Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the inaugural JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem, April 27, 2025. Photo by Hillel Maeir.
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    April 28, 2025
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Full remarks: Netanyahu at the JNS Policy Summit
Intro
"You cannot build peace and security on lies. If you do so, sooner or later, these lies will crash on the Middle Eastern realities," Netanyahu told JNS.
text

The following is the complete text of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the inaugural JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on Sunday, April 27, 2025.

There are so many friends here that I don't see. 

Some that I do. And beginning first with you, Richard. You've been a wonderful friend over the years. You and your wife, to me and my wife. You've been, as we say in Swedish, mishpoche.

I want to also acknowledge other friends who are here. Pastor Hagee. Ambassador Danon, are you an ambassador who brought ambassadors? And I know there are other ambassadors from the U.N. and from Israel. Welcome.

Equally, I see many friends in the crowd. Malcolm, I see you, and I see old friends. I asked you a question, my dear friend from Minnesota. How come there are so many liberals in Minnesota? And never got an answer.

And of course, I see here also... well, I don't see him, but my good friend Mark Levin. Where is Mark?... Ah. Now, here's a man who speaks the truth fearlessly. In a straightforward and sort of subtle way. And he is an example of what all of you are, but especially what JNS does.

And I want to acknowledge Alex Traiman, CEO, for the work that you do. He said, to counter the konseptzia. I said, no, it's not countering the konseptzia. It's just to speak the truth. 

That's what we need because—there's a reason—because you cannot build peace and security on lies. If you do so, sooner or later, these lies will crash on the Middle Eastern realities. You cannot do that.

They crash all these theories that are promoted over the years, that are contrary to reality. They don't stand over time. They fall like pieces of an iceberg into the ocean, and very soon nothing is left. So, you need a solid foundation, and the only solid foundation is the truth.

So, I want to encapsulate some truths for you tonight, because I think they explain where we are today. In the founding of the State of Israel, 77 years ago, we faced a fairly united Arab world. It was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. He promoted the idea of pan-Arabism.

He would unite the whole Arab realm under his leadership, under his rule, and the source of unity, one of the sources of unity, was to drive [out] Israel—that is, to oppose the founding of the State of Israel, that was done by the Egyptian regime before him, to prevent the Jewish state from being established. But once established, it had to be removed.

It had no place right in the center of that great Arab domain. There couldn't be a Western state. We were foreign interlopers. We were foreign interlopers, right? 

I mean, we're here in Jerusalem, about a kilometer away from David's capital, which was established 3,000 years ago. We are not foreign interlopers. We're not the Belgians in the Congo. We're not the Dutch in Indonesia. We're the Jews in the Jewish homeland, Judea. All right, that's one truth, an important truth.

But equally, they tried to not only ... at first, they didn't try to actually annihilate our history. They just tried to annihilate us. And it wasn't such a big task. We were very small, very small, really, on a strip, a tiny strip on the edge of the Mediterranean, with Jerusalem. 

We had Hebron—a few thousand years—and very little else. And the idea was you can cut to the sea and finish it off. So, they didn't waste time on propaganda. They just organized themselves. Having, from our point of view, miraculously defeated them in the War of Independence, they didn't think it was over. And they arranged ... themselves to choke us and drive us into the sea. In the weeks and days before 1967.

And of course, you know how that ended. It ended, even though they all said, well, Nasser put his troops into the Sinai, put 100,000 troops in the Sinai, Syria would join him. Hussein, despite our warnings, joined him from right across the street here. 

And we were about to be finished. But in six days, we turned the tables on them. And of course, we came back to our ancestral homeland in full force. And by the way, we took the high ground and we will not leave it. It's ours.

So. They still didn't give up. They tried the War of Attrition. And then in 1973, a combined attack, this time by two Arab armies in the Yom Kippur War, they surprised us. Within three weeks, we were at the gates of Damascus and Cairo, and that ended that. 

And so that began—this whole situation where they attacked us again and again—created a situation where the Arab world began to realise that Israel is here to stay, and that they have to make their due with it. 

And so, we began a process that began first with the peace at Camp David, between Begin and Sadat, and later the peace with Jordan that was signed by Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. And so, what you had was that the Arab world was slowly coming to realise that Israel is a fact that cannot be removed, and they were beginning to make peace with us.

We couldn't progress on that peace because one part of the Arab world resolutely remained against us, and that's—who's that, class? The Palestinians. The Palestinians clung to the original opposition to Israel, that basically, you do not recognize a Jewish state, the Jewish state, in any boundary, in any form. 

Israel has to be annihilated. Israel has to be excised like a tumour. That was their position, and that was and remains the principal obstacle to a Palestinian-Israeli peace. The persistent Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any form and any boundary.

That's the truth that somehow eludes fairly intelligent people. They sit in the State Department; they sit in the foreign chancelleries of the world. That's a very difficult concept to absorb. How? I think it's so obvious.

They keep saying it, they keep doing it. They keep saying, ‘We want a Palestinian state, in our ancestral homeland, in order to destroy the Jewish state.’ They say it. They say it in Ramallah. They say it in Gaza. They teach it in Ramallah to their children. They teach it in Gaza. There's no difference in the textbooks, exactly the same. 

One pays-for-slay in Ramallah and operates the ICC, and conducts warfare against us. Lawfare. And you know all this by heart.

And the other says, no, we have to go straight out militarily and terror. That's the difference between Hamas and the P.A. Hamas says we will destroy Israel by terror and military conquest right away. And the P.A. says, no, you destroy it politically by driving it, through propaganda and lawfare, to the '67 boundaries. 

And then you can do the military thrust because you're a few kilometres from the sea. That's the difference between them.

But the persistent refusal of the Arab, of the Palestinian Arabs, to recognize a Jewish state in any boundary is the source of this conflict. For close to 100 years, actually 100 years and more, from the Mufti in the 20s to today, in the 20s, a century later—no difference. One before the establishment of the state. And it didn't change after the establishment of the state.

So, the idea that you'll create a Palestinian state and that will produce peace. I'm saying this for the ambassadors who are here. All of you know this. The idea is folly, nothing more than folly. We just tried a Palestinian state in Gaza. You saw what that brought, right? So, we are absolutely clear on that. But it's important to see what happened in the rest of the Arab world.

