Four IDF soldiers killed in Lebanon, bringing military death toll to 813
Intro
The four were killed despite the ceasefire currently in effect.
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Four Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed in Southern Lebanon despite the ceasefire currently in effect, the military announced on Monday.
The slain troops were identified as Maj. (res.) Evgeny Zinershain, 43, from Zichron Ya'akov; Capt. (res.) Sagi Ya'akov Rubinshtein, 31, from Lavi; Master Sgt. (res.) Binyamin Destaw Negose, 28, from Beit Shemesh; and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Erez Ben Efraim, 25, from Ramat Gan.
All four served in Battalion 9263 of the 226th Brigade, the IDF said.
Israeli forces have killed some two dozen Hezbollah terrorists since the start of the Nov. 27 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday. The Israeli Air Force has also struck dozens of Hezbollah positions during the same period, the military stated.
Under the terms of the truce, Israeli forces are to withdraw from Lebanon by late January, while Lebanon's army enters those areas vacated by the IDF. Hezbollah has violated the ceasefire repeatedly since the day it took effect, according to the IDF.
The IDF said on Sunday that forces of its 7th Armored Brigade, working under the command of the 98th Division, discovered weapons warehouses hidden in civilian areas of Southern Lebanon.
In one operation, troops found "hundreds" of anti-tank rockets, mortar grenades and a car with a rocket launcher mounted on top, the military said, adding that the forces also "located and destroyed" several tunnel shafts that led to underground Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday night announced the death in Gaza of Cpt. Avraham Ben Pinchas, 24, a platoon commander in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 46th Battalion, from Harasha in Samaria.
According to a preliminary probe, his tank was hit by a Hamas missile during a counter-terror operation in Rafah city.
The death toll among Israeli troops since the start of the Gaza ground incursion on Oct. 27 currently stands at 381, and at 813 on all fronts since the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, according to official IDF data.
Additionally, Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, a member of the Israel Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit, was fatally wounded during a hostage-rescue mission in Gaza in June, and civilian defense contractor Liron Yitzhak was mortally wounded there in May.
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel will be required to open its rabbinical tests to women, the High Court of Justice ruled on Monday.
The landmark ruling stops short of saying that women are entitled to be ordained as rabbis, though it is being seen as a major step forward in the advancement of the status of female Torah scholars in Israel.
“This is an enormous achievement for the State of Israel in that the court recognizes women Torah scholars and their achievements,” Rabbi Seth Farber, founder of ITIM, a nongovernmental, Jerusalem-based advocacy group for reforming Israel’s religious bureaucracy, told JNS on Tuesday.
The organization filed the petition seven years ago with six women, including Farber’s wife—Michelle Cohen Farber, a prominent Talmud scholar—in addition to the Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women’s Status and the Kolech Religious Women Forum.
He noted that the High Court case intentionally differentiated between the right to take the rabbinical exam, which measures efficiency in Jewish law or halachah and gives economic and social standing, and ordination of women, which is anathema in the eyes of the ultra-orthodox.
Still, the decision was expected to raise the ire of the Chief Rabbinate, with an expected showdown in three months when the next rabbinical tests are offered.
A spokesperson for the Chief Rabbinate said that the ruling was being studied.
Last year, an internal power struggle involving politics, nepotism and the role of women delayed the selection of Israel’s chief rabbis.
While the war in the Gaza Strip continues, Israel has successfully dismantled Hamas as an organized terrorist army but is now facing a persistent, scattered guerrilla force that remains capable of carrying out hit-and-run attacks and rocket launches.
A senior Israeli military official told JNS that the IDF has eliminated most of Hamas’s senior command, destroyed its weapons production and smuggling capabilities, and established control over two-thirds of the Gaza Strip, but thousands of fighters remain in pockets of resistance, primarily in areas not yet cleared by ground forces.
The official, speaking on July 15, provided a detailed assessment of Hamas’s current state, emphasizing the fundamental change in its operational capacity.
“The main difference, our main achievement, is primarily in the dismantling of Hamas as a military organization. Hamas does not function as a military organization; it currently functions as a guerrilla organization,” the official stated. “Its capabilities are guerrilla capabilities. It cannot fight in an organized manner.”
