03b Israel

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The Trump administration has launched an investigation into New York City Public Schools over allegations that pro-Hamas activism by educators may have crossed the line into anti-Semitic instruction targeting Jewish students.

The probe was launched over allegations that teachers sought to sow “hatred toward Jewish students” during classroom instruction.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights confirmed it opened the probe after receiving complaints that teachers were promoting political messaging in classrooms and portraying Israel supporters as “genocidal white supremacists.”

U. Michigan Commencement Hijacked By Anti-Israel Prof. legalinsurrection.com
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A faculty commencement speaker at the University of Michigan used his spot to slam Israel. The president of the university said that those remarks deviate from the remarks submitted in advance:

I spoke about this on the Laura Ingraham show tonight:

 

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A national free speech group is calling on the Catholic University of America to allow pro-Israel speakers on campus – or else face an accreditation complaint.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a second letter to CUA leadership on Friday, asking it to remove its restrictions on Students Supporting Israel.

The intervention follows a proposal earlier this year for the group to host Israeli homeland security expert Dany Tirza as well as Jewish Republican Rep. Randy Fine of Florida, as The College Fix previously reported.

The university is requiring the club to host a pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel speaker.

While the school says this is part of their policy, that is only supposed to apply when an invited speaker takes a view contrary to the Catholic Church, such as if a club invited a pro-abortion speaker. However, the university did not even apply this policy, allowing the campus Democrats club to host a speaker who supports abortion, according to Student Supporting Israel’s leadership.

The Catholic university in Washington, D.C. allowed an event with an anti-Israel speaker, for example, but did not present the pro-Israel side, FIRE also said.

“We again strongly urge CUA to approve SSI’s event requests and assure students that the university will not condition event approval on student’s willingness to arrange for and host speakers opposed to their own viewpoint,” Program Counsel Jessie Appleby wrote to President Peter Kilpatrick.

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JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said on Monday (Apr 20) that it had determined an image circulating on social media that shows a soldier in south Lebanon hitting a statue of Jesus Christ is authentic and depicts one of its troops.

The image appears to show an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to strike the head of a statue of a crucified Jesus that had fallen off a cross.

Arab media reports indicated that the statue was in the Christian village of Debl in south Lebanon, near the border with Israel.

The Debl municipality told AFP that the statue was located in the village, but could not confirm whether it had been damaged.

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Spain’s prime minister is facing a complaint at the International Criminal Court alleging his government enabled Iran’s “terror machine” through dual-use exports, with the legal group behind the filing arguing that responsibility for war crimes extends to those who provide the means.

The complaint, filed Tuesday by Israeli legal advocacy group Shurat HaDin under Article 15 of the Rome Statute, calls on prosecutors in The Hague to open a criminal investigation — and consider issuing an arrest warrant — against Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and other senior officials.

The complaint alleges that Spain’s socialist government approved the transfer of approximately €1.3 million in dual-use components to Iran in 2024 and 2025, including materials linked to detonators and explosive systems.

According to the filing, the items were not benign industrial goods but “critical components that enable explosive devices to function,” transferred under circumstances in which their use in attacks against civilians was foreseeable.

At the core of the case is the allegation that materials classified as civilian “dual-use” goods function as essential components in weapons systems.

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Israel and Lebanon agreed to hold direct negotiations after “productive discussions” between the two sides in Washington, the United States said on Tuesday.

“The participants held productive discussions on steps toward launching direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said in a statement.

“All sides agreed to launch direct negotiations at a mutually agreed time and venue,” he said.

The announcement came after Israeli and Lebanese envoys held more than two hours of talks mediated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“The United States congratulated the two countries on this historic milestone and expressed its support for further talks, and for the government of Lebanon’s plans to restore the monopoly of force and to end Iran’s overbearing influence,” Pigott said.

And it “affirmed that any agreement to cease hostilities must be reached between the two governments, brokered by the United States, and not through any separate track,” he added.

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Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem urged Lebanon on Monday to cancel a planned meeting with Israel in Washington the following day, reiterating his group’s rejection of direct negotiations with Israel.

“We reject negotiations with the usurping Israeli entity…We call for a historic and heroic stance by cancelling this negotiating meeting,” Qassem, whose Iran-backed group has been at war with Israel since 2 March, said in a televised address.

The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States are scheduled to meet in Washington on Tuesday to discuss holding direct negotiations between the two countries.

Lebanese authorities have stressed that Beirut first wants to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, but Israel has dismissed that prospect, saying it prefers instead to focus on formal peace talks with Lebanon itself, with which it has technically been at war for decades.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that “we want the dismantling of Hezbollah’s weapons and we want a real peace agreement that will last for generations.”

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced on Tuesday that she has suspended her country’s defense cooperation agreement with Israel over the conflicts throughout the Middle East.

Meloni said at an event in the northern city of Verona that her government “has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defense agreement with Israel in consideration of the current situation.”

Her announcement came about a week after the Israeli military fired warning shots at an Italian peacekeeping convoy outside Beirut, Lebanon. No one was injured in the incident, which Meloni called “completely unacceptable,” while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani summoned the Israeli ambassador to Rome for a third time since 2024.

The 2003 Memorandum of Understanding was ratified by Italy in 2005 and is renewed automatically every five years.

Blurb:

U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV pushed back Monday on President Donald Trump’s broadside against him over the U.S.-Israel war in Iran, telling reporters that the Vatican’s appeals for peace and reconciliation are rooted in the Gospel, and that he doesn’t fear the Trump administration.

