US: Project Freedom to clear ships from Hormuz - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

Trump says U.S. will guide neutral ships out of Strait of Hormuz in humanitarian move, warns any interference will be met with force.

 

The amphibious transport dock ship USS New Orleans sails in the Arabian Sea during the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports on April 28, 2026. Over the past 20 days, U.S. forces have redirected 48 vessels to enforce the blockade, according to U.S. Central Command.

Source: @CENTCOM/X.

 

U.S. Central Command said early on Monday that it would begin supporting “Project Freedom” to ensure the free flow of commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global trade route.

The operation, directed by U.S. President Donald Trump, aims to safeguard merchant vessels transiting the strait, through which U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) noted that roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and significant volumes of fuel and fertilizer pass.

CENTCOM said the mission will include guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft, unmanned systems and about 15,000 personnel.

“Our support for this defensive mission is essential to regional security and the global economy as we also maintain the naval blockade,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander.

Trump said late on Sunday that countries whose ships are stuck in the strait have asked Washington to help them leave the restricted waterway, even though they are not involved in the ongoing Middle East conflict.

The United States has agreed to use its “best efforts” to guide those commercial vessels and their crews to safety as part of a new initiative he called Project Freedom, he added.

“For the good of Iran, the Middle East, and the United States, we have told these Countries that we will guide their Ships safely out of these restricted Waterways, so that they can freely and ably get on with their business. Again, these are Ships from areas of the World that are not in any way involved with that which is currently taking place in the Middle East. I have told my Representatives to inform them that we will use best efforts to get their Ships and Crews safely out of the Strait. In all cases, they said they will not be returning until the area becomes safe for navigation, and everything else,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

Trump described the operation as a humanitarian gesture toward neutral countries and Iran, saying many vessels are running low on food and other necessities and will not return to the area until it is safe for navigation.

He added that U.S. representatives are having “very positive” talks with Iran that he believes could lead to broader progress, and warned that any interference with the ship movements “will, unfortunately, have to be dealt with forcefully.”

The deployment follows a State Department initiative, launched with the Defense Department, to boost coordination with international partners through a framework known as the Maritime Freedom Construct.

CENTCOM’s announcement comes amid tensions between the Iranian regime and the United States over the critical waterway, with an Iranian blockade of Hormuz resulting in a retaliatory U.S. blockade.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said on Monday that the U.S. must scale back its demands on the Islamic Republic, warning that Washington “cannot use the language of threats and force against the Iranian nation.” He said “our priority is to end the war,” urged the “other side” to abandon “excessive demands,” and reiterated Tehran’s claim that it is the “guardian and protector” of the Strait of Hormuz.

He asserted in a briefing broadcast by state television and quoted by AFP that the strait was “secure and safe route” for global shipping before the war.

“The international community must hold the United States and the Zionist regime accountable for imposing insecurity on this waterway and for creating problems that are being felt across the world,” he added, referring to the State of Israel.

Iranian state media on Sunday quoted Islamic Revolutionary Guard spokesman Hossein Mohabi as saying that “in the unequal battle we are facing, Iran’s armed forces will be the final victors.”

Meanwhile, Likud lawmaker Tsega Melaku told JNS on Sunday that she believes that Trump “is completely serious about resuming hostilities, and as for Israel’s support for the matter, we simply have no other choice.” She added: “At the end of the day, the equation here is very clear: he needs Israel in this campaign just as much as Israel needs him.”

Jerusalem and Washington launched joint operations against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28, which ended with a ceasefire on April 8.

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/world/us-project-freedom-to-clear-ships-from-hormuz

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Purchase of F-35, F-15IA squadrons for ‘future missions,’ Katz says - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

The new procurement will preserve and ensure the superior capabilities of the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli defense minister said.

 

“Adir” (F-35I) aircraft on their way to strike in Iran, March 15, 2026. Credit: IDF.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that the government’s plan to acquire two fighter squadrons from the United States preserves and ensures the superior capabilities of the Israeli Air Force “ahead of future missions.”

An additional F-35 squadron and a second F-15IA squadron are part of the “Israel Shield” program advanced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior defense officials, Katz added.

The move marks “the first step in executing the IDF’s decade-long force buildup plan, approved by the prime minister and defense minister under a dedicated 350-billion-shekel budget (approximately $95 billion),” the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday. 

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/purchase-of-f-35-f-15ia-squadrons-for-future-missions-katz-says

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IDF takes responsibility for 16 front-line communities in security shift - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

The towns include nine in the north and seven in the center of the country,

 

An IDF guard post on the Lebanese border, Aug. 10, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

The Cabinet approved on Sunday Defense Minister Israel Katz’s proposal for the Israel Defense Forces to assume responsibility for the security of 16 communities in front-line areas.