Hamas is limited to hit-and-run attacks, the source stated, adding that Hamas does not have the command and control of a military organization like it had on Oct. 7, 2023. “It is an organization that never wanted to fight army versus army, because it is a terror organization that operates with the methods of a terror organization, but today it also cannot do so, even if it wants to. It does not have the ability for coordinated control; rather, it has pockets in different areas.”
This degradation is a direct result of Israel’s systematic targeting of the organization’s capabilities, leadership, infrastructure and personnel.
“The absolute majority of Hamas's senior command that existed on Oct. 7 has been eliminated,” the official said. “Today, those considered its senior command are people who were promoted during the war because so many people were eliminated.”
The current leader of Hamas is Izz al-Din al-Haddad, a member of the organization’s military council and formerly head of the military wing’s Gaza Brigade.
In addition to the leadership, Israel has focused on crippling Hamas’s ability to rearm.
“Another important element that we have damaged is their production and smuggling capability. They have neither smuggling nor production,” he explained. “What they fire, they cannot replace, except for foolish things. They can always take an explosive and a street sign and try to produce something basic, but except for this, everything they fire, they cannot replace. They have no way. This is a most significant achievement."
This degradation in military capability has forced Hamas to change its recruitment tactics, further eroding the quality of its fighting force.
Hamas is estimated to have lost tens of thousands of terrorists, with thousands currently in its ranks. This has created a vacuum that Hamas is struggling to fill, leading it to recruit teenagers for its guerrilla operations. This new generation of operatives lacks the training and experience of those eliminated by the IDF.
The battle is also being waged over the sources of Hamas’s power within the Gaza civilian population, which Hamas uses as its sources for power and money.
Controlling the distribution of humanitarian aid is therefore key to breaking the terror group’s grip on Gaza. By commandeering aid trucks, as Israeli soldiers on the ground reported seeing in late June, Hamas not only secures resources but also demonstrates its authority over the population. This was the driving force behind the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has distributed tens of millions of meals and is free from Hamas looting since distribution centers are secured by Israel.
On the diplomatic front, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad attempt to project an image of unwavering strength, despite their massive losses. Following a high-level meeting in Doha on July 13, the terror groups issued a joint statement affirming that any negotiation must lead to a complete end to the war and a full withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. This public stance is aimed at securing their primary objective: the survival of their regime in Gaza through gaining back territories lost to the IDF.
Recent IDF and Shin Bet announcements, meanwhile, regarding strikes over the past two weeks that eliminated commanders from Hamas's weapons production headquarters and its Military Intelligence unit, indicate a growing Israeli intelligence infiltration of Hamas.
On the ground, the IDF is intensifying its operations. On July 14, combat engineering forces conducted large-scale demolitions of structures in Jabalia, a dense urban area in northern Gaza, and in Khan Younis, a major city in the south. The IDF’s elite Multidimensional Unit recently completed a mission in Jabaliya where it eliminated over 100 Hamas terrorists.
The IDF now controls over 65% of the Gaza Strip, with the Morag Axis in the southern Strip serving as a critical logistical and operational corridor that separates areas under IDF control from those that are not. The establishment of this axis is a key pressure lever against Hamas, as it demonstrates Israeli control over territory, which the terror group fears most.
Despite these achievements, the military official acknowledged that a significant threat remains. “They still have thousands of terrorists,” he said, though he clarified their nature. “But these are terrorists, usually with simple weapons, who do not operate as an organized body but as scattered groups in different areas that can carry out terror attacks.”
These remaining pockets of Hamas control are concentrated in areas where the IDF has not yet conducted extensive ground operations, such as the central Gaza camps and Gaza City. “In the areas that the IDF does not hold, we know there are still terrorists hiding behind civilians,” the official stated. “We are advancing step by step, entering an area, evacuating the population, fighting terror..”
