US President Donald Trump speaks at the Saudi-US Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

US President Donald Trump called on Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords and officially recognize Israel while speaking at the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh on Tuesday.

“With the historic Abraham Accords that we’re so proud of, all the momentum was aimed at peace, aimed very successfully,” Trump said, referring to a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries during his first term in office.

“It’s been an amazing thing, the Abraham Accords, and it’s my fervent hope, wish, and even my dream that Saudi Arabia — a place I have such respect for, especially over the last fairly short period of time, what you’ve been able to do — but will soon be joining the Abraham Accords,” Trump added.

Trump argued that joining the Abraham Accords would be “a tremendous tribute” to Saudi Arabia and that agreeing to recognize Israel is “very important for the future of the Middle East.”

“It will be a special day in the Middle East, with the whole world watching, when Saudi Arabia joins us. And you’ll be greatly honoring me, and you’ll be greatly honoring all of those people that have fought so hard for the Middle East,” Trump stated. 

During the first Trump administration from 2017-2021, the White House helped broker the Abraham Accords, a series of historic normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world: Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has vowed to expand on the Abraham Accords, arguing that bolstering the normalization agreements will help foster greater peace and prosperity in the broader Middle East. According to recent reports, however, the US is no longer demanding Saudi Arabia normalize ties with Israel as a condition for progress on civil nuclear cooperation talks.

During his remarks on Tuesday, the US president also lambasted Iran, saying that he plans to exert “massive, maximum pressure” against Tehran. Trump vowed to “drive Iranian oil exports to zero” if the White House and Iran cannot successfully broker a deal to place restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program.  

“If Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we will have no choice but to inflict massive, maximum pressure … and take all action required to stop the regime from ever having a nuclear weapon. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, vowing to never allow Tehran to threaten the US or its allies “with terrorism or nuclear attack.”

Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, maintains that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported last year that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.

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Hatem Bazian, founder of American Muslims for Palestine and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Photo: Screenshot

A circuit court judge in Richmond, VA, ruled on Friday that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a nonprofit which has sponsored a series of anti-Israel protests following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks across southern Israel, must provide financial information which the activist group has long guarded from government investigators.

Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares has said that the organization possesses connections to terrorists and has submitted multiple filings to compel AMP to provide its donor list. He said his office “has a legal obligation to ensure that charitable organizations operating in Virginia are following the law” and vowed to “continue to enforce state law without exception or delay to protect Virginians.”

Judge Devika Davis’s decision represents the end of AMP’s efforts to legally delay Miyares’s investigation.

Labeling Miyares’s claims a “defamatory smear,” AMP lawyer Christina Jump said the “vague accusations that AMP has anything to do with Hamas or Oct. 7 just got thrown out completely by a federal court judge.” She referred to the dismissal last week of a Nevada lawsuit against the group.

A second suit in Illinois remains ongoing, arguing that AMP is a resurrection of the former organization Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which a judge found liable for $156 million due to its support for Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.

Individuals formerly involved with IAP and now supporting AMP include AMP’s current executive director, Osama Abuirshaid; Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Rafeeq Jaber, a former president of IAP who speaks at AMP events; former AMP executive director Abdelbaset Hamayel, who worked for IAP as executive director and secretary general; Kifah Mustafa, who worked for IAP in Illinois; and Raeed Tayeh, a former IAP member.

The lawsuit charges that AMP includes “largely the same core leadership as IAP/AMS; it serves the same function and purpose; it holds nearly identical conventions and events with many of the same roster of speakers; it operates a similar ‘chapter’ structure in similar geographic locations; it continues to espouse Hamas’s ideology and political positions; and it continues to facilitate fundraising for groups that funnel money to Hamas.”

In 2015, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) first revealed the extensive cross-over between IAP and AMP.

In a speech while protesting at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on Dec. 1, 2023, Abuirshaid denied the atrocities committed by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre: “Most of the civilians were killed by their own army … They killed their own civilians … There were no rapes, that’s what they told us. And they still lie to us, why?”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence during their Oct. 7 onslaught.

Abuirshaid has a history of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories such as the claim that Jews originated not in ancient Israel but among the Khazars.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes AMP as “at the core of the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist movement in the United States” and notes that the group’s leadership “promotes antisemitic tropes and support for violence against Israel, such as praising Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, attack which marked the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Founded in 2006 by Hatem Bazian — a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and the group’s current national board chairman — the ADL says that “some AMP-sponsored anti-Israel rallies have featured flags of terrorist groups and the glorification of individual terrorists, such as Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida; speeches and posters that contained antisemitic conspiracy theories about Zionist control of the US government; and incidents of harassment towards Jewish people.”

Bazian has previously made comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, a claim which the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism characterizes as antisemitic. In 2015, he wrote that Gaza was “an epistemic Warsaw Ghetto but only different Semites are locked up this time around” and that “the Europeans who fought Nazism with arms were labeled ‘terrorist’ by Hitler. Hamas is fighting against the occupation of Palestinian lands and is labeled ‘terrorist.’”

AMP works closely with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), another anti-Israel activist group also cofounded by Bazian. Jump told the Daily Mail in an April 2024 statement that AMP provides between $500 and $2,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace and SJP in support of protest events.

According to NGO Monitor, an independent, Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, “SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. Each SJP chapter operates independently and is responsible for forming its own constitutions, finding funding sources, and organizing activities.”

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Pope Leo XIV holds an audience with representatives of the media in Paul VI hall at the Vatican, May 12, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV has emphasized his commitment to strengthening the Catholic Church’s “dialogue and cooperation” with the world’s Jewish communities in a letter to an American Jewish leader.

“Trusting in the assistance of the Almighty, I pledge to continue and strengthen the Church’s dialogue and cooperation with the Jewish people in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate,” the first US-born pope wrote in a letter to Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

The AJC posted the letter, which was dated May 8, on the social platform X late on Monday.

We are deeply moved that Pope Leo XIV, so early in his papacy, has reaffirmed his commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations.

In a letter to AJC’s Director of Interreligious Affairs, Rabbi Noam Marans, he pledged to continue to strengthen dialogue with the Jewish people in the… pic.twitter.com/YC1w9gNrYQ

— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) May 12, 2025

The Nostra Aetate was a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated in 1965 by Pope Paul VI that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions.

Leo also appeared to invite Marans to his upcoming inauguration: “I am pleased to inform you that the solemn inauguration of my pontificate will be celebrated in Saint Peter’s Square on 18 May 2025.”

In response, AJC wrote in a statement that “we are deeply moved that Pope Leo XIV, so early in his papacy, has reaffirmed his commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations.”

The Jewish group added, “As we approach the 60th anniversary of this landmark declaration [Nostra Aetate], we look forward to working together to deepen understanding and cooperation.”

Leo was elected to become the next bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church last week following the death of Pope Francis in late April, becoming the first American to hold the position.

In his first Sunday blessing, Leo took time to comment on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. He called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas took during its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

“I am deeply saddened by what is happening in Gaza,” Leo said. “May a ceasefire immediately come into effect … Let humanitarian aid be given to the exhausted civilian population, and let all hostages be freed.”

Francis had become an increasingly vocal critic of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza in the months before his death.

During his pontificate, Francis strongly condemned antisemitism and promoted interfaith dialogue between Jewish and Catholic communities. However, he also drew the ire of pro-Israel supporters and Jewish leaders, including the chief rabbi of Rome, for his sharp words against the Jewish state.

Israeli officials and Jewish groups offered congratulations last week following the election of Leo.

The post Newly Elected Pope Leo XIV Calls to ‘Continue and Strengthen’ Dialogue With Jewish Community first appeared on Algemeiner.com.