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Jerusalem believes that the International Criminal Court in The Hague will issue arrest warrants against senior officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as early as this week.

Diplomatic efforts to thwart ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan’s move have failed, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.

International arrest warrants are expected to be filed against Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, according the the report.

Antisemitic agitators continued protesting at college campuses across the country Sunday as police made arrests and attempted to clamp down on the takeover. The anti-Israel movement started at Columbia University and quickly spread up the East Coast, to the Midwest and as far as Texas and California.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit Israel on next week amid hostage deal talks, The New York Times reported on Friday citing an Israeli official.

Israel's KAN News reported the same day that Blinken will arrive in Israel on on Tuesday.

The Secretary of State will be in the country to discuss with officials about Israel's planned Rafah incursion as well as talks for a hostage release deal, the Times reported, while also stating that "tensions have risen between Israel and the United States over the treatment of civilians in the war."

The Hamas terror group has published a new propaganda video showing signs of life from hostages Keith Siegel, 64, and Omri Miran, 46.

In the edited three-minute-long video, Siegel and Miran identify themselves and say they are hoping for a hostage deal that would see them and other hostages returned home.

The video is not dated, but Miran says he has been held captive for 202 days and Siegel mentions the Passover holiday, indicating the clips were filmed recently.

Another widespread and life-threatening tornado outbreak is likely across the Southern Plains on Saturday, just hours after twisters ripped through the nation’s heartland, leaving more than a dozen injured and neighborhoods reduced to rubble.

Some 55 million people are under threat of severe weather as the atmosphere recharges Saturday, stretching some 1,500 miles from border to border along the Plains, Mississippi Valley and into the Great Lakes, including many of the places still picking up the damage from Friday’s storms.

A round of severe thunderstorms will kick off from northwestern Texas into western Oklahoma on Saturday morning with large hail and damaging wind the primary threat. 

A Tornado Watch - the first of what will likely be several on Saturday - has been issued for parts of Texas and Oklahoma through 1 p.m. CT.

Dozens of tornadoes swept across America's heartland, impacting millions of residents and leaving a trail of destruction. 

Twenty million Americans, from Texas to Iowa, are on alert for twisters, large hail and up to 70 mph winds.

There were at least 59 reported tornadoes across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa as of 7 p.m. ET, according to the National Weather Service.

Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel was leading a delegation to Tel Aviv on Friday to advance negotiations for a hostages-for-ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group, the Qatari-owned Al-Arabi Al-Jadid reported.

Kamel will reportedly meet with Mossad head David Barnea and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.

The visit comes amid Hebrew-language media reports that Israel’s War Cabinet is willing to forge an agreement for the return of as few as 20 hostages instead of 40 in exchange for a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the United States and China as the two sides butted heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues.

Talks between the two sides have increased in recent months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about China's support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues including Taiwan and the South China Sea, human rights and the production and export of synthetic opioid precursors.

Blinken sounded a positive note on recent progress made in bilateral cooperation, including in military communications, counternarcotics and artificial intelligence, on which the two sides agreed to start a dialogue on how to reduce risks from the rapidly emerging technology.

US troops have begun constructing a maritime pier off the coast of Gaza with the aim of speeding up the flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave when it becomes operational in May, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

US President Joe Biden announced the construction of the pier in March as aid officials implored Israel to ease access for relief supplies into Gaza’s overland routes. Whether the pier will ultimately succeed in boosting humanitarian aid is unclear, as international officials warn of a risk of famine in northern Gaza.

The port sits just southwest of Gaza City, a little north of a road bisecting Gaza that the Israeli military built during the fighting.

Russia has vetoed a draft resolution before the United Nations Security Council banning nuclear weapons in space, spooking the United States. Moscow on Wednesday blocked the resolution, which was drafted by the U.S. and Japan. It would have reaffirmed the obligation of countries to comply with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty—not to place any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth.

Ukrainian forces are withdrawing US-provided Abrams M1A1 main battle tanks from the front lines after at least five have been destroyed by cheap Russian drones, according to the AP.

Dozens of tornadoes swept across America's heartland, impacting millions of residents and leaving a trail of destruction. 

Twenty million Americans, from Texas to Iowa, are on alert for twisters, large hail and up to 70 mph winds.

