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Weeks ahead of back-to-back critical elections – Israeli national polls and U.S. midterm contests – former U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed a delegation of Haredi Jewish leaders, several of whom hold well-documented anti-Zionist views, to the White House this Thursday, in a pre-Rosh Hashanah gathering that broke from the standard format of typical presidential holiday receptions for religious groups.

The group of rabbis and community representatives, who traveled to Washington D.C. from the New York and New Jersey region, secured a rare one-on-one meeting with Trump at the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk, where they sat directly across from the former president. Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and former senior advisor Jared Kushner was also present for the discussion. Following the Oval Office audience, the delegation also held talks with Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Congressman Mike Lawler, a New York Republican facing a competitive re-election battle this November in the heavily Democratic-leaning 17th Congressional District.

Yossi Gestetner, a New York-based political activist and outspoken pro-Israel voice who participated in the meeting, shared the news on social media platform X, writing: “I had the great honor and privilege to introduce 6 Leading Rabbis of the Hasidic Community in the US to @JDVance. I told the @VP that in this room there are the leaders of the most visibly Jewish people in the US, and despite the noise on social media and disagreements, he should know that his role is respected and appreciated by all those in the room.”

Among the six rabbis in attendance was Aaron Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe and a leading figure in global Orthodox anti-Zionist circles. Teitelbaum leads the ultraconservative Satmar community based in Kiryas Joel, New York – a village that falls within Lawler’s congressional district – and oversees a movement with roughly 100,000 adherents worldwide. Photographs from the meeting show Teitelbaum seated directly across from Trump, reading from a pre-prepared letter during the audience.

Miko Peled, an Israel-American author and activist familiar with the Satmar movement, told Middle East Eye that Teitelbaum was the most influential religious leader in the visiting delegation. Other anti-Zionist Haredi leaders note that the Satmar community takes a more cautious, nuanced approach to public anti-Zionist advocacy than smaller factions such as Neturei Karta International. “We know that officially it would be politically incorrect for them to meet with people who state unambiguously that [they] call for the entire dismantlement of the Zionist state of Israel,” explained Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a prominent Neturei Karta activist who frequently organizes protests against Israeli government policy in New York.

The unprecedented gathering has drawn mixed reactions from across the political spectrum. Critics of current Israeli policy on social media have praised the meeting, pointing to growing questioning of the longstanding bipartisan U.S. commitment to unrestricted support for Israel among American conservative circles as a sign of potential shifting political alliances.

According to Peled, the Haredi delegation came to the meeting with two core goals. First, they sought to publicly reaffirm their anti-Zionist positions and clarify that they do not identify as Zionists. Second, they aimed to raise awareness of growing tensions between their global community and the current Israeli government, which has escalated pressure on Haredi communities over longstanding military conscription exemptions. Haredi Jews in Israel have held widespread protests against forced conscription for decades, and demonstrations have frequently been met with violent crackdowns by Israeli police.

The exemption for Haredi seminary students originated as a limited, temporary exception when Israel first gained statehood, but has expanded into a mass, ongoing dispute as the Haredi population has grown rapidly. Data shows Haredi Israelis made up roughly 10% of the national population in 2009, and that share has climbed to approximately 14% as of 2025. While some Haredi factions agree to work with secular Israeli political coalitions to protect their community autonomy, others remain firmly anti-Zionist, rejecting the legitimacy of the Israeli state entirely.

A senior White House official confirmed in an email to Middle East Eye that the meeting marked the first gathering of this specific group of Haredi rabbis at the White House since 1979, though some Hasidic leaders have met with former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton at the executive residence in the years since, leaving it unclear whether the 1979 benchmark refers specifically to anti-Zionist Haredi sects. The official added that the delegation “thanked the President for all he had done in combatting anti-Semitism, advocating for school choice with the Middle-Class Tax Credit, and for fighting for peoples of faith.”

The official noted that the White House Faith Office regularly hosts religious leaders from across the United States to meet with the president, and that the administration has previously welcomed a range of Jewish representatives including Gaza hostage families, Holocaust survivors, and rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations.

