. 7, criticized the ruling to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Harvard insists on violating the civil rights of American Jewish students while holding the American people hostage in paying for it,” he wrote in a message. Kestenbaum encouraged the government not to issue any further grants to the university.

The case has been seen as a barometer of academia’s ability to fight the Trump administration in court over federal incursion efforts, many of which the administration cited campus antisemitism to justify. The day before the suit’s dismissal, three dozen universities — including fellow Ivy League schools Brown, Columbia and Cornell, all of whom had signed agreements with the Trump administration in exchange for dropping antisemitism charges — filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard in a separate case that had restored the school’s federal funding by court order.

The legal brouhaha had divided Jewish groups. Weeks before the judge’s ruling, Hillel International filed, then immediately withdrew, its own amicus brief supporting Harvard in the separate case. Hillel’s brief had argued the school was already adequately addressing antisemitism and that the government’s actions “do not help Jewish students.” Hillel withdrew the brief hours later, after activists including Kestenbaum criticized the organization on social media and urged donors to withhold funding.

Hillel International declined to comment on the latest development to JTA. A request for comment to Harvard Hillel, which operates independently of the parent organization, was not immediately returned. A request for comment to Harvard Chabad, whose director has also been outspoken about fighting campus antisemitism, was also not immediately returned. 

Harvard’s Jewish community has also split over the school’s handling of antisemitism and the merits of the lawsuit. A March open letter signed by 120 Jewish Harvard faculty and staff after the lawsuit’s initial filing said the government “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism to justify what can only be described as an authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education.”

In contrast, a July open letter signed by 170 Jewish and non-Jewish Harvard faculty and staff said that “challenges remain” on campus, while acknowledging “the situation has improved to some extent recently.”

“We understand why colleagues question the merits and motives of the Title VI lawsuit,” the second letter states. “But one should not turn a blind eye to the fact that many Jewish and Israeli students have suffered harassment and discrimination over the last few years, degrading their Harvard experience.”

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The lawsuit, which was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September 2025, accused Apple of discriminating against Tyler Steele, a longtime employee of one of its stores in Reston, Virginia.

Steele converted to Judaism in the spring of 2023, and while his manager initially approved his request not to be scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays due to his observance of Shabbat, another manager that replaced the previous one later rescinded the accommodation.

According to the complaint, Steele’s new manager, Anthony Dosch, denied his requests to have the days off in September 2023, allegedly telling him that month that he “could become a rules Nazi with regards to our policies.”

Days after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Dosch also warned Steele not to get into politics or debates about the conflict at work, and a month later issued him a misconduct warning claiming that Steele had body odor that violated the store’s policies.

The EEOC alleged that Steele later complained to Apple officials in November 2023 about antisemitic behavior and the denial of his religious accommodation. Steele was fired from the store in January 2024, after reminding Dosch that he could not work on a Friday the following month for religious reasons.

“Employees should not have to violate their religious beliefs to keep their jobs or live in fear of retribution because they requested an accommodation,” EEOC Philadelphia Regional Attorney Debra Lawrence said in a statement at the time the lawsuit was filed.

In its lawsuit, the EEOC accused Apple of religious discrimination and retaliation in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Apple and the EEOC unveiled the settlement in an Aug. 7 filing in federal court in Virginia, nearly a year after the initial complaint. The settlement is awaiting court approval.

Apple denied the allegations and did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which required the company to award Steele $80,000 in back pay and $70,000 in compensatory damages and interest.

Under the settlement, the company will also be required to update its religious accommodation policies and conduct trainings with some employees in its Virginia operations within 90 days.

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Sanders in an open letter on Sunday called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin to end a “corrupt system” of super PAC funding. 

His main target was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which spent $32 million in an unsuccessful bid to tank the Democratic primary campaign of Abdul El-Sayed, a critic of Israel, for a Michigan Senate seat. El-Sayed last week defeated Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel moderate.

Sanders cited reports that the pro-Israel lobby is now weighing another surge of funds to buoy Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee who will face El-Sayed in what is expected to be a tight general election in November.

“It is absurd that they spend tens of millions of dollars to try to determine who the Democratic nominee is and, if they fail, then proceed to support the Republican candidate in the general election,” said Sanders. He added that corporate PACs, including “crypto, AI and other online betting special interests,” have spent a record $517 million this election cycle. 

Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who frequently caucuses with Democrats, has long pushed for a constitutional amendment to undo the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited money on elections. He said in his letter that Democratic leaders did “not have to wait” for that, urging the party to immediately “prohibit super PACs from participating in its primaries.” 

“Millions of Democrats are AIPAC members who are proud to help elect principled Democrats,” AIPAC said Monday in its response to Sanders.

“This letter isn’t about democracy or campaign finance — that’s why he doesn’t name the billionaire super PACs that back him,” the group said on X. “Sanders just wants to blacklist Americans who disagree with him.”

Sanders acknowledged in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday that Democrats would be severely disadvantaged if they forewent PAC spending in general elections, but said the party should “take charge of what takes place within their own primaries right now.” 

Sanders is the most prominent Jewish progressive in American politics. He has supported an insurgent wave of democratic socialists and Israel critics who won elections over the past year, including El-Sayed, Adam Hamawy, the victor of the Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 12th district, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

While Sanders built his movement on fighting economic inequality, he has increasingly condemned Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Iran, and last year became the first U.S. senator to say that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. In April, a record number of 40 senators voted for his “Block the Bombs” resolutions to ban certain weapons sales to Israel. 

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Alawieh rose to national prominence as a key architect of the campaign to withhold votes from Biden during Michigan’s presidential primary in 2024, a protest against the administration’s support for Israel as it inflicted mounting casualties in Gaza. 

Alawieh defeated state representative Erin Byrnes in Tuesday’s primary to represent Michigan’s 2nd Senate District, a heavily Arab-American area covering Dearborn and parts of Detroit — and the epicenter of the Uncommitted effort. He won 59% of the vote to Byrnes’ 41% after more than 95% of votes were counted, according to the Associated Press, and is now almost certain to win the solid-blue state Senate seat in November. 

Alawieh, who was born in Lebanon and grew up in Dearborn, acknowledged his victory without giving a speech on Wednesday. His staff announced that Alawieh’s maternal grandfather, Hajj Kassem Bazzi, died Tuesday night as they awaited the election results. 

“Please keep Abbas’s family in your prayers as they take needed time together,” Alawieh’s team said in a statement. “Abbas will share his own thoughts on the race soon. For now, thank you to every community that made this win possible.”

Alawieh was backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He previously worked as a staffer for congressional Democrats, including Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin and former Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, who lost a primary against Rep. Wesley Bell on Tuesday. 

Alawieh, alongside Layla Elabed, co-founded the campaign urging Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary. The movement attracted a groundswell of support, including from some Jews, and won more than 100,000 votes, or 13% of the overall vote. Biden was beaten by the uncommitted vote in Dearborn, where Arab Americans make up more than half the population.