“To put my message on the same plane as what the president has attempted to do here, I think is not understanding what the message of the Gospel is,” Leo told The Associated Press aboard the papal plane en route to Algeria. “And I’m sorry to hear that but I will continue on what I believe is the mission of the church in the world today.”

Blurb:

Pope Leo has responded to President Trump’s attack on him by saying he has “no intention to debate” Mr. Trump on Iran.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump lashed out at the pontiff on social media, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.”

“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” he added.

Leo had called Mr. Trump’s threat to wipe out Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable” and encouraged people to contact “political leaders … to ask them, tell them to work for peace.”

Blurb:

If you’re just tuning in to today’s live coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran, here’s the latest to bring you up to speed. It’s 9.30am in Tehran, 9am in Tel Aviv and Beirut and 2am in Washington DC.

  • Donald Trump has said he doesn’t care if Iran comes back to negotiations with the US after the weekend talks in Pakistan ended without a deal. “I don’t care if they come back or not,” Trump told reporters in Maryland on Sunday. “If they don’t come back, I’m fine.”

  • Trump said earlier that the US Navy would start blockading the Hormuz strait and also prohibit every vessel in international waters that had paid a toll to Iran. US Central Command said later it would begin a blockade of all Iranian Gulf ports and coastal areas on Monday at 10am ET (5.30pm in Iran and 1400 GMT), effectively seizing control of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.

  • Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that “approaching military vessels to the strait of Hormuz is considered a violation of the ceasefire”.

  • Oil prices rose in early market trading after Trump’s blockade announcement. The price of US crude oil rose 8% to $104.24 a barrel and Brent crude oil – the international standard – rose 7% to $102.29. Australia’s share market dropped sharply on Monday morning.

  • Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf taunted Trump on X, saying in a post: “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade’, Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4–$5 gas.” Earlier he said Trump’s new threats would have no effect on the Iranian nation: “If you fight, we will fight … We will not bow to any threats.”

  • Trump and his advisers are looking at resuming limited military strikes in Iran in addition to the US blockade of the Hormuz strait, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing officials and people familiar with the situation.

Blurb:

ROME — In his strongest words yet, Pope Leo XIV on Saturday denounced the “delusion of omnipotence” that is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran and demanded political leaders stop and negotiate peace.

Leo presided over an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica on the same day the United States and Iran began face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan and as a fragile ceasefire held.

Blurb:

The Israeli government instituted a policy prohibiting Christian Palestinian teachers who live in the West Bank from working in any of the 15 Christian schools in Jerusalem in a move that threatens to weaken the two-millennia presence of Christians in the Holy City.

School principals in Jerusalem recently received letters from the Israeli Ministry of Education stipulating that beginning in September they are required to only hire teachers who reside in the city and hold Israeli-issued qualifications.

The March 10 directive comes in the wake of a bill approved last July by the Education Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) aimed at prohibiting Palestinian teachers who earned their degrees at institutions in the West Bank from teaching in Israel or the occupied East Jerusalem.

Blurb:

Israel has passed a law making the death penalty by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis.

The UK, Germany, France and Italy said the move was “de facto discriminatory” and “Israel risks undermining its commitments to democratic principles”.

A joint statement called the death penalty “an inhumane and degrading form of punishment without any deterrent effect”.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper posted the statement on X, adding: “The death penalty is wrong and we oppose it around the world.”

Blurb:

According to Zelenskyy, Kyiv has information that Moscow shared data on “some 50–53 facilities in total,” adding that these are civilian infrastructure sites with no military significance.

“It resembles the lives of Ukrainians under Russian attacks, when they target our energy grid or water supply systems,” Zelenskyy said.

“Of course, all the experience Russia has obtained during the war against Ukraine is being shared with Iran. This was the case with Shaheds, the same drones the Russians have, only used under a different name and upgraded to newer generations.”

Blurb:

President Donald Trump is weighing a range of military options against Iran as tensions escalate, with Pentagon planners outlining scenarios for what officials describe as a potential “massive final blow.”

According to Axios, President Trump has been presented with four possible paths.

Those plans reportedly include deploying U.S. troops and launching a ground operation targeting Kharg Island, a critical hub in Iran’s oil network.

Blurb:

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called out former president Barack Obama Thursday, accusing him of helping to finance Iran’s military with “pallets of American cash.”

“Many of the Iranian military factories and bases that we’re systematically destroying were paid for by the pallets of American cash that Barack Obama flew into Tehran under the Iran deal,” Hegseth said.

Critics have long condemned Obama for empowering the state sponsor of terrorism in 2016 with a $1.7 billion cash payout.

Blurb:

An apparent Iranian attack on a fully loaded Kuwaiti crude oil tanker at Dubai Port sparked a fire that was later extinguished, authorities said.

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) said early on Tuesday that the Al Salmi tanker was struck in an Iranian attack while anchored at the port in the United Arab Emirates, causing damage to the vessel and a fire on board.

Blurb:

Iran’s regime is publicly rejecting a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal, escalating tensions even as President Donald Trump signals a willingness to negotiate an end to the conflict.

State-run outlets in Tehran reported Wednesday that Iran “will not accept a ceasefire offer from the United States.”

The rejection underscores the regime’s refusal to de-escalate despite mounting international pressure.

Blurb:

Wednesday on “The Alex Marlow Show,” host and Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow talked about Iran.

Marlow said, “So, the sweeping of these mines can be a massive job, a real pain in the butt, very time-consuming, but it wasn’t as many mines as I had feared initially yesterday. So I’m hoping it’s just a bargaining chip, because Trump has laid out what he needs in order to…take his foot off the gas.”