Monday, March 30, 2026

Netanyahu orders IDF to expand security zone in Southern Lebanon - JNS Staff

 

​ by JNS Staff

Israeli premier aims to prevent attacks and push the Hezbollah threat farther from northern border amid ongoing multi-front war.

 

Lebanon
An Israeli military helicopter flies near the Israeli border with Lebanon, during the war with Iran and Hezbollah and ongoing missile fire toward Israel, March 28, 2026. Credit: Ayal Margolin/Flash90.
Ayal Margolin/Flash90

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to “further expand the existing security zone” on the Lebanese side of the border with Israel to “finally thwart the threat of invasion and to keep anti-tank missile fire away.”

Until 2000, Israel had maintained a buffer zone in Southern Lebanon, together with the now-defunct South Lebanon Army, a predominantly Christian entity with recruits from the Maronite minority of Lebanon. After the 2000 IDF pullout, Hezbollah became one of the best-armed terror groups in the world, capable of sustained fighting with the IDF.

“It must be understood that [slain Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah created a great force here. He believed that with this force he would destroy us. We eliminated Nasrallah. We eliminated thousands of Hezbollah terrorists, and above all, we eliminated the enormous threat of 150,000 missiles and rockets, which were intended to destroy Israeli cities,” Netanyahu said. “But Hezbollah still has a residual ability to launch rockets at us.”

Netanyahu said he’d discussed with the heads of the IDF Northern Command “ways to remove this threat as well,” though he added that he “cannot share these discussions.” The premier added “that we are determined to fundamentally change this situation in the north.”

In a short address announcing the security buffer push, Netanyahu also provided an overview of what he presented as the achievements of the war against Iran and its proxies since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

“We are in a multi-front campaign. We are striking with tremendous force at Iran and its proxies. We are bringing about tremendous achievements, achievements that are creating visible cracks in the terrorist regime in Tehran.”

Iran, Netanyahu said, “is not the same Iran, Hezbollah is not the same Hezbollah, and Hamas is not the same Hamas. These are no longer terrorist armies that threaten our existence—these are defeated enemies, fighting for their survival.”

Instead of those entities surprising Israel, “we are surprising them. We are the active party, we are the attacking party, we are the initiating side—and we are deep in their territory,” he said.

Netanyahu recalled that shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion, he’d said that “we would change the face of the Middle East, and we did it. But we also changed our security concept. We are initiating, we are attacking, and we have created three security belts deep in enemy territory.”

In Syria, he said, the buffer extends from the crest of Mount Hermon to the Yarmouk River; in Gaza, to more than half of the Strip. “And in Lebanon, I have now instructed to further expand the existing security zone,” Netanyahu said. 


JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/netanyahu-orders-idf-to-expand-lebanese-security-zone

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Iran's war against the US and Israel is being fueled by North Korean weapons, expert warns - Benjamin Weinthal

 

​ by Benjamin Weinthal

Iran used communist North Korea’s missile technology to strike US base and allies during ongoing war, expert says


 

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s vast missile system is the brainchild of the U.S.-designated state-sponsor of terrorism, the communist North Korea regime, which works hand in glove with Iran, according to one of the world’s leading experts on the Iran-North Korea strategic alliance.

"The missile launched at Diego Garcia was a Musudan. The Iranians bought 19 of these from the North Koreans and took delivery in 2005. They have had this capability since 2005 — and this is no ‘secret weapon,'" Bruce Bechtol, who co-authored with Anthony Celso the groundbreaking book "Rogue Allies: The Strategic Partnership Between Iran and North Korea," told Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital reported last week that Iran significantly escalated its war effort against the U.S. with its launch of two intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward Diego Garcia—roughly 2,500 miles from Iran.

TRUMP PROVEN RIGHT ON IRAN'S LONG-RANGE MISSILE CAPABILITY AS REGIME TARGETS US-UK BASE, EXPERTS SAY

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits major munitions enterprises in the last quarter of 2025, in this picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on December 26, 2025.

Kim pictured visiting a major munitions depot in an image released in December 2025. (KCNA via Reuters )

Bechtol said, "The most important threat from Iran as the war with the United States and Israel has evolved has been the ballistic missiles, launched not only at U.S. facilities and Israeli cities, but also at neighboring Islamic countries. Thus, it is important to consider this capability and where Iran got it."

He said, "The short-range ballistic missiles that Iran has launched at key U.S. facilities and at neighboring Arab states include a key system – the 'QIAM.' The QIAM was developed and improved with North Korean assistance… North Korea has proliferated a lot to Iran that we are seeing right now in the war."

Shahab 3

The launch of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Shahab-3 medium-range missile during a test at an undisclosed location on Sept. 28, 2009. (AP Photo)

The joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran’s regime, the world’s worst state-sponsor of terrorism, according to the U.S. State Department, has entered its fifth week.

Bechtol, who is a professor of political science in the Department of Security Studies at Angelo State University in Texas, noted that, according to the Wisconsin Project, North Korea had constructed a large missile test facility at Emamshahr, a city in the Fars Province in Iran, and a tracking facility at Tabas in South Khorasan province.

He said North Korea aided Iran with crucial technology "for targets farther away from Iran."

"The North Koreans proliferated around 150 No Dong systems to Iran in the late 1990s. The Iranians were apparently very happy with the missiles the North Koreans provided them, and, following the earlier precedent of the Scud C factory, contracted with Pyongyang to build a No Dong facility in Iran."

AFTER THE STRIKES, HOW WOULD THE US SECURE IRAN’S ENRICHED URANIUM?

Bechtol continued, "The Iranians called this ‘new’ missile the Shahab-3. The Shahab-3 is almost an exact copy of the No Dong. Once the Shahab-3 was up and running, the North Koreans moved forward with the Iranians in improving its range and lethality."

He said, "With assistance from the North Koreans, the Iranians were then able to produce (at the No Dong facility) the Emad and the Ghadr. The Emad has a range of 1,750 kilometers (approx 1,087 miles) and the Ghadr has a range of 1,950 kilometers (approximately 1,212 miles.) The Iranians have used these two systems to target not only Israel, but their Arab neighbors (including U.S. bases located in these countries) throughout the ongoing first stages of this conflict."

A Ghadr-H missile, center, a Sejjil missile and a portrait of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are on display for the annual Defense Week, marking the 37th anniversary of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, at Baharestan Sq. in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2017. Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard also displayed the country's sophisticated Russian-made S-300 air defense system in public for the first time. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Missiles and a portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on display for the annual Defense Week, marking the 37th anniversary of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 24, 2017. (AP)

Bechtol said the North Koreans spawned an Iranian missile warhead that weighs a ton and a half to two tons on the powerful Khorramshahr-4. "There is another system capable of hitting Israel that has been even more lethal than any of the systems described thus far. This system is called the ‘Khorramshahr,’ and the fourth version of this system, appropriately called the ‘Khorramshahr-4,’ has been proven to carry a warhead larger than any other in Iran’s missile inventory, armed with what appears to be cluster munitions," he said.

