The Times of Israel is liveblogging Thursday’s events as they happen.
War monitor: Israeli strikes killed 15 Syrian defense and interior ministry personnel
More than 350 people have been killed since the weekend in violent clashes in Syria’s southern Sweida province, a war monitor says, updating an earlier toll.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that since clashes erupted on Sunday, 79 Druze fighters were killed along with 55 civilians, 27 of them in “summary executions by members of the defense and interior ministries,” while 189 defense and interior ministry personnel and 18 Bedouin fighters were also killed. Earlier, the monitor had said the death toll was 300.
The Observatory says the victims in Sweida include a media worker, identifying him as Hassan al-Zaabi. The Syrian journalists’ union in a statement says Zaabi was shot dead by “outlaw gangs” in Sweida province “while performing his professional duties,” without saying whom he worked for.
The Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, additionally reports 15 defense and interior ministry personnel killed in Israeli strikes in southern Syria.
Far-right MK who quit coalition over ‘deep state’ involvement, says he’ll rejoin to boost numbers if PM meets his demands
Far-right lawmaker Avi Maoz, who is the sole MK representing the anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminist Noam party, tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is open to rejoining his governing coalition, boosting his razor-thin majority from 60 lawmakers to 61, if the premier agrees to meet his demands.
Maoz makes the offer following the resignation of United Torah Judaism from both the government and the coalition earlier this week, and after Shas resigned from the government today, but remained in the coalition.
The Noam chair resigned from Netanyahu’s government and returned to the opposition back in March, saying that he was doing so because the “deep state” had taken over the Justice and Education ministries.
In his resignation letter, he had alleged that this cabal of officials was “instilling a hyper-progressive, anti-Jewish and anti-national worldview into the education and legal system in Israel.”
He claimed that no part of his coalition agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud had been fulfilled, that the Education Ministry had refused to work with him, and that the “deep state” had prevented him from allocating additional budgets for national religious schools.
“According to my calculations, there are just 60 lawmakers in the coalition,” the far-right lawmaker now writes on X. “The prime minister knows what my conditions are for returning to the coalition. My conditions haven’t changed following my resignation from the coalition.”
Two dozen US lawmakers issue statements condemning Irish bill banning imports from Israeli settlements
Roughly two-dozen mostly Republican members of Congress have published posts on X expressing their opposition to legislation making its way through Irish parliament that would ban imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Those posting against the legislation include Sens. Hal Rogers, Tom Cotton, Bill Hagerty, Kevin Cramer, Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, along with Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Tom Emmer, Daniel Webster, Lisa McClain, Mike Lawler, Andy Barr, Pete Stauber, Harriet Hageman, Mike Crapo, Andy Ogles, Barry Moore, Mark Messmer and Claudia Tenney.
Jewish Democratic Reps. Brad Schneider and Josh Gottheimer have also joined their Republican colleagues in the apparently coordinated effort, with the posts all coming out in recent hours.
I hope that Ireland will reconsider their efforts to economically isolate Israel, as they are in a fight for their very existence.
I do not believe these efforts would be well received in the United States and they certainly would not go unnoticed. https://t.co/NCInfj6amo
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 15, 2025