After we had these two peace treatieshistoric peace treaties with Egypt and with Jordanthese are cold peace treaties, because there wasn't really pacification of the population, but between governments. And that still holds. And that's good, because a cold peace is a lot better than a hot war. OK.

That held. It took us another quarter of a century to get the next peace treaty, because everybody said, the only way you're going to get it is you have to go through the Palestinians. That is, first solve the Palestinian problem, and then you'll get peace with the rest of the Arab world. Remember that? Yeah. Who said that, John Kerry? Douze points.

Yeah, that's pretty good. That's right. He said it's not going to happen. No, no, no, no. He said it four times at the Saban Forum. I wish he had said it five times. We might get five countries. But that's what he said, and that was the [prevalent] assumption. 

Of course, I didn't think so, because if we had to go through the Palestinians—aside from creating a state that would spell the end of Israel—we knew the Palestinians would not make peace. They don't want a state next to Israel; they want a state instead of Israel. And so, they would never accept the expansion of peace with other countries, because we wouldn't succumb to their dictates.

So, we decided—I decided—to do something different. I chose to go around the Palestinians and went directly to the Arab capitals. In about two months, we made four peace treaties with four Arab states, expanding the circle of peace. 

The main thing you can see here is that the number of Arab states that attacked us kept declining over time: five (arguably seven) states in 1948, three in 1967, two in the Yom Kippur War, and then one in the Lebanon War of 1982. Gradually, the Arab world began to normalize its relations with Israel. And that was the good news.

The bad news, however, was that the Arab world was being replaced by a much more potent force that had appeared on the horizon—Iran. 

Beginning with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran became the primary Islamist force in the Middle East, replacing the Arab world as the engine of attacks against Israel. They were committed to destroying Israel for a simple reason—they were determined to conquer the Middle East. 

They correctly identified Israel as the only real force standing in their way in the region, because no one else was fighting Iran. The only ones willing to fight Iran—and actually fighting Iran—were us. We were the only ones keeping the Middle East from collapsing under Iranian aggression.

If we were not here, the neighboring countries would collapse on the spot. I won't give you all the details, but I could—there are many. The ones who don't need the details, though, are the Iranians. They know this very well. 

So, they embarked on a campaign from the very start that targeted Israel. And it wasn’t just about conquering the Middle East; their ambition was larger: to subjugate all Muslims to their fanatic creed, as written in their constitution, and to export their revolution worldwide.

Their chant from the beginning was clear: ‘Death to Israel, death to America.’ That's almost a geographic truth. We stand in their way, not only for their regional goals but for their larger purposes. To get rid of us, they designed two main forms of attack.

The first attack was to try to develop over the last two decades, nuclear weapons. We'll talk about that in a minute. The second line of attack is something they developed piece by piece, step by step, which was to choke Israel by conquering pieces of the Middle East, both for their own reasons, but also as a noose of death around us. 

And you could see them moving from Iran to Iraq to Syria to the Mediterranean and Lebanon. They control Lebanon completely. They control Syria in many ways. They control Iraq. So now they have a continuum right to the sea. And then in the south, in Gaza, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and then further south, the Houthis. 

And they have other plans. They would like to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. They would like to topple Jordan. They want to complete the conquest of the Middle East. But what stands in their way? Israel. So, if you have this noose of death, tighten the noose. And the plan that they hatched is something that became much clearer to us in the course of the war. 

We've just fought, you know, that we were attacked savagely, horribly, on October 7. I mean, these people are indescribable, actually indescribable, I mean, Chancellor Scholz, who visited me in the beginning of the war when he saw the film The Horrors and visited the sites. 

He said there, they're exactly like the Nazis. And I said, well, they're different. Not in intent, not in savagery. But the Nazis tried to hide their crimes. And these people carry GoPro cameras, live, you know, they're ecstatic about the blood they shed, the people they butcher the women, they rape the men, they beheaded, the babies they burned. They're ecstatic about it. 

So, they took 250 and some hostages, of which we recovered so far, 197 and 100. And of these, sorry, 198, and of these, 41, 47 are live, and the remainder are dead. But we intend to recover the rest. There are up to 24 that are alive. The remainder are dead. We intend to bring back all of them. 

But the most important thing. The most important thing that we had to do was to stop the invasion, which we did. And as we stopped the invasion and continued to take the fight into their territory, and of course, into Lebanon, where Hezbollah joined the day after.

We learned basically one simple truth. We learned that Sinwar jumped the gun. He jumped the gun. He deviated from the plan that the noose of death had planned in advance. And that plan was that there would be simultaneous invasions from Gaza and from Lebanon. 

The distances to the centre of the country are very small. Simultaneous bracketing of Israel, barrage after barrage of ballistic missiles and rockets in a tiny country that was meant to basically erase Israel. That was the plan. 

And Hamas didn't wait, couldn't get over themselves. They fired too quickly. In fact, Hezbollah was surprised. ‘They said, why did they not tell us? They were supposed to tell us, but they didn't.’ 

And so, we had time to prevent a similar ground invasion. That would have been much more potent, because there's no comparison to the power of Hezbollah. There is one force compared to the numbers, the monsters who attacked us, much more potent. 

But by that time, we could move our army to the north. So, we stopped that invasion, and we discovered what had been hatched. There was a clock in Iran, and it said here, the end of Israel and such and such date and the clock is winding down. But this was the plan. 

And in many ways, what happened is that we simply broke this on the second day of the war. I said, we will change the face of the Middle East. We first had to go into Gaza, [we told] our American friends who came here. And I appreciate the fact that President Biden came here at the beginning of the war and gave his support the beginning of the war. 

But they said, ‘Don't go in, don't do the ground invasion. Do it from the air.’ And I said, ‘Joe, we tried that.’ I myself, as head of the government, [had previously] authorized three attacks, three major operations against the Hamas terrorists. 

After they had attacked us [previously], we killed thousands of terrorists. We killed their military commander, Jabari. It made a dent. It stayed them. They had to rearm again and so on. But it didn't stop it. 

I said, ‘It's not going to work this time. We have to go in.’ 