The move shifts to the IDF exclusive operational authority and responsibility for thwarting terrorism and hostile activity and in those areas.

The communities include nine in the north and seven in the center of the country, Israeli website N12 reported.

The nine communities in the IDF Northern Command area of responsibility are Bar Yohai, Beit Jann, Kibbutz Hulata, Moshav Kfar Hoshen (Safsufa), Kisra-Sumei, Moshav Meron, Or HaGanuz, Moshav Sde Eliezer and Yesud HaMa’ala.

Falling under Central Command are six kibbutim: Afikim, Beit Zera, Degania Alef, Degania Bet, Gesher and Hamadia, and the village of Menahemia.

The selection of the communities was made on the basis of a security analysis that examined parameters such as distance from the border and threat level, as opposed to the distance from the nearest police stations and military forces, N12 reported.

Israeli police will continue to manage civilian security in these communities, including maintaining public order, the security of life and property, and handling criminal offenses.

Special emphasis was placed on Meron. While overall security envelope will be managed by the IDF, police will still hold responsibility for ensuring order and security at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a popular Jewish religious pilgrimage site that normally attracts hundreds of thousands during the Lag Ba’Omer holiday.

Israel has canceled this year’s Lag B’Omer pilgrimage to Mount Meron to ensure public safety. The holiday this year runs from the evening of May 14 through May 15.

Forty-two million shekels (~$14.2 million) were allocated from the Ministry of Defense (spread over 2028-2030) and an additional 18 million shekels (~$6 million) from the National Security Ministry’s budget for the security effort. 

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/idf-takes-responsibility-for-16-front-line-communities-in-security-shift

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Palestinian Authority's 'Reforms': Incitement in Classrooms, Empty Promises to the West - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

"[T]he PA [Palestinian Authority] has repeatedly and explicitly rejected calls to reform its curriculum. In public statements... senior PA officials—including the Prime Minister, Minister of Education, and curriculum directors—have all affirmed their unwillingness to make even minor changes to school textbooks." — Impact-se, November 2025.

 

• [T]he European Parliament has condemned Palestinian Authority textbooks for the seventh year in a row, citing the ongoing defamation of Jews, incitement to violence, and the promotion of jihad (holy war) as well as "martyrdom." Members of European Parliament also called for future PA funding to be strictly conditional, based on genuine reform. Demanding conditions and accountability is overdue but extremely welcome.

• "[T]he PA [Palestinian Authority] has repeatedly and explicitly rejected calls to reform its curriculum. In public statements... senior PA officials—including the Prime Minister, Minister of Education, and curriculum directors—have all affirmed their unwillingness to make even minor changes to school textbooks." — Impact-se, November 2025.

• "A central component of the PA curriculum's antisemitic narrative is that it categorically rejects Jewish presence in the region. Not only has content teaching Jewish history and the origin of the Jews been ejected entirely from PA textbooks since 2016, but the current curriculum explicitly refutes the very existence of a Jewish people.... The PA curriculum encourages students to believe that they share the same goal: of expelling the colonizing 'invaders,' the Jews, from the Palestinians' indigenous homeland, presumably to Europe, as they are presented as entirely foreign to the region." — Impact-se, November 2025.

• In fact, the reverse is true. In 1977, senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Zuheir Mohsen openly admitted in an interview in the Dutch daily Trouw: "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."

• The Jews have lived in the area, such as Judea, continuously for nearly 4,000 years; they are the indigenous people as much as the Arabs are.

• The PA's own Ministry of Education recently admitted that textbooks currently used in schools "have not been revised at all."

• No one is asking the Palestinians to embrace Zionism. However, any society that aspires to statehood and peaceful coexistence -- also not at all certain -- must prepare its next generation for nonviolence, mutual recognition, and respect. So far, there is scant evidence that these results are even in the bottom quadrant of the Palestinian leaders' goals.

• This systematic indoctrination has poisoned the minds of generations, making reconciliation far off, if possible at all.

• The funding of terrorism must stop. Aid should not subsidize incitement. It should demand the total cessation of terrorism and the total cessation of terrorist funding.

• Until such a time, the PA's promise of reform will continue to ring extremely hollow, and peace will be out of reach.

Pictured: A screenshot from a 2018 Sunday Times article exposing the British government's funding of a Palestinian curriculum that promotes the use of violence -- specifically jihad -- and encourages martyrdom.

