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Israeli army surrounds main Gaza hospital it claims is a Hamas HQ as Biden calls for ‘less intrusive action’
(JTA) — President Joe Biden called on Israel to take “less intrusive action” at hospitals across the Gaza Strip, which have become a focal point in the country’s war against Hamas and have drawn the attention and concern of the international community.
The Israel Defense Forces have surrounded the main hospital in Gaza City, Al-Shifa, which Israeli officials say also acts as a headquarters for Hamas, the terror group that controls Gaza and that invaded Israel on Oct. 7.
Palestinian and international health agencies said Al-Shifa was barely functioning on Monday. The power was out at the hospital and newborns and other patients are dying, the groups said. Israel has said it is making efforts to safeguard and evacuate patients from the hospital even as Hamas has disrupted those efforts.
In its most recent update, on Sunday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 12 of the hospital’s patients died over the weekend, including two premature babies, “compounded by the lack of medical consumables.” The agency said an additional 36 babies in incubators and kidney dialysis patients are “at heightened risk of death.”
The IDF said it endeavored over the weekend to get fuel to Al-Shifa for its generators, but that Hamas stopped the hospital from accepting the fuel. It also said it is helping evacuate babies from Al-Shifa to a safer hospital, and denied that the hospital is under siege. Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesperson, said the military is “speaking directly and regularly with the hospital staff.”
Hamas killed some 1,200 people in its invasion, largely civilians, and captured more than 200 hostages. It has also shot thousands of rockets at Israeli cities. Israel has vowed to defeat the terror group and rescue the hostages, and has hit Gaza with airstrikes and a ground invasion in which 44 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 11,000 people have died in the fighting, including thousands of children. Hamas’ figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians and do not denote casualties from misfired Palestinian rockets. Israel says it strives to avoid killing civilians and blames Hamas for embedding within civilian population centers.
Biden has broadly backed Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre and has so far ruled out a ceasefire in the conflict, but has sounded notes of concern about specific Israeli actions. On Monday, speaking to reporters, he called on Israel to use caution in dealing with hospitals.
“Well, as we know, I have not been reluctant expressing my concerns with what’s going on,” he said when a reporter asked about the situation at Al-Shifa. “My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals and we remain in contact with the Israelis.”
On Thursday, Israel launched its raid on the area near Al-Shifa, which it calls Hamas’ “military quarter,” involving ground troops, including special forces, that are backed up by air strikes. Al-Shifa is one of several hospitals that Israel has accused Hamas of using to shield its terrorists.
“The military quarter area is the heart of intelligence and operational activities of Hamas and was used, among other things, to plan and prepare Hamas operatives for the murderous attack on October 7th,” the Israeli military said at that point.
Hamas denies that its headquarters are adjacent to Al Shifa and accuses Israel of deliberately targeting hospitals. Hundreds of thousands of people in the northern Gaza Strip have evacuated south at Israel’s behest as it attempts to rout Hamas. At least one other hospital in the city, Al-Quds, has been partially disabled by the fighting, according to reports from Gaza. Israel said last week that Hamas terrorists had barricaded themselves in the hospital.
On Monday, the army released footage it said came from another hospital, Rantisi, showing weapons and signs that hostages had been held in the hospital. Yet another hospital, Al-Ahli, was hit in a blast earlier in the fighting that Hamas blamed on Israel but that a range of assessments — including from the United States, Israel and a series of journalists and analysts — attributed to a misfired Palestinian rocket.
The Biden Administration backs Israel’s aims but has sought to expand access to humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza via pauses in the fighting. Last week, Israel agreed to daily gaps of four hours in the fighting to funnel in aid. It’s not clear how efficient the deliveries have been.
In his meeting with reporters, Biden said the pauses could be useful for leveraging the release of the hostages, noting that U.S. officials are in touch with Qatar, a nation that has acted as an intermediary with Hamas and that houses its political leadership, to bring out the hostages.
“There is an effort to get this pause to deal with the release of prisoners and that’s being negotiated, as well with the Qataris [who] are being engaged,” he said. “So I remain somewhat hopeful — but hospitals must be protected.”
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, on Monday told reporters Israel had two or three weeks before international pressure to cease fire intensified.
“We sense that there is international pressure on Israel,” Axios quoted him as saying. “It is not strong but it is getting stronger”,
Biden is fending off pressure from the left flank of his party, as well as pro-Palestinian activists, to press Israel now for a ceasefire. The latest such call came in an internal memo from some 100 staffers in Biden’s State Department, Axios reported. The memo accuses Israel of committing “war crimes,” and calls on Biden to speak out more forcefully.
A key concern for Biden is that the war does not expand. Exchanges of fire with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, have intensified. And Israel is stepping up its raids on militant strongholds in the West Bank, where more than 150 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since Oct. 7. Tens of thousands of Israelis have evacuated communities adjacent to Gaza and Lebanon. The IDF’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said on Monday that there were “defensive and offensive” plans to engage with militants firing on Israel from Lebanon.
“We are preparing the operational plans for the North. Our mission is to bring security,” Halevi said, according to an army release. “The security situation will not remain such that the civilians of the north do not feel safe returning to their homes.”