Peled characterized the meeting as a historic, significant moment, noting that Trump adjusted his own schedule to accommodate delays in the delegation’s private jet travel to Washington, a sign of how important the gathering was to the former president. Political analysts point out that the choice to host the delegation carries clear electoral logic: Kiryas Joel, the heart of the Satmar community in the U.S., falls directly within the congressional district represented by Lawler, a pro-Trump incumbent locked in a tight re-election race.

Democratic critics have framed the meeting as a nakedly partisan political play. Halie Soifer, a former policy advisor to President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris who now leads the Jewish Democratic Council of America, argued that the gathering served a narrow partisan goal for the Trump administration and the Republican Party.

“The selection of just a group of Hasidic men is on brand for Donald Trump,” Soifer told Middle East Eye. “He brought in a very small non-representative sample of Jewish leaders to the White House, and was sure to include a vulnerable Republican incumbent who is likely to lose his seat in November.”

Soifer emphasized that the American Jewish community is not a monolith, noting that pre-holiday gatherings hosted by the Biden administration routinely included a broad cross-section of Jewish leadership, spanning all major denominations and political perspectives, rather than a narrow, non-representative fringe group.

On a Thursday vote, the U.S. House of Representatives has advanced a Republican-sponsored bill targeting U.S. universities that participate in boycotts of Israel or restrict student access to Israel-based academic exchange programs, setting up a critical next step for the legislation in the U.S. Senate. The final vote tally for the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act stood at 237 in favor to 169 against, with unusual cross-party defying the typical partisan line on this deeply divisive issue.

Thirty-three Democratic members, most of whom are facing competitive re-election races this cycle and hold long-standing pro-Israel voting records, broke with their party to support the measure. Only two Republican lawmakers voted against the bill. The legislation’s scope is limited to postsecondary institutions that participate in federal student aid programs; it requires universities receiving federal funding for international study and foreign language initiatives to submit annual verification confirming they do not bar domestic students from joining Israel-based programs, nor block Israeli students from enrolling in programming on their own campuses.

The debate over the bill comes against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, which has reshaped U.S. political discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and amplified campus activism. The conflict erupted after Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023 killed roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel. Since that date, Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, per official counts from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. In response to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the enclave, student and faculty coalitions at dozens of top U.S. universities have stepped up pressure on institutional leadership to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel. To date, the vast majority of university administrations have either ignored these demands or rejected them outright.

House Republican supporters of the bill framed the legislation as a necessary check on anti-Israel discrimination on taxpayer-funded campuses. “Our universities should not use taxpayer-funded federal programs to discriminate against Israeli students, faculty, institutions, or businesses simply because they are Israeli,” Tim Walberg, Republican chair of the House education committee, told colleagues ahead of the final vote. House Republican Conference leader Virginia Foxx went further, characterizing ongoing anti-war protests on college campuses as inherently antisemitic, arguing that “the antisemitic rot that has corroded college campuses must be eradicated.” She added: “Today, the House sent a clear message: if an institution of higher education chooses to capitulate to the caustic BDS movement, there will be consequences – starting with this bipartisan legislation.”

Democratic opponents of the bill pushed back against this framing, arguing the legislation unnecessarily infringes on First Amendment protections for peaceful protest and political expression. Bobby Scott, the top Democratic member of the House education committee, argued the bill is unnecessary on its face and dangerous for free speech. “No college or university has embraced the BDS movement anyway. So, we should combat antisemitism wherever it occurs, but we should not do so by punishing protected speech or conflating a student’s view with university policies,” Scott said on the House floor. Even some lawmakers who publicly oppose BDS voted against the measure, citing core free speech principles. New York Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler explained ahead of the vote that while he rejects the BDS movement, he could not support the bill because protecting the right to dissent is critical to safeguarding all expression: “It is the only way to ensure speech I do agree with is equally protected,” Nadler said.

Pro-Palestinian activists have long pushed back against claims that campus protests and BDS organizing are inherently antisemitic, arguing that critics deliberately blur the line between criticism of the Israeli government’s policies and anti-Jewish bigotry to silence legitimate dissent. Bill supporters have countered that the legislation does not target individual speech, but rather seeks to prevent discriminatory institutional practices supported by federal public funds.

