Who Really Needs Whom? Trump, Xi Jinping, and the Illusion of Chinese Strength - Sasha Gong

 

by Sasha Gong

China projects strength abroad, but internal purge politics, economic strain, and structural dependence suggest a far more fragile system than it appears.

 

 

As Donald Trump prepares for another high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping, conventional wisdom in Washington and the international press insists that the American president is entering negotiations from a position of weakness. Xi, after all, rules China as a near-absolute leader with no election to fear, no opposition party to challenge him, and a state apparatus capable of moving swiftly and decisively. Trump, by contrast, faces elections, court challenges, media scrutiny, and political resistance at every turn. As Sen. Jack Reed, a leading Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, “President Trump is going into this meeting terribly weakened.”

But conventional wisdom is often wrong.

The dominant narrative assumes Trump desperately needs China on three fronts: Iran, Taiwan, and trade. The conflict involving Iran threatens global oil markets and gasoline prices that could politically hurt Republicans before the midterms. Taiwan remains the most dangerous flashpoint in Asia. And after legal setbacks to his tariff policies in American courts, Trump appears to have less leverage in a trade confrontation than he did several years ago.

Meanwhile, many observers continue to portray China as an unstoppable superpower—the center of global manufacturing, the future leader in artificial intelligence, and a country whose supply-chain dominance leaves America dependent and vulnerable.

Yet this picture ignores a more important reality: authoritarian systems are often far weaker and more unstable than they appear from the outside. One need only look at the former Eastern Bloc.

Western analysts frequently mistake dictatorship for strength. In truth, dictatorship is often the most unpredictable form of government because nobody truly knows what is happening inside the black box.

Xi Jinping’s recent purge of top military officials should have served as a warning sign to the world. Sentencing senior military leaders to what amounts to life imprisonment is not evidence of confidence; it is evidence of insecurity. Over the past several years, Xi has systematically removed generals, ministers, and senior party officials—many of them his own appointees. Such behavior does not suggest a stable regime at ease with itself. It suggests mounting internal distrust.

China’s economy also tells a very different story from the triumphant narrative often repeated abroad.

Anyone who speaks honestly with ordinary Chinese citizens or business owners knows the economic situation is bleak. In recent years, growth has slowed dramatically. Youth unemployment remains severe. Real estate—once the backbone of Chinese household wealth—has become a liability. Consumer confidence is weak, private investment is shrinking, and local governments are drowning in debt, to the point that many officials and bureaucrats have had to accept severe pay cuts.

Most importantly, China’s export-driven model is beginning to crack.

For decades, China relied heavily on access to the American market. But Trump’s trade policies accelerated a process already underway: diversification away from China. Manufacturing is increasingly moving to Vietnam, India, Mexico, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Supply chains once centered almost entirely in China are gradually being redistributed across the world.

Ironically, China’s greatest strength—its overwhelming concentration of industrial production—may also have created its greatest vulnerability. The more the world feared dependence on China, the harder countries worked to reduce that dependence.

That is why the assumption that America needs China as much as China needs America may no longer hold true.

On Iran, the imbalance may be even clearer. Much of the American media portrays Trump as desperate to end the conflict. But China arguably has far more at stake. Beijing purchases the overwhelming majority of Iran’s oil exports. The Chinese Communist Party has long maintained strategic stockpiles in preparation for geopolitical disruptions, but prolonged instability in the Middle East threatens China’s energy security far more directly than America’s.

The United States, by contrast, has significantly expanded domestic energy production in recent years. Global supply routes can adjust. China’s dependence on imported energy cannot.

Taiwan presents a similar illusion. China boasts the world’s largest navy by ship count, and many commentators interpret this as proof of overwhelming military superiority. Yet sheer quantity does not equal combat capability. Indeed, the rapid expansion of China’s military may itself reflect entrenched, large-scale corruption. Xi’s purges reveal how little trust exists within the command structure.

Even Chinese strategists privately understand that the People’s Liberation Army still has significant weaknesses compared with American military technology, logistics, and operational experience. Public propaganda may project confidence, but internal caution tells another story.

What Xi Jinping may need most from a summit with Trump is not strategic advantage, but legitimacy.

For authoritarian rulers, international prestige matters enormously. A highly publicized meeting with an American president reinforces Xi’s domestic image as a respected global statesman. It projects stability, authority, and international recognition at a time when economic difficulties and elite tensions are growing inside China.

Trump, meanwhile, operates differently. His style often confuses both American elites and foreign observers. He praises rivals publicly while pressuring them privately. He flatters while negotiating aggressively. Critics view this as inconsistency, but in business, the combination of personal warmth and strategic ruthlessness is hardly unusual. Chinese political culture, in fact, may understand this style better than many Western diplomats do. After all, flattering rivals while simultaneously undermining them is a well-established feature of elite Chinese politics.

There is no question that Trump—or the United States—needs Xi Jinping and China. China remains a major global power and an indispensable part of the geopolitical puzzle.

But Xi Jinping may need Trump far more.

Trump can politically survive without Xi. America can absorb economic friction, energy shocks, and strategic competition. Xi Jinping, however, governs a slowing economy, a nervous elite, and a political system whose greatest weakness is that few inside it dare to speak honestly.

Behind the image of strength may lie a regime far more fragile than the world wants to believe.

Photo: US President Donald Trump (L) and China's President Xi Jinping greet each other as they arrive for talks at the Gimhae Air Base, located next to the Gimhae International Airport in Busan on October 30, 2025. Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will seek a truce in their bruising trade war on October 30, with the US president predicting a "great meeting" but Beijing being more circumspect. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP) 

Sasha Gong

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/12/who-really-needs-whom-trump-xi-jinping-and-the-illusion-of-chinese-strength/

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US sanctions Chinese firms assisting IRGC as Iran War looms large ahead of Trump’s China visit - Jerry Dunleavy

 

by Jerry Dunleavy

China has been trying to prop up its Iranian partner amidst devastating U.S. strikes against the theocratic regime. It remains to be seen if this will be a central topic for Trump and Xi as they meet in China.

 

The Trump Administration has been leveling sanctions against an array of Chinese companies profiting off of illicit Iranian oil sales and propping up the Iranian military ahead of a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing this week.

The U.S. naval blockade has stopped Iranian vessels from making it to China and elsewhere to sell their sanctioned oil, while the State and Treasury departments have hit Chinese companies with significant sanctions over their roles in the illicit Iranian oil market and in helping provide the Islamic Revolutionary Guard with dual-use technologies and with satellite intelligence that could be used to target U.S. forces in the region.