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ADL Research: 24% of Americans Believe Recent Violence Against Jews Is ‘Understandable’
Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were shot and killed as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, pose for a picture at an unknown location, in this handout image released by Embassy of Israel to the US on May 22, 2025. Photo: Embassy of Israel to the USA via X/Handout via REUTERS
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a report on Friday revealing American attitudes about antisemitic violence following the targeted attacks earlier this year against Jews in Boulder, Colo., Harrisburg, Pa., and Washington, D.C. The watchdog group found a sizable minority (24 percent) found the attacks “understandable” while 13 percent regarded them as “justified.”
The ADL surveyed a representative sample of 1000 Americans on Thursday, ensuring the group matched accurate proportions of the country’s demography. The findings showed disparate views across age groups and partisan affiliations while also a clear, majority consensus on many questions.
The survey showed that 87 percent of respondents believed the three recent antisemitic attacks to be unjustifiable while 85 percent called them morally wrong and 77 percent assessed them as antisemitic. Eighty-six percent regarded the violence against Jews as hate crimes. However, nearly a quarter of respondents said the attacks were “understandable.”
More Republicans (15 percent) than Democrats (11 percent) regarded the attacks as justified, while more Republicans (79 percent) than Democrats (77 percent) saw the attacks as antisemitic. Partisan differences also manifested in support for increased government action against antisemitism with 74 percent of Republicans in favor compared to 81 percent of Democrats.
In presenting their research findings, the ADL emphasized the broad agreement in American opposition to antisemitic violence and conspiracist tropes before noting the presence of a distinct minority of “millions of people who excuse or endorse violence against Jews—an alarming sign of how anti-Jewish narratives are spreading.” For example, 67 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans agree that antisemitism is a serious problem.
Smaller numbers among the Democrats (25 percent) and Republicans (23 percent) will acknowledge antisemitism as a concern in their own party. The ADL poll suggests the legitimacy of such suspicions, finding that “28 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats agreed with tropes such as Jews have too much influence in politics and media.”
Partisan affiliations correlated with where respondents saw the most significant antisemitic threats. Republicans expressed a 3.6 times greater likelihood of worries about left-wing antisemitism compared to Democrats who were 4.4 times as likely to focus on right-wing antisemitism.
The pollsters found that attitudes toward the severity of the antisemitic threat differed according to age.
While 80 percent of silent generation respondents saw antisemitism as a serious problem, that number fell to 65 percent for baby boomers and members of Generation X. The rates dropped again for millennials (52 percent) and Gen-Zers (55 percent).
Perceptions of antisemitism in local communities also differed by generation. While 19 percent of Americans overall report having witnessed antisemitism in their communities, that figure jumps to 33 percent for Gen-Zers and 20 percent for millennials. Among the boomers it drops to 10 percent and for Silent Generation respondents it reaches 17 percent.
Large numbers saw the threat of popular protest slogans “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” with 68 percent seeing the phrases as potentially fueling violence, a view held even among 54 percent of those who favor protests against Israel.
Researchers also observed a correlation between Israel support and perceiving the seriousness of antisemitism in America. While 74 percent of those favorable to Israel saw domestic antisemitism as significant, only 57 percent of those with negative views of the Jewish state agreed.
Nearly a quarter of those polled—24 percent—expressed the conspiratorial view that some group had staged the attacks to provoke sympathy for Israel. A second report also released by the ADL on Friday showed the rise in discussions of “false flag” attacks on the Reddit website in response to the antisemitic violence.
The ADL warned that “these beliefs are especially dangerous because they justify holding Jewish Americans responsible for the actions of the State of Israel, effectively viewing them as collectively responsible for international politics—making them greater targets.”
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Sen. Bernie Sanders Calls on Democrats to Stop Accepting Money From AIPAC
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), took to X/Twitter on Monday to call on all Democrats to stop accepting political donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the influential pro‑Israel lobbying entity.
In his tweet, Sanders wrote that AIPAC has aided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in waging an “illegal and immoral war being waged against the Palestinian people.” Sanders continued, claiming that “NO Democrat should accept money from AIPAC” while asserting that the organization helped “deliver the presidency to Donald Trump.”
Sanders’s post came in response to comments by former Obama administration foreign policy advisor Ben Rhodes, in which Rhodes urged Democrats to reject all future donations from AIPAC. Rhodes argued that AIPAC has influenced Democrats to take immoral stances on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“AIPAC is part of the constellation of forces that has delivered this country into the hands of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, and you cannot give them a carve out,” Rhodes said on an episode of the podcast Pod Save the World. “We need to have this fight as a party, because these are the wrong people to have under your tent.”
Tommy Vietor, another former Obama administration official and podcast co-host, agreed, accusing AIPAC of “funneling money to front organizations that primary progressive Democrats.”
AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying firm in the US, has historically backed pro-Israel candidates from both parties. The organization does not specifically lobby against progressive candidates. AIPAC has aided the campaigns of pro-Israel progressives such as Ritchie Torres.
