My grandparents live in a small apartment in Santa Monica. It has white walls and wood floors and is full of light. The living room window faces the street, and my grandma, Kathy, likes to poke her head out and talk to her neighbors, many of whom moved here after the Palisades fire, just like them.

To me, the Palisades house where my grandparents lived for 60 years always felt frozen in time. While opulent mansions sprung up on their street, their house served as a reminder of the days when a humble community college English professor (my grandpa, Marvin) could buy property in those idyllic, quiet, near-enough-to-smell-the-ocean streets. It was filled with books and family photographs. The living room mantle was covered in beach glass, sea-shells and surf paraphernalia, reminders of Kathy’s 1950s Malibu surf career that was immortalized in my great-grandfather’s novel Gidget, which inspired a series of books, a movie and a TV show.

Marvin’s office was filled with hundreds of Yiddish books with multi-colored spines and black-and-white photos, some of which showed his Bundist father in Polish prisons. As a child, I would scan the spines of fat history books with frightening titles like The War Against the Jews 1933-1945 and  Never Say Die! Printed out and pinned to the wall was a quote by Marek Edelman, the Bundist second commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed & never the oppressors!”

The Bund was a socialist Jewish political party, at one point the most popular in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe. The party was founded on the premise of doikayt, or hereness, the belief that Jews deserved to live in freedom and dignity wherever they happened to be. In practice, this meant that the Bund ran a complex network of schools, self-defense squads, athletic clubs, literary journals, unions and local courts, designed to celebrate Jewish life and protect Jews from ever-surging antisemitic hostility. Knowing that my great-grandfather and namesake, Rubin Zuckerman, was a Bundist meant knowing that he was secular, proudly Jewish, believed firmly in egalitarian values, and was critical about the founding of Israel.

During the pandemic, I would sit in Marvin and Kathy’s overgrown garden, six feet away next to a rusted exercise bike. I would practice my Yiddish by reading aloud postcards sent from some young woman Marvin thought was the greatest — Molly Crabapple.

Molly began interviewing Marvin for her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, seven years ago. She has a resume that would make anyone’s head spin. Her art is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and her journalistic output has covered Occupy Wall Street, Syrian rebels, and Guantanamo Bay. She’s won two Emmys and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Marvin told me about her with glowing eyes, and I responded with the type of disinterest reserved for recommendations from elder family members. OK, yes, there’s this young woman, she cares about the Bund, she makes art. But I too was a young woman who cared about the Bund and made art, and the narcissism of small differences precluded any real enthusiasm.

In 2026, with my grandparents’ Palisades sanctuary in ashes, I came to their house with a galley copy of Molly’s book. I had received it in the mail a few days earlier, and was quickly stripped of any skeptical haughtiness. Molly was describing a world, an ideology and a sensibility I knew so dearly and intimately from Marvin and Kathy. I had never seen this world so well described, neatly explaining concepts I have failed to adequately convey to even my closest friends.

I was eager to show Marvin the book, hear what Molly had gotten right or wrong, and share in the strange melancholic joy that comes from jewels of truth surviving over time, even as the physical, lived experience is washed away. With our personal archive up in smoke — the letters written by my great-grandparents, the stray notes, the marginalia in books toted from Poland to the Bronx to the Palisades — Molly’s book had a lot to live up to.

We sat on the couch and Marvin licked his finger to flip through the first pages. He went down the opening “Cast of Characters,” which outlines major players in Bundist history.

“Rafael Abramovich — I met him,” he said. “Meyer London — my father was in a picture with him.”

At 93, Marvin struggles to read without reading glasses and a dentist-grade clip-on magnifying glass. I read the introduction aloud to him and he recognized himself as the “octogenarian Yiddish scholar” who sang “partisan hymns” to Molly.

I continued to read aloud — about Molly’s own connection to her Bundist great-grandfather, her experience with leftist organizing, the overwhelming outpouring of support when she wrote about the Bund for the New York Review of Books, and her travels to the former Pale of Settlement, Ukraine and Gaza.

Despite my best intentions, my voice broke when I read this line: “The Bundists built alternate worlds of beauty, of courage, and of hope, which allowed their people to persevere even in the midst of an apocalypse. Their ideas are still vital today.”

I turned to Marvin and he was weeping as well.

“It’s true,” he said, “they were beautiful, beautiful people.”