The Uncommitted movement also spread to other states, rallying more than 650,000 voters nationwide, and crystallized a lack of enthusiasm for Biden, who eventually stepped off the presidential ticket.

Alawieh served as one of the Uncommitted delegates at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where he and other delegates unsuccessfully lobbied to place a Palestinian speaker on the agenda. 

Alawieh did not make Israel and Gaza a central part of his campaign for the state Senate seat, instead focusing on supporting working families and investing in healthcare, housing, public transit and education. Still, he told the Michigan Advance in February that his role in the Uncommitted movement resonated with people in his district. 

“For the people in real life — not on Twitter — it is clear to them that parties’ focus on prioritizing funding for war crimes was out of touch with what voters wanted,” he said. “The party was undoubtedly wrong about Gaza in 2024.” 

While some Democrats blamed the Uncommitted campaign for contributing to President Donald Trump’s defeat of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost Michigan in her 2024 presidential run, Alawieh and Harris have mended fences enough to recently sit down for a meeting.

Harris “initiated” the meeting after months of phone calls, Alawieh said in July. “I urge VP Harris and all of our party’s leaders to side with peace-loving Americans against endless wars, in opposition to the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza, and against the ethnic cleansing campaign in Lebanon,” he said. Alawieh has said that he voted for Harris against Trump in the 2024 general election, while Elabed did not.

The centrality of Israel in Michigan’s primaries has spawned bitter divides between Jewish Democrats and others in the party concerning the threat of antisemitism. In one incident that shook Detroit-area Jews earlier this year, Temple Israel in the suburb of West Bloomfield was rammed by a truck laden with explosives. The man who drove the truck, a U.S. citizen from Lebanon, had recently lost several family members in an Israeli airstrike on Lebanon. 

Alawieh responded to the attack by declaring his support for Jewish Michiganders.

“We must stand in unequivocal defense of the humanity and safety of our Jewish siblings and denounce this heinous act,” he said in a statement. “My family and I are praying for safety for communities across our state who are feeling afraid right now, and we are holding our Jewish community members extra close.”

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He is heavily favored to win the overwhelmingly Democratic district in November’s general election, when he will face Republican candidate T.P. Nykoriak, who ran uncontested.

McKinney, a democratic socialist backed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and other prominent progressives, largely focused his campaign on domestic issues like championing workers, reducing income inequality and bolstering public health in a district that encompasses much of Detroit and its western suburbs. A Black politician, he has also pushed for Black representation of the majority-Black district, which is the poorest in Michigan.

The last section of McKinney’s platform on his campaign website is labeled “Palestine.” He vowed to “end the military aid and arms that America gives to Israel” and to sign the Block the Bombs Act, a resolution that would prohibit the sale of certain weapons to Israel, which gained record support among Democrats in Congress earlier this year. A separate amendment that would eliminate military aid to Israel won votes from a majority of House Democrats last month. However, the amendment failed as the only Republican who backed it was its sponsor, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

“Israel needs to immediately end the genocide and release all Palestinians who have been detained, as well as allow the remains to be reunited with the families of their loved ones,” McKinney said on his website.

He added that the United States must “resume funding for UNRWA and other NGOs that aim to help end the famine, ensure full access to high-quality medical care, and provide full access to humanitarian aid for Palestinians.”

McKinney has linked the concerns of marginalized and poor people in his district to the military funds sent abroad.

“I can’t in good conscience at the federal level support sending billions — and sometimes trillions over decades — for bombs and weapons to kill families and children,” he said in an interview on Detroit Public Radio in April. “When literally in my own neighborhood I have to witness and see my neighbors struggling day to day.”

Thanedar, a millionaire businessman and former DSA member, bucked his party’s trend by boosting his support for Israel in recent years. As a state legislator in 2021, Thanedar co-sponsored legislation to end military aid to Israel. After he was elected to Congress in 2022, he took an American Israel Public Affairs Committee-sponsored trip to Israel and became a staunch Israel advocate.

Thanedar renounced his DSA membership after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, citing a New York City rally hosted by the party the next day in which some speakers praised the attacks. He called the event “hate-filled and antisemitic.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, one of Israel’s most stalwart Democratic supporters, endorsed Thanedar. 

Thanedar had highlighted a platform of progressive issues including affordability, public housing, universal healthcare and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He has faced criticism throughout his political career for accepting donations from corporate PACs and for a personal fortune that allowed him to largely self-fund his campaigns. 

AIPAC fundraised for Thanedar during his contest with McKinney, but the pro-Israel group focused its strongest efforts in Michigan this cycle on defending pro-Israel moderate Rep. Haley Stevens against progressive Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed for the Democratic nomination for Senate. The organization funneled a record-breaking $32 million into Stevens’ campaign. El-Sayed narrowly beat Stevens early on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, scoring a high-profile win for the political left.

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“It would have been a massive attack. We were all set to go, but when the allies asked to call it off, you got to, sort of say, ‘well, let’s see,’” he told reporters on Sunday night. Saudi Arabia thought a deal on the Strait of Hormuz was imminent, followed by one on the denuclearization of Iran, he said, but did not set a concrete deadline for either deal.

“There is a group of people that would like me to just do it, and there is another group of people that does not want me to do it,” Trump said as he described the ongoing dispute about whether the best next move in the conflict is a military or a diplomatic one.

“Would I rather make a deal? I am not looking to kill people,” he explained.

Iran denied any talks were forthcoming. Esmaeil Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters on Monday that Iran was discussing making passage through the Strait of Hormuz more secure, and that Iran was not otherwise sending envoys to any talks or planning on hosting them. “We do not currently have negotiations with America,” he said.

The region had braced for an expansion of the U.S.-Iran war, with a joint Israeli-American attack, after nearly a month in which the Jewish state had been absent from the fighting. The United States over the weekend warned its citizens to evacuate the Middle East.

At the last moment the president pivoted, and in a step that appeared to catch Israel off-guard, Trump announced on X that he was canceling the planned strike. It undercut Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim last week that he and Trump were in lockstep on Iran.

“The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II,” Trump said on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns.

“Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” he said. “This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s  nuclear threat.”

Saudi Arabia’s official news agency confirmed Sunday that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince who has close business and personal ties with Trump and his family, appealed to the U.S. president to stand down.

“The Crown Prince stressed the need to prioritize dialogue to reduce escalation and the importance of making every possible effort to achieve calm that paves the way for diplomatic solutions, preserves the region’s security and stability, and prevents a wider conflict whose repercussions would affect regional and international security and stability,” the Saudi Press Agency said.

Iran disputed Trump’s claim, instead saying that it was ready to respond to any attack on the country.

“The Iranian Foreign Ministry vowed that Tehran will use all means at its disposal to exercise its inherent right of self-defense in the face of the United States’ ongoing violations against the Islamic Republic,” the Fars News Agency said.

Fars, which is affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps – the principal power in Iran since the war began – denied any stand-down on Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. 

“Iran’s Armed Forces have staged uncompromising retaliation in the face of each instance of violation, including those taking place in support of illegal vessel movement in the waterway,” the agency said.

