The shift has included empowering and arming rivals to Hamas to play a role in aid distribution, Israeli news organizations reported on Thursday.

“Israel is acting to defeat Hamas in various ways upon the recommendation of the heads of the security establishment,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a one-line statement following the news reports.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new U.S-Israeli mechanism to deliver aid in Gaza and bypass Hamas, has been marred by upheaval since it launched last month, following more than two months of an Israeli blockade under which no aid entered Gaza. The British government threatened sanctions over the aid effort, the inaugural leader exited after complaining of limited autonomy, and a marquee consulting group backed out amid reports of dozens of Palestinians killed near the distribution sites.

Meanwhile, media coverage of the crises has ignited criticism and at least one major correction, to a Washington Post story that initially repeated Hamas’ claim that Israel was responsible for the killings.

Israel said the new effort, which launched amid warnings of widespread food shortages, was designed to ensure that Hamas terrorists would not seize supplies. But the rollout has been marred by chaos, drawing a barrage of criticism from international humanitarian groups that say its activities fall far short of meeting the massive need for food in Gaza and force residents to walk long distances across dangerous territory.

That criticism intensified after Hamas-affiliated health officials and the Red Cross reported that more than 20 people were killed at the distribution centers on Sunday and again on Tuesday. In response, the foundation, which is run by American contractors and secured by the Israeli military, said it would suspend aid distribution on Wednesday and part of Thursday.

The previous week, Boston Consulting Group, which had partnered pro-bono on the foundation’s work, said it would pull out and announced a review of its work in Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Nearly half a century ago, before he formally entered politics, Netanyahu worked as a consultant for BCG.)

The group’s exit came as the inaugural director, a U.S. military veteran named Jake Wood, resigned just hours before the first site was set to open, saying that Israel retained more control than he expected. This week, He was replaced by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian public relations executive and ally of U.S. President Donald Trump who takes partial credit for Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2018.

On his Linkedin profile, Moore describes himself as “a bridge builder and peacemaker especially known for consequential work at the intersection of faith and foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.”

He assumes the role amid mass confusion about violence at the distribution sites, where Hamas said dozens were killed in multiple incidents.

Israel initially denied killing anyone at the sites. Late Tuesday night, a military spokesperson said the IDF has not fired within the distribution areas but did fire warning shots nearby on Tuesday, and would investigate “any incident that requires review.” The spokesperson blamed Hamas for trying to “sabotage” the aid distribution and said the military would “do whatever is necessary to ensure that the aid does not fall into the hands of Hamas.”

“According to initial findings, the IDF did not fire at civilians within the aid distribution centers. Any claims to the contrary are entirely false, harm our forces and serve Hamas propaganda,” said the spokesperson, Effie Defrin. “Earlier today, IDF forces carried out warning fire approximately half a kilometer from the aid distribution center, targeting a few individuals who were approaching in a way that posed the security threat. We are not preventing Gaza residents from accessing the a distribution sites.”

But British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that his country had halted negotiations over a free trade agreement with Israel, and may apply sanctions to the country, in protest of the aid crisis and other Israeli activity, which he called “appalling and in my view counterproductive and intolerable.”

He added, speaking in the House of Commons, “We have strongly opposed the expansion of military operations and settler violence, and the blocking of humanitarian aid. … We will keep looking at further actions along with our allies, including sanctions.”

The United Nations secretary general also condemned the killings and called for an investigation. On Wednesday, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire.

The competing claims over carnage at the sites have rippled out into another controversy, as Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, accused the BBC of “tak[ing] the word of Hamas with total truth” regarding the fatalities, and then retracting its reporting — though she also said the administration was examining the claims.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry shared a clip of Leavitt’s remarks on X Tuesday, adding, “Maybe the @BBC should stop spreading fake news to vilify Israel.”

The BBC defended its coverage on Wednesday, acknowledging that it had updated estimates of the number killed on Sunday in its headline but that it had not retracted any article.

“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong. We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism,” the British network’s statement said.

But another outlet, The Washington Post, posted on X that it had corrected an article and deleted a tweet from Sunday that, it said, did not give appropriate weight to Israeli claims. The tweet had said Israeli fire had killed people at the aid site.

“The article failed to make clear if attributing the deaths to Israel was the position of the Gaza health ministry or a fact verified by The Post,” the tweet said. “The article and headline were updated on Sunday evening making it clear that there was no consensus about who was responsible for the shootings and that there was a dispute over that question.”

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Israel requires all of its Jewish citizens to enlist in the military but has carved out an exception for haredi Orthodox men in a deal dating back to the state’s early days. The draft exemption, which is not anchored in law, has sparked protest for decades that has intensified during Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, as Israeli reservists have served repeated, months-long tours. Last year, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to start drafting haredi men.

Haredi politicians have demanded that the exemption continue, but progress on a bill has stalled. Now one of the haredi parties, United Torah Judaism, has said it will pull out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which is a mix of right-wing and religious parties.

If the other haredi party, Shas, also withdraws, Netanyahu will lose his majority in parliament, which would force elections.

Netanyahu has faced crises over the haredi draft in the past and usually overcome them, though the issue has also stymied past coalitions of his.

Most Israelis, polls show, oppose his prosecution of the war in Gaza, and predict that if elections were held today, he would struggle to win another term.

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They show up, habitually, at both anti- and pro-Israel rallies, either as protesters or counter-protesters. And they reliably wear the same outfits — traditional haredi Orthodox dress combined with pro-Palestinian symbols and signs declaring that authentic Judaism rejects Zionism.

On Friday, the group appeared somewhere new: the social media pages of Humans of New York.

“People no longer accept this as being self-defense,” the attached quote says, presumably referring to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “Killing masses of little children, people don’t accept it anymore. During the holocaust [sic] our grandparents would have been delighted if people in the free world had stood up for them. But today if you stand up for the Palestinian people– who desperately need and deserve the voices of righteous people around the world– you will be labeled as a self-hating Jew. Or if you are not Jewish, you will be labeled as anti-Semitic.”

HONY is a wildly popular social media project founded in 2010 by photographer and writer Brandon Stanton that typically shares photo portraits of everyday New Yorkers, plus a brief, anonymous first-person vignette. It has nearly 30 million followers between Facebook and Instagram (more than three times the city’s population), and has gained widespread media coverage for the way it spotlights — or, well, humanizes — the struggles and triumphs of a diverse cast of the city’s denizens, many of whom live on the margins.

The Neturei Karta post departed from that model in a couple of ways.

Rather than post a portrait of a single New Yorker, it shared a photo of the group, with at least 10 men or boys visible in the photo, including one who’s facing the camera. He’s wearing a long black coat, the fur hat worn by Hasidic men that’s known as a shtreimel, and a keffiyeh-patterned scarf with tassels in the colors of the Palestinian flag.

And unlike most of the stories on HONY — which are famous for sharing intimate, tragic or heartwarming stories — this one said close to nothing about the subject’s life, except that he’s an anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew. Instead, it focused almost entirely on his stance regarding Israel, Gaza, and the pro-Israel response to pro-Palestinian protest.

