Author: Kelly Jackson

Last Thursday, the White House released its much-hyped U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. As our readers are well aware, combating antisemitism is absolutely central to our efforts. As such, we feel this issue is important enough that we’re going to deviate from our traditional multi-topic Update and focus exclusively this week on the strategy put forth by the Biden administration.

Over the past week, the world’s antisemites have provided something for everyone. In this week’s edition of the Action Update, we discuss Hezbollah inviting the press to watch their terrorists practice killing Jews, Iran enhancing their nuclear program (aimed at killing Jews), and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivering a message to the UN that sought to kill a core element of Jewish history.

Last week, Israel conducted Operation Shield and Arrow in response to rocket fire and to preempt additional terrorist attacks from the Gaza-based terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In this week’s installment of the Action Update, we’ll discuss what happened during the flare-up. In addition, we’ll also bring you the latest on the unresolved national elections in Turkey.

In this week’s edition of the Action Update, we look at the latest discussion over Israel’s right to defend itself against the Iranian nuclear threat, examine the latest piece of anti-Israel legislation introduced by a perennial Israel-hater in Congress, and discuss the latest positive development in Israel’s efforts to aid Ukraine against Russia’s invasion of the European democracy.

Israel enjoys widespread bipartisan support both in Congress and across the country. And in recent days, we’ve seen two high-level delegations of American lawmakers travel to the Jewish state. But there’s a problem on both sides of the aisle that all the trips and all the speeches in the world won’t solve. So, let’s dive in.

This week, Israel will mark the 75^th anniversary of the modern Jewish state’s independence. However, in the 24 preceding hours, the Israeli people will first commemorate Israel’s Memorial Day. The tradition is quite straightforward: it is incumbent upon a society to remember those who fought and died to ensure their freedom prior to celebrating that freedom.

On Monday evening, the worldwide Jewish community began solemnly commemorating Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Memorial Day. In Israel, sirens wailed throughout the land, and everyone, no matter what they were  doing, simply stopped to stand in solemn quiet prayer and reflection.

As Congress enters its second week of the annual Easter/Passover recess, we are heavily focused – and rightfully so – on the uptick in terror within Israel. In this week’s Action Update, we’ll discuss the multi-front offensive that Iran and its terrorist proxies are waging against Israel, the current status of the Iranian protest movement, and the latest from Turkey.

There are a lot of moving parts in the Middle East, and in this week’s edition of the Action Update, we focus on three storylines that, while ostensibly independent of one another, ultimately are all interconnected: Ramadan, Syria’s Middle East charm offensive, and U.S.-Israel cooperation.

We recognize that our readers have no doubt been following events inside Israel over the past weeks and we, too, are watching these events with concern. However, as you know, we take no position on internal Israeli politics. As such, in this week’s Action Update we will focus on a number of issues related to Iran.