While Western governments continue to search for a credible Palestinian partner for peace, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is once again demonstrating that it is unwilling – or unable – to undertake the most basic reform: preparing Palestinians for peace and coexistence with Israel.

For years, the PA has promised the United States and European donors that it would overhaul its education system by removing incitement, antisemitism, and the glorification of violence from school textbooks. These promises remain largely unfulfilled.

In its latest rebuke, the European Parliament has condemned Palestinian Authority textbooks for the seventh year in a row, citing the ongoing defamation of Jews, incitement to violence, and the promotion of jihad (holy war) as well as "martyrdom." Members of European Parliament also called for future PA funding to be strictly conditional, based on genuine reform. Demanding conditions and accountability is overdue but extremely welcome.

According to Euractiv, a European news website focused on EU policies:

"While the European Commission claimed that 'tangible progress has been observed' and the PA textbooks were being aligned with UNESCO standards, researchers from Impact-se, a UK-Israel-based institute that examines school materials from around the world, found that changes in textbooks used in the 2025-2026 school year were 'very limited, partial, and cosmetic.'"

According to Impact-se:

"Despite continued international pressure and the conditionality of European Union funding, the PA has repeatedly and explicitly rejected calls to reform its curriculum. In public statements spanning from 2020 to 2024, senior PA officials—including the Prime Minister, Minister of Education, and curriculum directors—have all affirmed their unwillingness to make even minor changes to school textbooks. These public rejections make clear that the PA's refusal to reform is not the result of capacity constraints or technical obstacles, but rather a deliberate ideological stance."

Impact-se noted the number of topics that the PA curriculum does not teach. These include the Holocaust and the destruction of Jewish communities in the Arab world during World War II and the last 82 years. "Another point of concern is how the PA curriculum portrays Jewish people as a collective," Impact-se wrote.

"A central component of the PA curriculum's antisemitic narrative is that it categorically rejects Jewish presence in the region. Not only has content teaching Jewish history and the origin of the Jews been ejected entirely from PA textbooks since 2016, but the current curriculum explicitly refutes the very existence of a Jewish people. The PA curriculum only recognizes the Jews as a religious community, which is how they are portrayed in the Qur'an and other Islamic sources, thus denying them the right to self-determination. Seen in this light, it is especially notable that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is frequently compared to anti-colonial struggles against European empires, such as the French in Algeria. The PA curriculum encourages students to believe that they share the same goal: of expelling the colonizing 'invaders,' the Jews, from the Palestinians' indigenous homeland, presumably to Europe, as they are presented as entirely foreign to the region."

In fact, the reverse is true. In 1977, senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Zuheir Mohsen openly admitted in an interview in the Dutch daily Trouw:

"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."

The Jews have lived in the area, such as Judea, continuously for nearly 4,000 years; they are the indigenous people as much as the Arabs are.

PA educational materials, according to Impact-se's study, regularly propagate hate towards Jewish people. In descriptions of early Islamic history, Jewish characters and groups are often associated with sacrilegious crimes, such as attempting to murder the Islamic prophet Mohammed or sexually dishonoring a Muslim woman, or other false charges libelously attributed to Jewish stereotypes.

Examples of anti-Israel incitement and glorification of violence in PA textbooks include:

1. General Sciences (vocational stream), tenth grade, 2020-2025, p. 55: "Newtonian physics is taught through an example of a young girl shooting a rock with a slingshot 'toward a specific target,' with an accompanying photo showing a hand hurling a loaded slingshot. In Palestinian culture, slingshots are strongly associated with attacks on Israeli soldiers..."

2. Mathematics, third grade, Vol. 1, 2022-2025, p.15: "To teach numerical digits, a third-grade math exercise asks students to write out in letters the number of 'martyrs.' The statistic offered by the textbook is 2,139 Palestinian deaths, which includes hundreds of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other armed Palestinian organizations killed during [the 2014 Israel-Gaza war]."

3. Mathematics, seventh grade, Vol. 2, 2022-2025, p. 97: "A probability exercise... features an irredentist map of Palestine that includes all of Israel's internationally recognized territory; it also teaches that Palestine was occupied in 1948, further implying that the territory of Israel proper is Palestinian."

4. Science and Life (Teacher Guide), eighth grade, 2018-2025, pp. 144-145: "The teacher guide for a lesson about the taxonomic classification of living organisms instructs biology teachers to hold discussions about 'towns and villages whose residents the Zionist Occupation expelled.' Selecting this unrelated discussion topic in a lesson on taxonomy can only be for political purposes, as a means of maximizing students' historical resentment of Israel."