“Are you two crying?” Kathy called in disbelief from the kitchen.

In Santa Monica, my grandpa’s office is inside of a closet. When I first got the news that the Palisades house had burned down, I emailed David Mazower, the curator at the Yiddish Book Center. I wanted to know if he could help me replace Marvin’s Yiddish books. Over the course of several months, he generously mailed nearly 100 books to us. They have strangers’ names written on their inside covers.

Feteshizing books

Family history embeds itself in your psyche through roundabout means. Marvin picked me up from school every Wednesday from the time I was in kindergarten until I graduated high school. He would buy me ice cream and listen to my favorite CD’s — The Beatles or Simon & Garfunkel, which sounded brand new to him since he stopped listening to popular music after Benny Goodman and prefers classical to anything else. He was my caring friend, who prioritized my own curiosity over anything else. Words like Bund, Yiddish, democratic socialism, Poland, the Holocaust, Zionism entered my subconsciousness, but I didn’t recognize the particular bent of Judaism I was born into until my later teens, when I started to seek out my own community.

Marvin urged me to attend the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books program for high school students in 2015. Stepping inside their shtetl-inspired wooden building deep in lush Western Massachusetts was the first time my Yiddishist, Bundist history had a context. I recognized a Jewishness based in literature. A Jewishness based in solidarity and multiculturalism, without borders or armies. Today, my great-grandparents, Manye & Rubin, are featured in the permanent exhibit curated by David Mazower. Their picture stands above a bookshelf with Yiddish translations of Darwin, Marx and George Brandes’ literary criticism, and a full set of Guy de Maupassant and Jack London. Next to the books is a video of Marvin, describing how his parents, although they had no formal education and were garment workers, read all the time. When I tell friends that my great-grandparents are in an exhibition, they ask what they achieved.

“They liked to read,” I say, with my heart full of pride. Their values speak to me as loud as any accomplishment.

“Secular Yiddish literature and the Bund grew together,” Molly writes in her book, “until Bundists became the literature’s greatest champions.”

“Jews fetishized books,” Molly writes elsewhere, describing the “gluttony” for knowledge most working class Eastern European Jews nourished.

Marvin is often critical of any work describing his history, but as we read the first 30 pages of Here Where We Live Is Our Country aloud, he had little to say other than brief exclamations of excitement and agreement. Molly’s writing style is full of delicious and evocative details that allow us to fully inhabit this vanished world. As we read about how Polish borders were drawn and re-drawn, Marvin told me about how he would fill out forms for his parents when he was a child.

“The forms would ask when were you born,” he said, “well, they didn’t really know. OK. Then, the forms ask where you were born. They would shrug and look at each other, saying, ‘Poland? Russia? Was it Russia then? Was it Poland?’

“Then the form would ask, what is your profession. They would say ‘operator.’ They meant sewing machine operator, but as a boy, I just thought, what’s wrong with these people? They don’t know when they were born, they don’t know where they were born, and they’re telling me ‘operator’ is a real job?”

Molly and I share the same generational gap from our Bundist great-grandfathers. Both of us have parents who are not Jewish. And we are both women. Her perspective about female psychology, sexuality and experience allowed me to relate to Bundist history from a new axis. She writes about women who lost their virginity or had sex with multiple men in one day while surviving in the Warsaw Ghetto. She brings Pati Kremer to the forefront over her better known husband, the official founder of the Bund, Arkady Kremer, starting with Pati’s abandonment of her bourgeois upbringing and ending with a visit to her unmarked mass grave in Poland. Molly articulates the pull that many women, including myself, feel to “[subsume themself] in the domestic sphere that takes so many women out of historical record, while sometimes compensating them with private joys”

Women in Here Where We Live Is Our Country crush on their “family maid with sapphic fervor,” have long noses that “a male comrade mentioned unkindly in his memoirs,” make men their projects, sustain relationships with incarcerated men, or sometimes, “never married… had no lovers… just worked for the Bund.” She describes Sophia Dubnova’s efforts to disseminate birth control and lecture series about a woman’s right to orgasm. A non-Jewish Polish Socialist ally woman hides a message in her lipstick case. Abortion happens inside the Warsaw Ghetto, where many women were unwilling to risk bringing a life into such terrifying circumstances. It’s thrilling to hear these subjects written about so candidly, with no sense of shame or secrecy. I realize that in some ways, only a woman from my generation can do this.