He described the strategic partnership, noting: "North Korea is the seller and Iran is the buyer. North Korea proliferates weapons systems, technology, parts and components, technicians, engineers and specialists and military capabilities (such as the building of underground facilities) to Iran. Iran pays North Korea with cash and oil. Simple as that."

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Residents and Home Front Command officers inspecting the interior of a heavily damaged residential home.

Residents and officers from Israel's Home Front Command inspect a house destroyed by an Iranian missile strike in Zarzir, northern Israel, March 13, 2026. (Ariel Schalit/AP Photo)

Bechtol said the only way to stop this is through sanctions enforcement against North Korea. "The sanctions that are needed are already on the books. But the USA and our key allies need to robustly enforce them. We need to go after banks, front companies and cyber entities in order to squeeze the money and contain or destroy the supply chain."

He said, "More emphasis needs to be placed, and more action needs to be taken using the Proliferation Security Initiative — an underused aspect of preventing North Korea's arms from flowing to rogue nations and terrorist groups.  If you cut off the supply chain, you cut off the proliferation."

 

Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal, and email him at benjamin.weinthal@fox.com

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/irans-war-against-us-israel-being-fueled-north-korean-weapons-expert-warns

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The Sham of 'Disarming' Hamas - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

In Hamas's view, the establishment of Israel on any of this land is an illegal "Zionist project" and a form of colonial occupation.

 

  • Hamas, like Iran, continues to treat the idea of disarmament with a mix of dismissal and rhetorical defiance, effectively signaling that it has no intention of giving up its weapons or altering its dream of eliminating Israel.

  • For Hamas, disarmament is not a serious proposal. Instead, it is a tool for political theater, a way to manipulate donors and tighten its grip over the Gaza Strip.

  • In Hamas's view, the establishment of Israel on any of this land is an illegal "Zionist project" and a form of colonial occupation.

  • When Hamas talks about "resistance" (Arabic: muqawama), it is referring to a comprehensive framework aimed at destroying Israel through a violent jihad (holy war), similar to the Islamic conquest of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or Turkey's 1974 invasion and conquest of northern Cyprus.

  • According to the Independent Arabia report, some 20,000 Hamas gunmen will be integrated into a new security force in the Gaza Strip and receive salaries with international funding. The new force would be granted the status of an official security apparatus, recognized regionally and internationally.

  • The "Board of Peace" has also apparently offered "political and legal immunity" to Hamas terrorists, guaranteeing that they will not be prosecuted internationally or by Israel in exchange for their involvement in a local governing council.

  • If true, this means that the "Board of Peace" views Hamas as a legitimate and acceptable partner in the future management of the Gaza Strip. The mere act of engaging Hamas in such negotiations is beyond problematic. It risks not only legitimizing an Islamist terror group, but also entrenching its authoritarian rule in the Gaza Strip and paving the way for more massacres against Israel.

  • The idea of integrating Hamas terrorists into the Gaza Strip's new security apparatus is even worse. Such a move sends a message to the Palestinians that participation in terrorism carries no consequences and that terrorists can move directly from violence into official roles without a meaningful process of disarmament.

  • Legitimizing these terrorists -- as with the Taliban in Afghanistan -- undermines any attempt to establish norms of governance based on law rather than on violence, and can only embolden other terror groups. Without a credible enforcement mechanism -- backed by unified international and regional support -- calls for disarmament remain hallucinatory.

  • It is hard to see how pro-Hamas countries such as Qatar, Turkey, or Pakistan, all part of the "Board of Peace" -- and two of which, Qatar and Pakistan, have never even recognized Israel -- would seriously participate in any effort to force the Palestinian terror groups to give up their weapons.

  • Without such pressure, plans for disarmament will continue to be dismissed by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups. Any plan that assumes these groups will voluntarily lay down their weapons is dangerously unenlightened.

Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have again rejected demands by US President Donald J. Trump's "Board of Peace" to lay down their weapons. This rejection underscores the determination of terror groups to continue their fight against Israel. Pictured: Hamas terrorists in Gaza on February 15, 2025. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have again rejected demands by US President Donald J. Trump's "Board of Peace" to lay down their weapons. This rejection underscores the determination of terror groups to continue their fight against Israel.

The Palestinian terror groups' refusal to hand over their weapons shows they do not take seriously Trump's repeated threats that they must disarm as part of the October 2025 US-brokered ceasefire and reconstruction plan for the Gaza Strip. Trump made his latest threat in February 2026, when he warned that Hamas would be "harshly met" if they failed to disarm.

Hamas, like Iran, continues to treat the idea of disarmament with a mix of dismissal and rhetorical defiance, effectively signaling that it has no intention of giving up its weapons or altering its dream of eliminating Israel.

For Hamas, disarmament is not a serious proposal. Instead, it is a tool for political theater, a way to manipulate donors and tighten its grip over the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian terror groups' latest refusal to disarm came after they received a detailed 12-point disarmament plan from the "Board of Peace."

The plan proposes an eight-month timeline:

1. Preparation (days 1-15) – A Palestinian technocratic committee takes security control and begins preparatory steps.

2. Heavy Weaponry (days 16-40) – Israel removes heavy weaponry; international security forces deploy.

3. Infrastructure Destruction (days 31-90) – Destruction of all tunnels and military infrastructure.

4. Full Collection (days 91-250) – Local police forces collect and register all remaining small arms, including rifles and pistols.

A Palestinian official close to the talks between the "Board of Peace" and Hamas said the plan was "unfair," and expected Hamas to seek some "amendments and ​improvements."

The unnamed official said the plan did not provide guarantees Israel ⁠would carry out its obligations. The plan, the​ official added, would risk causing the war to resume by linking reconstruction and improvements to living conditions to political issues such as disarmament.

Three Palestinian terror groups – Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) — issued separate statements criticizing the plan. They said it unfairly prioritized disarmament over issues such as reconstruction and Israeli withdrawal.

PIJ wrote in its statement:

"The weapons of the resistance belong to the Palestinian people and constitute a fundamental means to achieve their national goals, foremost among them ending the occupation and establishing an independent state."

Senior Hamas official Ismail al-Sindawi stated that the core of the crisis "lies in the occupation." The weapons of the Palestinian factions, he said, "are a natural consequence of the occupation."

Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist inside any borders. It considers all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as an Islamic wakf (endowment) that belongs to Muslims to hold in trust for Allah by divine right.

In Hamas's view, the establishment of Israel on any of this land is an illegal "Zionist project" and a form of colonial occupation. Hamas's 1988 charter frames the conflict as a religious one, and calls for the "liberation of all of Palestine."

When Hamas talks about "resistance" (Arabic: muqawama), it is referring to a comprehensive framework aimed at destroying Israel through a violent jihad (holy war), similar to the Islamic conquest of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or Turkey's 1974 invasion and conquest of northern Cyprus.

The PFLP emphasized that "resistance is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people." According to the group, "the resistance's weapons have never been a tool for chaos, but rather a means to protect the Palestinian people."

For its part, the DFLP warned that any arrangements concerning weapons must be part of a unified Palestinian position and claimed that Israel "is seeking to achieve political gains through diplomatic pressure after its military failure."

