The most powerful pro-Israel lobby may have accidentally boosted a progressive rising star who has accused the Jewish state of committing genocide in Gaza.
The New Jersey Democrat primary is in dead heat between former Rep. Tom Malinowski and Analilia Mejia, who has secured the backing of prominent Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the race to replace Mikie Sherrill, who was just elected to serve as New Jersey's governor, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is once again putting its thumb on the scale.
'AIPAC has historically enjoyed a winning streak of ousting anti-Zionist Democrats.'
Malinowski criticized aid to Israel, prompting a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against the Democrat funded by AIPAC.
The campaign hammered Malinowski for his track record on immigration, attempting to frame the Democrat as a pro-Immigration and Customs Enforcement candidate who approved President Donald Trump's deportation funding in 2019.
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AIPAC likely projected the ad targeting Malinowski would boost pro-Israel Democratic Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way in the overcrowded primary, but polls show they may have massively underestimated Mejia.
AIPAC has historically enjoyed a winning streak of ousting anti-Zionist Democrats, including Squad members like former Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.
This time around, the race remains too close to call, with the latest poll results putting Mejia at a razor-thin advantage of less than 1%.
New Jersey's 11th congressional districts used to be staunchly Republican but flipped to a deep-blue district in 2018, when Sherill defeated GOP candidate Jay Webber. Given the district's newly Democratic affiliation, a primary victory for Mejia would likely guarantee her a seat in the House of Representatives.
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Federal authorities reportedly disrupted a New Year’s Eve terror plot by arresting several alleged members of a pro-Palestinian extremist group.
The FBI told Fox News Digital that the bureau captured four alleged members of an extremist subgroup of the Turtle Island Liberation Front.
'The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles.'
FBI Director Kash Patel described the arrested individuals as members of “a radical offshoot” that is “motivated by pro-Palestinian, anti-law-enforcement, and anti-government ideology.”
According to Patel, the suspects were planning coordinated improvised-explosive-device attacks on New Year’s Eve at five locations across Los Angeles, California.
Federal agents arrested the suspects in Lucerne Valley, where they were allegedly preparing to test explosive devices ahead of the attack, Fox News Digital reported.
The arrested individuals were charged with conspiracy and possession of a destructive device.
Patel announced that FBI New Orleans arrested a fifth individual believed to be tied to the subgroup who was also allegedly planning a separate attack.
The FBI director credited investigators and law enforcement partners for saving “countless lives.”
FBI Los Angeles is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to provide additional details to the public.
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“After an intense investigation, the Department of Justice, working with our @FBI, prevented what would have been a massive and horrific terror plot in the Central District of California (Orange County and Los Angeles),” Attorney General Pam Bondi stated. “The Turtle Island Liberation Front — a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group — was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve. The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles.”
“PROTECT THE HOMELAND and CRUSH VIOLENT CRIME. These words are not slogans, they’re the investigative pillars of this FBI,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said.
“Thank you to our dedicated law enforcement and DOJ partners for the collaborative effort. God bless America, and all those who defend Her [sic].”
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Many people around the world are rightly celebrating the Israeli hostages who have been released from Gaza and the fragile ceasefire that is currently in place. Moments of reunion — and the prolonged agony felt by families of the remaining 13 deceased hostages — remind us that human life is precious beyond words.
Yet there is still another group of hostages in Gaza: countless Palestinian children trapped in fear, parents trapped in rubble, and a generation trapped between grief and uncertainty. For many Palestinians, this is a time to mourn.
What do we believe about the people who are different from us politically, religiously, racially, socially?
To speak of hostages today is to speak not only of those taken, but of all who have been bound by violence and loss. Every image of a freed captive should remind us that freedom is God’s design for every person made in His image. This is true for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
The Christian scriptures teach that every human being bears the imago Dei: the divine imprint of dignity, value, and worth. When we forget that truth, we become capable of anything.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of spending time with Rwandan Bishop Nathan Amooti. Rwanda is no stranger to pain. In the aftermath of genocide, Rwandans discovered that the first step toward national healing was re-humanizing one another — refusing to call a neighbor an enemy, rejecting demonizing language, and refusing to treat human souls as disposable.
That same work lies before us in Gaza. Rebuilding is not merely about bricks, electric lines, and water systems; it’s about reconstructing belief. What do we believe about the people who are different from us politically, religiously, racially, socially?
