Israel Watch

Blurb:

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned Israel on Wednesday against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened a Gaza deal.

Israeli lawmakers voted on Wednesday to advance two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, barely a week after President Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that was retaliation for a Hamas attack.

“I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said of annexation as he boarded his plane for a visit to Israel. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal,” he told reporters.

Blurb:

A university professor has vowed to continue teaching after pro-Palestinian students disrupted his lecture, made a threat to behead him and called for him to be sacked.

Michael Ben-Gad, professor of economics at City St George’s, University of London, told Sky News he was also branded a terrorist because of links to Israel’s military, after he was conscripted to serve in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the 1980s.

“It started, apparently on the same day as the start of the ceasefire [between Israel and Hamas]… which I don’t think is necessarily coincidental.

“There’s a whole industry that has developed about vilifying Israel, by extension, Jews. And they’re now looking for new targets.”

Mr Ben-Gad said it was not just his military service that protesters were complaining about.

“The other three accusations against me are that I studied at Hebrew University, this is a 100-year-old university in Jerusalem; that I’ve taught at the University of Haifa; and I’ve worked at the central bank [of Israel].

Blurb:

Vice President JD Vance expressed alarm on Thursday about the Israeli legislature’s vote that would claim sovereignty over swaths of the West Bank, calling the move an “insult” to the Trump administration because it could threaten peace in the region.

Before departing for the United States at the end of his two-day trip to the Jewish state, Vance denounced the Knesset’s vote as a “very stupid political stunt.”

“I personally take some insult to it,” he said at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”

Blurb:

A 48-page report released in September exposes the depth of the nation’s teachers’ unions’ hostility toward all things Jewish. “Breaking Solidarity: How Anti-Semitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel,” published by the Defense of Freedom Institute in September, explains how unions have worked to embed anti-Semitism into K–12 education.

This anti-Semitism was brought to light after Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Blurb:

Student protesters labeled economics Professor Michael Ben-Gad a ‘terrorist’

Hundreds of scholars world-wide are backing an economics professor at the University of London after a pro-Palestinian student group called for him to be fired and labeled him a “terrorist” due to his service in the Israeli military.

A petition launched Tuesday in support of Professor Michael Ben-Gad has about 1,100 signatures from professors in the United States, Canada, Chile, Australia, and other countries.

The petition opposes the “targeted harassment campaign” by the Association of Student Activism for Palestine and City Action for Palestine against the Israeli professor. Ben-Gad also has ties to the U.S. He formerly taught at the University of Houston in Texas and serves on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel on the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Immigration.

Blurb:

The U.S. increased pressure on Hamas on Tuesday to disarm in the next phase of an already fragile Gaza ceasefire as President Donald Trump pushed to cement an end to the devastating conflict.

In a visit to Israel, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said the ceasefire plan was going better than expected but warned the Palestinian militant group it would be obliterated if it did not cooperate, echoing a Trump threat earlier in the day of “fast, furious and brutal force”.

Blurb:

The United Nations’ top legal body, the International Court of Justice, on Wednesday gave an advisory opinion saying that Israel is under the obligation to ensure the basic needs of the civilian population in Gaza are met. The panel of 11 judges added Israel is forced to support relief efforts provided by the United Nations in the Gaza Strip and its entities, including UNRWA, the United NationsRelief and WorksAgency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

“As an occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure the basic needs of the local population, including the supplies essential for their survival,” presiding judge Yuji Iwasawa said.

Blurb:

Vice-President JD Vance arrived in Israel as the ceasefire in Gaza entered its eleventh day. He is expected to shore up President Donald Trump’s peace agreement amid sabotage attempts by Hamas.

“Vance was meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials and is expected to stay in the region until Thursday,” the Associated Press reported. “White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, arrived Monday and Vance met with them upon landing.”