Sheikh Salem al-Sufi, head of the Bedouin Tribes and Clans Council in the Gaza Strip, said that the Palestinian terror groups' weapons represent the "spirit" of the Palestinian people. Relinquishing the weapons, al-Sufi stressed, "is out of the question without achieving security and establishing an independent Palestinian state."

According to a report in the Independent Arabia newspaper, the "Board of Peace" recently presented Hamas with a set of guarantees described as tempting but complex.

The alleged guarantees include granting the terror group an international protection umbrella by deploying an international security force and observers on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, as well as a written American commitment that Israel would not launch military operations or assassinations.

According to the Independent Arabia report, some 20,000 Hamas gunmen will be integrated into a new security force in the Gaza Strip and receive salaries with international funding. The new force would be granted the status of an official security apparatus, recognized regionally and internationally.

The "Board of Peace" has also apparently offered "political and legal immunity" to Hamas terrorists, guaranteeing that they will not be prosecuted internationally or by Israel in exchange for their involvement in a local governing council.

If true, this means that the "Board of Peace" views Hamas as a legitimate and acceptable partner in the future management of the Gaza Strip. The mere act of engaging Hamas in such negotiations is beyond problematic. It risks not only legitimizing an Islamist terror group, but also entrenching its authoritarian rule in the Gaza Strip and paving the way for more massacres against Israel.

The idea of integrating Hamas terrorists into the Gaza Strip's new security apparatus is even worse. Such a move sends a message to the Palestinians that participation in terrorism carries no consequences and that terrorists can move directly from violence into official roles without a meaningful process of disarmament.

Legitimizing these terrorists -- as with the Taliban in Afghanistan -- undermines any attempt to establish norms of governance based on law rather than on violence, and can only embolden other terror groups. Without a credible enforcement mechanism -- backed by unified international and regional support -- calls for disarmament remain hallucinatory.

Finally, disarmament requires coordination between the US, key Arab and Islamic states, and European partners to ensure consistent pressure and messaging.

It is hard to see how pro-Hamas countries such as Qatar, Turkey, or Pakistan, all part of the "Board of Peace" -- and two of which, Qatar and Pakistan, have never even recognized Israel -- would seriously participate in any effort to force the Palestinian terror groups to give up their weapons.

The "Board of Peace" will need to apply pressure on the Palestinian terror groups just as a first step toward forcing them to disarm.

The pressure could include cutting off financial and military lifelines through sanctions, tighter monitoring of aid flows, and preventing weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip. The board also needs to tie reconstruction projects to verifiable steps toward demilitarization. If the terrorists remain defiant, Israel may need to use military force to eliminate all the terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

Without such pressure, plans for disarmament will continue to be dismissed by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups. Any plan that assumes these groups will voluntarily lay down their weapons is dangerously unenlightened.


Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22396/sham-of-disarming-hamas

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Why Joe Kent Matters - Stephen Soukup

 

​ by Stephen Soukup

A decorated patriot’s fall into conspiracism shows how even the best can be consumed by antisemitic fantasy—and why such thinking must be confronted before it spreads.

 

A couple of weeks ago, just after Joe Kent resigned his position in the Trump administration, Jack Posobiec, the conservative political activist and commentator and former naval intelligence officer, posted on Twitter/X about Kent’s meritorious military service. “Joe Kent,” Posobiec wrote, “has six Bronze Star Medals with five Oak Leaf Clusters across 11 combat deployments as a Green Beret in some of the biggest battles of the GWOT.” That’s impressive, to say the least. And it’s also just the tip of the sacrifices Kent has made for this country.

After serving in the Army for 20 years—as a Ranger, a Green Beret, and in Army intelligence—Kent retired and joined the CIA as a paramilitary officer. The next year, while he was stateside with his two children, his wife and the mother of those children, Shannon Smith, a Navy intelligence officer, was killed by an IED while deployed in Syria. Kent became an activist in support of ending the nation’s “forever wars” and consulted with the (first) Trump administration on how best to achieve that goal. He ran for Congress in Washington in 2022, winning the Republican nomination but losing the general election. He ran again two years later and again won the primary but lost the general. Kent served as the acting chief of staff to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and then as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

At just 45 years old, Joe Kent has done a great deal more in defense of this country than most Americans could ever even imagine. He is, in many ways, the very best of us.

Which is precisely what makes his story a tragedy and a warning to the rest of us.

In his resignation letter, Kent declared that the war in Iran was unjustified and not in the nation’s best interests. That, of course, is a perfectly defensible, if arguable, position. He went on, however, to say that the war is also not really America’s war. It’s Israel’s war. And the sneaky Jews conned us into it—just as they conned us into the Iraq War 23 years ago:

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.

In that same letter, Kent also mentioned his late wife—and blamed Jews for her death, stating that he is “a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife, Shannon, in a war manufactured by Israel.” Israel, you see, is at the heart of everything wrong with the world, at least according to Joe Kent. In his estimation, there is almost nothing for which the Jews cannot be blamed.

After resigning, Kent made the rounds of the usual suspects in the right-leaning anti-Israel media. He appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to blame Israel for even more global perfidy, joining the chorus of radicals blaming the Jews for murdering Charlie Kirk. Kent claimed that it was his office’s responsibility to look for foreign ties to Kirk’s assassination and claimed that they “had already dug up a decent amount of leads” before the powers that be—wink, wink—told them to stop. He then went on to join Carrie Prejean (also recently departed from a Trump administration appointment for antisemitic comments) and fanatical antisemite Candace Owens at a “Catholics for Catholics” event.

All of this, it is worth noting, is in addition to the anti-Israel/antisemitic sentiments Kent exhibited before joining the Trump administration. In a short piece on Kent’s resignation, Seth Mandel, a senior editor at Commentary magazine, noted that Kent’s history should have been a huge red flag for the Trump team. They should never have even considered Kent for a position, despite his military service, because his “worldview is a conspiracy-addled montage of easily debunked rage-bait hallucinations.” Mandel’s description here is both especially accurate and especially important.

In the few weeks that he has been in the news again, Joe Kent has often been called a “conspiracy theorist.” And so, for that matter, have Carlson, Owens, Prejean, and others with whom he shares a loathing for Israel. In a recent column for Bloomberg, David M. Drucker called Kent “a conspiracy theorist of such questionable character that he lacks almost all credibility . . .” This is understandable framing, but it’s not quite right. Kent does not engage in conspiracy theories. Rather, he engages in “conspiracism.”

In his classic 1997 tome Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes, and Where It Comes From, the inimitable Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, draws a distinction between conspiracies, conspiracy theories, and what he calls conspiracism.

“Conspiracies,” Pipes notes, are real, and they have existed throughout history. Moreover, some of these real conspiracies have, indeed, been perpetrated in the modern Middle East and have included conspirators like states. These are facts. “Conspiracy theories,” by contrast, are a mixed bag. They propose a hypothesis—an attempt to explain events by positing a hidden coordinating group. Most such theories are wrong, but some turn out to be correct. Others, while wrong, are arrived at through reasonable inference from available evidence. “Conspiracism,” on the other hand, is simply pathological. It is (as Mandel notes) a “worldview,” a standing assumption that conspiracy is the normal mechanism by which history moves, that powerful hidden forces are always the real explanation behind surface events. True conspiracists—like Kent, Carlson, and Owens—don’t investigate incidents and then draw conclusions; they begin with the conclusion and work backward. Conspiracism is, as Pipes explains, “unfalsifiable,” meaning that no amount of evidence can disprove the theory, and, in fact, much evidence is seen merely as an attempt to cover up the conspiracy.

