A picture released by the Israeli Army says to show Israeli soldiers conducting operations in a location given as Tel Al-Sultan area, Rafah Governorate, Gaza, in this handout image released April 2, 2025. Photo: Israeli Army/Handout via REUTERS

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer vowed at a policy summit on Monday that Israel would defeat Hamas and bring home the hostages still being held by the Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza.

His remarks came amid reports that Israeli officials had formally rejected an Egyptian-brokered proposal for a five-year truce between Israel and Hamas in exchange for the release of 59 hostages still held in Gaza.

“We are going to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities and end its rule in Gaza. We will ensure that Gaza can never again pose a threat to the State of Israel. And we are committed to bringing all our hostages home. These are the goals we have set, and we fully intend to achieve them,” Dermer vowed.

An Israeli senior official was cited earlier in the day as saying that Jerusalem had rebuffed a five-year truce that would see Hamas able to “rearm, recover, and continue its war against the State of Israel with greater intensity.”

The sentiment was echoed by several civil society leaders at the Jewish News Syndicate policy summit in Jerusalem, which brought together largely conservative policymakers, diplomats, academics, and journalists.

“There is absolutely no way that Hamas will give over every piece of its leverage. Even if there is a ceasefire, it will look more like [the one with] Hezbollah, which is not actually a ceasefire,” political commentator Meira Kolatch said, referring to the truce repeatedly violated by the Iran-backed terrorist group.

“The soldiers won’t agree to this,” Kolatch told The Algemeiner.

American influencer and PragerU host Xaviaer DuRousseau warned against “over-negotiating” with a terrorist organization such as Hamas. “Five years is far too long for Hamas to exist. Five days is too long. We need to be much more direct and forceful in doing everything to bring the hostages home and make sure Hamas is wiped off the planet.”

Beyond the Gaza war, a major focus of the gathering was Iran.

In his address at the summit a day earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a framework for countering Iranian nuclear ambitions. Noting strong US-Israel alignment on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Netanyahu called for a deal that would fully dismantle Iran’s enrichment infrastructure and curb its production of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). 

“A bad deal is worse than no deal,” Netanyahu warned, emphasizing that only the complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would eliminate the threat. 

“The only good deal that works is a deal like the one that was made with Libya that removed all [nuclear] infrastructure,” he said.

Speaking to The Algemeiner, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon expressed skepticism over the Trump administration’s Oman-based talks with the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, calling the Iranians “masters of deception.”

Dermer was more diplomatic, telling audience members that he was “confident” that US President Donald Trump would “make a good deal.”

In his address to the gathering, Danon vowed the war against Hamas “will not end with hostages [remaining] in Gaza,” referring to those kidnapped during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Addressing Trump’s decision to nix the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as the American ambassador to the UN, Danon said he was “deeply disappointed” but confident that the president would pick a “strong” candidate for the role and also have a hand in appointing a secretary-general who would be more favorable to Israel than the incumbent, António Guterres. 

Danon, who led a delegation of over 30 UN ambassadors to the Hamas-attacked communities of southern Israel as well as to the site of the Nova music festival massacre, said Israel was under “constant attack” at the UN. He pointed to the virulently anti-Israel UN special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, Francesca Albanese, who he said should be barred from entering the US. 

Israeli Ambassador the United Nations Danny Danon. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner

The Israeli envoy also Trump’s efforts to weed out antisemitism on US campuses and stop “dangerous outsiders who are not even students but who go on campuses to incite.”

Supporters of Israel should be “as engaged as possible in the fight against antisemitism,” Danon told The Algemeiner. 

As for the war against Hamas, some experts in attendance argued that Israel also has to alter its approach to Egypt, with which Jerusalem has maintained a peace treaty for decades.

Jonathan Conricus, former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel’s approach toward Egypt needed urgent reassessment. 

“They hold the keys to the future of Gaza,” Conricus told the Algemeiner, referring to Egypt’s control of the Rafah border crossing, which connects southern Gaza and Egypt.

He criticized Israel’s reliance on diplomatic incentives with its southern neighbor, urging a tougher stance while preserving the peace treaty. 

“We’ve been using way too much carrot, and far less than the necessary stick. They are, in many ways, dictating terms that we should be dictating and that’s very regrettable,” he said. 