A family affair

This past New Year’s Day, my parents and siblings crowded into Marvin and Kathy’s cramped living room. We ate the pastries Kathy had carefully assembled until the atmosphere abruptly shifted from friendly to tense. My father, a sociology professor, admitted he was planning on going to an academic conference in Israel. Although all of our family leans heavily left, my father feels a more profound connection to Israel. He lived there and worked on a kibbutz for several years.

My dad and I fell into the kind of argument many children have had with their parents since Oct. 7th, 2023. Despite fully knowing our shared values, we couldn’t help accusing the other of representing extremes: My dad must believe war crimes and genocide are legitimate means of self defense; I must believe Jews don’t deserve their own country. Marvin intervened thoughtfully, trying to bring our commonality to the forefront. Repeatedly, he referenced the Bund.

The Bund’s story is able to sidestep so many claustrophobic tropes around Zionism. Their devotion to Jewish safety and cultural autonomy leaves no room for accusations of antisemitism. If nothing else, they prove a point that bears urgent repeating for Jews and non-Jews alike — there has never been a singular Jewish consensus on the necessity of our own ethnostate. Like the Warsaw Ghetto fighters Molly resurrects in her book, like my own family, Jews have always argued about the best way forward.

I take enormous comfort reading Bundist leader Henryk Erlich’s 1933 speech, one that Marvin shared with me a few years ago when I was full of desperation about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza. Reprinted in Molly’s book, his words are clear as ever: “Our nationalism is just as ugly, just as harmful, and has the same inclination to fascist debauchery as the nationalisms of all nations.”

A strange sense of ownership

A few days after finishing Molly’s book, I met her at Canyon Coffee, and the two of us sat on the sidewalk while the east side creatives meandered by.

“I feel this strange sense of ownership over your book,” I said.

“You should,” said Molly, “without your grandfather’s encouragement, I would have never been able to finish it.”

I was overwhelmed by a new feeling. Here we were, chatting about the hectic nature of her upcoming book tour and the stress I’ve been feeling as a bridesmaid for my friend getting married next month. Against all odds, the movement that united our great-grandparents created a thread strong enough to find us sitting together. I felt that Molly was family.

The post I come from a long line of Jewish Bundists. Now, Molly Crabapple is part of our family. appeared first on The Forward.

Islamic State – Central Africa Province released documentary entitled “Jihad and Dawah” covering group’s campaigns in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo and battles against Congolese and Ugandan armies. Photo: Screenshot

US lawmakers this week raised alarm bells over the rising terrorist threat from Africa, advocating for continued American support for African nations fighting Islamists as the continent becomes the center of global terrorism.

The US Senate Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy, which is part of the larger Foreign Relations Committee, held a hearing in which legislators highlighted the importance of combating terrorist groups in Africa while jousting over President Donald Trump’s approach to the continent.

“Today, the center of gravity for global terrorism has shifted to Africa. It has shifted partly and in fact precisely because of the export of violent Islamic terrorism from the Middle East as well as because of incredibly complicated and specific local dynamics,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who chairs the subcommittee.

“Across the Sahel in West Africa and in East Africa, terrorist groups are expanding, embedding, and operating with increasing capability,” Cruz added. “ISIS affiliates and al-Qaeda-linked groups are growing, controlling territory, and exploiting weak governance.”

The Sahel region runs 3,360 miles across the African continent, dividing the Sahara Desert to the north from the tropical southern savannahs. Terrorist hot spots in recent years in the region have included Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, where, Cruz noted, “JNIM [Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin], and Islamic State in the Sahel have all expanded. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, ISIS West Africa, and Fulani extremists are mass slaughtering Christians.”

In November, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a study documenting that in 2024, 86 percent of all terrorism-related deaths occurred in just 10 countries, with seven of them in Africa and five in the Sahel. The researchers identified JNIM as being behind 83 percent of the killings.

Describing the threats in the Horn of Africa region, Cruz said that, in Somalia, al-Shabaab “targets Americans and threatens US personnel and partners in East Africa, all while receiving support from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.”

“In region after region, terrorist groups are outpacing the ability of local governments to respond,” he added. “The failures threaten our interest globally and endanger the American homeland. The threat is rapidly growing and demands attention.”

