Good morning! Today is Tuesday, May 5th 2026, and this is The American Conservative's Morning Brief. Harrison Berger reports on the unbroken flow of American aid to Israel as a former Mossad chief tours raided Palestinian villages and says he is ashamed, while a daylight school shooting and the killing of a Philadelphia native go unpunished. Ted Snider examines the bind of the Gulf states, which warned Washington against the war, host 40,000 U.S. troops, and have absorbed 83 percent of Iran's retaliatory strikes — leaving the American security umbrella in tatters. Trump's "Project Freedom" order in the Strait of Hormuz collides with Iranian threats and a fourteen-point counterproposal as Brent hits $112, gas reaches $4.46, and Spirit Airlines shuts its doors and lays off its workforce. and now for the details. We begin this morning in the West Bank, where the pattern of settler violence against Palestinians has reached a level that even former Israeli security officials are calling unconscionable — even as American taxpayer support for the Israeli government continues uninterrupted. The House Appropriations Committee has just released its Fiscal Year 2027 spending bill, approving another $3.8 billion in aid to Israel under the terms of the existing ten-year memorandum of understanding. That funding moves forward as Tamir Pardo, the former chief of Israel's Mossad, tours raided Palestinian villages and tells reporters that what he is witnessing reminds him of what was done to Jews in Europe in the last century. Pardo, the son of a Holocaust survivor, said he felt ashamed. His comments echo those of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who earlier this year compared the ideology now dominant in the Israeli government to Nazi racial theory. As Harrison Berger reports for The American Conservative, condemnations from Western and former Israeli officials have not changed conditions on the ground. Berger speaks with Rabbi Arik Ascherman and journalist Jasper Nathaniel, both of whom describe an escalation of settler violence carried out under direct military protection. Since Israel's security cabinet secretly approved 34 new West Bank settlements following the launch of the Iran war in February, attacks have intensified. Berger documents the daylight school shooting on April 21st that killed a 14-year-old boy and a 32-year-old man; the killing of 19-year-old Philadelphia native Nasrallah Abu Siyam in February — the seventh American killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in the West Bank since October 7th, with no arrests in any of those cases. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly vowed that the United States will hunt down anyone, anywhere, who kills Americans. Berger notes that this pledge has not been applied when the killers wear the uniform — or stand under the protection — of the Israeli state. Turning to the broader regional picture, Ted Snider writes for TAC on the deteriorating position of the Gulf states twenty-seven days into the ceasefire with Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council met last week in Saudi Arabia for the first time since the war began, condemning Iranian missile and drone strikes on their territory but also calling for a diplomatic path forward. Snider's reporting lays out the bind these states are in. Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE host thirteen American military bases and roughly 40,000 U.S. troops. They lobbied hard against the war. They warned Washington it would be disastrous. And they have absorbed 83 percent of Iran's retaliatory strikes. Snider quotes Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute, who says the Gulf states are furious with the United States for ignoring their warnings, and now face the reality that the American bases on their soil have become a liability rather than a shield. Iran, having been attacked twice during diplomatic talks, views strikes on those bases as the most efficient way to make Washington feel the cost of the war. Snider reports that U.S. fighter jets have been launched from Jordan, HIMARS missiles fired from Kuwait and Bahrain, and that an explosion in Bahrain originally blamed on Iran has now been traced to an American Patriot interceptor. The Gulf states, Snider concludes, are likely to begin diversifying their security arrangements. The American security umbrella, in their estimation, has not held. The standoff is now centering on the Strait of Hormuz. Harrison Berger reports that on Sunday evening, President Trump announced on Truth Social what he is calling "Project Freedom" — an order for the U.S. Navy to guide commercial vessels through the strait. Iran's unified armed forces command responded that any foreign military forces entering the strait without Tehran's coordination would be attacked. On Monday, Iranian state media claimed Iranian forces had struck an American warship with two missiles. CENTCOM denied the claim. The UAE has condemned an Iranian strike on an Abu Dhabi National Oil Company tanke