5. Chemistry (Teacher Guide), tenth grade, 2018-2025, pp. 93, 97, 99: "Chemistry lessons are politicized with the message that it is official Israeli policy to destroy Palestinian water resources. According to this teacher guide, one of the goals of a lesson titled 'Water in Our Life' is for students to grasp 'the Israeli Occupation's attempts to pollute the sources of drinking water.'"

Israel, in reality, supplies all the water throughout the country; it is often the Palestinians who, sadly, do the polluting -- to the detriment of everyone.

6. Arabic Language, fifth grade, Vol. 2, 2020-2025, pp. 51-61: "Dalal al-Mughrabi, the perpetrator of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre, which killed thirty-eight Israelis, including thirteen children, on a civilian bus, is celebrated in a detailed ten-page Arabic reading comprehension text for fifth graders. The text exalts her and the terror act as 'heroism,' describing how the massacre made her memory 'immortal' in the 'hearts and minds' of Palestinians."

7. Social Studies, ninth grade, Vol. 1, 2020-2025, pp. 35, 37-40: The textbook teaches that "resistance," including armed resistance, is a "natural and legitimate." The lesson shows Israel as a supposedly colonial power and misquotes a UN resolution as stating that nations have the right to conduct "armed struggle" to free themselves from colonialism. The lesson appears to deliberately cloud the meaning of international law, resistance, and violence to justify Palestinian violence.

8. Arabic language (1): Reading, Grammar, Prosody and Expression, eleventh grade, Vol. 2, 2023-2025, pp. 34-38: "Arabic language is taught with a poem that glorifies death and martyrdom, and lionizes men who were executed for murdering Jewish civilians in Mandatory Palestine. The poem... describes the June 17, 1930, execution of three Arab Palestinian men... by the British Mandate authorities, after they had been convicted of murdering innocent Jews in Hebron and Safed during the 1929 Arab riots. The poem – titled 'Red [Bloody] Tuesday' in reference to the day of the week in which the hanging took place in Acre Prison – praises the manner in which the three condemned men reportedly faced death with active joy and anticipation. This positive outlook on death is reinforced by the poem's assertion that the men's death is a "sacrifice for the sake of their country" and the frequent references to the 'Paradise" and 'reward' that await the men after death.

The facts are irrefutable. Despite a formal agreement with the European Union in 2024 to revise its curriculum, the PA has failed to implement meaningful changes. The PA's own Ministry of Education recently admitted that textbooks currently used in schools "have not been revised at all."

If the Palestinian leadership is serious about peace with Israel -– not at all certain -- it needs to begin by educating its children for peace, not indoctrinating them with hate.

No one is asking the Palestinians to embrace Zionism. However, any society that aspires to statehood and peaceful coexistence -- also not at all certain -- must prepare its next generation for nonviolence, mutual recognition, and respect. So far, there is scant evidence that these results are even in the bottom quadrant of the Palestinian leaders' goals.

Instead, Palestinian students are being exposed to materials that delegitimize Israel's very existence, demonize Jews, and portray violence as heroic. This systematic indoctrination has poisoned the minds of generations, making reconciliation far off, if possible at all.

The growing willingness of European lawmakers to condition funding on educational reform is a positive development. For too long, international aid has flowed to the PA without sufficient oversight or accountability.

The US and its allies should take concrete steps, including conditioning financial assistance only on verifiable textbook reform, and establishing independent mechanisms for monitoring the PA curricula. Also needed is demanding total transparency from the PA leadership, and supporting programs that promote coexistence and tolerance.

The funding of terrorism must stop. Aid should not subsidize incitement. It should demand the total cessation of terrorism and the total cessation of terrorist funding.

Until such a time, the PA's promise of reform will continue to ring extremely hollow, and peace will be out of reach.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on X (formerly Twitter)

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

Source:https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22494/palestinian-authority-classroom-incitement

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Israeli gov’t to approve new agreement with South Sudan, says Israeli FM - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar congratulated his newly appointed counterpart, as the two diplomats discussed the situation of both countries.

 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and South Sudan’s Foreign Minister James Pitia Morgan in an illustrated graphic created by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke over the phone on Monday with James Pitia Morgan, congratulating him for his appointment as South Sudan’s foreign minister.

Israel’s top diplomat said that he had updated Morgan in the “Knesset’s approval of the Framework Agreement for Cooperation between our countries,” adding that he will submit it to the government for final approval “very soon.” 

Spoke with the Honorable James Pitia Morgan and congratulated him on his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of South Sudan.
The Minister updated me on the situation in his country and I briefed him on developments in our region.
I also… pic.twitter.com/n95TReU0Dh

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) May 4, 2026

In 2023, the two nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen bilateral relations across 10 key sectors, including agriculture, water management, health, education, and economic development.

