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This Week:

• Sec. Rubio Visits Israel

• News from Capitol Hill

• MAGA Youth are Still Pro-Israel, Poll Finds

• Laser-Based 'Iron Beam' Interception System Declared Operational

• Short Takes

• Week's Best Tweets

• Upcoming Events

Sec. Rubio Visits Israel

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Israel this week. Here are some highlights of his trip:

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Jerusalem on Sunday, at the start of a five-day trip to Israel and the UK. Rubio began the visit with prayers at the Western Wall, together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee… The State Department said Rubio's agenda for the visit includes discussing ways to push back against recognition of a Palestinian state, as well as the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice cases against Israel.

• Gazans deserve a better future but eliminating the "barbaric animals" of Hamas is a prerequisite to that future, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state and national security advisor, told reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the latter's office in Jerusalem.

• "By the way, not just the hostages that they're holding from Israel but frankly the people of Gaza that they're also holding hostage as human shields," [Rubio] said. "[A negotiated settlement in which Hamas would lay down their arms and free the hostages] would be the ideal outcome and one we would all like to see. It's one that's been worked on, but I think we have to be prepared for the fact that savage terrorists don't normally agree to things like that, but we'll continue to pursue that route."

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday reopened the Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem, a first-century route linking the City of David to the Temple Mount. The Pilgrimage Road, a broad stone route used during the Second Temple period, connected the Pool of Siloam, where pilgrims purified themselves in ritual baths, to Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount. [Read more about the Pilgrimage Road excavations here.]

News from Capitol Hill

• House passes RJC-backed bill to correct markers for fallen Jewish WWII soldiers

The US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill on Monday to help the family members of fallen Jewish American servicemembers commemorate their fallen heroes with proper military grave markers. Jewish Republican Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) was the lead Republican co-sponsor of the bill.

The Republican Jewish Coalition's government relations team worked closely with the bill's congressional advocates and allied organizations to advance it in the House and the Senate. The bill has already passed in the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and awaits action by the full Senate.

The Fallen Servicemembers Religious Heritage Restoration Act directs the American Battle Monuments Commission to create a 10-year program to assist in identifying servicemembers incorrectly buried under incorrect markers. Five years of funding, at $500,000 per year, is to be provided, on top of the ABMC budget.

Some 900 American-Jewish servicemembers killed in World War I and World War II are estimated to have been mistakenly buried overseas under Latin Crosses, rather than the Jewish Star of David.

• Speaker Johnson meets with pro-Israel leaders

House Speaker Mike Johnson met Wednesday with pro-Israel leaders, including the Republican Jewish Coalition, and spoke about his efforts to prevent the rise of isolationism in the GOP.

Johnson told the group that, in his candidate recruiting efforts, he's working to filter out isolationists to prevent that wing of the party from growing larger in the House, four people who attended the meeting said.

The Speaker talked about his recent trip to Israel and his and his wife's lengthy dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, with whom he said he has become close friends. The Speaker also told the group he is eager to return to Israel to address the Knesset. His speech to the Knesset scheduled for last June was postponed due to the Israel-Iran war.

• Rep. Stefanik introduces bill to block Mamdani threat to arrest Netanyahu

House Republican Leadership Chairwoman Elise Stefanik introduced the Sovereign Enforcement Integrity Act to prohibit New York State Representative Zohran Mamdani's repeated statements of intent to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to New York City.

The objective of this bill is to preempt state and local law enforcement from executing, honoring, or enforcing any request, warrant, or indictment issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) unless expressly authorized by federal law.

MAGA Youth are Still Pro-Israel, Poll Finds

Eliana Johnson reports at The Washington Free Beacon:

Young conservatives and Trump voters have a largely positive view of Israel and strongly approve of the way President Donald Trump is handling the US-Israel relationship, a Washington Free Beacon poll found. That's true even for those who tune in to or get their news from anti-Israel podcasters like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens.

The poll, conducted in late August, surveyed over 1,000 young conservatives between the ages of 18 and 34. These young people support Trump's handling of America's relationship with the Jewish state by a whopping 43-point margin and a majority believe that the United States should support Israel as an ally.