The waterway is critical to the passage of a fifth of the world’s petroleum. Iran has asserted control of the waterway in the wake of the war the United States and Israel launched in February.

Trump’s statement came after CBS News reported on Saturday that the United States and Israel were set to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure, which would substantially escalate the war. The State Department put out a security alert advising Americans in the region to leave if they could, and to cancel plans to enter it.

Regional media reported that Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, conveyed warnings through Turkey and Pakistan to regional U.S. allies that it would hit back hard if the U.S.-Israel attack went through.

Israel appeared to be caught off guard both by the planned escalation and by Trump’s stand-down. “Israel is unaware of a decision to restart full military operations, nor has been requested of Israel to join any military actions against Iran,” CBS News quoted an Israeli official as saying – even as it quoted U.S. officials as saying that Israel was coordinating with the United States. 

Israel’s government had no comment on Trump’s reported plan to attack the infrastructure, or his stand-down. Flights in and out of Ben Gurion Airport were unaffected. In his Truth Social statement, Trump said, “The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment.”

Trump has multiple times since the war’s launch threatened to escalate the war only to retreat at the last minute, something the Fars news agency noted in a sardonic tone.

“This narrative seems familiar and repetitive,” it said in a separate report on bin Salman’s appeal. “Every time Trump has made serious threats against Iranian infrastructure in the past, after Tehran has not backed down, he has claimed that friendly countries have asked him not to do anything.”

Trump escalated his rhetoric last week as Iran continued to attack ships attempting to transit Hormuz. “We’re going to beat the f***ing s**t out of them,” he told Fox News.

Trump has since the tentative signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran in mid-June asked Israel to stay out of the conflict – including in the wake of the resumption of fighting on July 13.

Netanyahu, facing a tough reelection in October, has in recent weeks sought to allay any perceptions in Israel that he had been sidelined by Trump. He met with the president last week. 

“I just finished an excellent meeting with President Trump,” he told Israeli reporters after the meeting. “And when I say excellent, it’s not lip service – a conversation with full cooperation, with mutual support, with the understanding of the joint goal to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, and other goals.” 

The roller-coaster ride appeared to unsettle Netanyahu’s colleagues in his Likud Party. “You can say ‘no’ to Trump,” Knesset member Amit Halevi told Kan Reshet Bet, the government-run radio station. “Our commitment is to the security of the state.”

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But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work towards a peaceful future.

“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”

The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.

“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”

The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.

Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.

Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, Maine. (Courtesy Rachel Isaacs)

The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”

The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)

Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite in a similar way.”

Congregation Beth Israel is the oldest synagogue in Bangor, Maine. (Wikimedia Commons)

Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.

“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”

Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”

“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”

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“There will be no Israeli withdrawal,” an unnamed “diplomatic official” said in a statement issued in Hebrew to Israeli reporters.

The rejection has spurred blistering expressions of anger by unnamed U.S. officials in comments to reporters and has thrown into public view an area of dispute between the two longtime allies.

The statement came in the hours after Trump posted what might have sounded like a dramatic breakthrough to his Truth Social account on Thursday evening. The U.S.-convened Board of Peace had announced a “HISTORIC” agreement that would lead to the “COMPLETE DISARMAMENT” of Hamas, Trump wrote in a statement that the White House shared.

“CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!” Trump said.

Referring to the Hamas attack on Israel that initiated the Gaza war, he added, “The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 will NOT be allowed to rebuild!”

The Board of Peace had announced a deal several hours ahead of Trump, saying, “For the first time, Hamas officially has committed to an actionable plan for relinquishing all its weapons, which will be followed by Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.”

Hamas officials have said they had accepted the plan in principle but were waiting for Israel to sign on. Ghazi Hamad, a senior official, told Reuters on Friday that Israel must accept the plan before Hamas would disarm, while a different leader associated with the group tweeted that the “ball is now in the enemy’s court” while also acknowledging that Hamas had accepted the proposal despite misgivings.

“Certainly, it is not what our people aspire to after their epic battle on the path to liberation,” tweeted Basem Naim, a former health minister who now lives in Turkey.

The Israeli rejection said the plan did not “adequately address” Israel’s demands that Hamas must be divested of its weapons, and that the weapons must be removed from Gaza and that the Gaza Strip must be demilitarized. It did not mention Trump or the Board of Peace, the entity Trump established last year in part to supplant the United Nations, a body he does not trust.

“There will be no Israeli withdrawal from the Yellow Line in the Gaza Strip until Hamas is disarmed and the strip is demilitarized,” the statement said. The Yellow Line demarcates the areas Hamas and Israel control in Gaza; Israel still controls just over half of the strip.

The statement said these messages were conveyed to “envoy Tony Blair,” an executive member of the Board of Peace, without naming him as such. Other executive members include Trump intimates, among them, Secretary of State Marco Rubio;; Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff; Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles; and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The Israeli statement also did not mention Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s High Representative for Gaza, who first posted the news about the ostensible agreement, which Hamas has yet to confirm.

“Implementation and verification have to be real,” Mladenov said. “Withdrawal must move in lockstep with decommissioning.”

U.S. officials bristled at the Israeli statement. “We’re not asking Israel to do anything that isn’t in the 20-point plan that they agreed to initially, and so we’re very confident they will adhere to it,” an official told the Times of Israel, referring to the agreement that brought about the release of Israeli hostages a year ago. “If they don’t, President Trump would be very, very disappointed.”

The ceasefire that ended the hostage crisis did not last, and Hamas and Israel have been fighting in Gaza since, although with fewer casualties than characterized the first two years of the war.

Axios quoted an official who was blunter: “He’s f–king got to stand by his commitments,” the official said of Netanyahu. 

Netanyahu, facing elections in October, is under pressure from the Israeli right not to relinquish Gaza. His coalition last year absented itself from the Knesset when the opposition brought up Trump’s 20-point plan for a vote of approval. Netanyahu last year accepted the plan in an appearance with Trump, but he has not sought its ratification.

Axios also reported that Trump and Netanyahu spoke about Gaza in their meeting this week, when Netanyahu met with Trump to discuss next steps in the war Israel and the United States launched against Iran in February.

The Israeli statement pointedly said — in its first paragraph — that did not happen.

“The topic of Gaza did not come up at all between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump,” it said.

In his statement, Trump also singled out Turkey and Qatar for helping to broker the deal. Israel reviles both countries as enabling Hamas, and their presence on the Board of Peace initially delayed Israel’s own entrance.

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During his appearance with Morgan, the student, Austin Franco, defended his statement in June that he did not want to work with Jews, saying that he did not like most of the Jews he had met. The remark was made in a private message that the company that received it publicized.

“As a university built on the solid foundations of our nation’s democratic freedoms, Cornell has an obligation to fiercely defend freedom of speech — even when we find that speech abhorrent,” Cornell’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, said in a statement issued late Wednesday, shortly after the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reached out to the school for comment on Franco.