Israel recognized South Sudan’s sovereignty a day after it became an independent state on July 10, 2011.

Later that month, the Jewish state announced that it had established full diplomatic relations with the landlocked East African country.

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/israeli-govt-to-approve-new-agreement-with-south-sudan-says-israeli-fm

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Is It Possible for the Left to Engage in Principled Debate on Iran? - John D. O'Connor

 

by John D. O'Connor

A media class that smothers debate in moral hysteria cannot defend liberalism; on Iran, true liberty demands argument before orthodoxy makes dissent itself the enemy.

 

During nonstop lambasting of the Iran War and Trump, one—and only one—rational liberal thought has been uttered by the “Progressive” Left, and that is in the opinion pages of The New York Times:

There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat—to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, especially to prevent it from menacing its neighbors and, above all, from developing a nuclear weapon. We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.

To be sure, this sop to principled debate was just that, and the remaining seventeen paragraphs of the Times editorial were a vicious, highly emotional rant, mainly targeting Trump’s rhetoric and political style. The effect was to say that Trump is so evil that we can’t even have a potential debate. Thomas Friedman of the Times recently admitted as much.

The Times, along with the rest of the legacy media, has not sponsored anything resembling a true debate. Rather, there has been widespread conflating of Trump’s personal irrationalities with the well-planned, precise, and indeed existentially necessary Iran attack.

To assume that the war was a Trumpian seat-of-the-pants blunder is simply a projection of the media’s reflexive irrationality. This style of rhetoric was long urged by influential radical Saul Alinsky, who advised that one need not make a cogent political argument if one’s traditionalist opponent is portrayed as not just wrong but evil. Debate and skepticism are anathema to the top-down orthodoxy of socialism and its ideological cousin Progressivism. “Liberal” these political straitjackets are not.

In any case, it is patently clear that their media outlets don’t offer anything close to the principled arguments that their opponents would make. But as John Stuart Mill admonished, one must hear the opposing argument from one who sincerely believes it. Per Mill, those who silence discussion assume infallibility, anathema to the truly liberal project.

The argument supporting intervention is simple. To wit, Iran cannot get the bomb, because it would likely use it on Israel. If it did, would the United States help our ally? If we did, given the surprisingly increasing range of Iran’s ICBMs, recently reaching the Indian Ocean, would our Eastern Seaboard, and perhaps cities as far west as Chicago and St. Louis, be vulnerable?

Indeed, since Iran’s aims appeared to be not only “Death to Israel!” but also “Death to America!” Israel’s formidable military capability, together with its Iron Dome, might counsel a war-gaming Iran to launch first against Israel’s ally, America. After all, America has numerous unprotected urban areas. Wouldn’t Washington, DC, and New York, the epicenters of our government and modern media, be helpless to defend against a nuclear attack?

Putting aside the actual launch of Iran’s nuclear bombs, wouldn’t its threat, upon completed development, allow an expensive tollbooth to be erected on the Strait of Hormuz? Since Iran is China’s major oil supplier, its shipments of non-surcharged oil would give China great military strength and competitive commercial advantage, while consigning Americans and their allies to $10 gas as worldwide prices spike. Wouldn’t our present modestly increased prices look wonderful in comparison? Yet the media bellyaches over today’s prices, which they did not condemn when Biden caused similar levels.

And wouldn’t a nuclear Iran seek to colonize the Arab world toward the aim of a broad Islamic caliphate, hindering any progress for gays, women, and unemployed young Arab men? For reasons like these, for decades, Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and, weakly and ineffectually, Barack Obama and John Kerry have stated that Iran cannot have the bomb.

Since it appears obvious that a nuclear Iran would be good neither for global security nor prosperity, the only argument against the current US operation in Iran is that the threat from Iran was not yet “imminent.” This is part of the jejune pablum that this is a “war of choice.”

Seemingly, this argument rests on the presumption that Mossad and American intelligence had no knowledge of any imminent completion of an appropriately enriched warhead. Iran has admitted to 22,000 lbs. (11 tons) of enriched uranium, while only 141 lbs. (64 kg) of enriched uranium was necessary to incinerate Hiroshima.

The question then remains: How do these critics define “imminent”? If “imminent” means that Iran actually has the bomb in a warhead, doesn’t “imminent” also mean “too late”? And shouldn’t we discuss where we would be if a Democrat had won in 2024, even as the media hate Trump?