Pipes further writes that modern conspiracism has “two main forms”: antisemitism and fear of secret societies. As I have also suggested before in these pages, Pipes argues that the antisemitic conspiracist worldview has its roots in the Crusades and was exacerbated immeasurably by the Enlightenment and the events surrounding the French Revolution. He concludes that Jews are, in many ways, the perfect conspiracist foil. They occupy a unique position in conspiratorial thinking because they are simultaneously characterizable as weak and powerful, marginal and central, ancient and modern, tribal and cosmopolitan. Jews are, as a result, infinitely adaptable as an explanatory enemy. They can be—and often are—framed to fit almost any grievance.

Additionally, Pipes notes that conspiracism tends to have its most prominent and potent revivals during periods of social and economic upheaval. People are confused, lost, and in desperate need of an excuse, a scapegoat whom they may blame for the chaos and upheaval. This is a critical point. Not only does it provide clues as to when conspiracism might see a revival (as it does now), but it also warns of the damage conspiracism may do. In just the last century, for example, conspiracism directed at the Jews resulted in pogroms throughout Eastern Europe as well as the Holocaust itself.

It is easy, in other words, to dismiss Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens as grifters, cynical media manipulators who use antisemitic conspiracy theories to boost visibility or ratings. It is much more difficult to dismiss people like Joe Kent, people who represent the best of us but who fall prey to a warped and dangerous worldview. Joe Kent was, until recently, in a position of real power in the American government. That he no longer is should be seen as both a blessing and a warning. 


Stephen Soukup

Source: https://justthenews.com/world/ukraines-zelenskyy-signs-defense-cooperation-pacts-three-gulf-states

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Hungary's Orban, Trump's close European ally, faces toughest reelection bid in more than a decade - Eric J. Lyman

 

​ by Eric J. Lyman

Orbán has repeatedly forced the European Union to change its plans. Now, despite U.S. support, he's likely to be ousted from office.

 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, among President Donald Trump's closest European allies, is facing his toughest reelection bid in more than a decade – putting at risk what is arguably Trump's most reliable bulwark against what he considers the European Union's longtime efforts to "do damage to the U.S." 

Hungarians will go to the polls April 12, and polls show Orbán’s Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Union) party running further behind than at any other time since Orbán’s current tenure, which began in 2010. The election leader right now is the Tisza (Respect and Freedom) party, founded in 2024. 

Tisza is led by Péter Magyar, also a member of the European Parliament. If Tisza gains a majority in the April 12 vote, Magyar will replace Orbán as prime minister. 

Most recent polls show Tisza – a centrist, pro-European Union coalition – topping 50% of the vote in a crowded five-party field, with Fidesz a distant second with roughly 35%. A year ago, the two parties were running neck and neck. 

“This is the first election in more than a decade where Orbán’s defeat is a plausible outcome, not just a theoretical one, given the scale of the opposition’s lead and the erosion of his support in key constituencies,” the geopolitical risk and research consultancy Eurasia Group reported. 

The 62-year-old Orbán, the man once dubbed “Trump before Trump," served as Hungarian prime minister from 1998 to 2002, and then reelected in 2010, and has been in power since then. 

To be sure, Orbán has spent roughly the past 15 years as the European Union’s most reliable dissenter: blocking, delaying and restructuring decisions backed by almost all the leaders in the 27-nation bloc. And Trump, together with those at the highest reaches of his administration, are working to help keep him in power.

Trump last week formally endorsed Orbán, calling him “a strong and powerful leader ... a true friend, fighter, and winner.”

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a trip to Budapest, during which he held a televised press conference in which he praised Orbán and said his reelection was the best option for the country. And Vice President JD Vance has announced plans to visit Hungary on April 7 and 8, in another high-profile show of support, just days before Hungarians go to the polls.

Even with the election approaching, Orbán, who also has close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, has not stopped antagonizing European Union allies. 

His latest move was to veto Brussels’ finalization of a plan to provide Ukraine with $105 billion in funding for its war against Russia, a plan that had been approved by all EU member states – including Hungary – last year. Hungary’s lone opposing vote this month was enough to prevent the money from being released.

But the EU aid package may just be delayed, not rejected. European leaders are now banking on the idea that Magyar will be victorious in April and that he will not oppose the funding plan. 

An unnamed EU diplomat was quoted by media as calling the Ukraine vote “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” adding that “the hope to talk reason into Orbán is gone.”

Trump made the comment about the EU trying to "screw the U.S." during the early days of his second term, specifically referring to trade imbalances and further arguing the group was created as an opposition to America. 

"It was formed to really do damage to the United States and trade," he said in February 2025. "They're screwing us on trade. ... The European Union has been very bad to us." 

Trump has further argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in which 30 of the 32 member-states are European, has similarly taken advantage of the U.S., or at least until recently, by members not paying their fair share for military defense. And his recent gambit to annex or buy all or part of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, an EU and NATO member, is also considered another sign, in addition to higher European tariffs, of Trump's stance on Europe.

Meanwhile, Orbán has benefited from close ties with Trump.

Polls have shown that Hungarians have a higher opinion of the U.S. than any other country in Europe. 

According to Pew Research, 78% of Hungarians believe U.S. democracy works “very well” or “somewhat well,” compared to just 48% who held the same views in Italy, 36% in France, and 31% in Germany. The same poll showed that 60% of Hungarians had a “favorable” view of the U.S., compared to 47%, 36% and 33% in Italy, France, and Germany, respectively.  


Eric J. Lyman

Source: https://justthenews.com/world/europe/hungarys-orban-trump-administrations-closest-ally-europe-facing-daunting-election

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The War on Civilization: 'Israel Cannot Outsource Its Survival' - Grégoire Canlorbe

 

​ by Grégoire Canlorbe

A Conversation with Pierre Rehov

 

  • "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism." — Zoheir Mohsen, late PLO senior official, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

  • Hamas did not attack military targets to "end an occupation." It attacked families to affirm an old doctrine: the Jew is not an opponent; the Jew is a problem to be erased.

  • If you want to understand October 7, forget the comforting story of "desperation turning violent." Pogroms are not born from desperation; they are born from permission — social, religious, political permission to commit the unthinkable and feel righteous doing it.

  • In the Battle of Jenin, there was never any "confusion in the fog of war." The story that part of a hospital had been destroyed was a total fabrication. It revealed something essential: a good story has priority over reality.

  • The genius of the system is psychological. Once the image circulates, correction becomes irrelevant. The emotional verdict has already been delivered.

  • In modern warfare, the camera is no longer documenting the battle. It is part of the battlefield. The objective is not only to accuse Israel. It is to morally disarm the West. If you can persuade democratic societies that defending themselves equals murdering children, you have already won half the war.