The Texas senator also took time in his opening remarks to criticize former US President Joe Biden’s approach to Africa.

“For too long, however, Africa was treated as a theater where we didn’t have interests. Presidential administrations either ignored it or used it as a playground for self-indulgent ideological experiments,” Cruz said. “The latter problem was particularly acute during the previous administration. That mismatch allowed terrorist groups to expand and global adversaries, in particular Russia, China, and Iran, to intervene and undermine American interests. Those dynamics now threaten US interests, our allies, and ultimately the American homeland.”

After concluding, Cruz allowed Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, to offer his own assessment.

“What we are discussing today is not far away. It’s not disconnected from American life. It’s not some side issue we can afford to regulate to the margins of our senatorial and administrative focus,” Booker said. “Africa is not peripheral to the national security of the United States and to the urgencies we face.”

Booker added that, earlier this year, “the US intelligence community assessed that Africa has become ‘a focal point for the global Sunni Jihadist movement.’ That is not a passing warning. That is a flashing red light.”

Echoing Cruz’s concerns, Booker noted that “al-Shabaab remains a deadly and determined force who has killed civilians, killed Americans, threatened US interests, and plotted a 9/11 style attack against the United States.” He also described how “ISIS Somalia is emerging as a more significant node in the broader ISIS network with demonstrated intent and capability to threaten beyond the region, including against the United States.”

The senator went on to discuss the Sahel, pointing to how “in the Lake Chad Basin, IS West Africa and Boko Haram continue to exploit borders that are weak, states that are strained, and communities that have been failed by their governments for far too long. So, let’s be clear, counterterrorism in Africa is not charity. It is not a distraction. It’s not optional for our country. It is a core American national security interest.”

Booker named the factors that fueled terrorist groups in the region, saying, “They feed on corruption. They feed on broken governance. They feed on despair. They feed on the absence of state legitimacy, the weakness of institutions, the pain of exclusion, and the vulnerability of young people who see too few pathways to dignity, work, and hope.”

Emphasizing that “military strikes alone cannot prevent extremist groups from returning the moment attention shifts and the dust settles,” the New Jersey Democrat argued that combating the threat takes “strategy, patience, partnerships, diplomacy, development, and security working together.”

Booker then criticized the Trump administration for its approach to Africa, describing it as “retreat dressed up as resolve,” in part due to “diminished diplomatic presence” across the continent.

“The Trump administration is not delivering a whole-of-government strategy. It is delivering a whack-a-mole policy dressed up as counterterrorism,” Booker argued. “It is fragmented. It is reactive. It is too often militarized and under-strategized. Because the future of American security is bound up with the future of the stability, prosperity, and partnerships we have on the African continent, we need a strategy that reflects the true conditions on the ground and not only frames Africa as a problem but actually sees the real framing that it is an extraordinary asset.”

Cruz defended the Trump administration’s efforts in Africa.

“As I’ve said, one of the reasons for these hearings is to ensure that the administration officials have the opportunity and the platform to articulate President Trump’s approach to Africa. For too long, US policy has treated Africa as a secondary theater,” Cruz said. “The Biden administration withdrew US forces from Niger, which was a key foothold in the region that is the epicenter of global terrorism. That assumption is no longer tenable for a range of reasons.”

Cruz said that Trump “personally met with 13 African heads of state in his first year in office. But too often there is nonetheless a lazy assumption that the US is disengaging from Africa.”

Nick Checker, senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of Africa Affairs, testified before the committee.

“Africa will play an important role in America’s economic future. The continent holds vast critical minerals, energy resources, and tremendous human capital,” he said. “However, these opportunities cannot be fully realized amid persistent instability in parts of the continent, including terrorist threats, which continue to affect US interests.”

Checker described the limited nature of the administration’s approach.

“Our counterterrorism posture in Africa is narrowly focused and aligned with US national security priorities. The primary objective is clear: We will protect the homeland from threats while safeguarding US citizens and commercial interests abroad,” Checker said. “Groups affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda remain active in the Sahel, Nigeria, and parts of East Africa. These threats are real, but our response must be disciplined.”

On April 16, troops in Nigeria killed 25 fighters in the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terror group during a failed attack in the Borno state.