Political analysts have noted the House vote comes as partisan tensions over Israel policy have exposed deep rifts within the Democratic caucus, just ahead of a critical midterm election that will determine which party controls Congress for the final two years of the current presidential term. Some observers view the bill as a deliberate effort by House Republicans to amplify these divisions and appeal to swing voters ahead of the vote. Just months earlier, in July, more than 100 House Democrats backed a separate bill that would cut portions of U.S. military aid to Israel, a vote that laid bare the competing ideological currents within the party on Middle East policy. For now, the fate of the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act rests with the Senate, where it faces an uncertain path forward.

A contentious new regulation mandating basic conversational Marathi for taxi and tuk-tuk drivers in India’s western state of Maharashtra has triggered widespread pushback, prompting state authorities to delay enforcement by 12 months and reigniting decades-old tensions over language, migrant labor and regional identity.

The policy, which aimed to require all commercial passenger vehicle drivers to demonstrate basic proficiency in Maharashtra’s official language, launched its first round of testing on August 20. Under the original framework, drivers who failed the oral assessment faced a one-month grace period to re-test, after which their operating licenses could be suspended or revoked entirely. State officials framed the rule as a practical public safety measure, arguing that improved communication between drivers and local passengers would reduce confusion and create safer journeys for all road users.

But the mandate immediately sparked outcry from drivers’ unions, who warned that forcing working drivers into a high-stakes test threatened to put thousands out of work overnight. A large share of commercial drivers in Maharashtra are internal migrants, who relocated to the state from other parts of India – most notably the populous Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar – in search of stable employment. Many of these drivers have been out of formal education for decades, leaving them little time or flexibility to study a new language while working full time to support their families.

Amid growing public protests, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced the one-year extension last week, acknowledging that most migrant drivers needed far more time to build basic conversational skills. State Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik added that further extensions could be granted down the line, after the full year of learning is completed.

Maharashtra is home to nearly 979,000 active taxi and tuk-tuk permits, with almost half of those concentrated in the bustling Mumbai metropolitan region, one of India’s largest commercial and population hubs. For drivers who faced immediate risk of losing their livelihoods, the extension has delivered much-needed relief. “We were worried that if our licences were suspended, our daily income would be affected,” explained Lakhan Pandey, a Mumbai-based taxi driver. “Now we feel somewhat relieved.”

Beyond the immediate policy dispute, the row has dragged into the open a political debate that has shaped Maharashtra’s public life since the state’s founding. The state was created in 1960 following a years-long mass campaign for a separate Marathi-speaking state. As Mumbai grew into India’s financial capital, it attracted wave after wave of internal migrants from across the country, and language quickly became tied to fierce disputes over access to jobs and economic opportunity for native Marathi speakers.

In 1966, the regional nationalist party Shiv Sena was founded on a “sons of the soil” platform, which argued that Marathi speakers were being displaced from work by incoming migrants. The party went on to become one of the most dominant political forces in the state, with Marathi identity at the core of its political appeal. Today, Maharashtra’s ruling coalition is led by Fadnavis’ Bharatiya Janata Party and a faction of Shiv Sena that split from the original party in 2022, while the rival Shiv Sena faction and the regional Maharashtra Navnirman Sena both continue to prioritize Marathi identity politics.

Political analysts note that while widespread support exists for encouraging migrants to learn basic Marathi, the issue is often amplified for political gain. “The issue is not simply about communication between drivers and passengers, but about Marathi identity, migration and employment,” said Prakash Akolkar, a veteran journalist, author and political analyst. “Ordinary people do not always treat language with the same intensity as political parties. Parties have often raised the issue when it suits the political circumstances.”

Some advocates for Marathi promotion take a firmer stance, however. Deepak Pawar, a political scientist and head of the Marathi Abhyas Kendra, a center that promotes Marathi language learning, argued that any person who has lived and worked in Maharashtra for years should have already acquired at least basic familiarity with the language. Refusing to do so, he said, amounts to “linguistic arrogance”.