  • They hate Israel for what it is: an infidel state – and in their midst. If Israel were a Christian state, the same problem would exist. Just look at the genocide in Nigeria – with more than 52,000 Christians killed in just 14 years – in a free society, which is a visible rejection of the Islamic totalitarian dream.

  • The Palestinian project is not a "two-state solution" or "a better border." The project is a world where religious and political absolutism rules, where minorities submit or vanish, where women are controlled, where dissent is crushed. Israel is the laboratory target. If the West rewards October 7 with political gains, it teaches a lesson to every violent movement on earth: massacre pays. So yes — Israel is defending itself, and in doing so, it is also defending the principle that civilization cannot survive if it negotiates with barbarity as if it were a partner who is misunderstood.

  • "In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over...." — Ion Mihai Pacepa, a lieutenant general in the Socialist Republic of Romania's Securitate, the secret police, who defected to the West in 1978, Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2003.

  • If a deal buys time for the "wrong" side, it is not a deal — it is an extension of the threat.

  • The point is that Israel cannot outsource its survival, and the United States cannot pretend that totalitarian jihadism can be "managed" indefinitely. Either you dismantle the infrastructure of terror, or it regrows.... Israel's enemies... are imposing a war on civilization.

  • Peace that is built on amnesia is not peace; it is a pause before the next war.

  • The West will not be defeated by lack of power. It will be defeated — if it is defeated — by the refusal to oppose danger when they see it.

(Image source: Pierre Rehov/Wikimedia Commons)

Pierre Rehov is a French documentary filmmaker, director, and novelist. He is known for his movies about the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli–Palestinian conflict, its treatment in the media, and about terrorism.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Are Iran's and Hamas's October 7, 2023 jihadi attacks on Israel responses to what they claim, that Israel is on their land?

Pierre Rehov: Jews have lived on that land for nearly 4,000 years. Palestinians, by contrast, contrary to myth, actually do not exist. As the late PLO senior official Zoheir Mohsen openly stated in an interview with the Dutch daily Trouw on March 31, 1977:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

In modern times, the Palestinians are really just assorted Arabs who happened to be in Israel in 1948. They chose to leave after five Arab armies invaded the new nation on the day of its birth, either to avoid being in the middle of a war, or often at the urging of their fellow Arabs, who told them to get out of the way to make it easier to kill the Jews. When these often self-exiled Arabs tried to return to Israel after the Arabs lost the war -- an event in Arabic called the nakba, the catastrophe – Israel refused to admit them based on their earlier disloyalty. Arabs who did not leave Israel now make up just over 20% of Israel's population of nearly 10 million, are called Israeli Arabs, and have equal rights with the Jews, except for not being required to serve in the Israeli army unless they so choose.

After losing the war, to pressure Israel, Arab countries refused to admit their approximately roughly 700,000 Arab brethren as well, even though Israel, the size of New Jersey, made room for a commensurate number of Jews who had fled Arab countries.

In short, the Palestinian attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 were not "in retaliation" for anything. In fact, they had just pledged a ceasefire with Israel, and Israel had recently issued 27,000 new daily work permits to enable Gazans to enter Israel, where they could earn a better wage. October 7 was not a "reaction." It was just the latest episode in a multi-millenary history of attacks on Jews. It was a declaration of intent, of ideology, and of a civilizational fault line that many in the West have spent decades refusing to see.

A pogrom or a jihad is not defined by a map; it is defined by a mindset: the idea that Jews may be hunted as such—women, children, the elderly—because their very existence is deemed illegitimate. That is why I titled my 2025 film Pogrom(s). Hamas did not attack military targets to "end an occupation." It attacked families to affirm an old doctrine: the Jew is not an opponent; the Jew is a problem to be erased.

If you want to understand October 7, forget the comforting story of "desperation turning violent." Pogroms are not born from desperation; they are born from permission — social, religious, political permission to commit the unthinkable and feel righteous doing it.

What happened that day also exposed the West's moral confusion. Many people looked at videos of barbarity and still rushed to "contextualize," rationalize, excuse. This reflex is precisely what keeps pogroms returning throughout history: the world's temptation to treat Jewish blood as a negotiable detail in a political narrative.

Canlorbe: How do you relate the birth and development of the anti-Israel movie industry, especially after the film Exodus portrayed Israelis as heroic?

Rehov: It may have started after the alleged death of a young Arab boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, in 2000. Israel was accused of shooting him to death even though in film clips there was no blood to be seen, and after his supposed death, he can be seen lifting a hand to look out from under it. The episode became a turning point. The images, broadcast worldwide, showed a child allegedly shot deliberately by Israeli soldiers. The narrative was immediate, emotional, definitive. Israel was guilty. End of story.

The case was never as clear as presented. Serious doubts emerged about the staging, the angles of fire, the editing, the absence of forensic transparency. Whether one believes the child was killed in crossfire or not, what mattered is that the footage became a weapon before it became a fact.

More importantly, it revived something ancient: the blood libel — the accusation that Jews murder children. This medieval myth, responsible for countless pogroms, was simply updated for the satellite era.

The term "Pallywood" – anti-Israel films, frequently built on falsehoods, and masquerading as pro-Palestinian -- is not about denying suffering. It is about exposing the systematic staging, scripting, and amplification of imagery designed to fit a predetermined accusation.

You could see this machinery yourself in any investigation of the Battle of Jenin in 2002. At the time, international headlines were speaking of a "massacre." Hundreds killed. Entire neighborhoods razed. The emotional narrative was already fixed.

There, I encountered individuals presenting themselves as medical authorities and witnesses. One of them, Dr. Abu Raley, claimed that the Israeli army had destroyed a building belonging to his hospital. He described it in dramatic detail. The story was powerful. It was ready for cameras.

There was only one problem: the building was intact. Standing. Undamaged. The alleged ruin simply did not exist.

In the Battle of Jenin, there was never any "confusion in the fog of war." The story that part of a hospital had been destroyed was a total fabrication. It revealed something essential: a good story has priority over reality.

Anti-Israel films are a method: a communication strategy in which scenes are rehearsed, ambulances are summoned for choreography, children are positioned for optimum publicity, and Western journalists — sometimes naive, sometimes ideologically predisposed — broadcast it without verification.

The genius of the system is psychological. Once the image circulates, correction becomes irrelevant. The emotional verdict has already been delivered.

In modern warfare, the camera is no longer documenting the battle. It is part of the battlefield. The objective is not only to accuse Israel. It is to morally disarm the West. If you can persuade democratic societies that defending themselves equals murdering children, you have already won half the war.

Canlorbe: Are the Israelis fighting only for themselves? What are they really fighting for besides? For the whole of Western civilization?

Rehov: Israel is fighting — obviously — for its survival, but not only that. Israel is fighting to preserve Western civilization, and at a frontier the West prefers not to name: Islamic extremism and its call for global political control. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime do not hate Israel for what it does. They hate Israel for what it is: an infidel state – and in their midst. If Israel were a Christian state, the same problem would exist. Just look at the genocide in Nigeria – with more than 52,000 Christians killed in just 14 years – in a free society, which is a visible rejection of the Islamic totalitarian dream.

