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Abe Foxman: If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir get their way, Israel will lose me and American Jews
(JTA) — Abe Foxman, the past Anti-Defamation League leader who long has said that nothing could separate him from support for Israel, now says the leaders of an extreme party could do the trick if they get their way in coalition talks with incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I never thought that I would reach that point where I would say that my support of Israel is conditional,” Foxman said in an interview published Friday by The Jerusalem Post. “I’ve always said that [my support of Israel] is unconditional, but it’s conditional. I don’t think that it’s a horrific condition to say: ‘I love Israel and I want to love Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that respects pluralism.’”
“If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it,” he said.
Foxman said his outlook reflected that of the larger Jewish community — but added that he was optimistic Netanyahu would not let the leaders of Otzma Yehudit, the extremist party assuming a role in the incoming government, make drastic changes.
“I think he’s sensitive and smart enough to listen, to see the very serious concerns that [American Jews] have,” said Foxman, who retired from the ADL in 2015, 50 years after first joining the organization.
He pointed to an interview Netanyahu had recently with Bari Weiss, the opinion journalist, in which the incoming prime minister said he would not allow the excesses counseled by extremist party leaders including Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Avi Maoz.
But Netanyahu has struck a deal with Ben-Gvir to give him authority over the country’s police and has made Maoz, the leader of the homophobic party Noam, a new role overseeing “National-Jewish identity,” while he is reportedly nearing an agreement to make Smotrich finance minister. The men have said they want to expel disloyal Arabs from Israel, ban LGBTQ pride parades and roll back rights for non-Orthodox Jews.
Already, Netanyahu has reportedly agreed to back legislation that would stop recognizing non-Orthodox conversions. The men also agree on a vision to limit the power of Israel’s judiciary.
Netanyahu told Weiss that people alarmed by such demands should not be so worried.
“This Israel is not going to be governed by Talmudic law,” Netanyahu said. “We’re not going to ban LGBT forums. As you know, my view on that is sharply different, to put it mildly. We’re going to remain a country of laws.”
Foxman’s concerns, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a separate interview, are with proposals by the extremists to politicize the judiciary, to loosen open-fire regulations, to end recognition of non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism and to ban open LGBTQ events.
“It’s not one thing. It’s a whole package of things, which is bringing us back to the Middle Ages,” Foxman told JTA. “So it’s undermining democracy in terms of the legal system. It’s cutting back on on human or equal rights for all whether it’s LGBT or whether it’s a it’s the Conservative movement, or the Reform movement that have strides in Israel.
Foxman, 82, is still called on to pronounce on Jewish matters. A Holocaust survivor, he is on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. His remarks are notable in part because he was of a generation, together with Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and David Harris, who just retired as American Jewish Committee CEO, who said their top priority was keeping private differences between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community, and between Israel and the United States. Open criticism was the taboo.
That won’t hold if Netanyahu gives in to the demands of Otzma Yehudit, Foxman told the Jerusalem Post.
“If Bibi changes the nature of democracy in Israel, he will change the nature of Israel’s support in the U.S., certainly the American Jewish community, probably the general community and the U.S. government if it continues to be center-left,” he said.
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The post Abe Foxman: If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir get their way, Israel will lose me and American Jews 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.