“Every moment that they continue to keep the gates closed at Rafah really makes it close to impossible for us to actually defeat Hamas,” he added. 

As for the status of the US-Israel relationship, Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, warned against what he termed the “woke right” of the Republican party. 

“The cancer that has taken over the Democratic Party with the woke progressive left – with Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Oman, Rashida Talib, and the protesters on college campuses – we’re starting to see the beginning cells of that cancer start to take hold in the Republican Party,” Brooks told the audience.

Speaking later to The Algemeiner, Brooks said the danger came from rising voices within the GOP advocating American disengagement from the world, led by figures like Tucker Carlson. 

“There’s not a lot of foreign policy difference and in some ways economic populist difference between, say, Bernie Sanders on one hand and Tucker Carlson on the other,” he said. 

Extremes on both the right and the left were converging in a form of “neoisolationism” that seeks to “withdraw America’s role in the world and shrink it to just to our borders” and that views Israel as a liability rather than a strategic ally, Brooks said.

“It’s a very dangerous place for the Republican Party and for the country to go,” Brooks said.

On the international scene, the director of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha Hausdorff, who joined a legal panel at the event, urged private individuals to take a more active role in advocating for the rule of law and equal treatment for Israel in the international arena, particularly in legal forums. She emphasized that civil society actors are often able to speak and act more freely than the state itself, which is constrained by diplomatic considerations.

“I fundamentally believe that we as civil society have a great deal more to contribute to the legal debate. There is currently a deficiency of Israel demanding its equal rights and demanding the proper application of international law in the international space,” she told The Algemeiner. 

In Israel’s case, Hausdorff said, international law was being weaponized, resulting in “the erosion of legal terminology like apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, occupation.”

Marcus Sheff, CEO of curricula watchdog IMPACT-se, focused on the role of education in combating antisemitism. He cited Elie Wiesel’s assertion that fighting antisemitism must begin with books. 

“Textbooks are uniquely authoritative: they are a key tool in creating the societies of the future that will keep Jews safe,” Sheff told The Algemeiner. “From Saudi Arabia and the UAE to Morocco and Azerbaijan, antisemitism is being eradicated from national school curricula.” He urged Western countries — and even some school districts in the US — to follow the lead of those Muslim states.

The post At Israeli Summit, Gaza Ceasefire Rejection Sparks Broad Support for Continued Pressure on Hamas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A woman walks past the US Department of Justice Building, in Washington, DC, Dec. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Al Drago

The US Justice Department under President Donald Trump has launched an investigation into the nonprofit that operates the popular Wikipedia website, amid accusations that the online encyclopedia has spread “propaganda” and allowed “foreign actors to manipulate information” while maintaining a systemic bias against Israel.

Edward Martin, the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, sent a letter to the Wikimedia Foundation on Thursday, warning the organization that its nonprofit status could be jeopardized for possibly violating its “legal obligations and fiduciary responsibilities” under US law.

“[T]he public is entitled to rely on a reasonable expectation of neutrality, transparency, and accountability in [Wikimedia’s] operations and publications,” Martin wrote. 

“It has come to my attention that the Wikimedia Foundation, through its wholly owned subsidiary Wikipedia, is allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public,” Trump’s top prosecutor in the US capital continued. “Wikipedia is permitting information manipulation on its platform, including the rewriting of key, historical events and biographical information of current and previous American leaders, as well as other matters implicating the national security and the interests of the United States. Masking propaganda that influences public opinion under the guise of providing informational material is antithetical to Wikimedia’s ‘educational’ mission.”

Martin noted that top search engines such as Google prioritize Wikipedia results and that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms receive Wikipedia data to train large-language models, arguing that anti-American misinformation pushed by the website could have a widespread insidious effect on large populations.

Wikipedia has been embroiled in controversy over allegations that its editors have spearheaded campaigns to defame Israel, casting doubt over the site’s commitment to providing information on controversial subjects in a factual and neutral manner. A group of high-ranking Wikipedia editors has engaged in an elaborate and systematic effort to depict the Jewish state’s history in an overtly negative light, according to investigative reports by Pirate Wires and Jewish Journal.

The cohort of Wikipedia editors has softened the image of Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas through removing any mention of their 1988 charter, which calls for the complete massacre of Jews and elimination of Israel. The editors also edited an article on Zionism, describing the movement for Jewish self-determination as “an ethnocultural nationalist movement” which was “pursued through the colonization of Palestine.”

“Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible,” the Wikipedia article on Zionism read. 

Though the editors have steadily embedded an anti-Israel bias for years, efforts ramped up shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, according to researchers and investigative journalists. The group, for example, added an article titled “Gaza Genocide” in November 2024, heavily implying that Israel has waged a campaign of ethnic extermination in the Gaza enclave. 

“According to a United Nations special committee, Amnesty International, and other experts and human rights organizations, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people during its ongoing invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip as part of the Gaza war,” the article read. 

The site has also published an article titled Israeli Apartheid, which claims that the Jewish state has built “a system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and to a lesser extent in Israel proper.”

Several of the most controversial articles regarding Israel have been placed under “extended confirmed protection” which prohibits anyone, outside of high-ranking Wikipedia editors, from making edits. 

Last month, the Anti-Defamation League published a report titled “Editing for Hate: How Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish Bias Undermines Wikipedia’s Neutrality,” which argued that a group of “malicious” Wikipedia editors have inserted anti-Israel bias onto the site, oftentimes violating the organization’s neutrality policies in the process. 

“Most readers assume Wikipedia is a reliable online encyclopedia, but in reality, it has become a biased platform manipulated by agenda-driven editors on many topics,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

The Wikimedia Foundation disputed the findings of the report. “Though our preliminary review of this report finds troubling and flawed conclusions that are not supported by the Anti-Defamation League’s data, we are currently undertaking a more thorough and detailed analysis,” a Wikimedia spokesperson said of the findings.

In his letter, Martin requested documents and information to answer several questions about the foundation’s conduct.

The post Wikipedia Nonprofit Status Under Scrutiny From US Justice Department Amid Claims of Systemic Anti-Israel Bias first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Skyline of Kyoto at night. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A hotel in the Japanese city of Kyoto defended itself last week after an Israeli guest informed the Israeli embassy in Japan that staff had insisted that he sign a statement saying he had not engaged in war crimes, prompting a visit from officials at the city’s Medical and Health Center.

The unnamed Israeli traveler, a member of the Jewish state’s Navy reserves and a combat medic, told the Israeli publication Ynet that after showing his passport to check-in at the Wind Villa Guesthouse, “the clerk handed me this form and told me that without signing it, I wouldn’t be allowed to check in.” He called the statement “ridiculous and absurd,” noting that he told the clerk, “We don’t kill women and children. Why would we do that?”

The tourist initially resisted signing until being pressured to do so, saying that “in the end, I decided to sign it because I have nothing to hide,” and that “the statement is true — I did not commit any war crimes, and Israeli soldiers do not commit war crimes. I signed because I didn’t want to create problems, and because this form means nothing.”

The hotel posted the document on X titled “Pledge of Non-Involvement in War Crimes” and then sought to explain its company policy over a series of nine threaded, Japanese-language posts on the social media platform.

The pledge requires guests to sign “I have never committed war crimes,” and then the form offers such examples as “attacks on civilians (children, women, etc.)” and “sexual, violence, forced displacement, or looting.”

In addition, the hotel wants those staying to affirm “I pledge to continue complying with international law and humanitarian law and to never engage in war crimes in any form.”

Wind Villa disputed that it required guests to sign or that it singled out its customer because of his nationality.

“1) We ask all guests who are suspected of having committed war crimes to sign a pledge. 2) It is not discriminatory because it is not only targeted at Israelis,” the hotel wrote on X. “3) Filling out the form is optional, and not filling it out will not mean you will be denied accommodation.”

Wind Villa further justified its actions on the basis that “Israel has a universal conscription system, and the possibility that young men in particular will be involved in military operations after Oct. 8, 2023, cannot be ignored,” referring to the day after Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel and launched the current war in Gaza. It also stated that “so far, there have been no guests who have refused to fill out the pledge form, and there have been no cases of guests being refused accommodation. Therefore, there is no violation of the Inns and Hotels Act.”

The Wind Villa is not the only hotel to become embroiled in controversy after allegedly discriminating against Israelis amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Last year, for example, an Israeli family visiting Paris was denied service at the Novotel Paris Porte de Versailles after an attendant noticed their Israeli passport.

The post Japanese Hotel Asks Israeli Guest to Sign Pledge Denying Involvement in War Crimes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.