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AIPAC is targeting candidates who want to condition aid to Israel. Who has crossed its red line?
(JTA) — The flood of recent spending by a PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee against a Democratic congressional candidate in New Jersey had many observers scratching their heads: Why would the pro-Israel lobby go after someone who describes himself as pro-Israel, when there was a much more strident critic of Israel in the race?
The PAC’s answer: Tom Malinowski had expressed openness to conditioning U.S. aid to Israel — and that was now AIPAC’s red line.
“We are going to have a focus on stopping candidates who are detractors of Israel or who want to put conditions on aid,” Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, said in an interview.
The idea that U.S. aid to Israel should be contingent on Israeli behavior was long anathema to most American politicians, advocated only by the far left. But as the war in Gaza dragged on in 2024 and 2025, with Israel continuing its campaign despite the urging of two subsequent U.S. administrations, more lawmakers began to express openness to the idea.
That shift sped up last summer as reports of starvation in Gaza spread, and politicians who’d never previously done so voted to block certain weapons to Israel. Longtime allies in Congress are crossing red lines again and again. The new U.S.-Israel war against Iran is inflaming the discourse once again.
Now, with the November elections coming closer, a hobbled AIPAC is weighing which candidates to back across the country, even as an increasing number of politicians pledge not to accept their endorsement or their affiliated PAC’s money.
Here’s a rundown of who might find themselves in AIPAC’s crosshairs, why, and what they’re saying about the pro-Israel lobby that’s become increasingly toxic among Democratic voters.
Crossing a red line, but open to AIPAC support
Rep. Adam Smith was endorsed by AIPAC in his most recent election cycle, but has since declared his support for conditioning aid to Israel. The Democrat from Washington state wrote last summer that the United States should “stop the sale of some offensive weapons systems to Israel as leverage to pressure Israel” if it did not take a handful of concrete measures, including implementing a Gaza ceasefire, stopping expansion of settlements in the West Bank and taking “serious steps” to reduce violence there.
Smith, a member of Congress since 1997, will face a nonpartisan primary election in August before a November election between the top two candidates. His opponents include Kshama Sawant, a former Seattle City Council member running as an independent on a “working class, antiwar, anti-genocide” campaign. Sawant is in favor of ending all military aid to Israel, and has called its military campaign in Gaza “a new holocaust.”
Smith is walking the tightrope between supporting Israel and criticizing its government and policies — and, by extension, distancing himself from AIPAC. “I don’t know what AIPAC is going to do in my race,” Smith told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a statement sent by his campaign manager. “I have certainly taken votes and positions that are the opposite of what AIPAC wanted. On the other hand, I still support the right of Israel to exist, and understand the threats that Israel continues to face from Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas among others.”
Smith added that Israel has a right to defend itself against those threats “even if I don’t always agree with how Israel chooses to exercise that right.”
While Smith has taken positions counter to AIPAC’s mandate, he said he would still welcome support from its members.
“I do have a number of constituents in my district who are active members of AIPAC,” Smith wrote. “I speak with them regularly and yes, I would welcome their support if they choose to offer it even considering where we disagree.”
Illinois Rep. Jonathan Jackson is also among the vanishingly few Democrats to say publicly that they would still accept contributions from AIPAC. He also co-sponsored the Block the Bombs to Israel Act last summer, which would restrict the sale of certain U.S.-made weapons to Israel.
Defying AIPAC, and taking their chances
The list of politicians with pro-Israel voting records who are veering away from AIPAC’s stance is growing. It includes a number of politicians who haven’t publicly commented on whether they’d accept AIPAC contributions or an endorsement, but could become a target of its super PAC’s spending.
Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter was endorsed by AIPAC and benefited from more than $2 million in UDP spending last election. Nevertheless, she was one of 21 cosponsors of legislation accusing Israel of committing a genocide that was backed by anti-Zionist groups like Codepink and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Dexter also cosponsored the unsuccessful Block the Bombs Act last September. In fact, a number of AIPAC’s 2024 endorsees signed onto the bill since it was rolled out in May, including California’s Robert Garcia, Oregon’s Suzanne Bonamici and Andrea Salinas, Sylvia Garcia in Texas and Steven Horsford in Nevada.