Our liberal republic was founded upon notions of skepticism, diversity of thought, and the fallibility of the intelligentsia, especially those not rooted in traditional values. Our liberty’s foundational safeguard is unrestrained argument. The liberal Enlightenment project eschewed the imposition of any religious or all-encompassing orthodoxy and especially feared the combination of the press, moral vigilantes, and the passionate mob.

Our wise Enlightenment forebears (e.g., Hamilton, Madison, Burke, Mill, and Montesquieu), hoping to avoid the despotism of enforced ideology, would view today’s reflexive media as ushers of society’s destruction.

Today, while claiming to be “liberal,” the intellectual style of the legacy media is that of cheerleading for stultifying progressive thought, which by its very essence suppresses debate.

Our Founders hoped to devise a system where free and vigorous argument would be the norm. Progressivism, however, has sought to dismantle that system. The first influential Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, greatly disliked the Constitution. He argued strongly for the central administrative control of the country by educated elites, while of course re-segregating the military and the government.

As Burke so ably foretold, reliance on mankind’s limited “stock of rationality” would lead to French-style terror. Burke’s opposing thinker, Rousseau, urged that once the “general will” was determined, through guiding intellectuals, all dissenting citizens must be “forced to be free.”

We have seen such unchanneled “liberal” thought in progressive revolutionaries such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, and Maduro. Under the liberal flag of “the people,” none of these despots allowed free argument. Progressivism, as history has proven, is anything but “liberal.”

It is harmful enough to our democratic republic that major media outlets attempt to suppress debate on the most important societal issues: “climate change” (climate denier!); our election security (election denier!); COVID’s origins (conspiracy theorist!); “Russian collusion” (Trumper!); an aging President’s acuity (MAGA!). But intentionally squelching debate on an issue involving potentially imminent incineration of our world is beneath contempt.

In stark contrast to media-enforced, illiberal progressive ideology, the unwashed “deplorables” welcome true debate. A visit to coffee shops and luncheonettes throughout mid-America finds many people of various educational attainments happy to discuss all points of view in a respectful fashion.

As both Smith and Burke observed, those involved in the commercial trade economy are necessarily disciplined by its morality, which develops civic common sense as well. On the other hand, Burke warned of “calculators” (men of money) and “sophisters” (feckless intellectuals) eschewing traditional mores, inimical to a sound republic, and who therefore promote mob irrationality.

Both sides of our political divide are thus not equal and opposite, as thoughtless commentary would have it. Rather, one side, in diverse parts traditional, rough-hewn, and/or simply commonsensical, is not ideologically driven nor part of a cancel culture. These are the true “liberals” in today’s America.

It follows that the other side of the divide is decidedly illiberal, a league led by calculators and sophisters, hoping to incite the masses through the media they control toward top-down, power-worshipping progressive orthodoxy. Why, we ask, is John Fetterman the only prominent Democrat, among hundreds, willing to argue rationally about our country’s defense?

As the media prevents argument and bans debate, skewing all reporting to the reigning progressive ideological canard, we ask, per Abraham Lincoln, shall our “government of the people, for the people, by the people . . . perish from the earth”?

* * *

John D. O'Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. O’Connor and Mark Felt collaborated on the 2006 book, A G-Man’s Life, which was made into the 2018 film, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/03/is-it-possible-for-the-left-to-engage-in-principled-debate-on-iran/

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USCIS chief launches historic offensive against immigration fraud, armed with denaturalization - Amanda Head

 

by Amanda Head

Joseph Edlow says pending asylum cases exploded from 400,000 in 2021 to 1.5 million after the Biden years.

 

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has created a special team of criminal investigators to root out immigration fraud, equipping newly designated special agents with expanded law enforcement powers to investigate, arrest and prosecute violators and even denaturalize cheaters. 

"We're going to get to a place where people are going to know that if they file, and they're going to file something fraudulently, or they're not giving us their full story, we're going to find that," United States Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow told Just The News.

"What we are doing, what we saw a need for, was a very specialized group of criminal investigators. Many are in training right now, and we are bringing more on all the time who are going to be going out to various field offices across the county and investigating actual immigration fraud."

Edlow announced the initiative in September under a final rule that allows the agency to hire and train 1811-classified officers who can carry firearms, execute warrants and handle cases from start to finish without always referring them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  

“USCIS has always been an enforcement agency,” Edlow said in the agency’s news release. “This historic moment will better address immigration crimes, hold those that perpetrate immigration fraud accountable, and act as a force multiplier for DHS and our federal law enforcement partners, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force.” 

The move fulfills a delegation of authority from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and aims to strengthen fraud detection and national security vetting in the legal immigration system.