So, against their better advice, we went in, and well, very soon the propaganda war began to work against us. So, as we were making our military thrust, the diplomatic support that we had at the start of the war turned against us. And now we are facing pressure to mitigate the fight and very soon to stop the fight. 

We went into Gaza City. They didn't like it. We went into Shifa Hospital, some hospital. Right. They didn't like it. We went into Khan Yunis and then we reached the outskirts of Rafah. And there the Americans said, ‘Don't go in, don't go in. And if you go in, we'll put an arms embargo on you.’ 

And I said to President Biden, look, I respect you. You're the president of the United States. Please respect me. I'm the prime minister of the one and only Jewish state we are going in. And Secretary of State Blinken came in a few days later, and he said: ‘The president is serious.’ I said, I know he's serious. He's going to do it. I know he's already done it. 

And he said, ‘So what do you say?’ I said, Tony, we will fight with our fingernails if we have to. And we did. But we had more than fingernails. I said in the Cabinet that the weapons will take care of themselves. We'll fight with what we have, but we will survive. 

We are not a vassal state. We're the independent state of the Jewish people. And we will do what we need to do to protect us. So, we went into Rafah. The Americans told us that we can't go into Rafah because there'll be thousands of casualties. Some said 20,000 casualties in any way. They don't have a place to go. 

Remember that one? Well, I said, they do have a place to go. They can go two kilometres westward to the beach. There's a safe zone there. And they did. Within six days, 1.4 million people moved to the beach because we kept moving them out of harm's way. 

And I visited the extraordinary brigade commander there in the Rafah crossing, saw our soldiers and asked him, so, Itzik, how many terrorists have you killed? And this was in the middle of the fighting, he said, ‘At this point, 1,203.’ I said, How do you know? I said. ‘Body counts. We see them there.” And I said, How many civilians have you killed? You know what he said? ‘None. None. Because they all left.’ 

They ended up killing 2,000 terrorists and practically no civilians. In fact, the only civilian deaths that are recorded are in the beginning of the fighting, as far as I know, because we dropped a stray bomb before we actually went in, and it hit an ammunition dump that Hamas had placed among civilians, and 20 terrorists died and 20 civilians died. 

But in the course of the fighting, the assumptions that were broadcast around the world were untrue, that we would create extraordinary civilian deaths or that they had no place to go. They were proved to be wrong. And now we got the Philadelphia route. And so, we surround Gaza. We hold the perimeter inside Gaza, in the Philadelphia corridor. 

The sea is on the other side, so they can't smuggle weapons now. They can't do anything about that. Having done that, having destroyed most of the organised battalions of Hamas, they still have remnants. They still fight there. And we still have a job to do. And the only reason we're not doing it in, in such a short time is because of the hostages. Otherwise, it would be over long ago. 

But in the course of doing that, what is a battalion? A battalion means there's a Hamas chief and he says attack. And 100 people come out of the tunnels and attack. And when you destroy a battalion, three people come out, two people come out. Unfortunately, a sharpshooter can come out, but there's no organised military structure. 

So, having done that, having removed the threat of invasion from Gaza or the threat of serious rocketing from Gaza, having also done away with Sinwar, remember him? Remember Deif? Remember Haniyeh? 

Having gotten rid of them, we turn north. And having turned north, we had this small thing, you know, the beepers. You remember the beepers, the pagers? Yeah. 

So, we had a little debate, you know. Should we use the beepers? Some of the people said, ‘We have to tell the Americans.’ I said, No, no. And we didn't because I don't read The New York Times that often, but why give them the advance? I mean, it would be on the net. It would be, you know, that doesn't make any sense. 

We had to bring up the beepers a bit because we decided that we'd go into Lebanon in October. Why October? Well, obviously, because it's one month ahead of November. You'll figure that out. Okay, okay. 

But in late in the third week, I think of September, we learned that Hamas, or rather, that Hezbollah had sent three beepers to be scanned in Iran. We had previously bombed a scanner they were going to bring in. So, we got rid of that and the guy who operates it. 

But now they had these and, you know, they have this minuscule amount of TNT. And when the Mossad guy showed it to me a few months earlier, he's giving me an update how many we've got inside. And, and I said, is that really going to do the job? I mean, how much TNT do you have there? So, he says, I don't know, nano nanograms, something like that. And I said, what is that going to do? It's not going to do anything. 

He said, Oh no, it'll do it. Give me that. I take the beeper and I throw it on the wood panelling in my office and it dented it. And I said, okay, go ahead. So, but so now we're all set to go. But now it turns out that they are scanning this. And I learned it and I was crazy. I said, what? Why didn't you tell me this? Well, it happened a few days ago. Well, how long does it take him to do this? Could take a day. I said. Well, we have to do it right away. So, we did it. 

And that meant that we brought up the shock and the beginning of the great campaign in Lebanon. We brought it up about three weeks while the army was supposed to prepare in those three weeks for war. 

They came back a few days later and they gave me three options. One is do nothing. Wait, see what the beepers do. Option two was Conquer Bulgaria, something like that, you know, an impossible task. And option three was sort of a mixture—command post here, command post there. And I said, well, let's have option four. 

Option four was targeting the main stock of missiles that Nasrallah had built over the years in private homes. He was relying on the fact that we would not attack private homes. And he was right. We didn't over the years. But we set a goal for the army, attack these homes, but get the population out. 

And they came back 48 hours later with a brilliant, brilliant plan. They commandeered Lebanese television and radio. Can you imagine this is the IDF telling you if you're a resident of somewhere—leave because they had a missile in every garage and a rocket in every kitchen. They would open the roof and out it comes and so on. 

And that was done. So, in six or seven hours, we destroyed the bulk. Not all, but the bulk of the main weapons directed against us that Nasrallah had built over 30 years. Now, in the course of those weeks, we had targeted and killed many of Hezbollah's commanders, military commanders. 

But there was still one person there, and he was running the war independently. He was doing it quite well, I have to say. And that was Nasrallah himself. So, we had we knew where he was. And the question was, do we hit him or not? 

And that wasn't a simple answer, because he was the number two in the Iranian axis. He was the second most admired Shi’ite leader in the Shi’ite world. He was the beloved son of Khomeini. You know, he treated him like a son. And what does that mean? 