The official emphasized that while Hamas can still harm soldiers, its primary goal of attacking Israeli civilians in the Gaza envelope communities is being thwarted. “Hamas would like to carry out terror against Israeli civilians in the Gaza envelope [the western Negev], and it is not succeeding because we are there,” he said. “Unfortunately, it succeeds against soldiers, but the soldiers are standing between Hamas and the citizens of Israel.”
The Jewish world—and hopefully, decent people everywhere—mourn the devastating loss of Avraham Azulay, who was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Avraham, a 25-year-old reservist from Yitzhar in Samaria, was operating a construction vehicle in Khan Yunis when Hamas militants stormed the area. In a moment that speaks volumes about his courage, they tried to take him hostage, to add him to their horrific “collection” of captives, but he fought back. He refused to be another number, another pawn in their terror campaign. And for that, they murdered him.
This story is tragic. But when you hear the whole story, the heartbreak becomes almost too much to bear.
Avraham had just married his wife, Ruth, three months ago. They were newlyweds, starting their lives, dreaming of a future together. Now a widow, Ruth has already faced unimaginable pain: Her brother was also killed in combat in Gaza.
These are the kinds of losses we’ve read about in Holocaust books and memorials—entire families decimated, young lives cut down, a generation’s hope extinguished before it could fully bloom. This isn’t just a personal tragedy. This is a biblical loss Yitzhar—a moment of communal mourning that echoes across our history and our souls.
Raised in the town of Elazar in Samaria, Avraham later moved to Yitzhar as a teenager. He was a builder in every sense of the word, founding a construction business dedicated to developing the area’s infrastructure and roads. As Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan noted, Avraham “was a hero, a true pioneer, devoted with all his soul to the settlement of the hills and to the IDF.” He built Israel not just with his hands but with his heart.
Master Sgt. (res.) Abraham Azulay, 25, was killed in action in the Gaza Strip, July 9, 2025. Credit: IDF.
Our hearts are broken. And we must allow them to stay broken.
We must not become numb. We cannot get used to Jewish blood being spilled. We cannot become desensitized to the funerals, the shivas, the grieving mothers, the destroyed dreams. Every Jewish life is a world. Every murder is a cosmic tear in the fabric of our people.
Meanwhile, across the world, we hear voices shamelessly calling for a “global intifada.” This is not an abstract slogan. Every single Jew in the world knows what intifada means. It meant bombs on public buses and explosions in pizza shops. It meant death and terror for Israelis and tourists alike simply going about their lives.
Even in the heart of the Jewish Diaspora, in New York City, the largest Jewish population center outside of Israel, a mayoral candidate, Zohar Mamdani, refuses to condemn that vile slogan, a call for the death and destruction of Jews worldwide. This is not theoretical. This is not rhetoric. This is what it looks like: a young Jewish man, married just three months ago, is murdered. His wife is left shattered, grieving both a husband and a brother.
Mamdani, who led the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter when he was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine, now seeks to bring this ideology to City Hall. By refusing to denounce calls to “Globalize the intifada,” he has shown his true colors. He is not just a candidate with differing political views; he is effectively a cheerleader, an instigator for violence against Jews, unwilling to back down from a slogan that has only one meaning to those who lived through the horror of those years in Israel from 2000 to 2005.
New York City deserves better. The largest Jewish community in America deserves leaders who don't equivocate when it comes to terrorism and violence. We cannot allow someone who embraces such dangerous rhetoric to lead our city. This will be a fight for the soul of New York, a fight we cannot afford to lose.
We cannot, and will not, allow this to crush the Jewish spirit.
We will cry. We will mourn. We will hold each other close. But we will also rise. We will fight evil, whether it’s in Gaza or in the form of politicians who seek to bring that evil to the halls of City Hall. We will never be silent in the face of those who celebrate Jewish death and disguise it as political ideology.
For 2,000 years, we have endured. We have survived inquisitions, pogroms, genocides and wars. We are stronger than ever. We will stand tall not because we forget, but because we remember. We remember who we are. We recognize the cost of our survival. And we remember our heroes.
Avraham Azoulay was one of those heroes, the 31st soldier from the Samaria Council to fall in this war, sacrificing his life for the nation and the land while doing what he loved: building Israel.