In one early test of the heightened scrutiny, USCIS’s Operation Twin Shield in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area uncovered suspected fraud in 275 of more than 1,000 cases reviewed during a 10-day surge of site visits and interviews. Edlow declared the operation part of a broader crackdown. “USCIS is declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud,” he said. “We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws.”

Edlow also commented on building on the work of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) investigations, with the ability to zoom in on specific crimes: "This is with all due respect to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). They do a great job, but they have such a broad set of authorities. This is a narrow set. We're only going to be focused on the immigration and naturalization work, and that's what's going to finally bring some order to the legal immigration system."

Individuals found to have committed immigration fraud, particularly in procuring naturalization through concealment of material facts, willful misrepresentation or illegal means, face potential denaturalization and subsequent deportation, according to U.S. law and ongoing enforcement actions. 

The Department of Justice (DOJ), often with assistance from USCIS, pursues civil or criminal denaturalization cases in federal court when evidence shows citizenship was illegally obtained, such as through sham marriages, false identities, hidden criminal history or fraudulent documents, after which a person reverts to prior immigration status and becomes removable.  

Recent examples include filings against naturalized citizens involved in tax fraud schemes, identity concealment to evade prior deportation orders and naturalization fraud via fake divorce decrees. 

Edlow has emphasized that revetting of past cases and accountability will be used to root out fraudsters and there is no statute of limitations for most civil denaturalization actions.

Amanda Head serves as White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here.  

Amanda Head

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/uscis

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Trump looks to return ATF to original mission, gun regulation that 'truly improves public safety' - Amanda Head

 

by Amanda Head

In recent years, the 53 year-old agency became a thorn in the side of Second Amendment advocates and gun-lovers, with oppressive and restrictive regulations that countered the very protections America’s Founders codified in the Bill of Rights.

 

The Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have announced plans to repeal or revise more than 30 federal gun regulations, completing a 50-year pendulum swing back to the Second Amendment's original, resulting in praise from one of the country's longest-standing gun-rights advocates. 

“This is why America elected Donald Trump. Freedom. ATF has no business making up rules, that’s what Congress does. Blanch, Dhillon, and Cekada are setting the right course," NRA Board Member and retired Army Lt. Col. Willes K. Lee told Just The News after the DOJ and ATF made the announcement last week.

The shift is not just another regulatory rollback, its a culminating chapter in a half-century arc that began with the ATF’s transformation from a Treasury tax-enforcement bureau (pre-1972, when it was still mostly whiskey and tobacco-focused) into the aggressive regulatory federal agency it became after the 1968 Gun Control Act and especially after moved from within the Treasury Department to the Justice Department after the 9-11 terror attacks. 

Among the new proposed changes is one to scrap a 2024 Biden White House rule that expanded background check requirements for gun sales at shows and other non-store venues. 

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche described the package as "the most comprehensive regulatory overhaul in the history" of the ATF saying it would cut red tape and restore clarity for law-abiding gun owners without weakening enforcement. 

For too long, regulations were written without any real understanding of how firearms businesses operate, how lawful gun owners handle their firearms, or what truly improves public safety,” Blanche also said.

Gun control activists have criticized the moves as potentially dangerous.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

“Four days after the nation watched gunfire break out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the Trump administration’s answer is to gut commonsense gun safety laws and sabotage the only federal agency dedicated to keeping guns out of criminal hands,” John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

These actions follow mixed reviews during Trump's first term on Second Amendment issues. 

During that term, Trump took several actions that gun rights advocates praised as strengthening Second Amendment protections, including appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices—Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 – whose originalist judicial philosophies were expected to safeguard individual firearm ownership rights.

Trump also signed the Fix NICS Act (National Instant Checks System) into law in 2018 as part of a larger spending bill to improve the accuracy and completeness of the federal background check system by requiring better reporting from government agencies. 

However, he also pursued measures viewed negatively by many Second Amendment supporters, such as directing the ATF in 2018 to issue a regulation effectively banning bump stocks following the Las Vegas shooting (which took effect in 2019 and restricted a popular rifle accessory), publicly endorsing an increase in the minimum purchase age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 after the 2018 Parkland shooting, and expressing support for red-flag laws that would allow courts to temporarily remove guns from individuals considered a risk, even without a criminal conviction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Amanda Head serves as White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/trumps-atf-returns-former-glory-reduced-regulations-and-new-protections

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Indictment: Drone network smuggled weapons from Jordan - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

Five suspects charged in major operation that moved guns and drugs across the eastern border, exposing link between smuggling routes and terror activity.

 

Some of the confiscated weapons                                                                Shin Bet

The Southern District Prosecutor's Office filed a severe indictment with the Be’er Sheva District Court against five individuals involved in a weapons smuggling network operating along the eastern border.