“The student’s public comments invoked hateful generalizations and uninformed tropes with a long, ugly history of harm,” Kotlikoff said, adding that “antisemitism generally” is “detestable, ignorant, and fully at odds with the values of the Cornell community.”

Kotlikoff, who is Jewish, did not mention Franco by name in his statement, citing federal privacy law, nor did he specify which of Franco’s comments about Jews the school found objectionable. His statement concluded, “Despite the seriousness with which we take this matter, we are not able to make any further comment regarding the actions of this student, or any public statement of the university’s response.”

Cornell opened an investigation into Franco when his comments were first publicized. He remained in the headlines after he was secretly filmed by an apparent sting operation led by Accuracy in Media, a right-wing activist group that has targeted pro-Palestinian students and university heads the group deems antisemitic on other campuses. Franco told a hidden camera interviewer connected to the group last week that the university’s investigation had amounted to little and that he would be returning to Cornell.

Kotlikoff’s remarks Wednesday once again place Cornell on the front line in tensions over antisemitism at colleges and universities. The school reached a $60 million settlement with the Trump administration last year to resolve antisemitism claims and regain $250 million in funding that had been frozen over campus unrest in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Cornell was one of the earliest schools to face antisemitism allegations after Oct. 7, 2023, when a professor spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally and said he had been “exhilarated” by the Hamas-led attack against southern Israel, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. 

But the latest incident involving Franco had little to do with the subsequent war in Gaza until Tuesday, when the student told Morgan on his YouTube show that he objected to Jews in part because of Israel, which he deemed “a genocidal country.” 

The controversy over Franco, a rising junior at the Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York, began in June when he wrote in an internship application that he was “not interested in working for a jew.” 

His name and remarks were publicized by the Jewish co-owners of Handshake, the tech company to which Franco had applied for an internship, though Franco has claimed he’d already turned down an offer. His comments prompted online backlash — including from Leo Terrell, the Trump administration’s antisemitism czar, who posted dozens of times about the 19-year-old. 

Franco has garnered significant support from the far right, including through a crowdfunding campaign initiated by a YouTuber who had previously drawn criticism for saying he hoped to see “another Hitler.” Franco’s comments to Morgan included positive references to “America First,” the Trump-led nativist movement embraced by the far right.

Asked by Morgan Tuesday to explain his beliefs, Franco said that a Jewish friend of his at Virginia Tech University, where he was enrolled before transferring to Cornell, “said we should genocide all Palestinians.” He named other “bad experiences with Jews” he claimed to have experienced in college, focusing on Jewish campus figures he said had “made things up about me,” and said Jews had “made my life a living hell.” 

As Morgan pushed Franco to admit he was antisemitic, the student insisted he was not.

“Not wanting to be around Jewish people does not mean you don’t like them,” he said, adding that one of his exes “was half-Jewish.” He returned to Israel later in the conversation, charging that it is a Jewish-led “genocidal country” that insists upon “killing Palestinians and reporters and dragging America into wars abroad.” He concluded, “No, I am not going to want to associate with those people.”

“This is a common sentiment that is held,” Franco said. “If you think this is just me, you are completely wrong.” 

Morgan, for his part, concluded, “You kind of made yourself unemployable.”

Franco is facing more immediate consequences, he announced on X on Wednesday. “My parents are kicking me out,” he tweeted, drawing offers of support from a handful of prominent far-right personalities.

Like many other schools that faced unrest after Oct. 7, Cornell has taken steps aimed at countering campus antisemitism while attempting to balance academic freedom concerns, in part as a result of its settlement with the Trump administration. The university commissioned an antisemitism task force and has undertaken several initiatives, including new campus climate surveys and stricter Title VI enforcement. It has also enforced a range of disciplinary actions against pro-Palestinian students.

But when it comes to Franco, one Jewish faculty member at Cornell theorized, the administration’s hands were tied.

“You sort of have to live with it,” Menachem Rosensaft, a visiting professor at Cornell Law School and former general counsel for the World Jewish Congress, told JTA. “He is engaging in obnoxious thought that is not harming anyone else.”

Rosensaft has been at the center of other antisemitism-related controversies at Cornell, including in 2024, when he prompted Kotlikoff to criticize another Jewish professor’s planned class on Gaza — an action that the school’s faculty union said was a violation of academic freedom. 

In the case of Franco, Rosensaft argued that Cornell shouldn’t “turn him into a First Amendment martyr.” 

But Rosensaft added that there could be grounds for discipline if Franco returned to campus and made harmful comments about Jews in the classroom or in other public spaces.

In 2025, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, praised Kotlikoff for what he called “a comprehensive approach to countering antisemitism.” An ADL spokesperson did not return a JTA request for comment on Cornell’s latest statement about Franco.

Franco himself has launched a second crowdfunding campaign to support his housing costs. 

“I have reiterated that my parents do not share my views, and it seems they no longer wish to provide me with a home to live in,” he wrote in the description. “I know the road ahead will be difficult, but this is the path I chose. I could have lived a more conventional life, as my parents did, and perhaps in a different time I would have. However, that is not the world we live in today, and because of that, I chose a different path than most.”

This story has been corrected to note that Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff’s statement said that he could not disclose details concerning disciplinary action, rather than stating that no disciplinary action would be taken. It has also been corrected to reflect that the original comments Austin Franco made about not wanting to work with Jews were conveyed in a private message rather than publicly.

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Investigators in Postville, Iowa, said on Wednesday that the fire that devastated AgriStar Processing started accidentally in the facility’s laundry room. The fire, which began on Tuesday, destroyed at least 75% of the plant and has put more than 600 people out of work, Fire Chief Jeff Bohr told the local TV network KCRG.

The fire has also interrupted a linchpin of kosher meat production, according to OU Kosher, the oversight agency run by the Orthodox Union.

“The damaged facility means a significant portion of kosher beef and chicken slaughtered and sold in the US will not enter the kosher supply chain,” Rabbi Moshe Elefant, the organization’s CEO, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Kosher consumers will feel the impact of the tightening supply with reduction of availability.”

Elefant said OU Kosher was working to “find solutions for ramping up production at other plants” while warning that the crisis could fuel bad actors. 

“Unfortunately, when supply is limited, it creates opportunity for unscrupulous individuals who seek to make money by preying on the well-meaning Kosher observant public,” he wrote.

Jarad Bernstein, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, said the fire represented “a terrible situation” in an email to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“The impact on the local community and the business will be large,” he said.

The fire is not the first time that a crisis at AgriStar has sent the community into a tailspin. In 2008, a federal immigration raid at the plant, then known as Agriprocessors, netted the arrest of hundreds of workers and led to the arrest and conviction of the company’s longtime CEO Sholom Rubashkin on 86 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and money laundering. It also led most of Postville’s Jewish residents to leave the town, which had developed as an unusual stronghold of Orthodox life in eastern Iowa.

Saying that “many people” believed Rubashkin’s 27-year prison sentence had been excessive, President Donald Trump commuted Rubashkin’s sentence in 2017. Rubashkin’s conviction stands.