For years, China has relied upon exploiting U.S. sanctions to import steeply discounted oil from pariah states such as Iran and Venezuela to fuel both its economy and military buildup. Trump’s interventions against each have upended this lucrative arrangement, and his administration has recently sought to tighten the screws further to limit China’s access to sanctioned Iranian oil and to call out Chinese firms assisting the Iranian regime militarily.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed Monday that Trump will be visiting China on Wednesday through Friday.

Trump was asked at the White House on Monday whether the war with Iran had changed the Xi meeting agenda.

“Look, I have a great relationship with President Xi," he responded. "We’re doing a lot of business, but it is smart business. ... I have a great relationship with President Xi, and I think you can see that with the fact that in [the Strait of] Hormuz – they get a big percentage, 40% of their oil, from Hormuz – there’s been no ships coming in, no nasty ships coming in.”

Trump also said of Xi: “I respect him a lot, and hopefully he respects me. He didn’t respect our previous government.”

State and Treasury spotlight CCP assistance to the Iranian regime

The State and Treasury departments have put the spotlight on Chinese companies that have been helping the Iranian regime during Operation Epic Fury, the United States' military offensive against Iran that began Feb. 28. 

State Department spokesman Thomas Pigott announced in late April that “the United States is taking decisive action to disrupt Iran’s illicit oil trade, the Iranian regime’s primary revenue streams that fund its terrorism and destabilization of the region.”

“The Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions today on a major, independent Chinese refinery and nearly 40 other targets – vessels and their respective owners or managers – that serve as critical lifelines for Iran’s oil exports,” he said. “This action cuts revenue streams that fund the regime’s destabilizing activities across the Middle East. The Administration’s maximum pressure campaign will hold Tehran accountable for its regional aggression and threats to American interests.”

At the same time, the Treasury Department said that its Office of Foreign Assets Control had sanctioned the “China-based independent teapot refinery Hengli Petrochemical Refinery” and argued that such small independent refineries in China "continue to play a vital role in sustaining Iran’s oil economy, and Hengli is one of Iran’s largest customers for crude oil and other petroleum products, having purchased billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian petroleum.”

Pigott announced in early May that the State Department had sanctioned “several entities, an individual, and a vessel involved in the trade of Iranian petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products” and said that “this action targeted Qingdao Haiye Oil Terminal,” which was “a China-based petroleum terminal operator that has imported tens of millions of barrels of sanctioned Iranian crude oil” since the issuance of a national security presidential memorandum by Trump in February 2025.

“Haiye has enabled the flow of billions of dollars to Tehran that has relied on sophisticated evasion schemes, accepting cargo from vessels conducting illicit ship-to-ship transfers with sanctioned vessels,” Pigott said.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce responded by saying that the U.S. sanctions, issued “on the grounds of their participation in Iranian oil transactions, shall not be recognized, implemented, or complied with” by the Chinese government. The ministry also said it was flaunting the sanctions “to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests, and to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens, legal persons, and other organizations.”

A reporter last week asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio what his reaction was to the Iranian foreign minister visiting China, and also asked him to address Beijing instructing its firms to ignore U.S. sanctions.

“Well, I’ll direct you to Treasury on that front," he said. "There are options that we have. If you ignore our sanctions, you’re going to face secondary sanctions. And I don’t have an announcement for you on that today, but we don’t do these things for symbolic purposes."

He also said: “On the first point about the visit, it’s fine. I hope the Chinese tell him what he needs to be told, and that is, 'What you are doing in the straits in causing you to be globally isolated. You’re the bad guy in this. You guys should not be blowing up ships. You should not be putting mines, you should not be holding hostage the – trying to hold hostage the global economy.'”

Rubio then announced Friday that the U.S. was imposing sanctions on 11 entities and three individuals based in Iran, China and elsewhere that were “involved in Iran’s efforts to acquire or use arms and related material.”

He said the sanctions targeted “several China-based entities providing satellite imagery to enable Iran’s military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East” and that “we are designating entities and individuals enabling efforts by Iran’s military to secure weapons, as well as raw materials with applications in Iran’s ballistic missile and unmanned aerial vehicle programs.”

“Today’s action holds China-based entities accountable for their support to Iran,” Rubio also said. “The United States will take all necessary action at its disposal to target third-country entities and individuals aiding Iran’s military and defense industrial base.”

The related State Department fact sheet states, “The supply of satellite imagery of U.S. facilities in the Middle East to Iran threatens American and partner personnel” and that the U.S. “will continue to take action to hold China-based entities accountable for their support to Iran and ensure Iran cannot reconstitute its proliferation-sensitive programs following Operation Epic Fury.”

The Trump Administration said it was designating the Chinese companies “for having provided to Iran any technical training, financial resources or services, advice, other services, or assistance related to the supply, sale, transfer, manufacture, maintenance, or use of arms and related materiel.”

The State Department said that “Meentropy Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd (MizarVision)” is a “China-based geo-spatial intelligence firm that published open-source images detailing U.S. military activity during Operation Epic Fury.” 

In addition, the department said that Earth Eye is also a “China-based entity that provided satellite imagery to Iran during Operation Epic Fury.”

The U.S. federal agency said it was also sanctioning companies “for having engaged, or attempted to engage, in any activity that materially contributes to, or poses a risk of materially contributing to, the proliferation of arms or related materiel or items intended for military end-uses or military end-users, including any efforts to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer, or use such items, by the Government of Iran.”

The State Department specifically named Chang Guang Satellite Technology as a “China-based commercial satellite company that has collected satellite imagery of U.S. and allied military facilities to support Iranian imagery requests during Operation Epic Fury.” The department added that Chang Guang has previously provided satellite imagery to the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group.

“While the surviving IRGC leaders are trapped like rats in a sinking ship, the Treasury Department is unrelenting in our Economic Fury campaign,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said when recently announcing his department's actions.  “Under President Trump’s decisive leadership, we will continue to act to Keep America Safe and target foreign individuals and companies providing Iran’s military with weapons for use against U.S. forces.”

The Treasury Department said that “China-based Yushita Shanghai International Trade Co. Ltd. (Yushita) is a facilitator for the Center for Progress and Development of Iran (CDPI) – the latest name of Iran’s U.S.-designated Center for Innovation and Technology Cooperation (CITC), which coordinates Iranian technology acquisition efforts” and alleged that “CITC has sought to purchase weapons, including man-portable air-defensive systems (MANPADS), from China.”

The Office of Foreign Assets Control issued additional sanctions against the “Iran-based Pishgam Electronic Safeh Company (PESC)” and said the company had “procured thousands of servomotors with one-way attack UAV applications, which have been recovered in downed Shahed-136 UAVs, for Iran’s IRGC Aerospace Force Self Sufficiency Jihad Organization.”

The Treasury Department said there was a China connection, arguing that the “China-based Hitex Insulation Ningbo Company Limited (Hitex) has supplied – or attempted to supply – millions of dollars’ worth of carbon fiber, honeycomb fabric, and other raw aerospace‑grade materials to PESC, ultimately for the IRGC ASF SSJO.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded on Monday with anger toward the U.S. actions.