The Palestinian project is not a "two-state solution" or "a better border." The project is a world where religious and political absolutism rules, where minorities submit or vanish, where women are controlled, where dissent is crushed. Israel is the laboratory target. If the West rewards October 7 with political gains, it teaches a lesson to every violent movement on earth: massacre pays. So yes — Israel is defending itself, and in doing so, it is also defending the principle that civilization cannot survive if it negotiates with barbarity as if it were a partner who is misunderstood.

Canlorbe: You mention the Nazi and Soviet origins of modern political Islam and of the so-called Palestinian cause. Please, what do you mean?

Rehov: Let's be precise: Political Islam was not "created" by Nazis or Soviets. It has its own religious roots. Modern jihadist politics borrowed heavily from 20th-century totalitarian toolkits — Nazi and Soviet alike: mass indoctrination, the cult of death, scapegoating, manipulating crowds through grievance and myth. Historically, there has also been direct contact and ideological cross-pollination. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, collaborated with Nazi Germany. He met with Hitler in 1941 — an emblematic moment showing that radical anti-Jewish mobilization in the region was not only "local," but plugged into Europe's genocidal imagination.

As for the "Palestinian cause" as a modern political brand, the Soviet model of the USSR perfected exporting "liberation" narratives, packaging conflicts into revolutionary frames, and the use of proxy groups for strategic warfare. When Russia's leaders saw that Israel had no interest in adopting its brand of socialism or communism, it seems to have turned its attention to supporting Israel's opponents. PLO and Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat first, and later the Palestinian Authority's current President Mahmoud Abbas -- now in the 21st year of his four-year term -- were groomed in Moscow by the KGB and its satellites. A lieutenant general in the Socialist Republic of Romania's Securitate, the secret police, Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to the West in 1978, wrote:

"In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. CeauÅŸescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch."

Whether through training, arms flows, or propaganda doctrine, the Cold War era shaped a whole ecosystem in which anti-Western agitation could be sold as virtue. The result is what we see today: a hybrid ideology — religious absolutism wearing the clothes of revolutionary victimhood — distributed to Western audiences through media and academia.

Canlorbe: What are your findings on "esoteric," or religious, Nazism?

Rehov: Nazism was not merely political; it aspired to be metaphysical. It tried to replace Judaism and Christianity with a racial religion — an occultized worldview in which blood becomes sacred, cruelty becomes purification, and conquest becomes destiny. The religious flavor of Nazism served two functions: it offered a mythic justification for domination, and it insulated followers from moral reality. When you turn history into myth, you no longer need ethics — you only need obedience to the "mission."

While I was writing The Third Testament, a novel published in English, it became clear that Hitler regularly consulted mediums. Even more striking was Heinrich Himmler's obsession with magic, witches and demons. Recently, his personal library was found in a warehouse near Prague. It contained more than 6,000 esoteric works, including rare volumes on witchcraft. The initiation ritual required to become a member of the SS drew directly from these occult beliefs. Many Nazi symbols — the SS runes, the Nazi salute, the swastika — were rooted in "esoteric" symbolism. This dimension of Nazism is often minimized, yet it reveals that the regime did not see itself merely as a political movement, but as a quasi-religious order claiming spiritual legitimacy for its crimes.

That is why the Nazi project felt to many like a perverse religion or spiritual movement: it provided meaning, ritual, identity, and a transcendent excuse for the worst crimes.

Canlorbe: How does that "religion" thought, which led to Nazism, differ from other religions' thought, such as Judeo-Christian?

Rehov: The difference is enormous, of course. Nazi "religiosity" basically promotes anti-ethics that masquerade as transcendence. It is essentially racial pagan mysticism that glorifies force, status and "purity." It dissolves the individual into the tribe and turns the "other" into a dangerous contaminant. Judeo-Christian spiritual traditions — even when they explore mysteries, symbols and initiations — remain anchored in the dignity of the individual person, moral responsibility, and the idea that facts are inseparable from conscience. Christian thinkers are usually not about exterminating imperfection; they are about elevating the human being — fallible, free and accountable. In the Nazi vision and in many Middle Eastern interpretations of religion, it exists to justify domination. In the Judeo-Christian vision, religion exists to deepen humility and love.

Canlorbe: How do you assess the Arab policy of the French Republic?

Rehov: France's Arab policy under the Fifth Republic has seemed to oscillate between grandeur and blindness. From President Charles de Gaulle onward, there was a strategic aim: to cultivate oil as energy and diplomatic leverage, to secure influence in the Arab world, which during the 1975 "oil crisis" looked as if it had most of the world's oil, and to position France as a mediator distinct from Washington. Too often, however, this stance became a reflex of moral equivalence — treating democracies and terror movements as two symmetrical parties in a "conflict," rather than distinguishing defense from aggression.

The culmination is the contemporary temptation to adopt diplomatic gestures that may flatter French self-image but can also reward intransigence, disinformation and terrorism. France's announcement that it recognized a non-existent Palestinian state in July 2025 is a prime example: a move presented as "peace" that instead rewards terror and confirms that "terrorism works, so let's keep on doing it!" — thereby encouraging actors who see concessions as weakness and what they are doing as delivering success. It reinforces the sales pitch that jihad and terrorism are the fastest ways to get what you want. France could have been a voice for realism and the values of civilization. Instead, it keeps choosing the comfort of theatrical posing

Canlorbe: Trump's foreign policy is centered on dealmaking and pointed, short-run military intervention. Do you fear that those factors may prevent the US and Israel from settling, for good, the Hamas or Iranian regime issues?

Rehov: I do not fear "dealmaking" as such. I fear deals that confuse calm with peace. If a deal buys time for the "wrong" side, it is not a deal — it is an extension of the threat. Hamas and the Iranian regime have proven that they interpret restraint as opportunity. So, the question is not whether America prefers short operations or long wars. The question is whether America draws lines that are credible, and whether it enforces them. As for domestic political constraints, every administration has them. The point is that Israel cannot outsource its survival, and the United States cannot pretend that totalitarian jihadism can be "managed" indefinitely. Either you dismantle the infrastructure of terror, or it regrows.

Yes, Vice President JD Vance represents a strand of American skepticism toward foreign entanglements. That is a legitimate debate. Israel's enemies, however, are not about "entanglements." They are imposing a war on civilization.

Canlorbe: If a diplomatic solution were to be found to the Ukrainian issue, would it be beneficial to the West?

Rehov: Diplomacy is beneficial only if it restores deterrence. A settlement that rewards aggression teaches the world that borders are temporary and violence is profitable. Such a lesson would not stay in Eastern Europe; it would travel — into the Middle East, into Asia, into every contested frontier. So yes, a diplomatic outcome can be good — if it protects sovereignty, if it prevents repetition, and if it signals strength rather than fatigue. Peace that is built on amnesia is not peace; it is a pause before the next war.

We are living through a war of reality. Weapons kill bodies. Propaganda kills judgment. When judgment collapses, democracies begin to hate themselves, to doubt their right to defend their citizens, and to romanticize forces that would destroy them.