Congresspeople with pro-Israel records and some past AIPAC involvement also voted yes on the Block the Bombs legislation, including California Rep. Mark Takano, who traveled on an AIPAC-affiliated trip to Israel and the West Bank in 2013; and California Rep. Jared Huffman, who also traveled to Israel in 2013 with AIPAC’s affiliated educational nonprofit. Both have regularly been endorsed by J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby, and not AIPAC.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost voted yes on Block the Bombs, three years after writing in a position paper that conditioning aid to Israel “would undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself against the very serious threats it faces.”
Other erstwhile pro-Israel politicians with increasingly critical stances on Israel have seemingly accepted that they, like Malinowski, could become the target of AIPAC’s spending.
That includes Sue Altman, who’s running in New Jersey’s nearby 12th district. In 2024, Altman won the Democratic nomination in a different district as a pro-Israel candidate endorsed by Democratic Majority for Israel, a centrist lobbying group that often overlaps in its endorsements with AIPAC. Altman lost to AIPAC-backed Republican Thomas Kean Jr. in the general election.
This year, according to audio leaked by Drop Site News, which has an anti-Israel bent, Altman said “a lot has happened” since 2024 and she is “going to be at least as left as Tom [Malinowski], if not more so” on aid to Israel.
“And so I can only anticipate that AIPAC, if they did it in 11, they’re going to do it here in 12,” she said, adding that there “might be other PACs too.” Last month, she posted on X, “AIPAC and countless SuperPACs are destroying our democracy by polarizing and misleading the public.”
Et tu, Senator?
In the Senate, in a landmark indication of shifting sentiment, a majority of Democrats voted in favor of Bernie Sanders-led resolutions last July that would block the sale of certain weapons to Israel.
The “yes” votes included eight senators who’d never previously voted to cut any aid to Israel: Jack Reed of Rhode Island; Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois; Patty Murray of Washington; Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware; Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland; Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who called himself “ardently pro-Israel” last year.
Reed, who is running for reelection, and Klobuchar, who is mounting a bid for governor, face elections this year. One of Klobuchar’s opponents, community organizer Kobey Layne, says she would prevent the state’s pension systems from “investing in companies facilitating Israeli settlements or military supplies to Israel.”
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons voted against Sanders’ resolutions. But Coons, who has previously spoken at AIPAC’s annual policy conference, said at an event last year he would be open to limiting weapons sales to Israel.
“If there is no change in direction from the Israeli administration, for the first time I would seriously consider that,” said Coons, who added that he has never “voted to withhold weapons from Israel, from the IDF.” Coons is up for reelection with a primary in September.
Meanwhile, not all of the “yes” votes have been seen as necessarily indicating a total shift on Israel.
Alsobrooks’ vote to cut aid drew concern from some members of the Jewish community to whom she’d expressed her support for Israel on the campaign trail. But Ron Halber, CEO of the Greater Washington Jewish Community Relations Council, said at the time that he spoke with Alsobrooks and believed she was casting a symbolic vote on a bill that had no real chance of passing.
“I don’t believe that this is a precursor to a fundamental shift on support for Israel,” he said.
But for AIPAC, voting in favor of one of Sanders’ numerous Israel resolutions is grounds for an attack ad.
Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish, voted to block certain weapons sales last July, as well as in November 2024. AIPAC released an ad attacking Ossoff, plus other lawmakers who supported Sanders’ November 2024 resolutions. DMFI endorsed Ossoff in 2020, but neither it nor AIPAC has backed any candidate in this year’s race.
You can’t fire me; I quit
Cognizant of AIPAC’s worsening public image, a growing number of moderate Democrats say they’ll refuse any campaign donations from the group.