“So I speak up today, not only for the oppressed and misrepresented people of Palestine,” he said. “But I also speak up for the Jewish people. The masses of Jewish people worldwide who are embarrassed and appalled by what is being done in their name.”

Neturei Karta, which has been estimated at around 100 members, has been doctrinally anti-Zionist since long before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack that launched the war in Gaza. While anti-Zionist Jewish groups have reported significant growth since the beginning of the Gaza war, according to surveys, most American Jews feel an attachment to Israel even as many disapprove of Israeli government policy.

Other, much larger Hasidic movements eschew Zionism, but Neturei Karta is unique in consistently showing up to protest Israel and adopting the language and symbols of pro-Palestinian activism.

The group’s leadership has met multiple times with the leaders of Iran, an Islamic theocracy and Israel’s chief regional adversary, including former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denied the Holocaust. The group faced particular backlash, as well as condemnation from haredi leaders, in 2007 for appearing at an Iranian conference centered on Holocaust denial.

The quote in the post, and HONY’s decision to platform it, drew immediate protest from a number of commenters.

“Is this a joke?? These people represent like 100 jews worldwide,” one wrote. Another posted, “Wow this is embarrassing tokenization. This is a tiny, extreme, and racist sect of Judaism that is rejected by nearly every Jew in America.” A third: “This post is incitement. These are the fringe of the fringe. Like a cult.”

Others praised the post, taking aim at supporters of Israel or thanking the subject of the photo for his words.

“Came here for the comments and as suspected the zionists are having a meltdown. To every Jew standing against this ethnic cleansing, thank you,” one wrote. Another wrote, “There’s a lot of genocide apologists here saying they’re unfollowing you…”

Brandon Stanton, HONY’s founder, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

HONY has spotlighted Jews before. In 2016 it profiled Jewish journalist Steven Weiss on Father’s Day. In 2021 it featured Jericho Vincent, a formerly haredi rabbinical student. In 2023, Jonathan David Rinaldi, who claimed to have fathered 12 children via sperm donation, appeared in its feed.

It has also featured posts on Jewish religious observance. A 2012 post shows a photo of a young man who appears to be Orthodox holding a lulav and etrog, the collection of four plant species used ritually on the fall festival of Sukkot.

In 2014, during a period when the account shared photos from around the world, one featured a group of people from Kav Lachayim, an Israeli organization that serves children with complex disabilities, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. That post, too, saw some commenters disparage Israel, with many others responding that HONY was not a place to litigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister who holds authority over civilian affairs in Israel’s settlements, announced the establishment of 22 settlements in the West Bank. Some are existing outposts that the Israeli government considered illegal but will now authorize. Others will be new towns.

Smotrich called the announcement a “once-in-a-generation decision” in a post on X.

“This is a great day for settlement and an important day for the state of Israel,” he wrote. “With courageous work and determined leadership we succeeded, with God’s help, to create a deep strategic change, the return of the state of Israel to a path of building, Zionism and vision.”

The next step, he wrote, was “sovereignty,” a term that connotes formal Israeli annexation of the territory or parts of it. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the decision will “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state that will endanger Israel.”

The decision comes during a period of bloodshed in the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands arrested in Israeli military operations, and dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian terror attacks, since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Reporters of settler violence have also spiked.

On Thursday morning, a newborn baby whose mother was killed in a West Bank shooting attack en route to delivering him died of his wounds.

Most of the world considers the West Bank to be occupied by Israel and considers Israeli settlements there illegal according to international law. Israel, which disputes that stance, conquered the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War; the first settlements were established there shortly afterward.

Today, roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers and some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the territory was divided into three zones:

• Area A, which includes most Palestinian cities and the bulk of the Palestinian population, is governed by the Palestinian Authority, though the Israeli military regularly conducts operations there.
• Area B is split between Palestinian civil control and Israeli military control.
• Area C — which includes the Israeli settlements — is fully controlled by Israel and covers most of the West Bank’s land area.

For decades, much of the international community has hoped for the West Bank, along with Gaza, to be the site of a future Palestinian state. In 2005, alongside its withdrawal from Gaza, Israel unilaterally evacuated a number of settlements in the northern West Bank.

But the current Israeli government is staunchly opposed to establishing a Palestinian state, and support for a two-state solution has fallen among both Israelis and Palestinians. In 2023, Israel’s government repealed the 2005 West Bank evacuation decision. A portion of the 22 settlements announced on Thursday are in the same area.

The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the announcement. The Palestinian Authority condemned it as a “dangerous escalation,” according to the BBC, and the United Kingdom also criticized it.

“The Israeli government’s approval of 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank is a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood,” tweeted Hamish Falconer, the British minister for the Middle East and North Africa. “The UK condemns these actions. Settlements are illegal under international law, further imperil the two state solution, and do not protect Israel.”

In recent years, leaders of the Israeli right have pushed for annexation of parts of the territory, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank in the past. Now, right-wing politicians are celebrating Thursday’s announcement as a step in that direction.

“The true response to terror. Settlement – sovereignty – victory,” tweeted Simcha Rothman, a far-right lawmaker, above a map of the new settlements. Orit Strouk, a fellow hardline lawmaker, posted to Facebook, “Expressing in deeds our right to the land and our obligation toward it. Continuing to correct the sin of the disengagement.”

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“Democratic Socialists of America seek to democratically transform our society and reject vigilante violence,” read the statement, posted to X Wednesday afternoon. “We condemn the murder of Israeli embassy workers. Any statement otherwise is not the stance of DSA.”

The condemnation — published nearly a week after Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were gunned down outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum — appears to refer to a post by one of the DSA’s factions, called the Liberation Caucus, endorsing the attack. That faction, which calls itself the DSA’s “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist caucus,” reposted a statement praising the shooting on Tuesday and called to “Free Elias Rodriguez,” the alleged gunman.

“As imperialism has made the entire world its battlefield, it is justified to fight it, by any means necessary, without regard for geography,” the statement said. “This holds especially true for those of us struggling behind enemy lines, inside the US, an entity that is an equal party in all crimes committed by the zionists.”

Following the Liberation Caucus tweet, New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democratic pro-Israel stalwart, tweeted, “The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has publicly endorsed the barbaric murder of a young Jewish and Israeli couple.” He does not appear to have reacted to the subsequent condemnation by the DSA.

The clash between the DSA and its Liberation Caucus reflects a broader split on the American far left over whether to praise or condemn the diplomats’ murders. The suspect, Rodriguez, is a far-left activist who allegedly shouted “Free Palestine” following the attack.

Many of the country’s most prominent progressive figures, who are often vocally critical of Israel, have joined voices from across the political spectrum in denouncing the attack and condemning antisemitism. Those include, among others, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago, where Rodriguez lived.

The DSA, a leading organization of the U.S. left, has also been vociferously critical of Israel. It endorses a boycott of Israel and was widely criticized, including by some of its leading members, for a pro-Palestinian rally it promoted the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Another group with which Rodriguez was once associated, the far-left Party for Socialism and Liberation, also said it did not support the shooting.

