During the first Republican Presidential debate, there was a brief flash of strenuous disagreement between longtime pro-Israel leader Amb. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman who recently called for ending all U.S. aid to Israel. To her credit, Amb. Haley was the only candidate on the debate stage who called Ramaswamy out on his anti-Israel position, going so far as to rightly articulate “Israel doesn’t need America, America needs Israel.”

Last week, CUFI was proud to welcome Vice President Mike Pence, Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Governor Ron DeSantis, among many others, to speak before the capacity crowd of over 1,200 pro-Israel Zionists. In this week’s edition of the Action Update, we’ll go over the three pieces of legislation that make up the 2023 CUFI Washington Summit legislative agenda. 

On Sunday, the CUFI Washington Summit kicks off. Over the next few days, more than 1,000 pro-Israel activists from across the country will hear from top leaders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Summit attendees will also hear from several Members of Congress and Middle East experts. But until then, we wanted to share a number of policy items that caught our eye and may very well directly impact our Washington efforts next week.

Nearly 250 years ago this week, the founding fathers of our great nation declared independence from a monarch living an ocean away. As we all know, what followed was the tragic sacrifice of thousands of Americans on the altar of freedom.

In this week’s edition of the Action Update, we start with Hezbollah setting up camp inside Israeli territory. From there, we’ll move to the latest effort to disrupt the UN’s anti-Israel obsession, and, attempting to return to an old tradition, we’ll end with some positive news out of our nation’s capital.

From surreptitious efforts to effectively capitulate to Iran, to contending with a hornet’s nest of Palestinian terror, this week’s Action Update, unfortunately, brings challenging news.

Some weeks it seems the Action Update might amount to little more than a synopsis of world leaders’ worst decisions and world pariahs’ worst actions taken during the past 7 days. This week, we admit, may feel a bit like that, but bear with us. Knowledge is power and if you have the full picture, when we see each other in Washington for the CUFI Summit, you and CUFI will be that much more effective when meeting with your elected officials.

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.