Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on during a meeting with Cyprus’ President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, July 9, 2025. Photo: Petros Karadjias/Pool via REUTERS

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday accused Hezbollah of dragging Lebanon toward becoming a “second Gaza” with its rocket attacks on Israel and called for negotiating a full ceasefire with Jerusalem, saying the launches served “the Iranian regime’s calculations” and risked “collapsing” the country.

Aoun’s remarks, among the most direct criticism of Iran-backed Hezbollah by a Lebanese president in years, accused the Islamist terror group of launching rockets as an “obvious trap” to lure his country back into a conflict with Israel.

“Whoever launched those rockets wanted to secure the fall of the Lebanese state, under aggression and chaos, even at the price of destroying dozens of our villages and the fall of tens of thousands of our people. For the sake of the Iranian regime’s calculations,” Aoun told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa in an online meeting. 

Earlier this month, he added, the Lebanese government made “a clear and irrevocable decision” barring any military or security activity by Hezbollah.

An Israeli coalition of former diplomats, security experts, and business leaders called Aoun’s remarks a “courageous” and potentially “historic” opening by a Lebanese government seeking to disarm Hezbollah.

“Israel must seize the moment to create the necessary conditions for shaping a negotiated reality along the northern border — one that would constitute a significant strategic victory against Iran and further isolate it,” the Coalition for Regional Security said in a statement. 

The group praised the “anti-Iranian Lebanese government” for seeking to disarm Hezbollah, but warned that “it is unable to accomplish this task alone.” 

According to Lianne Pollak-David, the coalition’s founder, the current US-Israeli strikes on Iran were creating more space for Beirut to confront Hezbollah openly.

“The more Iran is weakened and isolated, the more the Lebanese government feels confident going directly and publicly against Hezbollah,” she told The Algemeiner. 

But Pollak-David argued the Lebanese government could not disarm Hezbollah on its own and would need help from outside powers, including Israel. That, she said, would force Israel to walk a “very tricky fine line” to break Hezbollah on the one hand, without leaving Beirut to absorb the blowback by itself.

She called for “collaborating with the Lebanese government, leveraging all the regional coalition that has been formed around this war, and, under [US President Donald] Trump’s leadership, pushing for a new reality in Lebanon.”

Iran’s military and political incapacitation could even open the way to more regional peace agreements, she said.

“Everything is connected,” Pollak-David said. “The more Iran is isolated and the more its proxies are weakened, the more we’re seeing all the moderate forces in the region coordinating and collaborating,” increasing the chances of “Israel-Lebanese normalization and Israel-Arab normalization altogether.”

But Hezbollah expert Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi offered a far more skeptical view, questioning whether Aoun’s remarks signaled any real change on the ground.

“I don’t see the difference between Aoun’s remarks now and his remarks when he was elected, except for the willingness to have direct negotiations with Israel,” she told The Algemeiner.

When Aoun took office in January of last year, he said Lebanon must eventually ensure weapons are held only by the state, but he also said repeatedly that this had to happen through dialogue, not confrontation. 

“The biggest question at stake, which I don’t get an answer to, is whether Aoun’s army is willing to clash with Hezbollah, because that is what it will take to disarm it,” Zehavi said, noting Aoun’s fear that such a clash could lead to civil war. 

She pointed to reports from Monday that Hezbollah operatives arrested while transporting weapons south were released almost immediately on token bail of $20, which she said showed how little appetite Beirut had demonstrated for a real confrontation with the terrorist group.

Zehavi, who founded the Alma Center — a research center that focuses on security challenges relating to Israel’s northern border — said Aoun would need to do far more than denounce Hezbollah or talk about state authority over weapons before Israel could treat his government as a real partner. The first step, she said, was for his government to formally outlaw Hezbollah and take concrete action against it. 

“I will be much more convinced in Aoun’s good intentions if he designates Hezbollah as a terrorist entity,” she said. “Meanwhile, I don’t think we should negotiate with this Lebanese government.”

Until then, she said, Israel should keep up its attacks on Hezbollah, particularly south of the Litani River, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.