Rwanda’s recovery offers several lessons for all who long to see renewal in Gaza and beyond.
Bishop Amooti reminded me that genocide began when people stopped seeing one another as human.
The Hutus referred to the Tutsis as “snakes” or “cockroaches,” while the Tutsis called the Hutus “frogs.” Healing began when they rediscovered their shared humanity. Every act of compassion, every home rebuilt, and every hospital restored became a declaration that life is sacred.
Rwanda learned that forgiveness and rebuilding take years of patient, communal effort.
Reconciliation started when individuals faced their trauma and chose life over revenge. True justice meant rebuilding community rather than pursuing more bloodshed. Bishop Amooti said that when a person kills someone who harmed their loved ones, “They become exactly like the person who first caused the pain.”
It takes humility and courage to stop the cycle of dehumanization.
When Rwandans returned to their homeland after the genocide, every system was broken: schools, hospitals, banks, and trust itself. They became innovators and social entrepreneurs, not simply out of ambition but out of necessity. The church played a vital role in helping rebuild communities by reminding people that identity runs deeper than tribe or politics.
Rebuilding Gaza will likewise require more than international aid; it will require moral imagination, shared responsibility, and courage to believe that neighbors can once again live side by side.
In Rwanda, citizens didn’t wait for government capacity; everyone participated in reconstruction. Pastors, teachers, farmers, and business leaders worked together to restore life.
The same must be true for Gaza. Governments can broker ceasefires, but ordinary people — Israeli and Palestinian, Muslim and Christian, local and global — will have to be ambassadors of goodness and peace with their own hands.
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Followers of Jesus Christ have a special responsibility; they are invited into this ministry of reconciliation. We rejoice with the families whose loved ones have come home; this is good, beautiful, and right. But to stop there would be to miss the heart of God.
We must also mourn with those who mourn — to grieve the staggering loss of life in Gaza and to join the sacred work of rebuilding.
If we believe that every person is made in the image of God, then every broken city, every grieving mother, and every frightened child becomes holy ground, a place where the Kingdom of God still longs to reign.
Freedom for Israeli hostages must include freedom for the people of Gaza: freedom from fear, despair, and ongoing dehumanization.
Since Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, pro-Palestine protests have erupted across the Western world. Two years in, these riotous events calling for the death of America and Israel, the fall of the West, and jihadi violence continue to rage.
But Mark Levin can’t figure something out: If these protesters are so concerned about the Palestinian people, why aren’t they upset about Hamas' recent brutality against Palestinians?
Protesters are in the streets screaming about Israel starving Gazans — “a lie,” Levin says — but they don’t bat an eye when Hamas, just hours after releasing hostages as part of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire and peace deal, orchestrates mass public executions of Palestinians.
Graphic videos and eyewitness accounts show masked Hamas gunmen dragging blindfolded and bound Palestinian men, whom Hamas deemed dissenters, into public squares in Gaza City and executing them at close range with high-powered rifles. Since the ceasefire began on October 10, numerous Palestinians have been killed in similar executions, including beatings, hangings in streets, and purges of suspected spies or anti-Hamas militias.
Further, the Doghmush clan, one of Gaza’s largest and most powerful Palestinian families and a longstanding enemy of Hamas, was targeted. A gang of Hamas military men infiltrated the family’s estate disguised as medical staff and proceeded to slaughter numerous clan members.
“Very few people are saying anything about this. I mean, this is coming out of reports out of the Middle East. It’s coming out of reports out of Gaza,” Levin says.
He wonders: Where’s the outrage from the same protesters who flooded campuses over false claims of Israeli genocide — while Hamas now unleashes a documented “reign of terror” on its own people in the territory Israel just surrendered?
Now Netanyahu’s threat to continue military operations against Hamas makes sense. The recent executions and Hamas’ refusal to return deceased hostages points to what Levin has been saying about the terrorist regime from the get-go: You can’t negotiate with them.
He laments the partial Israel Defense Forces withdrawal to enable the hostage release, as that’s what allowed Hamas to regroup and terrorize Gaza with public executions.
Levin warns that Israel will now insist on permanent security zones: “They’re going to have a defense security area — whether the Arab countries and Muslim countries like it or not, whether we like it or not — to protect their country. And they’re going to insist on it. This is what Netanyahu has said. This is what they’re going to do.”
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