May his memory be a blessing.
May his wife, Ruth, and her entire family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May we soon see the day when swords are turned into plowshares, when the hostages come home, and when peace reigns in Jerusalem and throughout the world.
Mike Waltz, the former U.S. national security advisor and congressman, vowed to fight antisemitism at the United Nations if confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to the global body.
At his nomination hearing on Tuesday, Waltz described the problem of Jew-hatred at the world’s largest multilateral organization as “pervasive.”
“I could probably spend the rest of this hearing, sadly, highlighting the antisemitic activities,” Waltz said. “From 2015 to 2023, the General Assembly passed 154 resolutions against Israel versus 71 against all other nations combined.”
“UNRWA in Gaza, with its staff involved in the Oct. 7 massacre, its schools teaching antisemitic hate, must be dismantled,” he added, referring to the U.N.’s Palestinian aid agency.
Democrats on the committee grilled Waltz about his involvement in adding Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of TheAtlantic, to an encrypted group chat with senior U.S. officials in March to discuss forthcoming airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
“I've seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “You said this journalist intentionally infiltrated that Signal chain. You said that he was ‘sucked in.’ You denied, deflected and then you did something that, to me, really lacks integrity.”
“You sought out to demean and degrade that very journalist in crass and frankly cruel ways that made him a target,” Booker said. “That’s not leadership when you blame people who tell the truth.”
Waltz was removed as national security advisor in May when U.S. President Donald Trump named him as his pick to be U.N. ambassador. Trump withdrew his nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for that post to help preserve a very thin Republican majority in the House.
Waltz denied during Tuesday’s hearing that Trump had fired him and said that no classified information was shared.
At least two Department of Defense investigations remain underway to determine whether the group chat included classified information. The most relevant information was sent by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, not Waltz.
Waltz also faced questions from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over his vote for an amendment to prevent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2020 during the first Trump administration.
“When it comes to ending a war, you voted with Liz Cheney and the others to say that the president couldn’t end the war,” Paul said. “I just don't understand how you could have voted for this.”
“It just worries me that you come more from the Liz Cheney wing of the party than the Donald Trump wing of the party,” Paul said.
“Senator, I am squarely with the president,” Waltz replied.
Waltz also faced criticism from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), one of Israel’s sharpest critics in the Senate, about American support for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“It’s been called a death trap,” Van Hollen said of the foundation’s aid points. “Hundreds of Palestinian civilians crowding to get food have been killed either by the security contractors, mercenaries or by the IDF.” (Israel and the foundation have sharply denied such claims.)
Waltz said his sympathies are with two American aid workers, who were wounded in a Hamas grenade attack at a foundation distribution site earlier in July.
“I don’t think this should be a zero sum,” Waltz said. “I do agree that it is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I hope you would agree that Hamas could stop it tomorrow by laying down their arms.”
Primary and secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, failed to investigate 49% of antisemitic incidents reported to school officials, and more than 40% of Jew-hatred instances involved Holocaust denial or glorifying Nazis, according to a government-commissioned survey on Jew-hatred in K-12 schools in the province.
The report, dated July 14, lists 781 instances of antisemitism. “Several times a day on multiple days in September 2024, a 13-year-old Jewish girl in Waterloo was surrounded by five boys repeatedly shouting ‘Sieg Heil!’ and raising their hands in the Nazi salute. On each occasion, she begged them to stop, but they persisted,” it states. “In October 2024, a 6-year-old in Ottawa was informed by her teacher that she is only half human because one of her parents is Jewish.”
Michael Teper, president of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, told JNS that “in the public school system, Jewish students are frequently ostracized, isolated and assaulted verbally and physically.”
“Little is being done to resolve the crisis,” he told JNS.
The office of the Canadian special envoy for preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism oversaw the report led by Robert Brym, a University of Toronto sociologist.
From late January to early April of this year, 599 Jewish parents were surveyed. They reported 781 antisemitic incidents, estimated to affect at least 10% of the province’s 30,000 Jewish students. The report covers incidents that took place between October 2023 and January 2025, with more than 80% of the incidents taking place in the Toronto and Ottawa metropolitan areas.