But some activists on the left have expressed support for the attack, saying the victims deserved to die because they worked for the Israeli government. Many of the reactions to the DSA condemnation were critical; multiple X users equated Israel to Nazi Germany. The DSA post also received criticism from pro-Israel users who regarded it as insincere or insufficient.

The Liberation Caucus does not appear to have responded directly to the DSA’s condemnation of the attack. But shortly before that condemnation was posted, the caucus tweeted that it was not representative of the whole DSA.

“Liberation is not all of DSA,” it tweeted. “DSA is comprised of many different ideological tendencies, we are just one. Right wing news outlets and individuals have chosen to take the statement we signed to portray the entire organization as holding our views — this is wrong.”

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On Thursday morning, doctors communicated that that baby had died of his wounds.

In the terror attack, near the Israeli settlement of Bruchin in the northern West Bank, a shooter fired at passing cars and killed Tzeela Gez, a Bruchin resident who was on the way to the hospital with her husband to deliver their fourth child. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors delivered the baby and then fought to save his life.

Last week, the baby was named Ravid Haim, in accordance with his mother’s wishes. Ravid Haim reportedly received his name before his brit milah, or ritual circumcision, and while still under emergency care, so that people could pray for his recovery.

In a statement Thursday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog sent the family “condolences from the depths of the heart.” He wrote on X that he spoke with the baby’s father, who was lightly wounded in the attack, last week.

“How we prayed that little Ravid could recover and live with his loving family,” Herzog added. Of the child’s father, Herzog wrote, “All the people of Israel embraces him in this difficult hour and prays that he find comfort and solace together with his children and whole family.”

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“Well, I’d like to be honest. Yes, I did,” Trump said at a press conference Wednesday, when asked whether he warned Netanyahu against disrupting the negotiations in a phone call last week. He added later that Israeli action — which he did not specify — would not be “appropriate” with diplomacy ongoing.

He said a deal would “save a lot of lives.”

In his comments, Trump did not directly speak of an Israeli attack, but repeatedly said that he preferred dismantling Iran’s nuclear program without bloodshed. His comments appear to confirm reporting in The New York Times Wednesday morning about tensions between Netanyahu and Trump over how to confront Iran, which has been weakened from prior exchanges of fire with Israel.

Like prior reporting, the Times story said Netanyahu has been pushing for an attack and — after being rebuffed by Trump — may choose to bomb Iran without American support, and with little advance warning to Washington. It is the latest wedge between Netanyahu and Trump, fellow right-wing leaders who were once seen as close allies but who now appear to be out of sync on a number of key issues.

Trump has called for an end to the war in Gaza; Netanyahu gave a fiery speech in parliament Wednesday claiming — contrary to a series of polls — that most Israelis support his push for “total victory” over Hamas. Trump cut a deal with the Houthis, a terror group in Yemen that has since bombed Israel several times. When Netanyahu visited the Oval Office last month, Trump declined to lift U.S. tariffs on Israel — and announced direct negotiations with Iran.

In an official statement, Netanyahu’s office called the Times article “fake news.” But now, the Iran talks are causing further friction. Trump has touted an announcement of progress toward a deal in the coming days — though Iran is insisting on the right to continue enriching uranium while the United States is reportedly insisting that Iran cease all enrichment. The talks are being led by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s chief negotiator who is also the American point person in negotiations over the Gaza war and the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu waged a vehement, ubiquitous campaign a decade ago against the Iran nuclear deal inked by President Barack Obama. He has not gone public in the same way against Trump’s potential agreement. But he has said the only acceptable agreement would be one that sees forces “blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment, under American supervision and carried out by America.”

Trump said in the press conference Wednesday that he would like to see Iran’s nuclear facilities dismantled — but without anyone being killed. Without using the word “attack,” he implied that he suggested to Netanyahu not to strike Iran.

“It’s not a warning. I said, I don’t think it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “I just said, I don’t think it’s appropriate. We’re having very good discussions with them and, I said, I don’t think it’s appropriate right now.”

He added, “We can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab but nobody’s going to be in the lab as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right? Two ways of doing it. Yeah, I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution.”

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“I do not condemn the elimination of the Zionist officials who worked at the Israeli embassy last night,” Christensen, a Gen-Z influencer who goes by YourFavoriteGuy on TikTok, said in a video posted Thursday.

“I want to urge you first to support Elias’ actions,” he added later, referencing the alleged shooter. “He is not a terrorist. He’s a resistance fighter, and the fact is that the fight against Israel’s war machine, against their genocide machine, against their criminality, includes their foreign diplomats in this country.”

The video represented a reversal for Christensen, who had earlier posted a video condemning the murders. The video supporting the attack later disappeared from TikTok and Instagram. He appeared to suggest that the platform had removed it: “also tiktok banned my vid LOL,” he wrote on a subsequent post.

With the video, Christensen joined a growing collection of voices openly supporting the attack. He may be the one with the largest audience.

For nearly all of the time since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack and the war it launched in Gaza, Christensen has been a constant, vocal pro-Palestinian activist. In a November 2023 essay, penned when he was still in high school, he wrote that that support began when he discovered “more than what the media was telling me.”

Since then, videos condemning Israel and voicing support for Palestinians have populated his feed — and helped him rack up followers in the process. In the video supporting the murders, Chirstensen — as in many of his videos — was decked out in pro-Palestinian paraphrenalia. He wore a keffiyeh as well as a shirt that appeared to say “Jesus was a Palestinian.” A Palestinian flag hung behind him.

In his initial denunciation of the attack — which killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a young couple who were attending an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee — Christensen said, “I don’t support the slaughter of civilians. That’s not the way to go about it and bring justice.”

In the earlier video, he made clear that he still condemned the victims’ activities and affiliations — just not their murders. “These people deserve to be tried and punished and sentenced to jail for their facilitation of this genocide,” he said.

He spent much of the video predicting that the attack would lead to a government crackdown on pro-Palestinian activists, which he compared to Kristallnacht, the mass Nazi pogrom that is considered by many to be the beginning of the Holocaust.

Some of Christensen’s followers said they agreed with that stance. But others rejected it. Many made the case that they believed that the attack had been a “false flag” operation perpetrated by supporters of Israel to galvanize opposition to pro-Palestinian activism.

Similar comments were unfolding across the internet on Thursday. Pro-Palestinian activists and groups that denounced the shooting drew a flurry of rebuttals: “Condemn yourselves,” one popular account responded to Jewish Voice for Peace’s post decrying the attack on X.

News stories related to the shooting, meanwhile, saw fights play out in their comments section. When the news site Block Club Chicago reported on a search of the alleged gunman’s apartment, for example, several responses included requests for Rodriguez’s legal defense fund. The progressive radio show “Democracy Now” elicited comments likening Rodriguez to Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare in December — reflecting a trend peeking out across the internet.

Amid this context, by Thursday night, about a day after the murders, Christensen reversed course.

“Israel has livestreamed a genocide to the entire world the last two years,” he said regarding the war that began 19 months ago with Hamas’ invasion. “And you cannot expect to do such a thing in this world without the people standing up to fight, to stop you in any way they can, to resist against you, and that is exactly what happened.”