Could it possibly drive a war? Could it possibly? Could it bring Hezbollah into the war? That's a legitimate question. So, when we discussed and I received a big thicket of intelligence reports. I read it, all about Nasrallah. Then I read it again, 80 pages. I said he has to go. 

I was particularly impressed by the fact that by the fact that not only was he a capable leader, but also that his relationship with Iran was somewhat different from what I had thought. I would say he manipulated Iran much more than Iran manipulated him. He influenced Iran much more than Iran influenced him. And when I read this report, I came to the clear conclusion that he was the axis of the axis, and if we remove him, the axis would break. 

And so, we went into a debate in the Cabinet. Do we take him out or not? And there were two things that were brought up. One, we have to tell the Americans that again, I say, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And the second was, well, you know, you have to really think seriously about the consequences. 

I mean, Iran has a lot of ballistic missiles, as long as from where I'm standing right up to that wall. It's like a bus full of tons of TNT. And you have many hundreds of these, and they would fall in Israel and they would do serious damage. So, you couldn't quite dismiss that. And then the question was, do you do it, or don't you do it? 

The Cabinet was split not quite half and half. Most wanted to do it, but some didn't. And the senior echelon was hesitant. I could see that. So, I called the then-Minister of Defence and then-Chief of Staff to a separate room. I said, look, the American thing is out of the question. At best. We could tell them, you know, when the planes are en route, give them the courtesy, but we're not going to tell them. 

But I want to think about your opinions, and I'll come back to you. And there was a real sigh of relief there, because, you know, I'm going to the States to give a speech at the U.N. I was a few hours away from giving a speech.

By that time, we had intel that Nasrallah would probably leave for another place, where we didn't have access. So that would solve that dilemma. What I think they didn't know is that I have what is called an Air Force One. It's really Air Force minus one. It's kind of dilapidated, but it's very serviceable because it has a bed and it has a secure line. 

So, I slept for a couple of hours, two hours, got up, opened the phone and called the Chiefs in, and I said, OK, I've made a decision, we're going to take him out. And I ask that you convene the cabinet on a phone line when I get to New York. I got to New York, went to the Regency Hotel. I mean, I'm sure there have been many important conversations in the Regency Hotel, but I don't think there was anything like this. 

And we had a cabinet meeting in the Regency Hotel. And decided on the attack. I still had to write my speech. What a bore. So, I spent the night writing the speech, but also taking two other phone calls to make sure that the planes take off. 

Went to give the speech. And right after the speech, I was meeting some Israeli journalists. I don't do that very often. There's no point. And my military secretary came in and gave me a note with one word, “Done”. 

Now, the collapse, the removal of Nasrallah really broke the axis. It was a terrific blow. Some people are irreplaceable. And so far, he's been irreplaceable. And so, having delivered that blow to Hezbollah, we also delivered a blow to Assad because Assad was relying heavily on Nasrallah.

He wasn't relying on his army during the civil war. Every time he got into real trouble, Nasrallah would send thousands and thousands of fighters to help him. And now there was no one to send the fighters. So, there was an opening, obviously, which Al-Sharaa used. They didn't understand how come they're rolling into every place. There's no one to fight. And they just kept moving from town to town with the full blessing, that's a diplomatic word, of Turkey. But Iran has this total, amazing, unbelievable investment in the axis [of resistance]. This is the axis. You have to have a continuum to supply Hezbollah. And that was going down the tubes. And so, they had to rescue Assad. And what they wanted to do was to send one or two airborne divisions to help them. 

And we stopped that. We sent some F-16s towards some Iranian planes that were en route to Damascus. They turned back. So, being shed of any support from the West and any support from the East, the Assad regime collapsed. 

And just to make sure, we destroyed 90 percent of their armaments. And then improved our positions a bit, like taking the summit of the Hermon Mountain, a very beautiful place. That's what we did. 

So, in effect, if you summarise everything that I said up to now, what we did is we had peace going with the Arab world, Iran coming up, Iran putting a noose around our necks, and Israel turning the tables on them from a situation where on October 7, people were thought that Israel was doomed—to making Israel the most powerful country in the region. Within a very short time. 

We could do that because of the incredible courage of our soldiers and our commanders. Incredible. Just incredible. I mean, they are really, they're really the lions of Judah. I mean, they really fight. They are heroes, and the fallen are heroes and those who are wounded. 

You should see the wounded. There's a guy who lost both his legs, and he has these, you know, these artificial legs and an arm. And he lifts another arm. You know, he says, I want to go back and fight, you know, and he's not alone. These are amazing heroes. 

So having done that, we've smashed the Iranian axis, but we didn't finish the job. Remember, there's still more to be done. We have to finish the war in Gaza, get our hostages back and destroy Hamas. Hamas will not be there and we're not going to put the P.A. there. 

Why replace one regime that is sworn to our destruction with another regime that is sworn to our destruction? We won't do that. I can say that Israel, in any case, will control the area militarily. We're not going to succumb to any pressure not to do that. 

And I very much welcome President Trump's plan to allow the voluntary relocation of Gazans who want to leave. And believe me, many of them want to leave. So, what's left? Well, quite a few things and many opportunities, but obviously they'll all go down the tube if Iran gets nuclear weapons. 

The reason Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons is because successive governments, under my prime ministership, have led successive actions, which I won't discuss here, forgive me, with the same detail over the years. And that set them back about ten years from where they thought they'd be ten years ago. They already thought they'd have a nuclear arsenal. They don't. 

We delayed them. But we didn't stop them. So, they moved very far on enrichment. They're trying to move on weaponry. And the question is now what to do? Happily, we have a president in Washington who's committed, as he says. And as he said to me many times, including just recently, we can't allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. 

And I said, I absolutely believe that I devoted a good chunk of my life to prevent that. But there are two ways to do it. One is to get a deal that would prevent them from doing that by dismantling their nuclear infrastructure. You have to dismantle their nuclear infrastructure. And that means not that they will not enrich uranium, but that they will not have the capacity to enrich uranium, which means you destroy the centrifuges. 

You remove, of course, the nuclear material that is already enriched. And there are a few other things that you have to do. But that's the crux of it. The real deal that works is the deal that removes Iran's capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. By the way, the only reason you enrich uranium is to have nuclear weapons. 

