Saudi Arabia ‘should get top of the line’ F-35s like Israel, Trump says

Mike Wagenheim

U.S. President Donald Trump welcomes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the South Portico of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 18, 2025. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House

U.S President Donald Trump said that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are “great” allies, as he confirmed that the United States would sell Riyadh F-35 fighter jets that are “pretty similar” to those that Israel operates.

Trump made the comments during an Oval Office session with reporters on Tuesday alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump said that Israel is aware of the arrangement, which he first announced in broader terms on Monday.

Israel would “like you to get planes of reduced caliber,” Trump told the Saudi prince, as reporters looked on. “I don’t think that makes you too happy.”

“As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line,” Trump said of Jerusalem and Riyadh. “We’re going to have a deal. They’re going to purchase F-35s.”

Trump would not confirm reports that Israel requested that Trump condition the F-35 sale to Riyadh on the kingdom normalizing diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.

All Trump would say about the emerging sale to Saudi Arabia is that “Israel is aware, and they’re going to be very happy.”

Details about the potential sale of the F-35s remain scarce. Israel is the only U.S. ally in the Middle East to have access to the advanced technology.

Bin Salman said on Tuesday that Riyadh will “definitely help” pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, though an exact figure has not yet to be finalized.

Trump said that “it’ll be a lot.” He added that “the Palestinians are doing very well” and that “we’re working very closely with a lot of people that make everybody happy, including Israel, the Palestinians and everybody.”

F-35 fighter jets fly over the North Side of the White House during the Official Saudi Arabia Visit, in Washington, D.C., Nov. 18, 2025. Credit: Andrea Hanks/White House.

Of a path to Saudi normalization with Israel, bin Salman said that he and Trump had a “healthy discussion” on the subject and that Riyadh wants to join the Abraham Accords with “a clear path” toward a two-state solution.

“We’re going to work on that to be sure that we can prepare the right situation as soon as possible to have that,” bin Salman said.

Trump said that he didn’t want to describe it as a “commitment, but we’ve had a very good talk on the Abraham Accords.”

“We talked about one state and two state,” Trump said, without explaining what he meant by “one state.”

The U.S. president added that he and the Saudi prince would discuss the topic further and that bin Salman has “a very good feeling toward the Abraham Accords.”

Bin Salman sounded non-committal in his remarks to reporters. “We want peace for the Israelis. We want peace for the Palestinians,” he said. “We want them to coexist peacefully in the region.”

Trump and bin Salman also said that Iran could be brought into the fold.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman walk along the West Colonnade of the White House to the Oval Office, in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 18, 2025. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House.

The U.S. president said that Tehran “would very much like—I mean, they may say something else, but they would very much like to have a deal” with the United States, after Washington’s attack on Iranian nuclear facilities this summer.

“I think we’ve done a great job in wiping out the nuclear capacity of Iran. Nobody else could have done that. No other president would have done it,” Trump said.

Bin Salman said that Washington and Riyadh “are working closely together on that issue.”

“We would do our best to help to reach a deal between America and Iran, and we believe it’s good for Iran’s future to have a good deal that would set the path for the region and the world and America,” the prince said. “We will do our best to see that day happen.” 
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U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman exchange gifts in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House after a welcome ceremony at the South Portico, in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 18, 2025. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian/White House.

Trump pushed back heavily on questions to bin Salman about Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States and bin Salman’s reported involvement in the brutal murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which pushed bin Salman into pariah status for years.

“I feel painful about 9/11 families in America, but we have to focus on reality,” bin Salman said, of relatives of victims of the attacks protesting his visit. “The reality is that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people at that event for one main purpose, which is to destroy the American-Saudi relation.”

“That’s the purpose of 9/11,” the prince said.

Bin Salman told reporters that “it’s really painful to hear about anyone who is losing his life for no real purpose,” speaking about Khashoggi.

“It’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We did all the right steps of investigation in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We’ve improved our system, and it’s painful and it is a huge mistake and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”

Trump insisted on Tuesday that bin Salman knew nothing about the 2018 slaying and dismemberment of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, although Trump’s intelligence apparatus disputed that in his first term in office.

Trump is slated to host bin Salman and a group of investors, entrepreneurs and celebrities at a black tie dinner at the White House on Tuesday evening.