Similar tensions have played out across other Indian states, including neighboring Karnataka, where local language activists have raised alarms that Kannada is being sidelined as many migrants rely exclusively on Hindi or English to get by.

Under the revised Maharashtra policy, drivers are not required to read or write Marathi, or achieve fluency – only a basic working knowledge for routine work conversations. To support drivers, the state government has organized targeted training courses focused on common phrases drivers need for work: asking for passenger destinations, discussing fares, and sharing basic directions.

Thus far, state transport department data shows that roughly 166,000 drivers have completed the training and passed the required oral test. Munawar Sheikh, a 58-year-old tuk-tuk driver, was among those who completed the course at a training center in Thane, just outside Mumbai. Over four days of classes, Sheikh and his peers learned 16 high-frequency phrases and questions, from “Where do you want to go?” to “the fare will be according to the meter.” Sheikh said the course left him confident enough to hold basic conversations with Marathi-speaking passengers.

For many drivers, however, the biggest barrier remains finding the time to learn while working full time. Ajay Singh, a Mumbai taxi driver, said he is eager to learn Marathi but cannot afford to take time off work to attend classes. “From the time we wake up until late at night, we have to drive. Otherwise, there is no food on the table. Taking a few hours out of the day for a class is financially difficult for me,” he explained. Singh earns between 1,500 and 2,000 rupees (roughly $17 to $23) per day, and says losing even a few days of wages would leave him unable to cover rent and his children’s school fees. Instead, he is learning on the job, listening to Marathi radio during his shifts and practicing phrases with native-speaking passengers.

Like many other migrant drivers, Pandey said he never opposed learning Marathi – he only asked for enough time to learn without putting his livelihood at risk. The one-year extension has addressed that core concern. “We live here, we work here. Of course we should learn Marathi,” Pandey said. “Just give us the time to learn it without putting our livelihoods at risk.”

As Egypt prepares to implement a long-awaited reform to its criminal justice system next month, hundreds of pretrial detainees held for years behind bars are making an urgent plea: they want the new statutory pretrial detention limits to apply to their ongoing cases, which have dragged on for years in many instances.

The reform in question, the revised Criminal Procedure Code, was approved by Egyptian authorities in November last year and is scheduled to enter into force in October 2025, with the key change being a formal cap on the total length of time a defendant can be held in detention before their trial concludes. In an open letter addressed to the Egyptian government and obtained by Middle East Eye (MEE), an anonymous coalition of long-term pretrial detainees expressed cautious support for the new legislation, while calling for full inclusion of their cases.

“We hope that it will allow us once again to enjoy freedom and the rights of citizenship,” the letter reads. “And that each of us may return to making a positive contribution, with dedication and sincerity, to the advancement of our country and society in every sphere of life, within what is possible and legally permitted.” The letter also notes that detainees have moved past past circumstances, and are ready to rejoin society if granted release.

One prominent example highlighted by an anonymous source (who requested anonymity out of fear of government retaliation) is a 70-year-old physician who has been held in pretrial detention for more than six years. During his detention, his health has declined sharply after undergoing open-heart surgery; he now remains confined to his cell, suffering from extreme weakness, weight loss, and limited mobility, with no access to the consistent specialized medical care he requires. A second signatory, a man in his mid-30s, has already spent 11 years in pretrial detention, according to Saif Alislam Eid, a political researcher and former prisoner who maintains contact with the detainee coalition.

Shortly after the first letter was circulated, a second group of detainees from multiple Egyptian prisons issued a separate statement titled “Enough is enough,” which takes a harder stance on systemic detention abuses. The statement calls for the immediate release of all detainees, and condemns a long list of pervasive practices: prolonged pretrial detention, the arrest and imprisonment of women and children, extrajudicial detentions, enforced disappearances, and the widespread practice known locally as “tadweer,” or charge recycling, where authorities file new or identical charges against prisoners immediately after their release or completion of a sentence, trapping them in indefinite detention. Eid confirmed to MEE that the coalition plans to launch a coordinated prison strike if the government fails to address their demands.