There are dozens and dozens of countries that have civilian nuclear programs, and they don't enrich uranium. So, Iran is constantly thinking, well, we have to find a reason why we're putting these things in bunkers under mountains, maybe for radio isotopes, right, for medicine, or for nuclear submarines. Give me a break. 

They enrich uranium for one reason and one reason only. And that's to make nuclear weapons, which they intend to use to destroy my country and threaten America once they have the weapons of delivery. Ballistic missiles, ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, they will threaten every city in the United States. That is a palpable danger to Israel and to the free world. And it must be prevented. 

The way to prevent it is to dismantle all the infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program. That is the deal. We could not live with anything short of that, anything short of that could bring you the opposite result, because Iran will say, alright, I won't enrich, wait, run out the clock, wait for another president, do it again. That's unacceptable. 

Equally, I think we should bring in the ballistic missiles—the prevention of the development of ballistic missiles into the deal. I think these are the two requirements. I said to President Trump that I hope that this is what the negotiators will do.

But I said one way or the other, Iran will not have nuclear weapons. So, from a seven-front war, we have a one-front war with Iran and its proxies. We appreciate the fact that the United States is taking action against the Houthis. It's very important. We appreciate the help that we're getting from the United States. Arms are flowing in. 

It's important we share the same goals, but we have to make sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons. A bad deal is worse than no deal. We need a good deal. And the only good deal that works is a deal like the one that was made with Libya that removed all the infrastructure. I can tell you now, you should applaud that. That's the main point. 

We have another front. It's called the deep state. You heard about that? No. You're talking about the deep state in America. It's very shallow. It's a puddle. Ours is ocean deep, even though it's somebody said it's a deep shtetl, but it's a deep state. It's a deep state. It's very deep. 

It threatens democracy. It abrogates the rights of citizens to choose their government that will make its own decisions, its own appointments. That has to be obviously resolved. But we have to understand that there is another threat on the horizon.

And with this, I'll finish, because I think it relates to what JNS is doing and doing so ably. And that is, puncture the lies. The lies are disseminated in America by a campaign, a systematic campaign that is funded, organised by governments, by NGOs, that are funded also by very wealthy individuals. 

There's a lot of tourists in America. Yeah, a lot of tourists. There's a lot of tourists in Israel, too. So, what do they do? They pay influencers. They use social media in a very systematic way to attack the supporters of Israel. And I'm not talking about only the supporters of Israel on the left. I'm talking about the supporters of Israel on the right. 

And that is a palpable threat to our future. We do not ask others to fight for us. We don't ask for boots on the ground, but we ask for that support. That support means that the UN Security Council does not make binding resolutions against Israel. It means that Israel is not sanctioned, is not choked by the international community, and that support is being threatened by the systematic public opinion campaign. 

And if there's one thing that has to be done, is to fight back. That's what we do. We have to fight back, and you fight back. You fight back with the truth. 

So, I ask you to continue to fight for the truth. All of you do it in one way or the other. You should do it well. You should do more, more, more and more. Because we've learned in the long history of our people that if somebody says that they want to kill you. Believe them. 

And these people who want to kill us enjoy the support now of young Americans who support our killers and our rapists and our would-be destroyers more than equally as much as they support us. 

That has to be reversed. As fast as it came up, it can go down. But like in anything in antisemitism, people respect you only if you stand up for yourself. 

And the main thing is not to cower, not to cower before our enemies here, not to cower before lies that are spread here and there, not to cower, to stand up and fight back. 

That's my message to you. Thank you very much. Thank you all.

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  • Words count:
    326 words
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  • Publication Date:
    May 17, 2025
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    1 file

The Israel Defense Forces is conducting extensive airstrikes across the Gaza Strip and mobilizing ground troops to gain operational control in key areas of the enclave, the military announced overnight Friday.

The move marks the opening stage of an expanded phase of military operations—codenamed "Gideon’s Chariots"—aimed at achieving the central objectives of the war: securing the release of hostages and dismantling the Hamas terrorist organization.

https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1923481214931042687

On Friday afternoon, the IDF reported that it had attacked more than 150 terrorist targets across Gaza in the past 24 hours as part of ongoing operations against Hamas.

The airstrikes targeted anti-tank positions, terrorist cells, and structures used to launch attacks on Israeli troops. Ground forces from the 252nd, 143rd and 36th Divisions operated in both northern and southern Gaza, destroying tunnel shafts and other infrastructure while killing terrorists engaged in active combat and plotting further attacks.

In a videoed statement released on May 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to intensify the war in Gaza, asserting that IDF soldiers would remain in every area they capture.

“We decided on intensified action in Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “That was the IDF chief of staff’s recommendation—to move, as he said, toward the defeat of Hamas. He believes this will also help us rescue the hostages. I agree with him.”

“We are not letting up on this effort and will not give up on anyone,” he continued.

Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed these sentiments, saying that Israeli troops were prepared to intensify their activities until all war objectives are achieved.

“The operation is intended to defeat Hamas and secure the release of all hostages. We will act with great force to destroy all of Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities,” Katz said.

He added that the entire population of Gaza would be evacuated to the southern part of the Strip during the fighting, and that the IDF would remain in “every area that is taken.”

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  • Words count:
    466 words
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    May 17, 2025

The Israel Defense Forces launched a large-scale aerial operation on Friday night targeting terrorist infrastructure belonging to the Iranian-backed Houthi regime at the Hudaydah and Salif ports in Yemen.

Fifteen Israeli Air Force fighter jets carried out the attack, dropping more than 30 munitions in what marks the eighth IDF strike on Houthi targets since the terror group joined the war in support of Hamas and Hezbollah following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

According to the IDF, the targeted ports serve as hubs for weapons transfers and exemplify "the Houthi terrorist regime's systematic and cynical exploitation of civilian infrastructure to advance terrorist activities."

The military stated that the strikes were preceded by multiple advance warnings urging civilians in the area to evacuate, in an effort to minimize harm to non-combatants.

https://youtu.be/V4_bgEmBmAQ

“Over the past year and a half, the Houthi terrorist regime has been operating under Iranian direction and funding in order to harm the State of Israel and its allies, undermining regional stability and disrupting global freedom of navigation,” the IDF said in a statement.