One of those candidates — North Carolina Rep. Valerie Foushee — eked out a primary win last week by less than 1% of the vote. Foushee had been a prominent recipient of AIPAC support in 2022, benefiting from more than $2 million in spending by UDP. Her opponent, Nida Allam, was a Bernie Sanders-backed politician who accuses Israel of committing genocide.
AIPAC’s enemies smell blood in the water. Although Foushee says she will not accept AIPAC contributions during the 2026 campaign, the Working Families Party sent out a fundraising email in February in support of Allam, saying their candidate was “up against AIPAC and crypto billionaires.” (In her 2022 campaign that initially won her the House seat, also against Allam, Foushee was backed by pro-Israel PACs, including AIPAC, and a PAC primarily funded by Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur who has since been convicted of fraud. Foushee beat Allam by more than 9% that year.)
Another North Carolina incumbent, Rep. Deborah Ross, has sworn off AIPAC donations for this year after having previously taken them. The same is true for Kentucky Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who said last year, “We no longer take AIPAC money.”
Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton has gone a step further, saying he would return his approximately $35,000 in donations from AIPAC. Rep. Robin Kelly, who is running for US Senate in Illinois, swore off AIPAC funds and has shifted to a more critical stance toward Israel, including supporting the Block the Bombs Act and accusing Israel of genocide. Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar, who’s received AIPAC contributions, has done the same as Kelly.
Other Democrats, such as New York Rep. Dan Goldman, have sworn off corporate PAC money altogether, including from AIPAC-affiliated PACs as well as DMFI, which recently released its first round of House candidate endorsements.
Goldman has kept his AIPAC ties intact, however, and accepted its endorsement in his campaign against progressive challenger Brad Lander.
It remains to be seen whether UDP will spend in districts like Goldman’s. While a candidate can refuse a contribution, independent ad expenditures may be made without coordination with campaigns. In some instances, those ads are positive and encourage viewers to vote for AIPAC’s preferred candidate.
In the case of New Jersey, AIPAC’s “Anybody but Malinowski” pitch appeared to backfire when a harsh critic of Israel eked out a victory, and only added to the lobby’s growing sense of embattlement.
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Bob Dylan is changing his lyrics and his set list; what is he trying to tell us?
Nobel Prize-winning rock poet Bob Dylan once famously wrote, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” (in his 1965 song “Subterranean Homesick Blues”). That may have formerly been the case, but it didn’t stop Dylan from kicking off his “Lights of Autumn Tour” in Oslo on Saturday, Oct. 17, with a setlist chock full of warnings about floods and extreme weather — a veritable apocalypse of natural disasters. He even rewrote some lines in one of his most famous and beloved songs, “Tangled Up in Blue,” to make the weather a new character in the song.
Playing “Tangled Up in Blue” in concert for the first time since 2018, Dylan revised a few verses. Where he originally sang “I had a job in the great north woods working as a cook for a spell” to kick off the third verse, Dylan instead sang “Way up in the frozen woods, teardrops touch the sky / The leaves are falling one by one, and the moments passing by,” in keeping with the “Lights of Autumn” theme. (It should be noted that Dylan has been rewriting and changing the lyrics to “Tangled” at least since 1984, when he also included the song on his opening concert of a European tour.) “Way up in the frozen woods” may also refer to Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, which is so far north that you can practically see Canada from there.
On Saturday, Dylan continued to rewrite that third verse with the line “Sometimes I get so tired, sometimes I’m getting away / Lucky you found another, tomorrow’s another day.” In a clever twist, Dylan inserts the new word “lucky” into the number, which recalls the phrase “I can’t help it if I’m lucky” from the song “Idiot Wind,” also found on the 1975 album Blood on the Tracks where “Tangled Up in Blue” originated. “Lucky” also resurfaced as a cryptic moniker for Dylan himself when, in the superstar group the Traveling Wilburys that included George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison — all of whom took new names ending in “Wilbury” — Dylan opted for “Lucky Wilbury.” He can’t help it, indeed!