Blurb:

Hamas has rejected disarmament and security control surrender under President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, following the October 9, 2025, ceasefire in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which ended two years of conflict and released the last Israeli hostages. Saudi Arabia, with UAE and Bahrain, warned the U.S. administration of withholding $50 billion in reconstruction aid if Hamas retains arms or power, criticizing Qatar and Turkey’s mediation for emboldening the group. Gulf states propose a neutral Western-led mission for demilitarization to ensure lasting stability.

Blurb:

Terror-linked CAIR is suing Northwestern University because students were asked to watch a video about antisemitism. CAIR opposes acknowledgment of antisemitism because it defines them.

That’s the whole lawsuit.

They claim it violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Blurb:

New York Times reporter Anemona Hartocollis blamed Republicans for the supposed suppression of free speech on campus lately – as in, why aren’t pro-Hamas campus activists able to disrupt classes, occupy buildings, and harass Jewish students — in Tuesday’s “What Happened to Campus Activism Against the War in Gaza?

The war in Gaza was started by Hamas when they invaded Israel and killed or kidnapped over 1,000 Israeli civilians. But there was no attempt at balance. The only quoted material came in support of the pro-Hamas campus activists, with no dissenters from the one-sided tone.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations swept through campuses across the country in the spring of 2024, leading to the arrests of more than 3,100 people. But in the more than a year and a half since, the protests have dissipated, even as the war in Gaza intensified.

Why the shift?

A major factor is the strict crackdown that universities waged on student protesters who built encampments on college campuses, beginning with Columbia and spreading across the country.

Blurb:

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have arrived in Israel on Monday to shore up the shaky Israel-Hamas ceasefire, a day after the fragile deal faced its first flareup with Israel threatening to halt aid transfers after it said Hamas militants had killed two of its soldiers.

The Israeli military later said it continued enforcing the ceasefire and an official confirmed that aid deliveries would resume on Monday.

By early afternoon, it was not immediately clear if the flow of aid had restarted.

More than a week has passed since the start of the US-proposed truce aimed at ending two years of devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Blurb:

The fragile truce in Gaza faced its first major test on Sunday after Israel alleged Hamas had violated the ceasefire and hit back with air and artillery strikes.

An Israeli security official told The Associated Press, on the condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, that the transfer of aid into Gaza is halted “until further notice.”

Earlier Sunday, Israel’s military said it hit multiple targets in the Gaza Strip using aircraft and artillery, after it accused Hamas of shooting at Israeli soldiers. Military officials later said two soldiers were killed.

An Israeli military official told CBS News that Hamas had targeted its soldiers with a rocket-propelled grenade and sniper fire.

Blurb:

Israel restricted aid into Gaza and kept the enclave’s border shut on Tuesday while re-emergent Hamas fighters demonstrated their grip by executing men in the street, darkening the outlook for U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

Israel told the United Nations it will only allow 300 aid trucks into Gaza – half the agreed daily number – from Wednesday, and that no fuel or gas will be allowed in, except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure, according to a note seen by Reuters and confirmed by the United Nations.

Blurb:

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asks for more detail of what the UK is doing to help ensure more aid gets into Gaza.

He says all the bodies of dead hostages need to be returned.

And he asks what the UK is doing to ensure that the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank stops.

Starmer thanks Davey for the “content and tone” of his response. (He is making a contrast with Badenoch’s.)

On aid, he says there is a need for more trucks be admitted to Gaza.

On the bodies of hostages, Starmer says he agrees with Davey.

He says, when the media are finally admitted to Gaza, he thinks there will be ‘“quite some debate” in the Commons about “the full horror” of what happened.

Blurb:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said he believes there is little chance a Palestinian state could exist as a completely autonomous, sovereign state side by side with Israel.

Pointing to historical precedent, Netanyahu argued a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza would leave a security vacuum in the region, allowing radical groups to assert military power. His justification for a long-term Israeli military presence comes as Gazan clans or local militias opposed to Hamas’s rule have been rounded up and executed by the terrorist group after Israel withdrew some forces to make way for phase one of President Donald Trump’s peace deal.

