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This Week:

• Top RJC Priority, HEAR Act, Signed into Law
• Things You Need to Know
• US Blockades Strait of Hormuz
• Iran War Deep Dives: Recommended Reading
• Short Takes
• Week's Best Tweets
• Upcoming Events

Top RJC Priority, HEAR Act, Signed into Law

This week, President Donald J. Trump signed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act into law.

The HEAR Act extends and strengthens a landmark 2016 law that helps Holocaust victims and their heirs recover art looted by the Nazis and their collaborators. The HEAR Act strengthens victims’ rights to have their cases heard on the merits. Specifically, it prevents those in possession of looted art from evading justice through concealment and legal defenses based on the passage of time — practices that are all-too-common in the art world. It also blocks defenses based on deference to the laws of other countries, or for other technical reasons. The passage of the HEAR Act affirms a simple truth: there is no excuse for unjustly withholding the Nazi-stolen property of Jews murdered in the Holocaust from their heirs.

RJC CEO Matt Brooks said:

It is deeply meaningful that on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, President Trump signed the HEAR ACT—landmark legislation to extend and improve the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016—into law. The HEAR Act empowers family members, who have fought for decades, to recover artwork stolen from Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.

President Trump has consistently proven to be the best friend of the Jewish people ever to occupy the Oval Office, and his signature today ratifies the truth: the passage of time can never diminish the injustice of crimes committed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.  

Passage of the HEAR Act was a top legislative priority for the RJC in this 119th Congress, and we are grateful to the US Senate and House of Representatives for the bipartisan support for this law. We are grateful in particular to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) who led the way on the original Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act and spearheaded the push to make sure the law was not just reauthorized but improved, and to Congresswoman Laurel Lee (R-FL15) who championed the HEAR Act in the House. And we are grateful to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for a powerful statement affirming the bill as a fulfillment of American leaders' obligation to preserve historic memory and pursue justice for Holocaust victims. 

JTA reports:

Hundreds of thousands of pieces of fine art were looted from their Jewish owners by the Nazis, often by forced sales in the early years of the Nazi regime. Efforts to reunite the works with their owners or their descendants have been guided by an array of laws governed by an international compact including nearly two dozen countries. Restitution claims frequently ignite extensive legal battles.

JNS reports:

The bipartisan bill passed Congress unanimously in March after clearing both chambers.

Joel Greenberg, president of the nonprofit Art Ashes, which assists families seeking to recover Nazi-looted art and which pushed for the legislation, told JNS that law is significant for Holocaust survivors and their families, particularly on the eve of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day.

… One of the loopholes that was closed is a legal doctrine known as "laches," under which courts dismiss a case when families wait too long to file a claim, even if the statute of limitations hasn’t expired, Greenberg said.

"Every survivor and their family will have the right to have their case heard purely on the merits, which means whether the art actually was looted from their families," Greenberg told JNS.

Things You Need to Know

Politico: Ad Wars

RJC Victory Fund is upping its ad buy in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District to $3.5 million as it aims to boost Trump-backed Ed Gallrein against frequent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie. The group is placing a $500,000 buy today that will make it the biggest outside group spending in the race to date, POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky scoops. The group already ran five ads promoting Gallrein and plans more before the May 19 primary.

Jewish Insider: Majority of Senate Dems Vote Against Military Sales to Israel

Most of the Democrats in the Senate — 40 in total, including some traditionally pro-Israel lawmakers — voted on Wednesday evening for a measure led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that aimed to block sales of bulldozers to Israel, with 36 of them also voting to advance a second Sanders-backed resolution to block sales of thousands of 1,000-pound bombs.

The votes are a striking statement of the extent to which anti-Israel sentiment has become mainstream in the Democratic Party. Just seven members of the Democratic caucus voted against both measures.

Twenty-seven Democrats supported at least one of two similar measures in July 2025, which was a record at that time.

Click here to see how each Democratic Senator voted.

US Blockades Strait of Hormuz

JNS reports:

The US military has fully implemented a blockade of Iranian ports, halting maritime trade in and out of the country within 36 hours, the commander of US Central Command said on Wednesday.

…In addition to the blockade, CENTCOM forces are clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz, with the guided-missile destroyers USS Frank E. Peterson and USS Michael Murphy operating in the area.

Marc A. Thiessen analyzes this surprising move:

What a difference a week makes. Last Tuesday, Donald Trump’s critics were crowing that Iran had achieved a strategic victory in its war with the United States, leveraging control of the Strait of Hormuz to force the president to accept a ceasefire and return to the negotiating table. Now Trump has flipped the script — by using the ceasefire to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz.

…The brilliance of this plan is hard to overstate: The blockade … effectively shut[s]down Iran’s oil exports and cut[s] off its energy revenue. That will place an economic stranglehold on Iran.

