Members of Israeli security forces stand at the ceasefire line between the Golan Heights and Syria, July 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Israel and Syria are reportedly in the final stages of months-long negotiations over a security agreement that could establish a joint Israeli, Syrian, and US presence at key strategic locations.

Jerusalem and Damascus have agreed to form a joint Israeli-Syrian–American security committee to oversee developments along their shared border and uphold the terms of a proposed deal, Israeli officials told Saudi media outlets Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath.

Following the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel deployed troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to establish a military position aimed at preventing terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.

The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.

After months of negotiations and rising tensions, both countries appear close to finalizing an agreement based on the 1974 framework, with minor adjustments to reflect current realities — one of the most promising efforts yet to reach a lasting security arrangement.

For its part, Israel assured US and Syrian officials that it will not support any destabilizing forces within Syrian territory, according to reports.

Meanwhile, the Syrian government pledged to protect the Druze population while providing Sweida, a Druze region in the country’s south, with the support and resources needed to maintain stability.

Under a US-backed proposal, a humanitarian corridor from Israel to Sweida has reportedly been ruled out, with any aid route instead planned to run from Damascus to ensure all movement passes through officially sanctioned channels.

Earlier this year, tensions escalated after heavy fighting broke out in Sweida between local Druze fighters and regime forces amid reports of atrocities against civilians.

At the time, Israel launched an airstrike campaign to protect the Druze, which officials described as a warning to the country’s new leadership over threats to the group — an Arab minority with communities in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel whose religion is derived from Islam.

Jerusalem has pledged to defend the Druze community in Syria with military force if they come under threat — motivated in part by appeals from Israel’s own Druze minority.

But the Syrian government has accused Israel of fueling instability and interfering in its internal affairs, while the new leadership insists it is focused on unifying the country after 14 years of conflict.

Describing Syria’s new rulers as barely disguised jihadists, Israel has consistently vowed to prevent them from deploying forces in the country’s southern region, which borders northeastern Israel.

Despite lingering reservations about the newly established Syrian regime, Israeli officials have signaled interest in pursuing formal diplomatic relations if specific conditions are met.

Under the Trump administration, Washington has lifted sanctions on the Syrian government to support the country’s reconstruction efforts and pushed for Damascus to normalize relations with Israel.

Alyza Lewin (center), constitutional lawyer and former president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. She was recently announced as Combat Antisemitism Movement’s (CAM) new President of US Affairs. Photo: Israel on Campus Coalition.

Civil rights leader and constitutional lawyer Alyza Lewin will draw on her family legacy of Jewish resilience and advocacy in her new role as president of US Affairs at the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), one of the world’s leading nonprofits raising awareness about the global surge in anti-Jewish hatred, she told The Algemeiner in an interview this week.

CAM — whose recent work includes a new report showing a surge of antisemitic incidents on college campuses just over a month into the new academic year — announced Lewin’s joining the organization on Monday, calling her addition a move that “will elevate CAM to an even higher level.”

“I am incredibly proud that Alyza Lewin — among the foremost authorities on antisemitism in the US, with decades of unmatched experience safeguarding Jewish civil rights — will now, as CAM’s President of US Affairs, employ her personal expertise and vision in engaging American decision-makers so that they can better implement effective solutions to address the challenges facing American Jewry,” CAM chief executive officer Sacha Roytman said in a statement.

Lewin’s family history is rich with Jewish traditions of resistance to fascism and religious persecution, replete with stories of dead of night escapes from hostile countries, a grandfather who was murdered for publicly opposing Hitler during World War II, a grandmother born in Jerusalem during the Ottoman occupation, and victories in landmark legal cases, including Zivotofsky v. Clinton, which established the legal right of people born in Jerusalem to designate Israel as their place of birth on government documents.

“My father, Nathan Lewin, only knew one of his four grandparents because three of them perished in the Holocaust,” Lewin said, recounting her family history. “So, I grew up feeling as though the significant events in modern Jewish history were not just the history of the Jewish people, they were my personal history, my personal family history — you know, the Holocaust, the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. And I went through a phase as a child in which I read every young adult historical fiction book about the Holocaust. It was as if I felt this need to really understand what that was and what that was about.”

Nathan Lewin’s influence on his daughter was formative, serving as a paragon of Jewish excellence in education and the professions. After college, she enrolled in law and later joined forces with him to fight, pro bono, a succession of cases brought by Jewish people whose rights had been violated or denied.

“We started working together on religious liberty cases when I came to his firm,” she explained. “For example, we brought the Boim v. Holy Land Foundation case, the first case brought under the US Anti-Terrorism Act on behalf of victims of terror. We sued groups providing material support for it, opening a legal avenue for victims to collect damages from those in the US who facilitate it.”

It was during this partnership with Nathan Lewin that Alyza worked on Zivotofsky v. Clinton, which, as she recalled, was a vanguard of recognizing Israeli rights in Jerusalem.

“Prior to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Jerusalem, the city was treated as a city with no country from the time Israel was established. Even the part of Jerusalem that was under Israeli control was still not recognized as being in Israel for the purposes of US passports and other policies. Zivotofsky v. Clinton changed that finally, but official for the passports it changed in 2020. So, it took us 20 years, pro bono, to effect that change,” she said.

She continued, “We had cases that involved the right to put up a mezuzah in your housing complex; cases that involved the right to grow a beard while employed in the police force. These were cases that really spoke to me.”

In 2017, Lewin joined the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, taking over as president of the organization while its founder, civil rights champion Kenneth Marcus, served in government as assistant secretary for civil rights in the US Department of Education. She went on to serve in the role for nearly eight years, fighting civil rights cases involving campus antisemitism.