The military added that “any hostile activity in these ports will continue to be prevented.”

https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1923428163167588739

In response, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a stern warning: “If the Houthis continue to fire missiles at the State of Israel, they will suffer painful blows—and the heads of the terrorist group will also be hit.

"We will defend ourselves with strength against any enemy," he said.

https://twitter.com/Israel_katz/status/1923397915633979472

On Thursday evening, air-raid sirens were activated across Israel’s central region, including in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, warning of an incoming Houthi ballistic missile.

“Following alerts that were activated a short time ago in several areas of the country, one missile launched from Yemen was intercepted,” the military stated.

Early Saturday morning, the IDF intercepted a drone launched “from the east”—a term used by the military to refer to Yemen. Sirens were activated in accordance with protocol. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Since Tuesday night, the Jewish state’s air defenses have intercepted five projectiles fired at the country by the Houthis.

Last week, the IDF launched a series of strikes on Sanaa International Airport in Yemen. Dozens of Air Force fighter jets made the more than 1,000-mile journey and dropped 50 bombs over the course of about 15 minutes, disabling the main airport controlled by Houthi terrorists.

Israeli Air Force fighter jets also struck multiple major power stations in the Houthi capital, as well as a cement factory located north of Sanaa, which it said was used for building tunnels and terror infrastructure.

Those strikes come two days after the Houthis launched a ballistic missile at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, injuring six civilians and disrupting air traffic.

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  • Words count:
    193 words
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    Update Desk
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    May 17, 2025
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A terrorist stabbed and wounded a police officer on Friday night at the Chain Gate entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.

According to police, an officer on duty noticed the suspect and began a routine inspection. During the check, the attacker drew a knife and stabbed the officer.

Additional forces at the scene responded immediately, shooting and neutralizing the assailant, identified as a 17-year-old resident of Beit Hanina.

The injured officer was evacuated to hospital for medical treatment and is reported to be in mild to moderate condition.

https://twitter.com/IL_police/status/1923473971036528649

Jerusalem District Police Commander Major General Amir Arzani arrived at the scene and praised the swift response of the officers.

“The officers on duty demonstrated determination and courage when facing a bloodthirsty terrorist who attempted to take their lives in an instant,” he said. “This attack is another reminder of the wide range of threats our forces face daily in the Old City and across Jerusalem. We will continue to act decisively against anyone who threatens the safety of our officers or civilians.”

The investigation has been transferred to the Jerusalem District’s central unit.

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  • Words count:
    317 words
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    Update Desk
  • Publication Date:
    May 16, 2025
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The lead prosecutor in the International Criminal Court’s investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza has temporarily stepped aside over a sexual misconduct investigation, multiple outlets reported on Friday.

Karim Khan, prosecutor of the ICC, has taken indefinite leave pending the outcome of a probe from the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services about allegations that he repeatedly assaulted a Malaysian colleague in several countries and had urged her not to pursue charges as they might hinder his investigation of Israel.

“Think about the Palestinian arrest warrants,” he was quoted as saying, according to his accuser.

Khan has denied the allegations. JNS sought comment from the ICC.

The ICC’s two deputy prosecutors will take over the investigation while Khan is on leave, Reuters reported.

In May 2024, Khan announced that he would request arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity over Israeli conduct in the war against Hamas.

The Hague-based tribunal, which is independent and not part of the United Nations, issued the warrants in November.

Some have raised questions about whether Khan requested the warrants against Israel in May 2024 to deliberately overshadow the sexual misconduct allegations against him, which came to light just weeks earlier. Khan’s decision that month to cancel a longstanding trip to Israel and Gaza also raised further questions about his impartiality.

Israel has denied that the court has jurisdiction to arrest or try its citizens because Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC in 2002.

The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the ICC probe has ground to a halt following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order in February to impose sanctions on Khan and the court. Khan, who is British, has reportedly been frozen out of his U.K. bank accounts and lost access to his work email account. 

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  • Words count:
    300 words
  • Type of content:
    News
  • Publication Date:
    May 16, 2025
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New York University decried a student’s decision to attack Israel during a commencement speech and is withholding the student’s diploma, the school announced on Wednesday.

“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation” to “misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views,” John Beckman, an NYU spokesman, stated.

“He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules. The university is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions,” Beckman stated. “NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”

In an almost three-minute speech at the commencement ceremonies for NYU’s school of individualized study, Logan Rozos accused the Jewish state repeatedly of committing “genocide.”

“My moral and political commitments guide me to say that the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine,” Rozos said.

The student’s remarks were met with loud applause from many in the crowd.

NYU has yet to release a recording of the speech. (JNS sought comment from NYU.)

The Anti-Defamation League’s New York and New Jersey office stated that it is “appalled to hear that during NYU graduation, a student speaker altered their approved speech to make divisive and false comments about the current Israel-Hamas war.”

The ADL thanked the school administration for its “strong condemnation” and “pursuit of disciplinary action.”

“Send him off to visit Gaza,” David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote. “I’m sure he will receive a warm welcome from Hamas.”

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  • Words count:
    507 words
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    May 16, 2025
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New York City is increasing security ahead of Sunday’s Israel Day Parade, with street closures, screening checkpoints and specialized police teams set to monitor activity along the parade route, according to a security briefing at police headquarters in Manhattan.

Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the New York City Police Department, said at the Friday morning security briefing that, in preparation for Sunday’s parade, the section of Fifth Avenue from 52nd to 78th Streets will be closed starting at 7:30 a.m. Designated screening entry points will be located on the East Side at 61st, 63rd, 66th, 70th and 73rd Streets, accessible from Madison Avenue.

“Everyone has a right to express their views peacefully, but no one has a right to engage in criminal activity, and we will not tolerate any attempts to disrupt this event or endanger those who come to celebrate,” she said. “The NYPD has been preparing for this event for months.”

A comprehensive security plan includes specialized emergency units, counterterrorism teams, a bomb squad and NYPD helicopters and drones providing aerial coverage, according to Tisch.

