US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate a pro-Hamas activist who urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of America’s most advanced military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.

In a letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday, Cotton warned that Aisha Nizar, a leader and organizer of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), “directly endangered US national security” when she addressed a Palestinian conference in Detroit last week. Durin the event, Nizar told attendees that targeting “nodes” in the F-35 production process could have “a huge impact” on the program.

“We need to be surgical. We need to be strategic … Because there are many different points of these supply chains of death that we can intervene in and we must intervene in,” Nizar said at the People’s Conference for Palestine.

The F-35 program is widely regarded as a cornerstone of US and allied air power, and Israel is the only country in the Middle East authorized to operate the jets. Cotton argued that calls to undermine the program represent not just anti-Israel activism, but also a direct assault on American workers and defense readiness.

“Nizar’s statements constitute direct incitement of violence against US national security interests by advocating for actions against the men and women who build the F-35,” Cotton wrote. He urged the FBI to “immediately examine Nizar’s actions and take any necessary actions to mitigate the threat.”

PYM has emerged as one of the most radical anti-Israel, pro-Hamas groups in the US since the war in Gaza started, organizing raucous protests targeting Jewish and pro-Israel events across the country.

Nizar has previously faced legal trouble over her role in disruptive protests amid the Israel-Hamas war, including a demonstration that shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Cotton, an outspoken supporter of the US-Israel strategic alliance, said her ties to PYM, which he has accused of harboring antisemitic views and benefiting from questionable tax-exempt donations, warrant closer scrutiny.

“The defense supply chain is a key to our military’s ability to fight and win wars. We must protect that supply chain from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he concluded in his letter.

Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a tent, outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Sept. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khamis Al-Rifi

Israel controls 40 percent of Gaza City, a military spokesperson said on Thursday, as thousands of residents defied Israeli orders to leave in order for soldiers to target Hamas terrorists without civilians in harm’s way.

In Gaza City, Israeli forces have advanced through the outer suburbs and are now a few kilometers (miles) from the city center.

“We continue to damage Hamas’s infrastructure. Today we hold 40 percent of the territory of Gaza City,” Israeli military spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin told a news conference, naming the Zeitoun and Sheikh Radwan neighborhoods. “The operation will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days.”

“We will continue to pursue Hamas everywhere,” he said, adding that the mission will only end when Israel‘s remaining hostages are returned and Hamas’s rule ends.

Defrin confirmed that army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir told cabinet ministers that without a day-after plan, they would have to impose military rule in Gaza. Far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have been pushing for Israel to impose military rule in Gaza and establish settlements there, which Netanyahu has so far ruled out.

Israel launched the offensive in Gaza City on Aug. 10, in what Netanyahu says is a plan to defeat Hamas terrorists in the part of Gaza where Israeli troops fought most heavily in the war’s initial phase.

The campaign has prompted international criticism because of the humanitarian crisis in the area and has provoked unusual levels of concern within Israel, including accounts of tension over strategy between some military commanders and political leaders.

The Israeli military has said it is operating on the outskirts of Gaza City to dismantle terrorists’ tunnels and locate weapons.

Much of Gaza City was laid to waste in the war’s initial weeks in October-November 2023. About a million people lived there before the war, and hundreds of thousands are believed to have returned to live among the ruins, especially since Israel ordered people out of other areas and launched offensives elsewhere.

Israel, which has now told civilians to leave Gaza City again for their safety, says 70,000 have done so, heading south. Palestinian officials say less than half that number have left and many thousands still lie in the path of Israel‘s advance.

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 251 hostages into Gaza.

Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities and political rule in neighboring Gaza.

Prospects for a ceasefire and a deal to release the remaining 48 hostages, 20 of whom are thought to still be alive, appear dim.

A conference by La France Insoumise MEP and pro-Palestinian activist Rima Hassan was held on Dec. 13, 2024, on the Saint Martin d Heres campus, in the Grenoble suburbs, France. Photo: Benoit Pavan / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

European Union lawmaker Rima Hassan is drawing criticism after spreading pro-Hamas rhetoric and questioning the reported surge of antisemitic attacks targeting France’s Jewish community, renewing concerns over her promotion of hateful ideology.

In a Tuesday interview with French outlet Thinkerview, Hassan defended the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and asserted the Palestinian terrorist group is justified in denying the Jewish state’s right to exist.

“Historically, Hamas has maintained that Israel has no right to exist, arguing that it has taken our lands and settled on them. In this regard, they are correct,” said Hassan, a 33-year-old lawyer and activist who last year became the first French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, the EU’s law-making body.

“Oct. 7 is something that must be punished, yes, but it should be put into context before being condemned,” she continued.

This is not Hassan’s first instance of seemingly endorsing Hamas’s violence against Israelis.

The politician, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, has repeatedly faced controversies and investigations for promoting hateful speech.

“We have over 100 years of colonization, we are being massacred, we have over a million martyrs, and these French people don’t seem to understand that we want our independence,” Hassan said during the interview.

Earlier this year, the French diplomat was expelled from Israel after being arrested while attempting to reach Gaza aboard the vessel Madleen to “break the Israeli blockade.”

She has also been subject to an investigation in Paris for “apology of terrorism” following an interview given after the Oct. 7 atrocities, in which she justified Hamas’s actions.

During her interview, Hassan also questioned the rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes and targeted attacks against France’s Jewish community since the Hamas onslaught in Israel.

She expressed distrust in the figures reported by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews – on antisemitism.

“Yes, there have been more antisemitic acts, but honestly, I do not trust the CRIF’s figures at all,” the French lawmaker said.

According to the French Interior Ministry, 646 antisemitic incidents were recorded from January to June this year — a drop from the previous year’s first-half record high but a 112.5 percent increase compared with the same period in 2023, when 304 incidents were reported.

Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, strongly condemned Hassan’s remarks, denouncing them as a dangerous distortion of reality and an attack on France’s Jewish community.

“Downplaying, minimizing, and even hiding antisemitism is a core part of the strategy of LFI, and specifically of Rima Hassan,” Arfi said, referring to the left-wing French political party La France Insoumise. The party, of which Hassan is a member, has been widely accused of animus toward not only Israel but also the French Jewish community.

“She ignores that these figures come from the Ministry of the Interior, effectively pretending to forget that they are official French statistics,” Arfi continued.

Just last week, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station days earlier.

“Today, I want to kill Jews. I am Algerian, and I want to support the Palestinians,” the assailant said, according to French media.

In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.

In March, Arie Engelberg, the rabbi of Orléans, was violently attacked while walking home with his nine-year-old son from the synagogue in the city, located south of Paris.

According to Engelberg, the attacker asked if he was Jewish, and when the rabbi replied yes, the assailant began hurling antisemitic insults, including “all Jews are sons of —,” and attempted to film him. The attacker then allegedly started punching Engelberg and bit him until several people stepped in to help.

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded. The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 tallied in 2022. The figures, presented by CRIF in its annual report, were compiled by the Jewish Community Protection Service using data jointly recorded with the Ministry of the Interior.

The report found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.

One such incident occurred in June, when a 12-year-old Jewish girl was raped by three Muslim boys in a Paris suburb. The child told investigators that the assailants called her a “dirty Jew” and hurled other antisemitic comments at her during the attack.

In another egregious attack, an elderly Jewish woman was attacked in a Paris suburb by two assailants who punched her in the face, pushed her to the ground, and kicked her while hurling antisemitic slurs, including “dirty Jew, this is what you deserve.”