Fundraiser Promoting Antisemitism Raises Over $38K for Suspect Charged for Antisemitic Rant Against Dave Portnoy

Shiryn Ghermezian

Barstool Sports founder and online pizza reviewer Dave Portnoy outside a Starkville, Mississippi pizza shop on Nov. 7, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

An online fundraiser for a former Mississippi State University student, who was arrested and charged after allegedly shouting an antisemitic remark at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, has garnered over $38,000 and includes antisemitic undertones in its defense of the ex-college student.

Patrick McClintock, 20, was charged on Monday with a misdemeanor of disturbing the peace after being accused of yelling “F— the Jews, f–k you Dave” at Portnoy and throwing coins at him on Nov. 7 outside a pizza restaurant in Starkville, Mississippi. McClintock also allegedly told Portnoy, who is Jewish, “Get the f–k out of Starkville,” as seen in videos from the scene that have circulated on social media.

Portnoy was doing one of his popular “One Bite” pizza reviews at the time of the incident. The Starkville Police Department reportedly processed and released McClintock on Monday on a $2,500 bond. McClintock voluntarily withdrew from MSU that same day, the school confirmed to Fox News.

A fundraising campaign on the website GiveSendGo titled “DEFEND PATRICK MCCLINTOCK” has raised $38, 031 for the 20-year-old as of Friday morning. A description of the fundraiser states that McClintock is an “American patriot, [who] got cuffed and jailed in Mississippi on November 10, 2025, for the ‘crime’ of mean words.”

“This is peak smallhat fragility—turn any insult into ‘hate speech,’ cry victim, and watch the goyim get locked up. THE DOUBLE-STANDARD IS BLATANT,” the fundraiser claimed, referencing the Yiddish word for non-Jews. It also accused Portnoy of “tribal privilege” and “weaponizing the law,” and claimed that McClintock’s ‘F–k the Jews” remark constitutes “protected speech.”

“This is ZOG in action—and Patrick is the scapegoat,” the fundraiser further claimed. ZOG stands for “Zionist Occupied Government,” which is an antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theory promoting the false narrative that the US government is controlled by Zionists, according to the American Jewish Committee.

Portnoy told “CBS Mornings” he declined to press charges against McClintock because “his face being attached to this for the rest of his life should be punishment enough.”

“I do not think freedom of speech covers throwing s–t at someone you hate and creating a potentially volatile situation,” Portnoy added.

Od dziennikarki do aktywistki na rzecz Izraela: jak Dahlia Kurtz stawia czoła nienawiści wobec Żydów

Paul Finlayson

Now we have the evidence. The BBC knowingly helped spread Hamas lies and hate

Danny Cohen

Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip. An internal report reveals that the BBC has knowingly spread Hamas propaganda and anti-Semitic hate – Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg

The leaked Prescott Report is a devastating document. It is an insider’s account of serious and widespread failings of impartiality, systemic bias and activist journalism spanning years of BBC news coverage.

It lays bare for the first time how senior BBC executives repeatedly tried to dismiss, downplay or excuse these failings in a total abdication of their responsibilities. In doing so, they failed to uphold the highest standards of public service journalism we must expect of the BBC.

Michael Prescott is a serious and respected journalist. As an adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee for three years he had regular and detailed access to evidence of the BBC’s journalistic failures and groupthink.

His memo to the BBC’s Board exposes in forensic detail a deep and pervasive bias in the BBC newsroom and the chronic failure of the BBC’s most senior management to deal with it.

It also provides a compelling account of Mr Prescott’s loss of faith in the BBC leadership. This includes Director General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness, whose consistent modus operandi against all criticism appears to be to deny, defend and deflect.

For what is most striking about this report is the way it reveals how, having made such serious and misleading journalistic errors, BBC executives chose to hide them from the public rather than correct the record.

In doing so they consciously chose to mislead licence-fee payers. The idea that they should have been transparent with audiences about such serious failings does not seem to have occurred to anyone in a position of executive power.

Protecting the BBC’s reputation came before the duties and principles enshrined in the BBC’s Charter obligations.

Following disclosure of the BBC’s journalistic failings in its American Presidential election coverage, the revelations concerning the full extent of bias in the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war are frankly shocking.

When The Telegraph earlier this year revealed the poisonous anti-Semitic social media posts of journalists regularly used by BBC Arabic, the BBC sought to downplay their role. Public statements referred to the men as “eyewitnesses” and “not BBC members of staff or part of the BBC’s reporting team”.