There were at least 59 reported tornadoes across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa as of 7 p.m. ET, according to the National Weather Service.

Destroying Hamas is not a matter of if, but when, and Israel’s allies know this is the case, Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology Gila Gamliel told JNS on Thursday.

“All our friends know it, even the United States, and there is no other choice when dealing with a terror group whose goal is to eliminate Israel,” Gamliel said on the sidelines of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Hungary 2024.

Israel’s War Cabinet met on Thursday afternoon to discuss the IDF’s pending operation in Gaza’s Rafah city, where four of Hamas’s six remaining battalions are entrenched.

The Sabereen News, a Telegram channel affiliated with Iran-backed Iraqi militias is inciting American students to escalate university protests against Israel.

Per the Middle East Media Research Institute’s (MEMRI) Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM), the Telegram channel shared multiple photos of anti-Israeli protest across the U.S.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to crush the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) financially if certain unilateral actions are brought against Israel in the international arena.

In an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich warned that if any decision is made by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to unilaterally issue arrest warrants against Israeli citizens, or “a decision is made unilaterally in the [United Nations] General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state, I will unilaterally and immediately stop the transfer of all funds to the P.A.”

Smotrich was referring to a recent Channel 12 report that the ICC was considering issuing arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials with the tacit approval of the United States.

The U.S. Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package late Tuesday that includes $26 billion in wartime assistance for Israel and $9 billion in humanitarian aid, some of which will be allotted for the Gaza Strip.

The bill passed the Senate on an overwhelming 79-18 vote after the House had approved the package Saturday, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk after months of delays.

U.S. officials told AP that about $1 billion of the aid could be on its way shortly, with the bulk following in the coming weeks.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday claimed that the military had killed half of Hezbollah’s commanders in southern Lebanon, as the Israel Defense Forces carried out a large wave of strikes against dozens of sites belonging to the terror group.

“Half of the Hezbollah commanders in south Lebanon have been eliminated… and the other half hide and abandon south Lebanon to IDF operations,” Gallant said, after holding an assessment at the Northern Command headquarters in Safed with the chief of the command, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, and other top officers.

He said Israel’s main goal in the north was to return tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s daily attacks to their homes.

Israeli Air Force fighter jets destroyed two Hamas rocket launchers embedded in a humanitarian zone in southern Gaza, the army said Wednesday, as the war started by the terrorist group entered its 200th day.

The Israel Defense Forces said the launch pads were loaded with rockets and were struck before they could be used to attack the Jewish state.

The strike in the heart of a humanitarian zone was carried out following efforts to prevent harm to civilians, the military added.

Iran appears to have replaced a damaged radar with a different, incompatible radar in order to hide the impact of the strike.

Iran tried to cover up the damage caused by the alleged Israeli airstrike near Isfahan last week, satellite imagery shared with the Economist and the Institute for Science and International Security showed on Wednesday.

The alleged Israeli strike targeted an S-300 air defense battery near Isfahan in central Iran in response to a drone and missile attack launched by Iran against Israel earlier this month.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly warned of a "heightened threat environment," and has pleaded with lawmakers to take each one seriously. ... Of all the threats the U.S. faces, the FBI has signaled that China far outweighs them all.

At the same hearing, Wray said terrorists' ability to "exploit any port of entry, including our Southwest border, is a source of concern." ... Wray said earlier this month that the U.S. was at a "heightened threat level" of terrorism even before Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. ... "After Oct. 7 is when we went to a whole other level," Wray told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on April 11.

Wray said the FBI has seen a "rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations calling for attacks on us." ... This includes Hezbollah in Lebanon praising Hamas and threatening to attack U.S. interests in the region. It includes Al Qaeda issuing its most "specific call for an attack" on the U.S. in the past half-decade.

Despite the Gaza war’s evisceration of Israel’s image throughout the Arab world, Saudi Arabia has continued holding high-level discussions with the White House in recent weeks aimed at brokering a normalization agreement with Jerusalem, three US officials told The Times of Israel.

Significant obstacles remain, and any possible deal would hinge on securing a temporary truce in Gaza through a long-elusive hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, the officials clarified.

Still, they all asserted that the gaps between Washington and Riyadh are bridgeable.