Dylan kicked off another rewritten verse with the phrase, “Things were gettin’ to cost too much,” leaving one to wonder if this was a pre-midterm election reference to the state of the U.S. economy and therefore an implicit criticism of the MAGA leader and his acolytes. Dylan also revised the music somewhat, slowing the tempo of what was once a mid-tempo rocker to a rubato ballad; he also inserted a minor chord that doesn’t exist in the original.
As noted, Dylan’s 19-song setlist included copious references to weather disasters. “The Man in the Long Black Coast” opens with the line “Crickets are chirpin’, the water is high,” and refers to trees that are “bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze.” The aptly titled “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood),” which he performed for the first time in over two decades, includes the lines:
Crash on the levee, mama
Water’s gonna overflow
Swamp’s gonna rise
No boat’s gonna row….
If you go down in the flood
It’s gonna be your own fault…”
Even Dylan’s choice of cover tunes seemed oriented toward the apocalyptic theme. For the first time ever, Dylan sang a Randy Newman song in concert. Keeping with the flood theme, he chose Newman’s “Louisiana 1927,” which recounts one of the worst floods ever to strike the U.S.
What’s happened down here is that the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north, and it starts to rain
Rained real hard, it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline
River rose all day, the river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood, some people got away all right
Dylan also covered “Share Your Love” — originally recorded by Bobby “Blue” Bland in 1963 but also recorded and performed by Dylan’s former backup group, The Band — which kicks off with the line “Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no good.”
But Dylan didn’t have to go far from his own catalog to rack up mentions of climate insanity. He performed “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” which includes the lines “The air is getting hotter, there’s a rumbling in the skies / I’ve been wading through the high muddy water, with the heat rising in my eyes.” In “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” Dylan sang, “Clouds so swift, rain won’t lift / Gate won’t close, railings froze / Get your mind off wintertime, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.” And on “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You,” the seasonally appropriate narrator says, “I saw the first fall of snow, I saw the flowers come and go.”
Dylan’s tour continues tonight (Oct. 19) in Gothenburg, Sweden, before making its way through Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, and Austria, and concluding in the UK in November and early December. The forecast for Sweden tonight is clear, but later in the week, the weather report says there’s a chance of a hard rain.
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Argentina’s Jewish gauchos museum vows to stay open amid leadership feud
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – A museum dedicated to the history of Argentinian Jewish ranchers, farmers and the cowboys known as gauchos remains open and operating despite months of tension between its former director and the local government, the head of the Entre Ríos Jewish community confirmed to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
The Villa Domínguez Jewish Museum about the Jewish Colonies drew international attention late last year after visitors reported water damage affecting walls, documents and historical objects. The concerns arose months after the resignation of Osvaldo Quiroga, the local historian who had led the museum for nearly 40 years and was widely associated with its preservation.
In an interview, community head Marina Garber acknowledged the tensions that led to Quiroga’s resignation in January 2025, and that since then a successor has not been named.
“We are resolving the situation with an agreement in which the building belongs to the municipality, while the Jewish community is in charge of safeguarding the objects. The museum is still operating,” Garber told JTA, and the partnership between the local municipality and Jewish community would continue.
Villa Domínguez is a rural town of around 2,000 inhabitants located 225 miles north of Buenos Aires, where international tourism centered on the country’s earliest Jewish agricultural colonies brings considerable visibility to the area.
The fate of the museum matters far beyond Villa Domínguez’s nine remaining Jews. The Jewish agricultural colonies of Entre Ríos are a defining chapter in Argentine Jewish history, tracing how immigrants from Eastern Europe built new lives as farmers and gauchos. Its future is a test of whether a legacy that belongs to Argentine Jewry as a whole can be safeguarded.
Although its director was a municipal employee, the museum itself belongs to the Jewish community. This hybrid arrangement, with no clear responsibilities divided between the two, created tensions when the images of damage were spread online. Suggestions that the Jewish museum had fallen into a state of neglect circulated online as far as Europe.
According to some sources, tensions appear to stem from a combination of the government’s limited attention to the site and the apparent resentment by some government officials that Quiroga had received inordinate media attention.