My work is not about "taking sides" in a political quarrel. It is about refusing the lie — because when the lie wins, the innocent pay, and history repeats its darkest chapters with updated slogans.

The West will not be defeated by lack of power. It will be defeated — if it is defeated — by the refusal to oppose danger when they see it. 


Grégoire Canlorbe

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22392/war-on-civilization

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NJ school district’s secretive transgender policy faces legal threat for bucking Supreme Court ruling - Ashley Oliver

 

​ by Ashley Oliver

Thomas More Society's Peter Breen warns the New Jersey district will not be the last to face legal pressure over parental notification policies

 

 


 

A New Jersey school district is being threatened with legal action unless it repeals a policy that lets schools withhold students’ gender-identity information from parents, setting up what could become an early test of the Supreme Court’s recent intervention in the fight over parental rights and school disclosure rules.

The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group, accused the Westwood Regional School District in a demand letter of wrongfully maintaining the policy, which also allows the schools, in some cases, to aid K-12 students’ "social transition" to becoming transgender without their parents' knowledge. 

The move comes weeks after the Supreme Court dealt a major victory to conservative parents in Mirabelli v. Bonta by upholding an injunction against a similar policy in California. 

"I had hoped this would end the practice of secret gender transitions, but what's becoming clear to us is this is just the beginning," Peter Breen, Thomas More Society executive vice president, told Fox News Digital. "This is not an end, but a beginning, our big win in the Supreme Court. We are already fielding requests from other parents across the country, and we anticipate sending a lot more demand letters, unfortunately."

CATHOLIC GROUP ASKS SCOTUS TO BLOCK CALIFORNIA LAW AGAINST REVEALING STUDENTS' GENDER IDENTITIES TO PARENTS

Transgender sports law protesters gather at the Supreme Court

Protesters wave transgender pride flags outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams, Jan. 13, 2026, in Washington. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)

Fox News Digital reached out to the school district board members who received the letter, as well as the district's superintendent, for comment but did not receive responses. The school board told local media earlier in March that members were consulting with district counsel and reviewing policies. 

The letter requires the New Jersey school district to repeal its policy, called Policy 5756, within 20 days. Otherwise, Breen said, the Thomas More Society would follow the same path it did in California and begin litigation.

"When the Supreme Court decides a case, the logic of the decision is binding on every other court in the country, federal or state," Breen said. "And so, the Supreme Court has said that parents have a fundamental right to control the upbringing and education of their children… and so a school official who defies that right could be subject individually to a lawsuit, not just the school district."

In Mirabelli, California parents and teachers argued that the state's transgender policy violated their rights under the First and 14th Amendments. The policy prevented school administrators from telling parents about their child’s potential efforts to transition their gender unless the child consented to it. It also required school staff to use students' preferred names and pronouns regardless of the parents’ wishes.

Bob Bonta

California Attorney General Rob Bonta taking questions on Aug. 28, 2025. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta in the case, leading the parents and teachers to turn to the Supreme Court. The high court vacated the 9th Circuit's order 6-3 on an expedited and temporary basis while the case proceeds through the lower courts. The three liberal justices dissented.

FEDERAL JUDGE STRIKES DOWN 'GENDER SECRECY' POLICIES IN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS

"The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy," the high court's majority wrote in the unsigned opinion. "But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents."

Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, observed to Fox News Digital at the time that the Supreme Court's decision was the latest in a string of victories for conservatives seeking to tighten policies surrounding transgender people. DeAngelis noted it only applied to California, despite its anticipated impact on other states.

"This precedent is surely a sign of good things to come," DeAngelis said. "If there's a lawsuit that arises in another state, you can be pretty sure that the Supreme Court is going to rule on the side of families."

Parent Rally

A protester holds signs in support of an opt-out option for school lessons. (Courtesy of Becket)

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The Supreme Court has weighed in recently on several key gender identity disputes through full opinions and emergency orders, and the decisions have broken along ideological lines. Outside Mirabelli, the high court in United States v. Skrmetti affirmed 6-3 a state's authority to ban certain transgender medical treatment for minors under the equal protection clause. In a 6-3 emergency ruling last year, the justices temporarily greenlit President Donald Trump's ban on transgender service members serving in the military.

The high court is also weighing two relevant and closely watched cases, one on a religious-based therapist offering alternative counseling to transgender youths and one on transgender athletes. Decisions on those are expected by the summer.

 

Ashley Oliver

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nj-school-districts-secretive-transgender-policy-faces-legal-threat-bucking-supreme-court-ruling

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US Congress Confronts Bangladesh Genocide—But Ignores the Islamist Infrastructure Behind It - Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

 

​ by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

If the United States is serious about confronting terrorism, it requires designating organizations with documented links to extremist activities, dismantling financial networks that sustain them, and challenging ideological narratives that legitimize violence. It also requires a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths — both about past alliances and present-day policy inconsistencies.

 

  • On March 20, 2026, US Rep. Greg Landsman introduced House Resolution 1130, which recognizes the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

  • On March 25, 1971... Pakistan's military launched "Operation Searchlight", a coordinated campaign of mass murder targeting civilians... that would kill millions of Bangladeshis.

  • The central flaw in Washington's current approach is its failure to confront the ideological and organizational infrastructure that enabled the genocide in the first place.

  • Internal documents, congressional inquiries, and independent reports have repeatedly highlighted concerns about affiliated organizations operating in North America. These apprehensions include allegations of financial links to extremist causes and the dissemination of radical ideological material. Yet, apparently due to the influence of Islamists in various walks of life in the US, enforcement remains selective, and political considerations still seem to override security imperatives.

  • "Just as the Muslim Brotherhood spawned terrorist groups such as Hamas, Gama'a Islamiyya (which killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat), and al Qaeda, Jamaat-e-Islami also spun off terrorist groups across South Asia such as Jaysh-i-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahidin, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan." — Michael Rubin, Middle East expert, Washington Examiner, March 31, 2025.

  • "Within Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami was particularly brutal. It was intimately involved in the 1971 Bangladesh genocide that killed up to 3 million. For this reason, many Bangladeshis consider Jamaat-e-Islami members to be war criminals.... Nevertheless, Jamaat-e-Islami still receives active support from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency... " — Michael Rubin, Washington Examiner, March 31, 2025.

  • After recent political upheavals, means of accountability, such as the International Crimes Tribunal established by Bangladesh, have been significantly weakened. Charges against individuals linked to the 1971 atrocities have been dropped, and institutions originally established to deliver justice have faced allegations of politicization and misuse. This reversal not only undermines justice but also emboldens those who seek to revive violent ideologies.

  • If the United States is serious about confronting terrorism, it requires designating organizations with documented links to extremist activities, dismantling financial networks that sustain them, and challenging ideological narratives that legitimize violence. It also requires a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths — both about past alliances and present-day policy inconsistencies.

  • The introduction of HR-1130 is an opportunity — perhaps a last opportunity — to prioritize the victims of genocide but also the forces that made such crimes possible. Without such an alignment, the resolution risks becoming what so many similar initiatives have become: a statement of principle detached from any meaningful policy action.