“China firmly opposes illicit unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or the authorization of the UN Security Council,” ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said. “The Chinese government always asks Chinese companies to operate in accordance with laws and regulations. We will firmly protect Chinese businesses’ legitimate rights and interests. As to the Iran situation, we have made clear our position on many occasions. The pressing priority now is to prevent by all means a relapse in fighting, rather than exploit the situation to throw mud at other countries.”

China quietly plays key role in assisting the Iranian military

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission had assessed in March that “China enables Iran to mitigate global sanctions through trade and financial networks, technology transfers, and dual-use trade. Chinese banks, front companies, and intermediary firms facilitate oil transactions, the shadow fleet that transports Iranian oil, access to controlled technologies that support Iran’s missile and drone programs, and money laundering that enables it all.”

The Small Wars Journal similarly argued that month that “while Iran remains the primary military actor confronting U.S. and Israeli forces on the battlefield, China’s technological and intelligence support appears to play an important enabling role in strengthening Tehran’s operational effectiveness.”

The news outlet also said: “Access to advanced satellite intelligence, the BeiDou navigation system, modern radar technologies, and electronic warfare expertise can significantly enhance Iran’s ability to conduct more precise missile and drone strikes while improving its capacity to defend against sophisticated air campaigns.” 

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article titled “China Is Still Supplying Drone Factories in Iran, Russia Despite U.S. Sanctions” in early May.

The news outlet reported that “the open wartime marketing by a small, obscure Chinese company points to a growing source of frustration for Washington: its struggle to staunch the flow of so-called dual-use goods—items with both civilian and military uses—to adversaries.”

“Chinese companies are shipping hundreds of containers filled with such goods to Russia and Iran, according to Chinese customs data. Items on the packing lists range from engines to computer chips, fiber-optic cables, and gyroscopes,” the outlet also reported. “For a time, Chinese exporters intentionally mislabeled some shipments to skirt U.S. and European sanctions, but in many instances they no longer bother, according to former senior Treasury Department officials and weapons analysts.”

Jiakun said Monday that “China’s position on the Iran situation is consistent. We will continue playing a positive role in promoting peace talks and bringing about an end to the conflict.”

Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is on 'life support' ahead of China trip

Trump said from the Oval Office on Monday that the fragile ceasefire with the Iranian regime was on “life support.”

The president also said that an Iranian peace deal proposal “was just unacceptable” and called it a “stupid proposal.”

“Iran has been defeated militarily, totally. They have a little left they probably built up during this period of time. We’ll knock that out in about a day,” Trump said.

The president repeatedly insisted that “I have a plan” to continue to box in the Iranian regime. “It’s a very simple plan. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and they won’t have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump also sought to push back on any sentiments that he might not be willing to see the conflict with Iran through to a U.S. victory.

“They didn’t want to believe it. They think that,' well I’ll get tired of this or I’ll get bored or I’ll have some pressure,” Trump said of Iran. “But there is no pressure, there is no pressure at all. We’ll have a complete victory.”

Trump seemed to reveal that the Iranians had agreed to hand over their enriched uranium stockpile, before saying that Iran had already backtracked on this.

“Iran told me very strongly, because they intend to give us the nuclear dust, as I call it," he said. "They told me: number one, you’re getting it, but you’re going to have to take it out, because the site was so obliterated that there’s only one or two controls in the world that can get it – it’s so deep and got hit so hard that there is no way they have the equipment to move it – you and China are the only two countries in the world that could take it out.”

Trump said Iran agreed to this a couple of days ago but then “changed their mind” on allowing the U.S. to go in and get the buried enriched uranium.

The president was asked whether the fractured Iranian leadership could actually reach a deal with the U.S., and Trump said yes.

“You have the moderates and you have the lunatics. I think the moderates are more respected. The lunatics want to fight to the end — it would be a very quick fight,” he replied.

The president was also asked whether the ceasefire could remain in place.

“It’s unbelievably weak, I would say. ... Right now, it’s on life support. ... I would say the ceasefire is on massive life support,” Trump assessed.

The high stakes Trump-Xi meeting in China 

Trump had said on Truth Social in late March that “My meeting with the Highly Respected President of China, President Xi Jinping, which was originally postponed due to our Military operation in Iran, has been rescheduled, and will take place in Beijing” in mid-May.

Last week, the president was asked about the relationship between China and Iran.

"I have a very good relationship with President Xi. You know, I find him to be a tremendous guy, and we get along well. And you see how we do. We do a lot of business with China and making a lot of money. We're making a lot of money. It's different than it used to be, but I'll be talking about – that'll be one subject,” Trump said.

Trump added: “But he [Xi] has been very nice about this. You know, in all fairness, he gets like, 60% of his oil from Hormuz. And he's been, I think he's been very respectful. We haven't been challenged by China. They don't challenge us. And he wouldn't do that. I don't think he'd do that because of me. But, I think he's been very respectful."

Rubio in October had said the U.S. “condemns the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s recent detention of dozens of leaders of the unregistered house Zion Church in China, including prominent pastor Mingri 'Ezra' Jin.”

“This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches. We call on the CCP to immediately release the detained church leaders and to allow all people of faith, including members of house churches, to engage in religious activities without fear of retribution."

Last week, Trump reportedly indicated that “I’ll bring it up” when asked about the imprisonment of the Christian pastor.

Jimmy Lai, a prominent Catholic, is also being prosecuted by the Chinese government. Lai, a former Hong Kong media mogul and outspoken pro-democracy voice, was convicted on alleged fraud charges in October 2022, and he was already serving jail time for his role in Hong Kong’s protests in 2019 and for attending a 2020 vigil for those killed by the Chinese government during the Tiananmen Square protest clampdown in 1989.

Lai also faced charges related to “colluding with foreign forces” and putting together “seditious publications” — and he now faces potential life in prison.

Ten bishops from around the world signed a petition in November 2023 calling upon the CCP-led Hong Kong government “to immediately and unconditionally release Jimmy Lai. Mr. Lai’s persecution for supporting pro-democracy causes through his newspaper and in other forums has gone on long enough.”

The signatories included Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron of the United States, both of whom were named by Trump to the recently-created Religious Liberty Commission last year.

Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt earlier in May, “I brought him up” with Xi previously, and “I will be bringing it up” again during his meeting with Xi this week.

“I’ll bring them both up. I brought it up before – Jimmy Lai, I brought up,” Trump said at the White House on Monday.

“Jimmy Lai, he caused lots of turmoil with China, he tried to do the right thing, he wasn’t successful, he went to jail, and people would like him to get out, and I’d like to see him get out too. So, I’ll bring him up again.”