Of the 51% of cases that schools investigated, in nearly 9%, they said that the incident in question wasn’t antisemitic or recommended that the reported victim be removed from school permanently or attend classes virtually. Some16% of parents moved their children to other schools, per the report.
‘Sounding the alarm’
Josh Landau, director of government relations for Ontario at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, told JNS that the report makes clear that “antisemitism is a serious problem.”
“We’ve been sounding the alarm for a long time now, and it is completely intolerable,” Landau told JNS. “It must change, and we need to see the government act decisively to combat this rising antisemitism in schools.”
“We are disappointed by the delay in implementing the new and expanded mandatory learning about the Holocaust in the compulsory grade 10 history course, and we argue that the government should accelerate the implementation of that mandatory curriculum to address the troubling lack of understanding and ongoing dehumanization of Jews,” he said.
Every new story of a victim of antisemitism is “shocking but not surprising,” he told JNS.
“We’ve been seeing this huge increase in antisemitism within the K-12 space for years now, and we need the government to take action,” he said, adding that every school board in the province must adopt and apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred, “so that hate is recognized, recorded and addressed consistently.”
The report notes that the Toronto District School Board adopted the IHRA definition in 2018, “but in practice, it often fails to recognize and classify those incidents as antisemitic,” Landau told JNS.
Some 50,000 people attend a rally in support of Israel in Toronto, Canada, June 9, 2024. Credit: Doron Horowitz/Flash90.
‘We expect more from them’
Brym, the University of Toronto sociologist, told JNS that the IHRA definition “should be enforced,” but “it hasn’t been enforced largely because it would cause a backlash.”
Aaron Kucharczuk, co-founder of the Jewish Educators and Families Association of Canada, who is acknowledged in the study, reviewed a pre-publication draft.
He told JNS that some children asked that their parents not report antisemitic incidents, fearing they would become targets of more harassment or bullying. Some stopped wearing jewelry with Jewish symbols and Hebrew lettering, he added.
“These problems were not being dealt with effectively,” he told JNS. “Then the silence leaves more opportunities for even more antisemitic incidents to occur because they never responded to the earlier incident.”
“Students can make mistakes, and they can have learning opportunities about what’s right or wrong to say,” he said. “But teachers need to model good behavior, and we expect more from them, and clearly, the schools have been failing in their duty to make sure they’re held accountable.”
Teper, of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, is a lawyer. He told JNS he has had difficulty holding educators to account in the school system.
Since 2021, he has filed more than 25 professional misconduct complaints related to Jew-hatred against Ontario teachers. The regulatory body for the teaching profession in the province, the Ontario College of Teachers, has a “poor” investigation process, he told JNS. (JNS sought comment from the Ontario College of Teachers.)
“Investigations are routinely delayed unduly, sometimes for years,” told JNS, noting that it’s no wonder that Brym “cites a high degree of under-reporting.”
“When complaints are finally processed, they are either dismissed based on the investigation committee having a superficial understanding of the nature of antisemitism, including the IHRA definition, or the investigation committee bends over backwards attempting to formulate excuses for the member’s behavior to justify the issuance of inordinately lenient consequences,” Teper told JNS.
In one instance, it took a year and a half after he filed a complaint on April 24, 2023, before the discipline committee revoked a teacher’s license for, among other things, referring to Jews as “baby killers” on social media, he told JNS.
“If it were black people, LGBT2SQ+ people or indigenous people targeted by certain college members, would the college be this casual and lackadaisical in its approach?” he told JNS. “Why is it that at the Ontario College of Teachers, Jews don’t count?”
Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, told members of Congress on Tuesday that the school removed a professor who called for Iran to attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East.
Speaking at the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s latest hearing on campus antisemitism, Groves said that Jonathan Brown was no longer the chair of Georgetown's department of Arabic and Islamic studies.
“Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed,” Groves told lawmakers. “We issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”
A spokesman for Georgetown told JNS that Brown retains his faculty appointment as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at the university's School of Foreign Service.