…The blockade allows the president to twist Iran’s arm to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Moreover, because he is now blocking Iran’s energy exports to China, which gets 45 to 50 percent of its crude oil and 30 percent of its liquefied natural gas imports through the strait, Trump can give Beijing incentive to join him in that pressure campaign.

Jason D. Greenblatt writes at Fox News:

The critics erupted again the moment President Trump ordered a naval blockade, cutting off oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz that Iran has been controlling access to. Brinkmanship, they said. Dangerous escalation.

… President Trump did not arrive here without exhausting every alternative. A personal letter to the supreme leader. Four rounds of Oman-mediated talks. Back channels through Pakistan and Egypt. Extended deadlines. Muscat, Rome, Geneva, Islamabad. Iran made clear at every stage that it would not concede diplomatically what it believed could not be taken from it militarily. Diplomacy without leverage is a wish. President Trump applied both.

Iran War Deep Dives: Recommended Reading

Steinberg: The 'final blow' doctrine: How Trump is rewriting the rules of American power

Many interpreted "America First" as strategic withdrawal and self-isolation. Operations such as Epic Fury and the sustained pressure campaign against Venezuela prove that reading wrong.

What we are witnessing is a fundamental shift in US military-political doctrine: away from the large, diffuse, and costly coalitions that defined the Obama era and the American trauma of Iraq and Afghanistan, toward small, focused, deeply integrated partnerships with allies willing to sacrifice, share intelligence at unprecedented levels, and jointly build operational capabilities aimed at striking the enemy at its points of maximum vulnerability.

Doran: Seven Myths About the Iran War

Across much of the American and Israeli media, seasoned pundits cannot set aside their contempt for [Donald] Trump and [Benjamin] Netanyahu and have joined the chorus portraying the operation as aimless adventurism. In doing so, they advance the very arguments that serve America’s enemies, undermining the credibility of a successful deterrent action and weakening the case for strong, burden-sharing alliances in the 21st century.

… Here are the seven core myths around which the progressives and their MAGA restrainer counterparts are constructing a faulty story about the Iran war.

Yishayahu: Four Strategic Lessons from the Iran War

A nation’s true strategy during wartime is … revealed in the way power is applied. More than five weeks into the war between the United States, Israel and Iran, it is still too early to speak of outcomes. But the way this war began, and the logic that has followed, offer a set of key operational insights into American and Israeli strategy.

Riboua: The War the Arab World is Watching

Western coverage of Operation Epic Fury has unfolded almost entirely on Iran’s own terms.

The dominant frame across European and American commentary treats the Islamic Republic as the aggrieved party narrating its resistance, and the discussion in mainstream outlets and across social media platforms has largely been organized around what Iran claims, what Iran endures, and what Iran dares to threaten.

This frame leaves an enormous gap in the picture, and the gap is the Arab world — a civilization that has spent forty years watching the Islamic Republic erode its institutional, theological, and cultural foundations.

… Western observers who followed this war through the lens of Iranian social media accounts have been watching a carefully produced performance. The Arab world has been watching something else entirely, the first serious challenge to an ideology that was never democratically adopted, never welcomed, and imposed through violence and subversion from the moment of its founding.

Short Takes

Jerusalem Post: 'We're on the same side': Israel, Lebanon envoys conclude historic peace talks

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, met on Tuesday with Lebanon’s Ambassador to the United States, Nada Hamadeh, in what is being described as a historic meeting.

"It was a crushing victory over Hezbollah," said Leiter. "We are on the same side, we and the Lebanese, that the evil of Hezbollah must be eradicated. We are united in this need. We talked about possibilities, a vision for the long term, about how Lebanon can prosper…"

Update: On social media today, President Donald Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. He also announced that he will invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to the White House for talks.

Matzav: Israel Appoints First Ambassador to Somaliland

[Michael] Lotem, who currently serves as a non-resident economic ambassador to Africa, has been chosen as Israel’s inaugural ambassador to Somaliland. At the outset, he will carry out the position as a non-resident ambassador.

Israel formally recognized Somaliland in December 2025, becoming the first—and so far only—nation to grant official recognition to the self-declared republic, which Somalia continues to regard as part of its sovereign territory.

NY Post: Rep. Elise Stefanik’s new book ‘Poisoned Ivies’ on campus antisemitism tops Amazon bestseller list as she launches tour

Rep. Elise Stefanik’s new book about the rise of antisemitism and "anti-Americanism" at US universities has topped the Amazon bestseller list on the day of its publication, as the congresswoman announced a nationwide tour.

"Poisoned Ivies," comes nearly three years after the New York Republican’s highly watched confrontation in a Capitol Hill hearing with Ivy League presidents and aims to tell the story of how that "reset the course of American higher education" in the years to come.

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