The defendants are Wael al-Saraia, Madyan al-Saraia, Ziad Abu Gweid, and Ali al-Saraia from the Negev, along with Nassar Nag’ada, a resident of Yatta. The indictment follows a joint operation by the Shin Bet, IDF, and the Southern District Police’s central unit, which exposed a network smuggling weapons and drugs from Jordan.

The investigation revealed that members of the network were involved in multiple smuggling operations using drones, during which approximately 44 handguns were brought into Israel and about 120 kilograms of hashish were smuggled into Jordan.

Some of the weapons, including M-16 rifles and ammunition, were sold to a contact in Judea and Samaria and distributed from there. Two of the suspects were caught in the act during a smuggling attempt, in possession of 10 Glock 17 pistols and 10 matching magazines.

The case began several months ago, when IDF forces identified and intercepted a drone crossing from Jordan in the area of the 96th and 80th Divisions, carrying handguns.

Investigators found a dangerous and direct link between weapons smuggling along the borders and terrorist activity that could harm civilians. Security forces emphasized that this represents a significant disruption of infrastructure that harmed national security.

"The Shin Bet, IDF, and Israel Police view with great severity any involvement or assistance by Israeli citizens in terrorism and weapons smuggling, and will continue to act decisively to thwart such activity and bring those involved to justice," a statement said. 

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426507

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Yet Another Lesson from WWII for Today's Democracies - Lawrence Kadish

 

by Lawrence Kadish

The geography of the Strait of Hormuz is not going to change. What we can change is our dependence on it

 

Pictured: The American oil tanker SS Pennsylvania Sun burns after being torpedoed by the German submarine U-571 on July 15, 1942, about 200 km west of Key West, Florida. The ship was saved and returned to service in 1943. (Image source: U.S. Navy)

 

History has a way of offering its lessons time and again.

During the Second World War, the United States learned a costly lesson about the vulnerability of its oil tankers to enemy action. Today, the world is being offered the same lesson at the Strait of Hormuz, and we need to heed it.

When America entered World War II, nearly all of its petroleum products meant for the Northeast were put aboard ocean-going tankers leaving Gulf Coast refineries and then traveling the Atlantic alongside the eastern seaboard.

Germany's U-boat captains recognized this vulnerability immediately. The results were catastrophic. From January to July 1942, U-boats sank 585 vessels totaling over three million gross tons in U.S. waters, including 129 oil tankers lost in the first five months alone. The Germans would call it "the happy time." The bodies of our sailors would wash ashore, a grisly reminder that we were now at war with the Third Reich.

At one point, deliveries of oil to the East Coast fell by a staggering 90 percent.

The solution was typical American ingenuity. The answer was to bypass the vulnerable sea lanes entirely while waiting for our Navy to implement anti-submarine convoys. Washington and the private sector constructed a two-foot-diameter pipeline running from East Texas oil fields all the way to the Northeast, along with an accompanying line capable of carrying gasoline, heating oil, diesel, and kerosene as far as New York and Philadelphia.

Completed exactly one year after construction began in 1942, the two pipelines together delivered more than 500,000 barrels of oil per day. By moving oil overland, it became invulnerable to the ravages of German U-boats.

The Strait of Hormuz presents an identical problem. Roughly 20 percent of the world's oil supply — nearly 17 million barrels per day — normally passes through this narrow, 21-mile-wide chokepoint between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Every barrel transiting the Strait is hostage to Iranian mines or drone attacks by a murderous regime.

This conflict is not the first time shipping in the Strait of Hormuz has been threatened: during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s; in 2019, when tankers were attacked and seized, and repeatedly during confrontations with Tehran over its nuclear program. Iran merely has to threaten closure, and it plays havoc with the global economy.

The WWII precedent shows that infrastructure investment can permanently neutralize such a chokepoint. Pipelines already exist that partially bypass the Strait — Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, and the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline terminating at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman — but their combined capacity remains insufficient to carry what is needed in times of crisis. A robust, redundant overland pipeline network, built by an alliance of Gulf nations and funded through an international investment, could route millions of additional barrels daily to Red Sea and Indian Ocean terminals, making the Strait of Hormuz strategically irrelevant.

The objections will be familiar: too expensive, too complicated.

It was pretty much the same arguments when American oil tankers were burning off our coast. The pipeline was then promptly built in a no-nonsense wartime spirit. The smart course now is to recognize the need, gather the resources, and create the international coalition to build so that Iran can never again threaten the world's economy.

The geography of the Strait of Hormuz is not going to change. What we can change is our dependence on it.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22492/wwii-lesson-hormuz

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