Shortly after the U.S. concluded airstrikes against Iran in June, Brown wrote on social media, in a since-deleted post, that he wanted Iran to retaliate.
“I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops,” Brown wrote.
A specialist in traditional Islamic sources, Brown has attracted controversy for years over his academic views and anti-Israel advocacy. In 2017, he issued an apology for a lecture about the morality of slavery and rape.
“I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody, because we own lots of people all around us and were owned by people, and this obsession about thinking of slavery as property,” he said in the lecture.
During questions from the audience, the professor cited the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. “He had slaves, there is no denying that,” he said. “Are you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you’re not.”
A convert to Islam, Brown is also the son-in-law of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to a terrorism conspiracy charge over his support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was deported from the country in 2015.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, during a committee hearing about antisemitism on campus with leaders from Georgetown University, City University of New York and University of California, Berkeley, July 15, 2025. Credit: Courtesy of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.
‘Why did you give a medal?’
Tuesday’s hearing, the ninth that the education committee has held on antisemitism, also featured Félix Matos Rodríguez, chancellor of the City University of New York, and Rich Lyons, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.
Members of the committee were generally divided along partisan lines for the scope of their questioning; Republicans asked the university leaders about faculty and student statements about Israel, and the war in Gaza. Democrats asked about the Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
“This is yet another hearing to demonize Muslims and their religion, to demonize Palestinians, including those in Gaza who have undeniably faced unspeakable harms—a humanitarian crisis and human-rights crisis—and particularly, the young student activists and faculty who are determined to stand up against human rights violations,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).
“This is particularly another public opportunity for Republicans to pit Jewish Americans against Muslim Americans, Muslim against Christian, black against white,” she said.
Another focus of the hearing was foreign funding for the universities, particularly Georgetown’s relationship with Qatar, where the school has had a satellite campus for 20 years.
Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) asked Groves about the university’s decision to award a humanitarian medal to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar’s emir.
“Months prior to giving this award, Sheikha Moza had posted on social-media comments praising the Oct. 7 attack on Israel,” Harris said. “She praised the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, saying, ‘The name Yahya means the one who lives. They thought him dead, but he lives.’”
“She added, apparently referring to Israel, ‘He will live on, and they will be gone,’” Harris continued. “I have to ask: Why did you give a medal to someone who had made such antisemitic comments?”
Groves said Sheikha Moza’s post “is not consistent with Georgetown policy,” but that the school would not consider revoking the award, which was given for Sheikha Moza’s contributions to educating impoverished children around the world.
The university leaders were also confronted with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas statements and incidents from students and professors, as well as questioned about whether they had adequately rooted out Jew-hatred on their campuses.
‘You get to decide who to hire’
Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) asked Lyons, Berkeley’s chancellor, about Ussama Makdisi, professor of history and chancellor’s chair at the university.
“In the fall of 2024, you named Ussama Makdisi the inaugural chair of a newly endowed program in Palestinian Arab studies. On Oct. 7, Makdisi described the Hamas attacks against Israel as ‘resistance,’” Fine said. “I understand freedom of speech, but you get to decide who to hire. Why would you give a position to someone who said Oct. 7 was justified?”
“Professor Makdisi is a fine scholar,” Lyons replied. “He was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards.”
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), the committee chairman, stated in his closing remarks that he was “disappointed” by the responses from the witnesses.
“Berkeley admits abhorrence of the views of the professor rewarded with his own program, but won’t do anything about it, and refers to him as a fine scholar,” Walberg said.
“That’s something I could not refer to him, when he misses the moral issue of humanity,” he said. “Georgetown couldn’t affirmatively say it wouldn’t allow a member of the KKK to come speak. CUNY severely underrepresented the number of antisemitism complaints received. So those are concerns that we still have.”
The Council of the European Union sanctioned the Zindashti Network and eight individuals for “committing serious human-rights violations and abuses” on behalf of Iran, the council announced on Tuesday.
The violations include “extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions and killings, as well as enforced disappearances of persons deemed to be opponents or critical of the actions or policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The Zindashti Network, a criminal group connected to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, has carried out “assassinations of Iranian dissidents and persons critical of the actions or policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the European Council stated.