Like some who have praised the attack, Christensen denied that it was antisemitic by citing Lischinsky’s self-identification as a Christian. (Lischinsky had posted that he was Christian, and appears to have affiliated as a Messianic Jew, a movement that couples Jewish practices with belief in Jesus as the messiah — an idea considered incompatible with Judaism by all Jewish denominations.)

“Do not let yourself be fooled by the media, by the Zionists in this country who are telling you that this was an antisemitic terrorist attack,” he said. “It was not. First of all, the man who was assassinated was a Christian Zionist, proclaiming it so on his social media. He spent his days working at the Israeli Embassy fighting to maintain Israel’s genocide and support for that genocide in this country.”

Chirstensen continued, ”He is a war criminal, and the same is true for the woman. This was not because they were Jewish, it was because they were Zionists.”

(On Friday afternoon, he posted a “disclaimer” video where he said the following: “Since Zionists on Twitter are going rabid over what I just posted, I just want to disclaim that I’m not suicidal, I would never make a threat that would jeopardize my position to influence and educate people about the atrocity and evils that Zionism is currently bringing down upon the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza. I hate Nazis and I hate Zionists, so I don’t have a problem with you much if you’re not one of those things.”)

He spent much of his video supporting the attack reading the entirety of a manifesto that appears to have been posted by the gunman, titled “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.” In a subsequent video, he expressed fear that pro-Israel activists would spur a federal investigation of him.

After reading the document, Christensen reiterated the reversal of his condemnation of the attack, comparing himself to Luke Skywalker, the protagonist of the Star Wars franchise.

Condemning the attack, he said, would be like “condemning Luke Skywalker for attacking the Death Star because the Empire might crack down on the resistance.”

He then signed off.

“We must meet with escalation and stronger resistance,” he said. “I hope my retracted condemnation does not allow our government to condemn me to a cell. But I don’t know. Follow my page for more. Thank you and free Palestine.”

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The request is one of several made by the coalition in the wake of the attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday, when a shooter killed two employees of the Israeli embassy. In the wake of the shooting, Jewish security analysts are assessing what went wrong, and how such attacks can be prevented in the future.

One piece of that prevention, says the Jewish groups’ statement, is more government funding.

“The apparently targeted attack on individuals attending an event at a Jewish museum and hosted by a Jewish organization represents an elevation in the threat level to the Jewish community, broadly, at a time of already heightened threats and issues,” the statement says, adding that the threat “requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger.”

The statement was signed by groups representing the Orthodox, Conservative and Reform movements, as well as organizations including the Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Zionist Organization of America, the National Council of Jewish Women, Hillel International and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The lead signatory was the American Jewish Committee, which hosted the event at the museum.

They call for an increase to $1 billion for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which funds security for religious institutions and has historically funded a broad range of synagogues, Jewish community centers and Jewish day schools. There are annual negotiations over the size of the NSGP allocation, which was less than $300 million in 2024, and which was frozen for a time this year amid the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal government.

Jewish New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, in 2023 proposed an increase to $1 billion.

The statement also calls for the government to “dedicate funding to meet the urgent need for additional security personnel at Jewish institutions,” as well as for increased police funding.

The statement said the attack was “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

It called for more government emphasis on fighting hate crimes and monitoring domestic terrorism. It also called on the government to hold “social media, gaming, messaging, and other online platforms accountable for amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement.”

In recent years, social media platforms including Facebook and X, which is owned by senior Trump administration official Elon Musk, have loosened their restrictions on hate speech.

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Ten minutes earlier, Mejd had trawled Lischinsky’s profile on X, where the Israeli embassy staffer had posted a stream of Israeli diplomatic talking points — that Hamas is the main obstacle to aid distribution in Gaza, that the group embeds among civilians and that international law courts trying Israel are illegitimate.

For Mejd, that was enough to conclude that Lischinsky “loved baby murder.” He added, “Lol I dont feel sorry for this freak rest in piss.”

The post has been shared dozens of times. As of 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, it has 11,000 views.

Mejd’s post may have been one of the first to justify the murder of two Israeli embassy employees at a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. Wednesday night, but it was hardly the most popular. Some who have used the “Free Palestine” slogan the shooter repeated, or that once had ties to him, are disavowing him under criticism from pro-Israel activists. But a range of hardline pro-Palestinian social media accounts are praising the attack or paying homage to the man who allegedly committed it, Elias Rodriguez.

“The Israeli embassy workers were not murdered for being Jewish, this is a ridiculous lie to fear monger,” read one tweet that has been reposted hundreds of times. “They were targeted because they are cogs in a genocidal machine. They served a government openly planning to expel 2 million people from their homes.”

Another said: “Anyone who supports or is a party to the injustice, suffering, & genocide that Palestinians have been subjected to deserves zero empathy from me. If they’re put down I will celebrate it just as I would’ve celebrated in 1945 when Hitler’s brain matter hit the wall of his bunker.”

The name of that X profile is “More Elias, More Rodney, More Luigi.” The latter name is a reference to Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing a UnitedHealthcare executive in New York City. The “Free Luigi” movement that swelled in the wake of that murder, celebrating it as an act of resistance against an unjust system,  is now seeing hints of being replicated for Rodriguez.

“We all gonna have the same energy for Elias Rodriguez that we did for Luigi,” posted one TikTok user. “No one is untouchable. FREE PALESTINE.”

Several $ELIAS meme coins, or fad cryptocurrencies, have already been created — and have been skyrocketing since Wednesday night. Such coins are often a ploy to make quick money and frequently decrease in value soon after they appear. In one recent example, Mo Khan, who was involved in an antisemitic sign recently being paraded through a Philadelphia bar, later received payment in the form of another antisemitic meme coin, called $JPROOF.

To be sure, the celebrations of Rodriguez — and the shooting — are on the fringe, and are hardly the first time an attacker has been celebrated for their bloodshed. Far-right groups celebrate the gunmen in the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. The man who killed six people at a California university in 2014 is a hero in misogynist “incel” circles.

Voices across the spectrum have condemned Wednesday’s shooting of Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, including some of the most prominent pro-Palestinian politicians. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wrote that he was “horrified” by the shooting and denounced antisemitism.

So did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted, “Absolutely nothing justifies the murder of innocents,” and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who said she was “appalled by the deadly shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum last night.”

One organization to which Rodriguez once belonged also distanced itself.

“We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the DC shooting,” tweeted the far-left Party for Socialism and Liberation. “Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.”

The group also said a bumper sticker calling to “exterminate Zionists,” and bearing its name, was “a fake.”

The group’s post opposing the shooting drew backlash from pro- and anti-Israel voices alike. Israel advocates pointed to instances when the group had called for “intifada,” a term referring to violent Palestinian uprisings.

Another user had a different take.

“Lmao,” tweeted an account named “oct 7th enjoyer.” “Of course they would distance themselves from the very best thing any of their members, past or present, has ever accomplished.”

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Two people were shot dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where the American Jewish Committee was hosting an event.