The Jewish colonies of Entre Ríos, established in the late 1890s by Jewish immigrants mostly from Eastern Europe, represent one of the largest waves of Jewish agricultural settlement in the Americas.
The Jewish Colonies Museum was founded in October 1985 to safeguard the region’s documentary and material heritage. Since 1996, it has been housed in the town’s former pharmacy building.
The museum attracts Argentine and international visitors interested in the stories of the Jewish gauchos — the immigrants who blended their Jewish and Eastern European roots with Argentine ranching culture. Heritage tours, family-history trips, academic researchers and Jewish community groups contribute to a steady flow of visitors exploring the landscapes where the Jewish gauchos built their rural lives, a journey that began more than a century ago.
For the descendants of the gauchos — many now scattered across Argentina, Israel and beyond — the institution serves as a touchstone for genealogical research and family history. Its stability is also of concern to Jewish communal organizations and Argentine officials who have promoted the Jewish colonies circuit as a pillar of religious and cultural tourism in the province.
The first ship carrying Jewish immigrants from Europe to Argentina, the SS Weser, arrived in 1889 after sailing from Hamburg to Buenos Aires. Its arrival inspired Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German Jewish financier and philanthropist, to recognize the potential of agricultural migration and, in 1891, to create the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) to institutionalize, fund and organize the colonies.
A tourist trail linking the various Jewish settlements has been operating for more than 20 years, made up of four communities: Basavilbaso, Villa Domínguez, Villa Clara and Villaguay. Two- and three-day tours of the area’s main Jewish sites include visits to synagogues, cemeteries, cooperatives, and local museums. Villa Clara — or simply Clara — is a small town founded in 1892 and named after Hirsch’s wife. Its Jewish museum is located inside an old railway station. Another settlement, Lucienville, is named after the couple’s son, Lucien.
The last agricultural colony founded in Entre Ríos by the JCA is Colonia Avigdor, visited regularly by students of Fundación Judaica, a major Buenos Aires network of schools and synagogues, which brings groups there for educational programs, supports local schools, and works on community development.
The national government includes the tourist trail as part of a religious tourism program, and the Buenos Aires Jewish center AMIA has a site dedicated to the colonies’ history in Entre Rios, including Villa Domínguez.
The national government and some local municipalities also include the Jewish colonies among their cultural offerings.
According to Pablo Soskin, the representative in Entre Ríos of the Argentine Jewish political umbrella organization DAIA, the museum’s director stepped down on Jan. 24, but municipal officials initially declined to accept his resignation. He subsequently took an extended leave to use up a large balance of accrued vacation days, with the municipality’s approval. When that time ran out, he was reassigned within the museum to a different, non-directorial role. The director position has remained vacant since then.
“We maintain a close relationship with the government, which has expressed its commitment to making the museum and the Jewish circuit part of the province’s tourist attractions for locals and foreigners,” Soskin told JTA. “We will continue to coordinate community, public, and private mechanisms to ensure the preservation of our heritage sites.
“This is key to understanding the contributions that the Jewish community has made to Argentina,” he added.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Israeli police arrest suspects in Washington Post journalist attack
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israel Police arrested 10 people on Monday on suspicion of involvement in violent acts over the weekend against journalists, foreign diplomats and Palestinians in the West Bank during the annual olive harvest.
The arrests came after international condemnation of the attacks, including by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who is generally supportive of the current Israeli government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted it is just a handful of individuals and not representative of Israelis who live in the West Bank settlements.
“Following reports of acts of violence over the weekend, including the suspected assault of a foreign journalist and the suspected assault of foreign diplomats, the Judea and Samaria District and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) carried out a pre-dawn arrest operation as part of the ongoing investigation,” the police said in a statement, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
The statement said the suspects were arrested during a special pre-dawn operation conducted by the district’s Central Investigations Unit and transferred to police stations in the area for questioning.
“Following questioning, and subject to the findings of the investigation, they will be brought before a court for a hearing,” the police statement said.