Canadian Jewish billionaire Hershy Friedman purchased Agriprocessors and reopened it as Agri-Star. He told JTA in 2016 that he had done so after being urged by Jewish leaders to ensure competition in the kosher meat processing industry.

“It wasn’t done for financial purposes; it was done to really cater to the Jewish community,” he said about the purchase. “During the time Rubashkin was closed, the price of beef roughly doubled. After we acquired it, it came right back down.”

Friedman also said he had shored up the company’s employment practices, which had run afoul of the law, and made improvements to the slaughter process that had made Agriprocessors a target of animal rights activists.

Agri-Star said in a statement on Wednesday that it appreciated the first responders who “worked tirelessly and selflessly to protect lives and contain the fire” and the employees who had shown “inspiring” care for each other. It also indicated that it did not yet know the future of the plant.

“We understand there are many questions about what comes next,” Agri-Star wrote on social media. “While we are still gathering information and evaluating our short-term plans, we are committed to sharing verified updates as soon as they become available. We appreciate your patience as we work through this process thoughtfully and responsibly.”

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U.S. District Judge Noël Wise on Tuesday ruled against a lawsuit opposing Assembly Bill 715, which went into effect in January. The new law introduces measures to curb the “widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying” faced by “Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California.” 

As part of the law, California is establishing an Office of Civil Rights with a new statewide antisemitism prevention coordinator for public schools, who has not yet been appointed. The law mandates teachers to provide “factually accurate” instruction rather than “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship.” It requires local educational agencies to take action if they find that instruction or school-sponsored materials are discriminatory.  

A group of teachers, students and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee filed a challenge in November. They said the law was unconstitutionally vague, chilled speech in the classroom about Palestinians and discriminated against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and perspectives.

Wise said it was too soon to consider these claims, given the uncertainties still surrounding the new Office of Civil Rights, its leadership and how it will define and respond to antisemitism. She also said that teachers and students did not provide sufficient evidence of infringements on free speech, and teachers could not claim speech rights on the job.

“Teacher Plaintiffs are not acting as private citizens and therefore do not have First Amendment rights while teaching,” Wise said in her ruling.

She also dismissed the claim that the law would discriminate against non-Jewish students. “The existence of an Antisemitism Coordinator does not change the Office’s overarching purpose to stop discrimination generally; it merely reflects the State’s decision to accord specific funds to a specific problem,” she said.

Malak Afaneh, a staff attorney at ADC, said the group was reviewing the court’s decision and considering its options.

“AB 715 has already caused educators to alter the way they teach out of fear that classroom discussions or activities could trigger complaints or investigations,” Afaneh said in a statement. “When teachers feel compelled to abandon cultural identity projects or avoid discussions about Palestine, it is students who are denied the opportunity to engage with diverse ideas and perspectives.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco celebrated Wise’s decision as “great news.” 

“This ruling, and the fact that the case has been dismissed with prejudice, affirms that AB 715 is a strong, legitimate approach to protecting Jewish students — and all students — against harassment and discrimination,” the group said.

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Stephens, who has spent years pushing back on what he sees as double standards applied to Israel, wrote that he decided to speak out against what he called “Jewish terrorists” despite his reluctance to feed the volume of global condemnation facing Israel. 

“That’s not only because the terrorism is a menace to Palestinian lives and property, or an affront to Jewish ethics, or a stain on Israel’s reputation — though it’s all those things,” he wrote. “It’s also a direct threat to Israel’s security and statehood, and thus to Zionism itself.”

Stephens’s column drew heavily on a public letter sent Sunday to President Trump by Matan Vilnai, a retired IDF deputy chief of staff, on behalf of Commanders for Israel’s Security, an organization representing hundreds of retired senior Israeli officers. The letter cautioned that Israeli security services have been effective against Palestinian terror groups but hamstrung when it comes to curbing Jewish extremists. The letter warned about the consequences of Israeli inaction in curbing attacks on Palestinians.

“Unless arrested swiftly and decisively, escalating violence in the West Bank is poised to ignite the region and carries severe ramifications for both Israeli security and U.S. regional interests,” wrote Vilnai.

Stephens pointed to last week’s rampage by extremist settlers through several Palestinian villages — attacks that reportedly included arson at a home and two mosques and an assault on a stonecutting factory — as evidence the problem has become routine rather than exceptional. He cited Israeli military figures showing nationalistic and settler-related crimes climbed to 867 incidents in 2025, up from 682 the year before.

Stephens also cited Eran Shamir-Borer of the Israel Democracy Institute, a former IDF legal official, who told him the government has specifically declined to place suspected Jewish settlers under administrative detention. The practice, imprisoning individuals without formal charges, is regularly deployed against suspected Palestinian terrorists. 

The columnist dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s public framing of the violence as the work of roughly 150 “juvenile delinquents,” as he did in an interview with NBC earlier this month. Stephens argued that a government capable of eliminating a Hamas commander deep inside Iran cannot plausibly claim it’s unable to rein in a few hundred vigilantes. 

Stephens is known, and widely admired within the pro-Israel community, for his robust defense of Israel, from refuting the charge of “genocide” directed at Israel to condemning what he has called the “hyperbolic and often conspiratorial hatred of the country.” Editor of the conservative-leaning, heterodox Jewish thought journal Sapir, Stephens was also chosen to give the annual “State of World Jewry” address at the 92nd Street Y earlier this year.

“I think it is really important that people like Bret Stephens are speaking up about settler violence, and I think that it also shows how terrible that it’s become,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, in an interview with JTA. “Even people who are pretty, let’s say, hesitant or who almost never criticize Israeli policy are speaking up.”

But she also suggested that the issue goes beyond a failure to enforce the law or hold settlers accountable, and instead reflects the priorities of Netanyahu’s right-wing government. 

“This is actually government policy because this is violence that is designed to take more and more of the West Bank,” said Jacobs. “There’s already been not just violence, but expulsions, shoving Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas and, ultimately, annexing the West Bank or at least as much of it as possible.”  

Liberal Jewish groups like T’ruah, including Torat Zedek and Bnei Avraham in Israel and the U.S-based groups Smol Emuni, J Street and New Israel Fund, regularly condemn the settler violence and call on Israeli security forces to hold the perpetrators accountable. They also take part in “protective presence” visits to the West Bank in solidarity with Palestinians threatened by Jewish settlers.

The largest Jewish organizations have been less vocal on the topic, although the American Jewish Committee and the Union for Reform Judaism have issued statements condemning settler violence. 

Right-leaning groups have either downplayed the extent of the violence or say Jews living in the West Bank have been provoked by neighboring Palestinians. On the same day that Stephens’s column appeared, the media watchdog group HonestReporting ran an article saying that the major news outlets disproportionately focus on settler violence, and run many fewer articles about Palestinian attacks on Jewish civilians. It also cited official Israeli data suggesting that violence by Jewish civilians in the West Bank had declined significantly since March.

Nevertheless, Stephens appeared to be echoing a growing sentiment even on the right that the settler violence is both wrong and a black eye for Israel at a time when its reputation is suffering around the world. 