…While young people may be tuning in to these edgy right-wing influencers, they aren't necessarily being persuaded. Among media personalities like Carlson and Owens, who routinely lambaste Israel and its supporters in the United States, a majority of their audience nonetheless has a favorable view of the Jewish state—58 percent of Owens's listeners and 54 percent of Carlson's.

…Positive views of Israel persist in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile media environment. Much of the news young Trump voters encounter about Israel—45 percent—is negative, while just 21 percent is positive. That news is coming from a variety of sources, from television to social media and YouTube.

See the poll toplines here.

Laser-Based 'Iron Beam' Interception System Declared Operational

The Times of Israel reports:

Israel's high-powered laser interception system, dubbed "Iron Beam," has been declared operational after completing development and final tests, and is set to be delivered to the military by the end of the year, the Defense Ministry and manufacturer Rafael said on Wednesday.

... The Iron Beam is not meant to replace the Iron Dome or Israel's other air defense systems, but to supplement and complement them, shooting down smaller projectiles and leaving larger ones for the more robust missile-based batteries such as the David's Sling and Arrow systems.

As long as there is a constant source of energy for the laser, there is no risk of it ever running out of ammunition. Officials have hailed it as a potential "game-changer" in the battle against projectile attacks.

…In a symbolic move, the ministry renamed the system in Hebrew from Magen Or (light shield) to Or Eitan (Eitan’s light), after Cpt. Eitan Oster, 22, a commander in the Egoz Commando Unit, who was killed fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in October 2024. Oster’s father… was among the "initiators and developers" of the Iron Beam project, the ministry said.

Amit Segal reports: Rafael board chairman Yuval Steinitz believes that in five to ten years, "nothing hostile will fly in the air—nothing hostile: not aircraft, not UAVs, not cruise missiles, not shells, not bombs—because the laser will completely clear the air of anything that is detected."

Moreover, unlike Israel's current interception systems, which cost tens of thousands of dollars per missile, the laser system costs one to two dollars per shot.

Join the Celebration! RJC at 40

From our start in 1985 to today, the RJC has been a unique, outspoken, and trusted voice for Jewish Republicans, bringing our message to Republican decision makers and the broader Jewish community.

Please consider making a gift to the RJC today in honor of our 40 years of growth and success.

We need your support to keep moving forward!

Thank you!

Short Takes

NEH Announces Largest Grant in Agency's History to Combat the Normalization of Anti-Semitism in American Society

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded a $10.4 million grant to the think-tank and educational center Tikvah for a major, three-year, multi-format project to combat the recrudescence and normalization of anti-Semitism in American society through an extensive series of educational, scholarship, and public programs. The grant will support Tikvah's "Jewish Civilization Project," which will examine Jewish history, culture, and identity in the broader context of Western history, with the goal of countering the pathology of anti-Semitism through greater understanding of the enduring moral, religious, and intellectual contributions of the Jewish people to the Western world and, in particular, to the United States of America.

Tratt: Mahmoud Khalil's Anti-American Roadshow Coming to an End

Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil should start packing his bags.

On Sept. 12, an immigration judge in Louisiana ordered the non-citizen activist to be deported back to Syria or Algeria for neglecting to mention his affiliation with various unsavory organizations on his green card application.

That's bad news for Khalil, good news for America… His impending removal rids our nation of a radical activist who used the privilege of being in the United States to embark on a deliberate path to derail America's Judeo-Christian ethos and reshape our country's character.

Richard Heideman & Irwin Cotler: From hate to justice

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the passing of the Nuremberg Race Laws, legislation that stripped Jews of their rights and codified Nazi racial hatred. Those laws became the legal foundation for genocide.

In that same city a decade later, justice was born at the commencement of the Nuremberg Trials, where the world declared that crimes against humanity would not go unpunished. Nuremberg thus stands as a symbol of history's starkest duality: the Nuremberg of hate and the Nuremberg of justice.

Tweets

Events

Best wishes for a happy and healthy new year, from the Officers and Staff of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

All RJC offices will be closed September 23-24 in observance of the holiday.