Both of the people killed were staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington, according to Jewish and public officials. One was identified as Yaron Lischinsky, a researcher in the embassy’s political department who moved to Israel from Germany as a teenager.

The shooting took place after 9 p.m. on Wednesday and the victims were a man and a woman who were about to be engaged, Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter said at a press conference Wednesday night.

Police are questioning a suspect they identified as Elias Rodriguez, who they believe was solely responsible. Rodriguez, 30 and a resident of Chicago, approached a group of people and fired shots, according to police. He then entered the museum, where he was detained.

Rodriguez chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” after being detained, D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a press conference. Video from inside the museum showed a handcuffed man shouting the chant while being led away.

Smith said there was no intelligence ahead of the event indicating that there would be an attack. She also said Rodriguez was unknown to D.C. police. The FBI is investigating whether the shooting is a hate crime and an act of terrorism.

The event was held by the American Jewish Committee, which had advertised a cocktail event for young Jewish professionals and diplomats on Wednesday. Its website said the location would be provided to those who registered, a practice that many Jewish groups have adopted at a time of high alert, including over the threat of protests against the war Israel is fighting against Hamas in Gaza.

“We are devastated that an unspeakable act of violence took place outside the venue,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement. “At this moment, as we await more information from the police about exactly what transpired, our attention and our hearts are solely with those who were harmed and their families.”

The shooting comes amid reports of surging antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that initiated the war in Gaza. American Jewish leaders and Israeli officials connected the shooting to that surge.

“People who think that they’re going to address whatever issues they have about Israel through violent behavior directed at Jewish audiences, Jewish people — this is just pure antisemitism,” Eric Fingerhut, the president and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, said in an interview.

“There’s no question that especially since Oct. 7, the outrageous anti-Israel activities that have occurred across this country have contributed to an incitement of antisemitic violence,” Fingerhut added. “This is clearly evidence of it.”

The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, called the shooting “a depraved act of anti-Semitic terrorism” in a statement.

“Harming the Jewish community is crossing a red line,” he said. “We are confident that the U.S. authorities will take strong action against those responsible for this criminal act. Israel will continue to act resolutely to protect its citizens and representatives – everywhere in the world.”

The shooting represents the first fatal attack at an American Jewish institution in several years. The worst antisemitic attack in U.S. history occurred in 2018, when a gunman killed 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The following year saw three more fatal attacks on a synagogue in California, a kosher supermarket in New Jersey and a rabbi’s house in New York.

Since then, and including over the last 19 months since Oct. 7 and the start of the war in Gaza, Jewish institutions have bolstered their security. The Capital Jewish Museum, which opened in 2023, had just gotten a security grant from Washington, D.C. this week. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the city would consult with local Jewish institutions to ensure that they are safe after the shooting.

Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted that she was “on the scene of the horrible shooting” along with U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. The Trump administration has called fighting antisemitism a top priority.

“We’ll be doing everything in our power to keep all citizens safe, especially tonight our Jewish community,” Bondi said at the press conference. “We will follow the facts, we will follow the law and this defendant, if charged, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

Fingerhut said his organization would also continue to find ways to strengthen security. “The security of the Jewish community has been and remains the top priority of the Jewish federation system,” he said. “The risks have continued to rise as antisemitism has risen and as anti-Israel behavior in America has risen and our security teams have worked so hard to keep up with that. They obviously didn’t succeed tonight but we will not stop until we’ve ensured the security of our community.”

Lischinsky wrote on what appears to be his LinkedIn profile that he supported “expanding the circle of peace with our Arab neighbors” and added, “To this end, I advocate for interfaith dialogue and intercultural understanding.”

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In his first press conference in months, the Israeli prime minister also said for the second time this week that Israel would allow aid to enter Gaza in order to avert a humanitarian crisis. But he rebuffed calls to end the war, to step down or to take responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. He denied reports of a split between Israel and the United States, calling such reports “fake” and that the two countries were in “full alignment” on U.S. talks with Iran. 

The press conference came as Netanyahu has been buffeted by pressures foreign and domestic. Within Israel, the Supreme Court ruled against the prime minister shortly before he spoke, saying that he had inappropriately fired the head of the Shin Bet security service.

Meanwhile, international anger is increasing over starvation in Gaza, which has grown more dire as Israel blocked the entry of aid for more than two months. U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly eager for the war to be brought to a close. And polls show that most Israelis want to end the war with a deal that frees the nearly 60 remaining hostages, of whom at least 20 of whom are alive. 

This week, Netanyahu’s government proceeded in the opposite direction and escalated the war in Gaza, launching an operation to conquer and occupy the enclave. Netanyahu defended the operation, saying it would lead to an Israeli victory. 

“At the end of this move, all of the territories of the Gaza strip will be under Israeli security control and Hamas will be completely defeated,” he said. 

Netanyahu added that he would agree to a “temporary” ceasefire in order to free some of the hostages. But he said the war could only come to a complete end after a series of conditions were met, many of which Israel has pursued over 19 months of war since the Oct. 7 attack:

• The hostages are released to Israel
• Hamas lays down its weapons and surrenders
• Its leaders are expelled from Gaza
• Gaza is demilitarized
• The “Trump plan” is implemented

“I am ready to end the war with clear conditions that will ensure the security of Israel,” he said, adding that he was under “tremendous pressure” to end the war sooner. 

He said the “Trump plan” was “such a correct plan — and so revolutionary. It says something simple: Residents of Gaza who want to leave can leave.”

In fact, Trump has at various times called for Gaza to be completely depopulated and for the United States to “take over” the territory. In recent weeks, Trump hasn’t emphasized the plan, instead calling for the war to end and reaching a deal, without Israeli involvement, to free American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander.

Netanyahu claimed that ending the war now would position Hamas to attack in the future, “in striking distance” of Israel. 

“Everyone calling on us to end the fighting before these goals are met is essentially calling to leave Hamas in power,” he said. “And what does that mean? It means all of our achievements and all of the sacrifice of our brave fighters will come to nothing.”

Netanyahu also said his decision to let humanitarian aid into Gaza, after months of shutting it out, was motivated by international pressure and a desire to continue the war. 

He outlined a three-part plan that would see aid enter Gaza immediately, followed by a system in which American companies would distribute aid directly to Gaza civilians under Israeli protection. He said Israel would then create a “sterile area” in southern Gaza where civilians could enter and receive full humanitarian assistance. 

“In order to maintain our freedom of operation and allow our closest friends to keep supporting us, we need to prevent a humanitarian crisis,” he said. He said supporters of Israel in the U.S. Senate had encouraged him to continue the war, but added that they said, “We cannot accept a situation of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Humanitarian groups have criticized the new Israeli aid plan as woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the 2 million residents of Gaza. Three allies of Israel — the United Kingdom, France and Canada — said they would take “concrete actions” if Israel did not start allowing aid into the territory. 

Reporters at the press conference quoted back to Netanyahu previous instances when he had said Israel was on the verge of winning the war. The prime minister refused to give a timeline for the end of the war, saying only, “It won’t take a year and a half, I promise you.”