The president said of Taiwan that “it always comes up.”

Trump said that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if he were president, and added that “Taiwan, I equate it a little bit to that. If you have the right president, I don’t think it’ll happen. I think we’ll be fine. I have a very good relationship with President Xi, because I don’t want that to happen.”

Jiakun said Monday that “China stands ready to work with the U.S. to expand cooperation and manage differences in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit, and provide more stability and certainty for a transforming and volatile world.” 

Jerry Dunleavy

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/us-sanctions-chinese-firms-assisting-irgc-iran-war-looms-large-ahead-trumps

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US Hormuz blockade succeeds in choking off Iran’s oil lifeline - David Isaac

 

by David Isaac

JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, reviewed the data and found that the U.S. had redirected 62 vessels. The number continues to grow.

 

USS John Finn (DDG 113) sails behind USS Milius (DDG 69), USNS Carl Brashear (T-AKE-7), and USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) in the Arabian Sea. Credit: X/U.S. Central Command.

Is the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz working? It depends who you ask. Conflicting reports have created some confusion.

The Pentagon says that “it’s delivering the decisive impact we intended.” Certain media outlets and shipping analytics firms suggest the opposite, that dozens of Iranian ships are crossing unimpeded. Both can’t be true.

“Turning Tides: U.S. Blockade Enforcement Exceeds Iranian Evasion,” a May 1 report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), examined the discrepancies. It found that “the truth lies in between though far closer to the Pentagon’s claim.”

In short, the U.S. blockade has proven largely successful.

In an update to its report, JINSA’s review found U.S. forces had redirected 62 vessels that had attempted to breach the blockade as of May 11, and disabled four more. That is up from 44 vessels redirected at the time the report was first issued. The blockade began on April 13.

“The vast majority of ships that are eligible have been turned around or seized under the blockade,” Yoni Tobin, senior policy analyst at JINSA and author of the report, told JNS.

JINSA found that 23 vessels had apparently tried to bypass the blockade. Of those, one-fourth did so on the blockade’s first day, a result of enforcement issues that have since been resolved. One-third were small ships without the capacity to transport large cargo.

“The number one point is, and we’ve tracked literally hundreds of ships as part of this project ... none that we tracked going through were oil tankers,” said Tobin. “It’s very significant because that is really what the blockade is all about. It’s preventing Iranian shipments of oil to the Far East, and to China, primarily, which is responsible for the vast majority of Iran’s revenue.”

It strongly suggests Iran is deterred. It is reflected in the fact, widely reported, that the country is running out of places to put its oil. “They’re not able to move it. They’re not able to store it. We’re seeing them put it on ships that can’t go anywhere,” he said.

On May 8, Iran attempted to send two oil tankers through the blockade. The U.S. fired on and disabled both of them. “There have been several tankers that briefly crossed the blockade line but were then rerouted or disabled by U.S. forces... None have ultimately evaded U.S. blockade enforcement,” said Tobin.

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) claimed on May 4 that a single Iranian tanker had run the blockade and made it to to East Asia, possibly en route to China, “but JINSA has not been able to verify that,” he said.

Misreporting about the blockade is due to three main reasons, according to Tobin. The first is terminology. In other words, how an “Iranian-linked vessel” is defined. He pointed to an April 22 Financial Times article with a headline claiming 34 “Iran-linked tankers” bypassed the blockade.

Not only did the text of the article make no such claim, he said, but the report cited Vortexa, a shipping analytics firm that defined “Iran-linked” as any tanker with a connection to Iran going back years, “including just visiting its port, taking cargo a year or two ago.”

“A tanker being abstractly ‘linked to Iran’ is not part of the blockade’s criteria,” he said.

Secondly, there is confusion over the term “shadow fleet” or “ghost fleet vessels.” Lloyd’s List, a shipping data firm, drew considerable attention with an estimate published on April 21 that “at least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels” had bypassed the blockade. (U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, drew criticism when he posted a link to the article on his X account with the caption “awesome,” making it appear he was rooting against U.S. efforts.)

Similarly, The Wall Street Journal on April 16, using Lloyd’s List, reported that “81% of ships that transited the strait since April 13 were affiliated with Iran through ownership, flag, port calls in Iran and other links.”

But in a less publicized update, Lloyd’s List omitted the word “Iranian.” The firm also defined its criterion for a “shadow fleet vessel”—ships involved “in a cargo delivery where at some point over the course of the delivery one party in the chain engages in one or more deceptive shipping practices.”

That is clearly beyond the blockade’s sphere of responsibility, said Tobin.

What’s more, 23 of the 26 ships were ultimately redirected by U.S. forces. Which brings Tobin to his third point, which is that there is a lack of understanding about where the blockade starts. Many reports refer to ships crossing through the Strait of Hormuz. “In reality, that is not where the blockade is being enforced at all,” he said. U.S. Navy vessels are stationed roughly 300 miles away in the Gulf of Oman.

The U.S. blockade starts in the Gulf of Oman about 300 miles from the Strait of Hormuz. Credit: JINSA.

The naval blockade is not just about stopping Iran’s energy trade. As JINSA underscored in its report, the blockade also “constricts the regime’s ability to import weapons components, assembled weaponry, inputs for missile fuel, and cash.”

What is often overlooked is that the blockade is part of a broader effort dubbed “Operation Economic Fury,” said Tobin. It includes sanctions, such as against a major oil terminal and five so-called “teapot” refineries in China heavily involved in trading Iranian oil, and the freezing of Iranian bank accounts and other assets, including cryptocurrency.

Blocked from the U.S. financial system, nobody is going to want to do business with them, he said. On May 7, Bloomberg reported that “China’s financial regulator advised the country’s largest banks to temporarily suspend new loans to five refiners recently sanctioned by the U.S.”

“We’ve seen something that nobody has succeeded at doing under successive American administrations, which is to cut off the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism from its main funding source,” said Tobin. “There have been piecemeal attempts at dealing with it in the past, but this is a monumental step toward that objective.” 

David Isaac Israel Correspondent David Isaac’s expert analysis on Jewish history, politics, and current events at JNS.

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/world/us-hormuz-blockade-succeeds-in-choking-off-irans-oil-lifeline

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Israeli nonprofit hopes new report on Oct. 7 sexual violence becomes ‘watershed moment,’ gets attention of world parliaments - Jessica Russmak-Hoffman

 

by Jessica Russmak-Hoffman

The Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes Against Women and Children told JNS that the report “provides a prosecution-oriented framework for future investigations into war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts.”

 

Destruction at kibbutz Kfar Aza after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, in southern Israel, on Dec. 19, 2023. Credit: Moshe Shai/Flash90.