Human rights defenders have publicly thrown their support behind the detainees’ call for inclusion. Samar Elhussieny, executive director of the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, told MEE that detainees are proactively pushing to guarantee they do not get locked out of the reforms they have waited years for. “They’re trying to get a step ahead,” Elhussieny explained. “They’re saying we’re committed to doing whatever you want, just don’t exclude us from the pretrial detention cap.”

Despite the limited progress of the new pretrial detention cap, Elhussieny and other rights advocates remain deeply skeptical that the new law will lead to large-scale releases of the estimated 60,000 political and pretrial detainees currently held in Egyptian prisons. The original draft of the code faced intense pushback from global and local rights groups, the Egyptian Lawyers’ Syndicate, Journalists’ Syndicate, and independent UN experts, leading President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to send the bill back to parliament for revisions in September 2024. Critics of the initial draft warned that it would vastly expand police and prosecutorial power, and entrench existing human rights violations including arbitrary detention, restricted access to defense lawyers, prolonged travel bans, and expedited, unfair trials.

Elhussieny argues that the revised, final version of the code approved last November remains just as flawed, with the pretrial detention cap being the only genuinely positive amendment. “When Sisi sent the draft bill back we were expecting a better version. This didn’t happen,” she said. “It was more of a gesture from the president that I’m listening to your concerns. This law was supposed to be fixing the issues in the current law, but it’s actually more problematic.” Key unaddressed issues include the persistent practice of charge recycling, which allows authorities to keep detainees imprisoned indefinitely, and a provision that allows police to conduct interrogations without a defense lawyer present – a direct violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which guarantees access to legal counsel at every stage of the criminal justice process.

Furthermore, in the months leading up to the law’s passage, between October 2024 and January 2025, the Egyptian government referred thousands of detainees to formal trial, which reclassified them to remove their status as pretrial detainees – a move widely seen as a tactical workaround to avoid applying the new detention limits to thousands of long-held prisoners. “The Egyptian government for many years now has been manipulating this idea of releasing pretrial detainees,” Elhussieny said. She added that the detainees’ urgent plea is a clear sign of their desperation to avoid being excluded from the impending reform.

Previous Egyptian government efforts to address the crisis of prolonged pretrial detention, such as the establishment of a Presidential Pardon Committee that periodically announces small batches of releases, have done little to resolve the crisis. Elhussieny notes that the committee has only facilitated the release of dozens of detainees, while roughly 60,000 pretrial detainees remain behind bars. While the Egyptian government does not publish official data on the size of its pretrial detainee population, a 2022 estimate from the U.S. State Department placed Egypt’s total prison population at around 120,000, with pretrial detainees accounting for one-third of that total. Rights groups have also criticized the pardon committee for a pervasive lack of transparency, accusing the body of circulating “fake pardon lists” that claim to release political detainees who actually have had their detention extended by prosecutors.

Elhussieny argues that the new legislation was largely introduced as a diplomatic gesture to ease international pressure from the European Union and United Nations, which have repeatedly raised concerns about Egypt’s growing pretrial detainee population. The final installment of a large EU economic aid package meant to shore up Egypt’s struggling economy and reduce migration flows to Europe is scheduled to be disbursed in December 2025, two months after the new law takes effect. Rights activists have heavily criticized the aid package, accusing the EU of making major concessions on human rights to clear the package for approval. Elhussieny noted that the EU is likely to review pretrial detention numbers before approving the final disbursement, creating a small incentive for the Egyptian government to implement visible reforms.

The detainees’ appeals come as the Egyptian government has enforced a near-total information blackout on prison conditions across the country. Since mid-2024, after reports of widespread hunger strikes at the notorious Badr prison and a sharp rise in prisoner deaths, authorities have cracked down on detainees’ rights advocates and family members of detainees. Elhussieny described Egypt’s prisons as a “black box,” with almost no outside communication allowed. “Lawyers don’t have any access, families of detainees that are deemed to be a risk are banned from visiting,” she said.