The council also sanctioned the network’s leader, Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti—an Iranian narcotics trafficker and organised crime boss—and some of his associates. A member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a government official who oversees the network’s operations were also listed in the sanctions report.
The sanctioned individuals and network are now subject to an asset freeze, and any financial support or economic resources provided to them are prohibited. Additionally, a travel ban to the European Union has been imposed on the individuals named.
Something odd is happening to a select number of Israel’s former leaders after they leave power. Some seem to lose all sense of proportion—and, in some cases, their actual grip on reality.
Take Ehud Olmert, for example. Once a respected prime minister and the mayor of Jerusalem, he compared a proposed “humanitarian city” for displaced Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip to a German Nazi concentration camp. By doing so, he plays right into the hands of those who aim to compare Israelis to Nazis.
To quote him directly, in an interview with The Guardian, he writes: “When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding … is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them.” He added that it would be “an expression of a concentration camp.”
Does he not realize the damage he is doing? To compare this tent city to a concentration camp is not only grotesquely false but profoundly offensive. It cheapens the singular historical evil of the Holocaust and plays straight into the hands of Israel’s fiercest critics, who constantly look for ways to accuse the Jewish state of Nazi-like behavior.
Unfortunately, Olmert is not alone. So what’s going on with some of these former generals and prime ministers? Why are they saying such wild things?
Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who now leads a small left-wing party called “The Democrats,” claimed on Kan News radio: “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby … .” Huh? Does he believe that, or is he cynically playing politics without realizing the implications of his words. Is he such a fool and doesn’t realize that that kind of rhetoric doesn’t stay in Israel. It ends up on posters at anti-Israel rallies in London, New York and university campuses worldwide.
Former Defense Minister Moshe (“Boogie”) Ya’alon has also lashed out at the IDF’s strategy in Gaza and implied that the army was engaging in a type of ethnic cleansing. Ehud Barak went even further—years ago warning that if Israel didn’t find a two-state solution, then it would become “an apartheid state.” That line is now one of the central talking points of those who falsely claim Israel is practicing apartheid.
What unites all of these men? They were once considered measured, competent leaders. They commanded armies, led governments, made real decisions under pressure. And yet, once out of power, they seem to embrace extreme rhetoric.
I don’t believe Olmert is evil. I don’t even think that he’s a fool. Which is why his latest comments are so perplexing. He hasn’t become a villain, but maybe he has gone mad.
It’s as if once the weight of leadership is gone, some of our former leaders become intoxicated by the applause of international media and anti-government circles. Or maybe they just want relevance back. Either way, their words now do real harm.
Building a protected civilian area in Gaza is not the same as herding people into Nazi death camps. And saying so isn’t brave; it’s disgraceful.
The plan for a “humanitarian zone” in Gaza can be scrutinized but do it without invoking the Holocaust. Don’t throw around terms like “concentration camp” when talking about a proposal to shield civilians from Hamas and IDF crossfire. That’s not them being fair to the conversation, that’s recklessness, arrogance and shortsightedness.
The only “cleansing” going on is the attempt to separate Hamas terrorists from innocent civilians. And if the endgame includes giving some Gazans the choice to resettle in other Arab countries or elsewhere? That’s not genocide, that’s diplomacy. That’s regional problem-solving.
It’s time these former leaders get a grip and realize that their words are not exclusively for consumption in Israel. They have far-reaching consequences way beyond domestic political considerations. They must practice restraint, even if they no longer carry the burden of office.
If they can’t tell the difference between saving lives and mass murder, then yes—maybe they’ve truly lost their marbles.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has called upon New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “to reassure Jewish New Yorkers that he plans to prioritize their safety,” according to The Hill.
Jeffries, who has yet to endorse Mamdani, plans to meet with him this week.
Mamdani has come under fire from Jewish communities for his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish stances, as well as his refusal to condemn the phrase, “Globalize the intifada.” In a recent interview with Punchbowl News, Jeffries said that would be “part of our discussion.”
Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor in New York City in an upset against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 24.
