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Rep. Elise Stefanik, self-styled protector of Jews on the right, announces run for New York Governor
(JTA) — New York Rep. Elise Stefanik announced a run for governor Friday, as the Republican seeks to leverage her elevated profile as a vocal supporter of the Jewish community to a role in higher office.
She aims to challenge the Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul, who angered many Jews in New York with her endorsement of New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, despite his track record of Israel criticism.
In an announcement video for Stefanik’s gubernatorial run, a narrator notes that she “fought woke insanity in our schools,” as a headline referring to her campus antisemitism hearings fills the screen.
Stefanik, who is not Jewish, has been one of the loudest voices on Capitol Hill condemning antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and war in Gaza. Her relentless questioning of university presidents about the campus climate for Jews was credited with leading to the resignations of the top posts at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and others.
Many invitations to address Jewish groups followed, including the Anti-Defamation League and Yeshiva University (which awarded her the Modern Orthodox school’s highest honor over the objections of many faculty). Her newfound allyships came despite Stefanik’s past platforming of the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory, and other troublesome aspects of her history that confounded liberal Jews.
Stefanik, who seeks to become the first Republican since George Pataki to move into the governor’s mansion in Albany, seems likely to make antisemitism a main flank of her campaign. Her video attacks Hochul for the governor’s Mamdani endorsement, saying Hochul “cozied up to a defund-the-police, tax hiking, antisemitic Communist.” Hochul is facing a primary challenge from her top lieutenant, who had endorsed Mamdani much earlier in the election cycle and who is married to a Jewish filmmaker.
Among the Republican endorsements of Stefanik’s campaign the candidate retweeted Friday morning were Leo Terrell, who heads an antisemitism task force within the Trump administration, and New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish and vocally pro-Israel.
“Elise Stefanik will clean up our college campuses from the rot they have become and will confront antisemitism head on!” Vernikov wrote.
A staunch ally of President Donald Trump, Stefanik had been in line to become his ambassador to the United Nations, where she had promised to be a vocal defender of Israel. Her nomination was withdrawn in order to keep her in the House to help protect the chamber’s slim GOP majority, but Stefanik has been eyeing a bigger platform ever since.
Her announcement comes as the GOP is facing an internal civil war over right-wing antisemitism, with pundit Tucker Carlson, the head of the Heritage Foundation, and Vice President J.D. Vance among the figures taking criticism for embracing or failing to condemn antisemitic viewpoints. Stefanik was absent from this year’s Republican Jewish Coalition summit, where various speakers denounced antisemitism on the right.
The post Rep. Elise Stefanik, self-styled protector of Jews on the right, announces run for New York Governor appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine, Russia Swap 193 Prisoners of War Each in US, UAE-Facilitated Exchange
Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) react after a swap, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov
Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner of war swap on Friday, sending back 193 captured personnel each in an exchange both sides said was facilitated by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
“It is important that there are exchanges and that our people are returning home,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a post on Telegram.
His chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and Russia‘s defence ministry said the US and the UAE had assisted with the exchange.
Russia and Ukraine have conducted many prisoner swaps over four years of war, exchanging thousands of captives in total.
Zelenskiy said some of the returned captives, who included soldiers, border guards, and police, had injuries, while others had faced criminal charges in Russia.
In Ukraine, returning captives streamed off buses, many draped in their country’s flag and overwhelmed with emotion.
“It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m home, I was in captivity for three years … our Ukrainian sky, our trees — this is happiness,” said Serhiy, a soldier, who gave only his first name.
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Main Suspect in Syria’s Tadamon Massacre Arrested, Ministry Says
Residents gather in a street after Friday prayers to celebrate the arrest of Amjad Yousef, a key suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, in Tadamon, Syria, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Friday it had arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, one of the worst acts of violence attributed to the former government of Bashar al-Assad, in which 288 civilians were killed.
The ministry released footage of Amjad Yousef’s arrest in the Al-Ghab Plain area of Hama province in western Syria, near his hometown. Yousef had been hiding there since the overthrow of Assad at the end of 2024, a security source told Reuters.
US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack welcomed the arrest in a post on X, calling it an important step towards accountability for atrocities committed during Syria’s war.
DOCUMENTING THE MASSACRE
Yousef, 40, a former member of military intelligence under Assad, was thrust into the spotlight in April 2022 when the UK’s Guardian newspaper published videos provided by two academics that they said showed him forcing blindfolded civilians to run towards a pit in the Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus before shooting them.
Annsar Shahoud, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Holocaust and Genocide Center and one of the academics, spent four years documenting the massacre.
Posing as an online fangirl, Shahoud gained Yousef’s trust and ultimately obtained his confessions both on video and audio recording.
Reuters was unable to reach Yousef for comment as he has been taken into custody.
The massacre is one of the most egregious documented incidents of violence attributed to the Assad government during the 14-year bloody war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s fall at the end of 2024, civilians, media outlets and international organizations went to the site of the massacre to inspect it and interview witnesses. Locals refer to the site as “Amjad Yousef’s Pit.” It has been marked on Google Maps as “The Site of the Tadamon Massacre.”
Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighborhood committee, said victims’ families had been celebrating in the streets since morning.
“We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served,” he told Reuters.
Shahoud said she now felt safe with Yousef in custody, but added the path to justice in Syria was unclear and did not include all perpetrators.
“I feel safe now, despite the distance, because I always felt for years that this person was after me,” she told Reuters.
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Merz Floats Sanctions Relief for Iran Peace Deal, Other EU Leaders Cautious
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks during a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Feb. 4, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested on Friday that the European Union could ease sanctions on Tehran as part of a comprehensive deal that would end the Iran war, but other EU leaders struck a more cautious note.
The 27-nation EU has imposed sanctions on Iran for years, including travel bans and asset freezes for senior officials and entities, in response to human rights violations, nuclear activities, and military support for Russia.
US officials have suggested a comprehensive deal covering Iran‘s nuclear and missile programs and the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz could bring a lasting end to the US-Israeli war with Tehran, beyond the current ceasefire.
After an EU summit in Cyprus, Merz said the bloc could gradually ease sanctions on Iran in the event that a comprehensive agreement was reached.
European leaders have been largely sidelined in the current Middle East conflict but some European officials see the bloc’s sanctions as a possible way for the EU to be involved in a diplomatic solution.
“The easing of sanctions can be part of a process,” Merz told reporters after the Nicosia summit.
“No one has objected to that,” he said of the summit deliberations. “It is, so to speak, part of the contribution we can make to advance this process and, hopefully, lead to a permanent ceasefire.”
But European Council President Antonio Costa, the chair of the summit, told a press conference after the end of the meeting: “It is too early to talk about relieving any kind of sanctions.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said sanctions relief could only come after clear evidence of fundamental changes of course from Iran.
“We believe that sanctions relief should be conditional on verification of de-escalation, particularly on progress on the international effort to contain its nuclear threat, and on a change to the repression of its own people,” she told the same press conference.