“I don’t think there are many supporters of Israel in the U.S. who are happy with how Israel has handled, or really mishandled, settler violence,” said David E. Bernstein, a professor at George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School and a frequent commentator on Jewish affairs, in an email exchange with JTA. “To me, it’s anti-Zionist to allow settlers to flout the law and public policy, whether by violence or by setting up illegal outposts, because Zionism means accepting the legitimacy of the Israeli state, and radical settlers who don’t are no different than extremist Haredim [Orthodox] in not doing so.”

Last week, Israel’s Channel 13 reported that the government had approved a plan in March to tackle violence by extremist settlers but kept the plan secret due “to political considerations.” The report didn’t say whether the plan has been implemented.

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The Israeli leader made an evocative reference to the period when the Nazis took over Germany in a Fox News interview on Tuesday, adding that he is “definitely going” to New York for the U.N. General Assembly in September. The planned trip prompted Mamdani, a staunch pro-Palestinian advocate, to explore executing an international arrest warrant against Netanyahu. 

Mamdani said last week that his Law Department did not find the city could legally make the arrest, but he challenged the U.S. government to do so, calling Netanyahu “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.” President Donald Trump has rejected the idea of an arrest. The United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court, which has accused Netanyahu of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and its warrants have no legal power in the United States.

Netanyahu responded to Mamdani in an interview with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, a close Trump ally, while visiting Washington, D.C. this week. He called the mayor a “hate-spewing elected official who’s pitting one group of New Yorkers against the other.”

“He’s turning them against New York Jews. I mean, what are we, in the 1930s?,” said Netanyahu.

Since calling for Netanyahu’s arrest, Mamdani has said repeatedly that he does not single out Jews or Israel for punishment.

“My interest in executing that warrant is not specific to Benjamin Netanyahu, but to anyone who they put a warrant towards for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Mamdani said to reporters last week, adding that he also described Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel as a “horrific war crime.”

In a separate press conference on Monday, Mamdani said his characterizations of Netanyahu as a war criminal “were not even frankly personal assessments, they were objective facts.” 

Mamdani’s views are increasingly popular in the United States, with a new survey from The Economist/YouGov showing that nearly half of Americans believe the country should arrest Netanyahu. 49% of respondents said the United States should enforce the ICC warrant, while 27% said “no” and 23% were unsure.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio also backed Mamdani’s statements. “I think he drew attention to the fact that Netanyahu is literally a war criminal,” de Blasio said in a Fox News interview on Monday. “This guy’s policies led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian children, and that defines a war crime to me and to so many people around the world.”

Major Jewish groups have fiercely criticized Mamdani’s arrest ambitions. The UJA-Federation of New York accused him of “distortions and disinformation.”

“At a time of rising antisemitism, repeatedly singling out and vilifying the world’s only Jewish state for perceived political benefit is repugnant, puts Jews at greater risk — and leaves many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome in the city we call home,” the federation said in a statement. 

Before his interview with Hannity on Tuesday, Netanyahu slipped into the White House through a side door for a meeting with Trump that did not include public face time. Pundits theorized that the low-profile affair reflected how unpopular Netanyahu has grown in the United States amid the Iran and Gaza wars, making it politically risky for Trump to be seen with him, as the president’s approval also sinks to a new low.

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It was a choreography reminiscent of Netanyahu’s February visit that also lacked the ceremonial handshake followed by a question-and-answer session with reporters. Behind closed doors, however, Netanyahu made such a compelling case for war against Iran that within weeks the two countries embarked on a joint military campaign that has reverberated across the Middle East.

Netanyahu is in Washington at a critical moment in this latest phase of the Iran war, where the battle is now between the U.S. and Iranian armies, and Trump has to decide whether to intensify the war or go for a ceasefire.

The Israeli leader, who has been blunt about his belief that military action is still needed to prevent a nuclear Iran, emerged Tuesday from the White House bursting with triumph.

“I just finished an excellent meeting with President Trump,” he told Israeli reporters, speaking emphatically in Hebrew, after the 80-minute conversation. 

“And when I say excellent, it’s not lip service – a conversation with full cooperation, with mutual support with the understanding of the joint goal to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, and other goals,” he said of his eighth meeting with Trump in the president’s second term. “This was one of the greatest conversations I have ever had with our friend, President Donald Trump.”

Netanyahu has long cultivated his image as a U.S. whisperer. His contentious relationship with former President Barack Obama helped shape his reputation as a leader ready to stand up to a superpower, and he was happy to indulge reports, even false ones, that reinforced it. 

He has taken the opposite tack with Trump, who has in his first and second terms aligned himself with Netanyahu’s outlook. Instead of contention, Netanyahu has depicted the relationship with Trump more as a mindmeld.

That reputation was at a peak in February when Israel and the United States joined in launching a war against Iran, the first time the two countries were ever in a fighting alliance. Now, Netanyahu and Trump are both unpopular in the United States, as Iran has the upper hand in a war which is fueling inflation and discontent in the United States.

Netanyahu, if the meeting did indeed go as well as he claimed, had good reason to hope for a positive outcome: He faces elections on October 27, and his reputation as the Israeli leader best suited to handle the alliance has taken a hit. As he sat in the White House Tuesday, pundits theorized that Netanyahu had grown so unpopular in the United States due to the Iran and Gaza war that Trump could not afford to be seen with him politically.

Going in, the meeting Tuesday did not look auspicious. There would be no public comments. Photographers had to stick their cameras up against a fence to get a picture of Netanyahu entering. 

But after the meeting, Israel’s Government Press Office released smiling photographs of the two men, looking as if their famous diplomatic friendship and alliance was intact.

The White House statement following the meeting offered little, jamming together into two short sentences Netanyahu’s meeting with the president and the other announced meeting Trump had Tuesday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also away from the cameras.

“President Trump has concluded his meetings in the Oval Office with President Zelensky and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, said on X. “Both meetings were positive and productive!”

It might well have been productive, said David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Netanyahu’s goal was not to persuade Trump to abandon efforts to reach a ceasefire with Iran, Makovsky said, but to be ready to hit Iran hard should those talks fail.

“I don’t think Netanyahu came believing he can move Trump from Plan A, which is a mediated deal that will get him through the midterms,” said Makovsky, a veteran of Obama’s Israeli-Palestinian peace-brokering team. 

“Trump is very aware that Netanyahu has become associated with pushing for more kinetic combat and I don’t think he sees that association with Netanyahu to his benefit,” he said in an interview. “He’s open to Netanyahu’s arguments, which is ‘All right, Donald. If you want plan A with the diplomacy, you should try it, but if it doesn’t stick, I want to know: Can we converge on a Plan B?”

Given Netanyahu’s demeanor after the meeting, Makovsky said, he might have got a positive answer. “It’s more of a Plan B meeting than a Plan A meeting.”

Just hours before the meeting, however, Trump took a shot at Netanyahu on a favorite media venue, Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.” The president was irked, he said, that Netanyahu appeared to be going public with information Israel believes shows that Iran is ready to revive its nuclear weapons program at Pickaxe Mountain.

