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This Week:

• Matt Brooks: Republican Voters Reject Anti-Semitic Candidates. Democratic Voters Embrace Them.
• Radical Anti-Israel Candidates Making Headway in Democratic Party
• Help Our Senate Candidates!
• Maryland Democratic Leader Says It’s Time for Dems to Dump Israel
• The KC-46 Has Landed in Israel
• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
• Upcoming Events

Matt Brooks: Republican Voters Reject Anti-Semitic Candidates. Democratic Voters Embrace Them.

In an op-ed at the Washington Reporter, RJC CEO Matt Brooks writes:

Look at the split screen in American politics right now, and you will see two parties moving in opposite directions on the question of whether Jewish Americans and support for our ally Israel belong in the political mainstream.

On one side, Republicans continue the hard work of holding our own accountable. In Kentucky, the party's primary voters made clear that Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-KY) serial hostility toward the Jewish community and Israel has no future in the GOP. This is how a serious party polices itself. You name the problem, you confront it, and you win.

The Democratic Party is doing the opposite. It is not drifting. It is sprinting toward the fever swamp, and its leadership is cheering the runners on.

…The contrast is not partisan spin. It is the observable record of two parties in 2026.

The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) is going to keep saying this plainly, because the American Jewish community deserves to hear it plainly. The GOP is the only party where it is safe — and welcome — to be proudly Jewish and loudly pro-Israel.

The fight is worth fighting because the alternative is a Democratic Party that has decided antisemitism is a manageable problem and Jewish voters are a manageable constituency. We reject both premises. The split screen over the past few weeks tells you everything you need to know.

Radical Anti-Israel Candidates Making Headway in Democratic Party

The number of blatantly anti-Israel/antisemitic candidates currently moving forward in the Democratic Party primary process is deeply unsettling.

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed held a "Jews for Abdul" event in Pontiac, Michigan, where he said that he questions whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state and claimed that Israel implements apartheid in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza.

New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Adam Hamawy has a past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheikh." Hamawy helped the sheikh at his 1995 trial, where he was convicted of plotting to carry out terrorist attacks in New York City. Prior to that, Hamawy volunteered in Bosnia in 1994 with a nonprofit organization identified as a front for Al-Quaida. Hamawy has said that he doesn't support Israel's Iron Dome missile-defense system and said that Hamas did not use Gaza hospitals as bases for its fighters and guns. He has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

Graham Platner is the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine. He had a Nazi tattoo on his chest until after his campaign for the Senate began, and he has a history of offensive social media posts. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have spoken at rallies for Platner. Only now are some national Democrats beginning to step back from him.

And let's not forget Maureen Galindo, the Democratic congressional candidate in Texas who said on social media that she wants to "to imprison the American billionaire Zionists." Galindo made it into the run-off primary election last week, where she was defeated, but not before garnering almost 40% of the votes cast.

Maryland Democratic Leader Says It’s Time for Dems to Dump Israel

Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland makes it clear: Democrats are done with Israel.  Van Hollen writes at the New York Times that the Democratic Party's past support of Israel was wrong, and it's time for Democrats to use their political leverage against the State of Israel.

Van Hollen lays out a litany of lies against Israel, then uses them as support for his call to Democrats to pull out all the stops in support of a Palestinian state. He wants the next Democratic president to recognize a State of Palestine, end taxpayer-funded support of Israel as well as arms sales to Israel, and sanction Jewish individuals and organizations in Judea and Samaria ("the West Bank").

Finally, he calls on Democratic primary voters to reject "any Democratic presidential candidate who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues, especially if, as a legislator, he or she voted to send Mr. Netanyahu bombs even as his government imposed a total blockade on Gaza. Nor will they support a candidate who plans to re-enlist the senior Democratic decision makers who whitewashed the truth during the Biden administration and refuse to acknowledge their complicity."

This is a Democratic Senator throwing his fellow Democrats under the bus for not being sufficiently anti-Israel. This is mainstreaming anti-Israel lies. This is holding the Democratic Party's doors open to anti-Israel and antisemitic radicals and welcoming them in.

Van Hollen represents a quarter of a million Jewish Americans in Maryland. He betrays their trust and the trust of the moderate Democrats of his state with this piece.

The KC-46 Has Landed in Israel

The Jerusalem Post reports:

After years of waiting, the US delivered to Israel the first of at least six, and possibly eight, KC-46 midair refueling aircraft for future potential attacks on Iran and other distant targets, the IDF said on Wednesday.

The KC-46 can carry up to 15% more fuel and double the refueling capacity per flight of its predecessor, the "Raam" refueling aircraft.

Experts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies explain the significance of this development:

Israeli aerial refueling capacity is important because while threats from Hezbollah and Hamas are on Israel's doorstep, conflicts with Iran and the Yemeni-based Houthi terror group require aerial refueling to effectively prosecute. The Israeli Air Force has had to strike targets in Yemen 1,800 kilometers from Israel, and in Iran, the distance to targets ranged from at least 1,500 to as far as 2,300 kilometers in Eastern Iran.

Short Takes

Republicans press Trump to permanently dismantle UNRWA

In a letter sent to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, more than 90 House Republicans, led by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), called for a "broader view of [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] operations — not only in Gaza, but across the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria" and for the administration to ensure that the US does not "continue to rely on failed systems that have further entrenched the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

…The House letter follows a similar letter last week led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) with two dozen other Senate Republicans which also calls for dismantling UNRWA both in Gaza and throughout the region.

The letter highlights that UNRWA employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks and that 10% of UNRWA's employees in Gaza have been found to have ties to terrorist groups. It also notes that Hamas has diverted UNRWA's supplies and repeatedly used the agency's facilities for terror purposes.

See also: Kontorovich: Trump Can Close Hamas's Front Office

US reimposes sanctions on anti-Israel UN rapporteur, one week after dropping them

The United States on Wednesday reimposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN special rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza who has been bitterly critical of Israel.

A notice on the Treasury Department's website showed that it had reimposed a sanctions designation on Albanese that blacklists her globally, making it impossible for her to use major credit cards or carry out bank transactions.

Albanese, an Italian national who has long been accused of antisemitism and extremist rhetoric against Israel, was sanctioned by the Trump administration last year for alleged "political and economic warfare" against the US and Israel. As a United Nations special rapporteur, she has recommended that the International Criminal Court pursue war crimes prosecutions against Israeli and American nationals.

Early last week, the US removed ​Albanese from its list of sanctioned individuals after a federal judge temporarily blocked the sanctions, finding that US President Donald Trump's administration likely violated her free-speech rights by imposing the measures.

But on Friday, an appeals court issued an administrative stay on the federal judge's earlier ruling while the court considers the merits of the case.

In a world first, Israeli scientists find 'memory' B cells can target ovarian tumors

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science announced Tuesday they have discovered, in a world first, that specialized immune cells known as memory B cells can recognize and attack ovarian cancer tumors.

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecological cancer worldwide, with a five-year survival rate below 50 percent.

The peer-reviewed study, conducted in Prof. Ziv Shulman's lab in Weizmann's Department of Systems Immunology, challenges the scientific assumption that immune memory B cells only respond to external invaders such as viruses and bacteria.

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