“We will not pursue large-scale, indefinite military engagements, or nation building efforts,” Checker said. “Instead, we are adopting a targeted approach that emphasizes intelligence sharing and limited, high impact security cooperation with partners who demonstrate both capability and political will.”

Regarding the Sahel, Checker said “a region that accounted for 5-10 percent of terrorism-related deaths a decade ago, now represents more than 50 percent. Despite significant American engagement, the strategic picture demonstrates that open-ended, aid-centric approaches have not delivered sustainable security outcomes. This is why a fundamental rethink is necessary.”

In his conclusion, Checker noted that “our approach is grounded in respect for sovereignty and realism about political conditions on the ground. We engage governments as they are, not as we wish them to be.”

Monica Jacobson, senior official for the Bureau of Counterterrorism, also testified and explained how the administration’s approach was guided by three core principles: neutralizing terrorist threats before they reached the US, supporting regional partners instead of replacing them, and defending critical supply chains.

“Moroccan forces previously trained by the Bureau of Counterterrorism now train Sahelian forces across sub-Saharan Africa, using US-provided curricula,” Jacobson said. “This is precisely the model we seek to expand, with regional partners leading and sustaining regional security efforts.”

Jacobson continued, “We also recognize that, in many parts of Africa, radical Islamic terrorists target civilians based on their Christian faith. As President Trump and Secretary Rubio have made clear, we will respond to atrocities and violence against Christians, including those who knowingly direct, authorize, fund, support, or carry out violations of religious liberty. Our counterterrorism efforts have included directly targeting the terrorists responsible for this violence, and we likewise hold governments’ feet to the fire when they fail to address terrorist threats that undermine religious freedom.”

Former Nigerian Information Minister Lai Mohammed responded to the hearing on Wednesday when speaking at Abbey College in Cambridge.

“Now, people say that there is religious persecution in Nigeria and that there is genocide against Christians,” Mohammed said. “It’s not true. It is fake news.” He defended Nigeria as fostering a culture that promotes interfaith tolerance.

Chigozie Ubani, a fellow at the Institute of Security Nigeria, has discussed Boko Haram’s attacks.

“Their target is to terrorize, maim, and displace people,” Ubani told Nigeria’s Punch News. “Once they displace them, of course, they occupy the space. So, for as long as that is not achieved, they can only retreat and come back.”

Last month, multiple terrorist attacks in Nigeria’s Maiduguri killed 25 people and injured more than 200.

“Their goal is to take over our territories,” Ubani said. “When they take over, everybody there will submit to their religious authority. That’s what it is.”

Earlier this week, officials from both Mali and Niger accused their neighboring countries of supporting terrorism. At the sidelines of a security forum in Senegal, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop claimed that other countries were “harboring terrorist groups” and allowing them to operate against Mali. Niger officials have previously accused France of backing terrorism and faced criticism for allegedly concealing the severity of Islamist terror attacks.

On Saturday, US Africa Command released a statement announcing strikes had occurred on Friday, targeting Islamic State terrorists in the mountain regions of Puntland, the Easternmost state of Somalia. The attacks targeted territory approximately 30 miles southeast of the port city of Bosaso in the Bari region. No casualty numbers were announced.

On Wednesday, Puntland forces displayed the corpses of more than 10 suspected Islamic State fighters killed in the strikes on the Jaceel Valley area of the Calmiskaad mountain range.

Video shared from the scene showed bodies in what appeared to be a crater from an airstrike.

Army soldiers patrol a road as Pakistan prepares to host US and Iran for the second round of peace talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Waseem Khan

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi arrived in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Friday to discuss proposals for restarting peace talks with the US, offering some optimism for an end to the eight-week war that has killed thousands and sown turmoil in global markets.

US President Donald Trump told Reuters on Friday that Iran plans to make an offer aimed at satisfying US demands, but said he did not yet know what the offer entailed.

When asked who the US was negotiating with, Trump said: “I don’t want to say that, but we’re dealing with the people that are in charge now.”

It remained unclear whether Araqchi would meet this weekend with US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, or whether a meeting would happen later.