The arrests come after Heidi Levine, a veteran photojournalist for The Washington Post, was attacked on Friday while photographing Palestinians harvesting their olive trees in the West Bank, an annual event that often sees violent clashes between Palestinian farmers and Israeli settlers who have increasingly moved into the same areas.
Video footage from the scene shows a group of masked settlers surrounding and attacking Levine before ripping off her camera and other personal gear. Palestinians can also be seen throwing stones at the settlers before another journalist arrives to help Levine leave the area.
The photographer was taken to a Palestinian hospital near Ramallah and later transferred to Beilinson Hospital near Tel Aviv, which reported that she was in moderate condition with lacerations across her body, a broken rib and four broken vertebrae. She also underwent surgery on her finger, the hospital said.
On Saturday, European diplomats from France, Belgium and Poland came under assault by masked settlers who forced their convoy off the road in the area of Taybeh, near Ramallah. Bernard Baudoux, a leftist mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, a town in northern France, was beaten, according to witnesses who spoke to international media.
Data collected by Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din and published on Sunday showed some 538 alleged incidents of settler and soldier violence over the 20-day period from Sept. 27 to Oct. 16, across 181 Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Some 269 of the incidents were directly related to the olive harvest, the organization said.
Israeli right-wing legal-aid organization Honenu confirmed the arrests on Monday and said its criminal law department would be providing the suspects with “initial legal assistance.”
“At this stage, it is unclear what the detainees are suspected of,” the organization said in a statement.
The Israel Police said that “items linking the suspects to the alleged offenses were seized, and several vehicles were confiscated.”
“The law in Judea and Samaria applies to everyone, regardless of identity or affiliation. The Israel Police is committed to professional, equal, and impartial law enforcement, based on evidence and in accordance with the law,” Israel Police Commissioner Daniel Levy said in the statement.
The issue of settler violence in the West Bank falls into a gray area of law enforcement between the Israel Police and the Israeli military, the latter of which is responsible for civilian matters in parts of the territory that are not legally under Israeli sovereignty. Israel’s police force is under the authority of the National Security Ministry headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right nationalist who has not made clamping down on settler violence a priority.
Levy said that the ambiguity over which agency is responsible for what must be addressed.
“At the same time, a distinction must be made between responsibility for preventing incidents in the field and responsibility for investigating and enforcing the law after they occur,” Levy said.
“We will continue to coordinate with all security agencies to strengthen security and the rule of law and ensure that anyone found to have violated the law is brought to justice,” he added.
Huckabee on Saturday called for a full investigation into the attack against Levine and for the perpetrators to be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Attacking a female photographer is a despicable act of terror carried out by masked cowards. Dishonorable act of senseless violence,” he wrote on X.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also condemned the “shocking violence” and said he had called Levine to apologize.
“I expressed my deepest sorrow to Heidi and apologized for what she went through. The despicable behavior of the perpetrators of this attack does not represent the citizens or the values of the State of Israel,” he said in a statement.
Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a closely contested election campaign to retain power, condemned violence generally, but also stated that the circumstances of the attack “remain unclear.”
“We will not allow disputed incidents to be exploited to demonize the hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria,” he said in a statement, using the biblical names for the West Bank.
Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter, however, stated on CNN on Friday “unambiguously and unequivocally, that gratuitous violence perpetrated by anyone, be they Jews or Arabs, is completely unacceptable.”
He added, “If we have not yet reached a passing grade to bring Jewish vigilantes to justice, then we’ve got to do a better job. But I’m convinced that we are going to do it. I’ve been in government meetings. I’ve heard the prime minister speak emphatically about putting a stop to this.”
In a statement Monday following the arrests, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that it was time for the Israeli police to handle such crimes.
“The IDF should not and cannot be engaged in civilian law enforcement. Its role is to fight Palestinian terrorism and defend the country’s borders and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and along the seam line,” he said, adding that he was preparing, in coordination with the prime minister, “a comprehensive plan to regulate civilian law enforcement activities in Judea and Samaria.”
“The plan distinguishes between the IDF’s authority in the field and the transfer of responsibility for carrying out civilian law enforcement in practice to the Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District,” Katz said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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