Middle East

Religion News - Some 1,200 Jewish university professors have signed a strongly worded statement rejecting a controversial antisemitism definition that the U.S. Senate is considering codifying in federal law. The Statement from Concerned Jewish Faculty Against Antisemitism was delivered to key congressional leaders on Tuesday (May 14), including Senate Democrats, members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce as well as Biden’s White House Liaison to the American Jewish community.The Jewish professors’ statement opposes any effort to enshrine into federal law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which they say conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. Among the signers is Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe, journalist and professor Peter Beinart and Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn.

New Republic - Representative Greg Murphy joined his fellow Republicans in suggesting that  Israel could use nuclear weapons in its already brutal war on Gaza.Speaking to Chris Salcedo on Newsmax Tuesday afternoon, the North Carolina congressman compared the situation to Japan and the United States during World War II.“If you look at what imperial Japan did to the United States, we came back and said basically you’re going to have to unconditionally surrender, and when they didn’t, we had to drop the two atomic bombs on them,” Murphy said. “This is where Israel has every single right in the world to press this conflict further.”The congressman’s extreme rhetoric follows that of Senator Lindsay Graham, who on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday similarly suggested Israel could drop nuclear bombs on Gaza.