In the roughly two-and-a-half years since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, Israel has presented extensive evidence of terrorists subjecting women and girls to sexual violence both during the attacks and subsequently in captivity in Gaza. A report, which the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes Against Women and Children released on Tuesday, aims to get the attention of both prosecutors and parliamentarians worldwide, according to the independent Israeli nonprofit.

“The most important impact that is achieved from this work is recognition in the historical record of what happened to the victims,” Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder of the commission, told JNS. “We aim now for institutional recognition and to bring the report to parliaments around the world.”

“The report is also a legal and historical foundation for accountability,” which “provides a prosecution-oriented framework for future investigations into war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts,” said Elkayam-Levy, a lawyer who has previously advised the Israeli attorney general.

“It maps patterns, identifies operational methods and outlines avenues for responsibility that extend beyond direct perpetrators to those who planned, facilitated, amplified or enabled these crimes,” she told JNS. “We also believe the report advances the international legal understanding of conflict-related sexual violence, particularly through the concept of kinocidal sexual violence—a term we coined to describe sexual violence intended to torture families and exploit familial bonds to increase the suffering of the victims.”

On a broader level, Elkayam-Levy hopes that the report “becomes a watershed moment in how the international community responds to sexual violence in armed conflict.”

The report is based on an investigation spanning 10,000 photographs and videos, 430 testimonies and interviews and more than 1,800 hours of footage, including footage recorded by the terrorists.

Sexual and gender-based violence occurred at multiple locations during the Hamas-led assault, including at the Nova music festival, kibbutzes, roads and military bases, and it continued during the abduction of hostages and their captivity in Gaza, according to the commission.

The report identified recurring patterns of abuse across attack sites. Investigators concluded that the repetition of these acts demonstrated that they were “not isolated acts of brutality but formed part of a broader operational method used during the attack and its aftermath.”

Testimonies from survivors, released hostages, first responders and medical personnel described assaults committed during the attacks and in captivity. Several former hostages reported ongoing sexual abuse while held in Gaza.

Elkayam-Levy told JNS that evidence in the report “speaks for itself.”

“Sexual violence in conflict has historically been denied, especially when acknowledging it is politically uncomfortable, but human rights cannot depend on politics,” she said. “The victims of Oct. 7 and those who returned from the hell of captivity deserve the same recognition and protection afforded to victims anywhere else in the world.”

Destruction caused on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza Strip, Jan. 23, 2025. Credit: Yaniv Nadav/Flash90.

Suddenly silent

According to an April 2026 report by Boundless, a U.S.-based think tank focused on Israel and antisemitism, 49% of the U.S. population agreed that Hamas committed acts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 and that there is video and photographic evidence.

“When women were assaulted, mutilated and murdered by Hamas terrorists, too many voices who claim to champion justice suddenly went silent,” Jayne Zirkle, director of communications at the Lawfare Project, told JNS.

“Others went even further, mocking survivors, denying evidence and spreading propaganda designed to protect terrorists from accountability,” Zirkle said. “Imagine telling victims of any other mass atrocity that their testimony is politically inconvenient.”

“The evidence of Hamas’s sexual violence has been documented by eyewitnesses, first responders, forensic teams, released hostages and international investigations,” Zirkle told JNS. Oct. 7 rape deniers are complicit in “the erasure of suffering,” she added.

“Terror groups thrive when the world rationalizes evil instead of confronting it,” she told JNS. “We must ensure this never happens again by speaking the truth clearly and without apology.”

Sigal Kraunik, of Kibbutz Be’eri, whose husband Arik was killed by terrorists on Oct. 7, told JNS that “Hamas and the terrorist organizations are busy with propaganda that they are the victim, and the world is buying it.”

Human rights organizations were notably silent about Hamas’s atrocities, she told JNS.

“They do not really protect the weak,” she said. “They are a large part of the machine that works to hate Jews and Israel.”

Damage from the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist assault on Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel, Dec. 19, 2023. Credit: Moshe Shai/Flash90.

‘A liar’s a liar’

Jacqueline Carroll, a former sexual crimes prosecutor in Cook County, Ill., and founder of a consulting firm that focuses on fighting hate, told JNS that she hopes that some of the perpetrators might be still “under the jurisdiction of Israel” so that they can face legal consequences.

The evidence in the report could also be used for sanctions, reparations and individual cases, including the possibility of American victims suing, she told JNS, prior to the release of the report.

Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, told JNS that the report’s findings could form the basis for future prosecutions before the International Criminal Court, an independent judicial body in The Hague, “if its anti-Jewish bias doesn’t get in the way.”

The court, which is independent of the United Nations, has accused Israeli leaders of overseeing “genocide” in Gaza and issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and former defense minister. Israel is not a party to the court.

The report “forces the world to confront Oct. 7 sexual violence as a documented atrocity, not a disputed talking point,” Filitti told JNS, prior to its release.

“The world now has to reckon with the legal questions that demand answers and consequences,” he said. “How was it organized, who knew, who participated, who commanded and who facilitated?”

The commission called for coordinated international investigations and prosecutions and for creating specialized war crime units focused on sexual and gender-based violence.

The new report is an “indictment of Hamas,” according to Filitti. “Terror apologists will attack the source and call it propaganda, but the world will not be able to deny the reality of these atrocities,” he said.

Two Jewish leaders told JNS prior to the release of the report that those who hate Israel will likely deny the report’s findings.

Rabbi David Katz, executive director of the Israel Heritage Foundation, told JNS that Oct. 7 deniers will likely not be persuaded by the report.

“A person that’s a liar is a liar,” he said. “A person that does not want to be realistic is not realistic.”

Rabbi Josh Joseph, executive vice president and chief operating officer at the Orthodox Union, told JNS that “unfortunately, those who choose denial, ‘asking questions’ and the demonization of Jews, regardless of facts, will not be swayed by any evidence or report.”

Joseph said that there is a Jewish tradition of remembering not only “moments of miracle and salvation but also moments of oppression and unspeakable atrocities.”

“Our enduring identity is tied to the memory and commemoration of our experience,” he said.

He advised readers to be deliberate about engaging with the report, which documents horrible crimes in explicit detail.

Readers should balance “the responsibilities of bearing witness and remembering with maintaining dignity for victims and caring for one’s own psyche,” he said. 

Jessica Russmak-Hoffman is a writer in Seattle.

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/israeli-nonprofit-hopes-new-report-on-oct-7-sexual-violence-becomes-watershed-moment-gets-attention-of-world-parliaments

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COGAT warns: Too much aid entering Gaza, strengthening Hamas - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

A COGAT report warns that excess humanitarian aid entering Gaza is being exploited by Hamas to tighten control and finance operations.

 

Aid Trucks                                                                           Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) sent a strategic warning to the political echelon recently, according to which the scope of the humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip is double what is required and, in effect, fuels Hamas.