After a US bombing campaign and Iran‘s blocking of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the two countries are at a costly impasse, with Iran‘s oil exports blocked and US gasoline prices at multi-year highs. The US and Israel also destroyed most of Iran’s navy and air defenses, killed much of the regime’s leadership, and significantly degraded its nuclear, missile, and drone programs.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff and Kushner would leave for Pakistan on Saturday morning for talks with Araqchi. Pakistani sources said Araqchi was not slated to meet US negotiators in Islamabad, a message echoed by an Iran state television reporter, who said Pakistan could convey Iran‘s concerns for ending the war.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry confirmed Araqchi’s arrival in Islamabad, where a heavy military and paramilitary presence was visible across the central parts of the city.

Araqchi went straight into a meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar at the Serena Hotel, where the first round of talks with the US was held, two government sources said.

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani pledged his country’s support for mediation efforts by Pakistan in a phone call with Trump, Qatar’s state news agency reported.

Leavitt struck an upbeat tone, saying the US had seen some progress from the Iranian side in recent days and hoped more would come this weekend.

She added that US Vice President JD Vance, who earlier this month led a first round of unsuccessful talks with Iran to end their war, is ready to travel to Pakistan to join the negotiations if they prove successful.

Araqchi wrote on X that he was visiting Pakistan, Oman, and Russia to coordinate with partners on bilateral matters and consult on regional developments. The tour will include consultations on the latest efforts to end the war, Iran‘s Foreign Ministry spokesperson later told state media.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a briefing earlier on Friday that Iran had a chance to make a “good deal” with the United States.

“Iran knows that they still have an open window to choose wisely,” he said. “All they have to do is abandon a nuclear weapon in meaningful and verifiable ways.”

Reports on Araqchi’s trip in Iranian state media and the Pakistani sources made no mention of Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of Iran‘s parliament, who was the head of its delegation at the talks earlier this month.

The Iranian parliament’s media office denied a report that Qalibaf had resigned as head of Iran‘s negotiating team, and added that there was no new round of talks scheduled yet.

Pakistani sources said earlier that a US logistics and security team already was in place in Islamabad for potential talks.

The last round of peace talks had been expected to resume on Tuesday but never took place, with Iran saying it was not yet ready to commit to attending and a US delegation led by Vance never leaving Washington.

Trump unilaterally extended a two-week ceasefire on Tuesday to allow more time to reconvene the negotiators.

Oil prices remained volatile on Friday, as traders weighed potential disruption from the worst oil shock in history amid the prospect for further talks.

Brent crude futures settled at $105.33 a barrel, about 0.3% higher, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures were down 1.5% at $94.40.

HEZBOLLAH DISMISSES LEBANON CEASEFIRE EXTENSION

On Thursday, Israel and Lebanon extended a separate ceasefire for three weeks at a White House meeting brokered by Trump.

The war in Lebanon, which Israel invaded last month to root out Iran‘s Hezbollah allies after the terrorist group fired across the border, has run in parallel with the wider Iran war, and Tehran says a ceasefire there is a precondition for talks.

There was little sign of an end to the fighting in southern Lebanon. Lebanese authorities reported two people were killed by an Israeli strike and Hezbollah downed an Israeli drone.

While the ceasefire that came into force on April 16 has led to a significant reduction in hostilities, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to trade blows in southern Lebanon, where Israel has kept soldiers in a self-declared “buffer zone.”

“It is essential to point out that the ceasefire is meaningless in light of Israel’s insistence on hostile acts, including assassinations, shelling, and gunfire” and its demolition of villages and towns in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayyad said in response to the extension of the ceasefire.

Israel’s military said it had killed six armed Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon on Friday.

STRAIT OF HORMUZ BLOCKADE

Trump on Thursday said he wanted an “everlasting” agreement with Iran, while asserting the US had an upper hand in the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route.

The US has yet to find a way to open the strait, where Iran has blocked nearly all ships apart from its own since the start of the war eight weeks ago. Iran showed off its control this week by seizing two huge cargo vessels there.

Trump imposed a separate blockade of Iranian shipping last week. Iran says it will not reopen the strait until Trump lifts his blockade.

“Our blockade is growing and going global,” Hegseth told reporters on Friday.

“No one sails from the Strait of Hormuz to anywhere in the world without the permission of the United States Navy,” he said.

Only five ships crossed the strait in the last 24 hours, shipping data showed on Friday, compared to around 130 a day before the war. Those included one Iranian oil products tanker, but none of the vast crude-carrying supertankers that normally feed global energy markets.

Container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd also said one of its ships had crossed the strait, without giving details.