This leaked memo reveals that one of those men, Samer Elzaenen – who called on social media for Jews to be burnt as “Hitler did” – appeared on BBC Arabic 244 times between November 2023 and April 2025.

Ahmad Alagha, who described Jews as “devils” and Israelis as less than human, appeared a staggering 522 times on BBC Arabic news programmes during the same period. That is a remarkable amount of times to have been an “eyewitness”. Yet the truth of this has been hidden from licence-fee payers.

Not only was BBC Arabic routinely platforming Jew-hating journalists, it was also promoting Hamas lies over facts. A BBC Arabic article covering the harrowing story of a Yazidi sex slave rescued from Gaza devoted almost 600 words to a Hamas statement calling the woman a liar.

Faced with undeniable evidence of flagrant bias BBC executives chose, both in private and in public, to deliver a full-throated defence of BBC Arabic’s “exceptional journalism”.

And this rot is not confined to BBC Arabic.

The Prescott document also exposes how the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight highlighted claims that thousands of babies were on the brink of starvation in Gaza that it already knew to be false.

And it charts how BBC News gave extensive coverage to stories that painted Israel as the aggressor while burying stories that contradicted that narrative. Even the BBC’s own exclusive story that the media had widely misunderstood the International Criminal Court’s ruling on “genocide” in Gaza was buried.

As I read page after page of shocking revelations, I felt a growing sense of dismay towards those at the top of the BBC who have spent two years assuring me and others within the British Jewish community that they take issues of anti-Semitism and bias seriously. This report provides hard evidence that the BBC has been gaslighting us.

That the BBC has helped to push Hamas lies around the world and fuelled anti-Semitism at home cannot now be in doubt.

This explosive document has shredded any pretence to the BBC’s claims to be a trusted and impartial news source and should serve as a wake-up call to the Government as it embarks on Charter Renewal.

Those responsible for overseeing this deep offence to impartial journalism should hang their heads in shame and resign.

The BBC is not safe in their hands.

Danny Cohen is a former Director of BBC Television

Catholic Church in Berlin Condemns Antisemitism as Anti-Israel Agitators Vandalize Historic Crucifix

Ailin Vilches Arguello

Illustrative: Hamas supporters at a rally in Cologne, Germany, on Oct. 22, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Ying Tang

As antisemitic incidents continue to rise in Germany, the Catholic Church in Berlin has taken a firmer stance against anti-Jewish hatred by issuing new guidelines prohibiting its members from expressing racist, antisemitic, or extremist views.

On Saturday, the Archdiocese of Berlin, the governing body of the city’s Catholic Church, announced that all candidates for leadership positions must sign a special declaration rejecting racism, antisemitism, and extremist views. 

“With this decision, responsibility falls where it belongs. Anyone seeking to serve on the diocesan committees and run in the elections must actively uphold the values of our Church,” Karlies Abmeier, president of the Diocesan Council, said in a statement. 

The Catholic Church’s latest move aims to ensure that anyone seeking a leadership role within the institution commits to rejecting “racism, antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and hostility toward democracy.”

“It is crucial for us that such statements never come from those in positions of power within our Church,” Marcel Hoyer, executive director of the committee, told the German Press Agency.

Candidates would also be prohibited from belonging to any party or organization that the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution has designated as extremist.

The archdiocese’s announcement comes amid a climate of rising hostility and radicalization in Germany, where the local Jewish community has increasingly become a target. 

Last week, anti-Israel protesters vandalized a church with paint in the Vogelsberg district of Hesse in central Germany.

According to local media reports, a crucifix was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including the slogans “Free Palestine” and “Jesus is Palestinian,” and the church walls were also defaced with red paint.

Pastor Ingmar Bartsch denounced the incident, describing himself as “angry and bewildered.”

“What affects me most is that it’s a historic depiction of Jesus, at least 200 to 300 years old, and truly one of a kind,” Bartsch told the German newspaper Bild.

He explained that the crucifix will require a professional restoration, with initial damage estimates reaching into the thousands of dollars.

Local police have launched an investigation into the incident as a case of property damage, noting that the items involved hold religious significance.

As the restoration process begins, Bartsch said the church will remain closed for now, reopening only for religious services.