An internal document written by Major General Yoram Halevi and revealed in Israel Hayom states that Gaza only requires approximately 250 trucks of aid a day to meet its basic humanitarian needs. However, Israel allows 600 trucks to enter daily, mainly due to commitments to ceasefire agreements.

A professional study conducted by COGAT with intelligence officials and international bodies found that Hamas systematically exploits the "substantial surplus" of aid in the enclave.

The document states that "each truck beyond the humanitarian requirement, in effect, strengthens Hamas," since the organization takes control of the goods, taxes local merchants, and collects food in its storehouses.

These actions allow Hamas to maintain its civil control over the population by creating a system of economic dependence and exclusive control over the distribution frameworks and the market.

Beyond strengthening Hamas's control, the document also warns that the huge number of trucks makes it difficult for the security forces to conduct quality inspections, dramatically increasing the chance for smuggling. According to the data, over 75% of the contraband detected contained tobacco and cigarette products, a product of enormous economic value that Hamas uses to finance its activities. In addition, attempts to smuggle sensitive dual-use materials were detected. Additionally, forces also caught attempts to smuggle sensitive multi-use substances. 

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426946

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Democrats, media and legal scholars float wild proposals to win Virginia redistricting battle - Steven Richards

 

by Steven Richards

Is outcome determination above the law? The proposals follow Democratic leaders decrying the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that struck down Democrats' redistricting attempt as “undemocratic.”

 

In the wake of the party’s failed Virginia redistricting gambit, Democrats and their allies in the media and academia have been floating radical proposals to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In response to their defeat at the Virginia Supreme Court, the Democratic leaders have promised to remain defiant and have labeled the judicial decision “undemocratic” and discriminatory against minorities. 

“Even after being aided and abetted by blatantly undemocratic court decisions, the failed GOP majority will not be able to gerrymander themselves back into power,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Minority Leader, wrote in a letter to his caucus on Monday. “Republican extremists spent the last few days applauding their ongoing effort to rig the midterm elections based on two egregious judicial decisions dripping with far-right partisanship,” he also wrote. “We remain undeterred.”

They gambled and lost

The Virginia referendum to change the congressional maps was a gamble for Democrats. The party had to circumvent the state constitution, amended by referendum in 2020 to create the Virginia Redistricting Commission – a bipartisan body tasked with drawing the state’s maps. The Democrats needed to temporarily suspend that process with another amendment. 

But, to do so before the midterm election, party leadership had to bend the rules of the state’s amendment process – which requires an amendment be proposed in one session, an intervening election to take place, and then voted on again in the subsequent session. The problem is that the Virginia House of Delegates voted to propose its amendment after the 2025 election was already underway, which invalidated the process, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled.

The ruling is devastating for Democrats because it means the party is likely to come up short in its redistricting brawl with Republicans ahead of the midterm elections this year. 

But, some state officials, Democratic Party leaders, and its academic and media allies are not giving up. Some have proposed radical solutions to undo the court’s ruling in order to secure more Democratic congressional seats. 

Not democratic? Questioning the right of a high court to interpret law

“The referendum wasn’t just an election; it was the people of Virginia exercising their right to amend their Constitution as they see fit,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Sunday.  

“On what basis can the State Supreme Court, a creature of that Constitution, invalidate a sovereign decision of the whole people?” he asked. “The court may have the right to say what the law is, but this doesn’t extend to a veto over the people’s right to change the fundamental rules of their political system.” 

Bouie called on Democrats to “meet the moment” to combat the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision, seeming to suggest using whatever means necessary to overrule the court’s ruling.   

One law professor who has been involved with Democratic politics in the past, Quinn Yeargain, proposed that Virginia Democrats should pass legislation to lower the retirement age of its Supreme Court justices – forcing all of them off the court and allowing lawmakers to appoint a new slate. Lawmakers could then appeal the redistricting referendum to the new court.  

"Democrats might prefer other solutions, but if they want to see the will of the voters respected in time for the November elections, there are virtually no other options — and none with as good a chance of success as this one,” Yeargain, who is a professor at Michigan State University College of Law, posted to Substack. 

Lest the proposal be considered fringe, Virginia Democratic lawmakers and Minority Leader Jeffries reportedly discussed the proposal in a call over the weekend to discuss possible ways the Democrats could challenge the Virginia Supreme Court ruling. The group reportedly did not settle on a strategy. 

Jeffries letter to his caucus on Monday makes no reference to any attempt to forcibly retire the state’s justices. The proposal faced swift pushback from Republican state lawmakers and conservative legal scholars.  

“In the unlikely chance that this could pass the General Assembly […] it would be difficult to engineer before the midterm elections, given the likely challenges. However, it is the inclination of some to try such measures that is chilling,” wrote Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University Law School. 

“If Democrats will try to fire the Virginia Supreme Court over one redistricting case, what will they do the next time a court tells them no? This is not about maps anymore. It’s about whether the rule of law survives in Virginia,” Republican state senator Glen Sturtevant said.

State officials not all on board with the idea

However, key state officials are opposed to moving forward with such a radical proposal. 

Democratic Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell on Monday reportedly ruled out pursuing such a measure. He told the Virginia Scope, a local outlet, that drastic measures would not be taken, in part because the state’s Department of Elections warned that any changes to the map after May 12 would disrupt the primary and midterm elections processes.

Governor Abigail Spanberger, who was inaugurated earlier this year, also said that she does not support forcibly retiring the state’s justices for redistricting.

Virginia Democratic leaders on Monday submitted an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking them to intervene and allow the commonwealth to use the maps redrawn by the Democratic legislature. The leaders argue that the state’s court ruling was “deeply mistaken on two critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the nation.” By invoking federal law, the Democratic official hopes to provide the grounds for the federal Supreme Court to intervene. 

Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/democrats-media-and-legal-scholars-float-radical-proposals-win-virginia

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California mayor accused of secretly working for China, spreading propaganda while in office: feds - Stepheny Price

 

by Stepheny Price

Eileen Wang faces up to 10 years in prison after prosecutors say she spread pro-Beijing content at officials' direction

 

Here's how China is 'actively targeting' Chinese Americans in US politics

The Daily Caller's Philip Lenczycki and Texas Rep. Lance Gooden examine the relationship between a Biden appointee and Chinese intelligence on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'

A California mayor who has since resigned has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and has agreed to plead guilty, according to federal prosecutors who say she secretly worked to push pro-Beijing messaging inside the United States before she took office.

Eileen Wang, former mayor of Arcadia, California, has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and has agreed to plead guilty to the felony offense, the Justice Department announced. She now faces up to 10 years in federal prison along with a potential $250,000 fine, though any sentence would be determined by a federal judge.