Netanyahu also drew criticism after the press conference for having said that “nothing” had happened on Oct. 7 at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, where the IDF was relatively successful in repelling Hamas. Four members of the kibbutz were killed while fighting with terrorists that day, and the kibbutz called for a correction as well as a state inquiry into the events of the day. Netanyahu’s office soon said that he “regrets that his comments regarding Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha were misunderstood.”

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Golan is the most prominent voice in a growing chorus of Israelis who supported the war against Hamas following its Oct. 7, 2023, attack, but are now calling for the fighting to end while airing concerns about Israeli atrocities in Gaza. That mounting critique comes amid a storm of international condemnation of Israel’s decision to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. This week, Israel began to allow some aid to enter.

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state among the nations, what South Africa once was, if it doesn’t return to acting like a sane country,” Golan, leader of the left-wing Israeli Democratic Party, which has been rising in the polls, said on Tuesday morning. “And a sane country doesn’t conduct a war on civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby, and doesn’t set goals for itself of expelling a population.”

Golan’s remarks are especially significant because he is a former deputy chief of staff of Israel’s military. He gained widespread admiration in Israel for driving into the fighting on Oct. 7, singlehandedly rescuing people and killing Hamas terrorists.

Israel’s leaders attacked his comments, accusing him of fomenting antisemitism and besmirching Israel as well as the military he once helped lead.

“I strongly condemn Yair Golan’s wild incitement against our heroic soldiers and against the State of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and our soldiers are fighting in a campaign for our very existence.”

Netanyahu, who leads a hardline right-wing government, added, “Golan and his friends on the radical Left are echoing the most contemptible antisemitic blood libels against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel. There is no limit to the moral rot.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a center-left politician whose current position is meant to be above the political fray, called Golan’s comments “a severe and false slander” and a “red line.”

“Our daughters and sons are now at the front,” he tweeted. “Defending us — the nation, the state. They left their hobbies as well as their families, jobs and lives at home.”

In the firestorm, the World Jewish Congress cancelled a private talk Golan was scheduled to give to members of the organization.

Golan’s base acknowledged that his rhetoric might have gone too far when he suggested that killing babies was a “hobby” but said he had articulated a powerful and distressing reality that needed to be acknowledged. “Yair Golan spoke a truth that is uncomfortable to the Israeli ear,” the liberal newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial. “That is the most accurate explanation for the attack on MK Yair Golan from nearly the entire political spectrum.”

Golan responded later in the day — by doubling down in a much longer attack on the government’s management of the war. He clarified multiple times that his criticism was aimed at Israel’s leaders, not its soldiers. And — citing officials who have called for starvation or mass killing in Gaza — he compared the Israeli government to a Hamas mouthpiece.

“The war in Gaza began as a determined, strong and correct response to Hamas’ abominable attack, a just and necessary war to safeguard Israel’s security,” he tweeted on Tuesday evening. But he said the war had become, “due to this failing government, a war with no national or security purpose.”

He made clear that he would not apologize. “We cannot be afraid anymore. We owe that to the hostages. To the combat soldiers in the field. To Israel’s citizens, who deserve courageous leadership,” he wrote. “Our mission is to make sure Israel stays a sane country that doesn’t kill children either as a hobby or as a policy.”

He added, “A government that says we can abandon hostages and need to starve children is a government that sounds like a Hamas spokesman.”

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But when Adam Boehler spoke to a room full of Israel advocates on Monday, he was met with a warm welcome — even as he gave a full-throated defense of the talks with the Palestinian terror group and other groups holding captives.

“My role, as you may imagine, is focused on hostages around the world,” said Boehler, the Trump administration’s lead negotiator on American hostages, at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York City on Monday. “You may imagine the other side of that are generally not good people. They’re taking hostages. And so, for me, I think of it as my job to engage with people that in general are not good people.”

Boehler, who is Jewish, came to the conference on a wave of success: Last week, the Trump administration and Hamas negotiated the release of Edan Alexander, the last living Israeli-American hostage. Calling President Donald Trump a “peacemaker,” Boehler made the case for more negotiations and said the United States would be open to talking to Hamas again.

“What I find is any direct engagement, any engagement, is not weakness,” he said. “It does not mean you accept something or you let people off the hook.”

He added, “If Hamas wants to come forward and make a very legitimate offer that they’re willing to stand by, and release hostages, we’re always willing to listen to that.”

His appearance came as negotiations over another ceasefire and hostage deal are ongoing, and at a time when Trump has joined the calls for an end to the war that includes the captives’ release. Israel has also escalated its military campaign in Gaza — which Boehler, contrary to what many believe, credited with making a deal more likely. He said “the main force holding back a deal is Hamas,” which drew cheers.

“I do think we’re closer than we ever were, and part of that is because of movement that the IDF in Israel did on the ground,” he said.

He added later:

I think that Trump would love to be in a situation where these hostages are home. That doesn’t mean that Israel’s security needs to be compromised. There are two very different things, while they’re related because one could do it the wrong way. There are plenty of ways that we can think of to make sure that Israel is always strong, and its security is never compromised. And we push towards something that gets people home.

Boehler also nodded to the main argument of the Israeli government — that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in power in the Gaza Strip, which has previously been a key reason ceasefire talks have failed.

“I think even they know, at this point, there’s not an immediate political future,” Boehler said. “It would be crazy, right? You can’t have people that go in and murder people come over. There’s no equation that has that.”

Boehler also spoke to the case of another Israeli hostage who was taken months before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack — Elizabeth Tsurkov, a researcher who was taken hostage earlier that year in Iraq by the militant group Kataib Hezbollah (separate from the Lebanese terror group).

He called on the group to release her, threatening a military response if they do not, and for the Iraqi government to work harder on the issue.

“I think they were doing clearly not enough. I think they’ve stepped up efforts,” he said of the Iraqi government.

Regarding the group holding Tsurkov, he said, “They’re the only one that’s not in a world of hurt on the extremist side right now. That attention is going to turn eventually, and I think it is in their best interest to release her now, not to wait, because I think what you’re going to see if they wait is, they’re going to see the same thing that Hamas saw, the same thing that Hezbollah saw.”

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Culture Minister Miki Zohar, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, made the comments onstage at the Jerusalem Post conference in New York City on Monday. The comments come as Israel has embarked on a broad offensive in Gaza that aims to conquer and occupy the territory — an escalation of its 19-month military campaign there after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“We are going to change the game,” Zohar said. “Israeli is going to annex land and to create a buffer zone, and we’re not going anywhere until all of our hostages are coming back home.”

Zohar is the latest member of Israel’s cabinet to discuss Israel taking over parts of Gaza. Far-right ministers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have called on Israel to occupy the territory and establish settlements there, and some Israelis have shown an eagerness to move into Gaza if they are permitted to do so.

Zohar is not a member of Israel’s security cabinet, the high-level group that votes on the course of the war. He portrayed the campaign as a means to pressure Hamas to surrender. Polls show that a sizable majority of Israelis support a deal that ends the war and releases the hostages.

“If we annex land, we’re going to stay there, we’re not going to leave, and if we stay there Hamas cannot come back,” Zohar said. “So Hamas needs to understand. if you want us out of Gaza, bring out all of the hostages back home and leave Gaza for good. These are the two things that will end the war.”