“Well, I don’t need Bibi to tell me that,” Trump said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved.”

“We know exactly what’s going on,” Trump said. “But no, I heard Bibi announce that. I said, ‘Why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?’”  

In fact, Netanyahu never made the claim publicly – it was leaked on Monday to the New York Post, citing an Israeli source. On Tuesday, a top Israeli diplomat told Israeli media that Pickaxe Mountain never came up in the meeting, and that reports that Netanyahu was ready with intelligence to unveil to Trump were false.

Dropping the Pickaxe Mountain gambit, if the advance reports were accurate, was a smart move, said Ilan Goldenberg, a senior official handling Middle East policy in the Obama and Biden administrations. It’s not the first time that stories leaked ahead of Netanyahu’s Washington visits suggest he had stunning new evidence of malfeasance by Israel’s enemies, Goldenberg said in an interview, and it’s not a good look for Israel. 

“It’s kind of condescending and annoying if you’re the president of the United States, and there’s stories out there of ‘This prime minister is going to show me intelligence, and that’s going to change my mind on something,’ which is how this stuff is framed,” said Goldenberg, a senior vice president at J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy lobby which has opposed the Iran war.

Netanyahu knew going in there would be differences with Trump, Yisrael Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said on Channel 14, an Israeli outlet that is supportive of Netanyahu. Iran’s control in recent weeks of the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which 20% of the world’s petroleum transits, and the ensuing inflation were an American problem, he said.

“The United States and Iran, these are certain problems that are outside the specific interests of Israel, like Hormuz, the energy crisis,” Katz said, emphasizing that otherwise the relationship has never been better.

Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic administrations, said that Trump had little interest in embarrassing Netanyahu, given Trump’s own reputational stake in the war.

“Trump doesn’t do himself any favors in castigating Netanyahu publicly for dragging him into the war or pretending that he has other objectives,” than Netanyahu, “he just doesn’t, because he condemns his own judgment in doing that,” Miller said in an interview.

Netanyahu’s low profile made sense, said Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which backed the war, because neither Trump nor Iran wants to pull Israel back into the war, which resumed on July 13 after a brief ceasefire.

“The Iranians understand that the moment that Israel gets back into the war, they’re going to start targeting top leaders, which is something that the U.S. is not likely to do,” he said in an interview. “Donald Trump is facing an American public that is generally not in favor of this conflict, and so I think he has decided to try to manage this conflict to try to keep it to a low-intensity war. Inviting the Israelis will only increase that intensity.”

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The withdrawal ends a round of lawsuits over the legality of such a demand, which alarmed Jewish groups on campus and beyond.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is overseeing the probe, did not explain its decision to drop the subpoena in its Thursday court filing. A representative for the agency declined further comment to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

In its own statement, Penn, which had been engaged in a legal back-and-forth over the school’s refusal to compile such a list, said it had “protected its employees’ rights.” The school had shared the names of Jewish staff who had consented to the probe, but resisted sharing the names of all Jewish staff.

“Penn remains committed to fighting antisemitism and all other forms of discrimination, to ensure everyone it serves can learn, work, and thrive,” a university spokesperson said.

The unusual demand, first made in November, came as the Trump administration has aggressively targeted a handful of elite schools accused of failing to curb antisemitism on campus. Most of the time, its intervention has come through the education and health and human services departments, which have cited civil rights violations in seeking to yank billions of dollars in federal funding.

But the EEOC has gotten involved, too, arguing that Penn, in particular, had failed to protect its Jewish and Israeli employees from discrimination. Its case against Penn originated in 2023, and its subpoena had included demands to reveal members of “all clubs, groups, organizations and recreation groups” that were “related to the Jewish religion, faith, ancestry/national origin.” The subpoena also targeted the school’s Jewish studies personnel.

Jewish groups, including Penn Hillel, had argued against the demand, as did free-speech organizations. In an email, Penn Hillel’s director, Rabbi Gabe Greenberg, told JTA the organization welcomed the news.

“Over the past year, I have spoken with hundreds of students, faculty, and staff across the University of Pennsylvania regarding this issue. Every single person expressed objections to the EEOC’s attempt to compel the University to surrender data on Jewish identity and affiliation,” Greenberg said.

He continued, “While many in our community share Penn Hillel’s conviction that campus antisemitism requires urgent, sustained action, demanding ‘lists of Jews’ was a fundamentally incorrect and inappropriate way to address it.”

Earlier this year the agency chair, Andrea Lucas, defended the list-of-Jews demand during an antisemitism conference at Harvard. Lucas told the roomful of Jewish professionals that her office needed the list to identify “potential victims,” including as a means of distributing potential payouts.

(L-r) Andrea Lucas, chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, speaks with Brandeis Center founder Kenneth Marcus at an antisemitism conference held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 16, 2026. (Dillon Meyer Media)

“At some point, either the government will know information about individuals related to their religion or we will not be able to enforce the laws on their behalf,” Lucas said at the time.

A federal judge had ruled in March that the request was reasonable, dismissing efforts by Penn and Jewish groups to declare the ruling unconstitutional. However, the judge delayed the deadline by which Penn would have been forced to comply, giving the university more time to appeal.

The EEOC’s larger antisemitism inquiry into Penn continues.

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A representative for the Hillel parent organization told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency the original 22-page brief filed on Wednesday “was filed without having gone through our internal review process.” They did not elaborate further.

The whiplash further complicated institutional Jewish efforts to address campus antisemitism while sounding alarm about some of the government’s aggressive enforcement mechanisms. 

In its since-withdrawn brief, Hillel had argued that Harvard has improved in its response to antisemitism, also asserting that the Trump administration’s moves to defund the school “do not help Jewish students or improve the campus climate.” 

“To the contrary, they disproportionately impact the very Jewish students and Jewish researchers the government purportedly seeks to help,” the brief continued. It followed Harvard’s own brief in the case, which revolves around federal efforts to cite antisemitism as a reason to freeze more than $2 billion in U.S. Health and Human Services contracts and grants.

Jewish legacy groups have sought to straddle their demands for a crackdown on campus antisemitism with concerns that the Trump administration’s threats of massive cuts could harm research and students.

The brief had been signed by Mark Rotenberg, Hillel International’s general counsel and head of its Campus Climate Initiative, as well as by attorney David Zimmer. Neither Rotenberg nor Zimmer immediately returned requests for comment.

Harvard Hillel, which is independent from Hillel International, told JTA in a statement that it had nothing to do with either the decision to file or withdraw the brief.

“We hope that this dispute between Harvard and our government soon comes to a resolution that safeguards the rights of Harvard’s Jewish students and faculty, strengthens the university’s academic mission, and advances the preeminence of American research and industry,” a Harvard Hillel spokesperson said.