Federal prosecutors say Wang admitted she acted "at the direction and control" of Chinese government officials from at least 2020 through 2022, coordinating with individuals in the U.S. to spread pro-Beijing messaging, all without notifying the U.S. Attorney General as required by law. The conduct described by prosecutors occurred before Wang took office on the Arcadia City Council in December 2022.

Arcadia city officials said the case is tied to Wang’s individual conduct and does not impact city operations.

"Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said.

CHINA SKIRTS US EFFORTS TO STIFF-ARM CCP INTERFERENCE BY BOLSTERING STATE, LOCAL RELATIONS

Eileen Wang, former mayor of Arcadia, California, who is accused of acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government, has agreed to plead guilty. (City of Arcadia - City Hall Facebook)

"It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all."

According to court documents, Wang worked alongside Yaoning "Mike" Sun, a convicted Chinese agent already serving a four-year federal prison sentence, to operate a website posing as a local Chinese American news outlet.

Prosecutors described the website as a propaganda arm for the Chinese Communist Party, saying it published content supplied directly by Chinese officials. Bottom of Form

ALLEGED CHINESE SCHEME TO INFLUENCE 2020 ELECTION FOR BIDEN BEING PROBED BY FBI, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

In one exchange, a Chinese government official sent Wang a pre-written article denying allegations of forced labor and genocide in Xinjiang.

Minutes later, Wang posted it online and sent back the link. The official replied, "So fast, thank you everyone."

GOT A TIP?

In another instance, after making edits at Beijing’s request and touting more than 15,000 views, Wang responded, "Thank you leader."

CHINA TARGETS US MILITARY MEMBERS IN OVERSEAS SPY OPERATIONS, FORMER CIA STATION CHIEF WARNS

The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that a CIA officer who provided Top Secret intelligence to China was sentenced to prison. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg)

Prosecutors also say Wang communicated with convicted PRC operative John Chen, a figure tied to China’s intelligence apparatus with connections to Chinese President Xi Jinping, asking him to distribute messaging and writing, "This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send."

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"Individuals in our country who covertly do the bidding of foreign governments undermine our democracy," First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said. "This plea agreement is the latest success in our determination to defend the homeland against China’s efforts to corrupt our institutions."

The FBI framed the case as a warning about foreign interference in American politics.

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The U.S. and Chinese flags are displayed side by side in an illustration on Jan. 30, 2023. A Chinese couple had their U.S. naturalization citizenship revoked by a federal judge due to wire fraud and theft of trade secret convictions. (Wang Gang/VCG via Getty Images)

"By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government," said FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky. "Let this serve as a clear warning individuals who act on behalf of foreign governments to influence our democracy will be identified, investigated, and brought to justice."

Despite the covert relationship, Wang was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022 and later became mayor through the council’s rotating system. The conduct outlined by prosecutors occurred before she assumed office.

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In her plea agreement, Wang admitted she never disclosed her work for the Chinese government either to federal authorities or to readers of her website and acknowledged she was acting inside the United States while doing so. She is expected to formally enter the guilty plea in federal court and has not yet been sentenced.

The agreement also makes clear that if Wang is not a U.S. citizen, her felony conviction could trigger deportation or denial of future citizenship. The plea agreement describes those as potential immigration consequences.

Wang has agreed to resign from public office and is expected to formally enter her guilty plea in the coming weeks as the FBI investigation continues.

Arcadia City Hall in California. Mayor Eileen Wang resigned after being charged in a federal case tied to acting as an illegal agent for China. (Jesse Watson/Fox News Digital)

Arcadia city officials said the case is tied to Wang’s individual conduct and does not impact city operations.

In a message to residents, City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto confirmed Wang has resigned from the City Council, vacating her role as mayor, following the federal charges.

"The allegations at the center of this case, that a foreign government sought to exert influence over a local elected official, are deeply troubling," the city said in a statement. "We take them seriously."

City officials said the conduct outlined in the case occurred before Wang took office in December 2022 and emphasized that no city resources or decision-making processes were affected.

"Following an internal review, we can confirm that no City finances, staff, or decision-making processes were involved," the statement said.

Officials added that no other members of the City Council are under investigation and that city business is continuing as normal.

Fox News' Matt Finn contributed to this report. 

Stepheny Price

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-mayor-accused-secretly-working-china-spreading-propaganda-office-feds

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The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

Demographic change, DEI ideology, anti-Israel radicalism, and political cowardice have mainstreamed hostility toward Jews.

 

 

Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.

After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.

Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.

It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.

True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.

So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?

There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.

Demography

First, in demographic terms, the US Muslim population is expanding exponentially, due almost entirely to recent immigration and higher birth rates than the American norm (e.g., 2.5–8 versus 1.6–1.7).

There are now nearly five million Muslim Americans. These numbers are anticipated by 2030 to surpass the Jewish American population.

Moreover, increasing numbers of Jews are not just secular or intermarried but no longer identify so strongly as Jewish, much less as supporters of Israel. More importantly, billions of dollars in the last few years from the Gulf states—primarily Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait—have flowed into American universities.

These enormous sums bankroll weaponized Middle East studies programs and enrich left-wing NGOs, nonprofits, and sympathetic politicians. The new antisemites talk nefariously of the money of “International Jewry,” and “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” but in truth, Gulf money dwarfs Israel’s lobbying budget.

An entire generation of young American elites has been groomed in universities to despise Israel and, by extension, to express hostility toward Jews. After October 7, the scab was torn away, revealing what had festered underneath for years.

Any visitor to a contemporary American campus who talks at length to protesting students quickly arrives at two general conclusions:

First, many have been taught to despise Israel and simply parrot the indoctrinated talking points of their professors—“apartheid,” “genocide,” “war crimes,” “settler colonialism,” and so on.

The result is that it is now “cool” on campus to trash Israel, utter the platitude that “hating Israel is not hating Jews,” and then either make life uncomfortable for Jewish students or remain silent when witnessing such harassment firsthand.

Second, today’s students know little to nothing of the modern Middle East. Most have no idea what the eliminationist slogan “From the River to the Sea” actually portends. Few anti-Israeli demonstrators could identify either the Jordan River or the Mediterranean Sea, much less distinguish between them. Yet all understand that chanting the hip and approved slogans earns social acceptance in and outside the classroom.

DEI

The DEI binary fuels both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish animus. In this Marxist moral schema, the world abroad—and within the United States—is divided into “white oppressors” and “nonwhite victims,” despite the fact that people commonly classified as white comprise only a small minority of the global population. The dichotomy is reductive and often absurd, collapsing immense differences in class, wealth, power, culture, and historical circumstance into a crude racial narrative. Instead, in this paradigm, superficial appearance—including something as trivial as adding accents to names or adopting some sort of virtue-signaling head dress or garb—can brand one as a nonwhite victim. Once so identified, the supposedly oppressed are granted collective grievances against their victimizers and, increasingly, exemptions from censure.