Zohar said he believed the Trump administration was receptive to that strategy. In recent days, the White House has negotiated the release of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, and Trump has called for the release of the rest of the hostages and an end to the war.

“They know about it and I think they respect that position of Israel,” Zohar said of the administration. “We trust Donald Trump, we trust him, and we know that President Trump will always support Israel.”

But Zohar indicated that international pressure did affect Israel’s decisions on one area of the war: the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel said it would begin allowing some aid into Gaza on Monday after two months of blocking it, something Zohar said was necessary for Israel to be able to keep fighting. Netanyahu suggsated on Monday that international pressure played a role in the decision to allow aid in.

“First of all, we still have hostages there — they are in a very, very bad situation and Hamas doesn’t care about them… We think that they need to come back before we can give humanitarian support,” Zohar said.

He added, “We don’t want hunger in Gaza because hunger in Gaza could end the war, because if people will start dying there from hunger, it will be a big problem to Israel to continue the war and to finish the job.”

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In remarks after the race, Shwartzman signaled opposition to the war in Gaza and called for peace between nations.

Shwartzman, 25, won the leading spot at Indianapolis Speedway by achieving the fastest four-lap average in the final day of qualifying races on Sunday.

Pole position is no guarantee of a victory, but if Shwartzman prevails, he would be the first Jew to win the race since Hall-of-Famer Mauri Rose won three times in 1941, 1947 and 1948. Israeli racer Alon Day also competed in Indy races more than a decade ago.

Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shwartzman raced internationally before entering the Indy series and identified as a Russian racer before the country’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters after the race on Sunday, he called broadly for peace.

“Representing Israel, I just want to believe that for all the people, they realize that what is going on generally, let’s say, I’m not supporting it,” he said. “I just want peace in the world. I want people to be good and i don’t want the separation of countries, saying this is bad country, this is good country. There is no bad or good. We’re all human beings and we just have to support each other and respect each other.”

He also expressed hope for a major race to be held in in Israel.

“It would be amazing if we would go to Israel, honestly,” Shwartzman said in response to a question about that possibility. “Obviously, I’m not in control of it. It’s just, again, a dream, but like you said, it’s definitely an amazing idea to have a racetrack in Israel where we can do an international race.”

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Later, when asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can free the remaining hostages held captive by Hamas, Trump said, “I don’t know. We’re going to find out pretty soon. We’re going to know pretty soon. They’re not in good shape.”

Trump’s statement on starvation in Gaza comes as aid groups have warned of a dire crisis and encroaching famine in the war-torn enclave, where Israel has blocked the entry of humanitarian assistance since it resumed its war against Hamas two months ago. Now, Israel and the United States are embarking on a new plan to deliver aid that they say will avoid supplying Hamas. Aid groups have criticized the pan as insufficient to meet the enclave’s needs.

Speaking at an event in the United Arab Emirates, Trump said the United States would help solve the crisis.

“We’re going to handle a couple of situations that you have here, we have some very serious situations,” he said. “And we’re looking at Gaza and we’ve got to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving. There’s a lot of bad things going on.”

His comments come days after The New York Times reported that Israeli military officers who oversee Gaza’s humanitarian situation said the territory is close to running out of food.

Upon news of Hamas’ release of Edan Alexander, the last living American-Israeli hostage it held captive, Trump expressed a desire for the war to end with a deal that releases all the hostages.

That release came days after Israel adopted a plan to conquer and occupy Gaza, and on Friday, the Israeli military said it had bombed more than 150 targets over the past 24 hours. Palestinian officials in the Hamas-run territory said more than 75 people were killed.

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Cohen, who has long been a vocal progressive activist and lately a harsh critic of Israel, was part of a group that interrupted testimony Wednesday by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of health and human services. Other protesters called out Kennedy, but Cohen yelled, “Congress pays for bombs that kill children in Gaza” before being removed by Capitol Police.

As he was being escorted out with his hands bound behind his back, Cohen extended his criticism of U.S. military assistance for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, connecting it to health care in the United States.

“Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S.,” he said. “They need to let food into Gaza. They need to let food in to starving kids.”

Humanitarian groups are raising alarm about encroaching famine in Gaza, where Israel has obstructed the entry of aid for two months. It is on the verge of launching a new, controversial U.S.-approved plan to distribute food there.

Domestically, Republicans in Congress are advancing a bill that would cut Medicaid funding. A bipartisan bill that provided billions in military aid to Israel passed under the Biden administration, before the much larger Medicaid cuts were on the table.

Ben & Jerry’s drew backlash from a range of Jewish groups in 2021 when it announced it would stop selling its ice cream in what it termed “occupied Palestinian territory.” Cohen and his co-founder Jerry Greenfield, who no longer control the company, supported the decision, citing their Jewish identities. Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, later effectively reversed the decision.

Cohen has since escalated his criticism of Israel, and recently was a guest on the talk show of far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, where he spoke out against American militarism and said, “There seems to be some kind of strange relationship between Israel and the U.S., where, I don’t know, Israel now has the U.S. supplying weapons for its genocide.”

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He’s not alone.

More than 19 months after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which launched the war in Gaza, calls are mounting for the war to end, even among those who once supported it.

Trump has said he wants an end to the war. Polls of Israelis consistently show that most prefer a negotiated end to the fighting that releases the remaining hostages. Polling of American Jews indicates that most do not support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to continue the war. A poll of Palestinians last year found only a minority — and just 36% in Gaza — support “armed struggle.”

Still, the fighting has gone on. So we asked a collection of experts — Israelis, American Jews and Palestinians from across the political spectrum — to describe a realistic pathway to ending the war. Here’s what they said.

Some responses have been edited for length. 

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, head of Realign For Palestine, the Atlantic Council

The tacticalization of this war has devolved into an utter disaster for both the Palestinian civilian population and, very likely, the surviving Israeli hostages that remain in Hamas’s captivity…

What is desperately needed is to introduce new players on the ground beyond Israel and Hamas; that would entail the immediate formation of a joint Arab, and international policing force with the involvement of elements of the Palestinian Authority’s security services to go into zones currently held by the Israeli military inside the Strip.

Simply pulling out the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip without any viable alternative to hold those zones will automatically mean the return of what remains of Hamas to controlling the lives of 2 million Palestinian residents of the territory.

The war must end immediately… And there must be an immediate activation of small beachheads throughout Gaza to create Hamas-free zones from which the Strip’s recovery and hopefully, political transformation and rejuvenation in the transitional period can begin.

Dahlia Scheindlin, Israeli political analyst and Haaretz columnist

There is a realistic pathway to ending the war and it’s called the original [U.S. envoy Steve] Witkoff-brokered agreement, which Israel broke. The government now says it wants to go back to that, but I believe this refers to the bastard version — revised after Israel broke the first — which was stillborn.

Why did Israel break the first [ceasefire, in March]? It’s a reasonable pathway forward. I suppose there’s no way around the reality that the Trump administration holds all the cards for pushing the sides back to that.

