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‘Mind your own business,’ Israel’s Diaspora minister tells US ambassador about judicial reform urging
(JTA) — The Israeli minister responsible for relations with Jews in the Diaspora has a message for the government of the country where most of them live: “Mind your own business.”
Amichai Chikli made the comment Sunday in a radio interview in Israel, where he was asked to address recent comments by U.S. ambassador Tom Nides, who said he was urging Israeli leaders to “pump the brakes” on their controversial effort to change the country’s judiciary.
Nides was echoing sentiments expressed by U.S. President Joe Biden about the judicial reform proposal, which would give the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, the power to overrule Supreme Court decisions. Biden said last week that both that checks and balances are part of the “genius” of democracy and that “building consensus for fundamental changes is really important.”
Nides said on a politics podcast that the Biden administration was pressing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek agreement rather than push the reforms through quickly. “We’re telling the prime minister, as I tell my kids, pump the brakes. Slow down, try to get a consensus, bring the parties together,” he said.
Chikli had a retort: “I say to the American ambassador, put on the brakes yourself and mind your own business,” he said. “You aren’t sovereign here, to get involved in the matter of judicial reform. We will be happy to discuss foreign and security matters with you. But respect our democracy.”
The message was in line with one that Chikli issued during his first public comments as Diaspora minister on American soil last month. And Netanyahu, too, appeared to reject the urging by Biden and Nides in a speech Sunday in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella that includes a broad range of groups.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Feb. 19, 2023. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
“All democracies should respect the will of other free peoples, just like we respect their democratic decisions,” Netanyahu said. (His speech focused largely on the threat posed by Iran.)
Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who is trying to broker a compromise that would tone down the proposals that have drawn dire warnings from business leaders, army commanders and democracy watchdogs, said Sunday that he believes a deal could be reached in a matter of days. But it is unclear how seriously Netanyahu and his allies in the government are taking the possibility of compromise, with a top minister, Bezalel Smotrich, vowing on Sunday to press forward with the legislative process.
In Israel, opposition to the proposed reforms appears only to have grown, with protests this weekend swelling to more than 220,000 people across several cities, according to their organizers. That would be equivalent to nearly than 2.5% of the country’s population.
Israelis protest against the government and its planned judicial overhaul, in Tel Aviv, Feb. 18, 2023. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
In the United States, the proposed reforms have caused angst among some American Jews who fear that Israel increasingly does not reflect their values.
The moment is also exposing Israel to renewed criticism. “Do you think that democracy is in peril in Israel right now?” Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, was asked on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. “I do,” Sanders said, saying as he has before that the United States should “put some strings attached” to the aid it delivers to Israel. “You cannot run a racist government, you cannot turn your back on the two-state solution, you cannot demean the Palestinian people there, you just can’t do and come to America and ask for money.”
Host Margaret Brennan asked whether he had spoken to the Biden administration about his feelings. “They’ve been very careful giving criticism of the Netanyahu government,” she noted.
“I am not careful about it,” Sanders responded. “I am embarrassed that in Israel you have a government of that nature right now.”
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The post ‘Mind your own business,’ Israel’s Diaspora minister tells US ambassador about judicial reform urging appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.