Blurb:

Some Palestinians fear Hamas will not honor President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan as footage emerged of the terrorists executing civilians in Gaza’s streets, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

Hamas began rounding up alleged Israeli collaborators and killing them as soon as the country’s military withdrew from Gaza after a ceasefire was announced Oct. 8, an anonymous Gazan activist told NYP. The broader 20-point peace agreement requires Hamas to permanently disarm, but video evidence of its brutality toward Palestinians shows it continues to terrorize Gaza.

Blurb:

Aid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday and Israel resumed preparations to open the main Rafah crossing after a dispute over the return of the bodies of dead hostages that had threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Israel had threatened to keep Rafah shut and reduce aid supplies because Hamas was returning bodies too slowly, showing the risks to a truce that has stopped two years of devastating conflict in Gaza and freed all living hostages held by Hamas.

New Yorkers have been betrayed': can Zohran Mamdani become the ...

Blurb:

Jihadi Zohran Mamdani ran for Gaza on the day the hostages were released -the UNRWA 5K for Gaza. UNRWA, the organization UNRWA whose employees took part in the October 7th massacre and subsequently kept the hostages in captivity. This is who Mamdani is raising money for.

The federal government has already cut off funding to this terror linked organization last year.

Mamdani wants to keep the refugee status of Palestinians into perpetuity to help with his cause of the eliminating Israel.

https://twitter.com/CampusJewHate/status/1977510662575411336

Blurb:

Tearful reunions were captured on video Monday as the last 20 living Israeli hostages were released from Hamas captivity in Gaza and reunited with their families.
Family members shed tears of unimaginable joy as they embraced their loved ones for the first time in more than two years.

Video clips released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) depict the emotional moments when Guy Gilboa-Dalal (24), Matan Zangauker (25), Matan Angrest (22), and Eitan Mor (25), and Alon Ohel (24) were reunited with their parents at the IDF’s Re’im base in southern Israel.

Zangauker can be heard asking his mother if his dog was still alive.

Blurb:

CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour snidely guessed on Monday morning that Israeli hostages were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan” on Monday, hours after Hamas released the last 20 living hostages. PBS actually simulcasts this woman’s nasty takes.

Fifty years ago, an Amanpour type would have greeted American POWs coming out of Vietnam by suggesting our tortured POWs were “probably treated better than the average Vietnamese.”

In a CNN News Central special, anchor Kaitlan Collins asked about Western journalists being denied access to covering Gaza, which cued Amanpour to lecture:

AMANPOUR: Kaitlan, you can imagine that’s a question that I’m asking every day. And surely all of my colleagues, it is unconscionable that us, we have not been able to go in and help our Gaza colleagues tell the full story to the world  That is just something that I’ve never seen any democratic nation forbid, outside journalists, and I’ve asked every Israeli official who I’ve interacted with over the last two years, publicly and privately, to open the doors and let us in. And I pretty much can assure you that one, that once those I those doors are opened, it will be a scene of absolute, abject horror.

Blurb:

In the shadows of the joy sweeping Israel over the return of 20 living hostages taken by Hamas, outrage erupted over the failure of Hamas to return the bodies of all those who died since they were taken after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists.

Only four of 28 bodies held by Hamas in Gaza were being returned on Monday, according to ABC News.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the action a “failure to meet commitments,” of the first phase of the ceasefire deal brokered by President Donald Trump.

“Any delay or deliberate avoidance will be considered a blatant violation of the agreement and will be responded to accordingly,” Katz said in the statement.

Blurb:

A man who spent his presidency alienating Israel and coddling its enemies just proved he hasn’t learned a thing.

In a post published Thursday to the social media platform X, former President Barack Obama managed such a mealy-mouthed comment on news of a cease-fire in the Israeli-Hamas war that he managed to infuriate partisans on all sides.

But most of all, he proved just how petty a former president can really be.