Dan Shapiro, former ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama

Trump helped create this problem with his unserious Gaza Riviera proposal. That tempted the far right in Israel to think he would support Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. Coming out of his cozy meetings in the Gulf and skipping Israel, that seems unlikely.

The priority, as most Israelis believe, should be to get all the hostages home with their families. Edan Alexander’s release could be used as momentum for a larger deal that brings everyone home and ends hostilities. That deal should be coupled with a commitment from Arab states to use their financial, political and military assets to exile Hamas leaders and fighters from Gaza and destruction of their weapons as a condition for Gaza’s reconstruction. Trump needs to use the goodwill he now has in the Arab world to get the Arab states to step up to that responsibility.

David Friedman, former ambassador to Israel under Trump

Other than militarily, I’m not aware of any means to force Hamas out of Gaza. And if Hamas doesn’t leave, the trauma of Oct. 7 will just recur every five years or so (perhaps even more often). In other words, Israel will effectively have conceded that it cannot protect its citizens.

That would be untenable — something unacceptable to any nation. I believe that Hamas can be and must be eradicated. And I think there is beginning to emerge a means to do that while offering protection to civilians: The humanitarian aid and safe zone plan proposed by Israel and the United States.

It’s a path that I believe Israel must take (and one I believe most Israelis support when the issue is properly presented). By the way, I believe that President Trump endorses that approach.

Einat Wilf, author and former member of Knesset

The question is not whether one wants the war to end. That is easy and obvious. The question is how? Will this war end with Hamas and its ideology in control of all of Gaza’s territory? With billions of dollars flowing in?

Or will it end, as it should, with the unconditional release of hostages, surrender of Hamas, and the beginning of a process to transform the destructive ideology of Palestinianism into one that wants to build for the Arabs rather than destroy what the Jews have built?

Perhaps a viable path would be to designate an area in Gaza where, absent collective Gazan and Palestinian and Hamas surrender, individuals would be able to surrender. This would be the only area where Israel supplies [aid] — the rest will be a war zone for those who refuse to surrender…

Ultimately, moments of destruction and ruin, both in personal and collective lives, can become moments of growth and transformation, but only if one accepts the connection between the ideology and attitudes that led to the destruction and ruin.

Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman

The agonizing debate is about whether this is the Last Gaza War, or the Penultimate Gaza War. Many think it’s now or never to bring down the regime threatening more 10/7s. Many others say Hamas has checkmated us with the hostage crisis, let’s pay the ransom and bring down Hamas later.

But nobody thinks we can reconcile with this jihadist regime controlling Gaza again. Israelis understand that if we end the war to free the hostages, the next war is a matter of time. You can’t sweep the problem under the rug.

Ghaith al-Omari, senior fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Given political dynamics on both sides, it is unlikely that domestic public opinion will bring about a quick end to the war. External intervention will probably be needed. On the Israeli side, a clear position from President Trump regarding ending the war will certainly impact Netanyahu’s calculus.

But the administration will only call for an end of the war if Israel’s key demands that Hamas releases the hostages, is disarmed and is no longer in charge of Gaza – possibly through the exile of its leaders from the Strip — are met.

The only way to pressure Hamas into making these moves is for an explicit, unified demand from key Arab states, including Hamas’ backers in Qatar. Given the tremendous credit the president has accrued in his current visit to the Gulf, the United States may be well poised to coordinate such a position from Arab states.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president, J Street

This week’s freeing of Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity demonstrates that diplomacy is the only path forward to end the war and guarantee the safe release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza.

The Israeli government and Hamas should reach an immediate agreement to end the fighting, release the hostages and surge aid into Gaza. Then, Israel needs to agree to a plan for post-war governance, security and redevelopment with its Arab neighbors that paves the way to full regional normalization, long-term security and Palestinian statehood.

It is time for President Trump and the Gulf states to lean in and use the leverage necessary to bring this war to an end, to get the hostages home and to get aid to the people of Gaza.  Enough is enough.

Morton Klein, president, Zionist Organization of America

The war against Islamic Arab Hamas terrorists must continue until all the hostages are released and Hamas completely destroyed and dismantled. We support the Trump/Netanyahu plan to improve the lives of the Hamas supporting Gazans by relocating them in Egypt, Jordan, Libya or elsewhere or at least secure a major buffer zone between Israel and Gaza. Southern Israel cannot be safe for Israelis unless this action is taken.

Tamar Hermann, senior research fellow, Israel Democracy Institute

A majority of Israelis support ending the war only if doing so results in the return of all Israeli hostages. The continuation of the war, in and of itself, is not considered unacceptable by most Israelis — despite the situation in Gaza. This, in my view, is because unlike the situation for Palestinians, especially in Gaza, the war is barely felt by the Israeli general public.

In fact, many — including some rather dovish military experts —are saying quite openly that Hamas must be completely removed from the equation.

Netanyahu is not concerned about being toppled over the war’s continuation. On the contrary, ending the war could trigger internal pressures within his coalition…

So what could stop the war? Unfortunately, not much at the moment, I’m afraid.

First and foremost, significant pressure must be exerted on Hamas to release all hostages and to accept the presence of an international force to control the Gaza Strip. Second, some form of “good news” regarding even partial normalization with Saudi Arabia could make a difference…

Yardena Schwartz, journalist and author, “Ghosts of a Holy War”

The vast majority of Israelis want this war to end in exchange for the release of the hostages. The inconvenient truth is that Hamas agreed to this framework long ago. Netanyahu has openly and repeatedly expressed his refusal to end the war, even if the hostages are released.

It was Netanyahu, not Hamas, who reneged on the ceasefire deal in March. “Victory” he claims, is more important than the hostages. Yet 19 months into a war that has failed to defeat Hamas, it is time to recognize that the military pressure Netanyahu claims will free the hostages has in fact killed more than three dozen of them.

The only way Hamas will cease to control Gaza is if an alternative government is in place to rule it — something Netanyahu has consistently rejected. Israeli security officials have said that without a political solution for Gaza, no military solution will be successful.

It’s time for American Jews to stand with the hundreds of hostage relatives, dozens of released hostages and the majority of Israelis in demanding from the Israeli government: bring our hostages home and end this war.

Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute

Like a strong majority of Israelis, I believe we need to prioritize saving the hostages over defeating Hamas. It’s not only a question of saving lives; it’s also a matter of salvaging the Israeli ethos of mutual protection, which is one of the factors strengthening our motivation to fight for this country.

And so the way to end the war is straightforward: all the hostages for a long-term ceasefire. Then I believe we should focus our attention on destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, which is the real existential threat we face. Even if it means defying Trump and going it alone.

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The Israeli military said that a terrorist fired on cars next to the settlement of Bruchin in the northern West Bank. The pregnant woman, named in Israeli media as Tzeela Gez, was wounded and rushed to a hospital, where she died of her injuries. Her husband was lightly wounded.

Medical professionals delivered the baby, the couple’s fourth, who is reportedly in serious condition.

Israeli forces are hunting for the gunman. The attack comes as Israel is poised to expand its war in Gaza. Since the war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, dozens of Israelis have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank.

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