Shabbos Kestenbaum speaks on stage on the third day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, July 17, 2024. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Hillel’s defense of Harvard in the case had immediately proved controversial. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish Harvard alum turned conservative campus activist, had castigated Hillel for the brief and urged Jews to stop donating to the organization on social media Wednesday evening, shortly before the group announced it was withdrawing the brief.

“I encourage Jewish donors to pull their funding and support from Hillel and instead support organizations that positively impact the Jewish future,” Kestenbaum wrote on Facebook in response to the amicus brief. “It’s clear that Hillel does not want to reform.”

Kestenbaum later told JTA, “It’s increasingly obvious to any donor who wants to have an honest conversation with American Jewish students that a significant amount of the Jewish establishment is failing in that mission.”

He also had harsh words for Harvard Hillel, accusing the organization of having discouraged an undergraduate student from flying an Israeli flag, among other allegations. 

In response, a Harvard Hillel representative did not address Kestenbaum’s specific allegations. The representative told JTA that the organization “decisively improves the lives of Jewish students, and Harvard as a whole. For anyone who cares about defeating antisemitism at Harvard — there is no better allocation of your resources than supporting Harvard Hillel.” 

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The deal signed Wednesday by U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had set off alarm bells in Jerusalem and Washington.

Critics feared the deal lacks appropriate oversight to prevent the plants from enriching weapons-grade uranium and to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The statement announcing the deal, for instance, does not say it would require Saudi Arabia to abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty’s Additional Protocol, which allows for snap inspections.

Washington’s and Saudi Arabia’s announcement of the deal on Wednesday also did not mention a normalization agreement with Israel. 

A U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear deal had been one of the key incentives Washington and Jerusalem had hoped would sway the Kingdom to normalize ties with Israel under the Biden administration. Those efforts were scuttled by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, that sparked the Gaza war.

Trump pushed back at criticism of the deal on Thursday, stating: “The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.”

Trump pushed back against reports Wednesday that the deal would allow enrichment of fissile material. “The United States is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office notably only referred to the prospect of normalization, and not the nuclear deal, in a statement about the kingdom issued Thursday.

“The joint American and Israeli military action against the genocidal regime in Tehran and Israel’s crushing of Iran’s terror axis have created the possibility to expand the circle of peace,” Netanyahu’s office said. “Saudi Arabia’s joining of the Abraham Accords would be an historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East.” 

Netanyahu’s colleagues were more critical.

“A civilian nuclear program isn’t what Israel wants to see, but it seems that it doesn’t have the ability to prevent it,” Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, who formerly headed Israel’s Security Agency, wrote on X. 

Laura Rozen, an independent journalist covering foreign policy, quoted a Saudi source as saying the deal was not subject to alteration.

“It was signed. So nothing to renegotiate,” Rozen quoted the source as saying. “Tweets don’t overturn signed agreements.”

Netanyahu has long sought a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia and to include it within the rubric of the Abraham Accords first brokered by Trump in 2020, normalizing ties with Muslim nations. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco are among the countries which have signed the Accords.

Saudi Arabia insists that a prerequisite for it joining the accords is recognition of Palestinian statehood or at least significant progress toward that goal. 

Netanyahu, who is now running for re-election, has opposed Palestinian statehood as has his government. Support for two states has plummeted among the Israeli public since the Oct. 7 attacks.

Speaking to reporters earlier today in the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the deal, explaining that it was better for Saudi Arabia to build civilian nuclear plants with the United States than with other countries.

Any agreement the United States makes on civilian nuclear energy has safeguards in place, “and one of the best safeguards is to make sure that American technology and American companies are the ones involved in doing that,” he said. If Saudi Arabia moves forward with another country, it would be difficult to ensure that the plant produces only civilian energy, he said.

Rubio said that the issue of safeguards would be addressed during the Congressional review of the deal. 

Democrats were already taking aim at the proposed deal. Rep. Brad Sherman, a Jewish Democrat from California, said Tuesday during a U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the deal compared unfavorably with a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which has agreed to not enrich fissile materials and allows visits by inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Saudi Arabia’s reported failure to agree to these conditions was “outrageous,” Sherman said.

Massachusetts Sen. Ed. Markey took to X to call the deal “reckless.” “This deal will make us all less safe. We must stop a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” he said.

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The settlement was announced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which jointly filed the complaint, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination at any institution receiving federal funds. It comes as campuses across the country, facing threats of losing federal funding under the Trump administration, have demonstrated willingness to negotiate new antisemitism protections.

As part of the agreement, the private Portland, Oregon, liberal arts school says it will insert language into its discrimination policy asserting that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is integral to their religious, ancestral and/or ethnic Jewish identity,” and that “targeting Jews on the basis of their Zionist identity” will be considered discriminatory.

The school will also contract a third-party consultant to monitor and report on its effectiveness in adhering to antisemitism protections, role that is unusual in similar Title VI agreements. The agreement says Reed will “consider” the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel, and implement antisemitism training for faculty and staff.

“We take concerns about antisemitism, and all forms of unlawful discrimination, seriously, and we will continue to support the well-being, safety, and success of every member of our community,” a Reed College spokesperson told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement acknowledging the agreement. Reed declined to comment further.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and Brandeis Center officials praised the agreement in a release as a potential model for other colleges.

“We believe it should serve as a model for other schools,” Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told JTA about the agreement. The required language in Reed’s discrimination guidelines, she said, is “very clear about what constitutes anti-Zionist conduct in violation of civil rights and in violation of the policy.”

“This outcome demonstrates how the Title VI process can work to effectively protect Jewish students,” Greenblatt said in his own statement.

Around 100 students at Reed College are Jewish, or about 7% of the total student body, according to estimates from Hillel International. After this article’s publication, Greater Portland Hillel, which serves multiple area campuses including Reed, issued a statement saying it “welcomes” the settlement, adding that it would open up “new opportunities for collaboration” with the Hillel.

“This agreement represents an important step toward ensuring that Jewish and Israeli students at Reed College receive the same protections afforded to every other student under federal civil rights law,” Lisa Hendricks, the Hillel’s executive director, said in a statement to JTA.

The resolution stems from two anonymous Title VI antisemitism complaints from Jewish former Reed students, both filed in 2024 under the Biden administration. One of those cases related to a student whose dorm-room mezuzah was vandalized, and who herself was later pelted with rocks, during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in spring 2024. The student later left the school out of concern for her safety.

Both of the described acts would have already been considered violations of school policy for reasons unrelated to the student’s Jewish or Zionist identity. Brandeis’s Katz-Prober argued both should have also been considered in the context of her targeting by anti-Zionist activists.

“It might be difficult for someone to, at first glance, understand whether it was simply an assault or an assault motivated by bias,” she said. The case, she said, demonstrated how in some cases, “‘Zionist’ is merely a codeword for Jew.”

Katz-Prober also touted the agreement’s mandate that the school bring on a third-party compliance consultant, separate from its Title VI coordinator. While she insisted that such a role would be “independent” and free of bias, she noted that both the ADL and the Brandeis Center would have a role in their selection.

“Both sides get a say,” she said.

This article has been updated with comment from Greater Portland Hillel.

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