Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed details about the largest Israel Defense Force (IDF) drill in recent years last week. The drill included simulated airstrikes on Iran and a simulated multi-front war against Iran-backed proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. The message was unmistakable: The Israeli government is weighing its military options, and the military is readying for whatever the government decides. Iran should be worried.

Right now, however, all eyes are on Syria. The war in Ukraine has prompted Russia to redeploy some forces and hardware out of Syria, where it has been buttressing the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad. As the Russians depart, the Iranians want to fill the void.

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Credit where credit is due: Vladimir Putin is revitalizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance that has never been obsolete but had become obsolescent.

Of course, boosting NATO was not the Russian dictator's intention. He expected his invasion of Ukraine to divide and perhaps destroy this beneficial international community.

NATO was founded in 1949 to prevent the U.S.S.R. – an ally against the Nazis but only after Hitler broke his pact with Stalin – from subjugating Western Europe as it had Eastern Europe.

Even after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, many East European nations were eager to join NATO. They believed that membership ensured independence – come what may.

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The British government has announced a new plan to fight illegal immigration by giving some migrants seeking asylum in the United Kingdom a one-way ticket to Rwanda to have their applications processed in the East African country.

The five-year pilot project, aimed at deterring migrants from crossing the English Channel, will initially focus on single males arriving illegally to the UK on boats or trucks.

The plan to outsource the processing of asylum applications overseas — if it survives legal challenges that are certain to come from human rights groups and the European Court of Human Rights — could become a model for other European countries seeking to crack down on illegal immigration.

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A great debate is underway in American foreign policy: a tug-or-war over the extent of U.S. interests in—and American engagement with—the Middle East. To some, the region has come to be seen as a "purgatory" that continues to leech valuable resources and national attention.[1] Others have contended that "the Middle East isn't worth it any more," and Washington should downsize its regional presence to a more modest and sustainable footprint.[2] Still others have argued that, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, engagement in the Middle East represents an "unnecessary expensive and wasteful" venture which should be terminated altogether.[3]

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A skilled writer, editor, and political activist, Midge Decter was a key figure in the movement of neoconservative, anti-Communist liberals away from the Democratic Party in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Despite over two months of trying to bloody and bomb Ukraine into submission to prevent its strategic drift to the west, Vladimir Putin may soon face one of his worst strategic nightmares: the NATO alliance he despises is about to get larger and stronger. And not a minute too soon.

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There are certain moments in life that can best be described as transformative. One such moment is when you cradle your newborn grandchild in your arms for the very first time.

A few days before the start of Passover, I was blessed to be inducted into the grandfather club. I must admit that it will take time to get used to applying that term to myself or hearing others use it in reference to me.

Like Tevye the milkman, I look at my own children and cannot help but ask, "I don't remember growing older, when did they?"

But, the addition of grandparent to one's resume, as jolting as it might be, is hardly the most heartfelt or meaningful aspect of the experience.

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JOE BIDEN came to the presidency trailing a long history of unfiltered outbursts, offensive gibes, and cringe-inducing comments. When he called himself a "gaffe machine" in 2018, no one suggested he was being too hard on himself. More than once in the course of the Ukrainian crisis, Biden has lived up to that reputation by uttering ill-chosen words — from his suggestion in January that a "minor incursion" by Russia wouldn't result in a united NATO response to his startling statement last Thursday that any Russian use of chemical weapons "would trigger a response in kind" by the West.

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Popular wisdom is often wrong. Consider, for example, how it views organic agriculture, which has grown to a $48 billion a year industry in the U.S. Organic products are sold at outlets ranging from local farmers' markets to large supermarket chains, and many people assume that there is something more natural, wholesome, or environmentally sustainable about them. None of that is true.

What's remarkable about this agriculture sector is that the government's extensive promotion has been a hoax from the beginning, having nothing to do with agricultural sustainability, protection of the environment, or food quality.

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In a recent webinar for Americans for Peace Now (APN), the new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, discussed his vision for the Middle East. Among the topics he addressed was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, better known as UNRWA. He declared that he didn't believe giving money to UNRWA hurts the security of Israel.

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Observers seeing a brutal, thuggish war criminal trying to crush the will of a neighboring people to live independent and free of domination are at least partly right. Vladimir Putin is indeed a throwback to Russian rulers past, whose identity was tied up with glorification of conquest, empire, and a twisted spiritual quest inspired by Russian Orthodox Christianity. But it's more than that today: for Putin and those of his inner circle who keep him in power, the prospect that the people of Ukraine (whose very name connotes "borderlands" or "outskirts" . . . of the Russian Empire) would choose not only to break away from Mother Russia, but to edge ever closer to the West, is unthinkable and intolerable. It's not about any imagined military threat from NATO (although that's the misunderstood excuse): It's about the very real fear that Ukraine is breaking free of its Russian roots to build the democratic structures of a Westward-looking nation state.

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