“We express our gratitude to Alyza for her dedication passion, and tireless efforts during her time at the Brandeis Center. CAM has made great progress in the fight against antisemitism and have served as such valuable partners to the Brandeis Center,” Marcus said on Monday.

The Algemeiner covered Lewin’s litigation efforts regularly, as they took on the forces of rising antisemitism long before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, when most Americans had not yet registered the issue as a problem that needed to be addressed.

In February 2022, Lewin represented Cassandra Blotner, a Jewish student at State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz who was expelled from a sexual assault awareness group for expressing support for Israel. In August of that year, she precipitated a civil rights investigation of antisemitism at University of Vermont and later challenged its president, Suresh Garimella, when he minimized Jewish students’ accounts of bigotry and discrimination.

“He essentially chosen to blame the victims,” Lewin, backed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other groups she mobilized for a concerted response, said in a statement. “Instead of summoning the courage that other university leaders across the country have shown in acknowledging the problem or offering support for Jewish students who are fearful about identifying publicly as Jewish, the UVM president’s statement doubles down and refuses to take responsibility.”

In 2024, the Brandeis Center won rulings, rendered by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which verified claims of discrimination brought by Jewish students enrolled in the City University of New York (CUNY) colleges. One of the cases sought justice for Brooklyn College Mental Health Counseling (MCH) program students, who were repeatedly pressured into saying that Jews are white people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.

“I witnessed a Jewish student get told by the professor in front of our whole class to get her whiteness in check,” a Jewish student and witness to the events described in the complaint told The Algemeiner at the time, speaking anonymously due to fears of retaliation. “The professor basically said, ‘You can’t be a part of this kind of conversation because you’re white and you don’t understand oppression.’”

The badgering of Jewish students, the students said at the time, became so severe that one student said in a WhatsApp group chat that she wanted to “strangle” a Jewish classmate.

Those cases and more created legal precedent and school of thought for recognizing antisemitism as a civil rights issue falling under the jurisdiction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which aimed to abolish discrimination based on heritable traits such as race, religion, sex, and ethnicity. Lewin hopes to expand the “ecosystem,” holding all institutions, from large corporations to private schools, accountable for allowing hostile antisemitic environments to degrade to the point of causing irreparable harm.

“What I hope to do now at CAM is to expand the ecosystem of individuals and institutions that understand, utilize, and apply this same framing,” Lewin explained. “There are so many additional communities and constituencies in society that would benefit from being able to understand and recognize how contemporary antisemitism manifest.”

She added, “I’d like to be able to help ensure the safety, security, continuity, and flourishing of the Jewish people. And to the extent that I can do that by using the legal education I was provided, by using the Jewish education that I was provided, and by celebrating my own families, and, as an extension, my people’s history that I am so proud of. If I can combine all of that in a way that really helps the Jewish people, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’m grateful to be in this position every day and to call it work.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, July 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday condemned antisemitism and affirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to combating hatred and persecution against the Jewish people, arguing his faith demands such a stance.

Speaking in St. Pete’s Square at the Vatican for his weekly “general audience,” the pontiff acknowledged the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope Paul VI that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions.

Since the publication of Nostra Aetate, “all my predecessors have condemned antisemitism with clear words,” Leo said. “I too confirm that the Church does not tolerate antisemitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself.”

“This luminous document teaches us to meet the followers of other religions not as outsiders, but as travelling companions on the path of truth; to honor differences affirming our common humanity; and to discern, in every sincere religious search, a reflection of the one divine mystery that embraces all creation,” Leo continued.

He then added that the primary focus of Nostra Aetate was toward the Jewish people, explaining that Pope John XXIII, who preceded Paul VI, intended to “re-establish the original relationship.”

Representatives from other faiths including rabbis, imams, and Buddhist monks attended Wednesday’s gathering. Leo thanked them for joining him and acknowledged that “we cannot deny that there have been misunderstandings, difficulties, and conflicts” in the previous 60 years.

“Even today, we must not allow political circumstances and the injustices of some to divert us from friendship, especially since we have achieved so much so far,” Leo said. “More than ever, our world needs our unity, our friendship and our collaboration.”

Leo added that “each one of our religions can contribute to alleviating human suffering and taking care of our common home, our planet Earth.”

The pontiff also addressed Jewish-Catholic relations specifically.

“Today we can look with gratitude at everything that has been achieved in Jewish-Catholic dialogue during these six decades,” he said. “This is due not only to human effort, but to the assistance of our God who, according to Christian conviction, is dialogue itself.”

Leo described how through Nostra Aetate, “for the first time in the history of the Church, a doctrinal treatise on the Jewish roots of Christianity was to take shape, which on a biblical and theological level would represent a point of no return.” He said that the origins of the Catholic Church “are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets.”

Jewish leaders have expressed optimism for interfaith relations under Leo’s leadership.

Rabbi Noam Marans, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), told The Algemeiner in May that “his remarks to the Jewish people have actually been extraordinary.”

At the time, just after being elected to the papacy, Leo met with Jewish leaders and other faith representatives at the Vatican. “Because of the Jewish roots of Christianity, all Christians have a special relationship with Judaism,” he said during the meeting. “Even in these difficult times, marked by conflicts and misunderstandings, it is necessary to continue the momentum of this precious dialogue of ours.”

Before the beginning of Leo’s pontificate, Israeli-Vatican relations had come under strain due to the late Pope Francis’s statements about the war to defeat Hamas in Gaza, including his suggestion that the Jewish state was committing genocide.

“According to some experts what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies,” Francis said.

In his Wednesday speech, Leo stated, “Together, we must be vigilant against the abuse of the name of God, of religion, and of dialogue itself, as well as against the dangers posed by religious fundamentalism and extremism.”

“Our spiritual and cultural differences are called to encounter one another and to live together fraternally,” the pontiff added.