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This Week:

• Trump: No Place for Jew-Haters in GOP
• Legislators Feel Pressured to Say There is a "Genocide" in Gaza
• The Pro-Gaza Left is Oh So Quiet on Iran
• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets

Trump: No Place for Jew-Haters in GOP

President Donald Trump was asked in a recent interview whether there is room in the Republican coalition or in the MAGA movement for people with antisemitic views. He replied:

No, I don’t. I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them.

… Look, if you talk about the antisemitic views, there’s been nobody better for us. As an example, I just got the Israel award, which is the biggest award they give. It was just given to me. First time it was ever given to anybody outside of Israel.

… And the reason is that there has been no better president in the history of the world as we know it that has been stronger or better and less antisemitic, certainly, than Donald Trump. I have been the best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel. And that’s, by the way, acknowledged by everybody, including the fact that we have peace in the Middle East, and that’s going to hold.

In a follow-up question, the President was asked if he thought leaders of the Republican Party should condemn those who espouse antisemitism. The President responded:

From my own personal standpoint, absolutely, because I condemn [them]. I have a daughter who’s married to a Jewish person. My daughter happens to be Jewish, beautiful, three grandchildren are Jewish. I’m very proud of them. I’m very proud of the whole, that whole family. I am the least antisemitic person probably there is anywhere in the world.

Legislators Feel Pressured to Say There is a "Genocide" in Gaza

Two reports this week quoted legislators saying that they feel forced to say that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza, even if they don't believe it.

An unnamed legislator from New England told JNS that there has been "so much mounting pressure":

"Nobody was going to engage with me, or even talk to me, or not just throw me in some bucket if I wasn't willing to say that," the legislator told JNS. "They didn't want to hear anything else that I wanted to say. They just wanted to hear whether or not I was going to use that word."

The legislator also felt such pressure from news outlets that reached out for comment on the matter, the person said.

"Depending on how you answer this question, are you going to be able to stay relevant in this conversation or be able to offer anything to this conversation unless you use this word they want to hear or not hear?" the legislator said.

Jewish Insider spoke with Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic candidate for Senate, who said that "genocide" has become a "political purity test":

"I am somebody who looks at the videos, the photos, the amount of pain that has been caused in the Middle East, and you can't not be heartbroken," McMorrow said.

"But I also feel like we are getting lost in this conversation, and it feels like a political purity test on a word — a word that, by the way, to people who lost family members in the Holocaust, does mean something very different and very visceral — and we're losing sight of what I believe is a broadly shared goal among most Michiganders, that this violence needs to stop, that a temporary ceasefire needs to become a permanent ceasefire, that Palestinians deserve long term peace and security, that Israelis deserve long term peace and security, and that should be the role of the next US senator," she continued.

McMorrow went on to criticize an unnamed opponent for campaigning on the issue of the war in Gaza, presumably referring to Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left Democrat who has made his opposition to Israel a centerpiece of his campaign.

"Particularly in this primary, we've got some candidates who are using this as a political weapon and fundraising off of it, and I think that that is just losing the humanity of what we're seeing in the Middle East. And we deserve better," McMorrow continued.

The Pro-Gaza Left is Oh So Quiet on Iran

Writing at the Wall Street Journal, singer/songwriter John Ondrasik criticizes the "Free Palestine" crowd for their silence on Iran amid the regime's violent crackdown on protesters:

…American college campuses, so recently the site of passionate encampments in support of the Palestinian people, are eerily quiet about what's happening in Iran. The congressional microcaucus known as the Squad, so quick to decry the suffering of women and children in Gaza, are oddly mum about the suffering of women and children in Iran. And Greta Thunberg's flotilla of humanity has yet to set sail for the Persian Gulf.

… At this week's Golden Globes ceremony in Los Angeles, not one of the Hollywood celebrities found a moment to shout out the Iranian nation in its time of suffering.

… It's almost as if the Free Palestine movement has nothing to do with freedom, human rights or the welfare of innocents at all.

Short Takes

Free Beacon: Who Funds the Groups Harassing ICE Agents in Minnesota? The Left's Premier Foundations and Dark Money Networks Have Given Millions, Records Show.

When the Trump administration sent some 2,000 immigration agents to the Twin Cities area, they were met by activists who trailed their movements and harassed them outside their hotels. The activists are members of radical groups that together have received millions of dollars from the Left's premier foundations and dark money networks, including George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Washington Free Beacon review found.

At the center of the unrest is the Sunrise Movement, a left-wing group founded to fight climate change that has since directed its local chapters to fight the Trump administration. For Sunrise Twin Cities, that means tormenting ICE agents on the ground. The group holds in-person "action trainings" on how to "stop ICE & build a revolution." It also maintains a running list of the Twin Cities hotels housing ICE agents and organizes late-night "noise demonstrations" aimed at making it "impossible" for those hotels to operate.

Read the whole article to see who's funding these efforts and to see examples of the tactics they teach for interfering with ICE officers.

Jewish Insider: Trump admin designates three branches of Muslim Brotherhood as terror organizations

The Trump administration labeled three Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations, including chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan.

The move follows an executive order President Donald Trump signed in November, which tasked Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with identifying whether branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt should be designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and which should be deemed Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

Those determinations were released on Tuesday: Jordanian and Egyptian branches were placed under the category of Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), with the State Department citing their provision of “material support to Hamas.”

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