A pro-Hamas demonstration in Zurich, Switzerland, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: IMAGO/dieBildmanufaktur via Reuters Connect

Antisemitism in Switzerland surged to alarming levels last year, with two reports released on Tuesday warning that hostility and violence targeting Jews are intensifying across the country amid the broader fallout from war involving Israel in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, the Intercommunity Coordination Against Antisemitism and Defamation (CICAD) released its 2025 annual report on hate crimes, documenting a 36 percent rise in antisemitic incidents against the local Jewish community in French-speaking Switzerland compared to 2024.

With a total of 2,438 antisemitic acts last year, CICAD’s latest report marks the highest level of such incidents since the organization began monitoring them in 2003.

Based on the latest data, the association warned of a worsening trend, with incidents classified as “grave and serious” rising 16 percent — from 109 cases in 2024 to 127 in 2025.

This week, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities (SIG), in collaboration with the Foundation Against Racism and Antisemitism (GRA), also released their annual report on antisemitic outrages in German-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking Switzerland for the past year.

Their latest data also shows that antisemitism “remains at a persistently high level” across the country, with tensions further fueled by the ongoing war in the Middle East.

“Since Oct. 7, 2023, the war in the Middle East has been the main long-term trigger for antisemitic incidents in Switzerland,” the organizations wrote in their report, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel more than two years ago.

“This influence remained significant in 2025. No return to pre-Oct. 7 levels has been observed to date,” they continued. 

SIG and GRA’s latest report found the biggest surge of antisemitic activity in online spaces, with 2,185 incidents recorded in 2025 — an increase of nearly 37 percent from 1,596 the previous year.

Most incidents took place on the Telegram messaging app, with online newspaper comments coming in second, and the bulk of the reported content centered on conspiracy theories.

With such figures, the report warned that antisemitism is no longer an isolated occurrence but a structural issue, cautioning against the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric.

Even though the study found that real-world antisemitic incidents fell to 177 in 2025 from 221 in 2024 — a decrease of roughly 20 percent — the number remains about three times higher than levels recorded before the Oct. 7 atrocities.

The GRA and SIG urged local authorities to ensure the sustainable protection of Jewish life in Switzerland, calling for long-term security measures, increased investment in prevention and education, and a stronger commitment to monitoring antisemitic threats.

“Effectively combating antisemitism is not a one-off task, but an ongoing responsibility of the state and society,” the report said.

Elon Musk holds up a chainsaw onstage during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, US, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard

The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on the ChatGPT large language model program when deciding to cut grants for Jewish-related history programs, including one focused on violence against women during the Holocaust, according to a new class-action lawsuit.

DOGE staffer Justin Fox is named as one of the defendants in the suit filed in US federal court on Friday by the Authors Guild, which alleges that he was the one who developed the method of using ChatGPT prompts to determine which grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) — also a defendant — to cut in the name of eliminating any programs related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Fox said in a deposition that he regarded any grant related to a minority group as qualifying as “DEI” and thus up for elimination. When asked about a grant he chose to cancel related to violence against women during the Holocaust, he responded, “It’s a Jewish — specifically focused on Jewish culture and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.” Fox added, “It’s inherently related to DEI for that reason.”

The Trump administration has made a point of targeting DEI programs, especially on university campuses, arguing they foster bigotry by replacing merit with identity-based preferences. Many Jewish groups have criticized DEI initiatives for often excluding Jews, ignoring antisemitism, or characterizing Jews as white “oppressors” rather than as a historically oppressed minority group.

The lawsuit alleges that Fox and his fellow DOGE staffer Nathan Cavanaugh “made and executed the termination decision without any legal authority conferred by Congress. There is no jurisdictional barrier to vacating these unlawful terminations, and permanent relief is warranted.”

One of the projects targeted by DOGE was a translation project titled In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers From the Soviet Union, which the lawsuit describes as “a critical, annotated translation into English of Yiddish and Russian works written in the aftermath of the most significant Jewish tragedy of the 20th century.”