Where the US officials said the administration is more divided is on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be prepared to advance the cause of Palestinian statehood to get the Saudis on board.

The details of what the Palestinian element of the deal will be are still being finalized, but it will require Israel to take concrete steps aimed at establishing a pathway to an eventual Palestinian state, the officials said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted both Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and the subsequent war Israel launched to defeat the terror group among the issues covered in the State Department’s 2023 human rights report that was unveiled Monday.

“Hamas’s horrific attacks on Israel on October 7 last year and the devastating loss of civilian life in Gaza as Israel exercises its right to ensure that those attacks never happen again, have raised deeply troubling human rights concerns,” Blinken said at a press conference called to unveil the report.

“We continue to work every day to bring the fighting to an end, to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas and other groups, to uphold international humanitarian law, to prevent further suffering, to create a path toward a more peaceful and secure future for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Blinken added.

The IDF killed Hassin Ali Ezkol, a terrorist and central member of Hezbollah's aerial defense unit during a targeted strike on a vehicle he was riding in, the IDF confirmed on Tuesday.

According to the announcement, another unnamed senior Hezbollah terrorist was killed in the strike as well.

Additionally, fighter jets attacked a Hezbollah military building along other terrorist infrastructure in the Yaroun area in south Lebanon at the time of the targeted strike.

Jewish people around the world are gathering to celebrate Passover, as the war in Gaza nears its seventh month.

The Washington Hebrew Congregation is celebrating Seder to a full house Monday night.

Passover celebrations are happening at a time when antisemitism continues to rise.

Russia warned Monday that the risk of a “direct military clash” between Russia and nuclear powers in the West is rising.

“Westerners are dangerously balancing on the brink of a direct military clash between nuclear powers, which is fraught with catastrophic consequences,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a video message to the participants of the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference.

The comments come after Russia reacted angrily to the U.S. House of Representatives passing a $61 billion foreign aid package for Kyiv at the weekend.

DAWN (Democracy for the Arab World Now), a U.S.-based NGO that has sought “arrest warrants against Israelis” in international fora, has provided the so-called evidence driving the U.S. State Department’s anticipated sanctions against an Israel Defense Forces battalion, NGO Monitor reports. 

“The reported sanctions to be imposed by the U.S. State Department on IDF combat units and individuals stem directly from a coordinated campaign by extreme political NGOs,” said Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, in a statement provided to JNS.

“Currently, the leading NGO is DAWN, a U.S.-based tax-exempt organization that has intensified its legal attacks against Israeli officials since October 7,” he said. 

In October 2022, DAWN submitted to the State Department a Leahy Law referral against the Netzach Yehuda Battalion for alleged “systematic and widespread abuses.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will head to Beijing this week, with a warning for China to curb its technical support for Russia's military — or else.

Blinken's three-day trip starting Wednesday comes after the approval of a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine by the U.S. House, and in the midst of fears in Western capitals that Chinese aid to Moscow for manufacturing of military hardware is ramping up.

"We're prepared to take steps when we believe necessary against firms that ... severely undermine security in both Ukraine and Europe," a State Department official told reporters ahead of Blinken's trip. "We've demonstrated our willingness to do so regarding firms from a number of countries, not just China."

Minister-without-portfolio Benny Gantz urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday to reconsider a reported decision to issue sanctions against the IDF's Netzah Yehuda battalion.

Terrorists in Lebanon fired barrages of rockets towards northern Israel on Sunday morning, lightly injuring one Israeli, local media reported.

Iran-backed Hezbollah launched two rockets at Moshav Dovev in the Eastern Galilee, with the projectiles striking open areas. No casualties were reported. No warning sirens sounded during the attack.

Earlier in the morning, air raid sirens sounded in communities in the Western Galilee near the Lebanese border, including Shlomi and Rosh HaNikra.

Israel will inflict “painful blows” on Hamas in the coming days in an attempt to free the remaining 133 hostages held by the terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“Why is this night different, citizens of Israel? That on this night, 133 of our dear brothers and sisters are not at the seder table and are still held captive in the inferno of Hamas,” he said in his Passover remarks.

“We have already freed 124 of our hostages and we are committed to returning them all home—the living and the fallen,” continued the premier.