“This year’s parade comes at a time of heightened tension around the world and here at home,” she said. “Since the Oct. 7 attacks, there has been a notable increase in demonstrations and deeply personal emotions on all sides of the conflict, and we’ve also seen an unacceptable uptick in antisemitic threats and rhetoric.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at the briefing that this will be the second major parade since Oct. 7. He told reporters that this is also the second time that there have been calls to scrap the parade over security concerns.

“We refuse to ever succumb to those who want to have this city live in fear,” he said. “We want to ensure we have a safe acknowledgement of Israel’s Independence Day on Sunday.”

Adams told JNS that while the NYPD is not currently expecting counter-protesters on Sunday, the department is prepared to handle anything that may arise.

Rebecca Weiner, the deputy NYPD commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, and her team “are always looking for any intel that would disrupt any event in the city,” he told JNS. “So it is not our prediction. It is our preparation.”

“If we practice, we’re always ready,” he told JNS.

NYPD Eric Adams Tisch Israel Parade security
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch discuss security ahead of the Israel Day on Fifth parade at One Police Plaza, May 16., 2025. Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office.

Even when sporadic protests emerge, the city is able to carry on with its activities, and Sunday should be no different, according to the mayor.

“We will be prepared, and that’s why we are creating an environment where we can inspect who’s coming into the parade site, how we’re gonna control the flow of people and ensure that we have proper deployment of personnel if there’s any form of disruption,” Adams told JNS.

https://www.youtube.com/live/b-z82NsvswY?feature=shared&t=781
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  • Words count:
    684 words
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    Opinion
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    May 16, 2025
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StopAntisemitism’s X account shared a disturbing video on May 4 from the Barstool Sansom Street bar in Philadelphia. The footage, seemingly a screen recording of an Instagram story, showed a sign “F*** the Jews” before the camera unsteadily turned to a crowd of onlookers. Some reacted with visible shock. Others laughed. One person remarked, “crazy.” At least one voice chillingly echoed the sentiment: “F*** ’em.”

This vile incident and the troubling response that followed offer critical insight into the current state of antisemitism in America.

StopAntisemitism tagged Barstool CEO Dave Portnoy in its post. Within two hours, Portnoy responded with a video on X expressing anger and disbelief. He proposed what appeared to be a constructive solution: Offering the alleged perpetrators an educational trip to Auschwitz to confront the historical reality and horrors of antisemitism.

That, however, was not the end of the story.

The fallout was immediate. Two Barstool employees connected to the incident were fired, and Temple University suspended student Mo Khan, who had posted the original video.

Portnoy later stated on X that Khan had recanted an earlier admission of involvement, instead claiming to be merely a “citizen journalist.” As a result, Portnoy rescinded his Auschwitz offer. While we can’t know what was said in private, Khan made his perspective public on X and a fundraising platform.

On his fundraising page, Khan cast himself as “the real victim.” He dismissed the phrase “F*** the Jews” as three words on a bar sign, and cited a series of defensive claims: “I’m a 21-year-old college kid. I’m not a public figure,” adding that it was merely an “edgy joke.” He also lamented being a casualty of “cancel culture.”

More troubling, however, was Khan’s attempt to rationalize the antisemitic slur itself. He argued that the sign was “provocative because it reminds people of the acts of injustice israel [sic] is perpetrating around the world.”

He accused Portnoy and the wider Jewish community of misplaced outrage, writing: “Frankly, they’re more concerned about destroying my life than they are with stopping a genocide that is blowing up children. That sign didn’t kill any Jews—nor did my reporting of it—but their support of Israel kills 1000s of people every single day.”

In facing public backlash, Khan invoked what sociologist David Hirsh has termed the “Livingstone Formulation,” a rhetorical tactic in which accusations of antisemitism are dismissed as efforts to silence criticism of Israel. Casting himself as a victim of censorship, Khan claimed that the outrage over his actions was an attempt to suppress his political views.

Predictably, Khan found supporters among far-right antisemites such as Nick Fuentes, Lucas Gage and Stew Peters, the latter of whom hosted an “emergency press conference” with Khan, railing against so-called “Jewish supremacy.”

The hatred extended to Khan’s fundraising page. While many of the posts have since been deleted, either by Khan or the platform, comments—ranging from Holocaust denial to conspiracy theories and religious slurs—revealed how the far-right, far-left, Islamist and Christian fundamentalist antisemites have all found common cause with Khan, uniting around a shared hatred of the Jewish people.

This was not a murky or ambiguous episode. It was blatant hatred. Yet even in the face of that sign, we saw denial, deflection and disturbing attempts at justification. It’s all part of a broader trend. As antisemitism becomes more normalized, particularly among younger generations, as poll after poll has shown, those who promote it increasingly shield themselves by claiming they are merely criticizing Israel.

If someone can excuse “F*** the Jews” as a political message about Israel, then anything Jewish—people, institutions, symbols—becomes fair game. This is not criticism. This is hate. If we allow such rhetoric to go unchallenged, and if society is slowly desensitized to the language of antisemitism, the consequences will be dire.

There must be no confusion here. No equivocation. No shielding bigotry in freedom of speech. This hate must be named, confronted and eradicated—not only to protect Jews, but to safeguard any society that refuses to let hatred define its future.

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  • Words count:
    220 words
  • Type of content:
    Update Desk
  • Publication Date:
    May 16, 2025

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced on May 15 that the umbrella group’s membership committee and its members voted unanimously to admit the Iranian American Jewish Federation as its 50th member.

The federation “has long stood at the heart of Iranian Jewish life in America, and we look forward to the energy and outlook they will bring to our shared mission,” said Harriet Schleifer, the conference’s chair.

“The Iranian American Jewish community transformed exile and adversity into a remarkable chapter of American Jewish life,” stated William Daroff, CEO of the conference.

“Through IAJF, they proudly preserve their heritage and champion a steadfast commitment to Israel,” he said. “By joining the Conference of Presidents, they bring valuable perspective and strengthen our shared pursuit of Jewish unity and purpose in these challenging times.”

Shahram Yaghoubzadeh, chair of the federation’s board in New York, said the “milestone is a testament to the strength, commitment and enduring contributions of the Iranian-American Jewish community to Jewish life in the United States, Israel and beyond.”