Sanders has long held an acrimonious relationship with AIPAC. In November 2023, he repudiated the group for supposedly having”supported dozens of GOP extremists who are undermining our democracy,” and urged his fellow Democrats to stand together in the fight for a world of peace, economic and social justice and climate sanity.”
Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser under President Obama, has emerged as a vocal critic of Israeli policy, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His skepticism is rooted in years of diplomatic frustration during the Obama administration, especially surrounding failed peace negotiations and Israel’s settlement expansions in the West Bank. Rhodes has often framed Israel’s hardline stance as a major obstacle to a two-state solution, and he has been critical of what he sees as unconditional U.S. support that enables right-wing Israeli policies. His stance reflects a broader shift among some American progressives who advocate for a more balanced U.S. approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sanders has long been a staunch critic of the Jewish state. Sanders has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “collective punishment” and “apartheid” against the Palestinian people. Although the senator initially condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel by Hamas, he subsequently pushed for a “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Sanders also spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to implement a partial arms embargo on Israel in 2024.
In the 20 months following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, relations between the Democratic party and the Jewish state have deteriorated. Democratic lawmakers have grown more vocally critical of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, sometimes arguing that the Jewish state has recklessly endangered lives of Palestinian civilians. Moreover, polls indicate that Democratic voters have largely turned against Israel, intensifying pressure on liberal lawmakers to shift their tone regarding the war in Gaza.
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Iranian National Charged in Plot to Subvert US Sanctions Against Islamic Republic
Iranians participating in a memorial ceremony for IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists in downtown Tehran, Iran, on July 2, 2025. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl via Reuters Connect.
Federal law enforcement officials have arrested an Iranian national after uncovering his alleged conspiracy to export US technology to Tehran in violation of a slew of economic sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic, the US Department of Justice announced on Friday.
For May 2018 to July 2025, Bahram Mohammad Ostovari, 66, allegedly amassed “railway signaling and telecommunications systems” for transport to the Iranian government by using “two front companies” located in the United Arab Emirates. After filing fake orders for them with US vendors at Ostovari’s direction, the companies shipped the materials — which included “sophisticated computer processors” — to Tehran, having duped the US businesses into believing that they “were the end users.”
The Justice Department continued, “After he became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in May 2020, Ostovari continued to export, sell, and supply electronics and electrical components to [his company] in Iran,” noting that the technology became components of infrastructure projects commissioned by the Islamic Republic.
Ostovari has been charged with four criminal counts for allegedly violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), under which conducting business with Iran is proscribed due to the country’s human rights abuses, material support for terrorism, and efforts to build a larger-scale nuclear program in violation of international non-proliferation obligations. Each count carries a 20-year maximum sentence in federal prison.
Ostovari is one of several Iranian nationals to become the subject of criminal proceedings involving crimes against the US this year.
In April, a resident of Great Falls, Virginia — Abouzar Rahmati, 42 — pleaded guilty to collecting intelligence on US infrastructure and providing it to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“From at least December 2017 through June 2024, Rahmati worked with Iranian government officials and intelligence operatives to act on their behalf in the United States, including by meeting with Iranian intelligence officers and government officials using a cover story to hide his conduct,” the Justice Department said at the time, noting that Rahmati even infiltrated a contractor for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that possesses “sensitive non-public information about the US aviation sector.”
Throughout the duration of his cover, Rahmati amassed “open-source and non-public materials about the US solar energy industry,” which he delivered to “Iranian intelligence officers.”
The government found that the operation began in August 2017, after Rahmati “offered his services” to a high-ranking Iranian government official who had once been employed by the country’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, according to the Justice Department. Months later, he traveled to Iran, where Iranian agents assigned to him the espionage activity to which he pleaded guilty to perpetrating.
“Rahmati sent additional material relating to solar energy, solar panels, the FAA, US airports, and US air traffic control towers to his brother, who lived in Iran, so that he would provide those files to Iranian intelligence on Rahmati’s behalf,” the Justice Department continued. Rahmati also, it said, delivered 172 gigabytes worth of information related to the National Aerospace System (NAS) — which monitors US airspace, ensuring its safety for aircraft — and NAS Airport Surveillance to Iran during a trip he took there.
Rahmati faces up to 10 years in prison. He will be sentenced in August.
In November, three Iranian intelligence assets were charged with contriving a conspiracy to assassinate critics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well as then US President-elect Donald Trump.
According to the Justice Department, Farhad Shakeri, 51; Carlisle Rivera, 49; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, acted at the direction of and with help from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, to plot to murder a US citizen of Iranian origin in New York. Shakeri, who remains at large and is believed to reside in Iran, was allegedly the principal agent who managed the two other men, both residents of New York City who appeared in court.
Their broader purpose, prosecutors said, was to target nationals of the United States and its allies for attacks, including “assaults, kidnapping, and murder, both to repress and silence critical dissidents” and to exact revenge for the 2020 killing of then-IRGC Quds Force chief Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq. Trump was president of the US at the time of the operation.
All three men are now charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy, and money laundering. Shakeri faces additional charges, including violating sanctions against Iran, providing support to a terrorist organization, and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Powers Act, offenses for which he could serve up to six decades in federal prison.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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