Pictured: The destroyed streets of Madhabpur, Bangladesh, during the war of liberation, on July 24, 1971. (Photo by TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

In a welcome moment of moral clarity, the United States Congress took a step toward acknowledging one of the most underreported genocides of the twentieth century. On March 20, 2026, US Rep. Greg Landsman introduced House Resolution 1130, which recognizes the 1971 atrocities in Bangladesh as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Washington, Beijing, most Arab nations — as well as Palestinian leaders Yasser Arafat and Amin al-Husseini — vehemently opposed Bangladesh's secession from Pakistan in 1971, branding the war of liberation as a "battle between Pakistani Muslims and Bengali Hindus" and comparing it to the Israel-Arab conflict.

The House resolution, which has been referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, recalls the events of March 25, 1971, when Pakistan's military launched "Operation Searchlight", a coordinated campaign of mass murder targeting civilians in East Pakistan. Bengali Hindus, intellectuals, and pro-independence activists were systematically hunted down. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was arrested, and a campaign of violence began that would kill millions of Bangladeshis.

Although the resolution calls upon the US president to recognize the atrocities committed in 1971 against ethnic Bengali Hindus by Pakistan's army and their allies in the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) movement as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, it remains unclear whether the US will designate Jamaat-e-Islami as a Foreign Terrorist Organization for committing such atrocities.

For decades, this genocide remained politically inconvenient. During the Cold War, Pakistan's strategic importance shielded it from accountability, while Islamist narratives distorted the truth — portraying the conflict as a religious struggle rather than a national liberation movement.

Now, more than 50 years later, Washington appears ready to correct the historical record. But recognition alone is not enough. The central flaw in Washington's current approach is its failure to confront the ideological and organizational infrastructure that enabled the genocide in the first place.

At the core of that infrastructure is Jamaat-e-Islami, which actively collaborated with Pakistani forces in 1971. Its militias participated directly in the mass murders, particularly targeting minority communities. Its ideology — rooted in the writings of its founder Abul Ala Mawdudi — provides religious justification for violence in pursuit of a theocratic political order. This ideology has not disappeared.

Today, Jamaat-e-Islami and its affiliates continue to operate across multiple countries, often under the guise of charitable, educational, or advocacy organizations. In some instances, these entities have been linked to extremist financing networks and the promotion of radical indoctrination.

In 2019, South Asia expert Seth Oldmixon highlighted the role of Jamaat-e-Islami in promoting and exporting religious extremism and terrorism on a global scale. He noted the enduring legacy of Mawdudi, and warned of the dangers of ignoring the activities of JI and its affiliates in North America.

"Jamaat-e-Islami's guiding ideology and its goal of establishing a global theocracy have not changed from Mawdudi's original vision," Oldmixon said. He further noted continued calls for jihad by senior JI leaders, as well as ongoing violence by JI and its affiliates.

JI's commitment to extremism is clear from its public rhetoric. Oldmixon pointed out that in 2012, a senior Pakistani JI official said: "I salute the Afghan Taliban. They have defeated America and have destroyed NATO".

On November 1, 2019, US Senator Jim Banks (R-IN), and US Reps. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN) and Randy Weber (R-TX) wrote to State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator Nathan Sales, presenting substantial evidence of terror-financing links between JI and its affiliates — Helping Hands for Relief and Development (HHRD) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

In a 2010 report, the Investigative Project on Terrorism wrote:

"The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a leading 'domestic affiliate' of the South Asian Sunni revivalist movement Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), was established in 1968 and formally incorporated in 1987 in Jamaica, N.Y. An introductory brochure states ICNA's goal is '[t]o achieve the pleasure of Allah through the establishment of the Islamic system in this land.'"

Despite mounting evidence and longstanding concerns, the United States has not designated Jamaat-e-Islami as a terrorist organization.

Policy experts have long warned that Jamaat functions as part of a broader Islamist ecosystem connected to the Muslim Brotherhood -- a network that historically has served as a radical incubator for groups such as Hamas, Al Qaeda, and others.

Internal documents, congressional inquiries, and independent reports have repeatedly highlighted concerns about affiliated organizations operating in North America. These apprehensions include allegations of financial links to extremist causes and the dissemination of radical ideological material. Yet, apparently due to the influence of Islamists in various walks of life in the US, enforcement remains selective, and political considerations still seem to override security imperatives.

The Muslim Brotherhood's expansion continues under various fronts and affiliated entities. Despite growing concerns, these organizations or their affiliates continue to operate in many countries, including the United Kingdom. A December 17, 2015 report by the UK House of Commons noted that the Muslim Brotherhood had developed an extensive international network and was using Europe as a key base for its global activities.

Calling for the designation of Jamaat-e-Islami as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, analyst Michael Rubin has argued:

"Just as the Muslim Brotherhood spawned terrorist groups such as Hamas, Gama'a Islamiyya (which killed Egyptian President Anwar Sadat), and al Qaeda, Jamaat-e-Islami also spun off terrorist groups across South Asia such as Jaysh-i-Muhammad, Harkat-ul-Mujahidin, and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.

"Within Bangladesh, Jamaat-e-Islami was particularly brutal. It was intimately involved in the 1971 Bangladesh genocide that killed up to 3 million. For this reason, many Bangladeshis consider Jamaat-e-Islami members to be war criminals. Indeed, Jamaat-e-Islami became just the second political party after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party to face an international tribunal for its crimes. Nevertheless, Jamaat-e-Islami still receives active support from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the same group that helped hide al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and sponsored the Taliban insurgency."

While Washington acknowledges the crimes of 1971, it continues to tolerate — and sometimes even engage with — entities that share the same ideological foundations that made these jihadi crimes possible.

After recent political upheavals, means of accountability, such as the International Crimes Tribunal established by Bangladesh, have been significantly weakened. Charges against individuals linked to the 1971 atrocities have been dropped, and institutions originally established to deliver justice have faced allegations of politicization and misuse. This reversal not only undermines justice but also emboldens those who seek to revive violent ideologies.

The lesson of 1971 is clear: ignoring Islamist extremism only allows it to adapt, evolve, and re-emerge in new and often more sophisticated forms. If the United States is serious about confronting terrorism, it requires designating organizations with documented links to extremist activities, dismantling financial networks that sustain them, and challenging ideological narratives that legitimize violence. It also requires a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths — both about past alliances and present-day policy inconsistencies.

The introduction of HR-1130 is an opportunity — perhaps a last opportunity — to prioritize the victims of genocide but also the forces that made such crimes possible. Without such an alignment, the resolution risks becoming what so many similar initiatives have become: a statement of principle detached from any meaningful policy action. History has already demonstrated the cost of such dismissal. The question now is whether Washington is prepared to learn from it.


Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is an award-winning journalist, writer, and editor of the newspaper Blitz. He is a recipient of PEN USA Freedom to Write Award 2005; AJC Moral Courage Award 2006 and the Monaco Media Award, 2007. He specializes in counterterrorism and regional geopolitics. Follow him on X: @Salah_Shoaib

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22397/us-congress-confronts-bangladesh

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