The conference stated that its newest member has raised more than $100 million in the past two decades to support more than 230 groups in Israel and the United States, including in the areas of healthcare, education, supporting Israeli soldiers, social services and aid for terror victims.

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The Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Institute recently hosted a webinar for journalists about detecting media bias to coincide with “Press Freedom Day.” One big problem: Muhammad Khamaiseh, the Al Jazeera instructor who specializes in “journalism ethics,” has a record of not only media bias but of hatred and discrimination. That’s quite an ethical dilemma, an area in which he claims to be an expert. It’s also a dilemma for Al Jazeera, the organization for which he frequently acts as a public standard bearer.

Khamaiseh holds a master’s degree in media and cultural studies, is an editor at the Department of Media Initiatives at the Al Jazeera Media Institute, is a member of the Al Jazeera Journalism Review’s editorial team, and oversees its research fellowship program. But despite his impressive resume, Khamaiseh has used social media to spread hate against Jews instead of using it to gather information for stories.

“Jews have been known for centuries to be cunning thinkers, and currently, the entire global economic system is under their control,” he posted, in Arabic, on his X account in August 2018, six months after he started working at Al Jazeera, amplifying a hateful canard against an entire faith population.

Back in July 2014, at the height of an expanded military confrontation between Israel and Hamas, Khamaiseh expressed disturbing support for Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades when he cruelly mocked the suffering of Jews, laughing—actually typing out the sound of laughter—at the idea of them being left orphaned. As he wrote in Arabic, “The summer schedule of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades … by God, they are not slacking off on going after the Jews, not even allowing them to sleep in the morning as they would like. Hahahaha.”

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was a Muslim cleric who formed an early Islamist group that terrorized and murdered Jews in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. The brigades that led the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—in which some 1,200 people from more than 40 nationalities were killed and 251 people were taken hostage—are named after him.

Khamaiseh is the author of the Al Jazeera Media Institute’s “A Guide to Avoiding Discrimination and Hate Speech in the Media.” The guide includes chapters such as “How do discrimination and hate speech happen in the media?” “Anti-discrimination and hate speech laws as a means of suppressing freedom of expression,” “Objective and ethical coverage to avoid discrimination and hate speech,” and the ironically titled chapter “Important questions to ask yourself.”

Khamaiseh advises journalists on legal ramifications of discrimination to avoid singling out people based on race, color, ancestry or ethnicity “in a way that prejudices their enjoyment of or recognition of their human rights.” Apparently seeing himself as immune from his own purported standards, he writes, “In a media context, discrimination can occur through negative framing of individuals or groups based on their identity and with the aim of inciting hatred or negative feeling against them.”

In the guidebook, parts of which appear in other sections of the Al Jazeera Media Institute’s website, Khamaiseh writes that the resource “can be thought of as a roadmap that will help journalists to isolate their pieces from their own personal beliefs and biases,” “provide them with tools to deal with the moral dilemmas that confront them,” and “familiarize them with the boundaries between legally acceptable journalism and hate speech and discrimination as prohibited by international law.”

Khamaiseh, who counsels his students to “treat our audiences with due respect,” has celebrated Hamas’s military arm when it killed Jews, whom he refers to as Zionists. Lauding murder, in an Arabic post on X (then Twitter), he said, “God is great and glory belongs to God. Al Qassam Brigades announces the killing of six Zionists, as one martyr from the Brigades was killed during a landing operation.”

These were not isolated posts but part of a pattern of praising Hamas. In another instance, referring to those who engage in violent jihad, he cheered in an Arabic post, “A salute of reverence to the steadfast fighters standing against the brutal Zionist enemy in Hebron … #Hamas_Will_Not_Kneel.” Elsewhere, he posted in Arabic, “This is why we love Hamas,” ending his comment with a smiley face.

There is strong evidence that at least six Gaza-based Al Jazeera journalists reportedly joined Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in carrying out the Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel, allegations the network denies. Some of the evidence includes the reporter-operatives’ own footage of participating in the attack.

Al Jazeera and its affiliates’ royal Qatari funders have invested heavily in positioning the Al Jazeera web of platforms as a tech-savvy ecosystem, seeking to appeal to Western audiences. Tech-savvy as it may be, Al Jazeera is the Qatari government’s soft-power tool to amplify and promote the ideologies of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s goal is to create an Islamic state where Islamic law, or Sharia, governs society.

Qatar’s strict media laws prohibit “any criticism” of the emir of Qatar, and media outlets in the wealthy emirate require government approval before reporting on Qatar’s armed forces, its banks and certain judicial proceedings.

Tempting as it may be to accept the emirate’s financial largesse, global media entities that take funds from Qatari government patrons, including, but not limited to, through the Al Jazeera Media Institute and other Al Jazeera platforms, should be held accountable for their ethically and journalistically problematic deals.

It is noteworthy that after additional public revelations about Al Jazeera’s relationship with Hamas following the Oct. 7 attacks, Northwestern University cut ties to Al Jazeera, which had joint programs in the Illinois university’s Doha campus. Northwestern has received more than $500 million in contracts from Qatar since 2007, according to U.S. Department of Education data.

In recent weeks, thousands of Gazans protested against not only Hamas’s brutal rule of Gaza but also against Al Jazeera itself as Hamas’s mouthpiece, chanting “barra, barra, barra, Al Jazeera.” An Arabic word barra means “out.” The channel’s own coverage did not reflect the tagline on the bottom of the institute’s page that claims, “You can count on Al Jazeera for truth and transparency.” Instead, it reportedly hoisted anti-Israel signs among the crowd, filmed it and disingenuously portrayed the protesters’ actual anger at the network as anger at Israel.

In another booklet called “Do Muslims scare you: A guide for journalists,” for which he served as editor, Khamaiseh advises reporters to “connect Islamophobia with antisemitism and other forms of racism.” The guide concludes with a “checklist” of “red flags” that reporters should use to check against their own biases. One of the questions they need to ask, his guide says, is, “Am I repeating a libel or a slander against [people] if my source is making vicious claims or remarks?”

Khamaiseh would do well to check his own words for these red flags. And those journalists and media outlets that collaborate with Al Jazeera Media Institute should check the myriad red flags associated with their collaboration.

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