ChatGPT put the book on the chopping block, stating that “this anthology explores Jewish writers’ engagement with the Holocaust in the USSR.”

According to the suit, the DOGE cuts “are unconstitutional several times over. The record establishes, without genuine factual dispute, that the terminations violated the First Amendment by targeting grants for their viewpoints and perceived political associations; that they violated the equal protection guarantee by classifying grants based on race, sex, and other constitutionally protected characteristics.”

DOGE also allegedly targeted Catholic efforts to promote Holocaust studies. The suit notes that another grant Fox and Cavanaugh chopped was support for the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton Hill University.

In a deposition, NEH’s acting chair Michael McDonald said he did not know DOGE had relied on ChatGPT and rejected including Holocaust-related grants under DEI. He also claimed DOGE ignored his disagreements. DOGE possessed the final say about which projects to cut.

In response to the question “In your view, does this grant relate to DEI?” McDonald answered “no.” When the lawyer followed up with “would you consider this to be wasteful spend?” he replied “I would not, no.”

Since the NEH’s founding in 1965, the agency has provided over $6 billion in grants to fund over 70,000 projects in all 50 states.

The lawsuit details that Fox and Cavanaugh lacked “any relevant background in the humanities, public or private grant administration, peer review, or government service of any kind prior to joining the administration.”

According to the filing, the two DOGE staffers met with McDonald and Assistant Chair for Programs Adam Wolfson on March 12. However, Fox and Cavanaugh “entirely controlled the process of selecting grants to terminate and executing the terminations — their approach was top-down, viewpoint- and race-based, and indifferent to the views of NEH leadership or the ordinary processes of grant administration.”

DOGE’s mastermind, billionaire Elon Musk, has a professional rivalry with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT.

Musk faced multiple controversies last year involving alleged antisemitism, Nazis, and the Holocaust. Following his decision to make a gesture at a Jan. 20 rally which many interpreted as resembling a “Sieg Heil”-style salute, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) initially defended the billionaire before criticizing his choice to promote Holocaust humor on his X social media platform.

“We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it. Elon Musk, the Holocaust is not a joke,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO and National Director, wrote on X in response to Musk.

Musk faced criticism days later when addressing a gathering of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, where he said, “There is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that.” Critics decried the comments, arguing they minimized or dismissed the Holocaust.

“The remembrance and acknowledgement of the dark past of the country and its people should be central in shaping the German society,” Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s national memorial to the Holocaust, said in response to Musk on X. He warned that not focusing on learning lessons from the past is “an insult to the victims of Nazism and a clear danger to the democratic future of Germany.”

In July, following an upgrade to Musk’s ChatGPT rival Grok, the program began promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and in one instance labeled itself “MechaHitler.”

Two months later, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) released a report revealing the rise of antisemitism on X.

The report utilized OpenAI’s since-discontinued GPT-4o model and drew on a year-long investigation to find that “679,000 posts sampled violate X’s policies on antisemitism, and posts identified as antisemitic got 193 million views in the 11 months of this report, despite X’s promises to limit their visibility. Also, antisemitic conspiracies appear to perform disproportionately well on X, constituting 59% of posts in the sample but 73% of likes.”

The report noted that X had allowed for the rise of so-called “antisemitic influencers” and that  “approximately one third of all likes on antisemitic posts were on posts shared by just 10 antisemitism ‘influencers.’ 9 out of these 10 ‘antisemitism influencers’ have more followers on X than any other platform, and 6 out of the 10 are verified on X. 3 out of the 10 profit from paid subscriptions on X.”

Amid the criticism, Musk has denied accusations of antisemitism and said his priority is to make X a bastion of free speech. He visited Israel in late 2023, weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of the Jewish state, and Auschwitz in January 2024. Following the latter trip, Musk said he was “frankly naive” about antisemitism and described himself as “Jewish by association.”

The Tesla CEO and X owner vowed to wear around his neck a dog tag reading “Bring Them Home” that was given to him by a parent of one of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza until all the captives were returned home.