Thus, DEI offers a pass from charges of antisemitism on the theory that the oppressed cannot themselves become oppressors. Muslim students on American campuses were often graphic in their chants and placards wishing deaths upon Israelis, unapologetic in roughing up Jewish students, and confident—often correctly—that their purported victimhood exempted them from consequences.

The idea that minorities cannot be antisemites is, of course, not new. For example, graphic antagonism toward Jews—long at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement has long been expressed by prominent black leaders with little downside (e.g., Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “dem Jews”; Jesse Jackson: “Hymietown”; Al Sharpton: “diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights”; Malcolm X: “bloodsuckers”; Louis Farrakhan: “termites” and “gutter religion”).

Thus, Jews in America found themselves classified among the whitest and most privileged of the oppressor class, perhaps by virtue of their material success, while Israel abroad was deemed a white colonialist settler state because it repeatedly defeated neighboring enemies.

Key to the DEI demonization of the Jews has been the diminution of the horrors of the Holocaust to ensure Jews are excluded from the victim side of the ledger. The murder of six million had once been a principal reason of many to support the idea of an independent sanctuary in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Downplaying the Holocaust—or treating it as irrelevant or understandable—therefore calls postwar Zionism into question.

When Tucker Carlson declared that the unpublished podcaster Daryl Cooper was the preeminent historian of World War II, his praise rested neither on Cooper’s comprehensive scholarly work (there was none), nor bestselling popular accounts of the war (there were none), nor distinguished public lectures, seminar classes, or journal articles on the war (there were none).

Instead, the reason for such hagiography was that Cooper in his podcast shad downplayed the Holocaust in narratives of the war, whitewashed Germany, and cited a nefarious shadowy group of you-know-who for pushing supposedly naïve or sinister leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt into an aggressive and unwarranted war against a supposedly victimized Hitler and Nazi Germany.

From Underdog to Overdog

Third, Israel is no longer the Israel of 1947, 1956, 1967, or 1973, nor the Israel mired in the various Lebanon and Intifada quagmires that followed.

In the early 21st century, Benjamin Netanyahu helped open the Israeli economy and foster a meritocratic, free-market boom. Only oil-rich Qatar and the UAE surpass Israel in regional per capita income.

Its military, honed over generations of warfare, has become more capable than those of France, Germany, or the UK in key areas, especially combat aviation, the number of combat aircraft, and pilot quality. In short, tiny underdog Israel—surrounded by hundreds of millions of aggressive Muslims—has somehow been recast as the settler “overdog” bully. With a mere 18 percent of collective Arab GDP and outnumbered 50,000 to one, Israel is depicted as poised to carve out a “Greater Israel” from the impotent but simultaneously more virtuous and richer Arab Middle East.

October 7 and its aftermath, counterintuitively, accelerated the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish hatred. If Israel had not responded to the massacre, the new anti-Israel cohort would have claimed their inaction was a passive admission of prior guilt for which the attack was merely partial payment.

Yet once Israel moved to destroy Hamas, it was branded genocidal. Early Israeli calls for Gazans to turn over the planners and perpetrators of the massacre were dismissed by the Palestinians as absurd or unserious—mere jest. Few in the West called on the Palestinians to surrender their mass murderers.

Yet few of Israel’s critics could ever explain exactly what the Jewish state was supposed to do after suffering mass murder in peacetime from an enemy that had abducted more than 240 hostages—to the cheers of most Gazans.

How was the IDF—or any army—supposed to descend into a billion-dollar, booby-trapped labyrinth of tunnels, its exits and entries hidden beneath schools, private homes, mosques, and hospitals, to free hostages and kill terrorists while the media effectively shilled for Hamas?

The New Jacobin Agenda

Hating Israel—and, by association, Jews—was voiced not merely by DEI or the radical new wing of the Democratic Party. Anti-Israelism instead merged into a broader leftist potpourri of open borders, illegal immigration, anti-ICE violence, Green New Deal-style wokism, and Trump Derangement Syndrome.

These causes came to be viewed as an inseparable package whose elements were interconnected and tolerated no apostasy from any of them.

Thus, Jacobinism became an all-or-nothing litmus test. As a result, even though Totenkopf tattoos might have been the last thing seen by Jews as they were herded by the tens of thousands into the gas chambers, such Satanic iconography scrawled into the flesh was apparently no longer disqualifying for a Democratic Senate nominee in Maine.

For figures like Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, or Chuck Schumer to forcefully challenge hatred of Israel—and, by extension, of the Jews—would now be treated as political heresy, a career-ending death wish. Defending Israel and calling out antisemitism became as unfashionable in progressive circles as praising secure borders, deportations, or fossil fuels and pipelines. And so the old party largely kept mum and sanctioned the new loathing.

As for conservative podcasters and internet influencers who now seem unrecognizable from what they had professed only months or years earlier, many had grown tired of being ostracized from popular culture and the establishment hallmarks of media and entertainment.

How else to explain their sudden hatred of Trump for the current Iran war, or his support for Israel, when the remaining 90 percent of his agenda has matched their own life-long conservative views, and were antithetical to the Left they now sometimes court?

But once figures like Candace Owens or a newly radicalized Tucker Carlson became fixated on the Jews, the Left found them useful as both shields and validators. Their rhetoric suggested that virulent anti-Israelism was not merely a left-wing fixation but something shared across the political spectrum.

The more such figures received establishment tolerance—or even praise and social acceptance—like addicts, the madder and louder they became until they were very nearly indistinguishable from the leftists they had so long warned about. Thus Carlson, a once eloquent conservative, came full circle and effectively rationalized the idea of allowing Iran to have a nuclear bomb. That notion after all, was the subtext of Obama’s Iran Deal and his morally neutral idea of a powerful Tehran-Damascus-Beirut-Gaza axis to balance moderate Arab regimes and Israel.

The Left praised these new right-wing opponents of Israel, as if they were Liz Cheneys—who were not so bad after all. Such praise from the corridors of cultural influence and power apparently was seen as welcome shelter from the prior left-wing hailstorms that had pelted them for years.

The final irony?

The only meaningful resistance to the anti-Israel crowd is not the DEI coalition, not the new Democratic Party, not the coastal and credentialed and supposedly enlightened left-wing white elite, not the supposedly “character is destiny” Never Trumpers, and certainly not the allegedly brave mavericks who have bolted from the MAGA base.

Instead, what is left in the pathway of demonizing Israel and blaming Jews, here and abroad, is the supposed bigot Donald Trump and his “irredeemable,” “deplorable” MAGA movement—for now, the last dam holding back the rising flood.

 

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/12/the-four-horsemen-of-the-new-antisemitism/

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